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The GaryVee Audio Experience
Tim Ferriss | Rituals, Reinventing Success & the Power of Failure
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- [00:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
This is the GaryVee audio experience. Hey guys, before we go into today's podcast, big news. I know you love it. The show that you all adore, or at least according to my mom, is back tomorrow at 9am Eastern. Tea with Gary Vee tomorrow. Tea with GaryVee is back tomorrow at 9am Eastern live on all my socials. But go to vefriends.comveriends.com live if you want to be in the mix and get the free giveaways and the whole new thing. I'm doing social shopping. But go to veefriends.com live if you want to really be in the mix. And now enjoy today's podcast. Tim, for the nine people that are watching this that don't know who you are, can you give a quick little bio? And before that, your new facial hair game is so legit.
- [00:51]
Tim Ferriss
Inspired by kung fu movies.
- [00:52]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I figured, I know your love for Japan and all those things.
- [00:56]
Tim Ferriss
Slash down and out in Beverly Hills.
- [00:57]
Gary Vaynerchuk
No, seriously, it's really like, thank you.
- [00:58]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you, thank you. Well, I figure I can't do it on the top.
- [01:01]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I'm feeling good.
- [01:02]
Tim Ferriss
So I'm going Jason Statham upside down face. I'm growing it this way.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
You do look fit too. Like, have you been like, you had a good six months to you?
- [01:09]
Tim Ferriss
I feel like the last time I said gymnastics. Fasting.
- [01:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What's your fast game?
- [01:15]
Tim Ferriss
Fast game is number one. Don't do this at home, kids. Talk to your professional liability. Cover my ass. Okay, so three contiguous days each month. So I do a three day fast every month. And then I do longer five to ten day fasts two or three times a year. That kills my once a week for that. Well, no, but once a week, it's actually, it's debatable. Which is of greater benefit, right? The sort of high frequency, low dose.
- [01:41]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's so funny when you, you know, obviously you get brought up a lot to me and I'm like, look, anytime I want to do something, like, I intuitively do stuff you do them for. Like you do. Like you look at this book like this. He goes th. Like I was saying, the girth of his work is so incredible. The podcast, the.
- [02:00]
Tim Ferriss
Those are the two poll quotes right there.
- [02:02]
Gary Vaynerchuk
But it's so funny. Like I just fast once a week when I'm in that zone randomly. Cause I just like the way I feel. I have no idea of the data and the science and the understanding. I know that's where your strength lies. So there is no.
- [02:15]
Tim Ferriss
I'm trying to up My intuition game. But are you. But yeah, yeah. So we can talk about that. I thought you were gonna say for the nine people who are familiar with my work. Which may be true. Depends on when you're watching.
- [02:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love when Timmy goes, oh, excuse. I love when Timothy.
- [02:28]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, yes, thank you, thank you.
- [02:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Which we have to talk about as well. Goes with the humility card. Tim, honestly, you've had a. It's been an unbelievable decade for you. You have not only a lot of awareness and people know who you are, but what I think is super interesting. Cause there's a lot of names that run around the world. There's two things that I really like about you. From afar. From afar. One, a lot of people know who you are. And as people get closer to actually you, the admiration grows, not declines. And I think that is a big fucking deal.
- [03:01]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you.
- [03:02]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You're welcome. Okay, so where were we? The nine people.
- [03:06]
Tim Ferriss
Oh yeah. So I suppose was put on the map as far as most people are concerned with a book called the Four Hour Workweek, which we could certainly talk about. Had its 10th anniversary the day I stepped on the TED stage this past year, April 24, to talk about the darkness. So the juxtaposition was quite interesting. And then after that wrote a number of different books with the four hour infomercially sounding vibe and then Tools of Titans and then Tribe of Mentors. So I've retired the four hour jersey for the time being. And around 2006, I can't wait for.
- [03:42]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That 20th anniversary four hour Mars while we're all gonna.
- [03:48]
Tim Ferriss
Jeff Bezos with Tim Ferriss. And then around 2007 also started angel investing and getting involved in tech. And so the main financial impact on your piece of the pie chart has come from the involvement of tech and.
- [04:03]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Have done a lot of like, you know, TV projects and things of that nature.
- [04:06]
Tim Ferriss
TV podcast for the past few years to Parish.
- [04:08]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I mean the podcast is a beast.
- [04:10]
Tim Ferriss
Yes, it's been a good run. Funny to believe that it started with me getting stupidly, inappropriately drunk out of nerves interviewing our friend Kevin Rose. I don't know why I was so nervous. But now, yeah, 300 or so episodes later, about 200 million. More than 200 million downloads. Yeah, it's crazy.
- [04:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You did a really good job with that.
- [04:32]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you.
- [04:33]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Okay, let's go into this. What is the new book and what's it about? And then we'll bounce around. And don't forget this is a call in show. So Facebook put in your phone numbers. This is a rare opportunity Unlike me, who just weirdly adores interacting with people at all levels at all times. Tim, I'm not speaking for him, but he's more limited than I am, let's put it this way, more monkish in my behavior. So this is a rare opportunity. You can randomly DM me and I might just like probably respond, you know, Tim, I can't get to him, you know. And so I think that this is a huge opportunity. Make sure you call in. I would recommend this be Tim. Questions? I'll get to you another time, but thrilled if we can, wherever we cross paths. Talk to me about the new book.
- [05:15]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. So Tribe of Mentors came about. I just turned 40 not too long ago and it's been a big 12 months. It's been a heavy 12 months too. I had a number of close friends die unexpectedly, including one of my mentors in this book. Actually passed away just a few weeks ago, very unexpectedly of complications. Terry Loughlin, who taught me how to swim. How old was Terry? 66. So he had metastatic or metastasized prostate cancer and then had complications from that and a stroke. It's been, thank you. A good opportunity for me to just take a step back and say, all right, let me hit pause for a period of time to try to reassess priorities. Look at the direction that I'm heading, look at the things I'm doing or not doing. How has planning or over planning or under planning helped or hurt me? How am I relating to myself, not just to the world? I mean, all these questions started to bubble to the surface and it seemed like a good opportunity to ask a lot of questions, some of which are really tactical, some of which are more strategic, some of which are really high level life mission type goals. And I asked myself the question, which I've been trying to do in the last couple years, which is what would this look like? Or what might it look like if it were easy? So if this were simple, what would the structure look like? And I journaled on it and the answer that came back was you should just ask other people the questions that you are having trouble answering for yourself. So I reached out to about 140 people across every possible discipline. So ranging from say David lynch, the director, or Terry Crews, all the way to Kelly Slater, most decorated surfer of all time, to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's an incredible writer, thinker, activist, Temple Grandin, I mean, you name it. Basically every possible discipline and industry, artists. I reached out to all of them. People at the top of their fields and asked them a set of 11 questions and then compiled it into this book, Tribe of Mentors. Because I've thought for a very long time, and this is borrowing from somebody else advice I got when I was probably 14 or 15, which was an older student in a martial arts class. He was an adult, and he left a voicemail on my answering machine. Remember those?
- [07:38]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And by the way, guys, not on your mobile device. This was a machine with physical tape. You have to put the tape in.
- [07:45]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. And if you ran out of tape, no more messages. But his message was advice to me, which was, you're the average of the five people you associate with most, which I still think physically, emotionally, financially. That's true. And I get asked all the time, well, what if I don't have five, five people around me that I can use to average up?
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Find them.
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Tim Ferriss
Yeah, find them. Or you can do it remotely. You can do it virtually through audio, through video, through books. And so Tribe of Mentors was intended to give people 130 of the world's best to learn from.
- [08:15]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love it. What stood out for you? So you sent this out to people. Stuff comes back. You know, some of these people really well, some people medium well, some people not at all, some people not at all.
- [08:26]
Tim Ferriss
Just DM through Twitter, like, love it.
- [08:27]
Gary Vaynerchuk
So what? They must have been pumped getting that dm. What did you. What did you kind of give me a. Give me one to three. Kind of like this person said this, or I couldn't believe how well I knew this person. And the thing they said, like, give me a standout.
- [08:42]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, well, I'll give you a few. So I'll give you two patterns. The first would be, I'd say, 85 to 90% of all the people in this book, many of which I've never had any contact with, have some type of very specific morning ritual, very often with some type of meditation or repetitive exercise, which I think serve, in some cases, the same purpose. So very high percentage of people practicing Transcendental meditation or vipassana meditation specifically. Then another pattern, I think, partially because the question that I ask, which is, do you have a favorite failure? Or if you had to pick a failure of yours that set you up for a later success, could you tell a story? And for every huge success that you associate with someone, they have an equally devastating loss that maybe hasn't gotten as much airtime or any airtime. So showcasing those is really important, just because when people are going through hard times or dark times, it's very easy to look at say the magazine covers and think that, well, Tim Ferriss has got it all figured out or Gary's got it all figured out. And they never make mistakes, they never whiff a ball. And it's just, at least in my case, certainly not true. And I think it's important to showcase those. A few very specific pieces of advice that I've been using a lot recently. So number one, you can't do all profound deep questions or it gets really tiring. It's just heavy lifting, It's a lot of digestion. So one of the questions that I asked everybody was what is the purchase of $100 or less that is most changed her life in the last few years. And one that came back was this supplement called Host Defense My Community. It's a combination of different mushrooms that this chef, like a big time chef, has used for immune support when she's traveling. And so I started taking that and it's like all the usual flu season cold stuff just gone. So from just a functional day to day perspective right now I'm like hustling, hustling, hitting it. And I've blocked out time and that is, that travels with me. Right. So that's, that's one another would be. And I don't know if you've ever had any interaction with Kyle Maynard. Kyle Maynard's fascinating guy. He's, he was born a congenital quad amputee. So he has his arms and before the elbows and his legs before the knees. Nonetheless, he is in the National Wrestling hall of Fame, like collegiate wrestling, and is the first person to ever climb Mount Kilimanjaro without prosthetics. So he military crawled the entire mountain. He's such a stud. And he was taught by a CEO at one point. The CEO used this for hiring, but you can use it for anything. This particular CEO, very successful, would have his current employees rank prospective employees from 1 to 10. And that's not interesting by itself. His rule was you can't use seven. So I want you to rank him from one to 10. You can't answer seven. And what ends up being so beautiful about that and leveraged is that 7 is a safe number. It's kind of like the non offensive Switzerland of answers. It's not committal, it's not too bad, so you can wiggle out of it. Whereas if you're choosing a six that's barely passing, that's not good. If it's an eight, you're indicating you're pretty stoked, like you're vouching.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
He Forced them to make a decision.
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Tim Ferriss
Exactly. So you can love it 1 to 10. No, 7. And so I've used that and Kyle has used it for say invitations for anything. Invitation to conferences, invitations to coffee, whatever it might be. It's like decisions in life. Decisions in life.
- [12:15]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I've been using binary a lot lately. Black and white, 1 and 0.
- [12:18]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
And like to me that's the ultimate. Right. It's just yes, no game. But that's really the same thing as the seven in a lot of ways.
- [12:25]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, exactly.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Or with the reality that there's a little massaging to all.
- [12:29]
Tim Ferriss
Totally. Or that's interesting.
- [12:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I like that a lot.
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Tim Ferriss
Yeah. And so another question that I asked everybody is what tips or suggestions do you have for saying no? Two different things. And what have you gotten better at saying no to? And so we had, I mean a lot of founders, a lot of people you would know in here as well. I mean the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, Craigslist, everything, Pinterest and so on. And Dustin Moskovitz, co founder of Facebook, was talking about no. And the first no being the cleanest and the easiest. So what a lot of people tend to do is they cross their fingers and hope something will go away and they'll say, well, pay me in two months. Like I'm a little busy right now. I'm over committed. But maybe in three months. And then lo and behold, that person, if they know what they're doing is they calendar it. And two months later, hello. Hello, Gary. It's been two months.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right.
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Tim Ferriss
And then you end up in this vicious cycle of hunting.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
So he's saying clean nose.
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Tim Ferriss
He's providing. Yeah, he's providing guidelines for clean first nose.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
No question. In the last three years of my life, and especially even last year in running vaynermedia, more radical candor, less honey massaging has helped and it's so not natural to me.
- [13:40]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it comes naturally to many people. Yeah. Especially if you and I mean I know of some of your early stories, certainly in my early story, for instance, of working in restaurants and so on, I mean you're client facing. Right. It's a high touch business and you need to honeycoat and know how to deliver things. And so to switch gears then is tough. Is tough. But when you get to a certain, if you even have a small amount of success in any field, if you want to 10x that and then 10x that and then 10x THAT, the behaviors that got you to the first point are very rarely the behaviors that get you to the next.
- [14:15]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And you know what helped me? I realized I wasn't doing any favors.
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Tim Ferriss
No, no, no.
- [14:19]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, to me, before it was, I was doing something nice. Yeah, you kind of, through experience, you're like, wait a minute, I'm not doing anything nice here.
- [14:25]
Tim Ferriss
No, no.
- [14:26]
Gary Vaynerchuk
By saying another two months, you're saving.
- [14:27]
Tim Ferriss
Them short term pain to guarantee larger pain later sometimes.
- [14:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And I still punch stuff for two months because sometimes I'm like, okay, in. I do still aspire to sneak something silly in. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?
- [14:39]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah. No, if you have like the seed of an interest in it.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah.
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Tim Ferriss
But there's. I think in many cases, for a lot of folks, it's just like, oh, God, I don't want to deal with this. All right. Like, let's hope it goes away.
- [14:48]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Listen, a lot of people in my audience already know who you are and are going to see you in other places or your own platform and are going to get this book. My world's been interesting in the last year and I think there's a lot of people who like I actually, for the, you know, it's funny, for the last seven or eight years, I would have said nine people in our crossover. Now I think there's some more that are like, yeah, I've heard, but haven't dug deep. What else can we say about this book? Cause I do want everybody in this audience. And let's link it up, guys and girls. The work you put out is so real. I mean, we live similar ish, but different lives. We know what's going on out there. I'm just such a fan of the quality and quantity.
- [15:25]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
I think, honestly, I think that's. We have a lot of differences, but I think one of our weird similarities is we've both been around for a little while now.
- [15:33]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [15:33]
Gary Vaynerchuk
We've put out a lot of shit and somehow, miraculously, they're still somewhat interested.
- [15:39]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [15:39]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And I think that speaks to depth and I think you have it. So what else should they know about the book? Or what else do we want to get off here? Until I ask you a little more about you as a whole. And we're taking the first question.
- [15:49]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can jump into all sorts of stuff. But I would say that whenever I write a book, this is something I admire about you. And actually I favorited and retweeted something recently. You may or may not have seen it on the first three minutes of your answer about what Advice you would give to, say, someone just getting started, going out into the world, and it was work for free for someone at as high level as possible in basically an apprenticeship role.
- [16:17]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I literally believe that, like, if somebody texted me, I apologize.
- [16:21]
Tim Ferriss
Cutting off, no, you're fine.
- [16:22]
Gary Vaynerchuk
If somebody texted me right now and said, hey, I'm getting to work for Tim for the next two years and I can afford to. Whether that means your parents put you in a position where you can afford to, you've made some money on ebay in your teens, or fuck it, I'm Gonna live with 13 roommates in the outskirts of Oakland and commute in to San Francisco. It's such a. It's a glorious win.
- [16:45]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Yeah, totally. And you end up focusing on the learning instead of earning. And the reason I brought that up is that I think you've been very good at making decisions. And I've tried to do the same. Where you're developing skills and relationships even if that project fails.
- [17:01]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Correct.
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Tim Ferriss
And so it does not really matter if 2 out of 10 fail or 5 out of 10 or 9 out of 10, if you are like a snowball, acquiring these skills and relationships, you're going to win, like, inevitably. If you just stick with it, you will win. And with the book, any book that I put out, the goal is for it to be more valuable years from now even than it is today. And the reason I say that, it's intended to be evergreen. So you have the really, really specific tactical stuff, but also the principles and the portfolio of tools like the 1 to 10, but no, 7. These types of tricks, if you will.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Very true.
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Tim Ferriss
That are just going to work. And they'll work 10 years from now, they'll work 20 years from now. So it's intended to be more like a choose your own adventure book where you can flip open to a single recipe. You're like, all right, I need to become stronger in X, Y and Z way. Therefore, I'm going to look up Jocko Willink.
- [17:56]
Gary Vaynerchuk
He's awesome.
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Tim Ferriss
He's amazing. Yeah. Retired Navy SEAL commander, or I want to become more focused on absorbing knowledge. Okay, I'm going to read, say, Yuval know Harari's profile. He wrote, Sapiens has an incredible, incredible annual routine. It's sort of rituals. So he inspired me to do my first vipassana meditation retreat, which I did not too long ago and has been hugely, hugely impactful. So it's intended to be something that can be used immediately. So you pick something up, have a cup of coffee, and you can take Something from it, but also something you can refer to for 10 years.
- [18:32]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love it.
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Tim Ferriss
But that's it.
- [18:34]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Let's take our first call. We should be remiss, but I want to give a huge shout out to Kevin Rose, our mutual friend, for having their first child, which is.
- [18:44]
Tim Ferriss
Yes.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Great job, Dar. It's amazing.
- [18:47]
Tim Ferriss
Kev. Kev. Dardar. Love you guys.
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C
Hello.
- [18:50]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What's the name again?
- [18:51]
Tim Ferriss
Nicole.
- [18:52]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Nicole. Hey, it's Gary Vaynerchuk and you're on the AskGaryVee show with Tim Ferriss.
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C
Oh, my God, I'm losing my mind.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
That's a. Well, take your mind back real quick, ask the question, then you can throw your mind out again.
- [19:04]
C
Sure, absolutely. So my boyfriend's sitting next to me and he's freaking out too.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
What's his name?
- [19:10]
C
Jeremy.
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Gary Vaynerchuk
Jeremy. What's up, Jeremy? Go ahead, what's the question?
- [19:17]
C
So my question is a few months ago I actually quit my corporate job. I was just not happy there. Started a VA company and within two months replaced my corporate salary. And I'm doing really well. I'm billing out like eight hours a day and working on weekends. And now I'm looking to scale my business and hire on maybe my own assistant or subcontractors underneath me. And I'm just trying to figure out how to do that. Maintain, you know, the expected level of quality that I put out and also enhance the positive relationships with my clients because they do put a lot of value in me and trust. I mean, I have access to email accounts, social media accounts, credit cards, everything. And I just want to kind of keep that same level of quality and grow my business because I want to be more successful and grow.
- [20:10]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I totally understand and I get it. And it's a non scalable thing. And so especially when you get into credit cards and Social Security numbers. The advice that I usually love, that's mine. And I don't think it's everybody's, but I'm a big fan of hiring intuitively to the best of your ability. But firing quick if you know that it's wrong. There's a little extra dynamic there with things like sensitive information because you don't want to create the vulnerability that could be an atomic bomb. Does that make sense? Is that something that's running through your mind?
- [20:41]
C
Yeah, no, absolutely. And some of the contracts that I have with my clients actually state like not hiring subcontractors. But I'd like to introduce that to my clients in a very respectful way to see if maybe we can talk about that in the Future.
- [20:55]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yep. Timmy.
- [20:56]
C
So I'm trying to just kind of like plan out how I got some thoughts.
- [21:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I'm going to let Tim jump in.
- [21:01]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I have a few thoughts. Just because I spent so much time with one foot in the VA world, I would say that there's a book called the E Myth Revisited. I would take a look at that. Just in terms of systematizing how you train and just for the big picture and longer term view, I think that would be useful. There's also a book called Built to Sell that will allow you to think about building a business that is not dependent on you as a bottleneck, even if you never sell the business. It's a useful set of checkboxes. And just on the simplest level, I would say you need to run background checks, certainly on people. It's a very simple, simple process. But as a baseline, before you even consider someone, you should run background checks. And then there are two components I would say for training and quality assurance to ensure that you're not doing it in a one off fashion where you have to continually say the same thing is create various documents and videos that can be used to train other people. So if you have a particular way of say parsing email, going through someone's inbox, determining what's important and what isn't, consider using a program like screenflow where you can capture all of that and walk someone through in real time how you are say clearing, categorizing someone's inbox and then that video can in turn be used to train 100 people. Ultimately, if it came down to it. And then last just. I'll try to keep this short, but.
- [22:28]
Gary Vaynerchuk
This is a domain that you like. Yeah, built. I mean this is your more qualified answer here.
- [22:32]
Tim Ferriss
I've seen companies built and self destruct in this space quite a few times.
- [22:38]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Because a lot of them popped up after a four hour work week.
- [22:40]
Tim Ferriss
A lot of them popped up or. Yeah, or I gave them the hug of death by promoting them and then they couldn't maintain the quality. They tried to scale too quickly. So the secret to scaling effectively, I think in a business like this, is to scale very, very slowly in the beginning and do not be in a rush to hand your clients off to someone else. What I would encourage you to do, and I've seen this done elsewhere, is bring someone in on say, calls. Even if you don't do calls, consider incorporating them in a temporary way so so that they can handle low level, low sensitivity tasks for someone else and prove to be very fast and very Very reliable. And then as the trust develops between the client and this supplemental va, you can talk to the client about having them handle more in the interest of having better response time and higher quality. So that would be one approach. And last but not least, this is what I'll close with. I would at least every six to 12 months, schedule a day where you can do a 30,000 foot review and ask yourself, do I want to scale? If the answer is yes, why do I want to scale? Because I see very often when people create, say, a business to manifest a better life for themselves, that differs from, say, your corporate job, that they take something that's really going well and then recreate the problems that they experienced in their old job by creating complexity and trying to scale even if their lifestyle needs are already met with the income that they're generating.
- [24:24]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. The AKA you're making 337 a year income from crushing it on something. And now that's like the perfect zone. And now you're making 509, but you hate your life and that extra really meant nothing. Can I. How long. How long is. You said two months in you were able to do that. How old is it now, the company?
- [24:46]
C
About four months old.
- [24:48]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Right. And how old are you?
- [24:50]
C
I'm 35.
- [24:51]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you watch any of my stuff, but obviously if you're watching this. Unless I don't think. Tim. Good. So patience. Do not be in a rush. Like, I turn 42 tomorrow, right. And I feel 24. And that's the real truth. And if you understood that and said to yourself, well, wait a minute, I'm gonna feel exactly the way I feel now in seven years, it may not make you rush to scale sooner than you needed to. I mean, you're four months in. Like, I'm almost.
- [25:22]
C
Yeah, no, I'm not looking to scale, like, super quick, but just a little background story. And my husband's probably gonna kill me for telling you guys, but about a year ago, he had heart failure in the middle of night. And after CPR and a coma and everything, it just kind of put things into perspective.
- [25:40]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes.
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C
I don't want to work 40 hours for a company where I hate every second of every day.
- [25:46]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right.
- [25:47]
C
So I, like, I decided that I wanted to work from home and that he and I could be together more and travel more. And so now that I replaced my corporate salary, it's great. But I want to have a little bit more free time, I guess, to do that stuff with him.
- [26:03]
Gary Vaynerchuk
There's no such thing as free time or passive income when you own something because it's mental time. You have to wrap your head. You're gonna have to wrap your head around mental time versus physical time. I am so fired up for next week because somewhere around Tuesday morning, I know the world shuts off, at least in America. Let me rephrase. The US Shuts off somewhere around Tuesday morning because first, everyone's gonna buy Tim's book. But second of all, because it means that Thanksgiving is about to start. And I know Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are literally the best days of the year for me. Literally. This is not a joke. Next week, Tuesday afternoon, my team will feel it. I am in the best mood because it is literally one of the 24 days a year where I can actually mentally relax a little bit because the world shuts down for. I'm sorry, the US Shuts down for Thanksgiving. That will happen again during the Christmas week. That will happen in this miraculous new one. That is new in the last eight to nine days of August, which was a European thing, but has now become an American thing. You just need to travel more, spend more time together. That could be physical. But when you guys are seeing the Eiffel Tower or when you're having the best sushi ever in Japan or when you're watching a great soccer match in Spain, your mind's gonna be on this business some way somehow, no matter how zenned out, how much meditation, when you make that leap to being the final line of defense, there is a truth in that. That is something you're gonna have to wrap your head around. And no level of scale is gonna change that. It will only increase it.
- [27:45]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. And I would add, if I may add, one more thing. Now you're good. Let me just add one more thing. So because Gary's mentioning some potential peak life experiences that you could have, which may be part of the impetus or dream related to building this business. I would say a year from now, try to schedule four or more weeks where you are not part of the system. And in other words, if you schedule at least four weeks, has to be at least four weeks off the grid where other people are making decisions for your business. What that means is prior to leaving on that vacation to Spain or wherever it might be, you have to put systems in place, rules, policies, people, et cetera, that will allow you to do that without everything falling apart. And those systems then outlive the vacation and you come back. And that helps you then to scale because you've proven that you are not the bottleneck for every and all decisions. But you have to force that. If you just say I'm going to make an effort to build it, that's generally not going to be enough. But if you've pre committed to yourself and your boyfriend, maybe even other people in your family, you've bought plane tickets. Now you have accountability. And that's very, very. I've seen it be very helpful for entrepreneurs who want to scale but not to do so by bleeding out their eyeballs.
- [29:03]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Now that we're just going high level, we're just really jamming here and playing a little ping pong. Let me talk about accountability. Buying plane tickets may be accountability for a big percentage of people. Cause it's a financial one. It took me realizing at 38 years old that I'm only accountable to other human beings, not money. And that's how I hacked my health. Finally, I hired a full time health employee and I didn't wanna let Mike and now Jordan down. So I wasn't competing with myself or letting myself down. That's why I wasn't winning that game. But once I realized my accountability was actually other human beings, totally, that's how I hacked that. So Tim's right. But then make sure it's not money because you might be like, screw it. Who cares about the $2,000 plane flights?
- [29:44]
Tim Ferriss
The people are really important. This is part of the reason. Before we started recording, I was saying that after reading an article called the Tail End by Tim Urban Way. But why? Which had a huge impact on me, how I related to my family and realizing that by the time I think you graduate from high school, you've spent 80% of the total hours you ever spend with your parents before. Before they die. I started scheduling every six months a trip with my family. Now I'm taking my family on this trip. But it's also extremely beneficial to me because I'm taking in this extended trip every six months and I have to ensure systems are in place. And so it's a fantastic way to raise other people up while also improving your business game at the same time.
- [30:24]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love it. I hope that helps.
- [30:27]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Fortunately, my boyfriend is just as entrepreneurial as I am, so we love this stuff. So thank you so much.
- [30:34]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You're welcome. Have a great day.
- [30:35]
C
Love you guys.
- [30:35]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Thank you. Bye. Hey everybody. Actually, if you're a really hardcore listener, you know I never do this. I'm sorry to be jumping in the middle of the podcast, but the truth is I'm like, shitting, the bed on this. Everybody else is getting people to review on Spotify and Apple. And like the vaynernation does none of that. If this podcast has ever meant anything to you, please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review. By the way, even if you give me a one star review because you think it's shit, I respect it, but just leave a review. An actual review. Yeah, that would mean something for me. So thanks. Now back to the podcast. Let's get another call in. You know, it's super interesting. I mean, like, you know, the reality is that restrictions, Snapchat, creating a restriction to the openness of social at the time had the real upside. I think in life, those restrictions are a huge deal as well.
- [31:21]
Tim Ferriss
A huge, huge.
- [31:22]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And I think people aren't putting those barriers there. And the reason I got so excited when you said buy the plane tickets, I didn't realize that money wasn't my barrier anymore. And I've had different levels of money. I was never trading on money. And so once I figured myself out, I'm like, ooh, I'm a good CEO. Cause I don't like to let people down. I work for them. Not them, me. And that's how I've been able to hack. And I think it's super important for people to get inside themselves to understand those things. Totally.
- [31:47]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, totally.
- [31:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Who's this?
- [31:48]
C
Charlie.
- [31:48]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Charlie, Charlie Sviggins. Charlie, this is Gary Vee. You're on the AskGaryVee show with Tim Ferriss.
- [31:54]
Tim Ferriss
My man Gary.
- [31:55]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What's up? Things are good, Charlie. How are you, man? Life is good. Good, man. What's your question? All right, I need two answers from you guys, one from each of you. You got it. How'd y'all run Yalls businesses? Real quick, you chopped off for a second. Charlie. One more time. I said, what have y'all learned from hip hop that has transformed how y'all run your businesses? I love it. Is that CEO Charlie? Charlie. I didn't catch your name. I love it. I'm so glad you're on the call, man. How are you doing, man? Life is good. Never been better. How's Tiddy boy, man? Titty boy is doing amazing. AKA Chains. For all of you guys that don't know, Tim, what is your hip hop story, if at all? I actually not sure. I know.
- [32:44]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, you know. So believe it or not, I was one of the co founders of the first hip hop dance troupe at Princeton University. I'm so excited right now. So this hip hop dance troupe So B boying and B girling is my history primarily. So I was listening to, you know, at the time, like Eric B and Rakim and so on, but the dance troupe, which is still going strong now, I mean, more than. More than two decades later. So I would say what I learned from hip hop is that there are certain, at least within the dance forms, that there are certain techniques and there's certain basic principles, let's say in top rocking and footwork and power moves and all of that. So they're basic ingredients. But beyond that, you have the power to improvise and that the rules are almost meant to be broken. Like if you look at, for instance, Korean B boys and what they've done in the last 10 years, B boy pocket, especially if people want to see power moves that will blow the. Their minds, can keep redefining this genre that is still recognizable as hip hop. And that's part of what's so exciting to me about it, is that while you have this recognizability and pattern matching, you still, as an individual, have so much freedom to create. And that's true in business. That's true in how you decide to interact with your loved ones, whatever the rules of engagement might be there. So I think it can be translated to almost every possible area, including business, where I make a point of breaking my own rules repeatedly as experiments to see what happens. And I do that in terms of formats in the podcast. I do that in terms of how I communicate with my employees. I think it's very, very far ranging.
- [34:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Charlie, for me, I grew up in a culture in Edison, New Jersey, that really embraced it. Like, you know, fifth grade for me was Adidas with no shoelaces. Like, I was all about it. And so. But here's what's interesting. Everybody told me, you know, our teachers told us in fifth grade, in 85, that it's not music, right? Like, it was obviously urban and minority. It wasn't, you know, like, I grew up on MTV when Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson wasn't being played on mtv and, like, politics had to be played to have him on. So here's what I Learned in the 25 years that I've paid attention to it. Close from afar Close from afar if you're tried and true, the market will come to you. What is super interesting to me about hip hop is it is now a absolute fundamental pillar of our culture across all genres. And it stayed true to itself. It evolved, but the world came to hip hop. Hip hop didn't go to the world. And Then I realized as I got older, oh, rock and roll did the same thing. And honestly, that's what happened with me in entrepreneurship. Unlike Timmy, who's incredibly good at girth and super smart at things that I'm not, he was a really good student. And he'll tell you he's. You're 40, Tim. Yep. I turn 42 tomorrow. We grew up in an era, Charlie, that a lot of these kids are not growing up in, which was entrepreneurship wasn't a thing.
- [35:59]
Tim Ferriss
No.
- [36:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You were judged by. I went to Mount Ida College. Tim went to Princeton. And that was the judge and the jury when we were 18, 19, Tim was a winner. I was a loser. And then to watch Tim break out of the model of what every Princeton kid did, went a very different path. And a lot of cynicism, I'm sure, from the bankers and all the other people that he went to class with. And I'm sure there was plenty of jokes and cynicism behind his back. And now all of those people who are watching right now would a hell of a lot be more excited to be this path than the alternative hip hop. Let the world come to it. And I think the biggest thing in business is you have a product or service that people don't see. And the other thing Tim and I share is, is we were there early for a lot of these products that nobody knew in the mass world. We knew in our little subculture, but people didn't know. Like, ordering an Uber would seem ridiculous. That's why I passed Tim smarter. You know, it's, you know, or Twitter Lucky or Twitter or all these other things. The world. When Tim. Listen, there was a lot of entrepreneurs. Patty Flynn, JLD Lewis House. But when Tim did his podcast, I don't know the timing of you in those three, but when Tim did his podcast, it was earlier things had happened. He wasn't the first, but he was the biggest when he did it. And I was still 24 months earlier than I did it or others did it. And he reaped the benefits of that. Right. I've had those moments on Snapchat or Instagram or things of that nature, like YouTube for sure. By the way, fun fact, there's another video with Tim and I. We're much younger. We're drinking wine, and it's like eight. We may have to slice that into the post production.
- [37:41]
Tim Ferriss
I have more hair.
- [37:42]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, me too. And so, you know, I think that. Charlie, my answer is, if you believe in your thing, stick with it and the world will come to you. If you're passionate about cricket protein. This is not a joke, by the way. Now, this is actually something I think is gonna work out. If you're passionate about cricket protein, bet the farm on it. Because if you see it and you understand why you see it, it's gonna be a lot of fun in nine years when we're all eating it and you were there. Not because it's not selling right now. Most of the things that have brought good to Tim and I. Cause I can definitely speak for myself. And I've watched from afar and sometimes close with Tim people weren't super sure about at the time we're playing on being historically correct. Hip hop was historically correct.
- [38:25]
C
Yeah, that's right.
- [38:27]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Appreciate it, Joy. Keep hustling, man. I'm impressed with you. I also love your health transformation, which has been epic.
- [38:34]
D
Thank you, Gary.
- [38:35]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You're welcome, brother. I'll talk to you soon. Right. I mean, for example, you experiment on yourself, on all sorts. Like you are out there taking all sorts of concoctions and doing mental stuff that I know, not for me, I won't do it. Cause it's not natural for me. But I know you're gonna be historically correct. Like, I watch it and I'm like, fuck, man, I wish I had that gear. Cause he's gonna like, pee in 30 years. People are like, I fucking Ferris was doing that shit in 2007. You know that, right?
- [39:01]
Tim Ferriss
No, a lot of it. I mean, if you look at. For our body 2010, a lot of that is now proven out. I mean, the vast majority of the book, which is cool. But I would also say that. Let him finish this. That if you look. Whether it's hip hop or me doing all these weird experiments or you doing your thing, it's easier for us to indulge that obsession and to do that thing, no matter how weird it is, than to hold it inside. Right.
- [39:28]
Gary Vaynerchuk
We have no other option.
- [39:29]
Tim Ferriss
No. Right. So it's. And it's like when you have that feeling, that's a really positive indicator in a lot of cases.
- [39:35]
D
Right.
- [39:35]
Tim Ferriss
Like, people ask me, should I write a book? And I'm like, no, probably not. I mean, it's in the sense that I write books because you have my choice. I have these things trapped in my head and I have to get them out or I'll drive myself crazy.
- [39:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Do you feel like you. I. A couple other people are empowering people to do that for their thing?
- [39:52]
Tim Ferriss
I think so.
- [39:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Like, you're a motivator to others to go tried and true. Because you're so deeply tried and true to your thing.
- [39:58]
Tim Ferriss
I hope so, because I.
- [40:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Do you like that idea or is it. Or that doesn't come to your mind?
- [40:03]
Tim Ferriss
I like the idea of showing people both the successes and the failures so they can see net net. That it's actually low risk, if that makes sense. Like net net. If you're. If you're developing skills and relationships and that's how you choose your projects. And you are not trying to appeal to the entire world. You're trying to find your 1000 true fans who are just as crazy about cricket protein or whatever it might be as you are. Over time you will make mistakes. You will have what people perceive as failures, but over time, you will win. It's just. It's almost inevitability. And so if I can showcase that for people where they're like, oh, I saw Tim Ferriss publicly face plant when he did A, B and C and television. That didn't work out. I saw him try this new thing with this one book that didn't work out, but still, like in between, he had this huge success and this huge success.
- [40:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You talk about the Amazon thing.
- [40:49]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. No, really.
- [40:50]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I mean, like, listen, I mean, like, I mean, 90% of the stuff we do doesn't work. Sid and I are supposed to have an international domination tour in 2017 of all my content being transcribed all over the place. He texted me three days ago. He's like, really hope that we can get focused on the international tour. It's fucking November. Like, you know, like we're losing all the time.
- [41:13]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. And it doesn't matter. Like if you get a few things right, you can screw up almost everything else. And one thing right.
- [41:20]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Sometimes.
- [41:20]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, sometimes one thing right. And it's big enough. Yeah, for sure. And I think that, you know, for that reason I don't. Somebody asked me not too long ago if I. If I viewed myself as a role model, I wouldn't use that. I think I don't want people to try to be me. But if they can take lessons from watching my public successes and failures and that gives them the courage to try something because they've now realized that it's in fact very low risk or reversible.
- [41:49]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Tim, Great self esteem.
- [41:51]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [41:51]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Something I've been talking about a lot over the last 18 months, more than ever before. Why do you think you had it? Mom, dad, environment, something. I don't know. I don't know. I'm asking.
- [42:02]
Tim Ferriss
I don't know.
- [42:04]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You have it. You're talking right now and I'm like, I connect with it tremendously because it is the drug. It is the one that like you're right. Like, let me ask you. I'm gonna ask a bunch of things because I'm gonna get out here. Do you like the failures more than the successes?
- [42:19]
Tim Ferriss
No.
- [42:20]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Okay. I do.
- [42:21]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Yeah.
- [42:22]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Are you gonna chocolate. What is that? It looks delicious. Sorry.
- [42:28]
Tim Ferriss
Arms raised.
- [42:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I promised I was going keep it up. I felt that I was going ad.
- [42:32]
Tim Ferriss
It's like a bloodhound.
- [42:34]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I knew I could feel the chemicals in my head. I'm like, I'm about to get radic. I'm about to get random. Cause I've been staying very calm for very long. I've been trying to keep this vibe and I'm like, I'm about to fucking explode. So real quick. But real quick. So I really do. And I'm not kidding. I mean, look, let me rephrase. Maybe I just like them the same. I definitely am not scared of them. And I definitely like them a lot more than I think a lot of people. Why do you have self esteem, do you think from your standpoint?
- [42:59]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. So let me answer a few different things. Not necessarily in that order, but I would say so. I hate. I greatly dislike failure. I love being underestimated. So if someone says, oh, Tim Ferriss is trying X, he's never, that's never gonna work. I'm like, great. Then it's nothing but upside. It's already assumed that it's gonna be a worst case scenario. It's I have nothing but upside. I love that.
- [43:24]
Gary Vaynerchuk
As your brand has grown, as your successes have grown, do you, do you like trying to do new things because you're trying to scratch that itch?
- [43:32]
Tim Ferriss
In part, definitely.
- [43:32]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Me too.
- [43:33]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Because if I'm doing the same thing then it's like, it's kind of like being Serena Williams. She's like, oh yeah, no, like if you don't win Wimbledon, we will be disappointed. Yeah. Like you have to win everything because we expect you to or we're gonna be disappointed. My God, that's terrible.
- [43:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah.
- [43:48]
Tim Ferriss
But on the self esteem bit, I'm going to give you an answer that might surprise you. So I have spent for a host of reasons that I don't necessarily want to get into right now, but some really dark bad stuff when I was a kid that I spent the vast majority of my life disliking myself. And that's something that I've tried to, I've realized is not an optional piece of the puzzle. Like you cannot love Other people fully if you just tolerate yourself 100%. And so if not for yourself, for other people, your family, your loved ones, you have to reconcile bits and pieces inside of you. And the reason I say that is the. I think what I could attribute my successes to is more the fact that I was confident I could train myself to absorb or tolerate very high levels of pain, to outwork other people, to win in sports like wrestling, which is all pain. Right. And so I chose arenas in which I felt like even if I lacked the technical gifts, even if I lacked certain coaching advantages, that I could still win because I could just outlast other people. And I enjoyed being an instrument of competition, and I still do. I mean, I love competing. I just. I'm better in competition than I am in rehearsal.
- [45:20]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I understand.
- [45:21]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, it's like. It's really weird, but that's just me. I feed off.
- [45:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
How much time did you spend in your own head in your teenage years?
- [45:28]
Tim Ferriss
A lot. Because I was. I was horribly. I mean, you and I. I was. I've known of your. Some of your backstory, and certainly. I mean, you're in this, right, and talking about some of the bullying experiences. And I was tiny kid until about sixth grade. I got my ass kicked. I mean, it was like Lord of the Flies every day. I mean, I had to race my bike home so I wouldn't get the shit kicked out of me. And so that, I think, developed a lot of anger in me. And I used that as a fuel. I was an angry kid. I was not. I mean, there were moments of happiness, for sure, and I had a good family life, but I was an angry kid. And so in high school, I was very solitary. I did not. I wasn't a social butterfly at all. And social. Now I think I'm an introvert who can pretend to be. Not pretend to be an extrovert. I can. I'm an introvert. Yeah. I'm an introvert who. Who recognizes the value of being extroverted for certain things.
- [46:23]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's really interesting, like, to teach.
- [46:25]
Tim Ferriss
It's very difficult to teach. I view myself as a teacher, not a writer. It's very difficult to teach. Well, if I'm overly introverted, it's interesting.
- [46:33]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I was thinking about. I knew we were gonna hang today. I was just like, you know, you reverse engineer. And I thought about all the time. And I realized something very interesting. Out of the people I know, and we've gotten to spend some time together. It's interesting how much of our time together has been one on one in the. 13 to 14, 11, 9, 16 times we've hung out, I'm like, holy shit. Why is 75% of that time in that coffee shop in San Francisco on the grassy knoll at south by Southwest? Like, I was like, wow. It was interesting to me. And it just made me think a little bit about that.
- [47:04]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I don't do terribly well in groups. I shouldn't say that. I don't do well in big groups. But for instance, if I do a book signing, I need two or three days to recover from that. It's. It's so depleting for me because I want energy. I want to be on. It's not like, oh, great, nice to meet you. Goodbye. Like, I'm so in it. I mean, I'm looking through somebody, like, into them, not just at them.
- [47:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, I get it.
- [47:27]
Tim Ferriss
But, yeah, I need. I need a lot of solo time to recharge.
- [47:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I get it. Let's do one more question. Adam, chips on shoulders, man.
- [47:40]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [47:41]
Gary Vaynerchuk
There's such a fucking advantage. Jesus Christ. I like you. Just.
- [47:45]
Tim Ferriss
Chips are good, boy chips. They're good until they're not.
- [47:49]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. Of course, if you don't know how to control it, it gets real bad. You know, you and I could have been real fucking. No, really, I mean, we could have been known for way more stuff than. Adam, it's Gary Vee. You're in the AskGaryVee show with two guys with chips on their shoulder.
- [48:05]
D
Oh, my God. Hey, Gary. Hey, Tim.
- [48:08]
Tim Ferriss
How are you?
- [48:10]
D
Hey. I'm doing great. I'm actually in class. I just walked out.
- [48:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's a very good strategy. What can we help you with?
- [48:19]
D
Well, I was, like, memorizing my questions. I can't remember. What was it? Okay, okay. My question is for a foreign student. Not foreign student. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, talking right now.
- [48:31]
Gary Vaynerchuk
No worries. We got you. We're not hanging up.
- [48:34]
D
Okay, so for someone like me who just traveled from Asia or Malaysia to us and I'm 20 years old, so I just started college and all that, and I watch many of your videos about. And basically going into this entrepreneurial land like you said. So where do I start? I want to start doing things. I want to start experiencing things, but, you know, I don't know where to start.
- [49:09]
Gary Vaynerchuk
So real quick. And this seems like this could get real good, actually, for a couple reasons. You know, Tim said something super interesting earlier about should I write books? And he was like, no. And, you know, I came out the gate with the hustle and the entrepreneur thing, you know, four hour work, you crush it. You have these moments where, like, you've got a lot of more life to live to like, reconcile those headlines that people put you into. You know, as I hear your question, and I've been doing a lot more of this over the last two years, which I think is a maturity that I'm happy with. Do you have to be an entrepreneur? You know, to me, I always think about the number eight at Facebook versus the number one of the nine million things that didn't work. You know, I wanna make sure that I'm not inspiring something that sounds great but isn't really you. Or do you feel like you are and maybe the culture you grew up with suppress that in school? Like, what's your read right now at a young age? Are you excited about that? Do you need it? Like, why are you gravitating? Because when I hear how do I start an entrepreneur? I'm scared already. Because when you're a purebred, you don't, I don't know, fucking go buy something at the dollar store right now and post it on Craigslist. I mean, you know, that feels very raw and real to me. The modern day entrepreneur of like making a deck and raising $4 million on an idea. And this, that, that is student entrepreneurship. Sometimes not. But, like, I'm curious where you are right now.
- [50:39]
D
Obviously, I have no background experience in sales or being an entrepreneur in. In fact, I just recently have not urge what the word for it. It's like, I just wanted to be an entrepreneur because you really inspired me to be there. And I saw because my mom, she's in marketing, sales. So it kind of picks up from there. And for now I'm actually in liberal arts, which I'm actually planning to change the business, international business major. But that was another question that I was about to ask you. If it's the right path if I want to be an entrepreneur. I am very passionate to be an entrepreneur.
- [51:21]
Tim Ferriss
Okay, Adam, let me jump in here for a second. Where. Where do you live right now?
- [51:25]
D
Sorry?
- [51:26]
Tim Ferriss
Where do you live right now?
- [51:28]
D
I'm living in Rochester right now in Henrietta.
- [51:32]
Tim Ferriss
All right, so there are a few thoughts that I have for you. The first is that there are as many paths to entrepreneurship as there are entrepreneurs. There's no one right way. So the most important thing that I would want to convey first is that you're not going to make any fatal mistake at 20 that's going to prevent you from being an entrepreneur for the rest of your life. You could have 20 failed businesses and then still go on to be a billionaire all time. Right. You could become whatever you probably don't know Wayne Gretzky is, but Wayne Gretzky and Mike Tyson maybe, if you get that, of your chosen field. So I would say, number one, don't be afraid of your first steps, because there really isn't any clearly defined path. My recommendation at 20 would be to not try to memorize the entire playbook and start from scratch. What I would potentially consider is finding a small, fast growing company nearby and either interning or volunteering or doing something that allows you to be in any room with people who are negotiating and deal making. Because at the end of. At the end of the day, yeah, it could be real estate, it could be design, it could be web services. It really doesn't matter what the industry is. It's the skill set. So you want to get very good at crafting deals and persuading and negotiating. And the easiest way to get good at that is to observe someone who is doing that regularly, whether that's on the phone or otherwise. So I would suggest that you look for opportunities to learn from other people who are already good at deal making and negotiating, because you will use that in everything, whether you're buying, selling, or anything in between. Just to answer your other question. And then we can. We can hop around a little bit. Well, first, actually, to identify your obsession. If you want to do that, that could be part of your journey. There's a book called Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, which I would recommend checking out, which profiles a number of different businesses that are not intended to scale. So you might have a woman who makes leather pants for the most famous rock musicians in the world, and she makes 100 of those a year. And she makes. Makes a few hundred thousand dollars and she only accepts clients she loves. And that's it.
- [53:51]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's a real analogy you made that.
- [53:52]
Tim Ferriss
That's real.
- [53:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That sounds cool.
- [53:54]
Tim Ferriss
Like Sheryl Crowe, one of her clients. And so that's one you can take a look at. And just to your question about college and majors. So I was a liberal arts major and I was in neuroscience. That didn't work out. And then I went to East Asian Studies and studied Japanese and Chinese. That has, from the outside, looking in, nothing to do with what I'm doing right now. However, I would say that it is very hard to learn business in a school setting. That's just. It's like learning how to play football by reading books about it and then trying to Go to the super bowl just does not tend to work out very well. So if you are going to stay in school and you know I'm of the mind that there is some value in that depending on your circumstances and certainly your parents would probably like that if I had to guess so view college as a way to become a better rounded human being. And also if you are interested to develop certain skills like I would, if you were saying, if you were to say to me, my passion is entrepreneurship 100%, that's all I want to do. I would probably tell you to take computer science and math classes before business because if you have those skills, you can figure out the business y stuff in a three day tutorial from someone. So those are a few thoughts, but just my perspective based on my life experiences.
- [55:11]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Brother, here's. Let me tell you something. Entrepreneurship is tricky right now because it feels like anybody can do it. You don't see Steph Curry at 20 and say I'm inspired now I'm gonna be an NBA player and think that that's tangible. Entrepreneurship has zero cost of entry. It's awfully cool right now and it's very scary for me. One of the things I'm trying to combat, Adam, is is people jumping in because I'm an inspiring character. But it was what I always was and always will be. And so I think that there's a lot there from Tim that's important. You can't, you can't like you can't think it's that easy to just be inspired and be successful at something. I would spend more time tasting. I think you should try to do as many things as possible and to Tim's credit and point, try to surround yourself. I would really pour on the extrovert nature. I'm empathetic immigrant in a new country or foreign exchange or whatever you want to call it. So might not come as natural to roll up on anybody. You might just be introverted by nature. But I would take advantage. Well rounded person in college. I get it. I know that's a narrative to me it's just take advantage of a captive group of people in the same place and try to meet as many people as possible. Entrepreneurship is hard. Being a successful entrepreneur is stunningly rare. Way more than people think, Adam. So I think patience also 20 years old. I mean like to Tim's point, the next 10 years you can taste fail. It's why I'm pushing people to get closer to big time mentors because what you will siphon out of them is gonna Be so much more ROI positive. Don't put pressure on yourself to thinking it's either school or entrepreneurship. There are so many twists and turns.
- [56:52]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, there's a lot on the spectrum which is, you know, Gary, you and I, I think see this a lot in our respective audiences. Which people, where people make a false dichotomy out of full time employment or full time entrepreneurship. That's it. And no, there's actually a spectrum in between. So as a student, for instance, one thing that I did when I was in college, which you might consider is becoming a part or beginning a student club or a student union of some type, so that you have to sell membership, you have to actually take notes, keep track of records, right? So if there's something, it doesn't matter what it is. Like if you are say the graphics editor of the school newspaper, you're gonna have to learn how to deal with deadlines. You're gonna have to learn how to maybe interact with ad sales because so and so is buying a two page spread. Now you have to integrate and reflow the entire design of the magazine. These are all experiences that mimic the real world, meaning non school world. So I would encourage you to learn on someone else's dime, right at school. You aren't necessarily paying a lot for your mistakes, which relates also to my recommendation to maybe work with a within a smaller company where you have the opportunity to observe a really good deal maker where you can make mistakes and someone else is paying for that education.
- [58:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Adam, do me a favor. Also buy something on Craigslist or ebay or a store and resell it on the Internet. Figure it out. Just go through the exercise. The exercise of buying something and selling it for a profit is an incredible, incredible indicator and exposes a lot in the game. Cause it's always some level of buying and selling. Just do that. It's a very easy fun or not fun venture. And it will be quite telling in the success or non success you have if you do it a couple of times.
- [58:41]
Tim Ferriss
I'll give one more, which is actually. So, Adam, I don't know you, but I've spent a good amount of time in Singapore, Malaysia. So another exercise I would suggest, because entrepreneurship, if you choose to take that route, is full of uncertainty and what I would suggest and also nervousness in many cases. So when you go out to get a cup of coffee or tea or whatever it is, and this is borrowed from a friend of mine named Noah KAGAN, ask for 10% off. So like for the next 10 coffees that you get each time you get to the head of the line, I don't care if it's Starbucks. It doesn't matter if they say yes or not. But ask for a 10% discount. You can't say you're doing an experiment. You can't say that Tim Ferriss told you. So you just have to ask for 10% off and just sit there and wait for them to respond.
- [59:27]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Did you do this him?
- [59:28]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [59:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And what were the conversions?
- [59:31]
Tim Ferriss
Well, it makes you more comfortable with discomfort. And you also realize the downside is so limited. The limited. The downside is you just.
- [59:36]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I respect the macro amazingness. No, no, what were the conversions? Oh, yeah, How'd you do?
- [59:41]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, the conversions are surprisingly high. I mean, like 70%.
- [59:45]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Seven of the 10 people at a Starbucks or Pete's Coffee or some random place were like, okay, sir.
- [59:50]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Or they're just like so stunned that they're like, wait, this is Starbucks. And I'm like, I know, I would still love. I would really appreciate 10% off. And like half the time there's like, okay, okay, guy, sure. Yeah. I don't, like, I don't, I don't want to fight this fight right now. So. Okay, fine, 10 off. Yeah, knock yourself out.
- [60:08]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love it. And try some of those things. Get back to us. Okay.
- [60:11]
D
All right, thank you very much.
- [60:12]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Good luck. Good luck. What else, Timmy, as we're wrapping up.
- [60:15]
Tim Ferriss
What else.
- [60:16]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What else is going on here? Like, what's. How are your startups, your investment? Are you still investing?
- [60:20]
Tim Ferriss
I haven't, I haven't really done any investment for about two years.
- [60:23]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, me neither.
- [60:23]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I've been out for about stepped out.
- [60:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Me too.
- [60:26]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, no, it's.
- [60:27]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You just think it's overpriced. It's hard to pick the winners as much. Too much supply and demand.
- [60:31]
Tim Ferriss
Too much supply in terms of cash and too much. This is going to sound like a crotchety old man, but maybe that's me. A lot of also entitlement. Like if my startup isn't valued at pre money 30 million because I had an idea while I was taking a dump 10 minutes ago, then I'm inside, It's like, no, no, no. You have to earn that. And so I like to wait. I mean, things go in cycles. I will definitely be investing again, but I'll wait until there's blood in the streets.
- [60:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What about Voice? That seems to me like the closest thing to social I've seen in a long time. I'm going to probably invest in that space, the platform building on Top of Alexa, Google home. I'm real bullish on it.
- [61:08]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, I think it's going to be a super active space. I think it's probably also going to be a very crowded space, just like say, blockchain and AI and all of that. So when you move into a crowded space, you just have to make sure that you have an informational or analytical advantage so that you can pick reasonably intelligently. And at this point in time, I'm allocating my brain space to more of the writing, the podcast and so on so that I don't have, I think I don't have enough bandwidth to do a financially responsible job. I would just be spraying and praying or being like, oh, my 10 friends are in. Okay, fine.
- [61:44]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, we did a lot of tap.
- [61:46]
Tim Ferriss
Action, which I don't want to do because all of my friends who have funds have too much money, so they're spending more money than I should as an individual. So I would say just maybe as an overlay on everything. We've been talking about that. A lot of folks look at me and some people assume that I'm a risk taker, always loves risk. He loves taking no risk, no reward and all this. I am so focused on risk mitigation at all times, you know, Me too. And because look what I did in.
- [62:17]
Gary Vaynerchuk
The height of everything, we were living it. I decided to build a client service business.
- [62:21]
Tim Ferriss
No, really? No, I get it. But I think that's in part because you and I have had so much practice capping the downside. And like walking through that rehearsal like, all right, can I actually stomach and handle the worst case scenario? If so, all right, I'll cap my downside and then eventually the upside will take care of itself. And like you shared in Tribe mentors, this is another one I think about a lot, which is when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do or what do you think about? And your answer was, if you're going through something very difficult, you imagine your family dying in a terrible accident and it puts it in perspective. It's like there are problems that we put in quotation marks and we make a big deal out of on a day to day basis. And then there are tragedies and crises and real dark things that can happen. And when you put it in perspective, you're like, oh, yeah, like whatever. Getting my coffee 20 minutes late and it's cold. Maybe not a big deal. Like, maybe that should not occupy any of my mind.
- [63:15]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Big lost a huge account. Yeah, yeah.
- [63:19]
Tim Ferriss
And you know, one thing that Came up again and again when I was talking to these various mentors in different fields is the idea that sometimes you need life to save you from what you want, to give you what you need. So sometimes losing that account, you look back five years later and you're like, best thing that ever happened.
- [63:35]
Gary Vaynerchuk
The best. Tim, you get to ask the question a day. All the guests on the show get to ask the question of the day. It's a great opportunity for you to get thousands of answers on Facebook and YouTube. I know you like to get consumer insights and things of that nature or favorite color. I could care less. Wherever you want to go, Timmy, fire it away. All right, Timothy.
- [63:51]
Tim Ferriss
Timothy, camera one. Is that where I'm looking?
- [63:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I think that one actually, Right? Yep.
- [63:55]
Tim Ferriss
This one. All right. Question of the day is what? Failure or disaster, or so it seemed at the time, actually was a blessing in disguise and set you up for later success.
- [64:09]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love it. Tim, you said something earlier about, you know, you've got to be right to be able to, you know, do the right thing by others.
- [64:17]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [64:18]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, it was interesting. And you know, this. This is a. We have an interesting, great, long relationship, but I really wanted to use this medium to publicly apologize to you. This is something I've done to you personally a lot of times.
- [64:31]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [64:32]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I am so thankful for the life that I live. I am such a happy man because I really have crazy good intent and have been able to execute it a bunch. This is something nobody knows here. I'm excited for everybody. I'm Tyler and people that know who I am and I know you know who I am. But I wanted to do it because I thought it was important for me. Because I want you to know how much it means to me. Cause I've done it a bunch of times personally. Early in my career, I was giving a speech at blogs with balls, which is funny. And I think I got overzealous. I did get overzealous. And I was talking about hard work and hustle. And in it, I said, fuck four hour work weeks. You gotta work your ass off. And the level of intent was extremely low. But in reality, it was just not the right thing to do. Especially because out of all the people I know on earth, the thought that I haven't offended or hurt or even did anything slightly wrong to millions of people that I have no respect for or compassion for or desire for friendship or how I feel about them, the thought that that happened, and I just want you to know, because I know I've said it a bunch of times privately. But in my everlasting quest for you to know how deeply I'm hurt that I could have done anything that hurt you or miffed you in any certain way, I wanted to put it super out there into the universe and never let there be any confusion. I admire you tremendously. I've really enjoyed our friendship through the years. And that is when I do die, that is something that will still run through my. I've lived it pretty good. I've lived it pretty good and have all the right intents. I hated that that happened. I hate that that happened. And I want you to know on this big of a stage, or at least my little micro big stage, that I mean it with every ounce of my soul.
- [66:22]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you, Gary. Accepted. I know you do. We've talked about it. We've talked about it personally, so. But we mean a lot, so thank you.
- [66:31]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Honestly, like, now that as I continue to get older, there's not that many people doing it. Yeah, you know.
- [66:37]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, totally.
- [66:38]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, the level of. I get put into a lot of. A lot of people use my name and associate it with other names, and I have no interest. But every time people are like, oh, you know, on Twitter or in real life, when people are like, oh, I like Tim and Gary. And every time I'm associated with your name, it means a lot to me.
- [66:56]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you, Gary.
- [66:57]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You're welcome, brother.
- [66:58]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, man.
- [66:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I love you.
- [66:59]
Tim Ferriss
Many adventures ahead, 100%.