Tim Ferriss Opens Up: What I Do In A Day, Unfair Advantages & The "Barbell Strategy"

34:00But if I could find them, I'd be curious to see them. I'm sure I would. Well, I'm sure they kind of grew out of that, right? Like you basically have your lifestyle. Yeah. The notes from that, because every time I spoke, It was twice a year. Ed Schau, the professor, high tech entrepreneurship, invited me back because I had the harebrained idea of doing everything bootstrapped. And all the other guest speakers had these venture backed companies and some of them were huge. I was small fries by comparison, but I was doing it my way. I was taking a different approach. So I came back and twice a year, a lot happened in my life at that point.

34:35I mean, it was trench warfare dog years, right it's like if you ask anyone who's had the manic depressive experience of being involved with crypto it's like yeah what does the last year felt like they're like 17 years and it's similar i think when you're running a company in the early stages it's like you know two months ago it's like a lifetime it's like obama when he left office yeah yeah went from black to gray hair yeah exactly four years i mean look at me right no hair so uh i would say that that that desire to teach and the positive feedback, really positive feedback I got from workshopping the lessons and principles and so on in this class led me to conclude a few things.

35:19Number one, I really enjoyed teaching. Number two, teaching in that format in front of 20, 30, 40 students didn't scale. Now, I think scale can be a dirty word and dangerous and overly seductive for a lot of folks, but it wasn't going to enable me to reach a lot of people. And then I was done from an identity perspective with the supplements. So looking for something new. And I had an author friend of mine. This is a shortened story that could be really long, but effectively say, you should write a book and start introducing me to agents and editors, even though I didn't want that. Right. I was just looking for feedback and suddenly I had all these intros.

35:59And so I was like, ah, okay, well, let me start having these conversations. I'd also at that point returned from a year and a half or about a year and a half of this global walkabout, which I chronicle some of in the book, Argentina and this, that and the other thing. And I came back and I was like, OK, what next? I'm not motivated to really go into hyper growth mode with this company. This isn't going to be my thing for 10 years, 20 years. So what next? And that coincided with these intros. You know, the book was eventually accepted and there was an offer made, but a lot went into it, right? 20 some odd, 26, 29 rejections from publishers and so on.

36:41But I knew the material worked, right? I had the confidence because I'd workshopped it. With a live crowd, which is huge. Over and over and over and over again. I knew it worked. And I frankly love experiments. That's the way I model my whole life. So I viewed the book as an experiment. I was like, at the very least, it's like an MBA. It's like, all right. It's like a break from whatever I was doing that looks acceptable, like on a resume slash career trajectories. It's like, all right, let me try it. It's a great mask for unemployed, right? No, great mask. I'm writing a book. I'm getting an MBA.

37:18Yeah, great mask for unemployed. And then everything went bananas. Well, you did the podcast that way too, right? Experiment. You were like, I'm going to record, I forgot what it was. six episodes and like you you built yourself a golden bridge if you wanted to retreat you're like hey i'm gonna try this i'll do six it's either gonna be a wonderful six episode series or it's gonna be the next thing but like i'm gonna just portion off this experiment versus yeah give yourself a huge commitment yeah give yourself a grace flexing i mean framing it for yourself but also to other people whatever you do as an experiment gives you a grace flexing right it's so simple but it's such a psychological it's such a strong form of psychological leverage that i think very few people use right they're like my next thing is this i'm like oh totally i felt that before i felt that pressure to have an answer yeah i want to ask you about a different a couple of your like principle core principles that i've found very useful and i want you to unpack them one is the law of category can you explain what is the law of category and maybe how you used it.

38:22Sure. The law of category is is taken directly from a book called the 22 immutable laws of marketing. The law of category in brief is a description of the power of creating new categories. So rather than trying to be the best in a crowded category, trying to be the only in a new category, that's where Amstel Light comes in, the first light imported beer. Okay, there you Or in the US, let's just say low cost airlines Southwest. Right. And there are a million examples that you could find. The law of category is also, I would say, an encapsulation of something that might be called the Blue Ocean Strategy versus the Red Ocean Strategy.

39:11So there's a book called the Blue Ocean Strategy, I would also recommend that people read in combination with this chapter from the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the law of category. I think I put it in either Tools of Titans or Tribe Mentors. I liked it that much. I went through all the brain damage of getting permissions to include it. And those two pair well with an article you can find for free. You You can read it in 15 minutes called 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly on kk.org. You can find that. And they're all driving at the same thing, which is positioning and differentiation and trying to figure out how you can be the first something.

39:55Now, sometimes that turns into a bunch of hand wavy smoke and mirrors nonsense like we discussed earlier. but at least as an exercise it's it's worth considering because for instance one of the questions i was going to ask you which you can you can answer or we can just use it as a sample question was when a diehard fan of your show is talking to someone who does not know the show how would you ideally like them to describe the show right and that is a question of positioning because branding it gets turned into this huge process with flow charts and tons of agencies and companies and this and that and sure i'm sure there are people who are very sophisticated with their approach but at the end of the day for me brand is what people consistently associate x with x could be you x could be the show right how do they describe it right that's it that's your brand i mean just like a brand like where Where does the term brand come from?

40:56Like brand on cattle. Right. So from that perspective, I think it's very useful when you're considering doing a new project. It's not how can I be the best competing in the same way against people doing the same thing. That is not the frame. And even if you end up emulating other people or borrowing best practices, I think it makes sense to start with examining the law of category and thinking about blue ocean approaches, which is why, for instance, with my podcast, we're now at the 10th anniversary, and I don't really see a viable path forward for me that is heavily video focused, even though I think there are going to be some significant taxes to pay for that.

41:45Podcasts have a huge discoverability problem Yes. And a huge long term surface ability problem. And YouTube offers a solution in the form of what is it? The second largest language search engine in the world. And I understand why it makes sense for a lot of people to harness that as one engine for growth makes a lot of sense. But it's crowded. It's really crowded by anyone's definition. It would be a red ocean and it's definitely going to get redder. And for that reason, maybe I make the decision in six months, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to go whole hog. Let's see what happens. Right. Right.

42:37But I don't have, I don't have a really high degree of enthusiasm for that right now. And enthusiasm is important, right? I'm just, which means I'm not going to have the endurance compared to someone like Chris. Right. Right. Williamson of people are like, who is this Chris? And furthermore, I feel life, the threads of life pulling me in other directions. So doing it half assed would be the worst thing I could do. Like doing it six out of ten would consume resources and not be particularly effective. Right. So I'm trying to decide if I want to take a barbell approach with podcasting on some level, which I've experimented with.

43:16Explain that. What's the barbell approach? this all barbell approach could be applied i mean this is a term i i'm borrowing i don't know if he originated it from yeah nothing tallab when he talks about investing right like super risky stuff and then really boring let's just say fixed income or s p 500 or something right like super boring stuff and really risky stuff where you have a cap downside but potentially huge upside in his set of games it would probably be some type of like black swan option right position and then nothing in between. That's it. Right. And you could apply that to exercise, you could apply that to many different things.

43:54As I'm applying it, I would say, within the format of podcasting, you would have no video whatsoever. That would be on one end of the spectrum. And I've done that. I've experimented with walk and talks where I have a headset on and I'm recording with someone and we were talking and getting exercise and it's great. I feel better because I'm not sitting down for three or four hours or whatever the the amount of time might be and i love it i love doing it so i think that there's a possibility doing that with a lot of enthusiasm and joy and curiosity i might be able to make up for the lack of video with those elements and i would probably do higher frequency also right because of that and then on the opposite end of the spectrum i might actually for instance, tomorrow, like we'll have a nice video set up tomorrow.

44:47And I have effectively a studio. It's no wraparound immersive avatar LED screen, but it is, it's a nice studio set. It's what used to be considered really nice. It's what used to be. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't call it cinematic, but it's high quality video. Right. And probably shy away from stuff in between. And we'll see. this barbell principle applies to so much right investing you're talking about it with a project how i could approach a project we me and ben have been talking a lot about how we do this with our network it's like man we're meeting so many people but like death by death by a thousand zoom calls like i just i'm not gonna do it yeah so what am i gonna not talk to these people like no and so we decided there's a barbell approach like a bunch of random texts where there's no obligation for either side to reply it's just like hey thinking about you or hey check this out that's it quick text spend a half day or full day together i'll fly to you let's have a good time and we started doing this and oh my god it's like yeah i feel like i've cracked the cheat code of the relationship building that that that was otherwise felt very draining and overwhelming hey this episode is brought to you by mercury they're the fintech of choice for over 200 000 companies i myself use it for eight different companies the reason why we all choose it is because it does everything you need under one roof.

46:11So like my e-commerce company, it's super important for us to be able to easily wire transfer, pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the world. And the old way with our more traditional bank that shall now be named, I try it online. It would say no, it would freeze my account. Then I'd have to go in, book an appointment, speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn't need. And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done.

46:38It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've heard it on My First Million. For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Yeah, the barbell approach can be applied to a lot. I apply it all over the place. And another example would be say speaking engagements where I very rarely do speaking engagements, but it's either free where I would maybe even pay to be in front of the audience because the event and the audience is so interesting.

47:20Could also be a pro bono thing or ultra premium, ultra premium, high, high watermark. Like what, whatever company or organization paid me the most I've ever been paid. That's my new minimum. Right. Like whoever is going to meet or exceed that. that's it and i will do probably two to six engagements a year that's it you did this early on i remember you had like your blog or i think it was blog days and you did you were like everything's free i'm going to give everything away for free i'm not going to be a kind of online course slinger like most people who once you get a little bit of following it's like hey would you like half a million bucks would you like a million dollars you could just sell this course and then you you were like i'm either gonna be all free or i'm gonna be ultra premium i remember you did this, like, what's it called?

48:05The, uh, opening the community, the kimono, the kimono, it's like a$10 ,000 thing. But like a lot of us were happy. You'd be happy to pay that. Cause it's like, oh man, I've gotten so much free value and I have the means and you're like, cool. I only need a small number of people, which might make it a more enjoyable event for me. It was that the kind of calculus there. Yeah, it's free. It's free or ultra premium generally. I mean, that's how I try to approach things also because ultra premium gives you a lot more margin for error so you can afford to experiment right so it's it's a virtuous set of conditions that you can set in the beginning and it also poses a creative problem that i enjoy like setting the price i set the price before i figured out the content right i was like all right let me figure out the price and then i want to figure out.

48:58And it was, it was, it wasn't just 10 ,000. It was like 10 ,000. If you apply and are accepted in the first like six hours or something. And then it got more expensive. Gotcha. Then it went to like 1250, then it went to 15 ,000. And then my creative challenge was, okay, how do I make this event? It's a two or three day event. And I was done more than a decade ago. It I've only done that one event as far as paid events goes. And I was like, how do I make this event worth that amount of money? Like, how do I exceed the cost of this event in the first two hours of the event? And then the rest is just gravy.

49:40It's a powerful question. That's a great question. Yeah. And that was, that was the challenge. And part of the answer was I'm going to give people my actual book proposals for the first two books that lay out everything, like the marketing plans, all the nitty gritty, the sales pitch. and all sorts of details because people were there for, I guess we would call now content marketing. Right. Right. They wanted to know how to launch books. They wanted to know how I had launched these books. I was like, okay, let me just skip the, skip the conceptual overlay. I'm just going to show you exactly what I did.

50:14Open the kimono. Open the kimono. And, and then I did, I did an exercise. This was also to answer that question. very simple where we had something like 120 people i mean we had tons of people apply and we were trying to vet for assholes to omit them right so we had questions that were bear traps for assholes well we wanted to make sure i have an audience i have a very enthusiastic audience and the last thing i would want is someone to take out a second mortgage or max out their credit cards to come to some event right so first off it was like wire transfers only we're not accepting credit cards right and i had i had but it's gonna sound weird but like a warning slash lecture in text which is like i do not want you to go into debt for this right this has to represent i can't remember what the percentage was but like no more than X percent of your current savings, excluding your retirement accounts.

51:18You gave him a stern talking to. Yeah, and so I had a couple of questions about finances because I really didn't want to have the guilt on my conscience of knowing that somebody after the fact, knowing after the fact that somebody went into the red or put themselves into a really compromised position to come to this event. And I do have fans who would do that. I remember one guy in response to one of the finance questions He said, well, I appreciate you being my financial nanny, but if you want to come onto the tarmac to look at my jet when I come, you're welcome to. And I was like, and you're out.

51:53Yeah. Thanks for that. You have done exactly. You passed the financial qualifier. Yeah. But you failed the second test. I was like, you fell into the exact bear trap that I was setting for you. Thank you for disqualifying yourself. We do not need you in a small event. Financial nanny is good, though. I like that. Maybe it's a good service we can have for people. So clever. Yeah, financialnanny.com. So we had something like, let's call it 100 people. We had 100 people in the room, and there was an attendee book with very short bios, maybe not even bios. And I think there were bios for everybody.

52:30And we had every single person stand up in the room, and I was like, this is going to take a little time. But like, bear with me, folks. I think this could be interesting. And I'd never done this before, so I didn't know how it was going to turn out. I said, everybody's going to stand up. They're going to say their name. They're going to have a brag, which is... Give them permission. Yeah. Like, don't give me some fluffy, bullshit, humble thing. Right. Right. This is not the time or the place. Don't be like, yeah, I write books sometimes. And it's like a 10 times New York Times bestseller. Like, don't pull that stuff.

52:59Get up. Brag. I'm giving you permission. I'm actually giving you a requirement. Then you have an ask. make an ask of the audience and then you have a give it's like something that you're really good at or could be anything so get up and it's like a brag and ask a give and i was like everyone else is active this whole time you are listening and you're writing this stuff down if somebody has an ask that you can help with write their name down and if there's a give that you want to discuss with someone write their name down and just doing those few things the proposals and then everybody standing up and like by the end of that day people were like okay this is already 10x right what i spent this is amazing and then it was just gravy from there yeah i think the easy thing to gloss over in that it's like cool it's like cool story obviously but the takeaway for me and for anybody listening is that that question of or the technique of first i'm gonna set the price then i will ask myself how i can over deliver on that value or deliver in the first two hours where that was a no-brainer transaction for them to do that question led you to a such a different result than if you had just said what event should i do yeah average question common question and i feel like you have a lot of these powerful questions and you've said something that questions are like a pickaxe for the brain yeah it's how you dig the gold out of the brain and i love that metaphor i've i'm a collector of questions i got a swipe file of like a hundred questions mostly not people think it's interview questions no these are questions that i need to ask myself to get my brain to ask a better question get a better answer one of my other favorites of yours is what would this look like if it was easy you used it today for this interview i was like oh great i gotta do a great interview today all right oh man this could be difficult there's so much content what would this look like if it was easy and so what was your answer what would it look like if this was easy is me being genuinely enthusiastic and excited to meet you you feeling that for me and you walking out of here being like oh i actually had an interesting conversation he didn't just ask me 10 questions but maybe sean said two or three interesting things that got me got me like because i know like what does tim want out of a out of an experience if he learned something it's probably a good experience yeah or if he heard one or two provocative things that he might think about later, that's like a useful use of an hour for you.

55:24And so I thought, well, I'm good at that. So let me just like not withhold those, which would be common in a podcast where I'm only going to ask you questions. I'll mute myself to make sure that you're at the time. But in this case, given that you have a platform, you've been so vocal in the past, I thought, oh, maybe I'll let myself do that. Because I think if I give Tim one or two nuggets that are interesting, he'll walk out of here feeling like it's a great experience. Yeah, totally. So what other questions do you have on that list that you use a lot that maybe I haven't heard? Okay, I'll give you a couple of them.

55:55Am I leaning in to my absolute strengths and unfair advantage as much as I could be? And what this really is, is I call it the theoretical max. I had a friend who had an app one time and his developer, his product manager was saying like, oh, the response rate on our push notifications is like 10%. And he's like, guys, if we just got that to 15%, then like the rest of our funnel looks great. And they're like, ah, we tried a bunch of AB tests, didn't work. He goes, go in there right now and just write, your Uber is arriving. And this app was not Uber. And they sent it out and like 50 % of people open.

56:29He goes, that's now the theoretical max. Don't ever do that again. But like, don't give me the BS that like, because before that they were like, people don't have them on. People just got, people are too numb. There's too many apps, too many notifications. They had all kinds of stories. And he's like, actually, let me just torch that BS real quick. And so the theoretical max question is basically, am I leaning into my superpower or my unfair advantage to its theoretical max? And so I'd ask you that. What is your unfair advantage? I ask that question to myself a lot. I try to edge into it a few different ways.

57:04I'll ask friends of mine, when have you seen me at my best? That's one. or what do you see me do that is easier for me than for other people right uh i think my unfair advantage is at this point i have a lot just in terms of audience and platform and so on but

57:31But if we're talking about just what I can take with me, right? What I can walk out of here with, I would say it is an ability to ask unusual questions. also ask the dumb questions when i'm trying to learn something from someone from a book from a video it doesn't matter i'm always asking these questions these various questions and then i can take whatever i learn and i suppose i could try to deconstruct this but i consider myself a fast learner at this point. And if I can get to point X in six months, which is going to be usually pretty, pretty good, sometimes super impressive, sometimes not depends on the thing, but overall, on average, I'm going to learn things very quickly because I have a method at this point.

58:33I can, if it takes me six months to get to point X, I can get almost anyone to that same point in three months or less because i realized i i also had so many false starts and i tried so many things that didn't quite work i tried a lot of things that were common that turns out should be removed from the learning process entirely i'd say those those are what come to mind yeah my first reaction was if i was tim ferris what would i say i think my first reaction would be i can get first it was i can get any guest on my podcast really that i want i mean every guest is within reach. And you said, well, that doesn't really need to be about the podcast necessarily.

59:12Yeah. Anybody I want to talk to is within reach. Yeah. That's interesting. That's not true for most people. And even if you are booking tons of guests or you're meeting cool people, like you probably aren't at the theoretical max. You're not at the, your Uber is arriving level of like leaning into that superpower. For good reason. Your mom is dead. text message theoretical max exactly and so but then even further is not only can you get in touch with them okay that's easy but like you can go in and you can get people to open up the kimono because your reputation is i'm tim ferris i learn things i've interviewed people i deconstruct the things that they're great at i ask them questions people will come to you in an interview ready to open up the kimono totally that's interesting another interesting thing is like you said you went to go visit the game designer in europe for three days that's cool that's kind of like throwing your weight around into your, your unfair advantages.

1:00:03Like you could probably pick up the phone and if somebody is the best game designer in the world, you could, they would be honored to say that, Oh, Tim Ferriss wants to come and learn my stuff from me. Fantastic. Please I'll, I'll block, I'll block out three days. That's cool. And how many more times could you do that? So I would start to, to have a little bit of a brainstorm around that. There's another question I find really, really valuable. And that is what is, what is the silly story I'm telling myself? and it immediately puts you on the defensive because you're like, why would I tell myself a silly story?

1:00:33But we all are constantly telling ourselves silly stories. Why we can't do this, why that's going to be hard, why that's not going to work for me, why that will take forever, why this person is not responding to my thing. It's because of ABCD. No, actually it's probably not. And so identifying the silly stories, it's like, I'm a Harry Potter guy. I don't know if you read Harry Potter, but there's the boggart, the thing that will present itself as the thing you fear. And the way to get rid of it is the spell is ridiculous. You make it, you basically, if you're scared of spiders, you put the spider on skates and then it can't walk.

1:01:03And then it's actually becomes funny instead of scary. The same thing can be done with what are the silly stories in my life? As soon as you start to point them out, it's typically things that you've made real. But when you, when you sit down and you interrogate that, that story turns out it was just as fictional as like an easily replaceable story that might be, might be better for you. And so that's one that i ask uh quite often because it's the one that i hate it's the question that i hate that like yeah that's the one i need yeah yeah i suppose if i could choose one question the only question i could ask it'd probably be some version of that yeah you have in mind what it would be or no uh no i mean we're just we're constantly i mean the my favorite answer to the question that i ask most guests at some point what would you put on a billboard favorite answer I've ever had was from a hospice care physician named BJ Miller, who's helped thousands of people to die.

1:02:00Helped them to die. Helped them sort of transition. Well, he didn't, yeah, he didn't euthanize them, but he's midwifing them through the transition to death if they have terminal cancer or something like that. And his answer, he actually confessed to me he got from a bumper sticker somewhere but the his answer was don't believe everything you think that's it don't believe everything that you think and you know having some method for cross-examining those beliefs right these thoughts we take to be true is is really really critical so that's a good one yeah i like that i want to leave with one thing which is naval you're friends with the ball he's a fascinating guy to me.

1:02:48Never met him in person, only chatted online and whatnot. Really respect the guy. I really admire a lot of things about him. Do you have any stories about Naval, anything that you noticed early on or a moment you observed kind of like the wisdom or the sort of the insightfulness that he has? Naval's one of my favorite people. He's very, very smart and into hilarious and does not suffer fools gladly at all, which I like. You don't have to guess what Naval is thinking, which I deeply appreciate. And the first thing that came to mind is probably not the kind of example that you would expect, but it's actually the first time I met Naval.

1:03:31So the first time I met Naval, I went into a coffee shop in the Mission in San Francisco and I ordered a coffee and I'm waiting at the counter and there's this very attractive girl standing next to me and she's very friendly and smiles and I start talking to her and I'm kind of chatting her up you know hitting on her hoping to ask her for a number and take her out and who knows you know maybe dinner maybe drink who knows and then I see Naval walk up with this huge grin on his face and he's like i see you met my girlfriend and i was like oh damn and he's like naval and he just had this huge grin on his face was just like wow what a good way to address it like totally calm and then we then we started talking and like and we hit it off and that was probably god knows when i was i don't know 2008 or something like a man crush actually move out the way yeah face face palm yeah and and uh and that was it i i i just i admire and evolve for his ability to speak truth and ask uncomfortable questions and he doesn't go out of his way to be rude but he's he's he's i think less inclined he is less inclined to the type of people pleasing that i'd say many people are predisposed to myself included like there are definitely times when i'm maybe too polite or tell white lies to make people feel good or whatever like normal human right social lubrication right nothing major but it's like if you know if my girlfriend's put on a few pounds she's like do i look fat i'm like no right you know like i'm not gonna say yeah you look really fat uh not to say that nivala would say that uh but he's he's direct in a way that that cuts through the noise and is very refreshing to me.

1:05:31Have you been able to pick up or, uh, learn anything from them in terms of whether it's, you know, tactical stuff on the investing side or tons of stuff on the investing side. I mean, uh, I think the site was way back in the day, uh, Venture Hacks. Oh yeah. That he and Nivy coauthored. And I mean, that was basically the kind of Wikipedia Bible of angel investing and advising for, for, and inside game on venture capital. I mean, Naval is Jedi level when it comes to early stage investing, very technical. He just ends up in every deal you would ever want to be in. It's like, you know, the sort of, you know, pinky in the brain meets like Forrest Gump meets, you know, Siddhartha.

1:06:19You're just like, how is he in every cap table? Right. He's, he's incredibly skilled as an angel investor. Yeah, we don't even have enough time, even be hours and hours and hours of conversation to even begin to describe what I've learned from him there. And he's very curious. He's very interested and it's not at all limited to business. So if it's, you know, David Deutsch or other thinkers, he introduces me to a lot of eclectic thinkers from different disciplines and his, his exploration is certainly not limited as it is with a lot of people to say the sport of business or finance or investing.

1:07:04A lot of people are one trick ponies that way. He is not a one trick pony. So I, I admire that as well. I have a funny Naval story, which is I have a buddy who was doing some, like when Facebook launched its platform, my buddy made an app and it was like one of the silly apps i don't remember back then it was like people throwing sheep at each other and stuff like that he's doing one of the like silly apps but it was clear that oh facebook platform that's like an opportunity and so smart silicon valley people were interested my friend's sitting in georgia and naval's in san francisco and he gets an email from from naval basically he's gonna found the contact us page or whatever and was like hey i'd love to meet with you sometime you know talk about your app i'm a venture capitalist here in san francisco friend doesn't know who naval is doesn't know what venture capital is, but it's like, okay, sounds interesting.

1:07:48He's like, oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm open to that. Next email is a plane ticket. Like here's a plane ticket goes out tomorrow. So friends like, okay, girl gets on a plane, flies out here, meets Naval, meets him in his office. Naval asked him, he's like, he asked me questions for like 30 minutes. And he's like, I had no idea what the pot, what the right answer should have been, but I'm saying whatever's this, my honest answers. Naval was like, hold on, goes into the other room, comes back, has printed out like a term sheet and says like, here, you know, I'll give you whatever, half a million bucks or something, whatever it is, like some amount of money for, you know, some percentage of your company.

1:08:20And my friend who's like 23 or something like that is just like, I don't know who this Indian guy is. I don't know what the deal, I don't know any of the words on this page. My app is stupid. I don't know why he wants to invest in it. I don't really understand this. So he's like, I just don't feel comfortable right now. And he's like, and Naval at the time was like, you know, he's very, he's like, I think Facebook is going to be huge. I think it's going to talk to friends on there. You're going to be able to do XYZ. That's my thesis. That's why I want to invest in this. Cause my friend was like, honestly, this is kind of a stupid idea.

1:08:49Why you, but there's not a business. And so he gave him that, that pitch. My friend was like, wow, that sounds awesome. I didn't even realize all that. I had stumbled into this gold mine potentially. So he's like, listen, man, I just, uh, I don't understand what this thing is. I just need to think about it. And I was like, no problem. And so he's like, I go. And then by the way, that same week he meets Keith Reboi, Max Levchin, a bunch of other people who are also giving him the same pitch, but in different flavors. Like Keith Reboi was like, you should come work for us. He's like, I don't want a job.

1:09:14He's like, see all those people right there, all those programmers, they're going to put you out of business like, you know, tomorrow. And he was like, this is a stupid app. It's not a business to do it. Waste your time doing this. You're going to put me out of business that isn't a business. I live in my mom's bedroom. Like, what are you talking about? And so then he said, he goes, you know, the great thing about Naval though, is that he's like, like 15 years later, now my friend's very, a very successful tech entrepreneur. He's like, I actually dug up that old term sheet. He's like, it was so fair.

1:09:39He's like, he could have taken advantage of me and I didn't know anything. And he's like, it was incredibly founder friendly and fair. And he's like, that told me a lot about Naval, uh, that at that time when a lot of people were in the heat of the moment about this kind of gold rush in that Facebook app days, and I was clearly a novice. Um, he, he, he operated with very high integrity. And I thought that that said a lot about him. Yeah. That matches with my experience. I've always seen that in Naval. Yeah, for sure. Right on. Well, Tim, thanks for doing this, man. I really, really appreciate it.

1:10:07Yeah, my pleasure, man. Thanks for taking the time. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

1:10:25Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:10:55If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.