4 lessons from podcast legend Tim Ferriss that changed our business

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Today on this audio exclusive episode of the Colin and Samir show, we're going to be recapping one of our favorite episodes from this year. That episode is our interview with podcasting legend Tim Ferriss. Now, throughout my 20s, I listened to the Tim Ferriss show religiously. I would say that that show really shaped my viewpoint on entrepreneurship. Over the past decade, Tim has built one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

1:49He's interviewed guests like Ed Catmull of Pixar, Hugh Jackman, Mark Zuckerberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Madeline Albright, LeBron James, and the list goes on. His show has been listened to almost a billion times. Getting to talk to Tim was a very surreal experience for me, and the conversation really lived up to everything I wanted it to be. It was incredibly insightful, and Colin and I have pulled specific lessons that we continue to use in our business today. The lessons that we learned from this episode have given us new rules that we live by here in our studio. Whether it comes to booking guests, booking sponsors, building out our business, we come back to this episode and the lessons that we learned to help guide us.

2:32So as we approach the end of this year, we realized we wanted to synthesize some of the lessons that we learned and tell you the four lessons that we use to this day from our episode with Tim Ferriss.

2:48All right, so how this is going to work is we're going to share the top four lessons that we learned from Tim, and we're going to be playing a few highlights from the interview. After we listen to those highlights, we're going to be explaining how we've implemented these lessons into our own business and creative workflow. I will never forget the day that Tim Ferriss came into the studio to record. I had a lot of imposter syndrome because he is not only has he interviewed LeBron James. Yeah. I consider him to be the LeBron James of interviewing. Yeah, that's true. You know, and I felt like, OK, the roles are reversed now.

3:24is he going to be, you know, in his head while we're asking him questions, sort of judging or, you know, it's like game recognized game, I guess I'll say. You know what I mean? Like, it's in a situation where everything that we do, he's incredibly familiar with in that situation. Yeah, that's a good point. I was nervous for many different reasons. You know, this is one of those moments for me that was like, you know, careful meeting your idols. You know, it is nerve-wracking to have that experience. I think also recognizing that when he came to LA on this trip, he did our show, Andrew Huberman's show, and Dax Shepard's show.

4:03Those were the three shows he did. I think he did rich roles as well. But like, he didn't do very many shows in LA. He was very intentional. And so coming on our show, it felt like I wanted to be different from the other ones. I wanted to make sure that we did our job in introducing someone who, you know, we really cared about to our audience, but also remained very curious in the episode. There's a moment where he reflects back to us, which we'll play later, that it was a question he hadn't heard before. And that made me really happy. But what we're talking about is having Tim Ferriss on the Colin and Smear show, for us, we want that to be a very unique experience.

4:43And the first highlight we're going to play here is Tim talking about creating your own category. part of what has really informed my thinking are there's a chapter that is in the 22 immutable laws of marketing it's incredibly outdated in a bunch of ways but there's one short chapter it's probably five to ten pages long called the law of category which was incredibly impactful for me and effectively it's just saying don't be the best be the only like how do you create new categories the question of how can I be a category of one? Yeah. Right. So when people ask me, like, how do you feel about your competitors?

5:24I'm like, I don't view any of these people as competitors. As soon as you start thinking competitive terms, you're going to start making compromises and succumbing to groupthink and conforming in ways that you may not even recognize. And that will lead you to be less differentiated, generally speaking. The more time you put into investing in looking at your competitors and being angry about competition or just dealing with it, the more you're probably going to make decisions that actually will make you less of a category of one. And being a – like Tim has done that so well of being Tim Ferriss.

6:07and no, like, it emerged that there was a category of like wellness, entrepreneurial podcasters, you know, who cared about optimization and cared about life and business. And, you know, a lot of Tim Ferriss has emerged, but he's done a really good job of retaining this singularity of being Tim Ferriss. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication,

7:00I think when it comes to competition, there's a couple of solutions. and the first is that you can believe that you are a category of one amidst the competition. So in that instance, for you and I, we can believe that our years of experience in this industry, our chemistry together, these are things that can't be replicated, the relationships that we've built. We can sort of double down on our belief that we are a category of one even when there's competition. The second solution, I think, is to take actions to ensure that you are moving your category forward, whether that's experimenting with new formats or doing things that are just not happening in your category.

7:51When I look at next year, I think those are the two things I want us to do. And those are things that are proactive and that I want to do anyway, but they are a solution to that feeling of competition. So, you know, there's, before we get into the next quote, there's one thing also that Tim said to us that has really tangibly impacted our process. And that came to, you know, how he vets his guests, but also when he does a pre-call with his guests or even before they start recording, he asks one really simple question and he says, what would make this a win for you? It's such a simple change that we've made.

8:33It's funny that our guests, when they come in and they sit in the chair, if we ask them that question or on a pre-call, a lot of them have listened to this episode. So they're like, ah, the Tim Ferriss question. But it's actually changed the context of collaborating and made our guests recognize that we truly are there to build something together. It's not just, hey, you're here on our show. It's, hey, we're sitting down here. We're going to present a conversation to the world. we both are part of this. So what is it for you? So he's a very intentional process of how he approaches his guests. But one of the parts of this episode that stuck out, I think, to everyone was how intentional he is about how he vets brands.

9:16It was incredibly thorough. And whether you heard this before or not, it's absolutely worth listening to again because it feels like it's straight out of a textbook. It is so good. I'm curious if you can break down some of the anatomy of a good advertising relationship and a good ad as well. Sure. That's a great question. This is why I'm here. The anatomy of a good ad partner. So first I would say that we handle almost all ad sales internally. So I never outsourced all of my advertising or sponsorship to an agency. I think that's a viable option. But in my case, a lot of creators should just focus on getting really good at producing whatever the content is.

10:08Yeah. And not become the CEO of a business or a side business that is advertising. I just happen to be very, very comfortable with that. And I know how it works. And I felt like I could train someone to be very good at it. So I was like, we're going to handle it internally because ultimately whatever the, whatever the slice might be, 15 to 30 % gets very expensive as you start to grow. If you're successful. And I was like, I think we can do that internally. We do work with agencies one degree out, maybe two or three who have been very effective and easy to deal with. For me, easy to deal with is very, very high up.

10:43So first would be, and I do this a lot. It's product or service first. before I even consider the relationships or anything like that. If it's, if it seems to be a prospect and I've trained my team at this point, they know very quickly whether something has a snowball's handsome chance in hell of, of being appealing to me. So I, we, I only end up seeing maybe 10 to 20 % of, of what comes in anyway. And then at that point I will either use it myself or if it's something that I can't use myself because it's a some software as a service for mid to large fintech companies. That's going to be impossible for me to personally test, but I will back channel.

11:32I will talk to their investors, which they generally don't know. I mean, I just know a lot of people in tech, so I will back channel. I will also sometimes, let's just say they're in New York, hypothetically, I'll wait until after business hours on like a Friday and then put up a post on social, which is if you have used, and I will not use the at because I don't want to tag them and then have them maybe flood the comments with seeded responses. I will say, attention to anyone who's used X. From one to 10, no seven allowed, how strongly would you recommend it to a friend? Pros and cons, question mark.

12:10and then I'll look at it. And if it's, if it's, it has to be eight or higher, or it doesn't make the cut. So just as an example, and I've, I've turned away millions and millions, probably tens of millions of dollars. Wow. If things don't pass in terms of product and service, it's very simple. This is also how I've approached most of my investing, which is not investment advice. Please God, don't try to imitate what I did in early stage. It's a dangerous game, but would I, could I be a power user and super fan of this product or service? Yes or no. It's super binary. Yes or no. Would I recommend this to my friends who will give me endless shit if they don't love it?

12:51Right. Like my cynical, salty, stubborn friends who would try it once, but if they hate it, they're never going to let me forget it. Would I send this to them? If the answer is no, Do not pass go. And those early steps, which might seem less technical, are the bedrock of starting this entire evaluation process. After that, we will get to, say, the question of relationship, even before we get to ad read. Are these people easy to deal with? Are they being really problematic? Are they pushing back on our insertion order? document, right? Are they chewing up a ton of time from my team, which is a very lean team in a way that is kind of a pain in the ass.

13:43And if so, they get cut immediately. Even if they've passed the other hurdles, they get cut. I have no time for it. Just in, in life in general. Now I'm like, I don't have an extremely high burn lifestyle. That's by design. I mean, I like certain nice things, but I'm not crazy about it. Uh, and that gives me the flexibility. If you're the average of your relationships and your parasocial relationships, and this is something I'm going to have to talk to my team about on a regular basis, or that's going to affect them, which it will positively or negatively, depending on the quality of that relationship and the ease of that relationship, they're a pain in the ass, they're gone.

14:22and I'm very strict about that. So if they're reasonable, like it doesn't mean they can't have questions or even object to something in a sort of constructive diplomatic way. But if they're difficult in any capacity, they're gone. And at this point also, I've been very fortunate. The agencies we work with just know. It's like Tim is really expensive and he's very strict and you just got to know that going in. I'm like, great. I'm like primed. Fantastic. they know what they're signing up for perfect spot to be like and if you think it's going to be like a month-long negotiation thing where you change all of his terms like never going to happen not in a million years and let's say though that they're like okay we understand what we're going for here which is like we kind of want to reach the audience of ted and like movers and shakers in 20 different industries that simultaneously including journalists at all the top like outlets if you want to hit like if you want to hit that crowd and you're not trying to hit mainstream mainstream, you just have to pay up.

15:22That's just the way it works, at least with my show. And so then we get to read and I will not agree to taking someone on. And I don't want to make myself sound like a total jerk. I'm not a jerk about it. It's just like what I can do, the best favor I can do to any sponsor is to have as many check boxes on my checklist to ensure that they will be successful long-term before I say yes. Yeah. Also selfishly just saves us a lot of work. But saying yes too quickly can create an incredible amount of busy work and repair that I just do not ensure that we just do not want to deal with. Okay. So I get the read.

16:08If the read has a bunch of, especially any claims that I think are dubious related to anything scientific, certainly any kind of pseudo medical claims, or if they're like such and such has been rated number one out of blah, blah, blah. My team already knows this. So I'll get it. I'll be like source. I want to see citations. Number one, how, who decided number one, what's the assessment? You know, what was the analytics firm? Did you pay for the analytics for how to do this? There are many ways to become number one. I'm super rigorous with that stuff. And so we get the read and then my team will do a first pass because they know what's what's gonna get get me all riled up and sometimes great sometimes great off off the bat otherwise you know we'll we'll do some modifications and then be like all right tim is going to freestyle a lot of this ultimately final cut is up to him he knows what works for his audience are you okay with that because if they need me to read something verbatim it just ain't gonna happen that's not not how i work it's also not in their best interest.

17:11So it won't sound like me. And then we have, you know, the, the IO, like I think we're doing mandatory three spots maybe. Cause I mean, I imagine videos are, you have some idea of after you see things finished in post, you have an idea of how you think something might do, but it's, there's so much outside of your control and there's so many variables and it depends on like news cycle, who knows what's happening that week. I need somebody who can look at a pattern across three, not a single shot, because it's just, it could be misleading either in overperformance or an underperformance. I'm like, I want you to see the performance across three.

17:53Then, uh, and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a premium podcast, so it's expensive. So I'm also vetting, I'm looking at, okay, here's, I don't, I've never talked about this. This is why it's fun to, to, to have these kinds of interviews sometimes, because of my involvement with startups, I will look at the position of the company from a funding perspective. Are they in a save the Titanic position where they're trying to do like a last Hail Mary to try to figure out bridge financing? In which case, maybe I don't want to take that risk because this could perform super well and it could still get canned because they end up having to lay off half of their people and cut back on all these expenses.

18:33I want to know that if I do everything within my power and my team's power to ensure they are successful, that they have the capacity to stick with us for quite a long time. You mentioned four sigmatics. They're a great example, uh, and of a success, a success story on every level. Yeah. And so I might check some of that. Then I will, uh, also, um, I will look at the read and I will look at where the, the, where the read takes people. Okay. So if someone is claiming they want to track, which a lot of people do, and that's fine. Yeah. First of all, there's a lot of slippage, right? Not everyone's going to use the URL.

19:22if they're using a tracking URL and they're like, get$1 off your new mattress. I'm like, not good enough. They're not going to use it. And then you are going to say your conversions are really bad and you might use it to try to negotiate with us. Or you might genuinely believe that it performed poorly, but that's just because you did not provide sufficient incentive for people to use this laborious code that you're asking them to use when they're listening to a podcast as a secondary activity. It's too big an ask. So I was like, very often I'll, I will negotiate, not negotiate. I'll, I'll just have someone on my team go back to the sponsor and be like, if you're going to use the tracking in that way, you need a better, you need a better deal.

20:00And that's it. End of story. So, uh, and, uh, that's, that's one piece of the puzzle. Another is looking at the landing page and going through the process of buying something, looking for technical glitches, looking for browser compatibility. I mean, like we do stuff that I really don't think most podcasts do. And looking at optimizing all of the points with potential failure points for conversion so that if we send a bunch of traffic, we have a reasonable belief that it will convert well enough to lead to a sustained engagement with the sponsor. Okay, so obviously that process is incredibly thorough, strict.

20:46There's one line in there where he says, working with Tim is really expensive and very strict. And I wanted to bring this up because it's, for me, it was always a challenge when we were first starting out. The thing you want as a creator is money. You want the business to work. You want people to pay you. But the thing he says later in this episode is credibility is a scarce resource. And I think that's one of the most important things for creators to take away from that bit is that advertising is the bedrock of your business. It's the whole thing, right? It is how you make your money is by making recommendations or suggestions for products or services to the audience that trusts you.

21:34And if you lose that trust, if you lose that credibility, you've lost the business. and Tim's process for actually being able to speak with honesty about a product is why he's been able to build a decade-long career. I also think what was really interesting there is that credibility is not just about the product or service. It's also about the experience that the listener has when they get to the website or the landing page. are you sending people to a place that's not going to work? Right. Because it's a bad experience for them. And more importantly, it's actually just bad business. He says, if I'm doing my job right, I want to make sure that this company has the capacity to handle the people that I'm actually sending their way.

22:25We've dealt with that in the past. Yeah. We've dealt with that where we didn't vet the other side of the call to action. And it wasn't a great experience for our audience. and that is, again, that makes us lose credibility. The next time we tell you to go somewhere, do you not trust it? Do you maybe have that experience in mind? So yeah, even when Tim was here, he was actually testing a product that he said he tests for a span of like a month or two to make sure that he believes in it. And I think in this world of creator-led marketing, it really makes a difference if you feel like you can trust the creator.

23:06I just like that he gave really tangible steps. It was very specific. It was like, I have my team vet and I only see 10 to 20 % of the products or services because they know me. You know, the fact that he crowdsources feedback on Twitter or Facebook or different social platforms and asks, have you used this product, rank it on a one out of 10. And if it's not eight out of 10. He doesn't do it. I also love the human nature of he was like, would I get shit from my friends if I told them about this? Yeah. And it wasn't good. And it wasn't good. Like that is, that's so important. Like that's, that's incredible.

23:45Uh, the last thing I'll say is something that we also do is he has a mandatory three episode spend. Um, that is something we really try and do is, is make sure that an advertiser is buying across three. Um, because like what he said, there's so many variables with one, that three is a better representation. So all of that is really interesting. Obviously, the maturity to approach your content like that and your advertising like that, Tim was successful prior to going into podcasting. And that's a really important thing to note, that he wasn't depending on advertising originally. But I think as a creator, you want to get to a point where you are treating your advertising like this.

24:28Now, the biggest question is, so what about pricing? How do you get someone to pay up? How do you get to be really expensive? It can be very uncomfortable as a creator to send a very high price to someone. Yeah. And pricing is philosophy at times. Of course, it's heavily involved in sales, how good of a salesperson are you? And there's also metrics. So it's this combination of factors and different people sell differently. And I think when it comes to pricing, like the two things we've already said here and the two quotes we've played, number one, become a category of one. Number two, have a very intensive, strict process for what types of brands you bring forward to your audience, both of those things actually make you a high-priced show.

25:15Because if the advertising works, it's high-priced. So here's a bit from Tim on how he approaches pricing strategy. Can you talk a bit about pricing strategy? You spoke about keeping your rates really premium on your ad rates. And I think a lot of creators who listen to our show and a lot of, I think even entrepreneurs, like, you know, there's the mathematical side of all of this, which is like CPMs, right? And YouTube AdSense gives us a CPM that we fall under. When you go out to sell a brand deal or a brand partnership and you're talking pricing, I think there's a lot more nuance to that based on audience quality, how relevant it is to the advertiser.

25:56How have you thought about pricing strategy and what advice can you give on how creators can price themselves? Yeah, my pricing has largely stayed exactly the same. I think I could probably increase it in a couple of instances. I think we're at$60 CPMs, something like that. And I think we could probably charge two or three times that for some of what we do. So I've been a bit lackadaisical, maybe lazy in toying with it too much. But at the time that was considered insane. Meaning when you started? Oh, yeah, when I started. So when you started, you started at a$60 CPM. Yeah. I just wanted to be basically the most expensive or one of the most expensive.

26:38And I looked at, I think at the time, some of the NPR shows were like$12 CPMs, but they were third party read. So not host read. And the reads were very short. They did not tie into the hosts in any meaningful way whatsoever. And I thought, okay, I assume the conversions on those are quite bad. Do I think my conversions could be four times better? Absolutely. I think they could probably be 10 times better. And therefore, and I do this a lot. I will, I aim for ultra premium. And this is something I talked about even way back in the day, I guess in 2005, when I was writing the four hour work week, there's always a market for the best.

27:19Always. When you get into trouble, in my experience is in this bloody middle where you end up negotiating your rates to appease advertisers who are bargain hunting or price shopping. Yeah. So my, my, one of my goals from the outset was to buy approaching long form in the way that I've approached it with complex subjects, with difficult to reach guests or just amazing guests no one's ever heard of. So I am a source of new experts for people who want that type of exposure. I would attract an audience that would be so valuable that I could charge effectively whatever I want. And still have confidence that for a certain subset of sponsors, that would make a lot of financial sense or potentially make a lot of financial sense.

28:21I just absolutely love this notion of there's always a market for premium. There's always a market for the best. Yeah. And that trouble arises when you're in what he calls the bloody middle, where you're not at the top. So now brands are looking at you in relation to a ton of other creators, and they're kind of just looking for a bargain because you're not singular. You're replaceable in the middle. and that you really as a creator want to strive to be the best. It's interesting for him that he started at a really high price because he knew he would attract an audience that deemed that price. Yeah.