#760: Robert Rodriguez and Susan Cain

27:27thinking, how come no one's ever done this before? Let me go try it this summer. Let me try it for the Spanish video market because they make them for like 30 grand, but I'll guarantee no one sees it. I'll call it a mariachi, which is basically, if you're going to the action section, you won't buy a movie called or rent a movie called The Guitar Player. That promises no action at all, but I just thought, you know, I had a sense of humor and I thought, let me make it kind of, I don't really want people to see it. I just want to be able to test out these ideas and see if it's possible. Shot, shot, shot.

27:53Cut it, cut it, cut it. Went to sell it in LA because that's where the distributors were for those U.S. distributed Spanish language movies. Because you would just look at the video box and all the companies were like on Wilshire Boulevard. So I drove up here with my friend Carlos. And the in I had was there was going to be a 25th anniversary of the Texas Film Commission in Austin. And a bunch of people from Hollywood that Governor Ann Richards was trying to invite in. And I saw the list of people. And one of the agents from ICM called Robert Newman was going to be there. And I thought maybe I can try and slip on my short films.

28:22Well, the whole thing got canceled and fell apart. So when I was in LA, I called ICM up cold. I looked him up in the phone book, called him up. This was in 1992. I'd asked for Robert Newman's office and they put me right through. He was a new agent there. He didn't have any directors yet. I called up his assistant and said, hey, can I talk to Robert Newman? He was going to come down to this 25th anniversary thing. And they said, oh, I hooked up on the phone with him. I said, yeah, what happened with that? I was ready to come down. I go, wow, I don't know. But I was going to show you my film and I'm here in town.

28:47I wanted to drop off my award-winning short film in a trailer for a movie I made for$7 ,000. okay drop it off i couldn't believe it dropped it off he called me back up the next day hey the machine ate my tape he actually watched it completely i went and made another tape gave it to him waited over the weekend and i got the call and he says i love the short film but i love the trailer the trailer for this movie the mariachi movie i mean it's like a world-class trailer because i kind of i knew people couldn't watch the whole thing so i was i'm a pretty good editor i cut this really snazzy trailer that just made you want to watch the movie and he said how much did it cost again i said seven thousand well that's pretty good most trailers cost 20 or 30 no no the whole film cost 7 000 so oh come on i said no the whole thing i shot it i shot a really low budget but i'm gonna can i come up and talk to you so he had me come up and i told him i plan on making two or three of these like a trilogy of these guy with a guitar case as just a test and i'm wondering what else i should put on my demo tape because you know my award-winning short film has been doing well i think it's all kind of like a dollars trilogy and i can get you work right now off of this.

29:50I said, really? He goes, yeah, I send this to the studios. Just put subtitles on it and I'll send it to him. So I subtitled it, sent it. He got me a two-year deal right away at Columbia Pictures. Not to even release Mariachi. Mariachi was just a calling card. But it happened to so quick. I mean, I was really young. I was what, 22, 23? I really thought I was going to make some test films first and have a chance to come up with what my big idea was. I mean, I was in no rush. I really wanted to be prepared. I really wanted to learn every job and really know what I was doing. So this suddenly caught me by surprise because now they're asking, well, you're a filmmaker now.

30:21And he even wrote me down as a writer-director. I guess a writer-director? I guess I wrote the script. So yeah, I guess I'm a writer-director. I never really thought of myself that way. And I was suddenly, this young kid plunged into this world and I suddenly had to come up with a bunch of original ideas because this was my shot. It was too quick. I was not prepared. So I thought, well, look, you guys liked the mariachi. Why don't we just remake that? Remake it with like Antonio Banderas in Spain and we'll just cast it up and they said, okay, that's a good idea. But we want to test screen El Mariachi first to make sure people aren't think it's a downer ending when the girl gets killed.

30:53So they made a film print, they tested it. People liked it the way it was. They decided to take it to festivals. And I completely protested. I was like, this was my practice film. No one was ever supposed to see this. Give me$2 ,000. This is my debut baton ball. Don't put this out for the world to see it. Don't put this out. If I knew people were going to see it, give me$2 ,000. I'll go reshoot half of it. Just knowing people were going to see it as my first film. And they said, no, you don't know what you have here. It's very special. And they took it out and they went to Telluride, Toronto. And the head of Sundance came to me at Toronto and said, don't show it at any more festivals and you can bring it to Sundance and put it in competition.

31:25Because, you know, he knew it would do really well there. And it won. So I was already bought by Columbia. So I was one of the few films usually that's already had a distributor. And we took it and I had a great little talk I would do before to set it up because I had to disclaim why it was the way it was. and I say, well, when you see the Columbia logo come on in the front, the logo probably costs more than the whole movie. When everything you watch after that, just know that I, how I did it. I wanted people to know how I did it. I really wanted to deconstruct how I was done because I would have wanted to know that.

31:54As a film student who felt coming from a family of 10 kids, living in Texas, people constantly saying, you want to be a filmmaker? Oh, you need to move to LA. That you could stay where you are and come up with something that could be sold. I wanted others. I just wanted to get on top of a mountain and tell everybody. So that's why I put out a book. And that's why even before each screening, I would explain how it was even possible because I knew they would be wondering because nobody had really ever done it. It wasn't that it was impossible. Just nobody had done it before. No one ever thought that way.

32:20People kind of forgot that that's how movies really started. It was always like a couple of guys with a wind up camera and Buster Keaton in front. It wasn't a business yet. When it became a business, suddenly everyone had a job and you needed 200 people because it was now an industry. That's not what the art form was originally. It was just the manipulation of moving images. And you can do that with two people. One person, that was a breakthrough idea. And so we're going to tell them, I just took stock in what I had. My friend Carlos, he's got a ranch in Mexico. Okay, that'll be where the bad guy's at.

32:47His cousin owns a bar. The bar's where it's going to be the first initial shootouts. We're going to be all the bad guys hang out. His other cousin owns a bus line. Okay, there'll be an action scene with a bus at some point. There's a big action scene in the middle of the movie with a bus. He's got a pit bull. Okay, he's in the movie. His other friend had a turtle he had found. Okay, the turtle's in the movie because people will think we had an animal wrangler. and that'll suddenly raise production value. So I wrote everything around what we had so that you never had to go searching. You never had to spend anything on the movie.

33:15The movie cost really nothing. It was really just the fact that I wanted to shoot it on film instead of video so that it would look more expensive and try and tell people, you know, I made it for 70 ,000, try to sell it for like 70 ,000. Instead, it ended up going to Columbia and getting released. And that story really, when we won Sundance, the audience award, my acceptance speech said, you're going to get a lot more entries next year when people find out that this is the one that won a movie made with no money no crew everyone's going to pick up a camera and start making their own movies and it's been flooded with entries since then it was really a real change in the paradigm and it was only out of necessity it wasn't my big idea that it could be done I really just thought I don't want to take anyone with me even my best friend wanted to come help on my movie shoot from mariachi I said no because I gotta go to Mexico and this camera I brought you know it's probably going to break down the first day I don't want I'll jinx it if I start bringing too many people down.

34:06And I don't mind failing. I just don't like failing in front of a bunch of other people. So they go back and they say, Robert tried to make a movie for no money. You're an idiot. He got stranded in Mexico. I really didn't think it would work. And I was surprised. And that's the best I tell people is just be naive. Stay naive. Throw it away. Don't overthink it. I didn't overthink it at all because I would have treated it completely differently had I thought I would ever even show it to anybody. Had I thought it would go to a festival and I would have submitted it, I would have spent 10 times as much.

34:35I would have gone and borrowed money and done all. Instead, it was like one take, one take, one take. Everything was one take, even if it didn't work because the film's so expensive. So I would go, and it was a noisy camera and it was a soundless camera. I mean, it would make so much noise, you couldn't record sound. So I had to record sound the way you're doing right now. So I would shoot a take, put the camera away, get the sound out, put the mic up close. So for those people, yeah, we have two mics attached to a little recording device. I would put the mic as close as you have it. So I got great sound, but it was out of sync.

35:03but you kind of talk in your own rhythm so if you say hi my name is you know robert put the camera away okay now do the audio hi my name is robert it kind of comes you can pretty much get it to sync because i don't like rubbery lips if you look at mariachi it's all in sync except where it started to get out of sync i cut away to the dog or i cut away to a close-up and it created this really snappy editing style but it was really just to get it back in sync because i couldn't stand that but that was the whole idea you know it's like let me just try and do all these things myself and see if we can put it together.

35:31It reminds me of Jack Ma. I mean, it's very consistent among these people who seem to come out of nowhere and build something very big. Of course, there are exceptions, but Jack Ma of Alibaba, I said, you know, we had a couple of advantages when we started. We had no experience, no money, and no plan. And so every dollar we spent, we had to consider very, very, very carefully. Well, my plan was, I had a really good plan. This was the plan was, I'm going to go shoot one take of everything because a film is the most expensive item. If I just shoot two takes, you know, one just in case, I've just doubled my budget.

36:02So one take, I'll cut it together. The stuff that I need to come reshoot, we'll only reshoot that. We'll only get those shots. You never come back and reshoot. By the time you get back up there, back to Austin, you figure out a way to cut around things that were like not done right or a little slow or, and I never came back and reshot anything. You end up just working with what you got, but it left me off, it got me off the hook from being too precious is by knowing I had that safety net, which I never ended up using. So if you can do that for yourself, you know, in any area that you're in, try to just go free with abandon.

36:35And sometimes, you know, they say that for writing a book or writing a script, just write. Don't keep rereading each page and going, oh, it's not good enough. And then tear it up and throw it in the trash can. You'll never get anywhere. You got to just get momentum. Get it down. And keep going and come back later with fresh eyes and look at it again. Now that you have access to so many resources, what are practices you have or principles for maintaining that scrappy creative mindset right because if you you don't have to have many constraints if you don't want to yeah at this point are there ways that you try to simulate that or there's a couple things with that this is freedom of limitations you know there's almost more freeing to know i gotta use only these items turtle bar ranch you're almost completely free within that you know you almost can do not anything because that would be almost too many options but you're just put into a box it's one of my favorite movies i did with quentin was called four rooms where they said we're all doing short films we're all have the same criteria has to be set in one room has to be new year's eve and you have to use the bellhop the freedom of limitations was enormous i mean you watch that short and it goes all over the room by the end we burn down the room i mean it's almost some more exciting to know that you were in a box and you could be creative within that box.

37:47So now that so many things are available to you, you want to limit yourself in a way. So I try to limit time. I try to limit money so that we can really get still keep that essence of creativity and deliver on the screen something that just looks much bigger so that you can retain your freedom, creative freedom. Because if you start spending more money, suddenly the financiers, rightfully so, the studios or the executives will be over your shoulder constantly questioning every move you make because they want their money back. But if you keep the budget low, it's a win-win situation. If the movie does great, it's a great success.

38:22If the movie doesn't do great, it's still a success because it didn't cost very much and it'll make back its money over time. That's kind of where I've kind of lived and breathed. I'm about to jump out of the box a little bit more and do some things that are a little bigger just to learn more because you just learn more when you go and do other kinds of assignments, but where it's really the most fun. And that's why you asked, how do you keep the morale high. The morale is always high on the set because they know we're just being creative. That's the name of the game. It's not looking for a result.

38:48It's like, how can we just keep ourselves jazzed about this?

38:54Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious, sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low-carb, or paleo diet. So if you're on a low-carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, all that's garbage, unneeded. There's none of that in Element.

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40:10And now, Susan Cain, number one New York Times bestselling author of Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent eight years on the New York Times bestsellers list, and Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, and award-winning speaker whose TED Talks have garnered more than 46 million views. You can find Susan on Instagram at SusanCaneAuthor. Susan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I have been looking forward to having you on the show for some time. And we have a lot of terrain to possibly cover. So we may end up having a part two and three, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

40:56I thought that we could look at public speaking just for a second, because many people will associate you with this blockbuster mega hit of a TED Talk. And rumor has it that you straight in the delivery room from the get-go were a natural-born killer on stage. Is this true? Were you born a spectacular public speaker? Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, everybody listening, you can't see Tim right now, but he has a very devilish smile on his face because, of course, the answer is the complete opposite. So I had a lifelong, well, dating back to middle school, I know exactly when it started. I had an almost lifelong fear of public speaking.

41:43And a lot of people say they're afraid of public speaking and, you know, they're telling the truth. But, like, they didn't have a fear the way I had a fear of it. It was so extreme. What was the triggering event? Oh, okay. The triggering event was I had recently switched to a new middle school and I was in an English literature class and I probably appeared to the teacher in that class to be not a shy person at all because I love English so I was always participating. Anyway, she called me up to the front of the room. We were doing Macbeth and she called me up with a friend of mine and she said, okay, you're going to play Lady Macbeth and your friend Rob is going to play Macbeth and just improvise this scene.

42:22And for me as a shy person in a new school, this was like total kryptonite and I couldn't say anything. I just completely blanked out and just stood there dumbly at the front of the class and finally just had to kind of sit back down, red faced, not having said a word. That sounds terrible. It's making my palms sweat just listening to it. Yeah. Yeah. And I know this now, now that I've studied all this stuff, that if you have an experience like that, it gets encoded into your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that registers all your fears. And then the amygdala for the rest of your life is doing its job by saying, oh, you know, I'm going to steer you clear of any situation ever approximating anything like that literature class ever again.

43:09So after that, anytime I had to give a speech and I did it, you know, I used to be a lawyer on Wall Street and stuff. Anytime I would do it, I would just sort of suffer my way through and I would always lose five pounds because I couldn't eat before, like for a week before. Then I started writing this book, Quiet, after I had left law. And I really, really, really cared about it. You know, it was my dream come true to be a writer. And I cared so much about the ideas in the book. And I didn't want my fear to stand in my way. And I was giving this TED Talk. So I had to overcome it. How did the opportunity for the TED Talk come about?

43:50So I had a friend who worked at TED, told him about the book, and he kind of passed on the idea to the curators at the time. And I think that they understood that most of the TED audience is really introverted. And so they knew that it would relate with their audience. And I think that that was probably why they invited me in. And I mean, I'll come back to how I overcame my fear in a minute, but I will tell you, they turned out to be so accurate that after I gave the talk, you know, I came down off the stage and I was absolutely mobbed for the whole rest of the week by every single other audience member who are all coming to tell me, you know, that's my story too.

44:28And I'm going around pretending to be this very confident, extroverted person. And that's not really who I am. Amazing. Yeah. Present company included. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I will steer us back and you will also bring us back to what we were just talking about. But last night at a group dinner, which I helped organize, keep in mind, at a wonderful restaurant here in New York City called El Lili. It's a Lebanese place. I had to take four or five bathroom breaks, which were not to use the bathroom. That is what I do at any dinner of more than one or two people. I have to exit not just the conversations, but the environment to just recharge my batteries and gather my bearings for a few minutes and then go back out.

45:13It's like you're feeling a kind of overstimulation in the setting. Overstimulation. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting because I've heard you talk before about moving to Austin and having these group dinners. And I thought, oh, that's so interesting that that's what Tim wants to do because I would never choose to socialize that way. I always love to socialize one-on-one almost the way we're doing right now you know sitting here just talking there's a kind of boiling point for me in terms of size like four to six i can handle it depends for me also on the environment i think more so than the number of people so when i do these group dinners i will generally host them at home or have them at one of my friends homes right not in a popular restaurant yeah like i did last night so i'm just gonna say what's interesting about that is how strategic you are about it.

46:04And I really noticed this with people. So we were just talking about Ted. I was just talking to Chris Anderson, who runs Ted about this whole phenomenon. And he describes himself as an introvert too. And he said he loves group dinners. If there's a specific topic that everybody has gathered there to discuss, and he knows it's going to be something really substantive, then he's in his comfort zone. But if it's just kind of this amorphous socializing, he wants to leave. So just on the tactical practical side, I also tend to very frequently cook the meal for the group so that I have a task while people are arriving and talking.

46:42Also deliberate because I'm often inviting people who don't know one another, so I want them to have a chance to chat without having me as a mutual crutch, if that makes sense. But in any case, we could talk about that for a long time. No, and that's a really common strategy. I hear that from many people wanting to have the task. I can play extrovert. I'm good at playing extrovert. But up until, say, sixth grade, I wouldn't even go out to recess. I would sit on a step and read usually books about sharks and fish because I wanted to be a marine biologist. But I wouldn't even go out to recess. Wow.

47:14So a lot of what you talk about and have written about certainly strikes a chord. Now I feel like I want to ask you so many questions about this. Like I'm really curious if we talked about, if we could go back and talk to sixth grade you right this minute, like would sixth grade you have any idea that you would have the life path that yours has taken that's so public? Absolutely not. No, definitely not. I mean, what happened in sixth grade also, just for people who might be wondering, well, what happened in sixth grade? if it's up until sixth grade. What happened in sixth grade, or I should say more accurately, the summer of fifth grade is that I had a huge growth spurt and I had been bullied really badly.

47:52I was born premature and very small and I was bullied really, really badly up until the end of fifth grade. Then I left to a summer camp and gained about 30 pounds of muscle and grew four to five inches over the summer, came back. And then... It's like a Captain America narrative. Yeah, exactly. And then the bullies who had been accustomed to bullying me tried their usual playbook, and I just went on this vigilante spree like the Punisher, and that changed the social dynamics. So I was able to actually go outside and do things that I wanted to do at recess from that point on. So it didn't mean that I socialized a lot more, but I had more mobility.

48:32So that is what happened. But like you, and this is part of the reason why I wanted to start with this question about overcoming a fear of public speaking, is that it's when people see the finished product, it's easy to assume that it comes from an attribute as opposed to a skill. Yes. And in fact, a lot of what appears to be natural appears only to be natural because it started off very, very unnatural. And someone has worked at chipping away at it over time. I think that's true. I think so often when you see someone who's really good at almost anything, it's because they actually started out exactly the opposite and then they cared so much about fixing that problem.

49:17But in terms of how I overcame that fear, and I have this kind of evangelical desire to share it because it was so extreme. I feel like if I could do it, then I know anyone can overcome any fear. So first of all, I spent years sitting in therapists' offices kind of cozily discussing, well, what might be the sources of this fear? And, you know, what do I trace it back to? And that does no good at all. I'm actually a big believer in therapy, but not for this type of issue. So what really does it, if you're afraid of something, you have to expose yourself very slowly to the thing that you fear in really manageable doses.

49:56So you can't start off by giving the TED Talk. So in my case, I signed up for the seminar, and it was a seminar for people with public speaking anxiety here in New York. and you'd get there and on the very first day, all you had to do was stand up, say your name, sit back down, declare victory, you're finished. And that's it. What was the organization? Oh gosh. Was it Toastmasters or something else? No, and I am a big fan of Toastmasters, but this was almost like more remedial than Toastmasters. Toastmasters light. Yeah, this was like pre-Toastmasters, yeah. So the guy's name, he's amazing. His name is Charles DiCagno.

50:35and you can find his organization. It's speakeasy.com. And I think it's spelled with three E's. Perfect. And I'll put a link in the show notes for people as well. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I really recommend him. Yeah. And so, you know, you'd come back the next week and maybe you'd stand up and he would do these things like he'd have people stand on either side of you. So you didn't feel all alone up there on stage. It's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. And then the audience would ask you questions like, where are you from and where'd you go to college? You know, so really easy stuff. You answer the questions and you're done.

51:05And it's like if you do that little by little by little, you actually really can overcome it. It's kind of crazy but true. But I will say, having said all this, still, there's something about a TED Talk that's on some whole crazy other realm of public speaking nerves. Even if the setting is exactly the same, there is a performance anxiety associated with that three-letter acronym, for sure. Yeah, we were talking about this before we started taping, that so many of the speakers are really practiced on stage, and yet you see them minutes before they go out, and they're sweating bullets, and they're all losing it.

51:45Yeah, we were chatting for a second about, and Chris Anderson could certainly correct me, I'm blanking on the exact term, but there's some space right next to the stage behind the curtain called the Zen Room or the Relaxation Cube. There's some very pleasant sounding name for this space, and it's intended to be the next up batting cage for the two or three speakers to come. and I remember it was probably 15 or 20 minutes before I was supposed to go live or no, it couldn't have been that. It was probably an hour before and I really didn't want to be around a lot of people and in the green room, there are all sorts of staff and lots of people milling around and working on production and I thought to myself, I need to go to the Zen room.

52:26We'll just call it the Zen room and so I walk out to the Zen room and I won't mention names but there are like three just killers. These are consummate professionals who have done this type of thing thousands of times. people I look up to and would love to someday have a coffee with, and they are freaking the fuck out. And I was like, not helping, not helping. I need to leave the Zen room right now. So yes, it's a different beast. So how do you go from talking about your favorite color on stage with two people next to you to Ted then? Okay. So I graduated from that to Toastmasters, which I also completely recommend.

53:04And should I describe what that is? Yes, please. Yeah, okay. So Toastmasters, it's a worldwide organization. You can absolutely find one near you because they're everywhere. And it's basically this non-for-profit thing where you sign up for a group that meets near you. And once every two weeks, you get together and you practice public speaking together. And they have this ritualized way of doing it. And some of the time you're practicing speaking off the top of your head. And sometimes it's a prepared speech. and it's just kind of giving you that exposure therapy of, you know, putting you in the beast of the thing that most frightens you.

53:38You have to show up every two weeks and do it. So I did that. But then the next stage after that, and it was my husband's idea, I hired a coach for the full week before the TED Talk. It was really amazing guy named Jim Fife, who I also completely recommend. And since then he has coached many other TED speakers. So I worked with him morning till night for a full week before the talk. Good for you. Yeah. What did the working with him look like? Okay, so he did a really brilliant thing. He was very psychologically attuned. And I said to him, you know, I'm really comfortable in general talking to people one-on-one and kind of like cozily sitting on a couch and talking about life.

54:22I love that. For me at that point, though, getting up on a stage and holding forth was the hard thing. So he said, okay, let's practice your talk sitting on the couch and just talk to me about it. And we did that for like two days. And it was only after that that we then moved to the stage and started getting into kind of the theatrics of it. That kind of transition was so helpful. I just want to note that this is, I spend so much time with and I'm so obsessed with good teachers, good coaches. This is very common where they will effectively say, let's start from where you are right now. They will always return if they sense any type of overwhelm or fear to bring you back to a point of familiarity or comfort.

55:07And then edge into sort of the next concentric circle of what is your limit of comfort. Yeah. And I think they also have to show a lot of non-judgment because I had some dark moments during that week. You know, for me, this was the abyss and I was just hanging out in the abyss for a week. And so he saw me, you know, I had only just met him and he saw me not in the most flattering circumstances. And yet I didn't feel embarrassed by that. Did he do anything in the beginning to assess you or establish a baseline or was it more of an interview that he used, like an intake? Do you remember? It wasn't really formal like that.

55:45You know, he's such a human guy. It was just like we were just talking. You know, we were just, yeah. Disguised as intake. Smart fellow. Yeah. And then, so the amazing thing to me now is I now, super ironically, have a career as a public speaker. Like I travel the world going and giving talks to all different companies and conferences all over the place. like I asked you well if we could tell sixth grade Tim where he would be what would he say and I say that to myself too like if you could have even told me eight years ago that this would be my life I would have been so shocked by it and now I've come to like it so do you have any particular pre-game ritual or anything that you did in the hours leading up to your talk that helped or that you didn't do I have things now back then I just suffered but what do you what do you have now?

56:39Now I have a few things. I mean, I do deep breathing just like everyone else. I'm sure you've heard that a million times, but it's got to be real deep breathing, you know, where you really feel your belly and your diaphragm filling up. But for me, what I also do is I usually think to myself, and I do this, especially when I'm speaking to an audience that I find more intimidating, you know, like a group of finance people at an investment bank or something. I will say to myself, there, I am sure, is one person in this audience who has a child who is shy or introverted. And if that child has a better life because of one tidbit that that person hears today, then it's all good.

57:21And that pulls me out of myself instantly. Yeah. It gives you also a hurdle that you can clear. for winning the presentation, so to speak. yeah right it's a manageable goal but i think it's it feels deeper than that to me it feels also like i think when people get nervous about speaking obviously they're really nervous about being judged right but this completely shifts the energy where it's not any longer about how anybody judges me it's about can i help that kid out there i want to say also that part of the reason I am more than happy, actually excited to spend so much time talking about this is that it is not specific to public speaking.

58:05This just happens to be a very common fear and perceived weakness of many, many, many people. Also, as a side note, what Warren Buffett says is his greatest ever investment, but more specifically, a Dale Carnegie course that he took in public speaking because it magnified his ability to do almost everything else, to communicate effectively both in spoken word but also in the written word in some respects. I don't think I've ever spoken about this, but I also did Toastmasters. And if you have trouble finding it, oftentimes there are large companies that will have within their HQ or any large location their own Toastmasters group.

58:52and that's actually how I found it in San Jose initially. It was at Adobe. So I would go in and I would do this Toastmasters and your description of having this very logical progression of small wins layered upon small wins, getting up on stage and then getting off stage. Getting up on stage, having two people next to you and answering a few questions and getting off stage is so incredibly effective. And I'm laughing right now because I remember when I was preparing for my first presentation at South by Southwest. So this is a very large festival and conference in Austin, Texas. And the timing was 2007.

59:33It's about, I want to say, a month, month and a half before my book is going to come out, my first book, which I'm very nervous about. There had been no speaking slots, but I had pitched Hugh Forrest at the time, who I'd been introduced to that I would take anything available, corner of a room, hallway, if there were any cancellations, I would really appreciate the opportunity to speak at the event. And lo and behold, there was a last minute cancellation, not by a keynote speaker, but by a sponsor who was going to have a stage to pitch their products from in this makeshift cafe. And I was like, I'm in, I'm in.

1:00:12But I was so incredibly nervous about this. that in the beginning in particular, I was, and this is true today, too nervous to practice my rough, rough draft of the presentation in front of people. And so what I did, I was staying in a guest bedroom at a friend's house. He had three chihuahuas and I went outside, I was playing with the chihuahuas and they followed me into the garage. I practiced in the garage. I didn't want to practice in the house where my friend's wife was. And I gave my presentation. I felt reasonably confident about the content, but I wasn't comfortable with any of the performance aspects of trying to keep attention.

1:00:52So I gave my draft of this talk over and over again until I could get the dogs to sit and stare at me somewhat bewildered, but to hold their attention. That was the litmus test for me to graduate to giving a rough draft in front of humans for those people out there who are wondering whether this all comes naturally to me. It does not at all. Have you talked about that before or is this the first time you were doing that? I don't think I've talked about that. Certainly, I don't think I've talked about it on the podcast. And for the TED Talk also, something I did, which I did not do for the South By Talk, which I thought really made a difference was I practiced giving the talk in front of small groups of strangers once I had a reasonably polished version.

1:01:43And I asked friends of mine who worked at larger companies who had teams during lunch hour, if there happened to be an empty conference room, could they invite people to hear a rough draft of a TED Talk? And then I would ask them for feedback. And usually there was enough time that I could give it two or three times so I could actually incorporate their feedback, give another version. And once I'd given the second version, there are a lot more people in the room who are willing to be critical. The first round you get one or two. Yes, that's so true. And this is just something I've thought about a lot because I've been so nervous about public speaking for so long.

1:02:18And by the way, it doesn't really go away. At least for me, I still have those nerves. But with TED very specifically, I assumed, and this came from sports, but I'd never applied it, that I was going to be, my heart rate was probably going to be 30 beats per minute higher than normal. And that it was not just important for me to practice the content, but to practice under the physiological stress that I would probably experience when trying to deliver the content. So I would do a bunch of push-ups in another room and drink two double espressos and wait for it to hit and then go in and give my dress rehearsal to see if I could handle that stimulation.

1:02:59That was so, so smart. And listening to that story is reminding me of this crucial step that I left out in a lot of ways a kind of mistake that I made, which is, you know, I told you I worked with that guy, Jim, for a week, who was amazing. And I thought I was pretty well ready at that point. So I talked to my friend, Adam Grant, who's a very dear friend. Very good speaker too. And a really good speaker. And who also started out as a very nervous, and by his description, a terrible public speaker. He says he used to get terrible reviews from his students, and he just worked and worked and worked at it.

1:03:35And now he's the most popular professor at Wharton. But okay, so I was talking to Adam about all this. And so he said, so I'm leaving for Ted on Sunday morning, right, to fly out to California, which is where it was at that time. And he says, oh, I'm going to pull together a group of friends and you can practice your talk in front of them. And so this is Friday night and I'm leaving Sunday morning. And so I show up at this apartment full of Adam and his friends. And I think that I'm pretty well done with the talk. And this is the first time that I'm giving it in front of any kind of group because I didn't have the foresight of what you just described.

1:04:09And not only was I so nervous, but I realized from the feedback that a lot of the content was all wrong. And it's Friday night and I'm leaving, you know, like the next day basically, or the day after the next day. So I went home and I just spent the whole entire night rewriting the whole final third of the talk. And then I'm like on the plane going out to Ted, trying to memorize the new talk. I don't recommend that kind of approach. You need to get real people in front of you. This is just like entrepreneurship and people try to get the product perfect before exposing it to any prospective clients.

1:04:47You really need to get into the messy reality of what a live audience or a real customer looks like. And the same was true for me. I made a lot of changes in the last few days, which I thought were just going to be fine-tuned. And I was like, oh, actually, I really need to completely change by 30 % of this. And I was very, very nervous before the TED Talk. And I came off stage and I didn't think that I blew it, but I didn't think that I did a great job. I came off stage thinking that there were definitely bits and pieces I could have done better, but it seems to have worked out. Okay, wait, but I want to come back to one thing that you said for the benefit of people who are listening now.

1:05:31So you said that you still are really nervous when you give a talk, but are you really as nervous as you used to be? Because I really want people to understand that you can get to a point, you might still have butterflies. It's not like the nerves completely disappear, but they get to, in my experience and from all the literature that I've studied on this, they really do get to a point where you can manage them. and the difference between manageable and non-manageable is gigantic in terms of its effect on your life and your career and everything. So I just want to make sure that people know that.

1:06:03I can clarify. It depends a lot on the event. So if we're going to do a Q &A and it's a friend of mine interviewing me on stage, that's not, from my perspective, really public speaking. But at this point, I could do that with zero preparation. If it's anything resembling a keynote, if it is Tim on stage talking to an audience and they expect something that has been well rehearsed, my physiological response is still very strong. I get really sweaty hands. I pace. I have very minimal contact with anyone beforehand. But let me mention a few things. Number one, both Mike Tyson and Dean Martin used to vomit before nearly every performance.

1:06:56But the way that they psychologically contended with that evolved over time. And since I mentioned Mike Tyson, Customato, who was the trainer who really in a lot of respects, I think, boxing scholars or boxing fans would agree, made Tyson into what Tyson was at his prime. as an athlete used to say something along the following, that the hero and the coward feel the same thing. It's how they respond. Yes. Oh, I so believe that. Yeah. And I mean, there is no courage without the presence of fear. And for me, I have come to see those physiological symptoms that used to make me panic, that used to make me feel like I was doing something wrong, that used to make me feel like I was unprepared as simple precursors to a performance.

1:07:47The way that I frame them for myself is completely different. And I've learned to view it as this energetic asset that I can use. And that has made all the difference. It has decreased in some circumstances, but certainly before TED, I mean, I'd given hundreds of different presentations and it was like I was getting on stage for the first time. In part also, for people who don't know, they are very, as they should be, strict about many things at TED, including running over. Oh, yes. If running over, I mean, and I want to say, and this is exactly what they should say, but in effect, they say, if you run over by, you should not run over, number one, do not run over.

1:08:33If you run over, if you get to the point where you're like 30 seconds over, we will come up and remove you from stage. And while I'm preparing and while I'm rehearsing, one of the things that made me most stressed out is that my finish times were really variable. And I would say like 30%, 40 % of the time I ran over. Then other times I would run two minutes under but miss something really, really important because I was rushing. And I was like, good God, this is just a crapshoot. Like I am at the craps table with my timing. And that really was a concern for me. So that was another element that made Ted unique for me was that degree of cutoff.

1:09:17Yeah, I felt that way too. And I did end up going over by over a minute. Oh, good for you. And there it is. And they were just like, we cannot stop this performance. I don't know about that. But I want to say also for anybody who is listening and who is right now in the grip of this kind of fear and isn't sure whether they can really get past it. Also, like what is waiting for you on the other side of it is so gigantic because there's just there's something weird about public speaking where it has such disproportionate value to, in a way, what you're investing in it. You're going up on stage for 18 minutes or 40 minutes or whatever.

1:09:56Or maybe within your own workplace, even giving a two-minute talk, suddenly everybody is regarding you as a leader and as someone who they can turn to in a new way from if you hadn't been willing to put yourself forward in that way. Definitely. There's public speaking as the force multiplier for the value of your other skills, which is absolutely true. And then public speaking in a way is also a wonderful diagnostic tool. And what I mean by that is I remember talking to a friend of mine who is a wealth manager for a lot of buckety-mucks who you would recognize. And he said, I know them generally better than therapists they've been seeing for a decade within the first few hours because money brings up everything.

1:10:51Talking about money brings up the full spectrum of someone's insecurities, fears, desires, neuroses. Sex also, true. And public speaking, I think, if it makes you remotely nervous when you start to learn public speaking, at least for me, it kind of brings up all your stuff. So if you were simply interested in personal growth, it brings to the surface many different pieces of your personality and psyche that you can then work on in a way that transfers to other areas. So that, to me, was my experience and I find really interesting. It's like, okay, well, maybe you don't have to play hide and go seek with talk therapy for 20 years to find all of the bits and pieces when if rather than following these different ginger betrayals you can use certain fearful circumstances to just bring it all right or a lot of it to the surface that was my experience i'm not saying it's true for everybody but it was one of those things like talking about money talking about sex or public speaking it's like okay now we just bring everything to the forefront so for me that was also, even if I had not had any interest in getting on stage and giving presentations, it would have been valuable in and of itself.

1:12:07Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. Are there other things that you're fearful of or have been afraid of that you've overcome? No, I mean, that was really the big one for me. But yeah, we were talking about this before, I guess, you know, my bugaboo in general is that I just tend to be a worrier. So other than the experiences I had with public speaking. It's not like I have full on panic or anything like that. It's more like it's a very familiar companion for me. So I've had to just come up with various hacks around it. What are some of your hacks? This is going to get us into another big topic, but why not?

1:12:42Why not? So for example, when I stopped practicing corporate law and I decided that I wanted to be a writer, I told myself that it's really hard to make a living as a writer. and I said, okay, the goal is to publish something by the time you're 75. And at the time I was 33 at the time that I said that. And I kind of did that instinctively because I was always doing these hacks of like just wanting to completely take the pressure off of something that I otherwise loved so deeply. And like I just knew that if I turned this thing that I deeply loved into a source of like this has to be the place where I make my living, This has to be the place where I derive some kind of professional stature.

1:13:26It was going to soak a lot of the joy out of it. And so that's the kind of hack that I just naturally do. On a very related note, could you give us a little bit of context around the leaving law? Like why you left law? And then you decide you want to be a writer and you kind of alluded to it. but does that mean that suddenly your rent is dependent on writing? Right. Okay. So I had wanted to be a writer from the time I was four. And then for a whole bunch of reasons and like so many people, I took some creative writing classes in college and I decided, you know, I'm not actually that good at this and I need to make a living.

1:14:09And I also kind of had a desire, I think, to show myself that I could be out there as a kind of alpha person out in the world of finance or something. So I went to law school and I practiced law, Wall Street law, for almost a decade. And during that time that I was practicing law, it was so all-consuming that I completely forgot about the fact that I had wanted to be a writer. It wasn't like, you know, I was walking around conscious of this broken dream or something. I'd completely forgotten. And the first few years of practicing law, I really loved it. It was just this kind of crazy adventure that I was on.

1:14:45And as the years went by, it started to get really tough for me. You know, I'm not a very natural lawyer in a million different ways, but I was on this partner track and I was committed to it. And then came the day, and I think I may have told you about this in earlier correspondence, but then came the day when a senior partner in my firm walked in and said, I was supposed to be up for partner that year. And he said, well, we're not going to be putting you up. And the funny thing is to this day, I don't really know if he meant we're not putting you up ever for partner or just not anytime soon.

1:15:19I don't really know what it meant. All I knew was like, number one, I burst into tears. And number two, here was my get out of jail free card. So three hours later, I had left the firm. Like I was gone. I took a leave of absence and I just started bicycling around Central Park. Like I didn't know what I was going to do next. but as soon as that space opened up that I now had free time for the first time in like 10 years I started writing and I had no idea that was going to happen it was almost like in a movie that's cool yeah it's like I've just been waiting for you yeah I mean literally I like I remember that night you know like kind of curled up on my sofa in my apartment and I just started writing on my laptop and and then a week later I signed up for a class in creative non-fiction at NYU and I just had this complete feeling of certainty that this was what I wanted to be doing and zero expectation that I would make a living out of it.

1:16:16And this is a really important thing, I think. I think if you have that kind of a creative dream and a creative love, you have to do everything you can not to spoil it with the pressures of paying the rent and all those other things or the pressures of needing to derive professional status from it. so I set up a little side business teaching people negotiation skills and that was how I was paying the rent but the thing I was really doing in my heart was this beloved hobby of writing this is super super super super super important and there are I think it's true in creative fields which is pretty much every field but just for the sake of illustration writing music etc that also in entrepreneurship you hear these stories of desperation where necessity is the mother of invention and you know, bada bing, bada boom, magic wand and then there's a billion dollar company or there's J.K.

1:17:12Rowling or whatever it is. But those are, in my experience, the outliers. They make for great cover stories in magazines but the fact of the matter is that from what I've seen, certainly with guests on this podcast is that, for instance, Soman Chainani who has a number of mega successful novels, but he had a SAT prep counseling service that he offered well past the point that his first book was successful because he wanted to always feel like he had a safety net so that the writing would not be tainted or even subconsciously influenced to match the market or whatever the lens might become by this pressure.

1:17:57And that is something that whenever possible has come up as a really valuable, I suppose on one hand, financial survival mechanism, but even more so a psychological freeing device. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think we're so addicted to having a really glamorous narrative for things. And the glamorous narrative is, you know, you had so much courage, you took the risk, you know, you were dependent on this company or this book or whatever. And if it didn't work, it was going to be a disaster. But, you know, you were the one who beat the odds. Like, we love that narrative. And for most people, that's a really bankrupt narrative.

1:18:34And there's a kind of deeper glamour, actually, in the kind of story that you just told. because the glamour comes from you're doing everything that you can to deeply protect the thing that you love most. Definitely. Now, the book itself, people may not know backstory. I'm sure a lot of people don't. How long did it take to get that book done? Okay, so I'm laughing because it took a really, really long time, especially by Tim Ferriss standards. I listen to you and look at your life trajectory I'm like, how does he do that? Lots of cheating with format is the short answer but I don't want to take us off track So, yeah, it took from start to finish it was about seven years I will say in my defense that during those seven years I also had two children and was raising them so that was part of it But I also just think I'm kind of a slow writer.

1:19:35Like I like to really, really think about everything super deeply. And what I think is probably people might not know, I had a deadline as all writers do. And I turned in some sort of draft upon my deadline coming due, you know, after 18 months or two years. And my editor basically read it and said, this is terrible. And she said, you know, go back and completely throw that out, start from scratch and take all the time that you need. And you might think that when that happened that I would have been really bummed. But I was actually elated because I knew that it was terrible and I knew that I needed much more time and I had no idea what I was doing.

1:20:14I'd never written anything before. So yeah, I was just really happy to have that time. And it's actually really unusual. Like usually in publishing, they had given me a big advance for the book and usually they want their advance back and they're not willing to delay like that. So that was huge. Very understanding editor. Yeah, she's brilliant. And I'm working with her again on my next book. It's also smart in the sense that a mediocre book is more of a liability than no book at all. Yes. Yeah. For everyone involved. For everyone involved. Yeah, and because I have this philosophy about writing that it's the deep love that has to be protected at all costs, because of that, I don't care how much time it takes.

1:20:54I'm just interested in doing it as well as I can. What does your writing process at this point look like? You had your experience with that book. And now when you are writing, do you have a daily practice? Does it go through phases of research period, then organizing, then putting all of that into prose through synthesis? What are your writing routines or how do you think about writing these days? So for me, I take whatever thesis I'm working with, and then I spend a year or two just walking around the world looking at everything through the lens of that thesis. So it used to be introverts, and now it's on to a new topic.

1:21:36And I'm taking crazy notes through that period. So every conversation that I have, every book I read, it's all going in. How do you take and organize your notes? Do you do it notebooks? Do you do it digitally? I know this is nerdy, but... No, it's not nerdy at all. I'm into it because a lot of writers do it differently. The reason I'm laughing is I'm thinking when you hear my answer, you're going to know that I need a consultation with you for the next book because I don't do it in a super systemic way. Basically, all those conversations, all those ideas and notes and thoughts I'm having, I stick them all into one word document.

1:22:12And that document becomes about 700 or 800 pages by the time I'm done. And then I go through that document. And I'm kind of tagging as I go along. and then I'm separating everything out by topic. So I end up with like eight or nine loose leaf binders that are organized by topic. But in each of those binders, it's just like - One big - One big, massive notes. And then I think about where do I want everything. Whenever I'm emotionally moved by one of the ideas that I'm taking notes on, I try to write out the riff around that idea right then and there because you don't know if that emotion is going to come back.

1:22:45So you have to capture it when it happens. I think it's a perfectly fine system. So you - I feel like technology must have come up with something better. I do it in Microsoft Word. There are probably better tools available, but I would say also that a lot of people confuse new tools for better content. It's very easy, at least let's speak for myself for a second. When I'm writing, I have to disallow myself from thinking about, say, marketing. Because marketing is fun and exciting. and easy for me because I've had insomnia as a kid and watched many infomercials or something. In any case, it's a way to procrastinate doing the harder piece, which is the actual research and digging and prose.

1:23:32That's the hard part for me. Always has been, but it's the most important part. And I think similarly, a lot of folks can become consumed by upgrading their tools, multiplying their tools versus just the words. You've got to put the words in. and I have some questions about this Word doc though so when you're going through and adding things to the Word doc and you come in and you're tagging things so you can separate them and you mentioned binders so you're printing this stuff out and then separating them does that mean that when you put in a new note in the Word doc you go to a new page if it's tagged differently so you can separate them more easily later does that make sense?

1:24:10as opposed to each time you add a note then hit return twice and then add a new note if they're tagged differently it would seem like you would have to cut up the page into multiple pieces. So do you start a new page? Are there any particular ways that you tag? For instance, would it be a chapter name or would it be a theme? What would it tag? Yeah, it would just be a topic or a theme. And yeah, so every time I'm adding a new note, if I know that it relates to something I've already done, then I'll search for the thing I've already done so I can add it to that section to make it easier later. That makes sense.

1:24:43But you know, sometimes I don't or I can't think of it and And then I'll just add it to the end of the document. Which, control F, right? Word, then good to go. Yeah, simple works. Robert Rodriguez, the filmmaker, keeps a journal. I think he puts it in almost every day at midnight. And it's Word doc, Word docs. It works. Yeah, yeah. I actually, I will say, I tried for this next book. I spent a few days reading the instructions for Scrivener, one of these programs. Scriveners. And I just ended up thinking, you know, this isn't for me. It looks great. Scrivener, well, some other time we can sit down.

1:25:18That is one tool that if you set it up really simply and you don't use 98 % of the features, I find really useful just because you can create a view by which you see all of your separate documents. Or actually, I should say rather you see your tentative table of contents on the left side in a vertical pane, and then you can look at what you're on the right-hand side, then I would have it set up so that I have two split windows. So the left-hand side you see your table of contents and then there's research and you have whatever research you want. That way you can be working on a document in the upper right-hand pane while you have your research that you're working off of in the bottom right.

1:25:59And if you decide to move docs around to see how it affects flow, it's just drag and drop. It's actually quite wonderful. They did have some issues with footnotes or maybe I was just too technically incompetent at one point when you then had to export when the publisher insists on say Word. which maybe that'll change at some point. But getting a little geeked out. But Scrivener, I've used Scrivener for almost all of my books. There may be one exception, I think, for Our Chef, because of how visually intensive it was, was done outside of that. And in terms of routine or ritual, you spend a year gathering these notes.

1:26:34Yeah, maybe more. Yeah, or more. So you have 700 to 800 pages. It's a big word, Doc. Yeah. And then what happens? Yeah. So then I spend the time sorting them out. So I get to the point where I've got my eight or nine loose leaf binders that are more or less organized by what the chapters are going to be. Yeah. And then comes the time to write, during which I'm still doing more research, but I'm starting to write. for me the writing like the sitting down with my laptop and thinking about it all that's like I want to say it's my happy place but that's not really the best description it feels like it's this place that I go deep in my mind and I really love being there and it's like no matter what happens to be going on in my outside life I always have those few hours a day where I'm going to a cafe or a library or whatever.

1:27:25And I'm sitting with my laptop and my cappuccino and I'm just doing it. Like I'm stressing the emotional aspect because that's so huge for me. And I feel like I train myself to associate writing with all of these pleasures of, you know, sitting around in cafes and things like that. Do you have a consistent time when you sit down with your cappuccino and do this? Are you a morning writer or are you a catch-as-catch-can writer? Are you an evening writer? I mean, you also have kids. I mean, you have other obligations. So when do you tend to do your writing or do your best writing? You can answer it however you like.

1:28:01Well, I mean, there's what I do and there's what would be ideal. But as you say, I have kids. So my routine is that I drop my kids off at school. That's at around eight. Then I go and I either play tennis or do yoga every day. And then after that, I do my writing. And that's a pretty good time for me. What time of day would that typically end up being? Yeah, that probably ends up being around 10 or so that I'm starting. Yeah. But if I had no other obligations, the best times of day would be more like either seven in the morning and also super late at night. So two time periods that I have no access to for this stage of life.

1:28:39Right. And you start writing, this is really, I mean, interesting to me, hopefully interesting to other people. To start, let's say around 10, And do you break for lunch? Do you skip lunch? Do you have a standard type of lunch that you would have? And the reason I ask is that I think part of the reason so many writers seem to work between the hours of, say, let's make this up, but 10 p.m. and 7.30 a.m., and they tend to either be night owls like me, or early risers is that there are fewer distractions and they get a relatively uninterrupted block of three to five hours. But if you're starting at 10, then most people would have lunch scheduled shortly thereafter, like two hours later.

1:29:27So do you break for lunch? Do you have something really small? How do you handle that? Because for me, just speaking personally, I might have time. Of course I have time for a five-minute phone call, but if I do a five-minute phone call about something very mechanical or mundane, like calendaring stuff or whatever, and I'm juggling 15 pieces that were on paper in my head, I kind of have to start over a lot of times. Like I drop all those balls that I'm juggling because of the task switching. So I'd love to hear, not that that's true for everybody, but it's true for me. What does your schedule look like then once you sit down?

1:30:03I'll just kind of go until I realize that I'm not concentrating well anymore. And very often that happens after two or three hours and I just have to take a break. I have a lot of discipline if my brain would cooperate. So I would happily sit there for seven hours until my kids come home from school. But at a certain point, I'll notice that it's just not coming anymore. And so then I'll take a break and I'll eat or something like that. But, you know, I would say, like you were mentioning, well, people might work at night because it's when you get uninterrupted time. And I think that that's one factor.

1:30:35But I also think the reason that those hours tend to be so good. So nighttime is when your cortisol levels are really low, you know, which of course is your stress hormone. And so I noticed this in myself all the time that the ideas that I come up with late at night are different from the daytime ideas because they're completely unfettered by any stress. And so I'll just, I don't know, I just make different kinds of associative leaps and there's like a softness and an ease in my thinking and my feeling about the ideas. So I think that's one advantage of late night writing. And then in the morning you've got the high cortisol, but you also have this sort of acute attention.

1:31:16Yeah. I can totally see that. I can definitely see that. I also find that writing late at night, if I'm writing at two in the morning, it's very hard for me. I remember, I want to say it was Ayn Rand who wrote, she had a book about the craft of nonfiction. And there was some, it wasn't a metaphor. I think it was a real world example, but in effect, she's saying writers, many writers will do almost anything to not write. and there's this story about the white tennis shoes. I have to clean my white tennis shoes before I'm going to write because I'm going to go out. When it's 2 or 3 in the morning, I have to check email to make sure X.

1:31:51It's just not a viable excuse. It also just removes a lot of bullshit distraction that I would impose on myself to avoid doing what it is that I find hard. I so relate to this. So when I was writing Quiet, I suddenly developed this idea that I had to learn everything in the world about digital photography. And I was reading all these books about it and the rule of thirds and all this stuff. And I have never had any interest in photography before or since. It was just these two weeks of mania where I didn't want to have to be looking at that manuscript over there. Are there any particular, I mean, you are a student of the craft, right?

1:32:31You've taken creative nonfiction courses. Are there any particular books or resources or writers who have had a significant impact on how you view or practice writing? Oh, gosh. I'm sure the answer is yes. I can try to buy some time if helpful. Draft number four by John McPhee. I was very fortunate to spend time with him when I was an undergrad in college because he was teaching a seminar. Yeah, at Princeton. That's where I took my creative writing classes. Yeah, so the structure, thinking about structure in the way that McPhee thinks about structure saved me because I thrive with some type of predetermined blueprint for structure.

1:33:16It's very hard for me to just freehand flow of consciousness, let things take some emergent form. It's very hard. I do know friends who do that really, really well. That terrifies me. So I need the scaffolding. Right. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Oh, I love that book. Yeah. Such a good book. Bird by Bird, for people who don't know the book, I will say just before getting into a short description, has saved at least a half a dozen friends of mine from the precipice. Meaning they were at the point of throwing in the towel and just quitting their books. And they were all writers in this case. They were at the point where they're like, I'm done, I can't do this, it's too stressful, I don't like this.

1:34:00I don't want to do this. It's going to be terrible. And they were going to, in some cases, return their advances and just walk. And I want to say at least half of them read this book, went on to finish their books, and their books went on to become New York Times bestsellers. So talk about an important window for making a decision. And the gist of the book, the title, I should say, comes first from, I think it was her brother, Anne's brother. Anne Lamont as a writer. And her brother had this experience where he'd had something like an entire semester in, I'm making this up, but let's just call it fourth grade to prepare for this end of semester project.

1:34:40And he was supposed to put together a term paper on birds or something like that. And it was like the night before he hadn't done any preparation. And this poor kid who granted kind of deserves it because he didn't do any prep, but nonetheless is having this like nervous breakdown at the kitchen table with like 15 books about birds and he just is paralyzed. And I want to say it was Ann's dad who came over and like put an arm on his shoulder and said, just take it bird by bird, buddy. Bird by bird. You know, something like that. And it's sort of a psychological life raft, break glass in case of emergency kit for writers who are just hitting that point.

1:35:18Like maybe you did with the photography where you're just like, I want to do anything other than look at that screen or that page. I just, I can't handle it and I don't know what to do. So for that reason, not necessarily for the nuts and bolts of the writing process itself, but for the psychological component. It's like if you had a, if you were a top athletic coach and you had your sports specific technical coach, and then you had a mental toughness coach who also doubled as a shrink, like the mental toughness coach who doubles as a shrink is the bird by bird. Yeah. I'm remembering she also talks about shitty first drafts.

1:35:52Yes. And just those three words are incredibly helpful because, you know, when you're looking at your draft and it is always really shitty at the beginning. And so just knowing, okay, that's what it's supposed to be. Yeah. But yeah, you know, the other thing that's been really helpful to me. So I told you, I started taking that creative nonfiction class at NYU and all of us who took that class got along really well. So we formed a writer's group after the class was officially done. And we stayed together for years. And we would meet once every week, every two weeks and read each other's stuff.

1:36:24And especially at that stage, that really, really helped, you know, getting the feedback, but also having the kind of camaraderie and support system. Not feeling totally isolated. Not feeling isolated. And I actually met my literary agent from one of the people who was in that group, who was a publishing lawyer. And I said, you know, I have this idea for this book about introverts, which at the time to me seemed like the most idiosyncratic project on earth. But she said, when you're ready, I know the right agent for that. And that's a really serendipitous thing. When I put together the proposal for the book that became Quiet, I sent it out to that agent who she recommended and to four other super amazing agents, two of whom I had connections to.

1:37:10And every single one of the other ones passed. And some of them said, you know, I really like the writing, but I think this topic is not commercial enough and I just don't think it'll sell. So could you come back with a different topic? And the guy who became my agent instantly saw what the potential was going to be. And we've been together ever since. And I feel like I owe him everything and I love him. And his name is Richard Pine, if you're out there looking for an agent. And I think about this story all the time, not only because of book writing, but because all these people, these other agents, these are experts and these are the culturally anointed gatekeepers and they know what they're doing.

1:37:48And yet they didn't see this one particular thing. And I think that that happens all the time. Totally. Now I'm glad you shared that. And I had a very similar experience. I reached out to, I want to say it was four agents who were introduced by a very successful author who I'd met something like seven years earlier by volunteering at a nonprofit, which is a great way to meet people above your pay grade. As a side note, just like filling water glasses for panelists. Works really well. So I had the right introduction, the writing. I didn't think my writing was Tolstoy or anything, but it was passable and complete rejection from three of the four.

1:38:29This was the four-hour workweek? The four-hour workweek. Two of them were pretty heavy-handed about it. One of the third, I remember her name, Jillian Maness, a very good agent, and she passed, but she gave me a lot of really helpful feedback. She didn't say, this won't work. She just said, I don't think this is the right fit for me. Right. And that wasn't fair enough. Which is totally fair. But here's a bunch of advice. And one of the pieces of advice she gave me actually, wow, I haven't thought about this in forever, was think of each. I was intimidated by the prospect of writing a book. I'd never written a book before.

1:39:03She said, treat each chapter like a feature magazine article, beginning, middle, and end. Self-sufficient. Each chapter can live on its own. And I've followed that advice ever since with nonfiction. Which makes it easier to write also because if you get stuck somewhere, it's not like you have to cross that bridge to get to a chapter that sequentially should show up three chapters later. You can treat it in a modular way. If you get really bogged down, you can skip. Which also, in some cases, like the rest of my books, leads to a book that can be read non-sequentially. In any case, so three out of four, turn it down, finally sign with my current agent, Stephen Hanselman, who I still work with to this day, very similarly.

1:39:50and he had just become an agent. Wow. He had just become an agent but part of what attracted me to him was that he had a long career as a very successful editor and was also is just an eclectic guy. Went to Divinity School, plays in a jazz band and really like my kind of person. Yeah. And then we went out to sell it and I always forget if it's like 26 or 27 but nonetheless it was somewhere between 26 and 28 publishers turned it down. Really? Yes. And then the, but you only need one. That's the thing. It's like, it's not about how many people don't get it. It's about having the right person or people who do get it.

1:40:33And I mean, which is so clear with your book, right? And it's like, you don't need all the people in the world to think it's a good idea. You don't need half the people in the world think it's a good idea. You need the people who it resonates with to have it resonate. And it does not need to be millions of people. It could be, but it doesn't have to be. And I had a note down also to just, and we don't have to necessarily spend a ton of time on this, but just to clarify the talk about introversion versus shyness. I came across this when I was doing a bit of homework, which is people think of say Bill Gates, right?

1:41:11As sort of maybe a one example of someone who could be useful in distinguishing between the two. But could you clarify what an introvert is or how you define introvert and how it might differ from. From somebody who's shy. Yeah. Introversion is really about the preference for lower stimulation environments. And you can trace it to our neurobiologies. Introverts have nervous systems that react more to all the incoming stimuli. And so that means that we're kind of at our most alive and happiest and switched on when things are a little more chill around us, which is probably why when you're in those group dinners, you're going to the restroom every so often because your nervous system wants to tone it down.

1:41:53And extroverts have the opposite situation and the opposite liability because for an extrovert, you've got a nervous system that's reacting less to stimulation. And that means when you're in an environment that you find too quiet, you start to get really listless and checked out. So that's the liability there. Hmm. Shyness, and I always feel like my work has to do with both introversion and shyness, by the way, but shyness is much more about the fear of social judgment. So you'll know if you're a shy person because when you encounter someone who has a neutral expression on their face, you will have a tendency to read disapproval in there and to react really strongly to the disapproval.

1:42:32You feel kind of really unhorsed by it. And it can take different forms. So it could be a fear of public speaking, or it could be a job interview or any kind of situation where you feel you might be evaluated. So in reality, lots of introverts do tend to be shy and vice versa, but not necessarily at all. I don't know Bill Gates personally, but my guess is that he's an introvert, but not especially shy. And then somebody like an Eileen Fisher, who she's got this wonderful, and I think it's been decades now, super successful fashion brand, she describes herself as a shy extrovert. So she really wants to be around people all the time.

1:43:13She wants to be connecting all the time. You talk to her, she's constantly setting up this workshop and that program. And you look at her life and she's always surrounded by lots of people and things going on. But she's often feeling intense discomfort and needing to work through that. Wild. I would certainly describe myself as an introvert and I never knew quite how to frame it until coming across your definition of preferring lower stimulation or environments or environments with fewer stimuli. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been very sensitive. My sight is very sensitive. My hearing is very sensitive.

1:43:56But I'm not shy in the sense that I want to engage and ask questions and interact. But if the volume is turned up too much or there are too many speakers metaphorically or physically, I have a lot of difficulty parsing it all. But you don't have like, shyness would be like, you know, before you go into those group dinners, are you feeling a kind of social anxiety? No. Right. That's the difference? Yeah. Yeah. There are so many questions that I want to explore. But let's, because we have maybe 10 or 15 minutes more, let's ask a few of the questions that I always like to ask. Sure. Are there any books that you have given the most to others as a gift or any books you've gifted often to other people?

1:44:46I think that the book I've probably for the last few years been giving out the most is Waking Up by Sam Harris, which it's such a fantastic book. And it was really for me completely life changing. I think for probably the reasons it is for many people, which is I hadn't really known much about meditation before reading it. And because I think by my nature, I'm sort of a cross between a skeptic and a mystic or something.

1:45:19You know, the skeptical side of me, and it's a pretty deep skeptical side, it really needed somebody like Sam, who's such an extreme skeptic. Right. And then who very conveniently spent like what, 28 years of his life or something, investigating all these different spiritual tools and then reporting back on them. You know, for me, that was a narrator I could really, I felt I could really rely on. Fantastic book. You know, I just, I have to, I think you'll, we were talking a bit about Sam before we started recording because we were both, you know, sort of fanboying and fangirling about this meditation app and a handful of other things.

1:45:56but I haven't told you. And I don't know if I've even mentioned this publicly, but here we go. So the first time I met Sam, this relates to Ted, went to Ted for the first time as an attendee, which by the way, it was too much stimulation, so I never went back. Yeah, but I went to Ted for the first time as an attendee and I was invited to one of these group dinners. Right. And so I go out to this group dinner and we're eating dinner and off to the side on a separate table, bowl, there's this tray of brownies. And I love brownies. It's one of my weaknesses. It is an Achilles heel and I have zero portion control.

1:46:32And these brownies are large brownies. And I sneak over kind of in between courses and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to skip one of the later courses and just substitute the brownies because I love brownies. And so I eat two of these brownies. And about 20 minutes later, the host who I shall not name comes up to me and goes, Tim, did you eat any of the brownies? I go, yeah, I had two of them. And he goes, okay, everything's going to be fine. And I'm like, wait, everything's going to be fine. What the hell are you talking about? They were heavily dosed pot brownies. And I am not a habitual pot user.

1:47:07And so I suddenly in the middle of dinner, just get hit by this tsunami of cannabis. And you combine that with my discomfort with high stimulation environments. And I'm like, I need to get the hell out of here. So I excuse myself to go to the restroom. And by this point, I'm already a huge fan of Sam. But I've never had any contact with him. So I run off to the bathroom to escape. And I open the door and literally at the sink, run straight into Sam Harris in the men's room. And I'm like, Sam Harris? High off my rocker. And that was my first intro. And he looks at me kind of like, he's like, hi.

1:47:51It's kind of sideways because I'm just beyond reality at that point. And that was my first meeting with Sam. That's hilarious. And did you tell him your brownie story? I did. I did. I did tell him, which he appreciated because he does have some history with altered states. But yeah, no, I found that book and the subsequent meditation app and all of it incredibly helpful and fantastic. The one piece of it that I'm kind of trying to explore separately, because I feel like he looks at much less, is the whole tradition of loving kindness meditation and all the meditations around that. So that's really, really of interest to me.

1:48:29So I'm sort of charting a different course there. And I'll tell you, like even just last night, I was interviewing on stage this guy, Haman Sunim. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's a really renowned Zen Buddhist monk from Korea. and his books are all number one bestsellers in Korea and lots of other countries, but here he's less well-known. But anyway, he has a new book out. So I was doing this interview and we're up on stage so you can see the audience and it happens to be a pretty formal audience. So before we start, the audience is kind of sitting there kind of still in their seats.

1:49:04And then he opens by doing a loving kindness meditation. And it was so amazing to see the transformation on their faces. And he did this for maybe one or two or three minutes. Like, it wasn't long. And, you know, suddenly they're totally smiling and they're open and they're happy. It's remarkable. It's remarkable. And I think it's so weird and dispiriting how in the mainstream media and in corporate life, I mean, it's great that there's been this incredible embrace of mindfulness meditation. But I think there's a kind of allergy towards going too much in the loving kindness direction. And I spoke to Sharon Salzberg about this, who's one of the great teachers.

1:49:46And she said that people have this sense that it must be phony, like that you couldn't possibly actually have those feelings. And so it kind of gives them a sort of creepy feeling to do it. But I feel like that all needs to get completely rethought. Loving kindness, the label, I think, smells of kind of hand-wavy, hippie associations, and therefore people veer away from it. Or if they have sensitivity to that stuff, which I do and have for a very long time. But so did mindfulness for many years. Absolutely. And that's been recast. But I mentioned that as a contrast to my then subsequent experience with loving kindness meditation, also called Metta, M-E-T-T-A, meditation, which I was introduced to not first by Jack Kornfield, although I did spend some time with him, who's sort of of the same cohort as Sharon Salzberg.

1:50:41They're close friends, and Sharon's been on the podcast. But Meng, Chad Mengtan of Google, actually, who started this class within Google called, I think it's Search Within Yourself. It was a course that included many tools, including mindfulness. and he has a book called Joy on Demand, which is fantastic. I thought it was a fantastic title. I was like, I could use Joy on Demand. Let's take a look at this. And there's a very short part in that book, which I ended up excerpting for, I want to say, Tools of Titans about loving kindness meditation. And he tells the story of this woman who, as an experiment, guided or suggested by Meng, did a one-minute loving kindness meditation on the hour, every hour for one workday.

1:51:22And she would pick people who were walking out of the office. And she came back and she said, that is the best day I've had at work in seven years. And I think part of that is, at least for me, that I am very, historically, I've been very trapped in my head. I'm very prefrontal. And I come from a family of warriors, people who are... Warrior or worrier? Worriers. With an O. Not the battle axe type, but the Larry David type. Yeah, I come from one of those too. Right. And when you are consumed with worry or anxiety, and this is not my description, but it's been described to me as being trapped in the future.

1:52:05Like depression is being trapped in the past, anxiety or worrying is being trapped in the future. And it's also, at least for me, it's a focus on the self. It's like me, me, me. It's all things that might happen to me, things that I should do. And the loving kindness meditation, which can be so short and have an impact, gets you, unlike most types of mindfulness practice that are popular or becoming popular in the West, it gets you out of yourself. and I recall when I was writing Tools of Titans I decided to take Meng's advice and I did loving kindness for literally two or three minutes every night I was at this hotel and they had a dry sauna and I'd go into the dry sauna really late because I was doing my writing really late and just do two to three minutes of thinking about a friend and wishing them happiness and seeing them smiling and giving them a hug and having them smile back at me and wishing me the same and it was transformative with regards to my mood.

1:53:04It was really just incredible. Yes. Low dose, really, really low dose. And I'm curious, you mentioned that you were thinking about or meditating on loving kindness to your friend. Did you also start with a traditional practice of wishing it to yourself or is that less comfortable for you? This is a great question. So it did not even occur to me to do this until years later when I went to my first seven-day, it might have been 10-day, silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. And Jack Kornfield was there. And they check in with you to make sure you're not having a total psychotic break for a few minutes every other day.

1:53:46And I had this meeting with Jack and one of his co-teachers for the event. And we were talking about loving kindness, talking about loving kindness. And as I was leaving, the woman with Jack said, just out of curiosity, have you been doing any loving kindness for yourself? And it struck, I don't know how to describe this in a way that doesn't make me look like an ass, but it just struck me as such a silly question. I was like, no, of course I haven't been doing it for myself. And then I realized how much that probably explained a lot of my problems. And she goes, yeah, you might want to try that.

1:54:20Why don't you experiment with that? And I remember Jack later saying, and I'm paraphrasing, but if your compassion doesn't include yourself, then it's incomplete. And you can't really give it to other people in a complete way either. Right. So that has become, I'm so glad you asked that, one of the biggest changes in my, I could call it a mindfulness practice, but my way of relating to the world and thinking about helping others has been actually taking time to show or think on self-compassion specifically for myself at a handful of younger ages. Yeah, yeah. Which I do at mealtimes. And I might talk about that more at some point.

1:55:00But yeah, that's become really, it's become a very, very, very, very important ritual for me. But I don't think you're alone. I mean, Sharon Salzberg mentioned to me that many people have trouble. I mean, the traditional progression of the practice would be start with yourself and then move progressively outward to other people in your life. And she said many people have trouble beginning with themselves. And so I was really struck because last night, this monk, Haman Sunim, who I love, began in this meditation by directing it to ourselves. And I asked him about that afterwards. And he seemed kind of puzzled by the question, which made me wonder if this is a uniquely American problem.

1:55:38I don't know.

1:55:42It reminds me of the story I heard of this, I don't know what it was Nepalese or I know Bhutanese monk who came to the U.S. and he was in a car on the way to some event it was in the U.S. and there are these people running you know jogging on the side of the street to get in shape but they're just they looked like they were dying I mean they looked like they were running from hyenas and he was just like are they okay what's wrong with them it just it was so foreign oh my goodness so we have just a few minutes let me ask you the billboard question. So if you could put a message on a billboard, this is metaphorically speaking, to get a message, a quote, a question, anything non-commercial out to millions or billions of people, what might you put on that billboard?

1:56:31I think I'd probably put this one aphorism that I've loved since high school, I think, which is Only Connect by E.M. Forster. Only Connect. Only Connect. Yeah. Like that at the end of the day, that's all that really matters what does that mean to you? it just means connecting on some really deep level with the people around you. And that might sound like an ironic aphorism for someone who wrote a book about introversion, but to me, those are not contradictory things at all. You know, and so for me, like connection, it can happen in person for sure, but it could also happen just by listening to music that's really touching you.

1:57:13And you feel completely connected to this musician who may not even be alive anymore, you know, or a writer who might not be alive anymore, but they're expressing something deep and unchanging about what it's like to be human. So I think there's kind of nothing more important than that. Only connect. Only connect. Is there anything you've done that has helped you to more deeply or frequently experience those moments or any advice you might have for people who want to cultivate that? So aside from meditation, which I am a huge proponent of, but I think you really do have to pay attention to what works for you.

1:57:52And it really is so different for everybody. You know, so for me, I love to have deep one-on-one conversations. It happens through music. It happens through literature. And that's how it happens. But I think it really is a different answer for everyone. For each person. But I'll tell you, and this is maybe a different topic, but the whole idea for my next book came out of one of these kinds of experiences, is, which is I have always had a love of bittersweet and minor key music. And the book's not about music, but I'm going to tell you this story anyway. Okay. So when I was in law school, I was listening to music like that in my dorm and a friend came by and he was kind of a funny, wise guy.

1:58:35And he said, why are you listening to this music to commit suicide to? And I thought it was funny and I laughed, but I thought about it for decades afterwards. Like I was thinking, well, why is it, first of all, what is it about our culture that makes this music so suspect that you would make that kind of joke? And also, what is it about the music itself that for me is not suicide inducing at all? It's like, it's the opposite. I feel when I hear music like that completely connected to everything because it's like the composer is expressing some really deep truth about what it is to be human. And so I've thought about this for decades.

1:59:13And the place that I'm going with this next book is, I think that tuning into the sorrows of the world actually is a kind of secret superpower that we're not really allowed to access very often. because of course we live in this culture that tells you don't go there and always wear the smiley face and so on. But if I can say like, even look at somebody like you, even before you started being really open and upfront about some of the demons that you've struggled with, which by the way, all the honor to you for doing that. It's amazingly brave and generous, but even before you did it, and if you had never done it, I don't think you would have been touching all those people the way you have all these years if it weren't for those sorrows.

1:59:58I agree. Yeah. So it's all about that. I'm excited to read your next book. Thank you. I think that's a really, really, really, really important topic. Yeah. I think it's really important. I think we'll have to do round two in that case. I would love that. That would be awesome. I just have to write a little faster. I will happily wait for your best work. Thank you. No need to rush. Well, Susan, this has been Such a joy. And I'm sure people can hear it, but just to maybe underscore the point, I mean, you are a very present person when you're speaking with someone else. And I can feel that in the room.

2:00:39And so you're walking the talk, which is always refreshing and not always the case. So thank you for taking the time today. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Great to hang out. And I will link to everything in the show notes for folks, including the name of the Korean monk that I couldn't spell to save my life at the moment. But we will have links to everything at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And you can just search Susan and pop right up. People can find you online, presumably. Where are the best places to say hello, learn more about what you're up to? Well, best thing is to sign up for my newsletter, which you can get to if you go to quietrev.com, which is for Quiet Revolution.

2:01:19so you'll find it right there on the homepage. There's a sign-up form and there's a newsletter that goes out every week. So that's the absolute best. And then I'm also super active on LinkedIn and on Facebook. Great. And is that simply Susan Cain? Because I think Facebook, correct me if I'm wrong, I think is author Susan Cain. Oh gosh, thank you for saying that. Yeah. So on Facebook, it's author Susan Cain. And on LinkedIn, I actually don't remember, but it's part of the LinkedIn influencer. If you put in LinkedIn influencer and my name, you'll get there. And then Twitter may be less active. Yeah, I am on Twitter a little less active.

2:01:56But at Susan Cain. At Susan Cain. Yep. And can't wait to see the next book and continue to follow your work. Thank you for doing it. Thank you so much. I will say the same to you. What is the next book? What is the next book? Well, you know, based on an episode that came out a few days ago, I think it's going to be this book that I have been waiting to give myself permission to write, which is about. it's not that. It'll be a close cousin to what you are thinking a lot about right now. It would be how to pay attention to the psycho-emotional undercurrents and components of life very closely and how to use tools both on the beaten path and off very, very, very off the beaten path for finding a resolution for problems or challenges or insecurities or trauma that are, at least in current conventional practice, considered very difficult to treat or untreatable.

2:03:00So that would be, as far as I can tell, and I've been gathering notes for about five years now, that would be the thrust of it. That's going to be your most important book. I hope so. What's your timetable? what's my timetable it's well as who was it i think this was this is something i heard on a tv set once they didn't want people to rush but it was the gist was people need to rush and they said but they didn't want to say that and make people panic so they said we need everyone to move with purpose so i think my answer is move with purpose but not in haste because i want to treat it with the depth and thought that it deserves.

2:03:43I don't want to rush. I will probably write it without signing before selling anything or signing any contracts. I'll probably... Oh, you'll write the whole thing first? I'll probably do it on my own time. Oh, interesting. Okay. But it is a top, if not the top priority. Wow. So are you working on it every day right now? I am in some fashion working on it every day, but it's going to be a while before I get to the composition prose stage. But the vast majority of the work that I do on my books is the experimentation and the traveling for subjecting myself to all sorts of unusual things and the note-taking and the organizing of said notes.

2:04:20And I'm doing some piece of that almost every day. Wow. Oh, I'm so glad you're doing this book. So if I can help, if you want an early reader or whatever, I would love to. It's completely up my alley. Well, likewise. This has been so much fun. and until next time, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And to everybody listening, same until next time. Thank you for listening.

2:05:05called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

2:05:46If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance, and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller, more than a decade ago, The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I simply loved the product and felt like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement that you could use conveniently while on the run, which is, for me, a lot of the time.

2:06:29I have been using it a very, very long time indeed. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food source nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. Since 2010, they have improved the formula 52 times in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible using rigorous standards and high-quality ingredients.

2:07:10How many ingredients? 75. And you would be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now, I do my best always to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes.

2:07:55So each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more. Check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim.

2:08:34That's drink AG1, the number one. drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. I don't know about you guys, but I've had the experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something. say a show on Amazon or elsewhere, and it says not available in your current location, something like that, or creepier still, if you're at home and this has happened to me, I search for something or I type in a URL incorrectly, and then a screen for AT &T pops up, and it says you might be searching for this. How about that? And it suggests an alternative, and I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service provider is tracking my searches and what I'm typing into the browser.

2:09:20Yeah, I don't like it. And a lot of you know, I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I've been using today's episode sponsor ExpressVPN for several years now. And I recommend you check it out. When you connect to a secure VPN server, your internet traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see into, including hackers, governments, people in Starbucks, your internet service provider, etc. And no, you are not safe simply using incognito mode in your browser this was something that i got wrong for a long time your activity might still be visible as in the example i gave to your internet service provider incognito mode also does not hide your ip address also with the example that i gave of you can't access this content or that content wherever you happen to be then you just set your server to a country where you can see it and all of a sudden voila you can say log into your normal Amazon account as opposed to being routed to.uk or whatever, and everything works.

2:10:14So ExpressVPN protects you and enables you because it encrypts and reroutes your network traffic through secure servers. So even though your traffic is still passing through your internet provider, now they can't read it. ExpressVPN is so fast also, it doesn't bog things down at all. I usually forget that I even have it on. I can stream high quality video, no lag or buffering, even on servers thousands of miles away. It gives me access to servers in 105 countries around the world, which is very helpful, as I am constantly traveling. I love to do so. It's easy to use. You just choose a server location and tap one button to connect.

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