Lessons
Day 1
1Introduction
26:33 2Start-Up Tips (special guest: Philippe von Borries)
59:47 3Case Study: UniversityParent.com
11:28 4Hacking a Non-Profit (special guest: Leila Janah)
29:00 5The Creative Process (special guest: Neil Strauss)
1:02:24 6Learn Any Language in 3 Months!
22:43 74-Hour Body Introduction
15:30Mobility (special guest: Kelly Starrett)
45:33 9Strength (special guest: Mark Bell)
54:35 10General Q&A
10:10 11Validating Your Business (special guest: Noah Kagan)
1:05:17 12Self-Defense (special guest: Dave Camarillo)
31:19 13The 4-Hour Chef
27:51 14Basketball (special guest: Rick Torbett)
27:30 15Archery (special guest: John Jackson)
23:56 16Closing Thoughts
05:05Day 2
Lesson Info
General Q&A
I would just love an open Q and A. I mean, I love QnA's, I want everybody here, I want people online to feel like they had an opportunity to ask. I know things have (laughs) I was expecting this to "God how are gonna fill that much time?" It's like, well when you have really good teachers, really good content actually goes by really quickly. I just want to offer you guys- obviously I want you to come away feeling like this was a really enjoyable worthwhile trip for you, and all's for you watching, spent a lot of time watching this, I want them to feel the same way. So if you guys have any questions about anything we've talked through today, could be about anything, actually it doesn't even have to be related to subject matter. I would love to start online. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. And then I you guys we're thinking about some questions. So, this is one from earlier today, from Lanabanana who had asked: "how important is it to be the first person getting an idea out there as an ...
entrepreneur as opposed to being the best at something?" (chuckle) Easy questions here at the end of the day. Depends on what your goal is. And the reason I say that is if you get a high out of being first to market, being the innovator, if that is your priority over total revenue say, then you can take that path. There are many companies, including Apple, who are happy to let people do all the free research and development by coming out with MP3 players, then to come out with a better version of that and form the iPod and say "You know what? You guys are talking about like megabytes and blah blah blah a thousand songs in your pocket. Thank you very much we just stole all your customers." And you see that often times in tech also. Like Facebook, week later, China has Facebook. Called something else. (laughs) eBay? Great. Months later, Germany has eBay. Not called eBay. And they're able to build those companies, sell those companies, create huge viable businesses. At the end of the day though, it depends on what gets you excited. And for me, I don't chase happiness or success because I think they're so overused as to be very meaningless in a way. Poorly defined, like how excited am I when I wake up in the morning? And how psyched am I when I go to bed about the next day. And for me, for instance, I could have in many ways, keep in mind my book's banned nationwide, all right? 4-Hour Chef, you cannot walk into most bookstores. There're a few that are awesome and I'm glad they're stepping up. You can't get it. So I could have in many ways made more money by sticking with what I knew. With a traditional model, which has a lot of benefits, and I chose not to. Because I wanted to play in a new sandbox, wanted to try new things, expecting that I would take a bunch of arrows being on the front. That's okay. And it's not that one way is better than the other but it depends on what your priorities are and coming back to what Neil said earlier, you have to chase your passion. And that sounds so cliched and for me I just say what excites you. If you're kept up for three nights "God I can't stop thinking about this thing I really wanna do." You should do that thing. You should figure out a way to make it happen. All right. Any other questions online? We definitely do. Like one or two people on the internet right now? Maybe one or two. (laughs) While we're getting some together, anybody in the room have any questions? Yeah. Yeah. So my question is... you mentioned the length between cooking and being an entrepreneur, Mm-hmm and intuitively, I know that, and it's why I love what you've written and your story and your passion about it, how do you describe that length? That connection? Yeah Absolutely. All right, you've seen The Karate Kid, right? (crowd agrees) "Daniel-san. Wax-on, wax off." (crowd laughter) "Wax on! Wax off!" Right? All right. That's my answer. No, so. (crowd laugh) Yeah, good. Thanks. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Goodnight, goodnight. No. (crowd laughs) All right. Because there are universal principles of learning and improvising and minimal elegance, that you can learn really easily in the kitchen, because it engages all the senses. It's one of the few places where you can fine-tune all of your senses. Not only that, but if people are like "I can't buy 13 pot set, I can't do this, I can't do that". Cookbooks are really poorly written in a lot of cases. It's like what? I have to spend $15 to $100 on cooking gear? No no no. I can point you to a $6 knife, we'll do that tomorrow, like $6 knife, a surgical towel, and a like a $19 pot and you can make thousands of dishes for every cuisine. You're done. And in the example I used, so if you don't have a copy right now I guess we'll show them tomorrow. We have advanced copies, but in the very inside of 4 Hour Chef, I have a picture of female world-champion Muay Thai kick boxer. So, Thai kick boxer. All right. So I trained in Thai kickboxing for a while. And it's called the Art of Eight Limbs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Muay Thai has really simple technique. I mean a few dozen techniques. It's like jab, elbow, elbow, gotta couple knees, we'll cover a lot of that with Dave tomorrow. And they have this minimal toolkit and they focus on all of the more important stuff: timing, combos, surprise- all this stuff that you can use in chess, you can use in food, you can use it entrepreneurship. So the equivalent in entrepreneurship is are you trying to do a thousand things and ending up mediocre at a thousand things? Or let's do (clears throat) Let's do: deconstruction, definition, selection, sequencing, so you have five to six things that you are now really good at, that you can apply in a thousand different contexts. So cooking? What is cooking at its course? Creation, right? What are entrepreneurs doing? Building something from nothing. It's the same stuff. It's very much like The Karate Kid "Wax-on, Wax-off". So hopefully that helps. But what I found is if you also, Four Minute Mile. Four Minute Mile. Four Minute Mile was never broken because people thought it was physiologically impossible until someone's like "I believe it can be done". (snaps fingers) Boom, and as soon as one person broke the four minute mile, (snaps fingers) All these other people started doing it. That's interesting. Why? Because someone proved that it could be done. So, for instance, the first recipe, which is like 120 pages into your book, (laughs) 'cause I talk about all these different language learnings, sports, and swimming and all this other stuff. The first recipe is ossobuco. Ossobuco, we use lamb shanks instead of veal shanks from more whole host reasons, but people think of it as this really expensive Italian dish. Takes hours to make. 35 bucks on the menu. It is easier to make amazing ossobuco for four people than to make good scrambled eggs for one person. (crowd laughs) The first time I made it, with this broken down, dismantled, minimalist recipe, had a buddy over and he goes: "Dude. You should try to start Tim Ferris restaurant! This is amazing!" And I explained to him how it was made and he was like "Huh?" As if I had said Santa Claus were real. You guys know that, right? (crowd laughs) So anyway, the point being once I showed people these things they think are really complicated are actually extremely easy, then they're like "well maybe losing 20 pounds isn't that hard". And I point flex, point to that, sure so like, okay 120 pounds, like don't tell me you can't lose your last 10 pounds. I don't wanna hear it. All right? Don't wanna hear it. Not true. False. Fiction. So that's another thing. I want people who have always been afraid of something to conquer it in like an afternoon. And we'll do this tomorrow, but like knife skills, I was always afraid knife skills, my mom gave me - you know, good mom, gave me a set of knives, two knives with a little block and it just sat- it's been on my counter for like 12 years, this piece of furniture. Never used it, 'cause I would get the knife out and I'm like (scared gasp) and I'm gonna chop my fingers off. No. Not interested. I'll just order takeout, you know? And I can someone to a point to where you're like chopping stuff like this, looking at me as you're doing it without ever cutting yourself in like, hour, hour and a half practice. (snaps fingers) There is a method for it. Okay, so that's the long answer, but it's on the brain, I think of that a lot. What else do you have? Okay. I'm now getting the message that we need to end. So I have one final question. (crowd laughs) If it were up to me guys, I'd go for another hour. I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. I guess in the chatroom is wondering how do you increase willpower? There are so many distractions in life. How do you focus and develop that willpower? Okay. My dirty secret is that (clears throat) I don't try to increase willpower. 'Cause willpower is fallible. You can decide not to do something every second of every day. Willpower, to me - it's not failure-proof enough. And I do study the anomalies, that's what I do. So, gold medalist in the Olympics who shouldn't have been a gold medalist? I wanna study that person. 120 pound girl who dead lifts 400 pounds? Okay, I wanna study that. And by finding all these anomalies, it becomes clear how many of the things we believe can't be done are really actually easy to do. So just studying those people give me confidence in trying new things. I don't like to depend on willpower. You wanna lose weight? Take all the crap in your house and throw it out. Get rid of it. Do a clean sweep. Like, if I have chocolate in my house, I'll eat it. Before I go to bed, I will eat that chocolate. (crowd laughs) I know. I love chocolate. Can't have chocolate in the house. Like, cheat day, I only buy enough for me to eat. Could be a whole pizza. Not gonna have leftovers in the fridge. No way. I'll eat it. Steaks. Systems. Having steaks. You know you will be publicly ridiculed until the day you die by 10 friends if you don't fill-in-the-blank. Lose 10 pounds. Follow your diet. Learn to do public speaking. Putting it on the calendar was stakes. That's my answer.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Debbie Takara Shelor
I loved this class. I greatly enjoy Tim's writing and having him share and interview others on numerous topics that I'm very interested in was fascinating and fabulous.
artmaltman
Fascinating interviews. Lot's of useful tips for business and life. It's a bit of a gamble because this style of seminar does not have a clear curriculum (e.g. it's not "how to edit photographs in Photoshop"). I would say that if you have found Tim Ferris interesting and useful in the past (e.g. books, articles, talks) then you will enjoy and find this seminar useful. Try listening to the free portion and see whether it resonates with you.
Student Work
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