2025-10-01 03:19:01
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with James Nestor (@MrJamesNestor), a science journalist and the author of the international bestseller Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, with more than three million copies sold in 44 languages. Breath was named the Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for Science Book of the Year at the Royal Society.
He is also the author of Deep: Free Diving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves and Get High Now (Without Drugs).
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
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Tim Ferriss: James, so nice to see you and hear you. Thanks for making the time.
James Nestor: Thanks for having me.
Tim Ferriss: And I must tell you a bit of background to begin. I remember when Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art first came out and I don’t know if I’ve ever had, maybe Deep Survival would be another one, I believe, but two books that have come at me from so many different vectors, from so many friends, from so many athletes, from so many doctors. And I thought to myself, “You know what? This is fascinating. I’m already really, really captured by the subject matter, but I want to let this slow bake for a while and then come back and talk to James after it’s saturated the global populace a bit, and talk about the stories, what has stuck, what he’s using personally.” And so here we are. We did it.
James Nestor: Perfect timing. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Perfect timing. And in the course of doing prep for this came across a name, Maurice Dubar. My French is rusty, but I believe I’m getting that probably 50% right. Would you mind explaining who Maurice is and why Maurice is relevant?
James Nestor: When I was first trying to research the benefit of hyperventilation breathwork practices and sort of get a deeper story into how they worked and who was doing them, I ran across this guy that completely randomly at an event, and he told me about this mysterious 90-year-old who had spent hours in the snow and swimming in frozen lakes up in the French Alps. And this was not Wim Hof, this was a predecessor of Wim Hof who has been doing this for 50, 60 years. And so I was able to contact him and learn about his path into this world and learn about how rehabilitating it was for his own health and the other people that came to see him. And I thought it was interesting that there is a long legacy of people who have been doing these things, just like most things, right? But they’re usually hidden beneath a few layers and you have to dig a bit to get there. But he’s a fascinating guy. Sadly he passed away at 93 years old and did this almost every day as often as he could.
Tim Ferriss: How did he get to the breathwork? What is his story?
James Nestor: He was extremely sick as a child, had various lung infections, various respiratory disorders, and he was slated for surgery. They were going to remove a large part of his lungs. And at that time, a missionary came in to see him and said, “Hey, I was just in the far East and I heard about this thing called yoga.” And he said, “Well, what’s yoga?” He said, “Let me tell you about it.” And he showed him some breathing techniques. So Dubar said, “I don’t want to do the surgery yet. Give me a few weeks to try to rehabilitate myself.” And everyone thought he was crazy. And not only did he rehabilitate himself, he gained this almost superhuman strength by adopting these breathing practices. And that was in the 1950s. So that’s how far ahead of the curve this guy was.
Tim Ferriss: And what was he actually doing in the sense that in the course of reading up on this guy a little bit at 71, he toured the Himalayas on his bike at an elevation of 5,000 meters. He could sit in ice water effectively for 55 minutes, ran 150 miles beneath the sun in the Sahara Desert. And it seems like these stories, if you follow the ET Reese’s peanut butter bits back lead to something called Tummo. I’m sure I’m pronouncing that incorrectly, but that seems to be the spelling at least, T-U-M-M-O. What differentiates that from different or other forms of breathing?
James Nestor: Tummo is an ancient breathwork practice from the Bon Buddhist that allows you to both generate heat in your body and store it. So this is what the monks have used in the Himalayas for thousands of years reportedly to help keep themselves warm. So it was a survival technique, and depending on who you talk to, some people say, “Oh, it’s very religious, very spiritual.” Other people say it’s very practical, it’s just a practical thing. And you can learn this. It’s a mechanical skill that you can learn. Where it gets a bit more fuzzy is what is Tummo? What is officially Tummo? What is the saccharin version of Tummo? Is Wim Hof version Tummo?
And I try not to get into the weeds too much in the book, but basically there are two different versions. There’s the traditional type in which you breathe very slowly and you reduce your metabolism and somehow the heat in your body goes up. Shouldn’t be possible. There it is. And then there’s the other type which I guess isn’t officially Tummo, but people still call it Tummo, which is the Wim Hof style breathing, the extremely intense hyperventilation techniques followed by breath holds and building pressure in your body.
Tim Ferriss: Tummo Lite, register trademark.
James Nestor: Yeah, you know what? I think it’s still available.
Tim Ferriss: I have all the URLs, guys, I’m squatting on them if you want any.
James Nestor: There you go.
Tim Ferriss: And in the case of Tummo, is that something that you have personally experimented with or have you left that on the shelf?
James Nestor: I’ve done the commercial version of it many times. I still do it today. It absolutely works. If you are cold, if you’re in the ocean, if you’re in the snow, wherever you are, if you’re cold, you can do this and you can jack your body temperature very, very quickly. The slower one is a much better kept secret. You’re not going to find too many instructions for it. I’ve talked to a few Bon Buddhist monks about this and they kind of smile and say, “Oh, maybe if you hang out with us for another 10 years and spend some time in the Himalayas,” which has not been possible. But I do know some dedicated breathwork people that have gone the various levels deep into this and are now getting hints about it. But now they won’t tell me because they say, “I’ve got a secret. You’ve got to do the work.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the fight club of breathwork.
James Nestor: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Most folks don’t want to do the Jiro Dreams of Sushi route with the breathwork, I suppose. But in the case of what you’re practicing, would it be then akin to what Wim Hof would promote in terms of the breathwork or could you describe what it is that you do for folks just in brief?
James Nestor: Sure. So the Wim Hof method is about 30 very deep breaths, extremely deep breaths and quick repetition followed by a breath hold at a neutral position. And then you take one big breath in, hold for 30 seconds and go back to that cycle, and you do this over and over and over. So the Tummo version of this is learning the commercial Tummo Lite, L-I-T-E, register trademark is you do those same motions, but when you’re doing the breath hold, you are holding the breath in and you’re creating a pressure in your body. You’re also doing some different arm movements with it. So it’s almost like you’re creating compression. It’s almost like a piston that your diaphragm is a piston and you’re creating that compression. And I’ll be damned if someone does this and doesn’t break out into a sweat, and it doesn’t matter how cold you are. I’ve seen it time and time again and anyone that’s done Wim Hof can attest to it as well.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think, somebody on the Internet’s going to fact check me, but I think the first large public interview that Wim Hof ever did was on this podcast, it’s a hundred years ago. I will say for folks who dive into that rabbit hole, be very cautious about the cold exposure. There are lots of documented cases of frostbite and people losing digits and so on. So don’t immediately go out and hike barefoot up to elevation up to your knees in snow, just watch that and never practice this stuff in water also. What does your personal development journey look like with breathwork? I guess another way to frame that and ask it more simply is what has breathwork done for you? What have the outcomes looked like for you?
James Nestor: I think the main outcome was at the beginning where it made me realize that there are many more things you can do with your body to improve your health and focus on food and exercise and sleep. And those are the three big things that a lot of people have been talking about for good reason. There are absolutely essential. But I had all of those things pretty well dialed in around 12 years ago now, it’s quite a long time ago. I was eating the right foods, I was sleeping eight hours, I was exercising all the time, and I had chronic respiratory issues just constantly. This was when I was in San Francisco where I had been for a couple of decades. So I was surfing a lot, but constantly getting pneumonia, constantly getting bronchitis. And I would go to my doctor and the doctor, I didn’t know better at this time, would give me antibiotics.
The Z-Pak, I would take them because I was extremely naive. And this went on for years and years until these respiratory problems became so bad that I could actually hear myself breathing at night. When I was working out I could hear there was something very deeply wrong with my respiration. And it was from a suggestion of a good doctor friend of mine who was looking at me and she said, “You need to do breath work.” And before then, I’d never done any breath work. I had heard about it because I lived in San Francisco, but I had no interest in it. And the short version of this very long story is I did it and I haven’t had one of those issues since. And so that convinced me that there was a signal here to pursue when there could be real data and science behind it. It wasn’t just some placebo thing as I had been told. It was a real biological function that you could focus on.
Tim Ferriss: What strikes me so strongly about breathing also is that you have an autonomous function that you can also control. So it’s this sort of API, this interface between conscious and automatic or autonomous nervous function, which makes it, I suppose, on so many levels really potentially powerful for you. When you began waiting into breathwork, what was the first type that seemed to in part benefits to you? Do you remember what you tested?
James Nestor: I absolutely remember it. I remember it vividly because I still do it to this day. It’s called a Sudarshan Kriya. And I went down-
Tim Ferriss: How do you spell that?
James Nestor: S-U-D-A-R-S-H-A-N, K-R-Y-I-A.
Tim Ferriss: I never would’ve gotten that right. Okay, thank you.
James Nestor: It was through the Art of Living and you do this weekend workshop before they teach you the breathwork. And a lot of the practice in the workshop were not things I was vibing with at all. A lot of people were getting benefits from them, but it was making me extremely uncomfortable and I almost bailed. And then we did this-
Tim Ferriss: Wait, can you give us an example?
James Nestor: [inaudible 00:12:22]. You’re not supposed to talk about it. And I’m going to respect the secrecy of this. I can talk around it though.
Tim Ferriss: You can talk around it.
James Nestor: Have you ever sat in front of someone and a stranger and stared into their eyes for 10 minutes unblinking?
Tim Ferriss: No. That’s counter to my evolutionary impulses.
James Nestor: Got it.
Tim Ferriss: This is that kind of thing.
James Nestor: I’m just going to leave it right there and you can draw your own conclusion for the rest. But then some people were breaking down having these awesome experiences. I’m like, “Good for them, but this was just not my thing until I did the breath work.” And then I understood why they had you do all these other practices. And the breath work absolutely blew my socks off. it’s not that intense, but my body had such a reaction that I was wearing a shirt like this, and I sweated through everything. My socks were damp, there were sweat stains on my jean. My hair was sopping wet from just sitting in a corner of a very dark and cold room just breathing at this rhythm. And I said, “Oh my God, what is this stuff unleashing in me? What else is bottled up that I need to get out?” And I don’t want to sound too [inaudible 00:13:37], but it was the physiological reaction my body had to this. It was like a switch was just flipped on. And it made me very curious about breathing and other breathwork practices.
Tim Ferriss: And for those people who are interested, please correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but there are, I believe videos on YouTube that people can find of monks, if that’s a fair description, drying wet fabric on their baths using Tummo. And you can actually watch this in real time as it’s happening. I mean, there’s a lot out there that people can find. And also from a personal perspective, I mean years ago when I was first experimenting with the Wim Hof stuff and did some things in person with him, did some things in person also with David Blaine pretty shortly after, I think he broke, if I’m getting the term right, static apnea, sort of oxygen-assisted breath hold time as 17 minutes and something, it’s been crushed since somebody did 20-something minutes, which is just bananas. In any case, did a lot of experimentation with breath holds.
And at one point, if you were to ask me to hold my breath right now, I could probably do it for 30 to 45 seconds, which is not long. And I’ve historically had a lot of respiratory issues, particularly my left lung from being born premature, insufficient surfactant, had to be intubated on a respirator, et cetera. But when at one point, this was also in the Bay Area, I was, don’t replicate this folks, do this only with medical supervision, but I did a 10-day water-only fast, and I was nine days in very, very high ketone production, which is relevant for a bunch of reasons we won’t get into right now. It helps though with breath holds, I’ll just put it that way. Went into a hyperbaric chamber, which is a hard shell, so a very hard shell medical grade up to about 2.4 atmospheres of pressure.
Then did Wim Hof breathing and did a breath hold on an exhale and got to about nine minutes and then stopped because I was like, “I’m going to melt my brain.” I didn’t have the impulse to breathe, but I was like, “You know what? I’m going to call it complete at nine minutes.” It’s really wild what you can do with gaining familiarity with techniques around breath work. Now granted, I had a number of assists on that as well, but let’s pull back for a second and look at the book. So the book comes out, you have, I’m sure a million people coming to you for help, for various things. For you, what has evolved after the book came out? I am just so interested to know what has developed since the book was published for you, whether it’s additional insights, stories out of the woodwork that have seemed worth digging into, anything that comes to mind.
James Nestor: The book came out in the depths of lockdown, and so I had nothing else to do, just like most other people. So I just did podcasts all day long, three or four or five of them a day. So I was in this little bubble for about a year and a half. And then when it was finally time to come out and see the light, I’ve spoken at medical schools and banks and hedge funds and all that. And the reason I mention that is because every single time I’ve spoken, every single time afterwards, there’s a line of people and they’re all complaining about the same things, and they’re completely pissed off. They’re pissed off that they had to learn about this stuff in a book by a journalist and not from their doctor. And they’re angry. Their kid is super sick and didn’t have to be sick for the past three years.
They’re angry because they still have asthma, they’re still snoring and sleep apnea. So it was by engaging with these people and then engaging with a number of different researchers that I went on an additional learning journey, I’m still very interested in this stuff. I want to know the things that I should have included in the book, and I want to know how to answer questions better. So I pursued it. And I think one of the biggest things that I found, and I don’t know how interesting this can be to talk about, but I’ll throw it out there and then you can edit it out if you don’t want this out, is the amount of kids that have sleep disorder breathing, this can be snoring or sleep apnea or some sort of dysfunction in their breathing at night. And then if you take that population of kids who have these breathing problems at night, and if you take the population of kids who have ADHD, those two diagrams almost completely intersect.
And so what many researchers are saying is that ADHD does not exist. What you’re looking at are sleep-deprived kids. And the most shocking thing to me is that a kid that presents with ADHD, they’re never assessed for their breathing. They’re never assessed for their sleep. They’re given drugs and put on their way, and I think it’s criminal. And so this is something that really sort of ruffled my feathers, and it’s something that I try to talk about whenever I’m discussing this stuff because it’s vitally important. I think that we’ve been approaching ADHD as a neurological condition. I think it is mostly a breathing problem.
Tim Ferriss: Could you give people an idea? I suggest everybody get the book, by the way, I mean we’re going to talk about a lot of different aspects of breathing, but it doesn’t begin to approach what you’ve covered in your book. So everybody should check it out. Nonetheless, I want to make sure that people listening, for some of them, they’re going to be on the run. They’re going to be deeply interested in this particular Venn diagram, right? The ADHD or other types of neuro atypical conditions and breathing disorders.
And it makes me also think this is separate, although maybe my parents have ADHD, but they’ve gone through sleep assessments. They are Prescribed a CPAP machine, and there is exactly zero compliance. You will not wear those things. I tried to wear a CPAP machine and I was committed to wearing it, tore it off my face every single night that I tried to use it. And therefore, I’m wondering if somebody’s listening and they’ve never had, for instance, their child assessed, do you suggest them getting a particular type of assessment or is it more a matter of testing an intervention or a type of breathwork to see if there is any type of result? And is there any research also to support the overlapping Venn diagram? I know that’s a compound question.
James Nestor: There is an incredible amount of research to support this. I heard about this from researchers. I heard about it from doctors, from leaders in the field at esteemed institutions. They’ve been hollering about this for years. And exactly 0% of the population, either on the medical side or the general population has been listening to them. So the research is there, and you could type it up in any search engine and find these studies. It’s very, very easy to find them. As far as assessments for kids, yes, there are things that you can do in your house right now. What a lot of doctors, family, physicians will do if you say, “Hey, I want to check out my kid’s breathing.” They say, “Okay, we’re going to go to sleep lab and you’re going to do this,” and they’re not going to be able to sleep very well, so we’re going to give them sleeping pills, and that’s going to mess up the breathing.
And then they’re going to be diagnosed with sleep disorder breathing and given a CPAP and say, “Adios.” And if 50% of people given a CPAP within eight weeks won’t use them and the other large percent will use them, and it actually makes their breathing worse in many cases, so it’s not a good solution. So for those parents that want to assess their kid’s breathing and your own breathing, there are a number of ways to do it. Is your kid a mouth breather? In the daytime, is your kid breathing through the mouth often? It doesn’t have to be 50% of the time or 40% of the time, but enough for you to notice. And then when the kid is sleeping, wait for the kid to go to sleep, sneak into their room and listen to their breathing. If you can hear them breathing, they are struggling to breathe.
If they’re breathing through the mouth, they are struggling to breathe. If they are snoring or have sleep apnea, they are inhibiting their ability to grow physical growth. They’re causing neurological damage to their brains. They’re increasing their chances of having diabetes later on in life. And there’s this whole laundry list. And I’m not trying to be a scaremonger here. This is easy to look up, not controversial stuff. So I would start with that. There’s also an app. I have no affiliation with this app. I get no money from mentioning it.
It’s called SnoreLab. There’s also another one called SnoreClock, and they have free versions of this. And what it is you put it on your phone and you place it about four feet away from whatever sleeping head you want, and it records how you are breathing throughout the night with audio recording, and it creates a graph for you. And then it includes a score, a sleep score, and this is a very quick way of getting an initial signal if there is a problem. And then there’s a whole bunch of things to do after that. But I would start with those things.
Tim Ferriss: If they get a positive, what are some of the things that they can do? And for instance, I don’t know if this is one of them, maybe it’s not because maybe it’s not curative or incomplete, but a friend of mine, professional drummer, one of the top in his field, sent me a package of what he called hostage tape and it’s mouth tape, and he said it completely changed his life from a sleep perspective. Ultimately it looks like very, very, very, very expensive kinesio tape. But could you speak to what can be done particularly with kids, right? Because they’re not going to want some Bane mask, Darth Vader CPAP thing on top of their face, presumably, maybe some will comply, but what are some of the things that you can use or do in a case of a positive?
James Nestor: The number one thing you can do is become an obligate nasal breather. So it would be almost impossible to help to reduce these symptoms without doing that first. That includes starting in the daytime, creating a new habit around nasal breathing, and then you can allow that to sort of bleed into the night. Once you get comfortable enough with it in the day, you can then use these different tapes. You can use hostage tape if you, there’s a bunch of different tapes. You can go down to a drugstore and get any micropore tape, right? There’s 30 different kinds.
They all work. Find one that you think is best, and you use just a little piece of tape on your lips. A lot of people think this is a hostage situation, which is why hostage tape has that name, but all you need is a little piece of tape to close your mouth. A lot of parents are going to be apprehensive about doing this to their kids. So some entrepreneurial breeding people, Patrick McEwen, developed something called MyoTape. Again, no affiliation with this. I know Patrick, I’m a huge fan of this product because it goes around the mouth
And all it does is it gently trains a kid to keep their lips shut. They can open their mouth at any time. They can even talk wearing this. It’s just when they go unconscious and muscles relax. And I think that stuff is a complete game-changer. I have heard so many parents talking about their kids once you convert to nasal breathing, doesn’t work for everybody, but that as the first step so many people have told me their kids who are wetting their beds at age 10 and 11, stop wetting their beds. The symptoms of ADHD went away in two weeks. And this sounds like some sort of sketchy, crazy talk, but if you look at the science and how the body works, if you are not getting sleep, everything’s going to go haywire. And if you are, the systems are going to start to repair and heal. And that’s what’s happened with these kids. And I’m sure that’s what’s happened to your friend because he was a mouth breather at night his whole life, just like I was.
Tim Ferriss: Is there anything else that you did to address your own mouth-breathing or sleep quality?
James Nestor: Yeah, so once I sort of hopped on the breathwork wagon, I wrote it into various strange worlds, and one of those strange worlds was into the ENT, the ear, nose, and throat surgeon world. And it was while I was down at Stanford interviewing one of the leaders in the field, Dr. Nayak. I came across a breathing and sleep and respiratory therapist, and she specialized in people who had surgeries and all this, and she had this big roll of tape on her desk, and I asked her what that tape was, and she says, “I prescribe it to everybody.” And it was sleep tape. So I thought it sounded completely wacky.
I went home and looked up online what I could about it. Everything I found online seemed insane, and so I was apprehensive and I did something, and I don’t suggest anyone do, I just started wearing it immediately at night, and it sucked for about two weeks. It was terrible. Then I got over the hump and I’ve worn it almost every single night for the past seven years, and it’s really hard for me to sleep without. If I’m camping, I’m wearing it. If I’m sleeping on an airplane, I don’t wear it. I have seen people wearing it on airplanes on long flights, which is a whole other level of commitment. But only a handful of times have I not worn it and I immediately feel it and I can see it in my sleep scores. So it’s not something I’m making up.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Sometimes I wear my gag ball on international flights. It makes people really uncomfortable.
James Nestor: It’s cool if you do that thing where you put the blanket over your head, then I don’t care, right? But when they tuck the blanket into the collar and there’s this big piece of tape, it feels a little wrong.
Tim Ferriss: Just tears streaming down their face. All right, so the mouth tape, I’m going to give this another shot because I’ve frequently wondered what I can do that is also easy for travel to improve sleep quality. This has been the thorn in my side since I was very, very young. I’ve always had very, very challenged sleep quality. And I chip away at it here or there. I figured out a number of different things that are reasonably under my control, at least in a hotel room like temperature for instance. But I would love to segue perhaps from the mouth tape to the measurement of air quality that you’ve done, I guess, specifically CO₂ levels. Do you want to just take that and explain what it is that you documented?
James Nestor: This was something I had no idea about when I was writing the book and it’s something I got glued into about three and a half years ago. And so it’s the concept that we acknowledge that CO₂ is going up in the atmosphere. You can look at any graph, you can go out and measure it. Right now it’s 424 parts per million. But a lot of us aren’t considering what the air quality, specifically the amount of CO₂ is in indoor environments. We spend 90% of our time indoors and we’re not looking at the air quality. So I had heard from a researcher, he said, “You’re the breath guy. You should be checking this out.” I said, “Well, what do I do?” He said, “Why don’t you get a carbon dioxide monitor and take it around with you and just look at the air quality?”
And so, initially I was just like, “Well, who cares? Who cares if there’s more CO₂ or not?” Until I found all of these studies, and there’s about 30 to 40 years of studies and they’re done by governments around the world. So again, this is not sketchy stuff by some dude in a garage in Towson or something. These are real, which no disrespect, love that place. But this is real science, real data that anyone has access to. And what it turns out is when you get about triple the rate of CO₂ in an indoor environment, so starting at around 1,500 parts per million. Again outdoors, it’s around 425 parts per million. You start to find that in schools, certain cognitive test scores can go down about 50%, five, zero percent by tripling the amount of CO₂. And then you get up to 2,500 parts per million. You’re looking at headaches, chronic migraines, further decrease of test scores. And then it goes up from there all the way into serious cognitive disabilities up into 5,000 parts per million.
So that’s what you’re looking at. That’s the chart. And I’ve been carrying this thing around with me for about three and a half years, and I’ve been absolutely aghast by what I’ve found. I travel a lot. I travel around 100 days a year. And the average CO₂, when you are entering onto an airplane and suddenly everyone just starts falling asleep, they’re not tired. It’s because the CO₂ levels are around 2,500 parts per million, 2,500 parts per million. So if you wonder why you feel like crap after four-hour flight, I think it has a lot to do with the very low amount of oxygen and the very high amount of CO₂. And there have been all of these recommendations from engineering associations saying it should never be over 1,000 parts per million. That’s when it’s going to start to feel stuffy. I have not recorded one flight anywhere on Planet Earth where it hasn’t been over 1,000 parts per million, every single flight is.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sitting in a hotel right now and I am not sure. I think they’re trying to prevent suicides, I may not be able to open any windows. But are there any approaches that you can embrace to address this? If you travel a lot, what can you do?
James Nestor: Yeah, so I could tell you what I’ve done. I will tell you a little information about hotels. So I carry this thing around and I record every hotel I go into. And some are pretty good and some are extremely bad. And if you’ve noticed, and I’m sure you have, I just know you have. In the past 10 years, something very curious has happened. In every hotel, you used to be able to open the window, maybe not all the way because they don’t want to get sued if you commit suicide. But at least this much, six inches, seven inches, almost every hotel had that. Now they’re all glued up and they are glued up because heating and cooling accounts for 50% of the cost of maintenance. So what they do to save money-
Tim Ferriss: Good news, we have LEED Platinum. Bad news, your brain is dying when you stay here.
James Nestor: Yeah. So what they do, instead of pumping in fresh air and heating it and cooling it, which would cost them money, they recirculate the air from all the rooms. And you know this because you’re recording the CO₂ levels. And what I’ve found is in the hotels that have the big plaques outside that say LEED certified, Green certified that are the most expensive, have by far the worst quality air. I’ve recorded 2,800 parts per million waking up in one of these hotels.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. I was joking, but I nailed it.
James Nestor: No.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
James Nestor: Yeah, I know this is just a bummer parade coming from me. But this is something. Because once you see this and carry these things around, you’re like, “I am so screwed because I’m stuck in here and I can’t open a window.” And it starts to make you crazy. So my-
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
James Nestor: … solution for that is you have yourself or your assistant call ahead and ask a hotel, “Do you have windows?” “Well sir, of course we have windows.” “Can you open those windows just a little bit? Just a little bit?” And those are the hotels you stay at.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. What CO₂ monitor do you use or what’s a good option for folks if they want to embrace? I’m just thinking of how many people, we were talking about Venn diagrams earlier. In my psyche Venn diagram, there’s a OCD and hypochondria.
James Nestor: I know dude.
Tim Ferriss: But you know it’s over. And then in the bullseye is CO₂ levels in hotels.
James Nestor: And listen, I know those hypochondriacs that everywhere you go, they’re assessing everything. Some of them are my lovely friends, I love them, but they drive me fricking crazy. I never want to be that, but this is a real, real thing.
Tim Ferriss: This is a real thing. Yeah.
James Nestor: It’s something that you should pay attention to. So I bought about 10 different CO₂ monitors and assess them against a professional device. And most of the crap you see on Amazon is worthless. Don’t bother with it. There is one brand, again, I get no money. I wish I did. Maybe I should endorse these products, but it’s called an Aranet4, Aranet4, A-R-A-N-E-T-4. That’s the best one. You know what? I probably even have it in my pack right now, I could show you, but it’s the most accurate one. And the battery life lasts forever, last about three to four months. And once you start doing it, it’s hard to stop.
And I got so fired up about this that we’re now creating, we’re working on right now, creating the database. I’m trying to arm about 100 people with these things. And then everything will automatically upload to this database. So you could see what hotels have good air quality, what restaurants have good air quality. Because governments, let me tell you, governments are going to do nothing about this. It’s when companies start getting outed for recirculating all of this breath backwash from all of these people in the hotel that they’re going to start paying attention.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. How safe is it to assume that if you’re in a major city like LA, Chicago, New York, that you’re getting better quality air if you open the window in the hotel? Is that pretty much always a safe assumption? Where do you get to a point where you’re like, I’m better drinking in this backwash in the hotel than opening the windows?
James Nestor: That’s a really, really good point. Maybe Shanghai in summer, maybe Mumbai in spring. I have not assessed that. I think that’s a good point. If you are in a hotel that’s very high up and the CO₂ level is just absolutely pedal to the metal, 3,000 parts per million, my assumption would be that opening that window you would have, there’s more benefits than harm from that. Again, I think there’s a lot of variables, but the CO₂, if you’re talking immediate acute harm versus chronic harm, the acute harm from CO₂. Your ability to rebound after a long flight, not feel hung over, not feel jet lag, not feel drowsy. I think that’s a big one.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know if this is true, people can do their own due diligence. I wish I knew the answer offhand, but I know that ketones, exogenous ketones for instance, I mean, there are many different types of ketones, salts ketone, monoesters, diesters, etc. But have been developed to protect divers, specifically military divers from oxygen toxicity. But I wonder if it increases CO₂ tolerance. I wonder if that might have a place in the travel kit. I’ll let people do their own research on that. But what else is in your travel kit, given how much you travel, whether it’s related to breath or not, is there anything that is non-obvious like the CO₂ monitor that you can speak to?
James Nestor: Right when I was ripping on hypochondriacs and people obsessed with it. We really want to go there?
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible 00:39:27] a gallon of Purell.
James Nestor: Gallon of Purell. You know, I didn’t use to be-
Tim Ferriss: In three ounce packets.
James Nestor: I didn’t used to be-
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly.
James Nestor: I didn’t use to be one of those people until I just got completely drained after doing too many tours and they got older. And now I’m kind of one of those people-ish. I have a couple of night lights that are red lights and I’m very typical. Everyone’s just nodding, tell me something new. And those are the only light source that I have in hotels and especially important after a long flight. So I have this CO₂ monitor. If there’s a window, I will absolutely open that. I’ll try to take a cold shower before bed, especially if I am very jet-lagged. As far as the other tech, I carry a lot of vitamin D, K2, vitamin E in case I feel something coming on. I have some other supplements I carry round as well. And without getting too weird here, I have this very small electric device, a frequency device that I am currently assessing it’s validity.
Anecdotally, I could say it’s been a complete game changer for me. And what I usually do at night is I plug into that thing and I really feel a difference. I know about six other people that have these, and so we’re starting to sniff around at collecting some real data about it. So that’s the main thing in that little zip pocket that you have in suitcases, this stuff just stays in there. It’s more important than a toothbrush. You can get a toothbrush anywhere. You can’t get a frequency device anywhere, and you can’t get a red nightlight anywhere. So I just keep this in there and I carry it with me wherever I go.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So a couple of clarifying questions since all of my listeners are denizens of Weirdville. So the red light, is that just looks like a children’s nightlight that plugs into an outlet next to the sink, or are we talking something more substantial so that you can actually operate and walk around your room?
James Nestor: I have two that are able to fade up and fade down in the bathroom. You usually don’t need anything. I can keep the door open at night and I also will often carry a light bulb, a small, not a big one because those are pain. But I have these little light bulbs. One of the most important things I didn’t mention is the sleep tape thing. And if I don’t bring that or if I’ve forgotten it, I’m the guy at 12:30 AM looking for a liquor store that had some sort of packing tape or something. It’s that critical to me. But for the red lights, they have little bulbs and also these nightlights are bright enough. At night, I try not to be too productive, especially if I’m tired, I want to sit, maybe I’ll listen to something, but I want the light to be very low. And I think that there’s plenty of good research on that, not disturbing your circadian rhythm. So we won’t need to get into that.
Tim Ferriss: How do you pack a light bulb without it shattering? And now I’m just envisioning a normal old light bulb. I imagine there’s a little more to it, but how do you pack that?
James Nestor: These are these small LED ones. So the bulb is actually plastic. It’s plastic. I would love to find an incandescent one because now I’ve been hearing about flickering and I’m starting to notice that a bit because I’m going clinically insane, and you’ve just outed me unfortunately. So any of you inventors out there, it’s now incandescence, don’t have to charge $400 if they find one in your house. Need to invent a small little red incandescent bulb and I’ll buy a dozen of them. So there you go.
Tim Ferriss: All right. This stim device, that’s too tantalizing, Scooby snap. What does this look like? Because I am very much, very deep down the rabbit hole of all things kind of biomedical. Not to say this is medical, talk to your professional. And entertainment and informational use only. But what is this thing? And where do you apply it, how do you administer it?
James Nestor: I’m in about a six-year journey into this world that’s led me down, I would say the vast majority of the past that’s led me down that have been complete BS. There’s so much stuff if you look up online, that is just absolute garbage. If they haven’t even tested this stuff on biological matter, on cells at least, don’t buy it. Who cares what their claims are? So that’s the most important thing if you’re starting to look at electric medicine. But it is a real thing. PEMFs which were considered quackery 30 years ago are now becoming a staple of many offices.
Tim Ferriss: What are PEMFs?
James Nestor: I’m sorry. That’s pulse electromagnetic fields, these devices that you can plug into, they’re amazing for pain. But it turns out that the history of these devices is much deeper than that. It goes back to the ’50s and ’60s, and Russia was doing a ton of research into this. So to answer your question, this is a somewhat Russian device. It’s about this big. I won’t say it’s officially Russian, it’s more Soviet than Russian, to be honest. You’ll get what I mean if you-
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible 00:45:06] on it.
James Nestor: The aesthetics of this thing are so like Atari 2600 that it is just so, I just really dated myself with that one. Anyway, so it’s about this big and it has all of [inaudible 00:45:17].
Tim Ferriss: This big, so it’s like 10 inches or so for those people who can’t see.
James Nestor: Okay, I’m sorry.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s okay.
James Nestor: I’m taking my hands too close to the… So it’s like when you catch a fish, right? You put it right up to the camera.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was just going to say.
James Nestor: Okay. You want specifics. It’s about five inches wide by about four inches tall, and it’s about an inch and a half thick. And it has about 40 preset programs on it. And programs for grounding when you’re not able to ground, programs for Schumann waves, programs for cardiovascular health, programs for respiratory health. And I will be damned if this thing hasn’t really fixed a lot of issues. And again, this is 100%-
Tim Ferriss: What kind of stuff?
James Nestor: … anecdotal.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, anecdotal’s okay.
James Nestor: You name it. You start getting into this.
Tim Ferriss: Unpaid bills. I have a PMF device for you.
James Nestor: It’s just you manifest money, everybody. You plug this thing in and you can’t keep it out of the doors and windows. It just starts coming in.
Tim Ferriss: Another reason to have your hotel window open.
James Nestor: There are many reasons. That’s one of them. But it sends out, we’re really going to get into this. It sends out certain frequencies that have been studied, that have been found to reduce the loads of viruses, and bacteria, and fungi, and more. And I know what a lot of you’re thinking, this is completely based on zero. But I’m here to tell you, there’s a lot of legit research. And if I was going to place my money on anything, this is where things are going to go. We have exhausted chemicals, we’ve reached chemical overload, and chemicals are fantastic. They’re great. They can do so much. But there’s this whole other layer to health and I really feel like this is where stuff is moving.
Tim Ferriss: So we’re on the same page there. I mean, I recently interviewed a scientist by the name of Dr. Kevin Tracy, who’s I would argue the most cited, most credible or certainly one of the most credible. He’s incredibly well-published, researchers looking at legitimate vagus nerve stimulation. And then you have researchers at Tufts like Professor Levin and others who are doing incredible things ranging from looking at salamanders and axolotls, I want to say, for regeneration and how electricity can be used in cancer applications. I’m very much looking at this incredibly closely as it sounds like you are. For people who want to specifically, was it PMF or PEMF?
James Nestor: P-E-M-F.
Tim Ferriss: P-M-F.
James Nestor: P-E-M-F devices.
Tim Ferriss: For people who wanted to learn more about this, what should they search online if they wanted to read up on what it is, the type of thing that you’re using?
James Nestor: They should read my new book coming out next year.
Tim Ferriss: I see.
James Nestor: No, no, no, no, no. This is actually not in my new book. So what I would do is 100% don’t go on Amazon and look up these devices. Some of them can’t. I keep saying, don’t go on Amazon. Have you heard that three or four times? Because I certainly have. Amazon’s great just not for certain things. And this is not one of the things you want to go on it for. Because the problem is some of these devices can put out the specific frequency that has been studied to be beneficial, but they’re not putting it out at the load, at the power it needs to be. So they’re paying lip service to the science without actually going deep and providing the therapeutic effect. So some of these devices are very expensive, up to 20, 30 grand.
Tim Ferriss: Wow, okay. That is expensive.
James Nestor: But those are the ones used in clinics. These are the ones used for people with severe chronic pain issues for everyday devices. There are some cheaper ones. I don’t want to endorse anything. I don’t want to name them by name because I’m not done studying how legit they are. But once you start digging in a little deeper, you start to see that in Eastern Europe, these things have been used continuously for 60, 70 years and maybe they’re all crazy and are suckers for a placebo effect or maybe these things work. And so that’s where I have started sniffing around. And this thing I got that I’ve convinced a few other people to get. We’ve seen just some extraordinary stuff that doesn’t make any sense. And so I’m just trying to parse how much of that is a placebo-ish effect and how much of it can be measured and repeated in animal models.
Tim Ferriss: If somebody just wanted to read up on the research or learn a bit more about this without selecting a device necessarily, where would you suggest they start?
James Nestor: I would say read The Body Electric by Robert O. Becker, doctor who basically paved the way for Michael Levin at Tufts. And if any of this sounds crazy, all you have to do is read any of Michael Levin’s papers. You’re like, “Oh my God.”
Tim Ferriss: Your head will explode. Yeah.
James Nestor: With electricity and specifically frequency, you can grow two heads on a salamander. You can regrow another leg where it’s not supposed to be. You can grow with the frequency of eyeballs and eyeball on an animal’s back. So it just shows you that there’s a lot more to the story than chemicals. And if you can do that to a salamander and to a frog, then obviously we’re going to be affected by these frequencies as well.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Thank you for that. Now, you also glossed over other supplements. I recognized D, K2, E. What’s in your et cetera, other supplement bucket?
James Nestor: Oh boy. Again, I never thought I’d be one of those guys carrying around the granny vitamin packs, all the supplements.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I’ve got two of them 10 feet from me. And can I tell you, just to endorse the granny pill packs. I thought those looked so ridiculous. Added more labor. So I would carry around basically a pharmacy of bottles with me. And then when I started using the granny packs, I was like, “Why did I not start doing this 30 years ago? It saves so much time on a daily basis.” So just to give you permission to use the granny packs.
James Nestor: Yeah, I’ve got the granny XLs going on and those are also in the suitcase. So everyone talks about supplements, but if you want to go there, we can go. I’ve got all the typical stuff. I wish I had some cutting edge new thing you’ve never heard of, but all of you will be yawning in unison if I told you. There’s a little CoQ10 in there, there’s a little nattokinase, there’s… It’s the old classics that are in there. Nothing cutting edge.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it. So the nattokinase that’s going to have the K2 in it, presumably, right? Is that the source?
James Nestor: It will. But I have the special pack in case I get sick, in case I get COVID on the road, I have a special pack. Because if you’re taking heroic doses of D, then you need to be taking E, and A, and extra K2 with that. So very important. So that’s why I have that in its own separate little container, the sort of emergency pack.
Tim Ferriss: And if anyone out there is thinking, I’m looking for the next way to prove that I’m really tough. Well, forget about doing breath work in freezing cold water. If you’ve never had natto from Japan, then just eat a bowl of that dish and that’ll be the new tough man TikTok challenge for people who have never tried it.
James Nestor: Speaking of that, I was like, “Screw this. I don’t need supplements, man. I just need to eat better.” And then you start to do the research and realize that no vegetables contain the minerals that they used to. It’s virtually impossible to get all these things the way our ancestors did. And natto was one of those things. I went down to a Japanese market and I said, “I’m not taking these pills, man. I’m going to start my morning.” How many… Japan’s awesome. That place is perfect. There’s no crime. It’s beautiful. I said, “I’m going to start my day every day with this.” Wow. Day two. No way. It’s the stringiness that will really get you.
Tim Ferriss: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people can try that out if they haven’t tried it, that’ll be some podcast challenge. So I appreciate you indulging me on all those questions since I pay attention to my travel kit, I do. And I’ve got all sorts of electronic devices all over the place. It’s kind of absurd. I literally have an extra suitcase for all my blood flow restriction stuff. I did just have elbow surgery. So granted, I have kind of an excuse my e-stim for lymphatic drainage. I’ve got so much crap with me right now.
But on that note, I guess this is a bit of an awkward sequitur, I suppose. But my surgery came from a sports injury. So I’m thinking about athletes, and there were a few things in some of my prep materials here that I wanted to touch on because I hadn’t seen them before. So for athletes and professional athletes, so on, we see nasal breathing during training, breath hold sprints, which I first was exposed to way back in the day with Laird Hamilton at his house. One of the kings of big wave surfing. Surfing Giants, I think Riding Giants is the documentary. One of the two, people should watch it, it’s insane. Especially for people who don’t know the name, Laird, if you’ve ever seen tow-in surfing, Laird helped develop and popularize that. Stand up paddle boarding, he kind of resurrected it and helped make it popular, just a beast of an athlete. And so I remember seeing him on an assault bike, one of those bikes where you’re also pushing with your arms where he would do long exhale breath holds and push basically until he would pass out off the bike. I’m not suggesting anyone do that, but there were a number of other BOLTs, I won’t go through them all, but could you speak to BOLT score tracking, all caps, B-O-L-T, presumably an acronym. I’d never come across this. And anything else that you’d want to add?
James Nestor: Yeah, if there’s one population that has actually paid attention and started to get much more serious about looking and focusing on their breathing, it’s athletes. Athletes aren’t as scared of a little inconvenience or a little discomfort. This is what they thrive in to get ahead of everyone.
As a big wave surfer, you have to focus on breath work. You have to focus on your breath hold. If you don’t, you die. Which is one of the reasons why Laird is 60 years old, looks like he’s 30, that the guy is just constantly focusing on his breath because he wants to stay active in the field at the top of his class.
So, surfers have known this for a very long time, but a lot of runners and rowers and baseball players and football players and soccer players haven’t been clued into this. And so the elite trainers that I know, they said this is the number one thing that they do for athletes right now is to focus on their breath.
And what they’ve found is the vast majority of athletes, you would think that they would have their breath completely focused, that they would be the best breathers in the world, but they absolutely are not. They’re as dysfunctional as everyone else. They’ve learned how to push through the pain to win the game, but that doesn’t mean they’re breathing properly.
So, the first thing they do is retrain their breathing. And what they find with almost all these athletes is the majority of them are not engaging their diaphragm. There’s this muscle organ that sits beneath the lungs and when you breathe in, the diaphragm goes down and when you breathe out, it relaxes and comes back up.
What they’ve found is most athletes are just breathing into the chest, very limited diaphragmatic movement. And if you do that, it’s a complete waste of energy and it’s not efficient. The reason is you are just able to take little bits of breath each time, so that requires you to breathe so much more and it jacks your heart rate.
If you were able to breathe 10 times a minute or 20 times a minute instead of 40 times or 60 times or a hundred times a minute, then your heart rate will go down, which means your tolerance for whatever thing that you’re doing will go up and your recovery time goes down. So, it’s a basic math here, but so many people aren’t clued into it.
And once they start focusing on the breath and adopting these better habits, I mean, these trainers are just making monsters out of these people. Their performance goes through the roof, recovery times go down. It makes a huge difference. But still, I can count on one hand how many joggers I see out running in the morning that are breathing in and out of their nose. And that’s the number one thing at lower zones to be breathing in and out of your nose and just no one’s doing it.
Tim Ferriss: And is BOLT, is this BOLT score tracking a shorthand simple way of tracking breathing efficiency or what is that?
James Nestor: Okay, sorry, I didn’t answer that question. It is the body oxygen level test. It used to be called the blood oxygen level test, but Patrick McKeown changed that because he got some flack from some pulmonologist. What this is is-
Tim Ferriss: Oh.
James Nestor: … you take… We’re all going to do it. I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to show you like a good writer, that’s what they do. So we’re going to relax your shoulders a little bit. We’re going to relax the space between our eyes, relax your tongue.
You’re going to be breathing in and out of your nose, and you’re going to take an inhale in just real calm and out. And we’re going to do this two more times. Inhaling and out, inhaling and out. Let that breath naturally come out, hold your breath, hold your nostrils, hold your nostrils.
So on that exhale, you’re holding your breath in your nostrils and you’re going to hold your breath until you feel the first urge to breathe. This is not a competition. So, if your diaphragm quivers, if you swallow, if that urge to breathe is palpable and you are aware of it, you stop and you calculate how much time has passed.
Tim Ferriss: That’s it?
James Nestor: That’s it and-
Tim Ferriss: So, it’s three normal breaths or are they deeper than normal?
James Nestor: No, and this is where people try to cheat because they’re athletes and they’re competing, try to get ahead, normal breaths. And then on the exhale, this is not a Laird Hamilton, this is down to neutral, hold your breath, down to neutral, hold your breath, and then you start the timer.
And what you’re going to find is the more you focus on your breath, the more you learn how to take fewer, deeper, slower breaths, which oxygenate your body so much more efficiently, which lower your heart rate, which also increase your heart rate variability, all of these other benefits, you’re going to watch that BOLT score go up and up and up and up. Usually after about maybe a week or two, you could see it double and then after that, you could see it triple-
Tim Ferriss: Oh wow, that’s fast.
James Nestor: … triple. It depends who you are. I don’t want to make blanket comments for everyone. And it also depends how honest you are with yourself. Some people are like…
Tim Ferriss: Gaming the system.
James Nestor: Yeah, if you’re gaming, and if no one’s looking, why would you want to game the system? Be honest with yourself. When you feel that need to breathe, just stop. And you’re also going to notice it changes throughout the day.
So, if you’re very tired, if you’re coming off of a long flight, if you’re stressed out, your BOLT score is going to suck. If you’re very well rested and you’re in a good zone, your BOLT score is going to be three times what it was before. So, there’s a lot of variability.
Tim Ferriss: Then I’m reading here AI overview. So caveat, but a higher score indicates better carbon dioxide tolerance and efficient breathing, which you can improve with breathing exercises over time. Is there anything else from the world of sports that you’ve seen that has been particularly impressive or surprising besides the fact that most athletes, just like normal civilians, are suboptimal in their breathing?
James Nestor: I think the other important thing, and this really goes hand in hand with what I was just talking about, is proper breathing biomechanics. A lot of people have lost the ability to breathe properly, and that includes athletes. So, what you can do is you can train, learn how much you can expand your rib cage down here, learn what a really a full, deep, enriching breath feels like, learn how that changes your posture and then start adopting and adapting your body to these biomechanics when you are practicing whatever sport.
And there are bunch of trainers that do this now. If you look at LeBron now waiting in between plays, what’s he doing? Most of the time, he’s doing breath work and he’s doing it properly. He’s doing alternate nostril breathing.
You look at his diaphragmatic movement, because you can see his chest and his abdominal area. So, this makes a huge difference. This is biology, it’s not psychology, and I think athletes can benefit the most from it.
Tim Ferriss: So two questions, and these may be dead end, so I apologize if they are, but two questions related to the diaphragm and also inspiratory muscle training. So resistance at the mouth for building, well, effectively training the muscles involved with respiration. So, the first question around the diaphragm is, and I’m not sure if you’ve dug into this, I guess pun intended, but is any type of soft tissue treatment or manual therapy sometimes helpful for people to get better at diaphragmic breathing? That’s number one.
Then number two, do you have any thoughts on the various training devices that can be used for developing actual muscle strength or endurance for the respiratory muscles?
James Nestor: Yeah, so the first part of that, absolutely, find a good physio or find a good masseuse and who knows what they’re doing and to loosen up this area because for a lot of people it’s frozen. And what’s really sad is for a lot of older people, when the bones and the muscles start to atrophy a bit, things get brittle and you just lose all flexibility, so to find someone that can loosen up the rib cage around here.
You can do it yourself. There’s a bunch of different exercises you can do to help facilitate that process, but it’s better having someone who really knows how to do it help to open that up. And then you can start playing with your breath and after an hour of this, you can feel what a difference it makes, everything just starts to open up.
And now we’re talking about those different devices that the air resistance, the breath resistance devices, they work great. So, there’s a bunch of different brands, they all basically do the same thing. And what they do is they just create extra pressure to allow you to develop that better muscle memory.
It’s like putting a donut on a baseball bat. That’s probably very aged way of saying it too, but that’s what we used to call them. So you swing that bat around a few times, it feels very heavy, and then when you take it off, it feels so much lighter, and it’s so much easier to use it. So, that’s essentially what these devices are doing.
And it doesn’t matter if it’s a mask, it doesn’t matter if it’s one of those inspiratory muscle trainers, which is just one of the things that you put in your mouth. It almost looks like the end of a snorkel without the tube.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
James Nestor: They all work. They all work.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s see. I recall also just a warning for some folks. So if you use one of these inspiratory muscle trainers, I recall I had Bas Rutten, this legendary mixed martial artist on the podcast, and he has such a device that he’s co-developed and used constantly and his numbers are mind-numbing when you see them.
But if you do these exercises with a rounded back, so you’re “breathing through the back,” the amount of back soreness that you will feel if you have not done this before, which will last awhile, is you will feel like you’ve just done six hours of deadlifts. I mean, it is shocking how sore you’ll be. So, I just want to tell people start with a lower dose than you think you can handle when you’re getting used to this stuff.
James Nestor: I think that that’s good advice for every single thing we’ve talked about. People hear stuff, they want to go out and kick its ass immediately. This is especially true for the sleep tape. What you should do is you should be wearing it for 10 minutes answering emails one day and the next day wear it for 20 minutes answering emails, and then the next day wear it for an hour. You see where I’m going with this?
After two weeks of acclimating your body and getting yourself used to this, then try it when you’re taking a nap for 15 minutes and then eventually work into using it at night. And this is very true for these different devices. This is not a plant, by the way. I have this little desk here and this is on it.
So, this is a device. It doesn’t need to have a ton of pressure to be beneficial. This just has slight pressure to it. And when I’m working on something-
Tim Ferriss: So, it looks like an adult pacifier basically of sorts.
James Nestor: Yeah. It’s in other words, extremely sexy, something you want to be bringing on that airplane along with your sleep tape and your blanket, just a heads up. But it’s a little thing that you put in your mouth that has just a little bit of resistance. Because what I notice is when I get extremely focused when I’m writing something, my breathing patterns go to hell. And this is very common. It’s called email apnea.
It’s so common. Like the NIH spent 20 years researching it and blood pressure goes up, you get headaches and it can cause some chronic issues later on because you are holding your breath when you get scared or you focus, you’re having this reaction. If I use a little device like this, you can even put a straw in your mouth if you want something simpler.
It just reminds your body to keep with that rhythm. And if you have to work for four straight hours because you have to crank something out, you need every bit of focus and energy that you can get. And so that’s when those very intense times, I use this thing and it works like a [inaudible 01:10:02]
Tim Ferriss: What is that called?
James Nestor: Oh, boy.
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible 01:10:04]
James Nestor: Okay. Again, I am not endorsing this by any way. People give me things. This one’s by my friend Anders Olsen, who was in the book, he’s been studying breathing for 20 years. I love this thing. It’s called the Relaxator.
Tim Ferriss: I love the name.
James Nestor: This really feels like a commercial now. It’s called the Relaxator.
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible 01:10:25] for 30% off.
James Nestor: You can buy two and get one for free. Yeah, I’ve really screwed myself not getting a percentage of these things, but this thing is cool because these other devices that you see are big.
Tim Ferriss: Big, yeah. That, you could stick in your shirt pocket.
James Nestor: Like bondage-level big, a lot of bondage themes going on in this podcast. But this thing literally, you can wear around your neck, you stick it in your pocket. It doesn’t look so weird. And I love this thing, and this is one of the things I keep in the suitcase.
Tim Ferriss: So, if you’re jamming and working on something, writing for four hours, do you just have that? Do you just take a few breaths with that every hour? What does the use look like?
James Nestor: No, I have it in my mouth.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, the whole time.
James Nestor: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I’m glad I asked for clarification. Okay, I got it. Oh, wow.
James Nestor: I should have provided you the whole time. I won’t say every single minute, but…
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so you’re breathing in through your mouth and out through your nose in that case.
James Nestor: I’m mixing it up a little bit. I know I talked about all the wonderful things to do with nasal breathing. This simulates them in some ways, but what it does is it creates extra pressure, a little extra pressure to force you to slow down. So if you are going to be mouth breathing, mouth breathe with a device in that causes that extra pressure.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. Yeah, I found it.
James Nestor: So, sometimes I breathe through my nose and I breathe out through this, so it just extends that exhalation. So, the exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation, and that will put your body into that parasympathetic state.
Tim Ferriss: The Relaxator Breathing Retrainer, yeah. So, I’m looking up Anders Olsen, all those goods, presumably Scandinavian.
James Nestor: Yeah, he’s as Swedish as you could be, yes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Conscious Breathing Institute AB. All right, excellent. I’ll need to grab one of these before everyone in my audience buys an adult breathing pacifier.
James Nestor: Do they?
Tim Ferriss: Amazing.
James Nestor: It’s a beautiful world we’re going to create out there, everybody. You’re all going to be looking good.
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible 01:12:49] It’ll be like fight club. People can wink and have the secret handshake when they see other people with the bright green adult pacifier, so-
James Nestor: You just look the other direction and pretend you don’t know them, which is what I prefer to do.
Tim Ferriss: So, you mentioned writing. We’re going to take a little breather, pun intended, on the breath talk. I want to talk about writing for a little bit because I’m hoping you can help me sort out this 800 page draft of a book that I’ve got on my hands. But let’s begin with something that folks may not be familiar with. The San Francisco Writers Grotto, what the hell is the San Francisco Writers Grotto? And how did you become involved with it?
James Nestor: Oh my God, that was a long time ago. It was a group of professional writers that real professional writers when there were things called magazines around that you could actually write for magazines and make a semi living out of that. And they wrote books and [inaudible 01:13:45] Bronson was one of them, Julia Shears, Caroline Paul. And it was a group of writers who didn’t want to write at home anymore.
They wanted to write in little offices and be able to have lunches where they could complain about their agents. And this was a very sought after place, and I was able to get in there and I absolutely love it. And I made so many good friends there who are still my friends. And then it got a bit diluted.
One thing about writers is, especially later on towards the 2010s, when the magazine industry was going through a bunch of issues, they didn’t have consistent income, so they noticed that people would just stop paying rent. So, then they had to get some other “writers” in there, basically, people who had very large amounts of money, who wanted to tell everyone at parties that they were writers, they paid rent, man.
And that’s what happened to that place. But some wonderful people there. I learned so much being in that community, and sometimes I really miss it.
Tim Ferriss: What did you learn there before the trustafarians got roped in to raise the average rent price? What are some of the lessons that you learned? I mean, because part of one of the major challenges that I have as a writer is that I’ve spent so much of my time in self-imposed solitary confinement. I’m just like, I’m just over it.
And sometimes the solution can be going to a cafe and working at a cafe, and that’s an improvement. But is there anything that you really took from that experience in terms of lessons learned, habits developed, anything like that?
James Nestor: So many lessons. What these people taught me was the business part of it. And I know that that probably isn’t something people want to hear about, but I had prized myself as a very precious artist that I only wanted to do certain things in a certain way, and it had to be, and all of that’s bullshit. It’s completely not sustainable.
So, they taught me that this was a real job that you had to approach with a business mind, which I thought at the time was clouding it over or it wasn’t as pure as I would like it to be, but it was a very quick heads up. So, they introduced me to how to find an agent and how to talk to an agent, and how to deal with your publisher when your publisher was being difficult. And so really pragmatic skills and how to navigate the publishing world, which as you know, can be extremely, extremely tricky. And those lessons I’ve taken with me, and I think it’s allowed me to actually make a living doing what I’m doing by applying some of those lessons to the books I write.
Tim Ferriss: I was reading, you sent to me some of these snippets on writing, and I want to read part of it. This is quoting you, “So, I think the concept of writer’s block is a convenient out for people who want an excuse to not work and complain or get attention by talking about writer’s block. Every professional writer I know that writes for a living, that is writing is the only source of income for these people,” I think that’s actually really important parenthetical, “has never experienced writer’s block.”
And I’ll just add my comment, or maybe they just kind of got over it when they were put in an environment like the [inaudible 01:17:23]. “Every hobbyist who introduces him or herself as a “writer” at dinner parties has chronic writer’s block.” I have heard something similar from every friend of mine, here’s a distinction though, who has written for newspapers or magazines.
I do know some professional writers who focus and have focused exclusively on books who still talk about writer’s block. Do you think that is just a function of in the trenches, regular deadlines where you don’t have the luxury perhaps of long lead time for a book? Could you maybe just speak to this writer’s block term and excuse perhaps?
James Nestor: I have a feeling I’m going to get myself in a lot of trouble here, but I can just tell you from my own experience, the answer is yes. I think that anyone that needs to write to keep the lights on or support yourself or your family. And if you don’t hand the thing in, you’re not going to get paid and you’re going to be in a very precarious situation, finds a way out, and that doesn’t, you can meditate or you can sit and say, “I’m not leaving this chair for the next four hours until I produce the thing I need to produce.”
So, I think a lot of that comes down to your attitude and your financial situation. I have never had writer’s block because I came from a place where I cut the cord in the corporate world and I had to do this to pay my mortgage. It was the only way I was going to survive.
And there were so many times I wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t inspired. The muse wasn’t there. Who cares? Sit down and write the thing and get it done. And so this preciousness around writing, and this is one thing I learned a lot at the writers grotto, maybe one of the negative things is people just love to talk about it. Like when someone’s on a fast and they just want to tell you all about their cleanse or their fast, and it’s the last thing anyone wants to hear about. People just want to talk about writers block all the time because I think it’s a convenient way for them not to do the thing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, there are a lot of topics that fit in that category. It’s like if someone’s taking 10 minutes to tell you about their dreams, you’re like, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, all right.”
James Nestor: That’s exactly right, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Or in any case, we keep giving examples, but I want to try to focus here. When you cut the corporate umbilical cord, was that at a point where you were already replacing your income or was it a leap of faith on some level? And in either case, how did you make the decision to go 100% into writing? At what point did you make that decision?
James Nestor: I was a well respected member of corporate America for a very, very long time, and I was making a living and bought me a house, all that stuff. And there was obviously something missing in that. And so what I would do on nights and weekends is I would write magazine articles, and I absolutely loved it because it allowed me an excuse to knock on doors that I wouldn’t ordinarily knock on and talk to weirdos.
So, I unfortunately started off by just writing stories I wanted to write because I didn’t need to do it. The money wasn’t that good anyway. It was just writing things I wanted to write. And I got so absolutely absorbed in these worlds and would take months writing these stories. And I thought it was impossible for me to do this full time.
And that’s what I did for 6, 7, 8 years until I got to a point where I had several different magazine contracts, and I was at a four-year review for my work performance, and my boss was like, “Oh, really good.” And this is exciting and we’re really-
Tim Ferriss: What were you doing at the time in corporate America?
James Nestor: God, yeah. I was the head of an editorial department, so I was doing a lot of editing and a lot of writing for a organization, which shall remain unnamed at this time. And it was a very easy job that I had. The pay was good, all that stuff.
And I remember sitting in this guy’s office and looking at him and looking at the office, and I had the most sickening feeling at the bottom of my stomach. And I did not plan to do this, but it’s like it came from another realm in mid-sentence as he’s talking about this, I just said, “You know what? I quit. I can’t do this anymore.”
Tim Ferriss: It’s just a visceral, like animal response.
James Nestor: Yeah, it was. And it’s almost like I heard myself saying this and he was shocked, and I was like, “I’m going to go out and just kick ass.” And this was around 2009. Guess what happened next? Everything imploded and I lost all of my contracts, and I had a couple of extremely difficult years trying to find my way, navigate my way through this.
But I said, “I can’t go back until I really give this a go.” So, I could tell you so many horror stories. Year after everything went wrong, everything book contracts got canceled, magazine stories got canned, and it was horrible, but I kept with it.
Tim Ferriss: What kept you going? I mean, was it that the control Z wasn’t available and you couldn’t go back to a corporate gig? Or was there some other internal monologue or mantra or any type of time bound commitment that kept you going with the writing?
James Nestor: I could have gone back to a corporate gig for sure. At any time, I could have gone back. But I found another lifestyle and another feeling and another calling that felt almost illegal from my upbringing. I was doing everything I was told not to do. And there was an aspect of that and a danger to that that I liked. I was also, I didn’t cut the cord when I was 22, right? I cut the cord when I was later. I said, if I don’t do this now, if I don’t do it now, I’m never ever, ever going to do it. It’s going to be so hard to do it now, but if I wait any longer, it’s never going to happen and I’m never going to be happy. So that’s what drove me.
Tim Ferriss: When did it click? When did you, after the canceled contracts and the disasters, and just train wreck after train wreck, was there a moment, it doesn’t have to be a financial moment, but was there a moment where you’re like, ooh, okay, this is starting to build some momentum, or this is giving me the spider sense, which is somewhat the opposite of the quick blurting out of I quit in the corporate meeting, which is like, oh, here we go. Something is here. Was there a particular moment where things started to click into gear?
James Nestor: There was a moment. I was sent by Outside Magazine to write about the World Freediving Championships in Greece. And I remember being out there and sitting on the prow of this boat and watching these people do this thing that is not supposed to be biologically possible, swimming down on a single breath of air to 350 feet for four minutes at a time, coming back. And it sent chills through me. It still does when I think about it.
And I remember writing my editor Alex Heard at Outside, and I said, “There’s something bigger than the story going on here.” And he’s like, “Okay, but you got to finish the story.” So no writer’s block there. It’s weird how that happens. So I delivered the story within a couple of weeks. The story made a splash. I got a book deal out of it. And was finally able to have some semblance of comfort, and that’s when the lever turned on pretty big for me.
It’s also when things got really serious, right? Because you’re dealing with a larger sum of money, you’re dealing with something I’ve never done, which was write a book. Written a ton of articles, but writing a book was a different thing. But I loved the challenge. And I just went 100% in seven days a week, just like I was so absorbed in it, and I was so happy. I was very tired and I should have paced myself better. But every day I was so grateful not to be in an office and so happy to be doing something that was able to really stir my curiosity and my fascination with the world.
Tim Ferriss: When did writing become self-sustaining financially?
James Nestor: It became pretty self-sustaining from that contract. It was a larger contract. But then, I won’t give you the whole dirty story, but the book came out, and I got quite a large advance. And the book didn’t sell as much as the publisher had hoped. And they basically put me-
Tim Ferriss: This is deep.
James Nestor: Yes, yes. So within two weeks, they give you two weeks to make a splash. And it didn’t make the splash that they wanted to make, so they just cut it out. They just sort of stopped promoting it in any way. My editor at the time wouldn’t call me back. And I was so heartbroken by, not just the financial part of that, but the fact that these people that I really had these close relationships after a few years just sort of left me out there right when I really needed them. But I licked my wounds and focused a little more and got back to writing. And just learned a lot of valuable lessons in that process of exactly what not to do and what I should do more of. And the next book was Breath.
Tim Ferriss: What were the things not to do? Were these business dimensions, or were they other things?
James Nestor: It was trusting people in the industry to do things that they are paid to do, but at the time not realizing that you are very low on their priority list. And so specifically with promotion, begging people to send your book to a magazine, begging them to get you an interview and having them say, “This isn’t my job.” So again, it comes down to my business naivete. Had I done it again, if I were to go back and do it again, I would’ve done it, I would’ve hired an agency to take care of PR and not relied on the publisher. All these things that I’m sure you already know.
Tim Ferriss: I also had to learn a lot of these things.
James Nestor: But you have to learn that you’re not just a precious writer writing precious books, and you get to sit in a corner and tell everyone you’re an introvert. You have to take this whole machine by the reins and do it all. That includes hiring people to do things that you shouldn’t have to hire people to do, but that’s the reality. So the longer I’ve stayed in that industry, the more I’ve sort of been able to feel out those areas of deficiencies in publicity or whatever and fill them in.
Tim Ferriss: So I want to read something. This is, to give credit where credit’s due, it’s leadersmag.com, this is from 2022. So this might take a second because it’s a chunky paragraph, but I’m going to read this because I’m hoping for some advice. But we can do that, I think, autobiographically with your experience. So here we go.
“I think of my wife who had to watch me rewrite this book over and over, then watch my deadline slip away by months, then a year. I was bringing in no paychecks during this process, writing this book was a 24/7 job for several years. So now fourth time rewriting, being two years later on delivery of the book. She definitely got nervous When I went to the Paris Catacombs on research and traveled to talk with all these dentists. She kept asking me, ‘This is a book on breathing, right?'” This is like a lot of my friends who are proofreaders of my current 800 page draft. Back to the quote. “I told her, yes, and that it would all make sense in the end. The truth is I had no idea how I was ever going to put the pieces of this puzzle together.”
All right. So I find myself in maybe a similar place. How did you find yourself out of the catacombs and into an actual coherent book?
James Nestor: I worked.
Tim Ferriss: I know you worked.
James Nestor: I would love to say-
Tim Ferriss: How the hell-
James Nestor: I would love to say it’s more complicated than that. I worked until it was done. And some of these projects, as you well know, some of them kind of feel like they slide off. Things find their place, they find their footing. You’re almost out of control of the process. The process takes you over and takes you long for a ride. And it’s a wonderful feeling like, if only every project. And some of these, you cannot find your way out. You cannot see day light for a very, very long time.
And that was this book. So many people were so nervous. I think about my mental state, my physical state, because, hey, I’m talking to dentists. They’re like, “Cool. Why aren’t you talking to a pulmonologist.” I said, “Because dentists know about breathing more than pulmonologists.” And I’m doing all of this crazy stuff that has nothing to do with breathing. And I would call my agent and tell her this. And she kind of trusted me, but also was just like, “We have to hand in this book.” I said, “Okay.” And it was at that time it was 290,000 words, and I had to bake it down to 85,000.
Tim Ferriss: Wait, say that one more time.
James Nestor: It was 290,000 words.
Tim Ferriss: That makes me feel better.
James Nestor: That had to come down to 85,000. The key is where I was gaining real clarity is I did something completely cliched is I got a house in the woods where there was absolutely nothing around. No Starbucks to go to, no store to go to. And I just did that thing. I thought, huh, if I have no distractions around, what will happen? And it turns out that boredom is the most wonderful muse of all. And I was renting the house, and all these problems with it, it was I don’t care. I’m renting it. I’m just here to work.
And it was through the process of thinking about it night and day, just becoming completely absorbed in every thread of the story. It all started, I started to see the matrix after a while and it came together. And as you know, you know when it’s getting there. Once things start locking in, and then you know exactly what your job is. But sometimes that process can take a few months, or even a year for all of those pieces, those Tetris pieces, to find their way to start to make sense.
Tim Ferriss: What were, if you remember, some of the breakthrough moments or key decisions that allowed you to go from the 290,000 words to the 85,000 words. Because you’d have to cut a lot, right? There may have been some very new structural decisions that you would have to make about the overall architecture of the book. What were some of the key moments or decisions that allowed you to ultimately do that?
James Nestor: The key moments were being comfortable enough with the story and being so uncomfortable with how I had told the story that I was able to ask for help from my agent who’s a master editor, veteran in this world, and from my editor at the publisher. I gave them just this complete dog crap. And I said, “The information here I think is really compelling, but there’s no story. There’s nothing to hold onto.” And it was through their-
Tim Ferriss: As our through line, you mean?
James Nestor: Yeah. Not only the main through line, but all these sub threads that sort of need to weave together around that through line. So it feels like you’re reading a book and not a Wikipedia entry of anyone can get information anywhere. What they’re coming to you for for a book is they need to be absorbed in it. I mean, as a journalist, people don’t like to hear this, but you’re in the entertainment industry. If people stop reading your stuff, you have failed. So you have to keep them reading. And you want to include information that’s going to help enrich their lives too. And you do that through stories.
So it was through their intervention and advice that they were able to see something I was not able to see. And once we had that skeleton, and I remember the day it all came together, I was sketching it out, and I said, oh my God, this is finally it. Then fleshing out that skeleton was just almost mechanical work because I already knew the story. And I knew exactly where to-
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you had the blueprint, and then you could-
James Nestor: I had the blueprint.
Tim Ferriss: … lay the bricks.
James Nestor: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: What did the skeleton look like? I know this is very getting into the weeds.
James Nestor: Yeah. So I did this experiment at Stanford, which for 10 days I plugged my nose. So I was a mouth breather for 10 days. And then for 10 days, I was a nasal breather. And we took all these different blood work, we did pulmonary function tests, we did testing three times a day to see how our heart rates were changing, to see CO2 levels, every imaginable thing that we could possibly do. And in my imagination, this was going to be three paragraphs towards the end of the book because I was like, it’s cool, and the results are confirmed everything I had been told, right? And I was able to feel them personally. And it just confirmed across the board everything about the dangers of mouth breathing and benefits of nasal breathing.
So that two paragraph section is my editor and agent, they said, “No, that’s your through line. Tell the first three quarters of this book through those 20 days, and have all of the other stories branching out through that 20…” I said, “But it’s 20 days. I’ve been working on this fricking thing for five years.” They said, “Nope, that’s what it’s going to be.” And so I quickly put it together after a couple of weeks, and I went, wow, that’s it. And we finally had it. And I remember that feeling too of just extreme relief more than anything, but there’s always a way out. I know you’re in the weeds right now, I can sense that you’re just like, what the hell? I can’t figure this. There is always a way out and you’ll find it.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Yeah, your starting point of almost 300,000 words makes me feel a lot better because I think that’s roughly, I might be slightly over that. But yeah, it’s a big, big old honking block of granite that I need to start chipping away on.
I mean, we’ve covered a lot here, I want to touch on perhaps one other piece that I’ve also explored personally, which is now in modern terms, worked with a woman named Leah Lagos, this is quite a few years ago now, but to use particular patterns and cadence of breathing to affect heart rate variability, to improve heart rate variability. And it would seem that using very particular cadences of breathing is not a new thing. And I was hoping maybe you could speak to prayer cross-culturally and breathing practices, and what you’ve observed or found in the literature.
James Nestor: Everything I’ve mentioned today about how to improve breathing through biomechanics, through different breath work patterns, all of this stuff is literally thousands of years old. So we have instruments now to measure how they affect us, but back then they were able to see this in real time by these people practicing these different methods.
So there were some research being done around 22, 23 years ago in Italy where they were looking at different prayers, specifically the Buddhist mantra, om mani padme hum and sa ta na ma, which is a Kundalini chant and the Catholic prayer cycle of the rosary. And they noticed that all of these different prayers required people to exhale at around five to six seconds. And when you’re speaking a prayer, you are exhaling. And then there was this pause where you take this about five to six second inhale, very slowly.
And they looked at what happened to the bodies of all of these subjects and they looked at how heart rate variability went through the roof, how blood pressure decreased, how oxygen increased in the brain, and all of these different systems of the body entered the state of coherence. And they called this breathing pattern coherent breathing after that. You don’t need to pray to breathe this way. All you have to do is inhale five to six seconds and exhale five to six seconds. And if you don’t believe me, if you’re able to track your heart rate variability live, if you have a HeartMath monitor or whatever, you can see this play out in real time within a few seconds of breathing this way. And what you’re seeing and what you’re feeling is your body working at the state it’s designed to work at, at the state of coherence, at the state of peak efficiency.
Tim Ferriss: James, we’ve talked about a lot. I’m tempted to ask you about the new book, but I don’t know if you can divulge anything about it. But if we’re focusing on the breath side of things, is there anything else that you would like to mention? Whether it’s about technique, the book itself, plans for the book, anything at all outside of that too that we haven’t covered?
James Nestor: I think that the main thing, and this is my, I won’t call it my issue with the breath work culture that’s out there, but it’s just something I want to bring awareness to, breath work’s a huge deal right now. There’s retreats, there’s different schools, there’s classes all over the place. There’s breath work fashion, there’s breath work jewels, there’s all that stuff.
But what I think that that culture is doing is a bit of a disservice to everybody else in that it’s complicating and creating a barrier around something that already belongs to everybody. This is what my book was mostly about. It wasn’t breath work. It was about this biological function of breathing. And if you look at 90% of people on the planet right now suffer from some form of breathing dysfunction. The most helpful thing you can do for yourself is just to be a normal breather. You don’t have to go sign up for breath work class. And the breath work classes that I’ve gone to have been amazing. They’re incredible. And then I watch people walk away mouth breathing, or complain about their snoring or sleep apnea. So it’s like going to a culinary school, and just learning how to make desserts and not learning how to make entrees and not learning how to make food that is nutritious for you.
I’m not saying breath works bad. I love it. I try to do it as often as I can. But you have to understand the foundations and the fundamental part of that. And the fundamental part is very basic. It’s very simple, it’s very natural, which is why I think it gets overlooked. People think it’s just too simple to be effective until you do it and until you look at the science. So that would be the one suggestion I would have for people. Before you go into hardcore breath work, get your breathing to a normal place and see the benefits from that.
Tim Ferriss: Sage, sage words. Yeah, I mean it’s true of so many types of workshops, right? People are working on A, B, and C and then they walk out doing the exact opposite. Just get to normal natural breathing. Question related to sleep, because I have to make this, of course, self-interested, as we start to land the plane. But I have been having this last week, for reasons I won’t bore you with, but I’ve been having a hell of a time with sleep. A lot of it’s due to the environment. But besides tape on the mouth, and the things we already talked about, is there anything else that you recommend to people for sleep position, head position, anything at all, doesn’t have to be what I just mentioned. For purposes of improving or regulating sleep?
James Nestor: If you have, I’m sure you have various devices that measure your sleep quality. If you have a device that is able to look at dips in oxygen, then that’s even better. I’d wear as many of those devices as you can. And then I would start experimenting with different little things that you can do around… I would start with assessing your SnoreLab or SnoreClock. They both do the exact same thing. I’d put the phone on the side of your bed and I would record it not for one day, but for a week. And I would start with that to see if you are mouth breathing, to see if you are snoring, to see if you are holding your breath. And then from there, I would slowly adopt nasal breathing through the methods that I mentioned. Start in the daytime, start extremely slowly, and you can try to get MyoTape as well. They make it for adults as well as kids. It’s much more.
Tim Ferriss: M-Y-O-
James Nestor: M-Y-O-T-A-P-E. Again, I have heard so many people, big fans of that. If you have your breathing locked in, you’re not snoring, okay, you’re not mouth breathing, then I would start to look at positions. So what they used to do back in the day is get a t-shirt, and tape a sock or a ping pong ball or something light to the back of that t-shirt. Because so often when you are lying on your back, breathing is more difficult. This is what happened with COVID patients, which is why they started proning them. They started putting them on their stomachs and sides and they were saving so many more people this way.
Tim Ferriss: I didn’t know that.
James Nestor: So the same thing is true with breathing at night when you are on your back, most of the expansion in the lungs when you breathe happens in the back. It’s not the front, it’s the back. So you could be inhibiting that. So try side sleeping and by placing that ping pong ball or sock, taping it on the back of a t-shirt, when you’re unconscious, it will be so uncomfortable that you will go from side to side as you continue to record your sleep with SnoreLab and with all of your wearables.
After that, you can try incline bed therapy, which is where you raise the head of the bed around six inches. That can help a lot of people. And then there’s several other things you can do after that. But I would start there. And for most people, not everybody, for most people, they will see a reduction and sometimes a complete snoring to be completely resolved. And for some people with sleep apnea, they will see significant reductions.
Granted, I will say that sometimes troubled sleep is caused by stress. When you’re waking up and your mind is just racing. Sometimes it’s not so much a physiological thing, sometimes it’s psychological. But if I were you, I would want to get the physiological stuff out of the way first. Check all of those boxes, make sure your breathing is consistent and normal and fluid at night, and then you can dive deeper into it.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing. Thank you. James Nestor, everybody. Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art. Highly recommended. Man, do my friends just… I recall, and still to this day, just the barrages of texts that I get about it, and how within grasp these approaches are for people. Like you said, you don’t have to sign up for a $5,000 breath work seminar. These are very much within reach at low cost or no cost. Where can people find you online? Is there a best place for people to find James Nestor if they want to dive deeper, see what you’re up to?
James Nestor: Yeah. I took a year off of all social media and everything. I just felt like I needed to reboot. I’m crawling back into the morass right now. So I’m on Instagram. Some jerk took James Nestor. So I’m under M-R, James Nestor, Mr. James Nestor. That’s also my website. A lot of the stuff we’re going to be giving out different breathing protocols, different breath work audio tracks, and all that stuff. So if you go to the website, you can sign up and get all these freebies that way.
Tim Ferriss: Beautiful. And we will link to everything in the show notes for folks listening and watching as usual. So all the resources, all the gadgets and adult pacifiers and so on that we mentioned will be at tim.blog/podcast. You can just search Nestor on that page, N-E-S-T-O-R, and you’ll find everything. And to everybody out there, be just a bit kinder than is necessary as always to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Until next time.
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: James Nestor — Breathing Protocols to Reboot Your Health, Fix Your Sleep, and Boost Performance (#829) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-10-01 02:36:31
James Nestor (@MrJamesNestor) is a science journalist and the author of the international bestseller Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, with more than three million copies sold in 44 languages. Breath was named the Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for Science Book of the Year at the Royal Society.
He is also the author of Deep: Free Diving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves and Get High Now (Without Drugs).
Please enjoy!
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2025-09-27 01:23:04
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with David Senra David Senra (@FoundersPodcast), host of the Founders podcast. For the past nine years, David has intensely studied the life and work of hundreds of history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every week he reads another biography and shares lessons on his podcast. David has been invited to lecture at Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, and Notre Dame. Founders is one of the top business podcasts in the world, with hundreds of thousands of founders, investors, and executives listening every week.
His new podcast, David Senra, showcases conversations with the best-of-the-best living founders and extreme winners. Its goal is to share timeless lessons with current and future generations of entrepreneurs and leaders.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.
DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS: Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity. WHAT YOU’RE WELCOME TO DO: You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “The Tim Ferriss Show” and link back to the tim.blog/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above. WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss’ name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from the media room on tim.blog or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.
Tim Ferriss: Who is Brad Jacobs?
David Senra: Brad Jacobs is, I think, the only person in history to start eight separate billion dollar companies. A lot of people on the West Coast, they don’t really know who he is because he’s just been an East Coast guy his whole life, but he started his first company when he was like 23. He’s 68 years old. He’s by far the most energetic person I have ever been around and he wrote this book called How to Make a Few Billion Dollars.
Tim Ferriss: What are some of his companies with? What industries and so on?
David Senra: He’s like the roll-up king. He’d roll up logistics companies and trucking companies and now he’s got a massive one that he just took public that’s doing building supplies. Early in your career you might roll up a $5 million company or a $20 million company. His first acquisition I think was like $9 billion. He just gets progressively bigger and bigger and bigger.
What I find interesting about him is usually when you study extreme winners, and he’s obviously an extreme winner, what motivates them is kind of dark like issues with their father, some kind of insecurity, never felt good enough. They grew up poor and they felt they were born in the wrong place.
Brad does it out of love. He’s got no negativity. He’s just a very special human being and the fact that I get to text him and call him and go to his house is insane. He’s just an amazing human being.
Tim Ferriss: There’s another legend who defeated roulette and then went on to beat the market, Ed Thorp, probably another exception where —
David Senra: The exception.
Tim Ferriss: The exception where he did not eviscerate his personal life in the quest for business mastery.
David Senra: I don’t think anybody’s mastered life clearly as much as Ed Thorp did. Your two interviews that you did with him were incredible.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you. That was such a moment of gratitude to have the chance to interview him, especially because he is so, so sharp at his age. I can’t recall his exact age right now.
David Senra: It’s like 89 or something like that.
Tim Ferriss: If you want a holistic figure to consider emulating, Ed Thorp would be on a very, very, very short list.
David Senra: I can think of three out of 400.
Tim Ferriss: Who are the three?
David Senra: Ed Thorp is at the top. Sol Price who’s the one that invented essentially the warehouse model like Costco, Jim Sinegal was mentored by Sol Price when Jim Sinegal was 18. Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco, built one of the greatest companies in history and he has this great line in Sol Price’s autobiography. Sol Price’s son wrote his biography. People are like, when Sol died, like, “You must have learned a lot from Sol.”
He goes, “No, I didn’t learn a lot. I learned everything. Everything that I know I learned from this guy.” Sol Price, same thing, good husband, good father, didn’t chase after more money at the expense of other areas of his life after he already had enough money. Ed Thorp turned down so much, hundreds of millions, if not billions. He could have collected. He was just like, “I already have more money than I can ever spend. Why would I do that?” Then, I would say Brunello Cucinelli.
Tim Ferriss: How are those examples different? You should explain for folks. I mean, look, everything I’m wearing I got for free. You should explain to people. I did not know the last name you mentioned until a few years ago because I won’t doxx him, but my friend Tony is basically covered in Brunello. Who is this?
David Senra: Brunello Cucinelli wrote this, I don’t even know the name. I read the book. It’s like it’s something about Solomeo. Essentially, he sells $5,000 sweaters. He sells sweaters that were more than my first car, but he grew up in very rural Italy.
Then, everybody at the time, there was just essentially the hollowing out of his community. Everybody had moved to the cities. He is a very soulful dude.
Brunello essentially works. He essentially bounds his life where it’s like you work 9:00 to 5:00. You are not allowed to send an email to the company after 5:00. You have to take a break for lunch and they have this great Italian food.
Then, he spends his nights reading and then going on long walks and then sitting in the cafes in this little town that he essentially rebuilt and reinvested in. He likes having cappuccino and debating philosophy. He’s just like a real soulful dude. Now the one criticism people have is like that business model works when you have 70 percent margins and your sweaters are as much as a Honda Civic, but it was very intentional. I don’t care what people do. It’s very intentional.
Tim Ferriss:Let me come back to this question of clean fuel versus let’s call it dirty fuel and there’s a lot in between. I don’t want to look at it in a totally binary way, but why do you think of the say 400 plus that you can only call to mind three or four, Ed Thorp, Sol Price, Brunello Cucinelli, Brad Jacobs?
Why are there so few who seem driven in that particular, let’s just call it positive way, or that they can pursue business excellence without having a lot of collateral damage in their personal lives? What do you draw from that? Look, maybe these are just different animals and out of the box these four are just fundamentally different from the other 396 or so, but what is your take on that thin slice of the total?
David Senra: I would add another one to the list. You’ve also interviewed him, Michael Dell. Recently, I’ve spent hours and hours with him. We had a five hour dinner and then I just recorded a two and a half hour conversation with him for the new show. He is in love. His is very positive. Now he has a big fear of failure, which almost I think me and you probably share this. I won’t speak for you. I want to ask you actually. I am way more afraid of failure than I love winning.
Tim Ferriss: I mean that’s true for everyone I know who wins a lot. I don’t think I can think of a single exception in terms of someone who celebrates the wins as much as they punish themselves for the losses. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, I’m just saying that’s pattern matching.
David Senra: Even now with all the success that you’ve had, is your inner monologue still negative?
Tim Ferriss: I mean there’s a lot of negative. I’m working on that. I look at some of the, I don’t want to call them maxims, but you’ve quoted the, I think it was the founder of the Four Seasons,
David Senra: Excellence is the capacity to take pain.
Tim Ferriss: Right, and there may be some truth to that, but I feel like it’s very risky for me to take something like that and wear it as a marching order for life because I already tilt in that direction and not all pain is productive. I think for me when you are already tilted in that direction where you believe if there isn’t pain, if there isn’t some degree of suffering, then you’re not trying hard enough. It’s very easy to become a hammer looking for nails and that can have a lot of repercussions for your relationships also.
David Senra: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: If your self-talk is negative, at least in my experience, what I’ve seen in a lot of my friends and peers and founders, very often you end up having a similar type of dialogue with people around you. That can have huge repercussions. That doesn’t give anyone a neat, tidy silver bullet of an answer, but the negative self-talk, there’s a place for it. The nuance to me matters a lot. If it’s like, “You’re a piece of shit. You always do X. Why don’t you do Y,” and that has a good outcome, I would still want to refine the process.
David Senra: I read this biography of Jensen Huang, which is fascinating, because it’s right after one of the best quarters in NVIDIA history. He starts this meeting and he says, “I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said, ‘Why do you suck so much?'”
Tim Ferriss: He’s hardcore.
David Senra: He’s very hardcore.
Tim Ferriss: He’s hardcore. He’s hardcore. I guess what I’d also like to ask you is about not necessarily the people you study, and hopefully you take this as a compliment. It’s intended like a highest compliment.
When people ask me about you they’re like, “So what’s the story? Why do people like this stuff?” I’m like, “Well, I can only really speculate,” but I feel like you are, in a way, what Dan Carlin did with Hardcore History, you do for business. Hardcore History is my favorite podcast of all.
David Senra: I think Dan Carlin’s the greatest podcaster that ever lived. The reason I do a solo history show is because of Dan Carlin. I’ve given away his back catalog. I wish he would change his business model.
Tim Ferriss: It is a bit janky, but if you want to just listen to the greats, I mean the “Wrath of the Khans” —
David Senra: “Blueprint for Armageddon”, “Wrath of the Khans”, I think is the best podcast series ever created, in my opinion. “Blueprint for Armageddon”, just everything, I’ve listened to them. I’ve listened. He only has like 55 episodes. He was doing it for 15 years. I fall asleep at night. Right now last night I fell asleep listening to his new one. It’s not even new. It’s like six months old because he never released any episodes, “Mania for Subjugation Part Two”, about the relationship between Alexander the Great and King Philip.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing.
David Senra: He just puts me to sleep. He is the greatest.
Tim Ferriss: The reason that I mentioned that is I feel like I’ve learned so much from Dan Carlin. I’ve learned so much from your episodes. I’m curious though, as I know another person, you’re a fan of Derek Sivers who I’ve known I think since 2007, amazing entrepreneur. People can look him up. I’ll give the one-liner, which is sort of this philosopher king programmer entrepreneur who started companies, gave the vast majority to a charitable trust to fund musical education.
At one point, he was the ringleader in a traveling circus, played guitar and sang at a pig state fair, and has just crafted the most unusual and Derek life for himself and given his family permission to do the same for themselves. Really a true, original thinker who also shows it in his actions and this is where I’m going. Derek has this line. I may be paraphrasing it slightly, but the gist is “If more information were the answer, we’d all be billionaires with six pack abs.”
What do you see or surmise about people who make the leap from listening to your podcast about all of these icons and people who have not just once you’re lucky, twice you’re good, but in some cases they built $8 billion companies? In that case, I might come back to the acquisition kind of roll-up archetype. The people who make the leap from ingesting information to actually implementing and those who don’t, what’s the missing piece in the middle?
David Senra: The way I think about it, the maxim I’ve made for myself on this is learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. If you didn’t change your behavior, this is just all mental gymnastics for you. You’re just wasting your time. What I’m trying to do, I didn’t even understand what I was doing.
I had to have, as happens in many cases, somebody outside of you seeing what you’re doing actually gives you what this whole thing is about. I have a good friend of mine. His name’s Jeremy Gafan and he’s really quick-witted and he has a way to condense ideas really well. We’re just walking around taking a walk in Miami Beach one day and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s pretty obvious what this whole thing is.” I didn’t even think he was thinking about it. I was like, “What do you mean?”
He’s just like, “Oh, you never had any positive influences. You didn’t have any mentors. If you take somebody like you who’s like psychopathically driven and really has an obsessive personality, that’s what this whole thing is. You’re just reading book after book after book to try to find the path, to try to find the answer, to try to find the way out.” I felt like naked when he said this. I’m like, “I think he’s right. I think he’s right.”
For me, I’m definitely not just reading. I’ve been taking all these ideas. The unfair advantage I have is I have one-sided conversations with history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I sit down and read another biography. Then, because I like to talk, this is good because I have to shut up. I can only listen because this is what I think it is. That’s what I think reading a biography is. It’s like one-sided conversation.
Then, I take that and I would be doing this even if I didn’t record it, but then sitting down once a week and condensing my thoughts and reacting to it turns it to an act of service. Then, I take the ideas. I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” I’ll take that and apply it to my business, which is the podcast. It keeps getting better and better. I’m just like, “Oh, these ideas work so I’ll keep doing this.”
Then, now what has happened is the people that are trying to be great have studied great people that came before them throughout human history.
Caesar was studying Alexander and Steve Jobs was studying Edwin Land and Edwin Land was studying Alexander Graham Bell. If you’re interested in American entrepreneurship, it all kind of goes back to Benjamin Franklin. Everybody looks backwards like, “That guy or that woman was great. How did they do that?” That is an enduring part of human nature that will never change. It’s going to happen while we’re alive. It’s going to happen 1,000 years from now.
What I didn’t understand what I was doing is that you put it out into the world just like your work. It’s like a tuning fork, right? It’s like then the people that are really great also do this and they have a deep love of history. If you look at the people that I’ve been talking to from the new show that’s not even released yet, they came because they’re fans. They’re in the audience and it’s just like the para social relationship people have with podcasts.
I’m close to the people at Spotify. I’ve been to Stockholm twice in the last six months and I was talking to the head of business at Spotify. His name’s Alex and we were talking for two and a half hours like pretty animated. I was like, “I’m not building a media company. I’m building relationships at scale.” He’s like, “What? Say that again?” I go, “What a podcast is is building relationships to scale.”
This is the first time we’ve ever met. Now we should talk about how I found you, but literally I found you on MySpace. I’m going to tell you that.
Tim Ferriss: My God.
David Senra: The reason, and we’ll go to the influence that you played on having Founders, but I know who you are. We could sit down and talk for eight hours because I know you. There’s no possible way I can consume all of your books and, I don’t know, 600 hours of your podcast and not know Tim. You can’t act for that long.
What I didn’t understand is like this other path of me trying to find good information, valuable information. I came from a family. Everybody’s like, “Oh, I’m the first to graduate college.” That’s nice. No one even graduated high school in my family. There’s no reading. There’s no self-improvement. The only thing my family read is the Bible and that can be taken to a crazy extreme.
Tim Ferriss: You also didn’t go to prison.
David Senra: Exactly. My grandfather, I shouldn’t even say this publicly anymore. You have a big podcast. I would say stuff on small podcasts and forget that things get bigger later on. I say crazy stuff that I should not be saying, but whatever. We’re too late now. My grandfather, my father, my brother, I remember being in high school and hearing “bang.” Five guys at 5:30 in the morning come and grab my brother and I don’t see him for a few years.
That’s a fact. My point being is then I’m like, “Oh, wait.” I put this podcast out. Then, it attracts the same people that are in the books and then the fact that I could spend five hours with Michael Dell and he tweets about the podcast and he LinkedIns about it and just giving me phenomenal advice. Then, obviously we record our conversation, but before that they just want to help you because they got value from that.
Tim Ferriss: Let me pause you for one second just because I want to go back to the note-taking and then converting that into some type of action. You’ve done that. You’re hitting, and you’ve had a number of these, but inflection points where now you can sit down with some of these icons and have these extended conversations. Even if you did not have that direct access, maybe your process with the note-taking wouldn’t change.
I’m just curious how you read one biography or multiple biographies on a person and what the actual note-taking process looks like. I’ll volunteer what I do a lot. I use Kindle not for the convenience of the device, although that is convenient, not because I can listen on Audible or actually do it through the Kindle app and then stop and highlight things, which is also why I use it.
The highlighting overall is the reason and then exporting or using something like Readwise in addition to synthesizing my highlights. I believe you also use Readwise quite a bit. I’m not sure if you still use it, but what does your process look like? I know, for instance, like Maria Popova who’s this voluminous, prodigious, genius of a writer, it used to be Brain Pickings. It’s The Marginalian now. She has a very particular process for synthesizing and putting everything together. How do you do that?
David Senra: I actually think I’m going to sit down and make an episode about how I make these because I think it’s actually an older idea here that I just went through when I reread James Dyson’s autobiography. Both of them actually, but the first autobiography I’ve read like five times. The second one, I think this is the second or third time I read it. One of the genius things that he did when no one knew who he was, Dyson wasn’t a thing.
Now it’s one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world. You walk into a retail store. He had one product in one market at the time and you say, “I’m going to buy a vacuum cleaner.” Five of them kind of look the same and then you have this alien-looking thing at the end. Then, what he said, he’s like, “Hey, what is the advantage I have? I’m going against all these huge multinational conglomerates and I’m just some bloke that cares about vacuum cleaners in this remote part of England.”
He convinced all the retailers to let him write a story on a little leaflet and they would hang it on the handle of the Dyson. It tells a story. It’s in 200 or 300 words of who made it, why they made it, why they love it so much, and why you should buy it. People buy stories. That’s what I was saying. It’s like that’s not the first time I came across that idea. You go back to the early 1900s and there’s this guy named Claude Hopkins. I am always interested. You are —
Tim Ferriss: I read —
David Senra: Scientific Advertising?
Tim Ferriss: Yes, in the very beginning.
David Senra: I’m always interested in who influences the influencers, right? Let me give you an example.
Tim Ferriss: God, I haven’t thought of that name in so many years.
David Senra: I have so much shit on this guy.
Tim Ferriss: Claude Hopkins.
David Senra: I became obsessed. We were talking before we recorded that we both really, I won’t speak for you, love and admire, and mine is borderline idolize, Charlie Munger. If I can only learn from one person for the rest of my life, if you could say, “Hey, you can only read this guy’s words. Pick one person,” I’m picking Munger. I just love everything about him and the idea that I got to meet him is insane, absolutely insane.
When I’m reading about Munger and Buffett I’m like, “Man, these guys are really genius.” I didn’t know anything at this time. It’s like 10 years ago and I’m like, “These guys are genius.” Then, they kept mentioning this guy named Henry Singleton over and over again and they will tell you. If you admire somebody, what I think is hugely important, go. They will tell you who influenced them and then you have to go and read about these people. Then, you’ll find who influenced them and you realize that the ideas didn’t start with them.
They don’t start with us. They can’t die with us either. You have to push them forward down the generations. I’m like, “Oh, this guy’s interesting. Charlie Munger said that the smartest person he ever met was Henry Singleton. He’s best friends with Buffett. Buffett’s obviously, how did he say that?” Then, Buffett says that it’s a crime that business schools don’t study Singleton. That’s hell of language. That’s —
Tim Ferriss: Strong language.
David Senra: Strong language, and then you start reading. I’m like, “Oh, my God, the ideas that I thought were Buffett and Munger’s were Singleton’s.” You see this over and over again. I was obsessed. Another guy that Buffett introduced me to was David Ogilvy. David Ogilvy I think is one of the best writers I’ve ever come across and Buffett keeps mentioning this to shareholders. He’s like, “This genius named David Ogilvy.” Why is Buffett calling this guy a genius? Who is this guy?
Tim Ferriss: I read Ogilvy’s stuff at the same time that I read Hopkins.
David Senra: If you read Ogilvy, what does he talk about? He’s like, “That’s the genius. I’m not the genius. I’m just regurgitating Claude Hopkins’s work.” Then, he tells the story of Albert Lasker who made more money. There’s all these, let’s call them a dozen great advertising agency founders, the Mad Men era. The one that made the most money was this guy named Albert Lasker and he had the simplest business, no art department, no research department.
He had Claude Hopkins writing copy and his words rang the cash register. If you can bring more customers to businesses, they will pay you a lot of money and it turns out Claude Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising. He would try to publish it. It was essentially the secrets of Lasker and Lasker hid it in a safe for 20 years.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll get that right over to the agent. Stick that in the safe.
David Senra: If you read this, he’s like, “Hey, it may be boring to you.” He uses an example of Schlitz Beer, right? They were fifth in the market share and they hire Hopkins. They’re like, “We want to sell more beer.” He’s like, “Okay.” He does the same thing he does. He does a lot of research and he goes and he tours their distillery. He’s blown away by like that we triple distill the water and I don’t know how beer is made. I don’t even drink that much, but he explains the entire process. Claude’s like, “This is amazing. Why don’t you guys talk about this?”
He goes, “Because our process isn’t different than any other distillery.” He goes, “Yeah, but no one’s telling that story.” He writes these huge, essentially 1,500 words, 2,000 words of this is how the beer that you’re about to drink is made and goes from fifth to first because people buy stories. To answer your question, I think what I should do is sit down. Maybe I’ll just clip this and be like, “Okay, this is how I make the podcast or how I consume information.” I think me and you share a love of the writing of Cormac McCarthy.
Tim Ferriss: Sure, my God.
David Senra: He said —
Tim Ferriss: Beautiful and brutal in equal measure.
David Senra: Yes, he said something that’s fascinating where he —
Tim Ferriss: The Road, Blood Meridian, I mean there are many other examples.
David Senra: All The Pretty Horses, The Border Trilogy, just everything the guy just read everything. He’s just incredible. The Road, No Country for Old Men. I saw the movie before I saw the book. It’s crazy how they barely had to change any words. It’s like he wrote a script, so he said something that was fascinating, that subconscious is older than language. And they’re like, “How’d you write Blood Meridian?” He goes, “I didn’t.” He’s like, “I sat there and it came all from my subconscious. I eliminated anything that got in the way of it.” Right?
Tim Ferriss: And you must have a busy therapist.
David Senra: I couldn’t imagine within that guy’s head to write that book. The Judge. The Judge is the craziest —
Tim Ferriss: Really dark. So dark. Anyway.
David Senra: So anyways, so I am all intuition, all feeling. So basically what I do is I sit down with a book and usually, I do this physically and it’s like I’m doing arts and crafts over here. I sit down with a physical book because that’s how I fell in love with reading. I don’t have memories before I had love of reading and I think one of the best things that ever happened to me is the fact that I don’t know why reading grabbed a hold of me since I was four or five years old. So my mom was dying of breast cancer. What I said about the only thing they read is the Bible that you could take that to an extreme because she tried for two years. She tried to pray her cancer away.
And by that time, by the time we convinced her to see an oncologist, the word he used was the horses out of the barn. And this is the most grueling way to die when it spreads to your bones. It’s just like that happens. I’m calling you to put a pillow over my face. I’m just not going through that. It was just a terrible thing to see. But one of the thing she said, she’s like, you’ve just been like this forever. You were a kid and you’d read the back of cereal boxes. I’d walk in every single room. I did this when I come in here and just automatically read everything that’s on the walls. So I have no idea where this came from. I didn’t choose the passion of reading. It chose me. And all of it is intuition. I sit down with a physical book, that’s how I fell in love with reading. I sit down with pen.
Tim Ferriss: Your mom would bring you to the bookstore, right?
David Senra: Yes. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: They won’t kick you out for reading.
David Senra: Yeah, exactly. And the library. And then I remember the first time it was like this maybe before I even knew words because I was obsessed with Where’s Waldo. So it was my first memory. So you’re not reading anything, you’re just finding the guy with the striped shirt or a striped sweater. So basically I sit down with a book, physical book, pen, six-inch ruler, Post-it notes, and scissors. And I just read and I don’t think, and if something jumps out to me, I highlight it, and then whatever pops to my mind. And normally as our mutual friends like Patrick, Chris, Rick, they’ll all see this. It’s just like I’m not actually listening to what you’re saying. There’s an idea behind it.
Tim Ferriss: Meaning you’re not taking what the author says literally. You’re looking at the idea behind —
David Senra: I’m just looking for the essence. So if me and Rick are talking about a giant deal that he wants to invest in, I’m thinking about how that’s similar to how Fred Smith built FedEx or how Jim Casey built UPS or how Buffett thought about buying See’s Candy.
Tim Ferriss: So what do you do with the Post-it notes and the scissors and the ruler?
David Senra: So basically, I underline that sentence and then whatever popped in my mind and I’m like, oh, this is kind of like James J. Hill when he was building the only profitable successful American railroad and you just write down whatever comes to mind.
Tim Ferriss: On the Post-it?
David Senra: On the Post-it.
Tim Ferriss: And that goes on the page.
David Senra: It goes on the page.
David Senra: So then I’m writing it down and then I might have three sentences, but the Post-it note’s three by five, so I have to cut it. It has to be clean, it has to look good. There’s a beauty to it. I am irrational, crazy when it comes to this stuff. This is why I think I picked up on your work right away. I see a fellow nutcase and obsessive we’re like, I hand edit, now, my transcripts. So everybody’s like, “You should outsource it to AI. You should outsource it to India.” No, I have to touch it. I have to feel it. I just love it. I’m not doing it to do it quicker. I like what Jerry Seinfeld says. “The hard way is the right way.” I like the hard way. This also goes back to obviously have some kind of dark thing driving me, which we can dive into if you want. So then you go through the entire book and so then I have to take pictures of it into the Readwise app because you do it the smarter way. Kindle will just automatically go to Readwise.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I still use physical. I’ll explain. I can trade. I’ll tell you how I use physical.
David Senra: You want to go do it now, or you want —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, sure. Well, okay, so don’t lose your place.
David Senra: I won’t.
Tim Ferriss: All right, you got the scissors. I want to know about the ruler. Oh, I guess the ruler.
David Senra: Straight lines. It has to be straight. It has to be beautiful.
Tim Ferriss: So we both have pretty moderate to severe OCD. I remember when I was diagnosed by the psychiatrist who was doing some preliminary formality of taking me through these assessments before I was going to have this experimental brain stimulation, “Send me experimental.” And he had to check the boxes and went through these hours and hours of stuff and he’s like, “Why don’t you to take a seat? If we need to take a break, I understand.” And he gave me this OCD diagnosis. I’m like, “Yeah, what else is new? Keep going.”
David Senra: “I knew this about myself.”
Tim Ferriss: “Yeah, I don’t need time.” The way I use physical, and I do use physical still quite a bit, is I will, and this is another question that maybe you can answer when you pick back up is how a second or third reading differs from the first. Because when I read it the first time, I’m doing something very similar to you. I’m underlining things or if that’s just too much work, the book is actually a gem and it has a lot. Then I will just bracket it on the side of the paragraph so that I know what the highlight is. Then I will go through, if I read it a second time, and I will put T2 in a circle next to the things that still stuck out on a second reading. Now sometimes you’re just a different person if you read it five years later and your lived experience and your position is life is different.
But if I’m doing it in somewhat rapid succession, I want to see what sticks on a second or third reading. So you’ll see T2, T3, etc. Sometimes, it’s just fun to see how I change over time with The Moral Letters to Lucilius by Seneca the Younger — people can find it in all sorts of compendiums. I put out a free PDF called The Tao of Seneca. I like to just see where I am at different points in my life, what resonates. And then, typically with any physical book I’m creating, I just did this with a book I finished yesterday called Deep Tech by Pablos Holman where I’m creating an index in the front. So whenever there’s a page that really, really sticks out, I’ll write down like 168, whatever it might be. Someone I want to look up, someone like a Claude Hopkins, whose name gets dropped and I’m like, that seems important.
All right. And so I have this index and then I’ll take a photograph of the index just in case I lose the book, which has happened. And that’s always painful. I also will have, I’ll make a little box on the bottom right-hand corner of some of the front matter pages and I’ll put next steps there.
David Senra: Wait, what’s the front matter?
Tim Ferriss: So the front matter would be the copyright page, the title page, the pages that don’t really have any content on them. Maybe there’s the dedication page like ‘To Mom’, it’s like, okay, that’s a blank page that I can use. So on the bottom right-hand corner, just two lines that create sort a box, I’ll write down next steps. So for every book, not every book, in some cases if it’s just for pleasure and it’s fiction, but even then sometimes ideas will pop into mind. I’ll be like, okay, what is at least one kind of next step? Maybe it’s looking up someone like Claude Hopkins. Maybe it’s an action, maybe it’s a phone call, maybe it’s an email.
But along the lines of David Allen and Getting Things Done, it’s like one physical next action. And so I almost always have that in nonfiction books. So that’s photos. I take photos of all that. I used to put it all into Evernote. I still sometimes do that because I’ve been using it forever and I have thousands of them. But you’re the last Evernote standing. I might be, yeah, I use scannable to get it into Evernote, but the point is I have a way to then OCR it so I can search it. All right, back to —
David Senra: So that’s basically what I have to do now, which takes an unbelievable amount of time. But again, then now, so I’ve already read it one time. Now I have to input it into Readwise, right? So you take a picture of it and it’s laborious and now I’ve read it for the second or maybe a third time. Then you see on page and then you have to make sure that it matches up between the page and what’s on your screen. And so you’re reading it over and over again. So then I get it all into Readwise, then I will go back —
Tim Ferriss: Do you want to take a sidebar just to explain what Readwise is?
David Senra: Readwise is essentially just a way to keep track of your notes and highlights from everything you read. And now they’re expanding out because it turns out the total just on the market for people that want to keep highlights and notes, first of all, how many people are reading books now? That number is dwindling unfortunately. And then of that subset of smaller and dwindling people, how many read as much as you and I do? And then they want to actually research essentially giant, searchable database of everything you’ve ever read. It’s super valuable and they charge like $99 a year for it.
So now basically they were running this for six years. They have a new web reader app and they said they made more money in six months from that than they didn’t Readwise for six years. This is obviously not a lot of people that want to do this. The thing that we’re describing doing. So then I used to read the physical book because actually let’s back up and I want to tell you the role that you played. And don’t let me forget where I’m at though.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I won’t.
David Senra: So I went to a shitty college because I remember when I was in your senior year, I went to public high school and everybody’s like, “Where are you going to school?” And I didn’t understand what they meant. I’m like, “The one I can drive to, the one I can go to at night because I have to work during the day. I don’t know where you’re talking about.” I didn’t know. I got kicked out of my house when I was 18 and I had to live in student housing.
Tim Ferriss: Why did you get kicked out?
David Senra: My mom’s side of the family has severe mental illness and just some of the worst people you’ve ever met. And they just had this belief that you kick your kids out when you’re 18, it’s just like —
Tim Ferriss: Out of the nest.
David Senra: It is not even that. It’s like they pick a fake fight and you have somebody that’s very, I’m not, that was the point of contention between my mom is she had undiagnosed mental illness for sure, maybe not schizophrenic, definitely bipolar. Her sister was schizophrenic. And listen man, as you get older, at the time I had a lot of anger, super, a lot of anger, didn’t understand why they’re doing what you’re doing and then you get older and then you have your own kids. So I went through this crazy thing where I think I hated them even more because when my daughter was born, I’m like, I remember seeing her for the first time. I was like, you think you love a woman? No. Enzo Ferrari has this great line that “It’s impossible for a man to love a woman. The only true love he has is for his kids.”
And I understand what he meant. I think Ryan Reynolds said it best where it’s like “I never thought I’d love anybody as much as I love Blake Lively. And then she gave birth to our daughter and as soon as I looked at her daughter, I knew if we were ever under attack, I would use Blake as a human shield to protect that baby.” It’s funny, but it’s literally when I heard him say that, I go, “Yes.”
Tim Ferriss: Right.
David Senra: That’s it.
Tim Ferriss: So that makes the memory all the more painful.
David Senra: Then I was like, how did you do this to your children?
And then you get — there’s another — you get more experience and then you’re like, yes, but imagine you grew up like they did, poor white trash. My grandfather raped all his daughters, including my mothers. Raped all of his daughters, raped his gr — I didn’t know about this until after he died or else I would’ve been the one to put them in his grave, raped his daughters, raped his granddaughters. They lived in this shitty house in Indiana with one bathroom that was in — there was two-bedroom, she had three sisters. The only bathroom is in my gr — I call them grandparents. I hate them with all of my being in their room. And so if you wanted to go in the bedroom at night, he was a monster. They would urinate in cups and pour it out the window.
So again, it doesn’t excuse the bad decisions that they made and the unhappy marriage my parents had and all this other crap. It was just like, “All right, imagine that. Imagine that. You destroyed your kids. That person was supposed to protect them and I can’t even talk about this.” So anyways, we would fight a lot and she’d be alternate depending on the day, she’d be the kindest person in the world or a storm. And so the unfortunate part was when she got diagnosed with cancer, we hadn’t spoken for six months, so she only survived another, I think, two years. So that means the last two and a half years I missed — what? That’s 20 percent, 25 percent of her life. And somebody’s like, “What were you guys fighting over?” I was like, “The sad thing is I don’t remember.”
But I was not one to let, I was very hardheaded. And so she had some weird fight with me. I don’t remember what it was. And then she was like, “You’re not allowed to live here.” Kicked me out, I didn’t have anything.
So anyways, I went to, I lived in student housing and that was the first time — they randomly assign you a roommate and it was like the son of a rich rancher because our fridge was full of all this meat stuff, which is bad because it was the summer where Florida got hit by four hurricanes and all the meat went rotting.
Tim Ferriss: Spoiled.
David Senra: Oh, yes, it was disgusting, but I didn’t know that there were people legitimately, this makes me sound like an absolute moron, but I didn’t know that there were people that only went to college because my roommate didn’t have a job. He just drank and went to — I’m like, “What else do you do?” He was like, “What?”
This is crazy. So I don’t know where I was going with that.
Tim Ferriss: You were taking a pause on Readwise and multiple reads and you’re like, “I’ve got to tell you how I found you.”
David Senra: Oh, okay. So again, I’m in a crappy school. It’s a state school in Orlando, UCF. I almost said UFC where it’s MMA. That would’ve been probably more useful now. So UCF, and this is when Facebook was coming out, but Facebook was only at the fancy schools.
Tim Ferriss: Yes, right. It was very much at the fancy schools.
David Senra: We didn’t have Facebook, we had MySpace. And so remember you’d go and there would be music playing on somebody’s profile? Well, people would, they would list their favorite movies and favorite books. And I think I was looking at a girl’s — probably — profile. And under favorite books, it said 4-Hour Workweek. I’m like, that’s a great title, what is that? And I immediately order it on Amazon and then I start reading it, obviously. Then that book inspired, I don’t know, 25 million people, maybe even more, but now and then I start consuming all your stuff. So I’d buy all your books. I bought your TV show.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I appreciate that.
David Senra: Sometimes I’ll forget because you go on like — whatever, it’s not called iTunes anymore. And I don’t buy anything because everything streams. I’m like Tim Ferriss, [inaudible].
Tim Ferriss: I know from the Natural History Museum back in the day.
David Senra: So I was obsessed with podcasts, I discovered in 2010, and before I started mine in 2016, I listened to thousands of them. And you had one that changed my life, which was when you did Jocko. And that was 2015 if I remember correctly.
And you told him to start a podcast and I think Rogan told him to do it as well. And he’s like, well, if I got these two guys, obviously he’s smart. Just take the advice. And I started listening to his podcast and he changed format. But in the beginning it was just him doing, he would read a first-person account, so an autobiography of somebody in combat and I could not believe what I was hearing. And so what I would do is I’d listen maybe a hundred of the books or I listen to a hundred of his episodes and maybe buy a dozen of the books.
So you learn, even on the episodes, you don’t read the book, you learn so much and you’re inspired. And in the books, he kept introducing me all kinds of crazy stories and I was like, Hey. A couple months later then obviously I had started reading biographies because your friend Kevin Rose did this excellent interview with Elon Musk, we can talk about from 2012. And I was like, what if I do Jocko’s format, but I’m interested in four things. I’m interested in reading, history, podcasts, and entrepreneurship. And so if you look at it’s like it just sits in between those four. And I started doing that and essentially I was just imitating Jocko and no one gave a shit for five and a half years.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. Wow. What a wild story. So I want to dive into that. The interview with Jocko, I owe special thanks to, I think it was Peter Attia —
David Senra: He was.
Tim Ferriss: Who made the introduction.
David Senra: He said, just trust me on this.
Tim Ferriss: And —
David Senra: Then didn’t he just show up at your house or something?
Tim Ferriss: Yes, we hung out in San Francisco. I remember exactly which coffee shop we went to. And I made the mistake. I wasn’t even thinking properly. I had a camo shirt on and I was like, I can’t believe I wore a fucking camo shirt to meet someone as legitimate as Jocko Willink. And I was just like, oh, facepalm. But we ended up connecting. That was his first ever public interview, which is wild.
David Senra: One of the best ones ever done.
Tim Ferriss: Oh. I mean he really brought the heat as Jocko —
David Senra: He’s my alarm every morning. He’s like, “Get up.” I swear to God, I’m not joking. He’s been my alarm for half a decade. He yells at me. I’m like, “You’re right.”
Tim Ferriss: Yes, Extreme Ownership still highly, highly, highly recommend to everyone. And if you want to hear me and Jocko go toe to toe, not really toe to toe, we’re sort of shoulder to shoulder with a book we did Musashi.
David Senra: Episode 100.
Tim Ferriss: Episode 100, which was like four and a half, five hours long going through this historical novel about the most famous swordsman in Japanese history.
David Senra: I read that because of that episode.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, so good.
David Senra: I think I read the audiobook first. It’s 60 hours long or something.
Tim Ferriss: It’s really long. And keeping in mind, this was originally published in Japanese in a country of whatever the population is like 120, 150 million. I think it sold 80 to a hundred million copies. I mean something just completely insane. And who knows, I might be getting that off, but the numbers are just astonishing as a ratio of the total population.
So five and a half years, how do you explain no one giving a shit for five and a half years? In other words, was there something that happened, a decision you made, something that changed things around the five and a half year mark? Was it a change in technology?
David Senra: Oh, change in business model.
Tim Ferriss: What happened? Yes.
David Senra: Literally I was doing nothing different, changing business model. So you remember podcasting back in there, because you were one of the OGs and you had this massive audience. Your blog was crazy. You were huge and still are.
And I was none of those things. I was a weird introvert. I didn’t have any social media, I didn’t know anything about the internet. I don’t know how to describe. I just would like to read and record a podcast in my kitchen on a hundred-dollar microphone. And I remember calling around and trying to figure out what’s the business model here? And everybody was like, “Oh, it’s ads.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s great.” And so at the time there was these ad networks, essentially they just sell ads for you and they’re like, we’d love to work with you, you just have to have 50,000 downloads per show. And I go, “What? I will never! 50,000?” It seemed like such a big number. “That will never ever happen.”
Tim Ferriss: In the universe of podcasts, it’s still a big number.
David Senra: Yes, but now there’s a million. Think about how many people listen to The Tim Ferriss Show and there’s millions and millions and millions of people over the course of a year or whatever. So I was like, “Oh, my God, that’s never going to happen.” And so then you’d say, “Okay, well, what can you do?” And back then it’d be affiliate. So remember, Audible scaled massively. People don’t realize how big businesses can get on the back of podcasts, and how many have. Audible was, it was on every — Dan Carlin had one ad and it was an Audible ad.
Tim Ferriss: It was Audible.
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: They were very smart about that.
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. They’ve been able to change a lot of their economics —
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: For the better, for Audible and Amazon since capturing more market share. But they did an excellent job of marketing and advertising.
David Senra: They were on every single podcast. And so I did that. And then there was this company called Blinkist, which was a —
Tim Ferriss: Summaries?
David Senra: Summary, 10-minute summary app for business books, non-fiction books. And that blew my mind because so you only got paid on sales and they would show you not the people, but where the country was. And I remember the first time somebody in Japan bought, I’m like, I’m sitting in Miami in my kitchen, “Great acoustics, by the way, you idiot.” On a hundred-dollar mic with no pop filter, no nothing. There was nothing out there, there was no — editing a podcast now with the script and all the AI tools, it’s like magic compared to what we had to do back then. And I was like, what? Somebody in Japan listened to this thing? This was crazy.
So the one idea I had, there is this, I actually got the business model from a socialist podcast.
Tim Ferriss: Might’ve been the beginning of the troubles.
David Senra: So there was this, for a long time when I opened a browser, my homepage would be this thing called Graphtreon. Graphtreon is essentially they use the Patreon API and you see people building membership communities. And what was interesting about them is people sell comic books, they would sell podcasts, they would sell newsletters, videos, and the most popular category was podcasts. I’m like, that’s weird. And so at the time, this podcast called Chapo Trap House was the number one and they had 25,000 people.
Tim Ferriss: Thing is on Patreon.
David Senra: Yes. And the only way you see this is because Graphtreon would aggregate the data for you and present it to you. And so, at the time, I think they had 20,000 paid subscribers, at least $5 a month.
And their business model is simple. Every other podcast you have to pay for, so you can listen to half them for free. If you want more, just pay five bucks a month and you can listen to it in a podcast player. Like anything else, you just have to go through the paywall. And every month I’m watching and the number gets higher and higher and higher. Now if you pull up Graphtreon, I think the number one is Shane Gillis, I think he’s got 120,000 paid subscribers. So I was like, oh, there’s like a business here with what if I had a subscription podcast? So it’s one thing to pay five bucks a month for a comedy podcast, but my podcasts are about business. If there’s ideas on this podcast that will make people more money, which is essentially what business education comes down to, you want to be more successful at what you do, there’s some kind of, hopefully you see a better economic outcome for yourself and your family.
I was like, what if I could just sell subscriptions? Because I’m not selling enough Audible subscriptions and Blinkist, that’s not going to happen. And my idea was, I think I was completely in love with podcasting and still am. It’s the only thing I think about. I work on seven days a week. It’s completely taken over my life. And my idea was I don’t even have to be wealthy, I just have to do this for a living. It has to come out of me. It’s like I had no control over this.
And I was like, maybe I can make dentist money. So my idea was like, I bet you I can sell 3,000 paid subscriptions at a hundred dollars a pop, make 300 grand a year. And then I also have a lot of self-confidence like, well, if I could sell 3,000, I could sell 20,000, and then maybe I can sell as many as Chapo can and then I’m making two million. This is the idea I had. And so my idea was the genius idea I had was like, “Hey, your most valuable asset you have, which is your podcasts, they are easy to share and everything else, let’s put a big wall in front of that.”
And so I put a giant paywall in front of it and obviously it slows growth because how are you going to share the episode? And the one benefit I had, which really kept me going, and I don’t think I would’ve quit anyways, I really don’t think I had any other option, but was that we don’t know who’s going to listen to this one. We just see numbers on the screen.
But with a subscription, you see the email address and the emails were the top founders and top VCs and I had a very small audience and one of them was our mutual friend, Patrick O’Shaughnessy. And I was a huge fan of Patrick. And I saw, I’m not going to repeat his email address here, but I know what the, I was like, I saw that come across and there were so few, I saw every single one. You’re getting like 10 a day, I don’t know, five a day or something like that paid. And I’m like, oh, my God, Patrick bought one.
He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know I was a big fan of his, didn’t know anything. I had no followers. I think I had 7,000 followers across all, every one of my accounts. And I was trying really hard back then. And he goes, “I never find good podcasts to listen to. I think David Senra’s Founders podcast is excellent. You should listen to it.”
And he linked to that one and Estée Lauder and I could not believe it. Because I was like, why do I have these mentions on Twitter? What is a mention? I don’t get mentions. What is this new thing? And then I log into my email and it’s just because back then you would get an email every time you get a new pay subscription and off of one tweet of an endorsement by people. This is why you and Andrew are kind of like the male Oprah. And I mean that in the — you know how much shit I’ve bought because you told me that it’s good. Why? Because of the trust that, people chase numbers. It’s like that. You’re not chasing numbers, you’re chasing trust and relationships. I love what Warren Buffett said: “A brand is a promise.”
The fact that you guys have such high standards, I’ve never bought anything like what the hell was Tim thinking? And so that’s what makes you so valuable. So Patrick extended that trust to me where I logged into my email and you couldn’t stop scrolling. You couldn’t stop scrolling. And so I screenshotted that because —
Tim Ferriss: Patrick’s a good dude. Very smart too. Invest Like the Best.
David Senra: Yes. You did an excellent episode with him for when you hit your 10-year anniversary.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yes. 10 years.
David Senra: And then I was a huge NBA fan and the person that found me, that’s been really, really helpful. When I had 1,500 listeners, guy named Sam Hinkie, former general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, very, very intelligent, intense, and kind of reclusive guy. Now he’s really hard to get to. And we had talked a bunch and he’s just like, “I really think you have something here. I think you’re — what you’re doing is important and I’ve tried to help you as much as I can.” And I knew him and Patrick were friends, and I screenshotted Patrick’s tweet. I was like, “Look what your friend Patrick did.” Sam didn’t say anything. He just put it, and again, Patrick trusts Sam and Sam’s telling Patrick, “This guy’s worth your time.” He put us in group chat. He goes, “You two need to know each other.”
And I was like, “Patrick, I’m a huge fan. Love to talk to you.” And Patrick doesn’t have a calendar. So he’s like, “What about right now?” And I was like, “Well, let me look at my calendar.” Nothing. Nothing. Literally nothing. I was like, “Yes.” We talked for the first, first time we talked was an hour and a half. And we get to the end, he goes, “I thought I was in the podcast.” And then we become friends. And then I joined his network and then he just poured gasoline on a promising spark.
Tim Ferriss: Was he the one who convinced you to remove the wall? Or how did you end up —
David Senra: No. So a friend of mine, again, this is the sad part about becoming, getting more following is so many of my close friends now came from DMs. And now you can’t do that. You can’t even look at mentions.
Tim Ferriss: Yes.
David Senra: I’d be curious.
Tim Ferriss: Doesn’t work.
David Senra: Yes, it’s it kind of rule. It’s such a magical thing. And now because,
Tim Ferriss: Yes, well once verified could be purchased, it destroyed the utility of meeting those people on.
David Senra: It’s like what Charlie Munger said, if you have a bunch of raisins in just a few turds, you still got turds and you could have 99 percent of the people are nice to you. And then it’s these psychos and you’re like, I can’t read my mentions anymore. Can’t check my DMs. It’s sad.
But one of, I met a couple friends through them and again, I was grinding out hundred-dollar-year subscriptions, just like going to the factory every day trying to sell a few more. And one of my friends told me what one of his friends’ company just paid to advertise on one of the biggest business podcasts. And the number was like, what, what did you just say? And then Sam and other people like Patrick, they’re just like, “This is weird thing that you’re doing. Why don’t you just sell ads like everybody else?”
And I was like, “Look at China. They’re 90 percent subscription to your podcast.”
Like, “Yeah, but you’re American, you idiot.”
And so I came up with all these crazy, because I can be very convincing in the opposite direction. It doesn’t have to be a good idea, I can talk myself into good ideas, but I can talk myself into bad ideas too.
And so eventually I called Patrick one day and I was just like, “Man, I am fighting with one hand behind my back. This is really, really difficult. I think I’m going to make an ad based version of Founders.”
He’s like, “Yeah, no shit. I’ve been telling you to do this forever.”
And then I was like, “And I’d like it to be on your network.”
And he’s like, “Ooh, that’s interesting.” And again, he’s just a good dude, and he’s like, “Yeah, but I own all podcasts on my network. Will you sell me equity?”
And I don’t know why I said this, and I was like, “No.”
It was crazy, and I’d had all these acquisition investment offers up until that point, because obviously everybody in the audience likes to do deals, so they like trying to allocate capital.
Tim Ferriss: That’s their sport.
David Senra: Yeah, and I was like, “No, no, no.” It wasn’t a business thing to me, it’s like a special thing. It’s like part of my soul.
Michael Dell has this great answer when he was fighting with Carl Icahn when, and they’re like, “Why don’t you just start another company?”
And he’s like, “I like this company. First of all, it has my name on it,” and he goes, “I’m going to care about this company after I’m dead.”
So that’s how I feel, it’s a rational love that I have for this. And so I was like, “I don’t want to sell equity, but.”
He’s like, “What do you want?”
I was like, “I want you to help amplify my audience and connect me with first-rate advertisers. Then we could just share ad revenue.”
And one call he’s like, “Done.” That completely changed everything. That was four years ago.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. Thank God for Patrick, huh?
David Senra: Oh, for sure. I talk to him almost every day. We’re like brothers, I called him this morning.
Tim Ferriss: He’s a great guy. He’s a very, very good guy.
Tim Ferriss: Well, let’s just, actually, I’m going to zoom into your expertise, subject matter for a second, and then I want to talk more about podcasting, but just so it doesn’t become too much inside baseball, I do want to come back and talk about podcasting. But you have mentioned a number of different names at the top of your list, people to learn from. Where does Edwin Land fit into that, and who is Edwin Land?
David Senra: Edwin Land is the patron saint of Founders. I want a picture of him in my house like The Last Supper, it would just be Edwin Land in the middle like Jesus. Again, I’m very interested in who influences the influencers, and where do these ideas actually come from? And Steve Jobs, if you have a Mount Rushmore of greatest entrepreneurs, his face has got to be on it, undoubtedly. He created the most successful product in history. I think he did it for the right reasons. I think he’s a very fascinating person, obviously incredibly flawed as a human, which he even said. But what’s fascinating is if you go back, and which I do, is when I read a biography of somebody, I will make a list going back to your outline of what I’ll do in the front of the books, which you called, what’s?
Tim Ferriss: Front matter.
David Senra: Front matter. I didn’t even know that term till now, thank you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: I will write down all the other founders or all the other people they’ll talk about. And so I just did this with James Dyson. He’s obsessed with Buckminster Fuller and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Jeremy Fry and Alec Issigonis, and all these people. He just repeats them over and over again and you just realize, oh, he studied these guys and then took their ideas and said, those ideas are good. I’ll use them and then make $60 billion or whatever his company’s worth.
Tim Ferriss: Everyone should read about Buckminster Fuller.
David Senra: I haven’t read the book yet.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: I’ve read his ideas, but not the book that James read when he was in college. It’s fascinating to me how it’s almost all — and they usually find it early.
I had lunch with Sam Zell. I’m talking to him.
Tim Ferriss: How did he make his money, for people who don’t know?
David Senra: Well, people consider him an investor. He calls himself an entrepreneur. He called himself an entrepreneur. What he’s most well known for is in 2007, he sold, I think the biggest real estate company in history for 38 billion to Blackstone. He tipped at the very top of the market, but he just likes to essentially buy businesses, try to make them grow. He would sell some, so that’s why people consider him an investor. But he considered himself an entrepreneur originally. By the time I met him, he had 61 years of experience as an entrepreneur. And my favorite entrepreneurs are I love talking to these people that have 40, 50, I’m not interested in the startup founder at all. This 25-year-old kid that thinks he’s smart, he doesn’t have enough experience yet. Life is going to teach you what you need.
Tim Ferriss: People who’ve ridden many multiple macroeconomic cycles who have had to contend with different challenges at different points in their lives, not just when they have no responsibilities and no dependence, et cetera.
David Senra: Well, he says something in his autobiography that you were speaking to earlier. He’s like, “Yeah, earlier in my life, my career fought my marriages and my career won and that’s why I’ve been married three times.”
The very current theme is that you look at life as everything that’s not work as an unpleasant distraction, and you wonder why your relationship’s broken because you’re not spending any time there. Of course, that’s the outcome, and they all make this mistake over and over again.
So what’s fascinating about this is we’ll go back to Edwin Land in a minute. Sam Zell. In his biography, he’s like, “Dude, I’m in college.” This guy was making millions of dollars a year when he was in law school. That’s how good of an entrepreneur he was from day one.
Tim Ferriss: Was that real estate?
David Senra: Yeah. He was developing, I think student housing at the time, I think the student housing, but he was also doing deals. He’s just a very gifted deal maker, and you see this with Rick. Understanding, you’ll bring something to Rick and he’ll be like, “Oh, here’s 10 things that are important.”
Tim Ferriss: Do you want to explain who Rick is briefly?
David Senra: His name is Rick Gerson. He’s one of my closest friends. You’ve known him for what?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know, 15, 20 years, a long time.
David Senra: 15, 20 years, he’s one of the most generous, thoughtful, and also simultaneously super intense people I know.
Tim Ferriss: He’s a master of finance, came out of this just sort of amazing training environment. We can just call that for what it is for now in simplicity and is one also of the best connected humans I’ve ever met.
He identifies, there’s one thing. He learned that from Sam, and then Sam learned that from this guy named Jay Pritzker. It’s very fascinating, so.
Tim Ferriss: Chicago royalty.
David Senra: Yes, 100 percent. So I actually just backed, it’s not a Kickstarter, but it’s almost like this. There’s no biographies of Jay, and so there’s a guy named Rockwood Notes that essentially put his hat out. He’s like, “Hey, I want to do this, but I need to make at least, I think, 40,000 a year to write this book,” and he’s selling $800 or a thousand dollars a year subscriptions.
I was like, “Yeah, I’ll obviously sign up for this. I want a Jay Pritzker biography.”
So Sam Zell in his autobiography, he’s like, “Yeah, I read this book by William Zeckendorf and it changed my life because there’s one idea in this book.” It’s what Charlie Munger said, there’s ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. There was this thing called Hawaiian technique. William Zeckendorf was this real estate developer in New York, and he came from nothing and then made a lot of money, then lost it all, and then made a lot of money, then lost it all again and dies with no money, so you want to avoid that too.
But he had this thing called the Hawaiian technique, which was, hey, if you just parcel out a building and you sell the different parts to whoever values it more, you’ll make more money. So the lease is valued higher by these guys, and the land is valued higher, and maybe the commercial real estate there or whatever, he just would break it apart like Legos and sell it independently and make a little money. What Sam realized, he started using that real estate and he goes, “Oh, this works in business too.” He’d buy business. It’s like maybe you want the IP, maybe you want the talent, maybe you want the actual physical assets. And he’d do this over and over again. So I remember telling Sam to his face, and Sam had no filter, and he was exactly who you thought he was.
If you watched any videos, he’s just like this and I go, “Yeah, I bought that book that you recommended.”
He goes, “Did you read it?”
I go, “No.”
He goes, “Read it,” he’s got the gravelly voice. “Read it.”
I was like, “Oh, shit, okay.”
And I read it as soon as I went home and started reading it. Sam Zell tells you to read a book, just read a book. But the reason I bring this up is because you’ll see this over and over again. They’ll find somebody early. You can go back and read this Playboy interview just for the, I hope when you, it’s just for the interview.
Tim Ferriss: Just for the interview.
David Senra: It’s not for anything else, of Steve Jobs when he’s 25, 26, and he’s talking about the fact that we have the wrong role models and heroes as a society. We want to be. Now, he’d say — you want to be YouTubers or something. We want to be athletes. We want to be all these other things. We should want to be Edwin Land. And at the time, Edwin Land was the founder of Polaroid. Edwin Land’s in his seventies. Jobs meets him, spends time with him a bunch of times. Edwin Land at that time had the third most patents of any American in history.
I think it was Thomas Edison, the second guy, and then Edwin Land, or maybe it’s the first guy, and then Thomas Edison, but Edwin Land was up there, and what you would realize is when Jobs goes on stage and says, “Hey, I wanted to build Apple. I wanted to build a company at the of liberal arts and technology,” and he has that, he literally puts the street sign up on there. That is literally a direct quote from Edwin Land. Edwin Land wanted to build a company at the intersection of liberal arts and technology.
He wanted to make completely vertically integrated consumer products that were magical, that had a magical experience. In Edwin Land’s case, he invented the industry that he then comes to dominate. There was no such thing as instant photography. So when we’re like, how great is the iPhone compared to one that came before it? The difference is vast, but not the same thing as if me and you were hanging out before Edwin Land was on this Earth. We take a picture at a party, “How’d it come out? Well, we’ll find out two weeks from now when we get it back from Kodak.”
Tim Ferriss: Turns out it was a shot of my foot.
David Senra: As opposed to, “Wait a minute and we’re going to see it right here in the Polaroid.” And then dude, the amount of ideas that Jobs took from him. Go look at the freaking tables that Jobs uses when he gives presentations. The actual table, it’s the same table that Edwin Land gave when he gave presentations.
Tim Ferriss: If somebody wants to study Edwin Land, where do they start?
David Senra: I read this biography of Edwin Land I thought was incredible. It’s called Insisting on the Impossible. It’s the most comprehensive biography of him. People read it, they’re like, “This book sucks.”
I think it’s riveting. There is a book, I think it’s called Land’s Polaroid. That’s the one I’d read because it’s only 250 pages and it’s written by a guy that worked for and with Edwin Land for 20 years. And I love those kinds of things because you see them over a decade. But my point being is Jobs was talking about this guy when he was 25. Jobs knows he’s dying when he’s working with Isaacson on the biography, he knows he’s dying and he’s still talking about Edwin Land appears in Isaacson’s biography of Jobs six times. Why is he still talking about this guy? How could you not be interested in understanding why? What is it about this guy that he admired and liked? Yeah, and he has a saying that, he has a personal motto that I love and that I try to do. And Edwin Land’s, there’s two of them.
Edwin Land says, “My personal motto is very personal. It may not apply to anybody else or anybody else or any other company, but is don’t do anything that someone else can do.” The importance of differentiation. I’m shocked at how few people understand how important it is. Dyson, Dyson’s whole thing is it has to be different. Even if it’s worse, it should be different. He demands difference. He’s got a very fascinating business philosophy. Dyson’s mind’s incredible.
And then the other thing is he knows because he dropped out of Harvard, he goes, “There’s something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School, that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.”
Tim Ferriss: So how do you think about different archetypes? Perhaps that’s the best word to use within the pantheon of successful entrepreneurs. The reason I ask that is that I imagine you get questions that along the lines of, and I get questions like this also, when you look across all of the biographies, what are some of the common patterns? Give me the top five, top six, and then people want to grab that recipe. But it could be just to use a sports analogy, it’s like, all right, you’re taking the stretching routine from LeBron James, the weight training routine from Arnold Schwarzenegger and this and this and this. You’re grabbing habits from mutants that are in entirely different spheres where they have different bodies entirely and then trying to cobble it together. It may not work. That’s point number one, probably won’t work.
Number two is that within the world of business advice, whether it’s autobiographies, biographies, interviews, there’s a lot that conflicts. So you have one person who says, “Anything that’s worth doing is worth overdoing,” and then you can tell who the novice is because they do too much. And I’m wondering how you think of entrepreneurship for yourself in terms of modeling different people or taking advice because you could have two people, just to use a metric that’s easy for everybody to wrap their head around two billionaires and they give you diametrically opposed advice. How do you personally pick?
David Senra: There’s no formula. This is actually something, one of the things I’m so thrilled with is the fact that I’ve become friends with Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, and this is something we’re actually trying to work on together because he brings this up. He’s like, “We need alternative founder archetypes.”
And back up, first of all, Daniel is an alien. There is a specific reason that I wanted him to be the very first guest on the new show is I’m able to build relationships with other people. Daniel’s very special in the sense that he’s only a few years older than me, but he’s so much more wiser than I am.
I don’t know how I can put this in words, it makes sense, but because he’s founded and is still running a $120 billion company, he’s been running for 19 years, but to me, he’s still so underrated. And the thing about Daniel is not only is he wicked smart, but he’s given me some of the best advice. And he does it in a very reserved and very precise way. He’s got very clear thinking, and I just cannot get over how generous he is with his time and his advice to me. He told me one of the things that was really important, he said an offhand comment, but he’s like, “You’re really easy to understand, so therefore you’re easy to help. I know what is important to you, and so therefore you’re easy to help and you’re easy to interface with.”
And so his point is every young founder thinks they have to be an Elon or Steve Jobs, and he’s like, “But I’m not like an Elon or Steve Jobs.” And the massive success, not only what he’s done for Spotify, one of the best apps ever created. I think they have the most, I think there’s only one other company in the world that has more paid subscribers than they do, and it’s Netflix.
But think about the way you feel when you get done using Spotify. And this is why I like all the top people there too and they’ve also been working together for excessively a long time. Gustav, Alex, Daniel, all of them is they want you when you’re done using Spotify to feel good.
If me and you spend an hour listening to our favorite music on Spotify, you feel great. You spend an hour listening to Tim Ferriss’ podcast, inspired, you feel great. An audiobook now, you feel great. I spend an hour on TikTok or Reels, I feel like shit. Like Twitter? Oh, I can’t.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like the anti-therapy.
David Senra: But they’re trying to put something.
Tim Ferriss: If you want to send yourself backwards.
David Senra: So I like what they’re doing.
Tim Ferriss: Is there any other advice that has stuck from Daniel to you?
David Senra: Yeah, so let’s go to the —
Tim Ferriss: And then I won’t lose track of that.
David Senra: The archetype I think is really important. I think you’ll really vibe with what his opinion on or his perspective on this is. Yeah, Daniel will tell you advice in a, he’s like a wise old man. I don’t know how to describe it.
So one thing is implied and never explicitly stated is he just doesn’t feel he has any, there’s no ceiling on what he can achieve, or what he can learn, or the effect he can have in the world. And when you spend time with him, that is transferred to you. And it’s one of the most important things. And I don’t even know if I told him this. I have tears in my eyes thinking about it.
And then I remember hanging out with him in Stockholm. He’s done phenomenal stuff with Spotify, one of the best apps ever created at best businesses. He’s wildly successful as an investor too. And so I remember asking him, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. And I go, “Were you always interested in investing?” Because I knew his story, we’ve talked a lot about this.
And he goes, “No, I didn’t even know anything about it. I started learning.”
I go, “When did you start learning?”
He’s like, “2018.”
I go, “How’d you start learning?”
He goes, “Patrick’s podcast.” And so he would just listen to people. He’s like, “I like that idea, I’ll take that idea. Oh, I don’t like that idea, I don’t like that at all. I’ll avoid that.”
And the way Patrick describes, it’s like out of anybody you know, Daniel has the ability to apply what he’s learning faster than anybody else, and at a grander scale.
Tim Ferriss: I think he’s also a very, very, very good systems thinker. He is not at a risk cobbling together this sort of camel that is a horse designed by committee that has a bunch of inherent problems and conflicts within it. He’ll be able to figure out how to put pieces together from first principles that function well as a whole.
David Senra: Let me tell one other piece of advice he gave me, and he tells it in a story form. This is why he is the wise old man, and essentially was, remember why people love you. You sit in a room and you read all the time, and then you make this thing on the other side that educates and inspires us and gives us energy. And as soon as you stop doing that and you start saying yes to all these distractions, and I don’t even know, I think we might’ve talked about this in the episode we did, that comes out in a few weeks, but he tells it in a story, and he tells a story from another person.
So he’s not telling you, “David, go do this.”
He’s like, “Let me tell you about this little genius,” or not little genius. “This guy’s really impressive. Look at what he’s accomplished and everything else.”
And then the story will hit you hours later. And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, we’ve invited him to the conference over time. I’ve invited him to visit and I keep hearing no.”
And I’m like, “Oh, he’s like telling me you’re saying yes to too many things.”
The magic that you have is because you say no, and once you start saying yes, and you’re at every conference, you’re traveling around, you’re doing all this sort of stuff, the magic disappears.
Tim Ferriss: I’m curious what you think are some of the different archetypes because I think of the 100 plus startups that I’ve invested in since 2008, and there’s a lot of variability. You’ve got the engineer, let’s call it the engineer founder, somebody like Tobi of Shopify or Luis von Ahn of Duolingo. Then you’ve got genius operator, negotiator warrior, like a Travis Kalanick, right? Very different personalities, very different superpowers. And you just go down the list and you see some people come from a finance, numbers, spreadsheet God perspective, and they just have an analytical advantage. It’s very comparable to investing in some ways, looking at the investing world. They have this analytical advantage, let’s just call it. And I was trying to pick out what, if anything, might be commonalities because you also have the crazy artists who then figures out how to harness some of their superpower. And it strikes me that there are at least two that immediately jumped to mind. One is longer term time horizon.
David Senra: Those are the people I’m obsessed with.
Tim Ferriss: Like the Jeff Bezos type of mindset where it’s like if you have the exact same toolkit, the exact same competency, out of the box genetically, you’re built exactly the same as someone else, but you are able to think and plan longer term, it can be a huge advantage. Second is something that you mentioned where Daniel was saying to you, “This is the magic.”
Just remember this is the magic. When other opportunities, other shiny objects show up, because they will even in very early stages. And if you deviate, it’s incredibly easy to self-immolate if you lose track of that. You see that a lot when CEOs get replaced, sometimes, founder CEOs and sometimes they need to be replaced. But what else would you add to that or how would you expand on any of it?
David Senra: Just look at the founders of some of the biggest companies in the world now, they would go to war against each other, so think about Oracle and Microsoft. You can’t think of two different founder archetypes than Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison’s like, “I’m a sprinter. I have intense, very intense periods of work, weeks at a time, months at time, and then I need to go on my boat with a bunch of Italian models. This is how I have to live my life.”
Bill Gates is, we’d be walking into this room right here, and his feet would be under the ground underneath his desk. He’s sleeping for three hours. He’s getting back up and he’s going back on the, he’s a grinder. And then you have, I’ve been trying to name some of these and I haven’t done this yet.
And the problem is I never write anything, and this is all improv, but one of them was the anti-business billionaire. And so what I, in that category is these people are so obsessed about one thing and that’s the quality of the product that they’re making. They make non-financial decisions like Steve Jobs making sure that the inside of the Mac looks beautiful even though you can’t open it up and it costs more money. He doesn’t care. He wants the best product. James Dyson’s like this, he’s an anti-business billionaire. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, anti-business billionaire. These guys, they’re obsessed with two things, quality of the product that they’re making and retaining control of their company over long term. And the funny part about this, the reason I call them anti-business billionaires is because if you make the world’s best product and you retain control over your company, you wind up with the money anyways.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I can think of a few people, I mean within my portfolio who retained a lot of their equity at least, and that’s it. Which is preserving the magic in terms of the best product.
David Senra: Well look, everybody’s like, “Look at what’s happening to Larry Ellison right now.” It’s like, yeah, the guy I think they raised, I think this could be wrong, but I think Oracle raised 32 million of equity in their IPO and no more after that.
And then the guy would refuse, even when they were almost going out of business in 1990, he still wouldn’t sell. They’re like, “Sell your equity.”
Like, “No.” It might be worth nothing, he just wouldn’t sell it, and then he’s buying back stock.
He owns, I think, 40, I think he went down to 24 percent, now he’s back to 41 percent of Oracle. The company’s 50 years old, 45 years old. I think he was 30-something when he founded the company. He’s just an anomaly.
And then you have people like Elon where it’s just like, “I’m going to run.” I wouldn’t even think that’s possible, how the hell do you run seven companies at the same time?
Tim Ferriss: I can barely manage three employees, I don’t know.
David Senra: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t have a good answer.
David Senra: That is the point. I do think Daniel hit on something that no one else has put in front of me. It’s like, man, there’s not, the people are going to dominate. Obviously, Elon’s the most famous entrepreneur in the world, but even Bezos is very different. And then you have these people that some of the people just like to make money, and that is their scoreboard.
This is another thing I learned from Michael Dell. There’s two things. One thing you just said: protecting the magic. The advice that Dell gave me when I had dinner with him, and he does this in story form too, because that guy’s been running his business for 41 years, 41 years. It’s insane. And his whole thing is just like, “You’re not going to be taken out by competition. You’re going to sabotage yourself.”
“Entrepreneurs sabotage themselves, and the amount of people that were doing the same thing I was doing, and they were ahead of me.” This is Dell talking, “They were ahead of me, but then they got to 500 million year in revenue and they’re like, ‘I have a house on Lake Austin now.'” They’re in the same city. They’re doing the same thing as him in the same city, and they’re smoking them.
They’re ahead of them by a few hundred million, and they’re like, “Oh, I can chill now.”
No, you can’t, because you’ve got Michael Dell right across the river and he’s not going to chill. That guy has no chill. When I went to him, I was like, “What the?”
I heard he’s got this wonderful house in Hawaii, his son was telling me about this, and we were in Austin in July. You know, it’s like —
Tim Ferriss: It’s hot.
David Senra: What are you doing here? And Michael’s answer is simple. He goes, “I love my business and my business is here.” He wasn’t being mean to me, he was like, “That’s a stupid question, David. I’m working. I love what I do, this is what I’m doing.”
So one thing from his autobiography though is that really, I used to say it only works if you build a business that’s authentic to you. And this is why I asked you about your inner monologue earlier, because I really feel the reason people do their best work usually later in life, in business, is obviously more experienced network, finances, everything else, but I think because they know themselves better. I think me and you, if we would’ve met 10 years ago, we’d be different people and we also wouldn’t know each other. Know ourselves as much as we do now, where I think I’ve built a business and you have two based on what I know about you, completely authentic to you, and that’s the only way it’s going to work over long term.
And I used to say authentic and Michael Dell’s autobiography, which he narrates by the way, the Audible’s excellent. I listened to it three times before I read it to do the episode on it. And there’s a guy named, I think Lee Walker who Michael brought in when Michael was 21. He was in his forties, and he was an older, wiser man, and he had to quit after four years. He was basically running the company with Michael. He’s like, “We’re fighting. We’re taking on IBM with a thousand dollars of working capital from a shitty office in the industrial part in Austin.”
IBM’s the biggest company in the world. I didn’t know this, it was the first company to hit $100 billion market cap. “My back hurts. I’m losing hair, I can’t sleep. I got digestive issues.” Lee’s dead after four years. And he goes, “And Michael’s excited. It’s invigorated him,” and he gave me the line, he goes, “because he built a business that was natural to him. I’m dying and he’s thriving because it’s natural to him and it’s not natural to me.” And I think that’s the key, man. People are like, “Oh, I’m going to imitate X, Y, and Z.” It’s like, no, no, no. You should be copying the how, not the what. You don’t copy what they did, you copy how they did it, and then you just take the little ideas that make sense to you.
So you ask, “How am I applying this for my own work?” I am either completely apathetic and ignore something or completely obsessed. It’s zero or 100 and nothing in the middle. So the reason I love Munger, because Munger gave me really — Munger and your friend Naval, had a big role in this too. Gave me the blueprint where he’s just like, “Hey, we found that…” Oftentimes Munger has this line that oftentimes the winning system in business goes ridiculously far, maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables. And he used Costco like the example, and then he has another line. “Find a simple idea and take it seriously.”
Sharing lessons from biographies of great people is a very, very simple idea. Doing it for nine years, working 70 hours a week at it, building systems for it, redoing it over and over again is not — that’s the serious part. His other quote that I’ve already shared earlier, “There’s ideas worth billions in a $30 history book.” That’s another idea. That’s maybe why the work will be valuable and attract the audience that it could attract, another idea from him. You want to maneuver yourself into an area that you’re intensely interested in, that just being a fanatic, like a Sam Walton or a Jim Sinegal or a Sol Price is just — Jeff Bezos, very helpful.
These are fanatics, they’re intensely interested in what they’re doing. That is worth a lot of money, and I’ve become friends with Michael Ovitz, who’s also one of the first guests on my new show. And his whole thing is like, you cannot fight against your job. That’s one of the best pieces of advice. He’s like, “People fight against their job all the time and they lose.” You have to find something that you’re intensely drawn to it.
Tim Ferriss: So I have a couple of bullets. You should explain who Michael Ovitz is. Why don’t you do that first, and then I’ll just hop to two questions related to Michael Ovitz specifically.
David Senra: Michael Ovitz is a shark. He’s one of the most intense people. I think he’s 80 by now.
So Rick and I live very close to each other in Miami, and we always have breakfast at the same spot that I’m not going to say publicly.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, good idea.
David Senra: And so we’re hanging out —
Tim Ferriss: The disinformation campaign. Yeah, it’s always at Denny’s. Moons Over My Hammy.
David Senra: So his phone is on the table and it rings and it says “Michael Ovitz” and I gasped. I’m like, “Oh,” I read — everybody knows who Michael — Michael Ovitz was the most powerful man in Hollywood at one time. He had like 75 percent market share, 90 percent market share. He was the most powerful agent. He’s the founder of CAA, which still exists to this day. And I’m like, “Oh, God, I know who that is. I’ve done episodes of this guy.” And so he picks up and they’ve been friends for 20 years, 25 years, something like that. And he goes, “Hey, I’m sitting here with somebody you might know. Have you ever heard of David Senra and the Founders podcast?” And Michael pauses, he goes, “I listened to four of them yesterday.” He was on his boat in St. Barts.
Tim Ferriss: That’s incredible.
David Senra: No, but this is how — he’s a shark and a killer. He’s on his boat in St. Barts, he’s like studying Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He’s quoting stuff from the episode and so, we wind up having dinner.
Tim Ferriss: Rockefeller, one of the biggest sharks to ever live.
David Senra: 100 percent. And so we wound up having dinner, and this is one of the things I asked him, because his whole thing is going to run through — you’re going to meet thousands of people in your life. He’s going to definitely meet way more people than I will, because I’m an introvert. And he used to call 300 people a day, because he was kind of running Hollywood. Ovitz’s advice to me was just like, “You’re going to meet thousands of people in your life, and what I would recommend is just spend all the time with a handful that really matter.” And he’s like, “For me, Rick is one of those people.” And I go, “Why?” And obviously, he’s like, “Well, he’s intelligent,” basically. But he’s like, “Because he tells me the truth.”
Tim Ferriss: That is one thing you can definitely reply. That’s one thing you can rely on Rick for.
David Senra: But in general —
Tim Ferriss: Not sure he can help himself. Not sure it’s a conscious decision.
David Senra: No, but in general, his whole point is when you get to be as famous and as well-known, as wealthy as Ovitz, everybody is going to kiss your ass. Everybody wants something from you. They won’t either want to tell you how great you are, or they want money from you, or they want you to sell, buy something. And you’re just like, there’s so few people that you know that truly love you for you and don’t want anything from you. They just want to be friends. And they will tell you the truth. And this is the very dangerous thing that really successful people do. They surround themselves with people that don’t tell them the truth.
And this is an idea I got from Jim Casey, the founder of UPS. He realized that there’s this weird capture if you only talk to your top executives, so let’s say you have 10 top executives, and then they distribute everything else to the company. They work themselves in a position where they have the ear of the king and you hear nothing good. So he’s like, “I don’t want to talk to them at all.” He would stop and talk to every single — he’d make his driver stop every single time they see a brown truck. And he would talk to the people doing the actual service.
Tim Ferriss: Because he wouldn’t get the bad news or they would —
David Senra: They would tell them what actually is going on.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: What is actually happening? And the crazy impressive founders that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with, most of them are 60, 70, 80 years old. Those are my favorite. I love them. They’re not in their office. They’re in their warehouses. They’re on the factory line. They’re in their stores. They’re in constant contact with the customer and the person delivering the service to the customer. Not with their — they’re not looking at a whiteboard with their executives. They’re very practical, non-theoretical people. I think it’s really important.
So yeah, I think in my own thing, it’s just like I like to be obsessed and focus on one thing. I don’t like to multitask. So therefore everybody is like every single publisher. It’s like, “Write a book, you should do this.” I’m like, everybody says, “Hey, I like X, so do Y.” And I’m like, “But then if I do Y, I don’t do X.” And so my whole thing is just very simple. I want to do one thing relentlessly.
Tim Ferriss: So related to Michael Ovitz, there are a few notes here that I think relate to the new show and the interview you did with him. And I want to ask about two of them. So the first is the benefits of low introspection. And the second — so you can tackle these in either order is “this can’t be my life,” in quotation marks, is a powerful motivator. Can you expand on those?
David Senra: So “This can’t be my life” is a very powerful motivator. You see it over and over again. I think the sense of drive, the way you grew up on Long Island, the way I grew up, I was like, “I’m not going out like this.” I don’t care what I have to do —
Tim Ferriss: I’m not going to replay this movie.
David Senra: No way. I think in many cases, seeing examples of what you don’t want your life to be is more powerful than seeing what you want it to be. I think maybe that one comes first and then, you start to see, “Oh, actually this is the path I want to go down.”
Tim Ferriss: There’s an expression in Japanese, which is [foreign language] is like opposite side. [foreign language] is teacher and it’s someone who teaches you by showing you what not to do.
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
David Senra: Yeah. I would say my family definitely the case —
Tim Ferriss: One of those.
David Senra: Yeah, you just see this over and over again. And so with him, he grew up in the valley. He could see where he wanted to be. He could see the mansions of Beverly Hills. He saw the contrast between, “This is what I’m worried about with social media.” It’s like before we grew up, what do you see? You basically see, “Oh, that’s the nice neighborhood over there. That’s kind of a bad neighborhood.” Now you see the richest people in the world every day and the poorest people in the world, you’re exposed to nothing but extremes, which is like we’ve never — in human history, we’ve never been exposed to that.
And what is the long-term effects of that? I have a teenage daughter now, and I think there’s a lot of negativity of this like, you only see the most beautiful people. If you were just in a town where we grew up, you might see a really beautiful woman. You’re not seeing them all day long. It’s just this unfair —
Tim Ferriss: Barrage.
David Senra: Yeah, barrage of unattainable standards. So with him, he was fiercely driven to succeed. And one of my favorite parts of his book, the guy now, wildly successful, but even before that, he left, I think it was William Morris Agency, he starts CAA, they started to have a little success. He winds up buying a house in Brentwood and it was like $650,000, which is fantastic, but nothing compared to what’s going to happen over the next decades in his life. But he just woke up every morning, he’s like, “I can’t believe I live in Brentwood.”
“I can’t believe this. I did this.” And then once you start seeing results, the grind becomes very addictive. And he, if you had, what’s his archetype, grinder. I’m going to throw sheer hours and energy. He’s also an amazing — one of the best salespeople alive, very charismatic. He’s got a lot of superpowers. I actually met Marc Andreessen. I asked him this because Marc Andreessen is on record saying that when he started a16z, they essentially copied CAA.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think they brought Michael Ovitz in.
David Senra: They did. They both talk about this. And I asked him, I go, “What do you think is Michael’s superpower?” He’s like, “He’s the world’s greatest agent and therefore the greatest salesperson, the world’s greatest salesperson.” And so that’s one example from his book is just like, this can’t be my life. I don’t want to be like this. I’m going to direct all my energy and do something different.
Now the low introspection thing is I’m not a controversial person. I’m just sharing lessons from history that I read in a book.
You don’t have to listen, you don’t have to pay attention, it doesn’t matter. But when I bring up the fact that a lot of these people have low or zero introspection. Meaning that when they find what they want to do in life, they wake up and they know exactly what they’re doing that day. Sam Walton was not waking up saying, “What are my feelings like today? What should I do? Should I think about the meaning of life?” He’s like, “No, I founded Walmart. I made one Walmart. I’m going to make another one and another one and another one. I will make every Walmart better and better and better.”
And I think having low introspection after you found your mission in life — and this is a sad thing, I think most people never find their mission. I know I found my mission. I don’t think about what should I do today.
Tim Ferriss: We’re going to talk, obviously, about the new show and we’ve been alluding to it and mentioning some of the guests. But before we get there — so you’re about to meet Michael and he had been ostensibly on vacation, but he’s listening to your episodes on Rockefeller and others.
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Do you recall any of the other episodes?
David Senra: The Vanderbilt one stuck up in my mind. I mean, we text about them. I don’t remember — the Vanderbilt is the one that really — the Rockefeller and the Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt especially because Vanderbilt is like — what I say is I’m kind of telling the same story over and over again. I think it’s more like church than it is like — just like I went to church. I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian. We met together with believers on regular intervals on Wednesday and Sunday. And it’s not like the preacher got up there and was like, “Hey, we talked about that Jesus guy enough, we’re going to move on to somebody else.”
It’s like we literally just go to the same book over and over again. And so I always say there’s always a historical equivalent to anybody we’re dealing with today or in the past. But Vanderbilt, to me — there’s not an entrepreneurial historical equivalent. He’s like Putin or something. When he died, he controlled five percent of the money supply. So one out of $25.
Tim Ferriss: So I guess the reason I was asking about the episodes, and I don’t know Michael, so this is not a judgment or criticism of Michael at all, but I suppose if you believe that there is a value to low introspection for the purposes of building a business, which I would agree.
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Is there not a risk, and I have not listened to those particular episodes on Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, but I’ve read a bit of the history. These are not necessarily people you automatically want to model everything in all —
David Senra: No, I think Ovitz would.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So this is I suppose my question. Is there a risk of ending up amoral, immoral or sociopathic, if you — one of the things you optimize for is low introspection because — or maybe that’s just hardwiring frankly, and you’re just not inclined to do it.
David Senra: That’s a good question.
Tim Ferriss: Because this archetype does exist, just like the rape, pillage, destroy archetype is an archetype.
David Senra: They’re overrepresented in entrepreneurship. Why? Because, if entrepreneurship [is] done correctly, [it yields] the greatest material rewards in human history.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: So of course, it’s going to be full of psychopaths and sociopaths. Whatever — I don’t know if you know the numbers on this, but they assume five percent of the population’s sociopathic or something like that. Is that something like that?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know the numbers.
David Senra: Let’s just make it up. It’s five percent of the general population. It’s probably five times that of entrepreneurs and investors and people like this or anybody — political power. Power in general. This is why I think the work of Robert Caro is so interesting. And I always make the argument that there should only — there should be a law. The only one law that I would foist upon society is that there’s only one person allowed to write a thousand-page biography. I have no problem reading that. Almost none of the books that I’ve read that are a thousand pages needed to be a thousand pages.
They just didn’t know what to put in there. Robert Caro is the only one that should be able to write long biographies because everything that he has in there should be in there. I think he’s a master of his craft. He’s the best to ever do it. But he’s saying, “I’m not writing biographies. I’m writing about how humans accumulate and then wield power. And I did it first on a local level in New York with Robert Moses, and now I’m showing what happens on a national level. And guess what, LBJ would sacrifice everything to get what he wanted. Personal ethics, his relationships, everything.”
Tim Ferriss: Stealing elections.
David Senra: This is the wonderful thing about studying history. History doesn’t repeat, human nature does. So if you just read Will and — and you both love Will and Ariel Durant, right? Read the history of human civilization. Read their hundred-page book, Lessons of History. The same stuff repeats over and over again. So when it comes out and you see this on the news, “Oh, of course no one stole the election.” It’s like stealing every election in all different countries. Stealing the elections is an American pastime. Just read Robert Caro. And it could be a little Senate election in Texas.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
David Senra: If you don’t think —
Tim Ferriss: That missing ballot box.
David Senra: Yeah. The line I have about this is from Will Durant, where he’s just like, “In every age, humans are dishonest and governments are corrupt.” It’s one of my favorite quotes from Lessons of History, and every age, nothing that we’re doing is new. We’re telling the same stories over and over and over again. You see the same people over and over again. So yeah, I’m sure there’s a ton of people that read these biographies and that listen to my podcast that are absolute psychopaths. I don’t think Ovitz is a psychopath. He’s an extreme winner. He wants to win.
Tim Ferriss: The line may be pretty thin.
David Senra: Yeah, of course. Of course.
Tim Ferriss: I’m not saying he is, by the way, sociopath. It’s just that, just like you were mentioning, you can convince yourself of a bad idea, very compellingly, just as you can a good idea. It’s like when you start to get into the gray waters of morality as winning compounds upon winning, oftentimes the person who cares less about other people wins. If they can discard that consideration.
David Senra: 100 percent, and that’s been true in the past.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: True today, will be true.
That’s the point, that this is why it’s so interesting. You have to — I look at this as almost — I think something I didn’t even understand is I have the ability to step outside of myself, and I’m kind of like a casual observer of human nature.
Tim Ferriss: I want to ask you, and then I’m going to hop to questions about podcasting on the new show, about how you think about assessing leaders, entrepreneurs, reading biographies or autobiographies, and figuring out what people claim as things that help them succeed, to succeed, actually help them versus hindering them. In other words, what are the “because of” versus the “in spite of?” So for instance, if high disagreeability or low agreeability is common across a lot of founders.
To what extent is that — can you point to that as one of the causal factors for their success as opposed to just an emergency break they had on, causing all sorts of problems that they managed to overcome, so they succeeded despite. How do you think about separating those two things?
David Senra: So one of the things I love about James Dyson, who is a hero of mine, it’s the person that on the planet that I want to meet that I haven’t met. The number one is him. And what I love about him is how stubborn he is, because I see myself in that. And it turns out his stubbornness worked out for him because he had the right idea, but this is where it goes back to like you can’t blindly copy. There’s no formula. There’s no formula, there’s no track. So it’s like he’s stubborn on an idea that was a great idea, it just needed more time.
You could be stubborn on an idea that’s terrible and going nowhere. And then you did the exact same thing for the exact same amount of time. And on the other side of that, he has one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world, and you have a miserable life. There’s no answers to that. There’s nobody coming to save you. None of this shit works if you can’t trust your own judgment and figure things out. That’s why when people are like, “Oh, more people should be entrepreneurs.” I don’t know about that. I want to encourage the people that think they can do it, to do it.
But I think in many cases, most people should work, like they should choose a different path because it’s very, very risky. Like Todd Graves, the Raising Cane’s guy I told you about, right? His whole thing is entrepreneurs should have higher risk tolerance. James Dyson, multiple times, risked every single possession he had to chase his dream. He signed over his house multiple times. If he failed, they could have been homeless. It worked out for him.
Todd Graves had this crazy way to finance the first 28 Raising Cane’s where essentially he goes to an angel investor, he goes to Tim Ferriss and says, “Hey, you’re going to give me a 200,000 loan, okay? It’s going to be subjugated loan to the bank. I’m going to guarantee you a 15 percent return on the $200,000 for X amount of time.” You say, “Oh, that sounds great. You’re paying me 15 percent on my 200 grand.” But you don’t get any equity. I take that 200,000 equity that I have from this document from Tim. I go to a bank and say, “This is as collateral. Loan me the other 600 grand or whatever the number is to get this up and running.” And he did that for 28 times and he’s like, “Oh, I’m rolling, rolling, rolling.” Leveraged up to his eyeballs. What’s the problem? “I open up. Every time I open a new Raising Cane’s, there’s a line out the door from day one.”
Well, then a little thing called Hurricane Katrina comes and guess where? 28 of his restaurants are all in Louisiana, and he almost died, and he says, “If I didn’t come out of that, there would be no story. It’d be gone.”
And then I guess the second part of — I don’t know why this popped into my mind, but when you’re reading history, we’re reading about stories that happened a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, 50 years ago. Some of them are from that person’s own mouth. Like, imagine if you tell your own life story, you’re going to, here’s the good part. You’re going to hide the bad. You’re human, right? And so people are like, “Well, how do you know if what you’re reading is true?” The line is like if you think the news is fake, wait till you read history.
Tim Ferriss: It’s just old news.
David Senra: I don’t know. My idea is we’re not taking a test at the end of this. I’m not saying did this actually happen in 1912. It’s like, is the idea behind what he’s doing a good idea for me? And so the example of Rockefeller that you see that Elon used, where Rockefeller tells the story, I don’t know if it actually happened, but he tells the story where they would have to solder closed the barrels that they transport oil in, and he goes up one day and he says, “How many drops of solder do you use?” He’s like, “I use 40.” He’s like, “Have you ever tried 38?” He’s like, “No, we never tried 38.” “Can you try 38?” They tried 38, it leaks. “Okay, try 39.” They tried 39, doesn’t leak. That one drop of solder at the time of the business saved him $2,500 a year, the business grows and compounds for the next three decades, and now he’s saving like hundreds of thousands from that then.
Did that actually happen? I don’t know. But that’s a good idea to find the limit, to actually, “Hey, maybe I should control my costs a little more. Maybe I need to actually see if I can do this in a more efficient way.” I don’t know if it happened. I just want the idea behind it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, just to reiterate what you’re saying, it’s tough to separate the fact from fiction, right? And then sometimes this is actually why I just read fiction because I’m like, “There still are truths to extract,” right? There are principles that you can extract from, this is now cliched because it’s been made into a popular movie, but Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land. You can actually pull a lot from just straight-up fiction.
And then when it comes to the business side, because I’ve read so many, not as many as you, but tons of business books, still have my early copies and my notes from those books with Losing my Virginity, Richard Branson, early Yvon Chouinard, I think it’s Let My People Go Surfing, et cetera, still have all those books, and when you look at — part of the reason also that I like early biographies, so let’s just say like Hard Drive first on Bill Gates versus a later, I don’t want to say sanitized, but let’s say sanitized version where —
David Senra: I’m going through this right now, where it’s like, look —
Tim Ferriss: Warren Buffett, love the guy, and he’s turned himself into the “Awww, shucks” grandpa neighbor who takes his garbage out in a robe.
David Senra: Killer. Killer.
Tim Ferriss: He’s a killer, and I remember reading, I think it was The Making of an American Capitalist way back in the day, and the story that stuck out, and I hope I’m not inventing this, I don’t see why I would, but his routine was to go home, walk upstairs, and read.
David Senra: Step over his children.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. Was it his son —
David Senra: Yes. Step over —
Tim Ferriss: — who had fallen down the stairs, is sprawled out like a chalk outline at a crime scene, steps over his injured son to go upstairs to do more reading of S1 filings or whatever he was doing.
David Senra: You bring up something interesting. This is why I don’t believe them when they say they have regrets at the end of their life. So if I read Making of an American Capitalist, an excellent book. I think that’s actually the best biography.
Tim Ferriss: It’s so good.
David Senra: You read Snowball after his wife leaves him and he says, “The biggest mistake, if I could go back and live life again, the biggest mistake I would do is I would change whatever I need, so” — I think her name was Susie — “didn’t leave me.” No, I don’t believe you.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t buy it.
David Senra: No, none of them. When they all say — like a Leonardo Del Vecchio, the guy that started Luxottica. I think I had it translated from Italian. Some of these biographies are in different languages so, again, go back to differentiation, what can I do that no one else is doing, we’ve translated the Red Bull book from German.
Tim Ferriss: It was awesome. I listened to that.
David Senra: I appreciate that.
But he gets to the end of his life, he is an orphan. Dad dies young —
Tim Ferriss: What was the company again?
David Senra: Luxottica. So they essentially —
Tim Ferriss: [inaudible].
David Senra: Monopolize glasses, everything. So Mark Zuckerberg just invested, I think, three and a half billion dollars for like three percent of the company.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
David Senra: And so for essentially 60 years, he just a slow, methodical Rockefeller-esque march through the entire industry until he controls every single component of eyeglasses, sunglasses, everything. It’s like completely dominant. He gets to the end of his life, he’s just like, “Oh, yeah. The one regret I have is…” He’s married multiple times. I think there’s like a 50-year gap between his oldest son and his youngest son. So it’s like he’s like a wild boy, but he’s like, “The one regret I have is I didn’t spend more time with my kids.” No, you wouldn’t change a thing.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not true.
David Senra: It’s not true because I don’t think they could. That’s what where you just said. It’s like maybe they didn’t have a choice. Maybe it’s just hardwired. And so I’m going through that literally right now because this week I read Source Code which is Bill Gates’ autobiography about the first 20 years of his life, his version. I reread Hard Drive, Overdrive, which is also written by the same guys that wrote Hard Drive, and then I pulled all my highlights and notes for Paul Allen’s description of Bill Gates in Paul Allen’s autobiography. There is a vast difference between what’s in Source Code and what is in Hard Drive, and it’s obviously Hard Drive is more accurate. It’s written right after it happened. Bill is not the 70-year-old man he is now, and he’s in a different world, but watch his interviews, watch the documentary on Netflix about him. He’s like, “I was hardcore. That was my advantage.”
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah.
David Senra: He was.
Tim Ferriss: Killer.
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And also these questions, a lot of the questions that I ask myself when I’m reading any nonfiction — I shouldn’t say any nonfiction, let’s say biographies where I’m hoping to model something. One is like is, or an autobiography, okay, what’s the bias here. Are there any particular biases I should be aware of, okay? Is anyone in like reputation rehab mode before they die? Okay, let’s keep that.
David Senra: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: What type of survivorship bias might there be, right? Who tried the same? Do we have 99 out of 100 who tried something similar and failed? Let’s take a look at the tape. Okay. Luck is luck. Luck’s everywhere, right? So the fact that Bill Gates ended up with a computer, winding it up with the computers, it’s just like it’s, yeah.
David Senra: Timing. I think timing.
Tim Ferriss: Timing is a huge piece. By the way, these are not all reasons to discount anything, but I just want to mention a couple of that I try to think of. The other I try to think of, because I might try to mimic someone in sports if I’m trying to learn something, or language learning or whatever it might be, is what are attributes, what is trainable and what is not trainable, right? Because I’ve heard these stories from people who know Bill Gates and they’re like, “Well, we were going to go on this short vacation in…” fill in the blank, I can’t remember, Costa Rica, right? They’re going to go on a birding trip in the morning. It’s just like a two, three-hour thing with a world-class birding guide. They do the trip, and the night before, Bill has stayed up and read five books on birding, memorized them seemingly without trying, and is basically having like a peer-to-peer discussion with the birding expert as they’re going through the rainforest. That’s not normal.
David Senra: No. It’s not.
Tim Ferriss: That’s like “I’m going to do calf raises to make my body look like Michael Phelps.” No, you’re not. That’s not going to work. So it’s like when I’m looking for people to model, I’m trying to find people who have hopefully a comparable composition of strengths that I can amplify in myself or that are coachable, right? And so the question after all that is, does anyone stand out to you, of the biographies or people you’ve met, where you’re like in terms of someone doing the most with the hand they’ve been dealt — so maybe they’re not a freak of nature.
David Senra: So not aliens.
Tim Ferriss: They’re not a freak of nature, necessarily, because there are freaks of nature among the people that you study, the people I study, but it’s like, all right, these people might have a few strengths, but they’re not complete freaks. They’re not the Usain Bolts of — fill in the blank, and man, oh, man, did they play their hand well. They’re just so good at playing the hands that they are dealt, that person. Does anybody stick out?
David Senra: Sam Walton.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
David Senra: Sam Walton’s one of my favorite entrepreneurs. If you really think about it, so he had this crazy thing, this crazy idea. I don’t think he obviously didn’t know what Walmart was going to turn into, but one of the ways they avoided all the inheritance tax is if you give away the equity before it’s valuable. The last time I checked, if you look at all of the Walmart equity owned by the family, that means the wealth that came from his idea, it would be like 432 billion today if it was consolidated in one person, right? When you study Sam, he’s obviously smart, but he was just like, he didn’t really know what he was going to do. Then he had this idea, he’s like, “Well, maybe I can be good at retailing.” And then he starts out in Newport, Arkansas with one store.
This is what drives me insane about the modern day entrepreneurship industry is how everybody, they start out with like weird goals, like “I’m going to build a trillion-dollar company,” or “I’m going to be the fastest person to a hundred million ARR,” and you’re just like, “Okay, but none of these people talk like that. You’re doing it for the wrong reason, so you probably won’t get there if that’s just the case.” It’s like what Jerry Seinfeld says, “If you’re just doing it for money, you only get so far.” With him, he was just fascinated by stores and trying to make it a little bit better every day, and he spends —
Tim Ferriss: It was on vacation, right? Didn’t matter where he was, he would go into a retail store —
David Senra: His kids told the story. It’s just like vacation was essentially driving to different towns and checking out different retailers. The most important thing about his story, one of the most important things, is this idea to go slow now so you can go faster later. And so you’re like, “Okay.” The beginning of his career, he’s in one tiny store. I think they start doing 25,000 a year. 25,000 a year in revenue, and I think he gets up to like 250 grand. It took him five years. But for five years he just had one story. It was like experimenting, understanding, trying to figure out what the different parts of retail are because there’s no such thing as discounting and wholesaling and all this other stuff that he was doing that he’s going to do later on.
And then what’s fascinating is later in his career after Walmart, he then takes that idea, he goes and visits Sol Price, who we mentioned earlier, he takes that idea. He’s like, “Oh, this is a great idea. I’m going to do this.” He does Sam’s Club. In that same five-year period, so you have the first five years, one store, separated by maybe 40 years in the career, that second five years when he’s starting something else, in that five-year period he doesn’t have one store. He winds up doing, I think, a hundred stores and like seven billion in revenue from this new category because you see him learning. And so, yes, I think he was brilliant, but he’s not memorizing five books overnight in doing that.
This is like mine, I don’t think — man, one of the reasons that I do what I do is because Munger became a hero and he talks over and over again about being a biography nut, that he read more biographies than anybody else. I got to spend three hours inside of his house talking to him right before he died. I don’t care how many biographies I read, how many books I read for the rest of my life, I cannot have a brain like him. I will never have a brain like him. Anybody at 99 is going to have some level of cognitive decline. You know what one of my first thoughts was about an hour and a half into the conversation with him was, “This guy had to be terrifying when he was 60.” Terrifying. Terrifying.
Think about this. Everybody that I know, when I get to meet fancy people I always ask them, “Who’s the smartest person you know? What’s the best business you know?” It can’t be like Apple. It’s like these interesting, weird things, and every single person that says — if they know Buffett and they don’t tell you it’s Buffett, they’re wrong. Buffett chose this guy to let him mold and shape his thinking. What does that tell you about his intelligence? I remember — because this is what I do, again, I’m like laying bricks every day. I don’t think I’m a brilliant person. I just show up every day and don’t quit. And so I read. Once I find Munger, I read, literally, not, oh, I read some of the books, I read every single book on Munger. Then I reread my highlights over and over again. So my days, I wake up, work out, read for a few hours, have lunch, then reread past highlights in the afternoon. All my social media posts are just me rereading highlights.
I read every single book on Munger, then I reread all the highlights, but then I read all the books he tells me to read, because he’ll tell you, “Read Les Schwab.” He’ll tell you all these things. He’ll tell you Henry Kaiser. I was like, “Who the hell is Henry Kaiser?” Henry Kaiser started a hundred companies. He built the Hoover Dam. He built Liberty ships. I go, “What?”
Tim Ferriss: By the way, just the fact that pretty much everyone listening to this podcast will have no idea of who that person is just underscores, I think, how ridiculous it is to get overly fixated on legacy as an excuse for all sorts of behaviors.
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Nobody’s going to remember you.
David Senra: No. I’m anti-legacy and I’m anti-family dynasty. I think bequeathing your kids a bunch of wealth is — well, that’s another story for another day.
Tim Ferriss: But okay, a hundred companies. Right. Hoover Dam, which, by the way, was made in, what, like eight years or 12 years. I mean, some insane time span.
David Senra: Crazy. So first of all, I’m freaked out. I’m there, it’s me, two other young entrepreneurs in their 30s, and they had both met Charlie before. And then I’m like 10 minutes in and I’m just like, “Ugh.” I just couldn’t believe what’s happening to me. I’m like, “That’s fucking Charlie Munger over there.” And then you know he’s looking at you, because he’s blind, and so if he’s looking at you like this, he’s not looking at you. He’s got to go like this and this because then he’s got to look through his glasses. So you know when he’s looking at you. And then my friend looks at me, he’s like, “Get in here. Do something.” I literally sat there. Me not speaking for 10 minutes, it’s really hard for me to do. There’s a reason I do monologue podcasts.
So then I see we’re in his library, so then I’m like, “Oh, this is my savior,” because I’ve read all those books behind him because he told me to read them. And so this is why I said it doesn’t matter what I do, and this will answer your question a long way. I start asking questions about Henry Kaiser and all these books, and he knows the revenue, he knows the partner, he knows how the business ended, he knows the mistakes they made. And then I go, “Charlie, when’s the last time you read these books?” And he’s like, “15 years ago.” And then I go, when we’re shifting from the library to dinner, I was like, “Charlie, can I go through your library?” He’s like, “Of course.” He’s just sitting in his chair and I’m going through the books and I open them. No notes.
Tim Ferriss: Different stock.
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, different stock. Oh, my God. So, all right, we are going to get to the things I promised, but I have to ask you. So in addition to smartest person, best business, what are some of your other go-to questions when you meet the fancy folks?
David Senra: So who’s the smartest person you know? What’s the best business you know? I actually got to spend some time with Eddie Lampert. So Eddie Lampert at one time was thought to be the next Buffett, and he was mentored by Richard Rainwater, and I find Richard Rainwater really fascinating because Richard Rainwater has probably —
Tim Ferriss: Great man too.
David Senra: Oh, excellent. Richard, first of all there’s no biographies on him. He died rather young. He probably created more billionaire investors in America than any other person in direct mentorship. Eddie broke the record, I think in like the ’80s or’ 90s for the most taxable income made by an American, and he was super young. And so Eddie lives in Miami and I was at his house.
Tim Ferriss: He was like, “Never again. I’m moving to Miami.”
David Senra: No, no. No, no. So that might be one of the best investments because he probably paid $12 million for his house and his house will probably sell for 150 million today because it’s on the island that Bezos lives on, and the house is beautiful.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sure he won’t even notice it on his balance sheet or in his life.
David Senra: He’s much more out of the spotlight now. But again, he’s one of these older guys, just very, very wise and very quiet. He’s like me. He’s introverted. You go to his house, there’s just books everywhere. He’s got this insane yacht that I went on called the Fountainhead. I’ll let people google it. It is insane.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, great name too.
David Senra: Yeah, but same thing. You go on the boat and you go on the boat, dude, and it’s full of books. It’s the weirdest —
Tim Ferriss: Ran out of room at his house, so had to buy a super yacht for the books.
David Senra: It’s the weirdest unintended hack ever to build a world-class network of just read a bunch of history and they’ll come get you. They’re like — I’ve never sent a cold DM in my life, ever. I’ve never sent a cold email in my life.
Tim Ferriss: All, right. So what do you have? Why did Lampert come? You’re asking him questions.
David Senra: I’m asking these questions, right? Basically, and they’re not mean to me. He’s like, “Yeah, but there’s better questions you can ask.” I was like, “Okay, tell me what they are.” And so his answers are, like the smartest person, he’s like, “Well, I spent a bunch of time with Buffett.” I go, “Okay.” He goes, “It’s obviously Buffett.” He goes, “There’s actually more interesting…” And then who’s the best investor, that was another question I asked. He goes, “There’s actually a more interesting question that you’re not asking.” I go, “What’s that?” He goes, “Who’s the best dealmaker?”
Tim Ferriss: Mm. Mm-hmm. That’s a great one.
David Senra: And I go, “I don’t know what that means.” I don’t know anything about investing. The question I’ve asked Rick and Patrick, they probably think I’m retarded. You can edit that question out, edit that word out.
Tim Ferriss: No, it’s fine.
David Senra: But they’re just like, “What is wrong with this guy?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We didn’t even get to — I mean, I would say Brad Jacobs would fit in sort of the dealmaker. Or Zell.
David Senra: Yeah. But yeah, but his is like a different — so, okay, this is very fascinating what Eddie said. So again, Eddie, you can go back and read profiles of him. He was like a boy wonderkid. Rick told me a funny story. They used to all be at the same golf club in New Jersey, and Richard Rainwater walked in, and Rick’s like a young kid and Rainwater’s a legend, and he’s making conversation with him. He goes, “We just wait, the best investor in the America’s going to walk through that door.” And Rick goes, “Buffett?” And it was Eddie.
So anyways, Eddie’s like, “There’s a better question that you’re not asking.” I was like, “All right. Well, you’re way smarter than I am, tell me.” He goes, “Who’s the best dealmaker?” I don’t know what that means. He goes, “Well, an investor is judged on ROIC, return on invested capital.” He goes, “The two best dealmakers I ever knew were Richard Rainwater and David Geffen.” So the thing about David Geffen, he’s super underrated. He’s another person I’d like to spend time with if I could, is it’s one thing to have a bunch of money. It’s another thing to have a bunch of money and be liquid.
There is a line in this profile on Larry Gagosian that I read that says, “Any time there’s a downturn…” Larry Gagosian’s maybe the most successful art dealer in the world. Art soars during great economic times and kind of doesn’t do so well in other times. Any time there was a dip and they needed to make money, they’d call David because they said David is as liquid as the day is long. David gave a 26-year-old Eddie Lampert like 200 million of his own money to run. So David’s just like liquid.
Tim Ferriss: Staked him.
David Senra: And so he goes, “David is a crazy dealmaker.” He goes —
Tim Ferriss: I guess he didn’t stake him. He was an LP.
David Senra: I don’t think it was a fund structure. I think it was, “Here’s 200, make it bigger.”
Tim Ferriss: Make it bigger.
David Senra: I don’t think he’s going to be like, “You make money if I make money.” I don’t think it was a permanent structure, which is interesting. Sam Zell never had a permanent structure. There’s actually a lot of them. I find those more interesting. But anyways, I was like, “Okay, so why is Richard Rainwater one of the best dealmakers?” He’s like, “Because with Richard it was all returns, no capital.” I was like, “What?” He goes, “Richard maneuvered himself into such an influential position in the American economy because of who he knew, and him being involved in your deal immediately made it more valuable that people just gave him the equity.” All returns, no capital. That was like one of my favorite ideas that I’ve ever heard. Yeah, and he would just tell amazing stories. He told me a story where Richard, when he mentors you — like, he recruited Eddie. Eddie was living in New York, working at Goldman Sachs, if I remember correctly. He convinced him to move to Fort Worth, Texas. Have you ever been to Fort Worth?
Tim Ferriss: I have.
David Senra: Okay. I’ve been there too. There’s nothing there, and in the ’80s there was less than nothing there. This kid moves there, they would travel together, and Eddie said that Richard would want to summer somewhere in Massachusetts, and it was like this 20-room hotel that was members only, so it’s not open to the random public, and he insisted that Eddie be put in the room next to him. One day, a bunch of guys knock on Eddie’s door while he’s in the room supposed to be working and researching, and they come in with a bunch of tools. He’s like, “What are you doing?” He’s like, “Richard wants us to put a hole in this wall.” Richard didn’t want to go in the hallway and walk around to Eddie’s room. So he made them knock a hole and then install a door so he could just go. He could have direct access to Eddie just with a door that didn’t exist.
Tim Ferriss: That’s incredible.
David Senra: He just had all kinds of crazy stories.
Tim Ferriss: All right, so not Buffett, not Munger, smartest person.
David Senra: That I met?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, smartest person. Let’s revise that and just say if you could pick one person you’ve met to be your coach/Yoda.
David Senra: Oh, Daniel Ek.
Tim Ferriss: Daniel Ek.
David Senra: Easily.
Tim Ferriss: All right. That was fast. Okay.
David Senra: Well, again, Brad Jacobs gives me great advice. Michael Dell would give me great advice, like Todd Graves, but this guy is around my age.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
David Senra: It’s like the gap between us is so obvious when you solve for that, and again, I just think of the stuff he does, his clarity of thought.
I greatly admire the product. I like products. I guess we should back up what is actually important to you. I don’t actually give a shit how much money you have. I know a lot of people, and I love these, we’re in New York right now, some of my favorite people. I like the PE guys way more than I like the VC guys because they’re just more honest. The PE guys are like, they have great lines about this, they go, “VC gets all the attention, PE gets all the money.” And then they’re like, “The VCs are lying because they say the founders are the customers. No, the LPs are our customers. The founders didn’t give you any money.” Then the PE guys are just honest. Why do you wake up every day? To maximize the value of my LP dollars. I don’t want to play that game. I don’t want to play it at all, but I respect — their honesty is refreshing.
Their scoreboard is, “I have $6 billion and I’ll be better if I have eight.” I am obsessed with product. The fact that I work on my podcast for seven days a week, the fact that I hand-edit the transcript, the fact that I do — like MrBeast drives me — he’s like, “You’re stupid. Somebody can edit. Basically you need an editor. You need all these other things.” I just am obsessed. It’s like you don’t work all your life to do what you love to not do it. I don’t want to outsource stuff. I like the craft of making the product. I’m very proud — like when Spotify Wrapped, some people might, because it’s embarrassing. When my Spotify Wrapped comes out this year, the number one podcast on that is going to be my own. I go back and listen to it. One, I think of it as a tool, right?
I was on a treadmill in Malibu a few weeks ago listening to episode 221, which I think is the biography of Charlie Munger. I say to Charlie Munger all the time, “We forget how much we forget.” I listened to this hour-long podcast, like, oh, God, he’s got a lot of great ideas that I forgot. I’m not doing it because I like to hear the sound of my own voice. I also do it because do you think Kobe watched game tape? How am I going to get better if I don’t — when I interviewed Michael Dell, really more of a conversation than an interview, but I listened to the Michael Dell episode that I just did a few months ago, and all I hear is the flaws. All I hear is like, “You stupid idiot. You should use three sentences, that could have been one sentence. That is not even interesting. Cut that next time.” That’s how I get better. I go back and listen to it.
So I am obsessed with product. The people that I admire the most are great products. It could be Jiro’s sushi. It could be the Spotify app. It could be, it doesn’t matter, shoes that I like. I just love when people take what they do very seriously and I like the craft of it. And I want to dedicate my life to making a product that makes somebody else’s life better. That is what drives me. I understand, and I have a bunch of friends that like the money or building the systems, if you want to go back to archetypes or just having a big empire.
I don’t have any employees. You have three. I guess I have two technical subcontractors doing clips for me and thumbnails and stuff like that. But yeah, I don’t have any desire for a giant empire. I’m a little craftsman in my local shed over here.
Tim Ferriss: So why do the new podcast, David Senra?
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Why do it? And we can use any number of different entry points here. So number one, why do it? But you don’t have to answer that as number one. I’m also curious where you see the podcast ecosystem. Is it early? Is it late? Is it oversaturated? Is it undersaturated, et cetera? And then how do you diversify an interview-based podcast?
David Senra: Okay. So let’s take number one, the why do it. I was resistant on doing it for years because I like to do one thing and I don’t like to not focus. A huge thing, that if you could summarize nine years, 400 biographies into one word of what I’ve learned, is focus. These people, whether they’re psychos, nice people, different industries, they’re remarkably focused. They’re a different species than the current level of lack of attention spans that we have now that I think are getting worse. So focus is especially important.
If you look at how I spend my time though, we just talked about the importance of building a business that’s natural to you. Half my waking time, I would like to be completely alone, not in even the house with somebody else. Alone in my reading, thinking. I like solitude a lot to a scary degree. So that makes sense. Founders, reading books all day, that’s what you do. That makes perfect sense.
When I’m not doing that though, if you look at what else I’m doing, essentially do this data dump where I’m in silence half the day and then I go out every night that I’m not with my family. I usually have dinner with another founder, usually that I met through the podcast, and we talk for two, three — some people are like, “Oh, really impressed.” People will send me, “I would love to talk to you.” And they send me a calendar for 30 minutes. I go, “I don’t do 30. We’re not even going to start. We haven’t even started. If that’s what you think this is, I don’t care that you’re a billionaire, we’re just never going to meet, ever.”
And it’s always super long from the very first time. I can mention all these people, we talked for a long time. So I’m doing this, anyways. And for years, people like Patrick were like, “You stupid idiot. You should be recording these. This is crazy.” And so there’s two things, to answer your question, that happened. One is, the first time me and Patrick grabbed dinner in New York with Daniel Ek, okay? We talked for four hours.
And we get in the car because we’re leaving the city and going back to Patrick’s house because I’m going to spend the night there before I go back home. And the first thing Patrick says, and again, this is why it’s important. The piece of advice that Charlie Munger gave us when we were at his house, he’s like, “Your job at your age is to build a seamless web of deserved trust with other people who are like you.”
He’s like, “Everybody knows that me and Buffett — I met Buffett when I was 35. He was 28. What they didn’t understand, there’s a bunch of other guys around our age that we built the same level of trust with and we did life with and did deals with forever. Most of them were dead by the time I met Charlie. And so relationships are very important.” And Munger has that line, “Trust is one of the greatest economic factors in the world,” which I’ve never heard anybody else say that. That’s a truly unique idea.
Tim Ferriss: I agree with that.
David Senra: And so there’s a level of trust that I am very standoffish. People call me a turtle, I get my shell. And so once you’ve penetrated that, I have a level of trust that you want what’s right for me. There’s no weird competitive vibes here, we’re not secret adversaries. I want to see you win. And then we get in the car and he’s just like, “Goddammit, you need to record these.” And he’s like, “I’ve known Daniel for four years. You got more out of him in four hours than I did in four years.”
He’s like, “I spoke two percent of the time. You spoke 49 percent. He spoke the other 49 percent.” And he’s just like, “There’s nobody that could speak to the soul of the founder in the world that you can.” And it’s because he says something and it’s not what he’s saying. It’s what Henry Ford did here and Henry Kaiser did there and Jim Casey did over here, and that’s how my brain naturally works.
So I was like, “Okay, that was interesting.” And then part of the conversation was Daniel saying to take — I wasn’t doing video. I have 375 episodes because I’m not doing it for fame. I’m introverted. And Daniel’s just saying in a very nice way, “What are you doing? Stop riding the fence. This is the game that you chose.” And I have the data. Video obviously is important in podcasts. You’re lying to yourself again. The importance of somebody telling the truth.
I want people around me to check me. I don’t want sycophants. And I’ll tell you the second person that influenced me that calls me and checks me all the time. And so that got in my mind for a while and I was like, “Okay, that’s interesting.” And I get sad when I don’t podcast. I would like to podcast every day and I can’t because I have to read an entire book before I sit down to make an episode.
I cannot make more than 52 episodes a year. I just can’t. I can’t read — people are like, “You must read fast.” No, I read slow, 25 pages an hour at most. And I have to do all the other shit I just told you I had to do, highlighting. You know how long this takes?
Tim Ferriss: Taking photographs, putting it into Readwise.
David Senra: Yeah. And so then something else that’s important to me is I’m not a political person at all. I don’t even read the news. I will find out the important stuff. If there’s a pandemic, I’ll hear about it. If there’s a war, I’ll hear about it. Other stuff, no idea what’s going on. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m purposely aloof. But one thing that I am passionate about is that entrepreneurship is good for the world as long as you’re spending your time building. You mentioned Losing Your Virginity by Richard Branson.
He has the best description I’ve ever heard of a business. “All a business is, is an idea that makes somebody else’s life better.” And therefore, there’s always opportunity because there’s infinite ways to make other people’s lives better. And so that’s what I’m trying to do. And so another person who I’ve become close with is Jared Kushner. We live in Miami together. And we went and met for dinner, and Jared’s a really smart and buttoned-up guy. And again, I don’t pay attention to politics.
So the way I met him is actually he reached out to Rick and is like, “I’m a huge Founders fan. Can you contact, see if David would speak at my company offsite?” A lot of companies ask me to speak at their company offsite. And I didn’t know anything about Jared. All I know is that people on the internet like to argue about them because of the Trump stuff, but I judge people on how they are with me. This ever happened to you where you were like, “That person’s great,” and you deal with them, like, “Oh, that guy’s terrible,” or vice versa?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’ve had both.
David Senra: Yeah, exactly. So I’m going to go into this, I’m not going to do the research. I have no idea about all this stuff. I’m just going to see how this is going to go. And then we hit it off right away, and he tried to pay me. I was like, “No, no, no. It’s in Miami. I can drive over there. I can talk about this shit all the time. I like talking about this.” And then we just built a relationship and a friendship from that. We have similar interests.
And so we meet for dinner one day. Basically, he went and spoke at this conference in Miami, and he thought he was going to go talk about his new fund, and he thought he was friends with the guy, and the guy’s selling tickets and making money off his name being there. And it’s not like you’re paying speakers. And the guy, essentially, ambushed him and starts asking questions like, “How can you do business with Saudi Arabia? They chopped up Khashoggi,” and all this other stuff. And then before the talk was even done, his social media team was clipping it and sending it out in press releases and stuff.
Tim Ferriss: What a mess.
David Senra: So I show up at this dinner, and Jared’s always buttoned up and always got his shit together and he’s just like, “What the hell is going on here?” And by the time the dinner ends, it’s everywhere. And again, I’m like, “This is weird that the business and tech press in America, they hate business and tech. They cover things.” I’m an enthusiast. I’m not a journalist, I’m not a critic. I read books all the time where I hate the person or something. You’ll never see me do a podcast about it.
I want to talk about stuff I like, not things I hate. It’s a weird thing to go through. Imagine waking up every day, and your job is to cover people that you secretly wish you were. There’s just weird stuff around this. So we had this idea at dinner. I was like, “There should be a place where…” I am not talking about sycophant. I’m saying Todd Graves, people make fun of him because he says that God made him good at chicken fingers and that he’s living a chicken finger dream he thinks is a mission.
But I’ll tell you what, he believes it. He’s been offered billions. He owns over 90 percent of the company. He will never sell that company. He’s not doing it for money. He’s doing it because he wants to make money and he does a lot of great things in the community. And I think people should know this guy exists and his ideas should be spread. That’s a good for the world.
So those two things happened, and I’m like, “Oh, this is interesting.” I have this weird base of knowledge. So the way Jared describes it is, he’s like, “Talking to you is like talking to 50 of history’s greatest entrepreneurs at the same time.” Because we’ll talk about something and same thing you see I do.
And then Daniel’s way of saying that, he’s like, “You’re like an LLM trained on history’s greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned up because you’re crazy. So it makes it entertaining.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think that’s no small contributor to why you have a die-hard fan base. It’s the pulpit preacher fervor that you bring to it.
David Senra: But I didn’t understand that until I thought about my childhood. When people say they go to church, that’s not the kind of churches I went to. This really gets me sad and where I was almost crying earlier. My mom deserved a better life. She didn’t deserve to grow up with the monster of her father and frankly, the bitch that her mom was. The one thing that I remember about my mom’s mom that she said to me was that I was a faggot.
That is literally the only memory I have is her — she was mentally ill. You’d go to her house, you know National Enquirer and all those things? There’s National Enquirer, there’s The Sun, and all this other stuff that you get when you go to the grocery store. First of all, she was a hoarder, so you’d go in the bathroom and there’s stacks all the way up to the — she wouldn’t throw them out. But she read them like we read The Wall Street Journal. You assume the stock is what they said the stock price is.
She’d read it like, “This is true. Bigfoot is true.” I was a kid. This is the memory. I was the age when President Clinton was in the White House and she was convinced that Clinton was gay and his wife was lesbian. And so she saw conspiracy everywhere, and she would direct that at her grandchildren, which is monstrous. And so my mom deserved better. And then the problem was, my mom didn’t have an education and she was a very naive person. And so she turned to the church, but the church she turned to was — do you know who Benny Hinn is?
Tim Ferriss: I do know the name. Yeah.
David Senra: Okay. So you come up there and he blows on you and you don’t have leprosy anymore, or he hit you in the face, does this thing, and you can walk now. And all this stuff was acting. They caught these people over and over again. And I remember my mom didn’t have a bunch of money and her putting a couple crumpled-up dollars and giving it to them because she thought this is what she’s going to get in her life.
It’s sickening to me now that that happened to her and that she fell prey to that and that these people did this and they have private jets and they have all this crazy — I’m sure there’s some people that do that and they believe it. That’s a different thing if they really believe it. I know that guy didn’t believe. Come on, you didn’t believe that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it was a racket.
David Senra: But then I didn’t understand that, oh, my God, that influenced the way I make my podcast because it is like — preacher. I feel I shouldn’t be sitting at a desk. I should be sitting at a pulpit. Somebody bought the domain churchforfounders.com, and it points to my podcast.
Tim Ferriss: That’s amazing.
David Senra: So that’s why I’m doing it. And then the other thing was I just like podcasting and I can have a conversation every day. So we’re going to start out every other week, and then move up to every week, and then I want to be having multiple conversations a week. That’s what I want to do because I’m doing it anyways.
Let’s just put a microphone there. And it’s not an interview. Yeah, there’s some questions I have for them, but it’s like a conversation. The idea that I’m going to do a business show interview and compete with Patrick, I think he’s the best interviewer by far. He’s so concise and perfect and he’s just really good at it. And I like to talk. I want to talk 49 percent of the time.
Tim Ferriss: How will you balance the two shows? Because it seems like Founders podcast takes a lot as it is.
David Senra: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: One of the benefits of that format is — now, this might put a cap on growth to some extent, but if you’re not playing the video game, it removes a lot of complexity. You don’t necessarily need to travel. You just read. You enjoy your solitude. You do some long-form audio, you can have notes in front of you. You can be picking your nose as you take a deep breath. There’s a lot of flexibility there. How are you going to balance the two without sacrificing Founders, snuffing out the magic X when you’re working on Y?
David Senra: This goes back. That’s a great question and it’s something I was very concerned with, and that’s why I said no for so many years. And so then you think if you said yes, then how would you do it instead of just blankly saying no? And there’s a secret of dealing with me that everybody that knows me for a long time realizes, anybody that’s been around me for a long time, and essentially it’s like water on a rock.
This is literally going to happen multiple times. So let’s say Patrick or Sam Hinkie would be like, “I have this idea.” And immediately, I’m like, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” And I’ll be really aggressive and angry. It’s like, “Stupid idea, terrible idea.” Then they mention it two weeks later, and now it’s just, “Dumb idea.” Mention it again a few weeks later, silence. Then a few weeks later, I’m like, “Hey guys, I have a great idea.”
Tim Ferriss: It’s their idea.
David Senra: It’s their idea.
Tim Ferriss: A slow-bake.
David Senra: They know. They’re just like, “Okay.” It’s just water on a rock. I’ll get to them, it’s just going to take a while. And the problem is now I’ve said that, they know that, and then you have other people that have to deal with me. I’m very difficult to deal with, obviously. You are too. And I think that’s one thing we can bond over. And you’re not trying to be mean, it’s just part of our personalities.
And so the answer to your question is Founders is a one person — so I read, I research, I record, I set my own mics, I do all the editing, I hand do the transcripts, I do everything. The only thing outsourced is that I think the clip guy I have is a little genius, a young kid living in Paris. His name’s Maxim, he’s incredible. And then I have somebody now because I have to play the YouTube game, which I hate, and I refuse to do the YouTube thing. I hate it.
Tim Ferriss: I haven’t.
David Senra: Exactly, I won’t.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve cauterized myself in that.
David Senra: I won’t do that kind of shit. I’d rather not get views. I have to see something and say I would click on that myself. I’m not doing things for numbers. I didn’t even know how many people were listening to Founders until the first six years. I never looked. And then I started doing these big sponsorship deals and they’re like, “Oh, I should look.” And they’re like, “Oh, this is great.” But I don’t like thinking about numbers. I don’t want it to influence anything that I do. And so the Founders basically take seven days. Usually, I’m late on the episode.
Tim Ferriss: Something in common with Dan Carlin.
David Senra: Yeah. No, I’m five days late. He’s five months late. God, man.
Tim Ferriss: Love you, Dan. You know that.
David Senra: Yeah. He’s literally the best podcaster to ever live. So what I realized is if I was going to do this, I would need a team. And I don’t like working with other people because I’m difficult. I can be mean. I just am. And I don’t want to be mean. I really don’t. You mentioned earlier not getting some of the bad personality traits from them.
And I was worried. I’ve asked friends, “Do you think I’m sociopathic? Am I all this?” They’re like, “No. You have empathy. You have a hard outer shell, but you’re really soft in the middle.” Patrick will tell you that.
Tim Ferriss: Turtle.
David Senra: Yeah, exactly. When I was in Japan, we went to some — what’s the ones where you have 20-course meals?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, omakase.
David Senra: Yeah. And they try to —
Tim Ferriss: Which literally means, basically, I’ll leave it to you. Omakase is like, “Leave it to you.” So you can use it that way too, “Makaseru.”
David Senra: Well, why do they call it omakase and it’s multiple — what does it have to do with —
Tim Ferriss: Omakase, is you don’t pick anything à la carte. You let the chef. Sit down and they just give you what they want to give you.
David Senra: Yes. And then they come in there, they make sure —
Tim Ferriss: So you’re leaving it up to them.
David Senra: But then they come in after everything and they want to talk to you about it.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s very un-Japanese. That’s probably for foreigners.
David Senra: Okay. So they tried to give me —
Tim Ferriss: They might be like, “This is this,” and then they stop. But this guy was giving you little mini TED Talks?
David Senra: No, he tried to get me to eat essence of turtle. It was baby turtle. I was like, “I’m not eating turtle.”
Tim Ferriss: Doesn’t sound great. I’m not excited about essence of turtle.
David Senra: Hey, the face you just made should be the turtle face.
Tim Ferriss: I feel like if David Senra doesn’t work as a podcast name, you could have Essence of Turtle.
David Senra: So what I realized is I need a team. So what I could see is eventually going down. Right now I’m making a new Founders episode every 10 to 14 days, which is not good. And I’ve tried to do every week. The cadence probably should be every two weeks. Me and Rick were talking about this this morning in regards to you, the same way. What’s that old apocryphal saying? “I would’ve wrote you a short letter, but I didn’t have time so I wrote you a long one.” He says me and you share that thing where the reading’s not taking longer, the recording’s not taking longer. It’s the editing before I do anything, it’s this wieldy, 15,000-word thing. I’m trying to get down to 5,000 words. Takes so long to do.
So to answer your question, could see a future — I’m never going to stop doing Founders, where I have to reduce. It can’t be 52 a year. Second and biggest thing is I took an idea from one of Rockefeller’s biographies. So one of the things that I do that I also think is important is you read all the famous biographies, but you’ve got to go through the bibliographies.
Books are made out of books. Everybody has read Titan by Ron Chernow. In the bibliography of that, there’s the best Rockefeller biography I’ve ever read, and I have eight at the house I haven’t read yet. I collect obscure Rockefeller biographies that I’ll eventually get to.
Tim Ferriss: What’s your favorite one?
David Senra: It’s called John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers, by David Freeman Hawke.
Tim Ferriss: Better writer than a titler.
David Senra: Yes. 250 pages instead of 800, but all about what you really want to know. You don’t want to know about where his grandfather was born. You want to know how he built Standard Oil. And there’s this idea in there that I’ve used called secret allies. And so this is going to answer your other question about podcasting, where he’s at the beginning of the oil industry. It’s the very beginning and he’s there.
Tim Ferriss: Rough and tumble time.
David Senra: Yeah. No one knows shit about oil refining. So what does he do? He goes and builds a network of secret allies with other oil refiners and then eventually do something that’s even more nefarious, which they start something called the Oil Refiners Association of America or something. And then he gets himself elected president to that.
And then what happens is, it’s like if we had a podcaster union and I’m president of the podcaster union, and then I go to you and like, “Tim, what’s your downloads this month? And how much are you charging for ads? And then who’s your next guest?” And he’s getting all this data. So then he sees, “That’s a joker. That guy’s already out of business. He doesn’t even know it yet.”
Tim Ferriss: “Oh, we don’t have to worry about that guy.”
David Senra: Yeah. “That guy’s a killer. I need to buy his company and make him a partner.” And so this idea of secret allies. So I’m obsessed with podcasting. And so what I would go do, I’d go around and I would talk to any podcaster who would talk to me. And we talk about everything, downloads, ads, who you’re selling to, how are you selling, who are you using for editing.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe that’s the spider sense I got.
David Senra: No. No, because I give. I give —
Tim Ferriss: I know, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.
David Senra: There’s people, literally, they’ll even tell you. There’s podcasters that literally, I took an idea from one podcast and gave it to another podcast because that’s the whole thing. I don’t collect it and hold it. We spread it around and they’ve made millions and millions of dollars from these ideas.
Tim Ferriss: I have a friend named Kevin Kelly. Kevin Rose does that too.
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Just gives away. Derek Sivers does it too. Gives away as many as possible. And if he can’t get rid of one that keeps him up at night, it’s like, “All right.”
David Senra: If you’re talking about podcast data, who’s the mad scientist of podcast data? Chris Hutchins. Me and you’ve talked to him. We both talked to him. He has good shit because he tells you stuff and he tells me stuff that I didn’t know. And he’s this weird mad scientist, but he’s in this weird part of podcasting I don’t even think about.
Tim Ferriss: All the Hacks. People, check him out.
David Senra: Yeah. He’s been on your podcast twice.
Tim Ferriss: Once because he wanted to have this long conversation with me about a bunch of stuff I was doing. And I was like, “If we’re going to do that, make it good with your questions and we’ll just record it. And then I can share it because I don’t want to answer all these questions over and over again.” It was about podcasting.
David Senra: It’s a great idea. And so basically, I took that idea. So anyways, I was able to build a lot of relationships with a lot of great podcasters who are friends who share information. But then you also see, “Oh, wait, there’s a lot of disparity between podcast teams and stuff.” And so Rob Mohr and Andrew Huberman tried to recruit me years ago, because they have a podcast network called SciComm that they really don’t do much with because it’s really hard to launch another health podcast when they’re dominating that vertical.
Is there another Huberman in that vertical that’s not discovered? Unlikely. And power laws were everything around us. And so I got this crazy DM and then a phone call with Rob, and he’s just like, “Dude, who are you?” And this is when I had, again, 5,000 listeners. And he’s like, “I’ve never come across anything like this.” And then we wound up talking. I think every single time we talked, it was over — this is on the phone, for over two hours every time and it’s all about podcasting.
And then they’re like, “We’re looking for other Hubermans, and you’re this giant nerd that loves reading obscure shit and breaking it down in an entertaining manner just like Andrew does.” And he’s like, “Would you be interested in joining us on SciComm?” And I was like, “You are two weeks too late because it’s not announced yet. But I have a verbal agreement with this guy named Patrick and I’m joining Colossus.”
But we still became friends and everything else. And so basically me and Rob, we’d spent a lot of time, I spend my summers in Malibu, so I see them all the time. And I’ve talked to Andrew and they’re just killers.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they’re very good at what they do.
David Senra: They’re just operationally excellent. And they have a small but mighty team, and every single person in that team, they’re very focused. So their photographer’s one of the best photographers. Their editor’s one of the best editors. Their video people are some of the best video people. Their internet guy’s one of the best internet guys. It’s just everything. And so their whole point was — I was like, “Listen, Founders is never going anywhere. It’s staying on Colossus. It’s staying exactly what it is. But if I do something new, I’ll let you know.”
And so when I went to them, it was just like, “Here’s the thing. I am going to pick the guests. I’m highly disagreeable. I will never take direction from anybody. I want to pick the guests and I want to have the conversations. And then everything else has to be A-plus team around me. And that means from visuals, to editing, to clips, to every single thing.” And they’re operationally excellent. I have not met a better — just spend time with them.
Tim Ferriss: Very well-architected.
David Senra: And then the way they built their business is genius.
Tim Ferriss: So what does success look like for you two years from now? Three, five, pick your time frame.
David Senra: Oh, success looks the same now and forever that I’m proud of what I made. That’s it. I don’t care what the numbers are. I love the climb.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s say this show does really well.
David Senra: Oh, it is going to.
Tim Ferriss: So David Senra does really well. And not saying Rob would do this, but you know what we would really love to do is a third show, and it’s incredibly compelling, maybe it’s a slightly different angle or a totally different angle. Who knows? Who the hell knows?
Interviewing spouses of all these famous people, which I think would actually be an amazing podcast. I’m sure someone’s doing it. But besides the quality of the product and being proud of the product, there is such a thing as too many different products.
David Senra: Oh, sure.
Tim Ferriss: There is such a thing as simply burning the candle at both ends. So you’re at a battery capacity that compromises the product, maybe long-term or your life. You’ve got more considerations than just business. So how do you think about those other factors when you telescope out a few years?
David Senra: I’m not a long-term planner. So I would say I’m basically non-analytical at all. I go straight off intuition. Steve Jobs says this great line where he thinks intuition is more important than intelligence, and that intuition played a larger role in his success than anything else. Intuition and perseverance. And so I used to think I was more analytical and I have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan.
All a great life is, is a string of great days. And so the furthest I plan out is 24 hours. I actually have this weird — I don’t even know if I should say this publicly. I don’t think humans actually understand time at all. And when you say a decade, yeah, we know a decade’s 10 years. But do we actually understand what that means? I think we maybe understand a week, a month. We definitely understand a day because that’s how we live. We live 24 hours at a time.
And so all I try to do is like, “Can I design a day that I really enjoyed?” And not hedonistic. I’m not laying around doing nothing. I have to work. I feel guilt and shame when I’m not being productive. And that’s probably a bad thing. There’s all reasons that you could psychoanalyze why that is the case, but I just know how I am. I like to work. I like to get up and get after it. I don’t like taking vacations.
The stuff I get invited to is crazy. I like to work. I like podcasting. I’m obsessed with it. Everybody’s like, “We talked about this multiple times. Why don’t you do something else?” I like doing this. I will keep doing this. So to answer your question, I just try to make a great day. And the way I make a great day is I want to wake up, I want to take care of my health. I want to read. I want to make a product I’m really proud of and I want to spend time with people that I love and admire.
And I’m going to do that the next day and the next day and the next day. And I think if I have a great day today and a great day tomorrow and a shitty day a month from now and then a better day the next day and I get through my life and it’s just a string of great days, that will be a great life. And so two years from now, I don’t know because if you asked me two years ago, I said, “There’s no way I’m going to do another podcast.” But I would say my answer is that simple. The maxim I like about this is I love the climb. I don’t care where the summit is.
I just like the activity for the sake of itself, and so therefore, I’m going to do it. And I hope it’s well-received. But I couldn’t have predicted that Founders was going to turn out the way it was. So I don’t know. I’m just going to do great work that I’m completely fascinated by and it gives me energy. And on the other side of that, this is what Stephen King said, “I’m not just the writer. I’m the first reader.”
I listen to every single episode of Founders before anybody else and I just threw out one. The book is great, Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care of Itself. I read it for the first time five, six years ago. I read it again. Love the book. I made a podcast on it. It’s an hour and 15 minutes long. I finished editing it. I listened to it, not good enough, threw it away. That’s it. Can I make something that I’m proud of?
Tim Ferriss: So I believe all of that and I want to push on a little bit.
David Senra: Go for it, please.
Tim Ferriss: Because the great days make great lives, I agree with. But now your circle of interaction is expanding with a show that involves other people with very busy schedules. So to what extent are you going to be traveling to all these people versus having people travel to you? That type of decision has longer-term implications, right? So I’m curious how you think about that.
David Senra: So the way I think about this is this goes to the other side of me that’s probably not healthy, that I have a ruthless competitive drive that I think would terrify most people. I have a very negative inner monologue that I never think I’m doing enough. I have multiple people depending on me financially, way above and beyond just your wife and kids, other people that I have to make sure that I can take care of, so I have a lot of pressure on me. I want the pressure. So, to answer your question, it’s like I’ll do whatever it takes to win. And so, if that means I’ve got to get on a plane, or I get a little less sleep, then that’s what’s going to happen. But I also think you’re also smart, and you can think about these things, like okay, you want to talk to extreme winners in business, is essentially — not really starter/founders, I want people that have decades of experience. Every single person, if you look at the people that we’ve been recording with so long, I’m just more interested in talking to people that have done things for a long time, that are smarter and more productive and better than I am.
And so, setting up here, where we are in New York, is probably a good idea because everybody comes through New York. Now, we’ve recorded several in L.A., here’s also a thing to consider, most of the people I’m talking to have planes. Rick pulls me aside and says this all the time, multiple people have told me this, you don’t understand the impact that you’re having on people, because I don’t think about it. I’m by myself all the time, I don’t look at numbers. And so, people have literally gotten their jets and flown across the country because I was like, “Hey, can you do it on this day in L.A.? Are the teams there? It’s more convenient.” And they do it because they think I’ve done something for them, but I’m just like, “No, no, no, I haven’t done anything for you, I just thank you for listening. The fact that you listen to my podcast means I get to do this for a living.”
This is more Munger has really heavily basically influenced my thinking, it’s just like the reciprocation tendency in humans is so pronounced and it’s evolved. Yes, and it’s never going away, and what I didn’t understand and I still don’t understand, because I don’t like talking about, I don’t like thinking about this shit. I think about, like, as if I’m talking to one person is the fact that so many people have gotten value. Every single person’s recorded an episode with us for the new show so far has listened to a ton of shows of mine. And their point was it’s important work, and it’s more — Todd Graves has actually told me this two weeks ago. He’s like, “It’s important work and it’s more important the bigger your company gets.” Because if I can hear a single idea, or either avoid a mistake or get a good idea —
Tim Ferriss: That’s true.
David Senra: — and it makes a one percent difference on my business, that’s — I can’t do math, I can’t do public math. A billion dollars, whatever the number is, $2 billion. It’s a huge — no, that’d be 10 percent. So, if it makes a 10 percent difference in his business, it’s a huge swing. And so, so far, and again, you have a private jet, where do you actually live? Wherever you have to —
Tim Ferriss: Also, your carrying costs for that jet are pretty high.
David Senra: Yeah, so I —
Tim Ferriss: So, there’s a little bit of pressure just to utilize the damn thing.
David Senra: You want to hear something funny? I’ll go back to why I think New York and L.A. is going to be where I’m recording most of these. And we’re willing to travel, we will if we have to. If Dyson says, “Come do it,” I’m coming to England, I don’t give a shit. So, Sam Zell told me, he’s like, “I told you that lunch I had with him changed my life?” He’s like, “Don’t make the same mistake,” he’s like, “I know all the rich guys,” and he says, “first of all, they’re all guys…” That’s what he told me. He goes, “Two, you’d be surprised how many of them are miserable. And they do stuff they don’t like for more money that they can’t spend, and then they make the same mistake, where they buy slight…” This is his word, it’s not mine. He goes, “they buy slightly nicer versions of the same shit.”
He goes, “The difference between a $10 million house and a 30 million house is negligible.” And he’s like, “I own my place in Chicago, and my compound in Malibu,” that’s the word he used, compound. And he goes, “I rent everything else.” He goes, “The things that you own start to own you.” And he said every year, after, I think, Thanksgiving and in between Christmas, he’d take his entire family, extended family, to this little village in France. And he said, he’s always a shit talker. And he said funny things, he goes, “I could buy the whole village.” He goes, “I don’t, I rent it, and then I don’t think about it until I go back. It’s somebody else’s problem.” And he goes, “There’s only one true luxury in life,” he goes, “it’s a private jet, try to get to private jet money.” And he is like, “I use my jet three hours a day.” On average, he uses jet three hours a day.
He was in South Florida, because he’s like, “I woke up in Chicago this morning, I got on my jet, I went across the street, gave a talk to a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs,” because that’s what he wanted to spend his last days doing. He knew he was dying, he didn’t tell me though, I didn’t know that. We were scheduled to have another dinner, and it got canceled and they said he was sick, I was like, oh, he got COVID. He died three weeks later, so I never got to see him again. But the way he was spending his last days, at his own expense, traveling all over the world on his beautiful giant plane, spending a lot of money, is passing on the knowledge that he learned through 61 years to other investors and younger and entrepreneurs.
And so he goes, “I did that this morning, came over here, had lunch, I’m going to get in my car, and go back to Chicago.” He used it three hours a day. So, so far people have been willing to fly to come to us, I’ll come to some people if they’re super busy schedules, and then I think just setting up in a place where they all will come through would make a lot of sense.
Tim Ferriss: Anyone on your wish list that you haven’t been able to track down?
David Senra: No, surprisingly, again, I don’t like thinking about this, where I don’t understand that today, right now, if I do an episode on somebody living, it’s going to get to them. They might not be a listener, but — this just happened with Jimmy Iovine. So I have these weird, people are always surprised, they think, who’s on your list? Obviously I respect Bezos, respect Elon, all of them, but I would say like Todd Graves, they’re like, “What the hell’s wrong with you? And James Dyson. The vacuum cleaner guy?” I’m weirdly obsessed with these people. And so, one of the people I’m obsessed with is Jimmy Iovine. And Jimmy Iovine, Defiant Ones.
Tim Ferriss: Such a good series.
David Senra: I watch it —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God, it is so well done. If anyone hasn’t seen Defiant Ones, go watch it. It’s head spinningly good.
David Senra: With the description of the four-part documentaries, oh, it’s a relationship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Yeah, it’s really a documentary about entrepreneurship, it’s about chasing a path — chasing a path, there’s no path in front of you. There was no path for Dre to get out of Compton, there’s no path from Jimmy to get, for the son of a longshoreman in Brooklyn, to go what happened to him. He’s fascinating. And then this is my point about what do you actually value in life? Jimmy’s a billionaire. I don’t know, he’s got a billion, $2 billion, whatever the case is, I’d be more interested in that than if he had $100 billion. If you asked me whose life would you want, Buffett or Munger, Buffett was 100 times richer, I’m taking Munger every day. What I like about Jimmy is that he lived an interesting life.
The episode, you see it on Defiant Ones, crazy stories in there, but Rick Rubin, who, you mentioned, if podcasting is saturated, which we can get to, Rick Rubin’s really good because he’s a world-class listener. He took a skillset, what was his skill for the work that he did? Why are these musicians hiring him? To listen, to hear something they don’t hear, and to suggest something they might not hear, might not understand. And the episode he did with Jimmy Iovine I think came out in 2023, I think it was the single best podcast I listened to all year. And it’s just Jimmy Iovine telling insane story after insane story about the music business, because the music business is a wild business. And what I like about my business is that it’s a unique experience generator.
It creates opportunities and experiences you can’t buy, and the amount of people I get to meet and talk to — my memoirs are going to be wild because of the weird dinners I’ve been to, and the planes I’ve been on, and the boats I’ve been on, and it started because I was a giant nerd, with a giant head, sitting in a room by himself for five years, just mainlining biography after biography after biography. Jimmy’s really interesting to me, and then what happened is, I don’t even — part of this, I can’t tell you how I got connected, he agreed to do the show, and one of the previous guests is the one that connected me, which again, I just don’t feel I deserve how nice these people have been to me and what they’re willing to do, and I don’t even like asking them for this. But it got to Jimmy —
Tim Ferriss: Is that true?
David Senra: No, I don’t like — the worst possible —
Tim Ferriss: You put a lot of work into your podcast.
David Senra: It doesn’t matter though, the worst possible thing — Buffett has —
Tim Ferriss: Do you feel like you don’t deserve it? I feel like that’s an important question.
David Senra: Buffett has a — I’ll answer that question in a minute. Buffett has the line’s, it’s like, “The people that win are the ones that their eyes are on the field, not the scoreboard.” I don’t — I was going for a walk last night, and you know this happens to you all time, I’m way earlier, you’re like an OG, man, you’ve been famous way — I still, when people stop me on the street, which happens, I’m like, “How do you know what I look like?”
Tim Ferriss: No, that’s going to happen more and more.
David Senra: Yeah, exactly. So, I’ve read all your blog posts about this too. I was on the phone with Morgan Housel this morning, who’s a big fan of yours.
Tim Ferriss: Great guy.
David Senra: Obviously you guys are friends. And we were talking about that, security around this, and all this other stuff, and then we were talking about you. Morgan’s just a peach of a human, he’s the opposite of me.
Tim Ferriss: Psychology of Money, great book.
David Senra: It won’t stop selling, won’t stop selling.
Tim Ferriss: I know. Yeah. Got lightning in a bottle on that one. Yeah. Earned it. Earned it too.
David Senra: Oh, 100 percent. And the nicest guy. If you think you want to find my directional opposite, and we’ll go back to the question you think is important, Morgan genuinely believes that his ceiling that he should have — he should be an insurance salesman somewhere in the Midwest, making 100,000 a year. And the fact that this guy got really, really wealthy —
Tim Ferriss: Astronomical numbers.
David Senra: Yes. Really, really wealthy, and just wakes up every day, can’t believe his life. I wake up every day like, “Why am I not a billionaire?” It’s like, he’s happy in a way I will never be, and this is why I think Daniel Ek’s advice about chasing — Daniel does not believe, this is one of the first things I asked him on the show, was — he was the one that put this idea out there that life is not about happiness, it’s about impact. He is not chasing happiness, he’s chasing impact. And he’s the one that actually convinced Dara, the founder of Uber, tells the story, they were having drinks —
Tim Ferriss: Dara is CEO.
David Senra: CEO. Yeah, sorry. Good distinction. I met Travis too. Most intense person I’ve ever been in contact with.
Tim Ferriss: He is one hell of a builder, man.
David Senra: Oh, for sure.
Tim Ferriss: And different batteries.
David Senra: Most intense. And I’ve been around a lot of intense, he is —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. He’s —
David Senra: Very fascinating.
Tim Ferriss: — he has different gears than most people.
David Senra: Oh, and the storytelling, and the — he’s a phenomenal storyteller, phenomenal communicator. So, anyways, when Dara was going back and forth about becoming CEO of Uber, he said originally was going to say no because he was pretty happy with his life, and Daniel, in a very direct way, was like, “When’s life about happiness? It’s about impact. It’s like one of the most important companies in the world, and you can have an impact on it. You can have an impact on the way cities are changed. You absolutely have to do this.” And I think that’s a really interesting idea. So, I am trying to have impact. So, to answer your question, do I think I deserve it? I obviously know that I put a lot of work into it, and I believe that the product is good, and I think I found what I’ve put on the planet to do, but I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t like thinking about its impact on other people.
I like it because I like it. I make it, I’m like, I would listen to this podcast, I think it’s valuable. I think you start doing shit for the wrong reasons — I talked to a lot of the head people at Spotify, and they said the biggest mistake, one of the biggest mistakes they made is the great thing about podcasting is that people that come up like we did, through the garage. You just started — I listened to your first episode. I remember TimTim TalkTalk.
Tim Ferriss: TimTim Talk.
David Senra: Yeah, I remember.
Tim Ferriss: From my kitchen table.
David Senra: With a friend. And why did you do it? I think you had a couple glasses of wine, right? And with a friend, because you’re like, I don’t —
Tim Ferriss: Figured it out pretty quickly after listening to episode one that the second episode was going to be sober.
David Senra: Oh, man.
Tim Ferriss: Josh Waitzkin, number two.
David Senra: Yeah. But you come up with, you did it because you were curious, you only talked to people you really want to talk to, you had no production costs. And so, Spotify said they flipped it. They’re like, we took something that was low production costs done by enthusiasts and people in the garage. Huberman’s analogy of this is, it’s punk rock. Punk rock is great because it started with people that just wanted to play in the garage, and then they got good, and then they played for stadiums. And so, Spotify’s like, oh, what we did was we took a low production cost, made a high production cost because we had these big contracts, and then we hired celebrities, and no one listened, and the people that did listen, they stopped because the celebrities were just doing it for money, they didn’t do it because they love it.
And I think that’s the key. It’s like, I truly love this, I did it for five and a half years when no one was listening. That tells you that I love it. But I think one of the worst things you could do is, I’m going to do it because status is the funny thing. Podcasting is dorky, it’s low status.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, totally.
David Senra: In 2016, you think that was fucking high status?
Tim Ferriss: No.
David Senra: No. It was like, “You dorky nerd with a podcast.”
Tim Ferriss: And to be clear, I’m not asking if you’re seeking status, it was more if you feel that you’re unworthy of people flying to you and doing these things, those are two very different —
David Senra: No, yeah, I meant I think you see this now, that podcasting is obviously very influential and can be — there’s so many people jumping into it that clearly don’t love it. They like it because the CPMs are high or whatever, or they want to be famous. I had no video for eight years, do you think I want to be famous? Do you think I want to be recognized? No, I obviously don’t. I had to fucking had the most powerful person in podcasting berate me at dinner, in a nice way, saying, you idiot, you have to do video. That’s the only reason I do video because Daniel told me to. And how smart am I if I don’t listen to him? Then I’m an idiot. I have to do it. I don’t like doing it.
So, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I think at some point the platform gets big enough, like, “I flew here for this. Why? Because you have a massive platform, and you’re willing to extend it to me, and I’d travel wherever. You say. Iceland? I’m coming to Iceland, brother. I don’t know what to tell you. Like, I knew you like Argentina, let’s go down there. We’ll do an Argentina. So, yeah, I think eventually, when they see it’s big enough, that people would come to you, also try to make it easier, and I’m not doing it in Columbia, Missouri, I’m doing it in New York or L.A., you’re going to be there anyways.”
Tim Ferriss: And also with the particular cohort that you’re interviewing with jets, if they’re like, “Sure, I’ll fly to New York,” and then they can also set up five other meetings with friends or business associates, or fill in the blank.
David Senra: Make it easy. But I think really, man, I do this — I don’t, this is the turtle in me. I don’t like asking.
Tim Ferriss: This is the turtle.
David Senra: You can ask all the people that — we have a bunch of mutual close friends, I don’t like asking for help. And I think one of the weird ways that I think I built true friendships with some of these people is because all day long it’s, give me, give me, give me.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: I have never asked Rick for anything. I think one time to crash at his house, that’s it. All I want is to be homies, to be friends. I don’t want anything from this. And I think I didn’t understand because I didn’t come from this background, that when you’re high profile, and you’re building these empires, these are all empire builders. All day long they’re just surrounded by people that want something from them. And I’m just like, here, I have this podcast that might be valuable for you, you want it? I don’t want anything from you. And when they tell me, ask me for stuff, I still don’t like doing it. I don’t like doing it. It really hurt me to, would you be on my show? But I was like, all right, well, if I’m going to ask for something, I’ll do this. And not a single person I’ve asked has said no.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you love what you do, that is essential to producing the quality that you produce. It’s essential for the endurance to sort of outperform and outlast, because podcasting as a whole is just an elephant graveyard of three to 10 episode shows. So, if you choose something you really like, that you would make because you intrinsically enjoy it, if it’s an outgrowth of reading the biographies, taking the notes, and you’re like, well, this is really sort of in terms of additional work for me on top of something I might already be doing, actually not like the majority of the pie, and you have the fuel of that obsession you’re going to do well, even if it’s just for yourself, but certainly with the longevity you have the competitive advantage of durability.
David Senra: That means a lot coming from you, and everything you’ve accomplished, and I think you actually hit to the essence of it, where it’s like, I can’t sleep after these things. I had to get up the next day when I was in Austin, I think I had a 7:00 a.m. flight, and I slept maybe three hours because just gem after gem after gem from Michael Dell. Or you’ll see this on the Todd Graves episode, dude, we were the same person. We’re the same person. And so, we’re spontaneously high-fiving — I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of, “This guy’s a dork.” Like, “Hey, give me another high-five, buddy.” We were just geeking out about minute details of just being obsessed with, his whole thing is do one thing and doing it better than anybody else. And I remember going from the airport, it was in Baton Rouge, and I immediately called Sam, who’s the closest thing I have to a mentor, and I was like, “I’m in trouble,” and he’s like, “Why?” I go, “I’m addicted to doing these things already, I can’t stop.” This was crazy.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a good sign.
David Senra: Crazy.
Tim Ferriss: That’s how I pick my projects, largely, it’s how I pick some of my startups too that I get involved with. If I have what I would call good insomnia, for at least a few nights in a given week, and then I try to quell it, it doesn’t matter how much Trazodone I take, or anything else, I just am so excited by something that my mind is worrying and I can’t go to sleep, I’m like, okay, there’s probably something there. Also because it seems to be such an energetic unlock, I’m like, even if that one thing doesn’t do very well, if I can create this nuclear power from that, it’s not compartmentalized, it can apply to other things. So, I get it. I get it.
Now, I was listening to, I don’t know how I found it — actually, I was going on, I think it’s Tom Papa’s show. He’s a comedian, great interviewer, and I was going on his show, this is a while ago, and I was doing some homework on my own, listened to an interview he did where he interviewed Joe Rogan. And I’m paraphrasing here obviously, but Rogan effectively said, he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t really think much about discipline or willpower,” he said, “what I do have though is obsession. And when I find something that I’m obsessed with, when I deep dive, it’s like I don’t need to worry about discipline. I don’t need to worry about willpower.” So, it’s like finding that thing that you are obsessed by.
David Senra: I think 100 percent right.
Tim Ferriss: And so I think you’ve done that. You’ve done that. So, you’ve found your lane. A lot of people don’t find it, right? They don’t find that thing. It’s like you wonder if Kobe Bryant were born somewhere and didn’t have the chance to pick up basketball, would it have been something else? Maybe if you were Michael Jordan, okay, it’s baseball or this or that, but it’s like, you found your thing, that’s kind of amazing.
David Senra: No, I appreciate it. And the way I think about it’s, it took me 32 years to find my path, and five and a half years of struggle before I could even pay my bills. It was a long time. Kobe found it — imagine finding it at 12 like he did, and knowing. I read the 600-page biography on him by Roland Lazenby. And the middle school guidance counselor is like, he wrote down, “What are you going to do?” He’s like, “I’m going to play in the NBA.” He’s like, “You need to pick something else, that’s a one in a million shot.” He goes, “I’m going to be that one in a million.” To be that so sure at 12 years old, and this is what goes back to the lack of introspection.
I had a lot of angst, and what is the meaning of life, or what am I doing here? And then once you find your thing, there’s like a, definitely not resting on laurels, but there is almost a relief, like —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: Because it’s not just finding something you love to do, it’s like, what is that — you’re like a Japanese encyclopedia. Ikigai, what is the —
Tim Ferriss: Ikigai, yeah.
David Senra: Yeah, it’s like the intersection of what you love to do, what you’re good at, and what’s good for the world.
Tim Ferriss: Something like that. Ikigai gets used in a bunch of different ways. Japan’s always good for these pithy, conceptual words.
David Senra: I think, I’m just going to be blasphemous for you, but I think travel is generally overrated, after you do it —
Tim Ferriss: I am not jumping in —
David Senra: — after you do it for a while. Because the problem is we keep going to all the nice places, and all the nice places are all the same to each other. The one thing that Japan blew my mind and why it’s the top of my list now of everywhere I’ve been, and where I’d want to go again is because it’s one of the few truly distinct cultures in the world.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a wild one. They also, they’re kind of like a chameleon, because they pull so much from other cultures. So, when it was in isolation, it was certainly an alien environment, and then you look at everything they’ve incorporated, and in some cases, in the case of, say, The Toyota Way, right?
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: You have, I guess it was, I want to say Deming?
David Senra: Yep. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right. Who was basically, not ignored, but certainly not embraced in his country of birth, gets adopted by the Japanese, and you see them do this over and over and over again. So, yes, it’s a fascinating place, and I would agree with you that especially people who travel in the lap of, it doesn’t need to be luxury, it could just be comfort — like rich person travel is the most boring shit in the world.
David Senra: Same stores, same —
Tim Ferriss: It’s just like, okay, you’re going to the Four Seasons in 12 different places, getting on the Wi-Fi, doing whatever it is you would’ve been doing at home, and then going to the most expensive meals, it’s just not interesting. So, I think if anybody wants a great book on the art of long-term world travel, if that’s of interest, Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.
David Senra: I read that because of you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
David Senra: The amount of books in my library because of you. I did the same thing with you that I did with all these other people, it’s like, oh, Tim says to read it, I read it.
Tim Ferriss: And a lot of these books, they’re underneath it all, at least in the case of Rolf Potts’ book, Vagabonding, they’re really philosophical operating systems, and it’s a hat you can try on. You don’t have to wear it forever, but it’s like, okay, if you only have one jacket to wear, which is six gear workaholic, neglecting family guy, just expand your wardrobe. You can always put that jacket back on, you just hang it up for a moment. And similarly, I like these books, and they certainly can be business books, whether it’s Branson, who is in some ways, he took risks, but he’s kind of the opposite, at least in a lot of capacities to a Dyson. He risk mitigates the hell out of his ventures, and caps the downside in so many creative ways.
David Senra: Like his airline.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. So, the artistry of deal making for minimizing or capping downside is one of Branson’s superpowers. Even though the stuff on the magazine covers back in the day, it was like, the mad man, who’s doing X, Y, Z, and has the models, and he’s —
David Senra: Phenomenal marketer.
Tim Ferriss: — and he’s kite boarding with a naked model on his back. You remember that?
David Senra: That’s literally the picture I have in my mind.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God.
David Senra: That looks fun.
Tim Ferriss: He is also, can be a wild man. But I digress. I was just going to say that these are hats that you can put on to test them out as philosophical operating systems, which is how I pick a lot of the books. Yeah. Books, books, books. I was very similar to you when I was a kid, and also all throughout, just living in books, living and living in books, and —
David Senra: It’s very common though in these stories. Rockefeller, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Edwin Land, Winston Churchill — the way I say this is like they don’t just read, they devour entire shelves. There’s multiple examples of Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison read every single book in the Detroit library. Edwin Land read every single book on light in Harvard, then dropped out because he didn’t think he had anything else to learn, moves to New York City, I think one of the most beautiful buildings is the one we passed on the way here, the New York City Public Library, read every single book on light in there, and then is like, okay, I learned enough, now I can do my experiments. They just devour entire shelves.
Tim Ferriss: Monster. David Senra, what have we not talked about? People will be able to find, of course, the show. Davidsenra.com.
David Senra: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: Is that the best website?
David Senra: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And
David Senra: David Senra on all social channels, Instagram, X —
Tim Ferriss: All social channels.
David Senra: Podcast app —
Tim Ferriss: Founders podcast, of course, founderspodcast.com
David Senra: I appreciate you, you’ve included me in your newsletter in the past —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah.
David Senra: — on your blog. I read all your shit. And I’m like — and I didn’t even know, it’s shocking to me when I’m like, oh, because it’s not like you told me. I was like, what the hell?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you put out. The obsession and attention to detail doesn’t surprise me at all, when you told me about going through your transcripts by hand, I’m like, yeah, that makes sense. And I really have my fingers crossed for you, I don’t think you need any luck, but that David Senra is as durable as Founders podcast. If anybody can do it, you can do it.
David Senra: I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you, man.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Congratulations.
David Senra: You’ve had a huge influence on me.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, thanks man.
David Senra: It’s long overdue, like I said, I ran into the hallway and grabbed you. I was like, “It’s been too long —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, very, very, very long overdue. So, everybody listening, check out David Senra, I’m excited to check it out.
David Senra: Thank you, brother.Tim Ferriss: And also know the team at Huberman Lab, Andrew, Rob, those guys are all top tier, so what’s coming is going to be absolutely top-notch. So, I’m excited to see it. And as always, everybody, we will put links to anything that came up in this conversation in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast, just search Senra, S-E-N-R-A, or essence of turtle, and you’ll be able to find everything. And until next time, just be a bit kinder than is necessary, to others, yes, but also to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: David Senra — How Extreme Winners Think and Win: Lessons from 400+ of History’s Greatest Founders and Investors (Including Buffett, Munger, Rockefeller, Jobs, Ovitz, Zell, and Names You Don’t Know But Should) (#828) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-09-25 00:55:24
“If you could summarize nine years, 400 biographies, into one word of what I’ve learned, it’s ‘focus.'”
— David Senra
David Senra (@FoundersPodcast) is the host of the Founders podcast. For the past nine years, David has intensely studied the life and work of hundreds of history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every week he reads another biography and shares lessons on his podcast. David has been invited to lecture at Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, and Notre Dame. Founders is one of the top business podcasts in the world, with hundreds of thousands of founders, investors, and executives listening every week.
His new podcast, David Senra, showcases conversations with the best-of-the-best living founders and extreme winners. Its goal is to share timeless lessons with current and future generations of entrepreneurs and leaders.
Please enjoy!
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Website | Founders Podcast | Founders Newsletter | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
“I’m not building a media company. I’m building relationships at scale.”
— David Senra
“You should be copying the what, not the how. You don’t copy what they did; you copy how they did it, and then you just take the little ideas that make sense to you.”
— David Senra
“The maxim I’ve made for myself on this is learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior.”
— David Senra
“If you could summarize nine years, 400 biographies, into one word of what I’ve learned, it’s focus.”
— David Senra
“My whole thing is just very simple. I want to do one thing relentlessly.”
— David Senra
“I just love when people take what they do very seriously, and I like the craft of it. And I want to dedicate my life to making a product that makes somebody else’s life better. That is what drives me.”
— David Senra
“I love the climb. I don’t care where the summit is.”
— David Senra
“All a great life is, is a string of great days. And so the furthest I plan out is 24 hours.”
— David Senra
Want to hear another episode with someone who deeply appreciates business history? Listen to my conversation with Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, as he shares stories from Sam Walton’s office (which he still works in), discusses the founder’s legendary Saturday morning meetings, the “Go for it” keychain philosophy, and much more.
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The post David Senra — How Extreme Winners Think and Win: Lessons from 400+ of History’s Greatest Founders and Investors (Including Buffett, Munger, Rockefeller, Jobs, Ovitz, Zell, and Names You Don’t Know But Should) (#828) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-09-18 10:55:02
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Pablos Holman (@pablos), a hacker and inventor and the bestselling author of Deep Future: Creating Technology that Matters, the indispensable guide to deep tech. Previously, Pablos worked on spaceships at Blue Origin and helped build The Intellectual Ventures Lab to invent a wide variety of breakthroughs, including a brain surgery tool, a machine to suppress hurricanes, 3D food printers, and a laser that can shoot down mosquitos, part of an impact invention effort to eradicate malaria with Bill Gates. Pablos hosts the Deep Future Podcast, and his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times. He is also managing partner at Deep Future, investing in technologies to solve the world’s biggest problems.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.
DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:
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Tim Ferriss: Where to begin, Pablos? I don’t even know where to start. But I will start perhaps with my first glimpse of Pablos, which was circa 2008. I think it was the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. It could have been Google at Night, but it was a demonstration, and I remember watching you.
Let me actually take it to Wired magazine for a second. So this is what they wrote about this particular event.
“San Diego, California — Your credit card, the lock on your front door, your cell phone’s voicemail, your hotel television, and your web browser are all not as secure as you might like to think, as Pablos Holman, a hacker clad in all black, gleefully demonstrated on stage Wednesday like an evil Las Vegas magician.
“Holman used caller ID spoofing to break into the AT&T voicemail of the organizer of the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference being held this week in San Diego.
“Using the speaker phone, Holman changed the outgoing message of the target, Brady Forrest, while he sat helpless in a back row.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m confusing with Google at Night, because Brady also did Google at Night at one point.
“Don’t chuckle too much. The hack works for all many AT&T users, including anyone with an iPhone.
“Holman continued on to show how Schlage…” is that how you say that?
Pablos Holman: Schlage.
Tim Ferriss: “…Schlage locks — the kind that is likely on your front door of your house — can be quickly opened by banging a filed down key with a small mallet.
“Likewise, Holman used a snippet of Javascript to create a link that forced CNNMoney.com to load a modified Onion story saying that the iTunes store would soon be selling Tim O’Reilly’s home movies for $1.99 a piece.”
Then I’m just going to paraphrase here in the interest of time, called up a volunteer, this one, a young man sporting a headband. also had an RFID-enabled credit card. Holman waved a magic reader over the kid’s pocket. Up popped the kid’s credit card number and expiration date on the projection screen with a few digits Xed out. Turns out that after months of trying to figure out how to break the encrypted information transferred by the card, Holman just bought a merchant card reader on eBay for $8. Now, the only reason I think I may have been at a different event is because my memory, and maybe I conjured exaggeration for dramatic effect, is that you actually walked along the front line, the front row of the attendees and then put all of their credit cards up on a screen.
Pablos Holman: It was wild times.
Tim Ferriss: Wild times. So I just want to read some notes from a mutual friend of ours to give people a taste of where we’re going.
Pablos Holman: Oh, man.
Tim Ferriss: I put shorthand here, “Password-stealing robot? Keychain unlocking REDACTED within a square mile? Hardware in a car in Seattle downloading and uploading hard drives from unsecure Wi-Fi. Printing food, things that taste like steak?”
Pablos Holman: Oh man,
Tim Ferriss: So, so far that’s all. Is that all facts?
Pablos Holman: I mean, there’s —
Tim Ferriss: Ish?
Pablos Holman: There’s something factual about all of them, but certainly something must be exaggerated, I guess. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Certainly something must be exaggerated. Well, we will find out. Let’s begin with a question around this term hacker.
Pablos Holman: All right.
Tim Ferriss: What is a hacker to you and do you consider yourself a hacker?
Pablos Holman: Well, I’m a hacker because my early life was all around reverse engineering a computer. And that was out of necessity because I grew up in Alaska and there was nobody around who’d ever seen a computer. But I got one when I was like nine years old, one of the first couple thousand Apple IIs ever made. So I had a computer in the cold, in the dark, in the basement, in Alaska, and nobody to show me anything about how it worked. So I had to learn by reverse engineering, what we would call reverse engineering. You break things and see what they do and then try to learn from that. And so I learned the hard way.
And then for the first, I don’t know, couple decades of my career, it was all about trying to do new things with computers and advanced computers. And I didn’t have any formal training. I didn’t go to college. Software development was invented long after I got started. So there’s a lot I didn’t get that most people get. And so a hacker is somebody who I think is attracted to puzzles. They are attracted to computer security, because it’s a bottomless pit of puzzles. And I am trying, at this point, hack everything but computers, and I’m trying to rescue hackers out of the computer security department and get them into helping go attack bigger problems.
Tim Ferriss: How did you end up acquiring a computer in Alaska?
Pablos Holman: So my dad had put some of the first mainframes in the oil industry in the early 70s, let’s say. And so he wasn’t really a computer guy, but he had a notion that these things might be interesting. And when Apple needed customers, at the beginning of Apple, they went to the oil industry, because that was the big rich industry at the time. My dad said, “Sure, we’ll take one.” So I got one of the first Apple IIs. So I’m like nine, 10, 11 years old. I had an Apple II, I had a skateboard. People were sure that neither of them was a good waste of time, but it was a fair fight. It was just too early.
And I was lit up about this thing. Apple II isn’t very powerful, and in those days computers weren’t useful. It didn’t have hardly any memory. It was super slow. But I was lit up. And so I tried to convince everyone around me that this computer was going to be amazing someday, and no one believed me. They’d never seen a computer, but they were sure they weren’t cool. And so, I was inviting girls over to my basement to show them my computer and —
Tim Ferriss: Is that what they called it back then?
Pablos Holman: It made an impression, just not the one that maybe I was going for. So I’m still doing that. I’m still trying to convince people that these technologies are important.
Tim Ferriss: I’m trying to pull from your book, which I’ve been devouring.
Pablos Holman: All right.
Tim Ferriss: Deep Future: Creating Technology That Matters, about three-quarters of the way through, and I’m going to do something dangerous, because I just got off of opioid painkillers from my arm surgery, try to pull from memory.
Pablos Holman: Way to go.
Tim Ferriss: But let’s give it a good college try. Do hackers ask some version of not what does this do, but what can I get this to do?
Pablos Holman: The way I described that before, in the book, is just a simple way of thinking about the mindset of a hacker. Most people, if you get a new gadget, like your phone, and give it to your mom, she’ll ask you, “What does this do?” That’s a totally normal question. “iPhone, Mom. Says on the box.” If you give a new gadget to a hacker, then the question is, “What can I make this do?” And they’re starting from a completely different position. They’re going to take out the screws, break it into a lot of the pieces. You’ve met Samy, he’s the poster child for this. He’s violating the warranty before he got the shrink wrap off.
Tim Ferriss: Can you, just for entertainment value, people can listen to my conversation with Samy Kamkar to hear about his amazing adventures and his crime and punishment involving MySpace.
Pablos Holman: Oh yeah.
Tim Ferriss: He wasn’t allowed to touch computers for a while.
Pablos Holman: Samy is just —
Tim Ferriss: But what did you —
Pablos Holman: He’s just the most delightful hacker.
Tim Ferriss: He is a super delightful human. What did he do with Google Maps?
Pablos Holman: Oh, Google Maps is one of my favorite things he did. Early on, Samy was finally allowed to use computers again. Google colors the roads for traffic, based on where everybody’s phone is, just reporting to Google when you’re stuck in traffic. And so Samy figured out he could just lie to Google. He just sent a bunch of fake data to Google. And he figured out how to structure it so that he could make all the roads he’s about to drive on, just clear out, because they look like they’re all log jammed.
Tim Ferriss: Just ramped all the way.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, they all look like traffic jams. And so Samy could manipulate the traffic. I mean, Google’s since fixed this. But I often like to show off Samy on stage, and so I’ve shown his exploits a bunch of times and that’s one of them.
Tim Ferriss: What makes for a good hacker?
Pablos Holman: So I think the hackers have one way or another ended up being the people who start from that position I described. They’re the ones who don’t take the conventional wisdom of what something is for.
Tim Ferriss: Masters of off-label use.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, off-label. And so they’re creative, in a sense. They are the people who figure out what is possible. You can’t invent a new technology by reading the directions. That’s just never happened, ever. So a hacker, I’m interested in their minds as inventors. I’m interested in their minds as creative people who are going to figure out how to elevate what humans can do. And so a good hacker is somebody who is willing to do that.
I learned a little bit about hackers, because I was, like you described, I was doing this bizarre kind of hacker magic show stealing people’s passwords. But some magicians, actual magicians, showed up in my audience one time. And they explained to me like, “Hey, you kind of suck as a magician.” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, you could probably tell me what I should do.” And what I realized is magicians, getting to know them, are like these people who will spend an obscene amount of time, more than anyone can imagine, focused on the most useless thing. And they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure out something no one else could imagine ever figuring out. And that’s part of how their capabilities, their tricks come together, the things they invent.
And you could say maybe what magicians are inventing is useless. And you could argue that a lot of what hackers are inventing is useless. It’s like, why are you spending all of your time trying to figure out how to fuck with Google Maps? They’re just going to fix that bug and then it’ll be useless. But to Samy, it’s no problem at all. That is what he wants to do with his time.
And so I think a big part of it too is this, you could say as a class, maybe hackers have ADHD, but they can focus on what they’re interested in. And when they get interested in a puzzle, they’ll just go deep. And so you have to do that as well to get somewhere that no one’s gotten before. This is actually the reason I think I’m here is because I want you to know that you are the hacker. You’re like a very important hacker. And you don’t think of yourself that way, but the reason is you are the one who showed people that what hackers are doing can be taken places that are not computers. And you did that with all the things in your books. That’s what the Tango thing is, and the wrestling thing is, and all those examples, swimming and all the things that you showed in your books, that’s the exact same thing hackers are doing. And you’re showing them that it can go somewhere else. And that means a lot to me because I’m trying to get hackers to see that they could go somewhere else besides computers.
Tim Ferriss: Right, outside of software.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, thank you for saying that. That’s a huge compliment coming from you. And it’s also a very smooth segue, because you mentioned two things that were of questionable value when you were a kid, computers and skateboards. Rodney Mullen. Could you describe for people who Rodney Mullen is?
Pablos Holman: Oh, man. So Rodney Mullen, I don’t have to describe for anyone who ever touched a skateboard, because Rodney is the godfather of street skating. He’s the guy who invented every single thing you’ve ever seen a kid do on a skateboard, and including he’s the first one to ollie a skateboard, which is the fundamental basis of all street skating. I’m a shitty skateboarder. But Rodney is one of my favorite people on earth. He’s such a delightful human. And we spend all night hanging out together talking about everything but skateboarding. But I’ve used him as an example of an inventor, again, because I’m trying to show people that an inventor is a valuable and important thing. Hackers are one source of inventor, but skateboarder is inventor. There’s a difference between Rodney and every other skateboarder. And that difference is that Rodney will imagine something in his mind that’s never been done before, maybe impossible. He can spend months every night trying to make it happen on a skateboard and then finally get it.
Tim Ferriss: Now, did he grow up in Santa Monica?
Pablos Holman: No. He grew up in rural Florida. So we have this kind of odd parallel childhood. I mean, Rodney is way more important than me. But Rodney’s childhood was in rural Florida, no neighbors, like a farm. And he had a little patch of cement in the driveway. His entire skateboarding life started there. No one around him could skateboard. He didn’t have any influences. He just had his brain and the skateboard. So he invented what was possible. And so I think that is so important. So it’s analogous to my Apple II in Alaska thing.
But what’s so cool about it is that once Rodney does a new trick, puts it on YouTube, two weeks later, kids in Kazakhstan are doing it better than him. And so it’s a very important contrast, I think, to show people the difference between what an inventor does the first time. The zero to one, that first time is incredibly hard. It takes lifetimes, it takes careers, it takes everything you’ve got to do something the first time that humans have never seen before. Every time after that, the second time to the nth time, that’s craft. That is not invention, that’s not art, that’s craft. You need a skill to do it. Rodney needed to be able to skate to invent. But I want people to understand how important inventors are. And we throw them under the bus. You don’t know anybody, probably besides me, whose business card says inventor. It’s not a legitimate career choice.
Tim Ferriss: I only know one person, a guy named Stephen Key who’s just prolific in the toy world. But —
Pablos Holman: Okay, cool. You know one.
Tim Ferriss: But he’s literally the only one.
Pablos Holman: But how many music artists could you name?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: Or painters, or —
Tim Ferriss: A hundred. A hundred
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Or actors. I mean, and it’s just the contrast is extreme. It’s our most important creative class, inventor, and they don’t count. And I think we got to fix that.
Tim Ferriss: I want to dive into some of the personal, because some of the magic tricks, so to speak, I want to try to unpack a bit.
Pablos Holman: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: And it might be pearls before swine because I’m not technical.
Pablos Holman: It’s okay.
Tim Ferriss: Do not know how to program. But I am curious, for instance, this robot, I don’t remember its name.
Pablos Holman: Oh, the Hackerbot.
Tim Ferriss: The Hackerbot with a printer attached, right? Did I —
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. What did this do —
Pablos Holman: No, it had a screen, not a printer.
Tim Ferriss: Had a screen. Okay. How did that work?
Pablos Holman: Okay. So —
Tim Ferriss: And what did it do? Maybe you could describe it.
Pablos Holman: So, it’s like a long time ago. So Eric Johanson is my co-conspirator on a lot of hacking stuff. He and I were hanging out. We went to one of those first robotics competitions, which are huge now it’s teenagers making robots that they turned into a spectator sport. And we realized, like, oh, these kids are making robots. If they can do it, we should be able to do it, because super geniuses with a machine shop. I had the Blue Origin machine shop. So I figured we could build a robot. So we started — Eric is amazing. You come up with an idea, he’ll smoke cigarettes and stay up all night and get it done while I go to sleep. And so Eric —
Tim Ferriss: A great friend to have.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, great friend to have. So Eric starts trying to get PWM controllers and all this stuff to build a robot. I bought the wheels, because I’m good at buying wheels. So we started building this thing, assembling it as it goes. And then —
Tim Ferriss: These are robots for a competition?
Pablos Holman: No, we just were making a robot for no good reason.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. I got it. I got it.
Pablos Holman: And eventually, we figured out it should have a reason. So we’re like, “Well, what should our robot do?” Neither of us drink beer, so it didn’t need to fetch beer. We’re like, “Well, we could make it do some hacking since that’s what we’re normally doing.” So it became the Hackerbot. And everything that robot can do, a nerd with a Linux t-shirt and a laptop can do. So we made the robot, so it would drive around and it would find people, kind of like triangulate Wi-Fi users —
Tim Ferriss: At a conference or —
Pablos Holman: Anywhere.
Tim Ferriss: Anywhere.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. It’d drive up to them and then show them their passwords on the screen. Because we had all the tools for cracking Wi-Fi.
Tim Ferriss: This is a Wi-Fi password?
Pablos Holman: Yeah, we’re cracking Wi-Fi at the time. One of our buddies had made a tool called AirSnort to crack Wi-Fi, and we were cracking Wi-Fi and stealing passwords for fun. But the cool thing about the Hackerbot was it was just this insanely mediagenic kind of thing where everybody thought it was cute. It’s a nefarious robot stealing your passwords, but people thought it was cute. So we realized we could — in those days, we were just trying to raise the alarm about how insecure everything was, and nobody gave a shit about it. No one wanted to hear from hackers. But the Hackerbot got on television and that kind of thing. So we learned something from that, how to contextualize the lesson. I made a lot of friends stealing passwords too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. They’re like, “Wow.” Got to keep your prospective enemies as close as possible.
Pablos Holman: I came unarmed.
Tim Ferriss: Well, honestly, I’m not going to lie, when I saw that demo at whichever conference, I was like, “I don’t know how close I should get to this guy, because if he decides that I’m a pain in the ass, I really am defenseless.” I feel like I would just be bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. And so I was simultaneously incredibly curious, but I was very, very nervous —
Pablos Holman: Fair enough.
Tim Ferriss: — at the same time.
Pablos Holman: You’re not the only one.
Tim Ferriss: Is it fair to say, and I tend to tilt a little dystopian, so I’ll just disclose that in advance, that if you are a legitimate target who is non-technical of a very competent hacker, that your goose is cooked? I mean, and I’m sure there are basic digital hygiene things that you can do.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. You’ve heard them all.
Tim Ferriss: But what are your thoughts? Because I’ve talked to people, for instance, in the intelligence community, and they’re like, “Oh, yeah. If you’re the target of a state actor and the entire machine behind it,” they’re like, “They’re going to get your stuff.”
Pablos Holman: Yeah, that’s true. The problem is it is a moving target. So there’s this war of escalation between attackers and defenders. And a lot of what people are familiar with, it’s just kids in Romania screwing around trying to try an attack against every IP address of the internet and see what falls in their lap. That’s stealing credit cards and Bitcoin wallets and stuff. So that you could say it doesn’t really count. I mean, it sucks, but that’s all the recommendations you’ve heard of, use a password manager and stuff, will help you with that.
But if you are the target of a sophisticated, mostly nation state actor, it would just be an extreme lifestyle change to insulate yourself against that. And there’s a very sophisticated game of finding new exploits, selling them mostly to governments, and then they sit on them. They don’t use them. Because every time you use a new exploit, like say I’ve got a way of hacking an iPhone, that is so valuable, I’m going to save it for a really, really, really good use. The day I use it, I risk someone figuring out that it exists. So I want it to be what’s called zero-day. So you don’t use those lightly. So most people don’t have anything to worry about because governments don’t give a shit about you. And so I think you’re fine. If they start to, then you’re going to have a problem.
Tim Ferriss: What does the marketplace look like for zero-day exploits? Because I’ve heard of, say, Israeli developers formerly of Intelligence developing these exploits, these zero-click exploits, if I’m using the term correctly, and then they sell it for like a million dollars a pop or $2 million a pop for specific targets or something like that. But how does that transaction actually take place?
Pablos Holman: Well, so I don’t play this game anymore, but friends do. Say I were to discover a way to make a zero-click exploit for iPhone, that’s probably the most valuable thing in the world right now.
Tim Ferriss: Which means you don’t have to click on anything.
Pablos Holman: Right. It means I send you a text message or something and I’m in and I control your phone. That is very hard to do. Apple’s trying to keep that from happening. But if I have that, then I sell it to a broker. And so there are certain hackers whose job is to vet these things.
Tim Ferriss: Those are the brokers.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, the brokers.
Tim Ferriss: Do you find those people on the dark web or is it like a referral number, a referral?
Pablos Holman: Actually some of them, I think these days they’ll hang out a shingle. I’m not going to name any here. But the point is hackers who are finding exploits know who they are. And so then you sell it to a broker. And those guys have relationships with the shady folks at governments around the world. And that’s only people they’ll sell to, because otherwise they risk getting prosecuted in different jurisdictions. So you can get away with selling to a three-letter agency in the US, but you can’t get away with selling it to even a corporation in the US. Because to use an exploit like that for corporate espionage, you’re getting into very risky turf.
American hackers don’t want to play that game because they can make more money doing legit stuff. If you’re a Romanian hacker, there’s no six-figure job for you, so you might play with seeing how I can use that to get Bitcoin wallets or something. Love Romania, by the way.
Tim Ferriss: I do too. Love.
Pablos Holman: Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: I was just there a few months ago.
Pablos Holman: Amazing hackers.
Tim Ferriss: Go to Brasov if you have the chance, folks. Also, little known fact, lots of bears in Romania.
Pablos Holman: Not compared to where I come from, but —
Tim Ferriss: I find that to be an appealing draw, but —
Pablos Holman: Their bears are little, though.
Tim Ferriss: — that’s just me. In any case, are there pockets of incredible hacker density, geographically speaking, for whatever reason? You see this with all sorts of things where there’s a particular tennis school in Russia that produces just an absurd percentage of top tennis players for a decade or two. Or there’s a million examples from a million disciplines.
Tim Ferriss: So does that exist for hacking?
Pablos Holman: Yeah, there’s —
Tim Ferriss: Is it like, oh, this particular city in China, oh, this particular place in Uzbekistan or wherever?
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Well, there’s two things that caused that. So one is a center of gravity of technical excellence. And so you could say places like Hungary put out amazing mathematicians, which translates to pretty good understanding of computers. Some of those Eastern European places had that and/or still do. And so there’s a center of gravity there. Germany had these extraordinary hackers that would blow our minds. We would go over there and just wonder why we were —
Tim Ferriss: You say had, past tense?
Pablos Holman: I don’t know now, because again, I’m hacking other things. But I used to go to the Chaos Computer Congress in Germany, which is the big hacker convention. And we could blow their minds a little, but they could blow our minds a lot. So that was cool. But what happened is, in the early two thousands, Microsoft started to get serious about computer security. And they started to import hackers to Seattle from everywhere. I was in Seattle at the time, again graduating out of hacking and computer stuff into other things. But all my friends were hackers. And what was great is we had this critical mass of hackers from all over the world, including Germany and all these places, that Microsoft imported. So that was a center of gravity for a while. I don’t —
Tim Ferriss: Must have been fun grabbing dinner or drinks with that crew after work.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, that’s what we were doing. Actually, it was funny because it was at the same era Dodgeball came out, which is like this pre-iPhone location, SMS app.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I thought you were talking about the movie with Ben Stiller.
Pablos Holman: Not the movie, this is an app. Before Foursquare. It’s like the predecessor to Foursquare. And so you’d send a text to this one number and then it would go to all your friends. And so you’d send this text and like, “I’m at the bar.” And immediately a hundred friends would get the text. And they’re like, “I’ll go to the bar.” So the drinking rate amongst hackers just went off the charts. But we were hanging out together all the time, and that was actually a really cool community vibe for hackers. And we had some hackers that were good at getting people together. So that was a good era. I think it’s hard to say where the center of gravity is. Hackers have conventions that they go to now.
Tim Ferriss: What are the most interesting to you?
Pablos Holman: DEF CON got a little out of control. I think it’s a little too big. And then we did ShmooCon for 20 years. This is the last year though, so that one’s over. But you could still go to Germany for CCC. That would probably be the best thing to do. In the US —
Tim Ferriss: I’d leave my phone in the hotel room.
Pablos Holman: — ToorCon if you — oh, yeah, don’t take any computers to these things. But go naked and you’ll be fine.
Tim Ferriss: Naked and afraid.
Pablos Holman: There you go.
Tim Ferriss: CCC edition. Let me just pull on this geographic thread a little bit and then we’re going to move to other things. But this is from another of our mutual friends. So questions around geopolitics from a tech angle. In other words, who is leading and what? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Pablos Holman: Oh my God. Geopolitics.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a promising start.
Pablos Holman: Here’s how I would try to think about it. Technology in general, especially computers, especially computer security, these things are a war of escalation. You cannot win that war. You can lose very easily by not playing. And so for better or worse, I think it’s important to think about these things this way. You can see it, if you’re going to say geopolitically on technology in general, China and the US are definitely trying to play. And you can see a lot of places that I won’t name, like Europe, that you absolutely could say are not playing. And so you’ll see how that plays out. You can see how it plays out with lots of technologies.
Tim Ferriss: What are the main technologies?
Pablos Holman: Well, these days —
Tim Ferriss: I mean, are we talking semiconductors and AI? Are we talking about —
Pablos Holman: These days, those are the biggest ones. And the reason they’re so big is they’re generally applicable. So computers can be applied to everything. If you haven’t got one in your pocket by now, you will. I mean, they go everywhere. So computers are very important. Technology that’s generally applicable. You just can’t ignore it. You could hang out in Copenhagen and draft off China and the US if that’s what you want to do. But I think it’s dangerous not to play the game. You want to get to the point where you can at least wield these technologies to whatever extent you think is important. So that’s as much as I think people really need to know.
Now, there’s a whole stack. The software relies on the chips, which rely increasingly on energy. All these hyperscalers have woken up this year to the fact that a chip from Nvidia needs a shit ton of energy and we’ve been burning gas to get it, so maybe we should find something better. So now there’s a lot of intention on improving energy. I’m so excited about that because —
Tim Ferriss: Do you think the hyperscalers will actually help resurrect nuclear energy in the US?
Pablos Holman: I think hyperscalers are going to save us. It’s a crazy thing to say.
Tim Ferriss: Wild to say, huh?
Pablos Holman: It’s a crazy thing to say. But you can thank Meta and Microsoft and Google. And the reason is that we don’t make enough energy on this planet. Now you could say we make enough energy for Americans, because we’re not very price sensitive and we can just keep throwing money at it. But you will watch, even not counting AI, you will see that energy demand is off the charts. Try to remember when Shell or Chevron advertised to get you to buy more gas. It’s the biggest market in the world. They don’t have to advertise their product.
I mean they advertise to get you to buy it from them instead of —
Tim Ferriss: Well, speaking of dodgeball, I think in your book you wrote that at one point, was it the Senate, was switching players on a dodgeball team between Chevron and someone else?
Pablos Holman: Well, yeah. I mean, I would say the oil industry probably staffed Congress for most of our lives. Now, it’s hyperscalers. And so we are getting the legislation that we need. Last year, the most bipartisan bill I know of was called ADVANCE. That was to build nuclear reactors in the US. Now, Trump has signed multiple executive orders to build nuclear reactors and free it up. And it’s working. The overhaul of the NRC, which regulates nuclear, has been amazing. They’re supportive and helpful in my lifetime. They were usually an anti-nuclear activist group. It’s been crazy how — because we started, we invented one of the most advanced nuclear reactors at the Intellectual Ventures lab where I was before. And for the last 18 years, you’ve seen me on stage telling people nuclear reactors are awesome and they’re coming and they weren’t coming.
And that is because the NRC regulated them into oblivion. That has all changed now. And as of this year, this is crazy, as of this week — so we have now a nuclear reactor company I should describe, which has invented a reactor that fits in a borehole. They bury it a mile deep. So this reactor is unquestionably safe.
Tim Ferriss: It’s the size of a small car or something like that.
Pablos Holman: It’s the size of a Toyota, not more complicated than a Toyota. And the thing can be made in a factory like a Toyota, but it’s buried under 10 billion tons of rock. It’s something that if anything went wrong, there’d be no radioactivity at the surface. It’s a mile from anyone’s backyard.
Tim Ferriss: And when you retire it or when it stops functioning —
Pablos Holman: Fill the hole with dirt.
Tim Ferriss: Just bury it.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Leave the uranium where we found it. It’s a really exciting way of making nuclear reactors.
Tim Ferriss: How do you cool it?
Pablos Holman: So there’s water in the borehole that goes down and cools it. What’s so fascinating is if you look at a Fukushima type problem, there’s these pumps that are supposed to be pumping water through the reactor core to cool it. And those pumps could fail. Well, that pressure, the water pressure in the borehole from gravity creates enough pressure to cool the reactor.
Tim Ferriss: Gravity has been pretty reliable so far.
Pablos Holman: Pretty reliable so far. So then that makes steam, that goes back up and you run a turbine in a generator like everyone else. So the reason I’m describing this is that that company was on a track to get the reactor approved in a couple of years, build a test core at a national lab over a couple years, then build a commercial reactor in 2029. The Department of Energy is pushing them to do all of that by July. They will deploy their first reactors in July. It’s insane. It’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Is it?
Pablos Holman: And then we’ll make thousands in a gigafactory.
Tim Ferriss: Do you think the US is kind of a day late and a dollar short in terms of waking up to the reality? Because my understanding, and I’m not going to get the number right —
Pablos Holman: That’s okay.
Tim Ferriss: But looking at China, they have how many functional reactors?
Pablos Holman: I think they have about 130 reactor projects and they tend to get them done on time, on budget. There’s different technologies. They’re trying them all. It took them about three years to build a reactor. And those are big ones. They’re smoking it. It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: And is that legacy, well maybe it’s cleaned up, but mostly legacy technology in terms of —
Pablos Holman: Yeah, so there are different kinds of reactor technologies, and I won’t weigh in on that because I think we need a thousand silver bullets and I kind of want them all to succeed. Obviously I invest in the ones I think are the best. But the future of reactors involves a bunch of advanced reactor technologies and they’re — so like the TerraPower reactor that we invented at the Intellectual Ventures lab, which we can’t build because it’s new technology, not because there’s any other reason.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a regulatory hurdle?
Pablos Holman: It’s a regulatory. But just because the US has never figured out how to approve any advanced reactor technology. Once they do, we could build something like that. That reactor is powered by nuclear waste. It literally recycles nuclear waste inside the reactor. So that’s where we want to go. That might take a while. So the deep fission reactor that I described, that goes in the borehole, no new technology, just a simple design. And you get the containment for the price of a hole. And we have a whole industry that’s real good at holes.
Tim Ferriss: So if you were, I’m not saying you would agree to this, but if you were brought in by people you trust to advise the current administration on what the US needs to do to remain globally strategically advantaged or at least not lose, what are some of those pieces of advice that you would give?
Pablos Holman: Wow. Well, I’d say the number one thing is going to be energy. In energy, the number one thing is fission reactors. Love fusion. Hope we get it someday. Don’t hold your breath. We have other technologies that I think could happen sooner than fusion that we could talk about like space solar, but I would say aggressively deploy nuclear reactors, make that as easy as possible. Take on the — I mean the biggest problem remaining is the litigious nature of the US. So you start a nuclear reactor project, you get a thousand lawsuits. We’ve got to squelch that because we’re competing with China and China doesn’t have that problem. And so make a clean regulatory track that makes it possible to deploy these things at scale. So that’s the most important thing. If you get nuclear reactors, you solve a lot of other problems for free. And so I think that with limited attention span, that would be where my focus would be. Commercially, we can take care of the chips and everything after that.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe just patting myself on the back here in a self-congratulatory way. But when you talk about sequencing, picking the proper sequence of problems to solve, it just makes me so happy because I feel like —
Pablos Holman: That’s your mantra.
Tim Ferriss: Right. There are quite a few people who are good at defining, say, the constituent parts of a given problem. There are a lot of people who are good at applying some type of an 80/20 analysis, but it seems like the secret sauce that is kind of self-evident when you really peer closely at it that gets ignored a lot is the sequencing. Where it’s like, yeah, you can try to fix these 18 separate issues, but if your lead domino is solving for energy, then those either become irrelevant or they become a lot easier to solve.
Pablos Holman: The great example to me was how recycling played out in the US. We’ve been recycling our whole lives. Right now it’s kind of a wash. You’d probably burn less gas making fresh plastic than if you try to recycle these plastic bottles and things. And we’re 50 years into that. And so it’s just putting the cart before the horse. Recycling is going to work great once you have a nuclear reactor to power your recycling plan.
But we’re not there. We’re burning gas to do it. And you watch out your window when the truck comes, it’s going to pick up the trash and the recycling and throw them in the same truck. It’s not working and we’re not being honest about that. And it placates people. They feel like they did their part, separating stuff out. So I think it’s one of the things I’m trying to convey to people with technologies is you can’t keep putting the cart before the horse. We don’t have time to keep scaling the wrong thing. We got to pick something that’s going to work and then go build that. And you can just do basic arithmetic to get those answers a lot of the time.
Solve energy first, then you can solve — if you want to go do carbon captured, pick co-to molecules —
Tim Ferriss: 400 parts per million.
Pablos Holman: 400 parts per million means 400 needles in a haystack with a million pieces of straw. That’s what we’re talking about. So good luck. I think you want to find a less entropic source of carbon, leave the coal on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s very highly concentrated there. So if you had energy that was cheap and basically free, then you could go pump all the air through a filter and go get those carbon molecules. But we’re really not being honest about the basic arithmetic for a lot of these things. And so I can be a little harsh on these ideas, but it’s not because I don’t want them to work, it’s just that I want them to be done in logical order.
Tim Ferriss: And tell me if I’m off base here, but I don’t want people to misconstrue what you’re saying. It seems like what you’re saying, if I’m understanding it correctly, as much as people sometimes say “It’s the economy, stupid,” it’s the energy, stupid. But in the sense that that is the biggest lever we have to pull. What you’re not saying is everyone should stop recycling if their municipality actually sorts and so on.
Pablos Holman: I mean, maybe they should stop. Some of them are working. Copenhagen in one neighborhood, they figured it out.
Tim Ferriss: I guess product would mean more microplastics and there are issues with a larger volume of plastics besides the energy equation, I guess. But I don’t know how you think about that.
Pablos Holman: So again, something like plastics are part of the reason we all exist. They are very, very useful for saving lives in a lot of ways. But yeah, you want to use the plastic where it belongs, not where it doesn’t belong. So yeah, keep it out of your testicles and keep it out of the ocean and keep it out of the places where you don’t want it. But there are places where it can be very, very helpful.
Tim Ferriss: The inventions that you describe in your book are really compelling. And as I believe you described them, please fact check me if I’m getting this off, but that with deep tech, and you should probably define what that means —
Pablos Holman: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: — the risk isn’t so much, it doesn’t seem to be market risk or a need risk. People could read about the description and say, “Of course we should use that.” There’s technical risk up front, but I’m wondering how you think about and assess as an investor regulatory risk and all of the red tape and bramble bushes that entail getting something like that to launch or adoption.
Pablos Holman: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Because you have built or indirectly funded people who have built much better mousetraps.
Pablos Holman: Right.
Tim Ferriss: Quite a lot. And been involved with Nathan Myhrvold’s lab and building technology for, say, reducing the likelihood or severity of hurricanes, simple tech, which we could get into. And it’s like why the hell isn’t it being used?
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Okay. So there’s a few things there. I usually get involved when I see a technology that I think is 10 times better than state-of-the-art. If you go to Hewlett Packard, there’s somebody there. There’s an engineer that’s super smart figuring out how to make inkjet printers like one percent better, which is awesome. But I want the guy who’s figuring out how to make whatever comes after inkjet. So two times better. There’s probably not enough margin there to ensure that you can go the distance, but 10 times better. That’s a real window. It is 10 times cheaper, 10 times faster, 10 times more efficient, 10 times on any metric could be a good window. So that’s kind where I see deep tech breakthroughs as becoming sort of contenders. And then we try to invest in them and help get them out of the lab or out of the garage and into a startup.
That’s what I’m looking for in the world. Now that’s a much different thing than what we’re both very familiar with startups and venture capital and probably audiences too. The last couple decades of Silicon Valley, let’s say, have evolved a very impressive machinery for funding iPhone apps to have weed delivered to your dorm room by a drone. They’re not going to take on nuclear reactors. You can’t take a nuclear reactor and go knock it on doors in Silicon Valley and expect to get a response. Maybe this week it’s getting better. But the point is we’ve been funding these SaaS holes for decades instead of actual technologies.
And that’s okay. That’s cool to make software and it’s a good, I think good practice run. If you’re an entrepreneur and you made an app. Cool practice. Now take on a new technology that’s a 10X multiplier in some hundred-year-old industry where nobody in Silicon Valley has touched it. To me, that’s where the action is. And I think I can prove that.
Tim Ferriss: Does it need to involve hardware?
Pablos Holman: It doesn’t need to. We have a small percentage of things we backed that are exclusively software, but by and large, they don’t need our help. They probably don’t need your help because those are easier things that other people are going to do anyway. I do things like say new algorithms in AI, but I wouldn’t do applied AI, things like that. So things that move the needle along, what’s possible. New chip architectures, I do. But anyway, the point is, let’s get back to hardware in a minute. When you’re investing, you’re looking at risk as you described. So all of Silicon Valley, you could say, is fixated on market risk. So we have milestones like MVP, product market fit, those kinds of things because that’s a way to reduce market risk.
Technical risk. You never heard of it. If I can draw an iPhone app on a napkin —
Tim Ferriss: Except in my biotech investing.
Pablos Holman: Okay, that’s different. Yeah, we’ll leave Boston out of this. But for software investment, there’s really not technical risk that much these days. If you can draw it on Canva, then we can make it. Okay, so what I’m doing is the opposite. I take a lot of technical risk. Can we build this nuclear reactor? Can we put solar panels in space? Can we do whatever? But the day that I get through that, the day we get through that, the day the first reactor goes in the ground and lights up, there’s no more technical risk. It works. You can see it. And there was never any market risk because I just have vast industrial markets, trillion dollar markets. And that’s very important to understand. So I actually get — our companies, on average, will graduate from Venture earlier.
We’re not selling equity to make more nuclear reactors. There’s project financing and debt for that. So I think investors are missing what’s possible in deep tech. Basically no market risk once we get through the technical risk. And so the size of the markets, if you’re one of these SaaS investors and you see a TAM of 10 billion, let’s say for a Zoom or a Slack or something, that sounds good. If you add up all the software companies in the world, including Microsoft and Meta and everybody combined, their combined revenue is about $2 trillion a year. The global GDP is over a hundred trillion dollars a year. So Silicon Valley is doing two percent of what humans rely on. That other 98 percent is my TAM.
Tim Ferriss: Is top-line revenue and GDP a fair comparison?
Pablos Holman: I mean, you could nitpick over the details. It’s actually, if it’s unfair, it’s unfair in my advantage. It’s unfair to my advantage. So I’m trying to be generous here. And so just rough numbers, we can nitpick later. Fact-check me, guys, 98 percent. If you fact-check me, I’m going to win. Okay. 98 percent of what’s left is that’s energy, but it’s shipping. Shipping is a $2 trillion Industry as big as software. We could talk about that. Durable goods.
Tim Ferriss: And by shipping, you mean mostly ocean based.
Pablos Holman: Right. Durable goods, all your sinks and bicycles and light fixtures and chairs, that’s $4 trillion a year. Automotive is another four, five, six trillion. I mean we’re just talking about massive industries bigger than the entire tech industry and we’ve completely ignored them in Silicon Valley. That’s what deep tech is. That’s what we’re going after.
Tim Ferriss: What about the regulatory implementation piece? Because for instance, I was reading the book and I’m fascinated by containers and how the standardizing of containers revolutionized activity on the planet. And learning through your book about the different types of fuel and just the congestion at ports caused by extraordinarily large seaborne container ships, cargo ships, which is a necessity to reduce drag because they’re optimizing for fuel.
And the alternative that you propose seems like a no-brainer. But then I’m like, well wait a second. Is it like the Greek and Chinese cartels, so to speak? The sort of —
Pablos Holman: So you’ve named two more kinds of risk.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. I mean what are we talking about?
Pablos Holman: All right, well, so just to make it clear for the audience, we have a team that’s developing cargo ships that are autonomous. I don’t think it’s that hard. You duct tape a Tesla to the front and it can drive across an ocean. Probably anybody listening would believe that’s possible. There’s nothing to hit out there. One documented pedestrian ever.
Tim Ferriss: Are we talking about JC? Is that —
Pablos Holman: Yeah. And so other than that, it’s probably going to work. I don’t think it’s — not very questionable at this point. The other important advancement is it’s sailing, so it doesn’t need a crew, but it doesn’t need fuel. Those two trillion spent in the shipping industry every year are spent. Five out of six of those dollars is burned.
Tim Ferriss: You said sailing. What if there’s no wind?
Pablos Holman: If there’s no wind, we have electric backup to get out of the dead zone.
Tim Ferriss: I see.
Pablos Holman: But we’re actually really good at weather prediction because even cargo ships now need to avoid storms. And so the weather prediction has improved so much. We’re really good at that. But yeah, your worst-case scenario is you’ve got a ship full of bananas and they’re stuck in a dead zone. So we have electric backup to get out of the dead zone and then they sail themselves.
Tim Ferriss: Why aren’t these things everywhere?
Pablos Holman: Exactly. So they’re not everywhere because look at how we’ve all learned about disruption. You’ve seen what happened. Any taxi company in the world could have made an iPhone app. None of them did.
Tim Ferriss: Instead, they ended up suing Uber everywhere they launched.
Pablos Holman: Any shipping company in the world could make this ship. None of them will. So that’s what we have to do. That’s what the tech industry needs to do. That’s why deep tech matters. That’s why I want your fans who are listening, once they graduate from software, come help us build this ship. Help us take on — you don’t need to be a physicist. I’ve got physicists. What I need is entrepreneurs who want to build these industries. And when you look at what happened with Uber, that playbook is incredible. What happens the day my first ship sails? Do we sell this to Maersk? That would be like Uber selling to Yellow Cab. No, we build the next Maersk. That’s the opportunity.
Would you have rather built Uber or Maersk? That’s where —
Tim Ferriss: I mean, Maersk just might take it into hospice.
Pablos Holman: Risk of assassination is high. I grant that. Maybe higher than even in taxis because there are a few big cabals globally that run the shipping industry. You might need to partner with one of them, but that’s a tomorrow problem. The truth is we can do this.
Tim Ferriss: Pablos, one day I’m going to ask you for a favor.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, might need one myself after this airs. So the point is you could identify, I don’t know, risk of assassination as a fourth kind of risk. But look, we have to build these things. The regulatory risk in different industries in shipping you’re dealing with, look, teamsters and ports, I mean that’s where labor unions come from. Read about the Wobblies having shootouts with the sheriff’s office. I mean this is crazy stuff in the history of labor. So you’ve got to be careful about who you put out of a job. But I think it’s one of these exciting things.
What you mentioned is the reason ships are so big is because you get a drag advantage, you get improved drag. When you double the size of a ship, your drag only goes up by 50 percent. So you’re incentivized to build the biggest ship you can.
Well, those ships are clogging up ports. So if you look at what’s happening in shipping, your happy meal toys start out in China, it takes 50 days to get them to Los Angeles. Only 14 of those days are on the water. The rest of the time they’re just hanging out at port waiting to get loaded or unloaded. So that 14 days is a little slower when you’re sailing. 30 percent slower. But overall it’s faster. But we can make smaller ships and lots of them.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I guess you need to get to a certain position of dominance in order to clear the congestion at ports. You need to start replacing a lot of the container ships that are clogging.
Pablos Holman: I mean that would be great, but we will start out with tiny ships that move a few containers to islands. I mean there’s all these islands that you can’t even get a ship to. And we could just do that. Sail your happy meal toys to islands.
Tim Ferriss: Is Pablos a common name in Alaska?
Pablos Holman: Pablos is a totally fake name because all hackers have fake names.
Tim Ferriss: Is the last name fake too?
Pablos Holman: No, I mean I’m not trying to fly below the radar at this point. I got that username on a mainframe when I was like 12 and I don’t even remember how. I’ve been called Pablos for longer than anyone can remember.
Tim Ferriss: And I have to ask, I know we’re taking a left turn here, but on the cover of your book, you have your glasses. In every video I’ve ever seen, I see you in the glasses. What is the story behind the glasses?
Pablos Holman: I’ve been wearing the same glasses for 20 years, which is kind of why they ended up on the cover of the book and people associate me with the glasses. These are the best glasses ever made, which is why I started wearing them and because in labs all the time, I kind of need safety glasses that wrap around.
Tim Ferriss: Are they prescription?
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Pablos Holman: And I’ve been wearing glasses since I was four, but I started wearing these. They’re made of titanium alloy.
Tim Ferriss: What are they? Are they Oakley?
Pablos Holman: Oakley made them in their heyday. So back before Oakley got sold out, they had these designers who were little gods. They could do whatever they wanted. And they built this factory in Nevada to make titanium frames. But this is intensive to do. 425,000 watts to make one pair of frames. And they have all these volatile gases in the casting process. And so eventually the factory blew up and nobody will ever make glasses this way again. But I’ve been wearing the same ones for 20 years.
Tim Ferriss: One pair?
Pablos Holman: You can’t break them. Oh, I have a few pairs that I cycle out because the nose bridge gets loose and I got a guy who will tighten them up, but two pairs would’ve lasted this long. Yeah, I have more just in case I live a couple extra lifetimes. I’ve been stockpiling them.
Tim Ferriss: Are you optimistic? Would you describe yourself as optimistic?
Pablos Holman: Well, people cast me that way and I think it’s probably fair. But what I wrote in the book about that is that I think I’m not a pollyannish optimist. I don’t think everything’s going to be awesome. What I think is the future could be awesome that we have some volition in this, that we build that future ourselves with the toolkit we have. That toolkit is largely the technologies we have. And so I think it’s up to us to try. It’s up to us to decide where we want to go, what we want to aim for, what future we want to build and do that. I call it possible-ist. I think a future that’s awesome is absolutely possible. A shitty future is also possible, but the balance is up to us. And so that’s how I would describe that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Let’s talk about the B word for a second. Billionaires. So I know of at least three, you don’t need to name names, although you mentioned a few publicly who just find you to be the shiniest, most attractive hire. And I want to know why you think that is? Because they’re not looking for script kiddies in Romania. There are a lot of people who can steal passwords and who are capable hackers of various types, but you just seem to pop up again and again on these teams. Why is that?
Pablos Holman: Okay, so first of all, lots of hackers that are way smarter than me and way more potent, so nothing to worry about. I think that the heart of what you’re getting at is probably what you could say about me is I do have a kind of extreme risk tolerance. My whole career, I’ve only worked on things that I thought were cool or interesting. I’ll optimize for that over everything else. I’ve gone broke a bunch of times because I worked on things that were way too soon or way too cool or way too expensive. But I’m okay with that because I want to do the thing —
I’m not going to do that anymore. But I’m okay with that because I’m good at doing things I’m interested in. I think people are optimized for that. I don’t find that I’m effective if I’m working on something that’s not interesting. I’ve always optimized for that. I took on things a decade before other people would see them as rational. That’s how I ended up in some of those unusual situations in my career. As far as billionaires go, I think — look, I don’t think I’m just a shiny object. They can hire whoever they want.
Tim Ferriss: Not my words, by the way. It’s one of our mutual friend’s words. Shiny meaning attractive, by the way. Not just a crow collecting buttons or something. I’m just saying.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, I mean some of these are very — just circumstances that I ended up being open to when most people wouldn’t. I’d say that’s the biggest thing and I think it’s replicable. Other people could do that. Think about your worst case scenario. Probably your startup fails, you end up on your mom’s couch, regroup. Try again. For most people, you and I know most people in the US, most people in tech, that’s what it looks like. It’s not so bad. So why are you over-optimizing on safety? Why are you going to work for a big tech company or Goldman Sachs or whatever? That’s optimizing for safety.
Tim Ferriss: So let me ask you this, do you think people are under-optimizing on location? Because you mentioned Seattle, I’m not sure how you got to Seattle, but when I think Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, all Seattle, right? So is there some engineered serendipity placing yourself in the right location? Or is that less of a factor?
Pablos Holman: Okay, so I was in Silicon Valley before that and I would say the main reason I left is that sock puppet attack. In 2001, everything in Silicon Valley got shut down because of the.com bubble. So it was a wasteland.
Tim Ferriss: Sock puppet attack.
Pablos Holman: It was this —
Tim Ferriss: What does that mean? I like it. I want to use it. So I need to understand what it means.
Pablos Holman: Because the poster child for .com bubble was pets.com and they had this ad campaign, they spent like a billion dollars on ads, like Super Bowl ads with a sock puppet. And it was just the most ridiculous thing.
Tim Ferriss: You’re like, the end is nigh.
Pablos Holman: The end was nigh, and it’s because everything was over-hyped. Too much money was put into too many dumb things. I have a bad attitude about this because we had real technologies, and we got shut down too. I don’t like what I see in Silicon Valley. It’s too much crap. Not enough actual technology. We overindexed on entrepreneurs and we threw the inventors under the bus. It’s time to course correct. I want the guy from WeWork and I want to give him a nuclear reactor. Let me arm you. If you are an entrepreneur that wants to build a company, great. Let me arm you with IP, with an invention, with a CTO, I can hook you up. Only the good ones. So that’s kind of where I think this goes.
Tim Ferriss: Now the WeWork founder is a controversial choice.
Pablos Holman: Okay, whatever.
Tim Ferriss: No, no.
Pablos Holman: I’ll take the Uber founder. Any founder. Controversial or otherwise —
Tim Ferriss: Those are the two strong ones.
Pablos Holman: Okay, fine. But good entrepreneurs. No tech. So let’s arm those guys with some actual technology. That’s what I think — but that’s not your question. The point is, in 2001, everything got shut down. Silicon Valley was a wasteland. You couldn’t start companies, couldn’t do hardly anything. So I ran out of excuses to pay rent and go broke in San Francisco. And so Seattle was like, for the price of rent in San Francisco, I could rent a whole neighborhood. And I was like, “Oh, let’s try that.” And —
Tim Ferriss: How did you choose Seattle over every other place?
Pablos Holman: Because I’m from Alaska, Seattle’s like the default next, so I knew more people in Seattle than anywhere. And so I was just hanging out in Seattle during the summer funemployed and looking at real estate prices thinking, “Oh, this could be okay.” And then I got an email from Neal Stephenson who —
Tim Ferriss: I was going to bring him up, so I’m glad you did. Yeah.
Pablos Holman: So, look, Neal, if you’re any kind of nerd, Neal is a demigod.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Snow Crash, Metaverse. I mean, when did Cryptonomicon come out? Which I loved.
Pablos Holman: ’98.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so early glimmers of crypto.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. So I was working on cryptocurrency in ’98 when Cryptonomicon came out, so I’m a closet Neal Stephenson fan. And so I got an email from Neal and he’s like, “Hey.”
Tim Ferriss: How did he find you?
Pablos Holman: Mutual friends. Jeremy Bornstein introduced us and he was the founder of the company I’d been working for, doing AI stuff that got shut down in dot-com bubble sock puppet attack. So anyway, so Jeremy introduced me to Neal, Neal said, “Hey, we’re building a lab to do some cool stuff. Come check it out.” So I went down to this lab. So Neal and an astrophysicist named Keith Rosema had gotten this old envelope factory and turned it into a machine shop that they bought a machine shop on surplus, and actually the crusty old machinist kind of came with it.
So they were trying to build what was called Blue Operations. And I went down there and they’re like, “Hey, we’re trying to go to space.” I’m like, “Cool, whatever. Space is good, I’ve got nothing else going. Let’s do it.” And they needed help with computer stuff, of course. And so I started helping on that, and we were trying to figure out alternative ways of going to space besides rockets. And eventually we hired a couple other machinists and some other super nerds and tried all these experiments. And that was the origin of Blue Origin.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. What were the alternatives that you guys were exploring?
Pablos Holman: So rockets are like 90 percent fuel. So when you light up a rocket, you’re just burning fuel to get out of Earth’s gravity.
Tim Ferriss: Cargo ship plus.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, right, totally. So you can’t make rockets sail, but we thought maybe you could. So what if you could just take the payload, the craft, the part you want, people or the stuff or the satellites, and then beam power to it from the ground, which sounds kind of crazy, but every day gets easier and easier. We have the technologies that could do that now, so I think eventually we will do these things. But the problem was Jeff Bezos was the one who started Blue Origin. He’s the one funding it. And in those days, Jeff was worth like $7 billion and our job was to figure out what we could do with one. So —
Tim Ferriss: That’s a ballsy bet. He’s done pretty well since.
Pablos Holman: He’s done all right and now it’s putting a billion or more every year in Blue Origin. But the point is we could get further faster by standing on the shoulders of NASA and Russia than starting in a $50 billion hole, inventing some new propulsion scheme. So we have a bunch of ideas that were really cool, but in the end — so this, again, started in 2001. I’m going to go to Blue Origin next week for the 25th anniversary, and I get to meet some of the staff. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore, but hopefully get to meet some of the folks who are taking that and running with it. But the last thing I worked on was we built this terrifying craft with four Rolls Royce jet engines that we retooled to operate vertically and made like a quadcopter out of them.
Tim Ferriss: Sounds safe.
Pablos Holman: It’s totally not safe. This is before you could buy a quadcopter at Walmart, so we had to write all the code to do self-balancing and stuff on these microcontrollers and get it working and do thrust vectoring and all this. Anyway, we drug this thing out into the desert in central Washington, we fire the thing up, and it goes up and flies around like a UFO and then it comes back down and does a vertical landing. And so we proved that it could be done, and that was the day we decided go do it with a rocket, and Blue Origin got started on a track to go build a rocket and that’s when I left. You don’t need me to build a rocket, so yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Amazing. All right. This is going to be out of left field, but I like out of left field. But I don’t want to leave this question of why you get hired for these projects too quickly.
Pablos Holman: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: Because for whatever reason, I feel like there’s more there. How do you look at the world or what toolkit do you have? What are you able to provide that —
Pablos Holman: Honestly, I think there’s probably somebody better at everything than me.
Tim Ferriss: You’re very multidisciplinary.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. At this point, I’d say I’m kind of the canonical T-shaped person. I went real deep in computers and so I can appreciate and communicate with people who are experts in other things because I’m kind of a generalist. So I don’t write much code, I mean I’m fucking vibe coding for fun, but no one cares about any code I’m writing. I’m not that guy. But because my depth of knowledge is deep, I can appreciate another expert’s depth of knowledge and I think that that helps me to work with folks. A lot of people get pigeonholed into just the thing. We see that with scientists or engineers a lot. They’re specialized too much. And if you look at millennials, they’re kind of typically very flat. They just — “I could do anything,” but they can’t do it too well.
Tim Ferriss: An M-dash-shaped person?
Pablos Holman: M-dash. Yeah, M-dash for millennial. I like that. So I think that my suspension of disbelief, my willingness. Also, I think one of the other things that works to my advantage is most of my colleagues and friends are legitimate scientists or engineers, and they’re formally trained and they know what they’re doing. Those folks get stuck with kind of some professional liability. If you’re a scientist, you can’t say crazy shit because that could be professionally damaging for sure.
I’m a hacker so I can ask all the dumbest questions in the world because they think I’m a little bit smart, a little bit dangerous, but if I don’t actually know about shipping or rockets, I mean I had to learn physics on the job. I’m working with actual astrophysicists who know about rockets, and I have to understand what does delta-v mean, and I’m Googling that shit on the side. So I had to learn those things on the job, and I’m more fluent now, but I’m not formally trained in those things, but it’s okay for me to ask a dumb question about rockets. And so I think that helped me a lot.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s my job to ask dumb questions.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. And you get away with it too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: So that’s really cool. And you’re doing such a good job of that because you’ve been able to bring in people, whereas someone else, and you can see this when you see experts interview people, it’s not interesting. It doesn’t go anywhere because they can’t ask those dumb questions. Ask me some dumb questions. We’ll prove it right now.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, Zero Effect.
Pablos Holman: Oh, man.
Tim Ferriss: What is Zero Effect? You and Elan Lee are both fans of Zero Effect and I’ve never seen it. What is Zero Effect?
Pablos Holman: I thought I got this from him, but he says he got it from me. So this is a philosophy that drives me. So there was a film called the Zero Effect. It was like Ben Stiller made it 20 years ago.
Tim Ferriss: 1998. Yeah.
Pablos Holman: Okay. The main character is the world’s greatest private detective. And at one point in the film, he’s articulating his philosophy of being the world’s greatest private detective, and he’s a private detective who never leaves his home, so he stays home and he cracks every case.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like the fantasy of every millennial on screens right now.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, right. Well, here’s how to do it guys. If you lose your keys and you go looking for them, of all of the things in the entire world, you’re only looking for one of them and your odds of finding it are very low. But if you go looking for something in general and you don’t set such a specific target, you’re bound to find something. And so it’s a way of thinking about like, “Oh yeah, if I’m open, if I’m open to what’s possible…”
So for example, why I say that’s a philosophy that matters to me. I’m running the most wild venture fund ever. We invest in things that sound crazy and I have to be open. Most of them, even I don’t like them at the beginning. Even I’m like, “That sounds crazy,” but I have to force myself to stay open, let the founders try and explain why it’s not actually crazy. And by the time we invest, I’m convinced and I understand enough that it’s like, “Okay, it sounds crazy, but it isn’t.” You know by now I’m in the business of things that sound like complete bullshit but aren’t. I have to be right enough times that they’re not, but I got to be open. So I think the Zero Effect is how I think about staying open to finding anything.
So people come at me with perpetual motion devices every day now, and it would be crazy to invest in one of these perpetual motion devices, but it might be genius if you invest in all of them, so I do. Well, or at least a lot of them. So if one of them works, I’ll have it. So that’s kind of the game. And I think more people would get something out of that approach to life than the opposite, which is much more common, which is people are trying so hard to be so sure and be right all the time, and they really aren’t any way. They’re spectators in the world, they’re not building something anyway. So I think be open to things and be supportive.
One of the best things about Silicon Valley in the ’90s was the way everybody was like that. You could just walk down the street, find a homeless dude, start telling them about self-sailing cargo ships or nuclear reactors. He’d be like, “Oh, cool, man, my college roommate is an astrophysicist. He might be able to help you with that.” Everybody was in on it, and I think they get a bit of that now with AI. People are supportive, but it’s hard to find a critical mass of that dynamic anywhere else, so I try to be that for the deep tech folks.
Tim Ferriss: Is the movie worth watching or is it really just the philosophy?
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Good movie. It’s a good movie. It’s awesome. Go watch it. Yeah, I mean, I don’t even watch movies, but trust me, this one’s good. And WarGames, those are the two movies in the world to watch. Everything else, you can ignore.
Tim Ferriss: WarGames, the only defensible movie on hacking?
Pablos Holman: Only defensible hacker movie ever. I keep trying, Hollywood calls me to put hackers in a movie. I keep trying to help them put legit hacking in the movies and I explain everything, I show them exactly how to make it go so that real hackers will get on board. And then by the time the movie comes out, my influence is completely lost. It’s just fake access, control, override again.
Tim Ferriss: “Enhance photo.”
Pablos Holman: “Enhance photo.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s one of my favorites.
Pablos Holman: I know enhance — it’s such bullshit. Although enhance photo is working pretty well now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Now it’s a thing. So perpetual motion folks, it’s coming.
Pablos Holman: There you go.
Tim Ferriss: You mentioned looking for keys. I just have to ask because I know that you’re focused on deep tech, but still it seems like you have occasional side projects. So the key with duct tape, at least as it was described to me, where you were like, “Oh yeah, this one opens my car, closes my car, and this one unlocks every REDACTED in a one or two-mile radius.” Is this just a fairy tale?
Pablos Holman: It’s not a fairy tale. It was figured out by a hacker named Major Malfunction in England.
Tim Ferriss: Great handle.
Pablos Holman: And so those keyless remote or the remote key buttons that you have for your car, they’re kind of like RFIDs. They have a battery in them, so they can emit a signal, and then the car is listening for that signal. And when you build almost anything, you build it to do the thing, but you almost always build a little back door. Watch board games. So Major Malfunction, not through hacking, but by calling tech support for his REDACTED, because his wife was locked out in a sketchy situation, was told, “Oh, do this, manipulate the key.” So he’s able to manipulate the key to open any REDACTED and he explained this to me. And I don’t know if he was drunk or what, but he probably shouldn’t have. And so —
Tim Ferriss: Pablos on the loose.
Pablos Holman: — go by the dealership and you can open any REDACTED. So at the time, I wasn’t going to say the name of the brand, but you did. So yeah, it was —
Tim Ferriss: I mean, we can bleep it out.
Pablos Holman: — one brand of cars can open any car from that manufacturer. I think they probably have fixed this by now, but you would have to, or at least in modern cars, I sure hope so. I’m not going to say how to do it, but yeah, so look, that’s a vulnerability that has poor foresight because in those days, this is an old attack, so I don’t mind talking about too much, but you don’t have a system update. Those cars are not online. Now a Tesla and modern cars almost all have an internet connection and they can run system update, which is a very important way of reducing attack surface for vulnerabilities. So now that cars have system update, we could fix something like that remotely, but in those days you couldn’t. And so it was a pretty wild attack for a while. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I guess it still is if you’re going after vintage vehicles, potentially.
Pablos Holman: Maybe, yeah. I’m not going to tell you how to do it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s all right. I’d be curious to know, and there was another friend who popped up in your book, Chris Young.
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah. Oh, good.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve spent a ton of time with Chris Young —
Pablos Holman: Great.
Tim Ferriss: — for the book that I wrote about learning and cooking and so on, and had a blast. And that’s also the first time — I think I bumped into him twice now, but met Neal Stephenson —
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah, good.
Tim Ferriss: — who is one hell of a diversified polymath. I mean, that guy is up to a lot more than writing. I mean, he certainly is a prolific –
Pablos Holman: Neal’s delightful. We got to obviously do Blue Origin together. He helped us start the Intellectual Ventures Lab. He and I started a sword fighting school one time.
Tim Ferriss: He’s really into Victorian-era exercises, right?
Pablos Holman: Yeah, right. No, you got all the club bells and for a while was training with a Sherlock Holmes-esque cane, I forgot what’s that called? Bartitsu. Oh, man. Yeah, Neal, it’s great. I mean I really love Neal. He’s delightful, but he would spend about half his day writing in the morning and then the afternoon working on some crazy project, and I got to work on a lot of those with him.
Tim Ferriss: What are some of the characteristics or mental frameworks, anything at all, that distinguish some of these people who have employed you? So for instance, and I think you might’ve written about this, certainly I’ve thought about it a lot, but the advantage that, for instance, Jeff Bezos was able to create even before he created his empire with longer time horizons than anyone else, just changing the timeframe of thinking and planning. What else have you gleaned from these folks?
Pablos Holman: Well, that one, I think it’s a very important one because like you said, you sort of flippantly mentioned billionaires, and people get off about these folks as soon as they’re rich just because they’re rich or successful. But often what I see is it’s blinding them, it’s blinding people to learning what is it that made those people successful? What is it that’s good? What is it that’s replicable? What are the lessons? And that’s why I think we kind of need you to pay attention to them because for better or worse, more people will probably listen to you than these billionaires. And so you can —
Tim Ferriss: That’d save us.
Pablos Holman: — get those lessons, yeah. So for example, what I learned working for Jeff that really made a big difference to me personally was that if you think about Blue Origin, what is really going on there? It’s not a way for Jeff to get rich. That’s covered. So why make Blue Origin? Well, Blue Origin’s vision is to build a future for humans off of this planet and turn Earth into a wildlife refuge that maybe you would visit once in a lifetime because this is an awesome, amazing, and beautiful place and we don’t want to fuck it up too badly. So that sounds crazy, and none of us are going to be around for that, but it might take thousands of years to craft that future for humanity.
In the best case scenario, Earth just melts into the sun and that’s if nothing else wipes us out in the meantime. So if you believe in the sanctity of human life, you believe humans are something special, and I do, then in the long run you want to build kind of a plan B if not planet B. So that’s what Blue Origin is about. Now, that’s going to take generations, maybe millennia to do, but even so it would start with one small step. Blue Origin is that one small step. Can we get it started? And it’s actually a really amazing thing.
And so I learned to start by thinking on longer-term horizons, and that’s not super — like a thousand-year project to build space colonies is obviously not very relevant to me. I run a 10-year venture fund like everybody else who’s an investor. So what does that mean for me? Well, it gives me a way to think about new technologies. If I look at this nuclear reactor that goes in a borehole as an example or this cargo ship, and I say, “All right, 100 years from now, are we going to be burning nasty bunker oil to move those happy meal toys around or would we make these self-sailing cargo ships?” It’s like such an easy thing to answer. Anybody could do it. You don’t need to be smart, you don’t need to know anything about tech to answer that question.
Tim Ferriss: As soon as you extend the horizon.
Pablos Holman: You extend the horizon. In 100 years, anything could happen. In 100 years, the regulatory environment could change, Maersk could be out of business, all the cabals could be out of business, whatever, all the things, any objection you have probably could be solved in 100 years. So then ask yourself, “Does it have to take 100 years or could we do it in 10?” And if you can start to craft a vision for how to do it in 10, then you align with a lot of the machinery in the world that works. Venture funds are all 10-year funds. I can’t invest in things that take 20, but I can invest in things that take 10. So all the money is in 10-year funds. So people’s careers, they could sign up for a 10-year project, but a 20-year project might be too much. So that’s the kind of thing that helps me craft a vision for what I could invest in.
Okay, ships, yeah, we could do that in 10 years. The nuclear reactor, totally we can do it in 10 years. We’re going to do it by July. So all these crazy-sounding things that we do, I looked at them as things that definitely will get done in 100, but we’re going to try and do it in 10. And I learned that from Jeff. And you look at what even Amazon is doing, they’re taking on a whole bunch of projects that they could prove a success in less than 10 years. They’re like a giant venture fund internally, basically. Silicon Valley is thousands of million dollar experiments. We just try all these things that could be done in 10 years or less. And in 10 years you could do a lot. I think people don’t realize Google, Apple, Microsoft, all companies that were successful in less than 10 years. But not just that, the Apollo program was less than 10 years. The Space Shuttle program —
Tim Ferriss: Hoover Dam.
Pablos Holman: The Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal.
Tim Ferriss: The Empire State Building was like 18 or 24 months or something insane.
Pablos Holman: Right. So what are we sitting on our thumbs for, making more iPhone apps?
Tim Ferriss: My friend gave me that number when his remodel in Santa Monica took five years. He said, “Come on guys, what is happening?”
Pablos Holman: There you go. So the answer to that question is the answer to every question about the future, about what’s happening in the world around us. We need to solve all the things in that window. Let’s build in less than 10 years everything.
Tim Ferriss: Do you think that Elon actually wants to colonize Mars or is that a clever visual and story to tell to marshal public interest and support and so on? Or do you think that whether it’s Jeff, or Elon, or someone else, that the most practical future we’re looking to off-planet is something closer to Elysium where it’s in sort of a self-contained large-scale ISS city of some sort?
Pablos Holman: All right. Well, two things there. One, I do know Jeff, I don’t know Elon, so I know as much as you, I’ve seen publicly what he has done. I don’t know if it’s just because of Blue Origin, but I’m a little more on the space colony side of things than on the Mars thing. You only get one Mars anyway and so it doesn’t seem like that good of a destination.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, I remember somebody said to me, they’re like, “If you think you want to live on Mars, go spend a month in the winter in Antarctica.”
Pablos Holman: Yeah, which I have done for my entire childhood, so Mars doesn’t exactly appeal to me. I’ve had enough of that. I want to be in a city with people. But I think it goes back to the thing that matters to me is what I said before. People are blinded. They’re pissed off about Elon for one thing or another, and it blinds them to learning. That guy is showing us, “Here’s how you make modern industries.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean, he’s a phenomenon.
Pablos Holman: It’s phenomenal. And look, if you don’t like Elon, fine, go show us how to do it better.
Tim Ferriss: Well, you also don’t need to like everything about someone.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, that’s true.
Tim Ferriss: Or admire everything about someone in order to recognize and potentially model some of the things that really do work.
Pablos Holman: Well, I appreciate you demonstrating that by hanging out with me today. I mean, I think there was this thing I learned a little, I got a glimpse of this from this thing that a bunch of music artists did called the ONE Campaign, like U2 was doing it, and the idea behind the ONE Campaign was because they wanted to solve malaria, they wanted to solve HIV, they wanted to go after some big global scale problems. And the reason it’s called ONE is that they wanted to get all these constituencies from around the world to focus on this problem, and they only had to agree about this one thing. We only have to agree about this one thing, which is that we need to solve HIV.
Yeah, we don’t agree about all this other stuff. We don’t even like the same music. We need the Republicans and the Democrats and the autocrats all together for this one thing. And that had a big impression on me because I think it is important. We don’t all agree about everything. I’m a cypherpunk. We don’t agree about a lot of things, okay? That’s okay. And most of my friends, I want them for what they’re good for and what we can work on together. So yeah, I’m with you on that. And that’s why I can work for people who, I mean, I probably don’t agree with everything people I work with are about, but yeah, we need like 1,000 Elons. Maybe they don’t all need X accounts, but we need 1,000 Elons and we need them to go after all these things and that’s how we’re going to build the future.
Tim Ferriss: So this is from a New York Times article from 2018.
Pablos Holman: Oh, man.
Tim Ferriss: So this may not be relevant anymore, but I have attended a lot of conferences. You’ve been to a lot of conferences. I’ve heard of most of them, but one popped up, Mars, the conference. I don’t even know if it still exists, but what was it like to attend that?
Pablos Holman: Oh yeah. Well, Mars is —
Tim Ferriss: And what is it?
Pablos Holman: So that’s just a small event. So Jeff Bezos has that event annually. It’s for machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. And so Jeff and Amazon organize it. It’s a really delightful event because we bring in the world’s experts in those four things, and we’ve been doing that for like a decade. And so it’s a way to make a peer group out of people who often are siloed because they’re researchers in a lab somewhere. They wouldn’t necessarily party together otherwise. And so it’s a very important thing. I’m oddly probably the one person who’s worked in all four of those things. Everybody else is usually a Nobel Prize winner in something, but it’s otherwise like a normal conference. We come hang out together for a few days. Thankfully, Amazon or Jeff is paying for it, which is great.
And we get to cross-pollinate these folks who really often are peerless in a sense, because they’re world-class experts in their thing. You’re surrounded by people who are smarter than you. We’ll have five or 10 Nobel Prize winners and we don’t even put them on stage, so it’s a rarefied group. And I am convinced that these things are so important because people need a community. And we have like a WhatsApp group where we sort of stay in touch with each other the rest of the year, and people are very supportive and helpful. And it’s just wherever you are, I mean, look, you don’t need Mars, but you do need a community. And so one cool thing about Silicon Valley, if you’re into, I guess right now, AI-type stuff, you could definitely find a community there. The deep tech founders are having a harder time because there’s no geographic center of gravity. So we’re trying to, at least for our founders, help them get that going. But, man —
Tim Ferriss: Well, this is a good —
Pablos Holman: — community matters.
Tim Ferriss: — good time to explain why the hell we’re sitting where we’re sitting. What is this location? Where are we?
Pablos Holman: This place is so cool. So we are at the Newlab in the Brooklyn Navy yard, and this is like nothing else even I know about. It’s actually kind of like my lab or the Intellectual Ventures Lab. It’s about the same size, maybe a little bigger. There’s a machine shop here, there’s labs of all different kinds, and it’s an incubator for deep tech startups. They have like 100 of them.
Tim Ferriss: Beautiful space.
Pablos Holman: It’s a beautiful space. It’s I think kind of a public-private partnership with the city to build this thing. And they’ve been at this for like a decade. I’ve been friends with the founders for that whole time and just so impressed with what they’ve done. I actually don’t have anything to do with it. I’m pimping Newlab because if you have a deep tech startup, these folks can help. And I think it would be great to attract more deep tech founders to these things because they built this one, and they built one in Detroit that’s even bigger, and it’s so cool and it’s got space. So if you’re trying to build something, go see Newlab. And I thought this would be a cool place to record the podcast because it’s cool. And in New York it’s hard to find a cool space that’s not tiny. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. This is anything but tiny. And I was pulling up my phone because we haven’t spent much time together, and I’m pulling up to this location that I have no familiarity with. And so I just want to read our text exchange for a second. “Pulling up now.” “Enter through building 77.” I’m like, “Where the hell’s building 77?” Okay, you drop a pin. Apparently the main gate is under construction. I’m like, “Okay.” So I walk over and then you’re like, “Walk all the way through that building. There’s a turnstile with a guard, but he’s easy to PSYOP. Then go out and left.” And I’m like, “Building 5? PSYOP completed. I’m out walking left.” We’re going to come back to the PSYOP.
But then you say, “The big building straight ahead is your target. Get to that and then go left. No number on it. Entrance is at the far corner of the building.” And then I said, “Am I being set up for a podcast kidnapping? Very elegant,” ’cause I’m like, “Where the hell am I going?” Then you said, “I’ll come out and meet with the black van.” And there was actually a black van. And I’m like, “Wow, this is just…”
Pablos Holman: Now you know why Elan Lee and I are friends.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. I was like, “This is a coin toss. I have no idea what this — this could be the long con.”
Pablos Holman: Yeah, it’s a bit —
Tim Ferriss: This would be an amazing long con.
Pablos Holman: Well, my dating life has been very colorful because of every girl who’s dating me ends up meeting me at some strange warehouse in the industrial district with wires hanging out of metal. And yeah, it’s —
Tim Ferriss: So I remember ages ago when it first came out, someone recommended that I read Kevin Mitnick’s The Art of Deception, which — you made a face.
Pablos Holman: Oh, I did? Shit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay. Tell me what that’s about.
Pablos Holman: Well, look, I mean, Kevin’s a delightful human, you could say. He’s dead now, so we don’t want to say anything bad about him, but hackers kind of rallied around him ’cause he was one of the first hackers to get thrown in jail.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: But most hackers, I don’t know, if you’re elite, Kevin is kind of a joke because he was a good social engineer.
Tim Ferriss: Well, that’s why I bring it up, because you mentioned PSYOP. And as far as I could tell, 90 percent of the book was social engineering.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, that’s his thing.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Pablos Holman: And it’s worth learning. I mean, that’s a totally great thing. It’s different than hacking.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. But PSYOP, was that a joke or is that something —
Pablos Holman: Oh, just because — no, I had gone through building 77 and I’m like, “Hey, going to new lab,” and he just waved me through.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, okay.
Pablos Holman: So I’m like, I think this —
Tim Ferriss: Supremely easy to PSYOP.
Pablos Holman: — will be an easy challenge for you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, okay. All right.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Anyway.
Tim Ferriss: I want to ask you a bit more about China. So I lived in China for a period of time. I went to two universities there, studied Chinese, the whole nine yards. Spend about, oddly enough, right now, 20 percent of my time probably speaking Chinese, resurrecting my Chinese right now.
Pablos Holman: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: And that’s actually an exaggeration, but it’s like 10 to 20 percent probably. And I’ve been so simultaneously impressed and terrified by China on so many different levels.
Pablos Holman: You and me both.
Tim Ferriss: And there was a book, Tyler Cowen recommended, great, amazing guy, everybody should check out. There’s a book called Breakneck.
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I haven’t yet read it, but one of my employees is reading it and recommended it. He said, “It’s an amazing page turner. Really well researched.” And the reason I mention it is that in that book, they describe some of the differences in government planning and efficiency based on the fact that a lot of leaders in the US have backgrounds as attorneys, whereas a lot of leaders in China have backgrounds as engineers. And I have been chewing on that. I just learned about this yesterday, but I’m wondering what impresses you about China ’cause they really seem to have their act together. The homogeneity, relatively speaking, of the country helps. The speed with which the CCP can execute top down helps tremendously. But anything else come to mind?
Pablos Holman: So look, I could learn a lot about China from you. I’ve been there some, but probably not as much. I don’t speak the language. My way of learning was to start sleeping with a Chinese woman. So I’ve been doing that for five years.
Tim Ferriss: Sounds more fun than memorizing characters, frankly.
Pablos Holman: It’s helped a ton. I really opened up my eyes to China. So yeah, my fiance is Chinese, but been in America long enough that she’ll put up with me. And I think the insight from that book, I haven’t read Breakneck yet, it’s a relatively new book. I am also just kind of a spectator on what’s happening in China.
Tim Ferriss: But you have a unique multidisciplinary technical lens that includes deep tech.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. So what I can tell you, I think there’s a couple of major factors and the insight about the preponderance of lawyers I think is huge and really important. So I’m excited about reading that book. The reason we invented LLMs is to put lawyers out of business so we can fix this country, and I think that’s going to work. So if you are a parent right now, don’t send your kid to school to become a lawyer ’cause we’re going to replace all the lawyers with AI. I think where this goes, I’m optimistic. I know I’m taking it aside here, but I’m only half joking about that.
Right now —
Tim Ferriss: I use LLMs on a weekly basis for legal first passes already.
Pablos Holman: For lawsuits. Good.
Tim Ferriss: Not for all my lawsuits. No. Well, I’ll give you an example. I mean, this would be no surprise to you, but with just off-the-shelf basic ChatGPT or fill in the blank for your favorite LLM, I was selling a property in rural New York and it was taking kind of forever to get done. There are a lot of arcane local laws and so on. And I wanted to protect the land from overdevelopment. So I wanted to create deed restrictions —
Pablos Holman: More laws.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, I wanted to create deed restrictions, which are very tricky. Make the sale complicated because it’s encumbered in a way the resale value is reduced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I just threw in, this county, this is what I’m trying to do. This is the contract that I need to add to, like, draft me some basic language. And it drafted the language, explained exactly why it drafted that way. When it was eventually reviewed by a lawyer to do the finishing touches on it, maybe two or three words were changed and then it was copy and pasted right in.
Pablos Holman: So that’s a great example of what’s happening. Obviously a lot less lawyers were needed to get that job done. When Congress passes a bill, no congressman has ever read it. Collectively, all the congressmen have not read it. And so what the future we’re getting to here is one where if you’re running a business, we build a computational model of your business now, not an LLM, but still an AI, where you can run simulations of your business and you can figure out how to optimize your business. That’s all happening right now. If you’re in business and not doing this, be terrified ’cause by next year your competitors will be doing this. So I take heart because what I think is it means a hundred years from now, governments will do that too.
Tim Ferriss: So if you haven’t seen this, it didn’t get as much airtime as I would’ve expected, but Abu Dhabi is implementing that right now for legislation.
Pablos Holman: That’s right. It’s unbelievable. And if you go —
Tim Ferriss: And it seems like there were a lot of people who poked fun at it, where I saw a lot of people who were like, “Ah, this is nonsense.” As someone who has spent some time in Abu Dhabi with the people who are implementing this stuff, what they already have is science fiction.
Pablos Holman: That’s right.
Tim Ferriss: It’s remarkable what they’re already doing.
Pablos Holman: These are tools to help humans make better decisions. Now, an LLM is the wrong tool for lots of kinds of decisions, but AI overall can be applied to help make better decisions and that is where we’re going. And so when governments figure this out, and it’s great to see that some of these countries are leading the charge. When you see a country like the UAE and you see what good leadership can do, it’s kind of embarrassing. Democracy needs a little maintenance work, and I’m hoping that this class of tools is going to help us level up and fulfill our potential. So that is where that goes. What I think about it is, China has done a great job of a lot of things, and it would be great to have a Netflix series where every episode shows something amazing from China that sucks in the US. I just think that’s the kind of story people need to get in their head just to see that contrast and realize we’re not playing in the major leagues in a lot of things.
So we need to step up. And I think there’s a lot that’s impressive about China. I obviously am an Alaskan, which is a super charged American. So look, I think that there’s a lot of dumb shit going on in China that I can’t stand, I don’t want to live there. But I think you got to give them credit for the things that they’re good at. Now, the thing that’s missing here is a respect for that engineering mindset, a respect for, like you described, putting the dominoes in order, a respect for building thoughtfully, respect for basic arithmetic, a respect for building the future that we want.
We need to work on that. China’s problem, no respect for me, for the hacker mindset, for the renegade, for the creative person, for the crazy ones. They don’t make room for that. And it’s hurting their ability to do new things. Now, they’re kicking by just waiting for us to figure shit out and then implementing it faster and better than us. So we’ve spent most of our life worried about China copying us. We need to figure out how are we going to copy China. And I think that’s a wake-up call where we’re at right now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m very curious to see where it all goes.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, me too.
Tim Ferriss: They’re moving at remarkable speed with implementation on so many fronts.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. And it’s great for humanity.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: I mean, it really is. I mean, they should get a Nobel Prize for bringing their country out of extreme poverty. We should probably get one for, I don’t know, making global trade possible with our Navy or something. But there’s also a lot of accolades that I think we’re not giving to China that we should.
Tim Ferriss: So I want to get your take. I wasn’t planning on asking this, but I’m curious about, since you’ve looked at autonomous shipping vessels, you have familiarity in that domain. I’d like to talk about, for instance, Taiwan for a second. So I’ve spent time in Taiwan. I love Taiwan. Absolutely adore that place. Incredibly friendly. Food is amazing. The culture has been preserved in a way that was not true through the culture revolution in mainland China and everybody should go visit. It’s just an amazing place. Now, it’s also a tiny speck of an island that happens to be incredibly valuable for a number of different reasons, primarily chip production. And there’s a lot of discussion around what say an amphibious assault might look like, how China might exert pressure on Taiwan non-violently, which I think is the most probable path. But on one side you have these statistics that are related to shipbuilding capacity, and China has, I’m going to get this wrong.
Pablos Holman: All of it. Basically all of it.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like 30x, 300x —
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: — the US capacity. And I believe they also require that any commercial vessel over a particular size needs to be manufactured or built to military spec just in case they need to be requisitioned or otherwise enrolled in an attack. Now, we’re not going to catch up with that in the next two years, just it’s a logistics impossibility.
But you do have some startups like Anduril for instance, that talk about the only path forward to create a counter-attack in such a scenario would be lots and lots of small autonomous weaponized marine vessels. Do you think there’s a there there?
Pablos Holman: Well, I do think the nature of ballistic warfare is changing. I think the case Anduril would make is fairly compelling. I think we probably need a lot more Anduril. I’m not the guy who should weigh in on the geopolitics of Taiwan, but I think it’s not hard to look at that and say, “All right, why can’t we do that?” Now, one of the criticisms often made of American schools is that the whole structure was invented to make factory workers after the war. Well, now that we need some factory workers, where are they? We don’t have them. What we’ve got are OnlyFans, creators. So could some of them maybe help us out in a factory? We need to build a lot of things. And I think if you look around, we’re just miscalibrated. You and I barely have to work. You don’t know — anybody you know hasn’t worked a day in their lives, we’re not digging coal out of a mine. We’re sitting in front of a laptop wondering how long is the line at Starbucks?
It’s just not even close. So I think we need to recalibrate on our expectation of what it means to work. Look, I think we’re optimized for work. We’re evolved to work. You wonder about why are people depressed? I mean, not everyone, I don’t want mean to disparage anybody who is dealing with something like that, but you’re evolved to be useful to the world around you, to the people around you. And if you can’t see how your work is useful, yeah, you’re going to get depressed. I mean, I think that happens a lot. I’m not saying it’s the only reason, but when you have a whole society that doesn’t really do anything where you can see how anyone gives a shit about what you do, that’s not going to be very healthy. So I think we just need to recalibrate in our society and recognize like, okay, everybody needs to do something that matters, do something where they can see how it matters. I’m good at connecting dots, so I can do things where I see how it matters in a thousand years and I’m good.
But most people might be better off if they’re like a nurse where you can see, “Yeah, I helped that person today.” Are nurses depressed? They might be depressed about having to do a lot of paperwork, but they’re probably not depressed about their work —
Tim Ferriss: The meaningfulness of their work.
Pablos Holman: Again, I don’t mean to belittle anyone who’s depressed. I’m just saying as an example, we could be a much happier, healthier society if we’re doing things where we can see how it helps our world, helps our society. So building stuff is a good example of that ’cause you can build a thing and you can see I built that thing and somebody’s using it and that’s awesome. Are Tesla factory workers depressed. I don’t know. Or maybe swap out depressed for disgruntled or apathetic or something. You can solve some of these things. So I want to see us build, and I think Anduril is an example of we’re going to build these things that help us. I want to build those ships. We can build ships in the US.
Tim Ferriss: And Palmer Luckey is a machine. I mean, he’s an impressive —
Pablos Holman: Yeah. And we can build —
Tim Ferriss: — founder.
Pablos Holman: And so are other people there. We can build chip fabs. You don’t necessarily need tiny fingers. It’s not a lot of bullshit stories we’ve been told. We can build chip fabs, we can learn to work.
Pablos Holman Anyway, I’m ranting, but you get the idea. Let’s build some cool shit. And I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do that. And we could build ships, we can build chips, we can build all these other things.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So how do you find wild inventors? Or do they just come to you and you act as kind of a honeypot for the forlorn, the crazy, the people into the DeLorean with the crazy hair, as I heard you say once.
Pablos Holman: Honeypot means something else to hackers. So I’ll go with lightning rod.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: You just look for the crazy hair and the DeLorean and that’s how you find them. Yeah, I’d say I attract some of them because I’ve worked on some of the kinds of projects they want to do, and hopefully they believe that I’ll at least hang in there long enough to understand what they’re trying to do and maybe believe in it and maybe invest in it. So that’s where I’m at. There are times when I find out about a technology or an invention that we might’ve been really helpful with, but it’s too late. That is frustrating. So if you do invent —
Tim Ferriss: Too late in terms of stage?
Pablos Holman: Meaning, yeah, we’re basically helpful at the beginning. We’re helpful in the early stages when you’ve got to get out of that garage or get out of that lab and become more, maybe, venture compatible so that you could go, we’re trying to help people co-opt the machinery of venture capital and aim it at deep tech. And so if you’re kind of on that track, we could maybe be helpful. Not for everyone, but that’s what I’m looking for. And so yeah, I would love to see these, especially the breakthroughs, really early.
Tim Ferriss: But I guess is your game to attract them to you or do you go out and search in the —
Pablos Holman: I do still, like —
Tim Ferriss: — dark corners of nerddom.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, but I still need help. I need to deputize my friends. There’s probably VCs hanging out at Starbucks by MIT, but those professors call me when they have something that their post-docs want to spin out, and I’m like, “Yes, that’s the help I need because I can’t hang out at every lab.” I go and I visit and I try to be helpful. So some of its labs. About a third of it, I’d say, about another third is rogue engineers who are working at some company that’s got their head up their ass and not doing the coolest thing. So I like that. And then my favorite third is the crazy hackers who are in a basement. You just can’t find them. They’re not going to TED or whatever. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, right. Rodney Mullen wasn’t going to TED when he was a teenager.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, Rodney’s not going to TED. That’s right. He spoke at a couple of TED events, I think.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. But I mean, when he was the undiscovered —
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah, no, right. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Where does salsa enter the picture?
Pablos Holman: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: Because it seems to be important to you.
Pablos Holman: Well, it is important to me, actually. So I remember the Tango thing that you did that I read about, and you and I have a radically different relationship to dance. So I can’t do things that are choreographed. I can’t memorize things. I can’t focus on a structured plan for learning something like you do. I’m all reverse engineering. So when I show up to salsa, what I’m doing is, yeah, there’s a teacher and they’re showing me a thing I’m supposed to learn. I have to try everything and throw out the stuff that doesn’t work.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: That’s literally how I learned to dance. So I’m a really good salsa dancer now ’cause I started 20 years ago, but very unorthodox salsa dancer, which to be fair to my partners, I should say that ’cause I don’t dance like everyone else, and I can’t learn to dance like someone else because I can only — I have to try this stuff and then converge on what works, and that’s a really great thing. So I danced differently than ever else. But salsa for me was very important partly ’cause too much of my life was hanging out with hackers who fit a demographic that’s a little too homogenous in its way.
Maybe not intellectually, but certainly by all other metrics. And so I had trained in aikido for a decade, which is a Japanese martial art, very structured, very disciplined, very traditional. And I love, I’m obsessed with the physical communication. I love that part of it. And what’s cool about aikido is you’d always train with a partner. And that’s not true for a lot of martial arts. I’d done a lot of punching and kicking in the air with karate and stuff before that, and it just didn’t land for me. With aikido, you always have a partner, and so they’re attacking you and without words, you’re trying to communicate that you want them to shove their head in the ground or something like that. And I love that. I love that feeling of physical communication.
And I’m not great at aikido, and I was trying to learn that through reverse engineering as well, which also has its unorthodox problems. But eventually, short version of the story is I figured out that it was an upgrade to train instead of with sweaty, old Japanese guys, sweaty young Latin girls. So I’m still basically doing the same thing as aikido, but in salsa. And I can do it any night, anywhere in the world. There’s salsa dancers. You just got to know where to find them. You don’t need to speak the language. And so I got a lot out of dancing salsa ’cause I got a community of people in all walks of life. I’m not a rock star in salsa. I get out ranked by the Mexican dishwasher every night. It’s good for my ego ’cause I’m at the bottom always. And I think that’s good for me. And you learn something. My way of moving through the world is so heavily affected by aikido and salsa. Yeah. So anyway, I’ve been doing that for a long time.
Tim Ferriss: Salsa has a huge advantage over Tango that you can find it anywhere. Tango is pretty —
Pablos Holman: Yeah, it’s more niche.
Tim Ferriss: — narrow.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Unless you’re in Argentina, in which case you have an embarrassment of riches. But anywhere else, even in Argentina, outside of the capital, you can find more salsa.
Pablos Holman: The salsa’s everywhere. And the reason I defected from Tango, I tried to do Tango first for a month, but it takes advantage of none of my natural talents. You can’t do reverse engineering in Tango. It’s too structured and disciplined and minute, and salsa, you can just wiggle your way through it, so —
Tim Ferriss: So to actually implement the trial and error of trying everything and throwing out what doesn’t work for you, how do you even figure out the menu of options that you need to run through from A to Z?
Pablos Holman: Yeah. Well, again, you’re going back to the Tim Ferriss learning style. I’m not trying to codify the menu. I’m discovery mode. So what’s cool —
Tim Ferriss: Okay. I’m just wondering, when you went in and you decided that that was your approach, innately, maybe just instinctually, you’re like, “This is all I know how to do.” What does it actually look like in class for you?
Pablos Holman: So in salsa, the first year and a half, you’re in class, you’re being shown a move. You’re learning the move, you’re learning the basics, you’re learning the timing, learning the steps. You have to do that. There’s just no way getting out. It’s excruciating for me because I kind of suck at that. But the day I got through that, and what that meant for me was the day I could get out of anything I could get myself into ’cause in salsa, you’re turning a girl into a pretzel and then untying her at 180 miles an hour. Once I realized, okay, I know how to get out of every possible thing that I can get into —
Tim Ferriss: Every failure mode I know how to get out of.
Pablos Holman: — then I became dangerous because then I could just play. And in salsa, you get a different partner for every song. So you go out at night, you dance with a different girl every night, and it’s a different track, it’s a different girl, it’s a different, you know, and you’re just making it up and you’re leading. So I could just play and play and try things and see what works. So I have this vocabulary of bizarre salsa moves that I can do with a partner who’s never learned those moves ’cause I’m leading her through it and I know what I’m — I can feel it all. That’s what happened to me. And that’s pretty heterodox, but that’s what I meant. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: We may have more overlap than you realize. Just in the sense that I had, when I first got to Argentina in late 2004, maybe early 2004, I had zero interest in Tango, absolutely zero. I in fact wanted to avoid it because my reference points were Scent of a Woman, True Lies, flower in the teeth. I’m like, “Who would ever want to do that? It looks so stiff.” I did not have any interest in the choreography. My only dance background at that point was that I had co-founded the first hip-hop dance troupe at Princeton University.
Pablos Holman: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: And so breakdancing —
Pablos Holman: All right.
Tim Ferriss: — that’s all I had, which was improvised.
Pablos Holman: Yeah, okay, cool. Right.
Tim Ferriss: And did not do any kind of set routines. It was all improvised depending on the songs and stuff. And it was that physical improv that appealed to me. Like, the improv jazz aspect of needing to be not just fast on your feet, but mentally fast enough to improvise in that way. And then I was walking down Avenida Florida in Buenos Aires, which is a very famous pedestrian area, no cars. And it was hot as balls. I mean, it was just so, it gets very humid and hot. And the only place I could see I was waiting for a friend to get out of a Spanish class was this Tango music shop, total tourist trap. Just had, it had all of this cold air. I could see it just billowing out the AC.
And so I walked in there and I was just killing time. And this older woman, middle-aged woman chain-smoking, bleach blonde hair, in Spanish was like, “Hey, asshole.” She’s like, “I know you’re not going to buy anything, but if you’re going to stick around, you have to at least give me 10 pesos for the class upstairs.” And I was like, “Okay, what’s the class?” “Tango.” And I was like, “Ah, okay, fine.” And meanwhile, for the first month or so there, a half Panamanian, half Argentine friend had convinced me to go to Argentina from Panama, because he had said that Argentina has the best red wine in the world, the best steak in the world, the most beautiful women in the world, and you can live there for a king on pennies. And I was like, “Sold. Let’s go.”
So I found the steak, I found the wine. It was cheap. And I was like, “Where are all these beautiful women?” And then I walked upstairs to this class. It was like 3:00 p.m. or something, and it was like nine smoking hot women and one bored-looking guy who was like a husband who had been sent there on assignment. And I was like, “Oh, okay.” And then throughout the course of that class realized, “Oh, this is all improvised.”
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Now this is interesting.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Now this is interesting.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it was actually not for me, aikido, but wrestling, believe it or not, and judo that helped because it’s the same same.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, you’re shifting weight, you’re changing balance, you are directing the motion of someone else. The only difference is in dance, the person’s trying to cooperate instead of choke you out —
Pablos Holman: Sometimes.
Tim Ferriss: — or break your arms or throw you on your head. Yes, sometimes. Exactly. I did get shamed off the dance floor by some old Argentine ladies when I first tried to go out into the wild.
Pablos Holman: I still do.
Tim Ferriss: Oh my God.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Practicing, it’s —
Pablos Holman: It’s such a good story.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a good, very humbling experience.
Pablos Holman: For me, it was exact same thing ’cause I went to this Argentine steakhouse, and there was these pros direct from Argentina that —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, man.
Pablos Holman: — danced between the tables and up on the bar, and I saw he’s leaving her. But the communication was so subtle, I realized that’s what aikidoka are trying to do, and they’re better at it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: And so I went to try and learn from them, and then —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it is for people who haven’t really been exposed to dance, at the very least, you should go to a Tango or salsa dance hall to see good dancers who are strangers, dance with one another because if I took you to La Viruta or Niño Bien or one of these milonga in Argentina during kind of prime time, which would be like 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. I don’t know how they —
Pablos Holman: The good dancers don’t show up until after midnight. Yeah. I never go out until midnight.
Tim Ferriss: They show up really late. And, I could show you a pair dancing and you would say, “Wow. They must have been practicing and rehearsing this choreography for six months.” And, I’d say, “No. This is the first time they’re dancing.”
Pablos Holman: There you go. There you go.
Tim Ferriss: It’s so unbelievable. And, I don’t know if this is true — it’s such a different type of dance. It may be very different, but the best female dancers or a lot of the best female dancers in Argentina will dance with their eyes closed.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: For that sensory —
Pablos Holman: I’ll do that to salsa dancers. Salsa is super fast, but —
Tim Ferriss: Salsa is a lot. Well, Tango can get fast, but salsa is dependably fast.
Pablos Holman: So, very fast music, the steps are fast and there’s a lot of spinning and shit. And so, I’ll close a partner’s eyes because I can lead her —
Tim Ferriss: Sleek.
Pablos Holman: And, she doesn’t need her eyes because I’m leading everything. I’m tracking every moving object in the room. I’m putting her feet where they go. And so, you can sometimes, especially for some dancers, especially if they’re uptight, because a lot of salsa dancers will train for the stage, so they’ll train choreography and all this crap. And, I’m trying to get them out of that mindset. So, I’ll get their eyes closed and you won’t know. She can spin with her eyes closed.
Tim Ferriss: And, I remember also one of the aspects of my Tango immersion — because I went 110 percent. I just fully committed. I mean, I was doing three to six hours a day and my feet ended up so bruised because the shoes are these really thin shoes. They’re basically suede slippers. It was a lot of fun to dissect that and explore and try everything. And, one of the aspects I so loved, and I imagine this is true in salsa maybe, is that you’d go out to these different milonga, these different dance halls. Every one had its own personality, right?
Pablos Holman: For sure.
Tim Ferriss: There’d be one I remember, La Viruta, I think it’s in the basement of the Armenian consulate filled with smoke, which I can actually tolerate in that environment. Everyone’s sweating and it’s got kind of an illegal speakeasy type of feel.
Pablos Holman: Yep. Totally.
Tim Ferriss: Definitely a fire hazard.
Pablos Holman: Totally.
Tim Ferriss: And then, there’s another one, Sundaland, which was basically in a high school gymnasium on a basketball court, just blindingly bright lights and a totally different crowd. And, by crowd, I mean almost every age you can imagine. I mean, it’s like 18 plus. But, you would have older ladies, you would have 70-year-old guys dressed to the nines in a three-piece suit. I also got screamed off the dance floor by a few of those guys.
Pablos Holman: What was your violation?
Tim Ferriss: Well, my violation was very basic, and it is the most common mistake I would say that men make because in the classes when they’re teaching you the basic eight step, which is the first boot up sequence that everybody gets, almost always in every school where I’ve seen it taught, the first step is a step backwards. And so, you’ve got your partner and you step backwards. So, male, right foot back.
And, in a dance hall, you cannot do that. Why? Because you don’t have a bicycle helmet with mirrors on it. You can’t see where you’re going so you just end up smashing into people when you do that. So, when you go into a live environment in the wild, typically you’re going to take that first step out to the side because you can see where you’re going with your peripheral vision. So, I would get screamed off by the men because I would bump into them. And, Argentines, they are, at least in the capital city, very much like Italians. They are passionate gang of folks, very wild gesticulating, very high volume. And, if you bump into their lady, they’re going to give you an earful.
With the women in the beginning, this probably happens in salsa, but in Tango, at least, if you’re always practicing with the same partner especially if, in my case, that woman is a really good dancer, she will develop a sixth sense to read what you are intending her to do even if your lead or the mark is weak.
Pablos Holman: Of course.
Tim Ferriss: And then, you’re like, “Wow. I’m a Jedi. I’m doing so well.”
Pablos Holman: Totally.
Tim Ferriss: And, you go out and you do it with a stranger. And, literally I had women say to me, they would throw their arms down in disgust in the middle of a song, which is quite a show in the Tango world, and just be like, “I don’t know what you’re trying to do. I do not know what you’re trying to do, how you’re trying to move me.” And, they would just get furious. And then, I would put my tail between my legs and scuttle off and recover.
Pablos Holman: That’s why I say it’s important to do. It’s humbling. Even now, I mean, I’ve been dancing for 20 years, but if I show up, there’ll be incompatible dancers. And, my problem is, so I’m trained in what’s called essentially L.A. style, West Coast salsa. Salsa actually comes from New York City —
Tim Ferriss: New York City. Yeah.
Pablos Holman: So, I live in the epicenter of salsa but they dance what’s called Mambo and they can see me coming from miles away. I’m like an invasive species. They’re like, “Oh my God. What is this trash?” So, I’m having a hard time. I have to now reorient. And, it’s just a minor change in how you do the timing and it’s actually super cool but man, I have to somehow whitewash myself of this filth from the West Coast salsa scene.
Tim Ferriss: The Tango world also has its factions since every subculture needs its infighting.
Pablos Holman: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: So, there’s definitely a fair amount of that. And, I brought up the older guys, the 70-year-old guys in part because I remember going to these dance halls and I’m a healthy red-blooded male, and I’m looking for the most attractive women to dance with, which was not worth it in the beginning because I was just going to make an ass of myself. But, of course, you’re looking around and taking a gander, and more often than not, they would be dancing with the old guys. And, the reason for that is that you get these young bucks who are 30 or whatever, professional stage dancers, they want to show off every tool in the toolkit and it ends up just being a melee. It’s like they’re a weed whacker, and it’s not fun for these women necessarily to dance with them if they’re just trying to showcase everything they know. Whereas the older guys, they can’t do that physically. They also have a very clean classical style and they listen to the music —
Pablos Holman: Yes. The musicality.
Tim Ferriss: The musicality —
Pablos Holman: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: — is what matters.
Pablos Holman: And, same in salsa and its derivatives.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So now, 20 years in, you started salsa, it seems, in part to get away from the homogeneity of the hacker world but you’re still doing it. What do you get out of it?
Pablos Holman: I do it less. I want to. COVID kind of damaged the salsa scene. It’s mostly back, but I don’t have a salsa community anymore. And, the problem with that is it takes me a while to sort of brainwash my partners into doing the thing I want to do. And, you got to find a certain special kind of partner that can hang in there for that. What I do because I travel so much and I dance salsa everywhere I go, it’s kind of like the first conversation when you meet somebody. It’s like, “What do you do? Where do you work? Where’d you grow up?”
And, it’s just that I have the dance version of that conversation over and over again. It’s not very rewarding. I need a pretty rarefied partner now, and if you learn to dance, you should get good as slowly as possible. And, I did do that and I was able to have fun for a long time but now it’s really hard for me to have fun unless I have a pretty rarified partner that will put up with my flavor of bullshit. So, yeah. It’s an evolution.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Pablos, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We could, of course —
Pablos Holman: Keep going. Yeah —
Tim Ferriss: — cover a million other things for another five hours, but is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you would like to bring up?
Pablos Holman: Oh, wow.
Tim Ferriss: Anything at all? And, I have a few closing questions as well —
Pablos Holman: Okay. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But, I’m just wondering if anything comes to mind.
Pablos Holman: I guess the thing I maybe alluded to but didn’t articulate very well is that you could see how I kind of, in my career, I got the software out of my system young because I got early start and then maybe by 2001 or something, I was able to sort of say, “Okay. Did all this stuff with computers, but maybe I could go beyond that and bring other technologies to life.”
And, when I look at Silicon Valley, I see a lot of people who might want to do that. They got to do the software stuff. They may be 10 or 20 years into their career now and so maybe we can win some of them over and help us come bring these other technologies to life. Like I described, I think the opportunities are bigger, the impact is bigger.
And, why would you want to do that? Well, I think there’s a meaning in it. There’s an opportunity here to see technology as a force for good, to make the world better. We build this toolkit that we’re going to use to build the future, and you get to add something to that toolkit. So, yeah. I just think if you put that framework to use, you could kind of get a sense of where technology can go and get a lot more excited about it. It’s really sad for me to see people that are pissed off about technology in general or even pissed off about their phones or whatever. I’m like, “Yeah. Okay. Well, what are you using it for? Are you just doomscrolling, because we could do a lot better than that.” And so, yeah. So, I think, if I had a chance to try and share something, it would be that there’s a lot left to do.
Tim Ferriss: That is a military helicopter that just flew over us.
Pablos Holman: Oh, yeah. You’re trained in military helicopters. Great. We can rewind.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. No. No. I’m good. I’m good. I just wanted to say this is a lively environment. I like it. Those people, let’s say there are at least a handful listening who resonate with what you just said. What should they do? Should they fill out a form on your website? Should they check out anything online related to you? Send you an email? I mean, what would you want those —
Pablos Holman: Careful what I ask for?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’d be careful with the email, but —
Pablos Holman: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, look, I try to read every email already. I can’t reply to all of them so I don’t know the right answer. With or without me, I think these are important things to do. We can take on some fraction of things and help out a little bit. I think that what I’m trying to do is convince not just those founders but also those investors like, “Hey. You could steer what you’re doing to bigger opportunities. Look at deep tech. You don’t have to be a physicist to do it. You could find some important things and some really, really lucrative things to invest in deep tech and you won’t be competing with all the other usual suspects.”
Tim Ferriss: I’ve made that shift largely in my own investing in the last five years.
Pablos Holman: Wow. Cool.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. I heard of, I know we can cut this out, but you’re an investor in Holobiome.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. That’s one that we did. Super cool.
Tim Ferriss: Holobiome is amazing.
Pablos Holman: It is. That’s right.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I think that’s going to be such, hopefully, fingers crossed, we can talk about it, a service to humanity. I mean, building a proper library is step number one, right? It’s coming back to the — it’s like, yeah, sure, you can create probiotics with six widely available commercial strains, but ultimately you have thousands.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. What people don’t realize is that, well, just to make it clear to the audience, when you eat food, you’re not feeding yourself. You’re feeding a thousand different microbes in your gut, and then what they spit out feeds you. So, there’s this layer of indirection that we have no measurement for. Mine’s different than yours, everybody’s different. We’re tuned for different things and we don’t even have a way of understanding that. And so, that’s microbiome. We’re going to learn about it. Every one of those microbes is probably a few PhDs that need to get done, but Holobiome is crafting the machinery to do that, the mechanism to do that. And, it’s exciting because they’re figuring out cool stuff already.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a super cool company. I’ve been getting very involved with aqua culture and algae feed additives for cows to reduce methane production which is, frankly, very far outside of my comfort zone. I hope to have a positive return on investment, but I tend to get myself sometimes into trouble. For instance, I invested in a company that was developing in inhalable insulin. So, insulin that you could effectively use an inhaler for. And, the tech was super solid but due to a bunch of regulatory issues and other factors that I have much less familiarity with, puzzles that I’m not accustomed to solving for, I end up with a lot of zeros when I stray outside of stuff that I can directly promote to my audience. Because I can increase the value of equity in a company very clearly if it’s —
Pablos Holman: For a certain thing.
Tim Ferriss: ,,, in Uber or a Blue Bottle coffee or fill in the blank.
Pablos Holman: That makes sense.
Tim Ferriss: But, nonetheless, I have been as an intrepid deep tech investor because a lot of it just seems more meaningful if it works.
Pablos Holman: Right. So, the trick there, I am sure by now what most investors would do is get a portfolio, try to get a big enough portfolio to offset those failures with hits and that’s a shots on goal game. That’s why we do so many. That’s why we focus on being the first check. We’re doing pre-seed stuff, actual tech, but we will do hundreds of these things and we’re going to hope to get a couple hits.
Tim Ferriss: Over the course of a single 10-year fund.
Pablos Holman: In one fund, we’ll do about 60. So, we’ll do another fund and we’ll do another 60 in the future. But, yeah. We’ll do multiple funds, but most VCs would kind of graduate from pre-seed to seed to series A. We don’t do that. We just stay —
Tim Ferriss: Super early.
Pablos Holman: Lots and lots of pre-seed.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. If you could only place one bet in fusion, where would you place it?
Pablos Holman: Oh, boy. Don’t get me started. Okay. I’m started. Yeah. Okay. Fusion. Look —
Tim Ferriss: Or, would your answer be zero?
Pablos Holman: It’s not zero. So, here’s the thing. So, as you know, fusion is like rattle these molecules and get them to break apart and get a bunch of energy out. That’s fission. Fusion is push these molecules together and get them to become one. Plasma fusion is the biggest branch of fusion research in history. And so what that means is you’re going to heat up these molecules so much that they kind of expand and open up to the possibility of getting stuck together.
Tim Ferriss: Just create a miniature sun, no big deal.
Pablos Holman: It is temperatures that rival the sun because that is what the sun is doing. It’s doing fusion. But, what you need that we don’t have on earth that the sun has is you need a lot of pressure as well. Now, the pressure you could get if you could make a vessel that would hold the plasma, but the plasma’s so hot, it’d melt anything on Earth.
So, the way we do it now is — the best idea so far has been what’s called a magnetic confinement. So you create a giant super magnet and use the magnetic field to push the plasma together, and it’s far enough away that it won’t melt. That’s using force to do it. So that’s a super cool idea but it has been very difficult to make it work. And, scientifically we didn’t even really know if it would work and that’s why people make fun of fusion all the time and say that it’s 20 years away and always will be. That changed.
So, the cool thing is, a few years ago, the team from MIT called Commonwealth Fusion Systems now, published a series of, I think, seven papers that explain exactly how they can make magnetic confinement fusion work. And, the real breakthrough was a new superconductor. It’s a superconductor that allows them to make the world’s most powerful magnet, which they have done and it’s awesome, crazy cool magnet. But, now they got that working, we’re out of the science risk window into the technical risk window, which means can they engineer a fusion reactor?
So, I’d say Commonwealth is probably the most well-funded, most advanced plasma fusion reactor company. They’re building what’s called a toga mac, which is like the giant doughnut shaped thing you see pictures of, and I wish them a lot of luck, but they have extreme engineering problems. It is really hard to build that thing. And, once they get it built, then they’re going to need tritium. And there’s about enough tritium on earth left to make it go one time. And, the only way to make more tritium is, you guessed it, in a fusion reactor where they’ve got to get 99 percent efficiency on getting the tritium out. And, we don’t know if that’s going to be possible. So, there’s just a zillion of these really hard engineering problems. So, anyway, that’s the long version —
Tim Ferriss: Can’t just source the tritium from gun sites?
Pablos Holman: You can source it from the moon. So there are people who want to go to the moon and grab tritium and bring it back. The stuff in gun sites, there’s very little of it left.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Pablos Holman: It has tritium paint and in your old Swiss watches and things, and that’s why they glow. You need tritium. But, anyway, the point of all this is to say, in the best-case scenario, fusion is very difficult. I really hope we get it. The upside of that is, once it really does work, you’ll get more energy out than you put in. So, think of a gas tank, you’ll have to fill once and it runs the rest of your life.
Tim Ferriss: What is that? Q greater than one?
Pablos Holman: Q greater than one is the metric.
Tim Ferriss: Has anyone ever crossed that?
Pablos Holman: No one has ever actually achieved that if you count the entire energy for the system. There are projects and once in a while you see fusion headlines where it’s like, “Fusion works from Livermore,” or whatever. And, what they’ve done is, on system level one, which basically means the energy going into the fusion from the 192 giant lasers is less than the energy coming out of the fusion, but they’re not counting the energy going into the lasers.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Right.
Pablos Holman: And, the problem with all this, the reason I’m explaining is so people can understand, a lot of these fusion projects are very expensive to do research on. They’ve figured out that it’s hard to get that money from academic research financing. They’re trying to co-opt venture capital to do it. So, I think a lot of these teams are overstating what they can do, how fast they can do it, because they’re trying to attract that capital and I think they’re being a little disingenuous about it. I’m not going to name names. And, the problem with that is it poisons the well for the people who do have something that could work. So you’ve got to be very careful about whether you think it’s going to map to that 10-year venture time horizon.
I have seen a lot of the fusion companies. I haven’t evaluated all of them. I’ve not invested in any of the plasma fusion companies. I will tell you because I am a crazy venture capitalist who invests in wild ideas. I did invest in one and it’s called nanoconfinement fusion.
So these guys have figured out a very simple way to cause fusion by putting deuterium together with carbon nanotubes that cause a fusion. And, if it works, it’ll be fucking amazing. There’s work to do to prove it. Got it working in the lab, but they’re working on advancing that now. NASA has done the same kind of fusion using metal lattices. So, this is a very fringe area in fusion. Probably any physicist will tell you that Pablos is full of shit, which is fine but that’s the kind of wild ideas that we think are worth pursuing if we can. And so, there’s an important inflection point there where we were able to see this works in the lab, can we commercialize it is an open question.
Tim Ferriss: Also, as long as you are not completely insane and you have some degree of technical due diligence given the way you’re investing — if you were investing at series D —
Pablos Holman: No, I can’t do that —
Tim Ferriss: Then it would be a very dangerous game indeed. But, if your maximum loss is a check, which doesn’t need to be exorbitant in size at the precede, that’s your maximum downside res.
Pablos Holman: That’s right.
Tim Ferriss: Then it’s like, “Okay.”
Pablos Holman: Yeah. So I’m along for that ride. I’m going to get it wrong sometimes but, if that works, the upside is fucking utopia. So we’re going to do a few of those and we have a few.
Tim Ferriss: I’m not going to ask you to pick one because that would put you in a tight spot, but could you name one, of I’m sure quite a few or several from your portfolio, that you feel is likely to be a winner? And, the reason I’m asking is that I want to know what the characteristics are that give you that conviction.
Pablos Holman: Yeah. I think the heart of what you’re getting at, one thing worth articulating here is, I attract those technical founders, those inventors. A lot of the time I can’t invest. And, the reason is I love the technology, but there’s no entrepreneur, there’s no commercial animal, there’s nobody who can sell some shit. And, a lot of times the homework I have to give them is go find a frat buddy or a cousin or a roommate or somebody who can sell something because you need that to build a business. And, I can only take a few bets where I don’t see that hoping that it’s going to come later
Tim Ferriss: It’s interesting because you have the opposite problem of a lot of venture capitalists, right?
Pablos Holman: That’s right. I do. And, I know —
Tim Ferriss: You’re not looking for technical co-founders.
Pablos Holman: Every other VC will tell you, “We back the best founders.” That’s their mantra and I get it. And, increasingly, I’m sympathetic. I have backed founders because I loved the tech but they spent their career on the tech. They’re only making a business because it’s the next logical step.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, the other issue is that if you have someone who’s very technical, let’s say that they happen to be a unicorn and they’re also really good at business. If they try to spearhead both sides of that coin, they’re going to burn out.
Pablos Holman: Totally. I think we have a fucked up mythology in Silicon Valley. We imagine this amazing, smart person who invented something and then became a patent lawyer and patented it, wrote the code to launch the first version, and then hired the genius team, and then chose an HR policy and took the company public. That is not actually what’s going on. It’s always teams. And we might have the quarterback out in front that is the focal point that the whole world looks at and says, “Oh, that’s the founder,” and that’s the one that you see on YouTube. But, that is a person who is doing an important job of being the human face for a company, but there’s a team behind them.
And so, as a founder, I think you’ve got to find the people who are good at the things you suck at. My founders often suck at marketing. They suck at business development. They suck at the kinds of things that — and that’s okay. You can suck at that. I don’t need you to be good at that. I don’t believe in personal growth like every other podcast host probably does. I believe in do the thing you’re good at, hire friends or people who are good at the things you suck at.
So what I don’t know how to do is scale up on co-founder dating for deep tech. I want that solved desperately. There are more entrepreneurs than there are inventors. I’ve got the thing that’s precious here, but I want to figure out how do I get them to party with entrepreneurs and team up? And, I don’t know how to scale that, but I really want to.
Tim Ferriss: Pablos, where should people find you online? What are the best websites or otherwise?
Pablos Holman: So, I have, deepfuture.tech is our website. There’s a podcast there, which is mostly just long conversations with nerds. That’s how I learn. So, I pick the brains of nerds and I record some of them. And then, I’m on all the stuff. I’m Pablos on X, but nobody listens to me there. LinkedIn, more people listen. But, yeah. So, you could do those things. Oh, I have probably the best email list in the world because the only things I send out are super inspiring and amazing technology. So, join that or whatever.
Tim Ferriss: They can find that at the —
Pablos Holman: Deepfuture.tech. Yeah. That’s there, there’s a WhatsApp group with propaganda, you can join that too.
Tim Ferriss: And, if people are interested in the book, which I have in my backpack right now, it’s Deep Future: Creating Technology That Matters. A lot of good stories and a lot of head-spinning statistics.
Pablos Holman: Oh, no. Don’t say that.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I shouldn’t say statistics — that makes it sound too sterile — but just facts and figures that underscore a lot of important points that are pretty jaw-dropping, such as the $5 out of every $6 associated with shipping going to fuel or whatever the number might be and so on. I mean, it’s really remarkable.
Pablos Holman: The statistics, those are meant to be drop-kicks.
Tim Ferriss: Well, Pablos, thank you for taking the time. So great to hang.
Pablos Holman: Oh, man. No. This is awesome. I’m glad we finally got to do it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s super fun.
Pablos Holman: After all these years. And I came unarmed, so I wouldn’t intimidate your sensibility about getting hacked.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, black van’s still out front, so it ain’t over until it’s over. And, for everybody listening, and we will link to all the things we mentioned, including Pablo’s website, the book, newsletter, et cetera at tim.blog/podcast.” I can guarantee you that Pablos will be the only Pablos, so just search Pablos —
Pablos Holman: That’s true. Sounds plural, but there’s only one.
Tim Ferriss: — and you will find him immediately. So, that is where you can find all the resources. And, as always, be a little bit kinder than is necessary until next time to others, but also to yourself. And, thanks for tuning in.
Pablos Holman: Well, thank you. This is a real treat and I appreciate — I mean, you’ve done something really special with your whole career, and I’m really thankful that we got to hang out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Thanks, man. To be continued. I feel like this is the beginning.
Pablos Holman: Good. Yeah.
The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Pablos Holman — One of the Scariest Hackers I’ve Ever Met (#827) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-09-17 04:05:15
Pablos Holman (@pablos) is a hacker and inventor and the bestselling author of Deep Future: Creating Technology that Matters, the indispensable guide to deep tech. Previously, Pablos worked on spaceships at Blue Origin and helped build The Intellectual Ventures Lab to invent a wide variety of breakthroughs, including a brain surgery tool, a machine to suppress hurricanes, 3D food printers, and a laser that can shoot down mosquitos, part of an impact invention effort to eradicate malaria with Bill Gates.
Pablos hosts the Deep Future Podcast, and his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times. He is also managing partner at Deep Future, investing in technologies to solve the world’s biggest problems.
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“I think a future that’s awesome is absolutely possible. A shitty future is also possible, but the balance is up to us.”
— Pablos Holman
“I tried to do tango first for a month, but it takes advantage of none of my natural talents. You can’t do reverse engineering in tango. It’s too structured and disciplined and minute, and salsa, you can just wiggle your way through it.”
— Pablos Holman
“Most people, if you get a new gadget, like your phone, and give it to your mom, she’ll ask you, ‘What does this do?’ That’s a totally normal question. ‘iPhone, Mom. Says on the box.’ If you give a new gadget to a hacker, then the question is, ‘What can I make this do?'”
— Pablos Holman
“You can’t invent a new technology by reading the directions. That’s just never happened, ever.”
— Pablos Holman
“I had a computer in the cold, in the dark, in the basement, in Alaska, and nobody to show me anything about how it worked. So I had to learn by reverse engineering.”
— Pablos Holman
I do have a kind of extreme risk tolerance. My whole career, I’ve only worked on things that I thought were cool or interesting. I’ll optimize for that over everything else.
— Pablos Holman
“Pablos is a totally fake name because all hackers have fake names.”
— Pablos Holman
Want to hear another episode with someone who asks “What can I make this do?” Listen to my conversation with legendary hacker Samy Kamkar, in which we discussed creating the fastest-spreading computer virus of all time, accidentally taking down MySpace, getting raided by the Secret Service, hijacking drones with custom hardware, optimizing online dating through reverse engineering, opening locked cars, manipulating Google Maps traffic data, and much more.
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