Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio

Duration: 62:00

Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi: The Psychology of Testing

Ramit Sethi: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the call, thanks for coming. This is Ramit Sethi here from I Will Teach You to Be Rich, and I'm thrilled to have one of my good friends, and author extraordinaire, Tim Ferriss. Today's talk is on the Psychology of Testing. Tim, welcome to the call. Thanks a lot for doing it. Tim Ferriss: Thanks for having me. Ramit Sethi: So you and I...well first of all, congratulations on the book, last I checked yesterday it was still number one on Amazon. Tim Ferriss: Thank you very much; it's been an unusual journey, as always, it is with books. Ramit Sethi: What I want to do is talk today about the psychology of testing, but actually I just first want to share a little story. I dont know if everyone knows this. When you were writing your book, you and I, we both went out to dinner, and I actually didnt know what the deal was with the book at that point, and if you remember, we ordered this gigantic steak dinner. Tim Ferriss: We did? Ramit Sethi: Yeah, after we were done, we had desert and everything, and then you said: hey, do you guys mind if I order something else, I'm doing some testing. And I was likealright, I would order another dessert, or whatever. And then you go ahead and order an entire other steak... Tim Ferriss: [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: And hold up your shirt to reveal some kind of weird monitor you had on your stomach, and I was likealright, this is serious. Tim Ferriss: [LAUGHS] I remember that. Ramit Sethi: Yeah, 8,000 calories a day or whatever that was.

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Tim Ferriss: Yeah? Ramit Sethi: So this is great, I am thrilled to talk to you today about testing, but first I kind of just wanted to talk about The Four Hour Body, and any surprises that you came across, if any. Personally, when I wrote about it on my site and in my emails a lot of people were, you know, they were predictably skeptical, and even angry. Tim Ferriss: Yep. Ramit Sethi: And I can only imagine I just scratched the surface. I'm curious about the reactions from people, both, you know, people who have gotten good results and also skepticsjust out of curiosity. Tim Ferriss: The response has been, as you would expect, very polarizing. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's been most entertaining to watch, and enjoyable to watch on Twitter and through blogs, and Wikis and so forth since one of the underlying tenets of the book is self-tracking. So you see people, literally, I would sayon some days hundreds of feedback postings and status updates on Twitter with measurements. Thats really...so there are people who've lost 20, 30 pounds since the book came out which is about a month agoif not more in some cases. There are people who fixed fertility problems, or people who have certainly experimented with the sexual chapters, like the 15-minute, you know, orgasm, for which the book, last week, was apparently yanked from Cosco [LAUGHS]. Ramit Sethi: Wow! Tim Ferriss: Which I thought was amusing. And on the negative side, or the negative-response side, the most controversial chapter is definitely Geek to Freak, the muscle gain chapterfor whatever reasonand there are some very smart weight trainers out there, there are also a lot of meatheads, and the meatheads take very personal offence that I would even claim that such a change is possible, despite the documentation. So that was very controversial. I did talk very openly about anabolic; meaning anabolic steroid, the different factors it could be used, surgery, et cetera, and that did not seem to spark much controversy at all which was surprising to me and it doesnt make a difference because I wrote it to be valuable not just to be controversial, but it really did not produce the type of...the outburst that I expected through, say, morning TV shows.

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

It didnt even come upnever once did it come up that I can recall on any interviewwhich was surprising to me. And for those people curious, I forgot you were at that meal, that meal where I had the two steaks was the night before the opening scene in the Sex Machine Adventurers in Tripling Testosterone chapter. Ramit Sethi: Oh, right. Tim Ferriss: I believe, yes. I know that that dinner makes a guest appearance in the book. [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: That's funny. And what about you; like knowing and having gone through all this, one of the things I've learned as I've written books, and met other authors that, at a certain point, sometimes authors may have followed their own philosophies and patterns, or whatever, but as they get more experienced they kind of discard some of that and grow with some of it. Since youve written the book, are you continuing to follow the basics of it, or have you changed anything since the publication? Tim Ferriss: I have kept the same approach, certainly the testing approach because it's just based on the scientific method, it's not changed, and I think thats true whether you're split testing a website, or split testing a diet. In the case of the exact protocols there were a few areas that were a bit confusing to more than a handful of people. For example, where I would suggest that you eliminate dairy but if the only protein you can consume in the morning is whole fat cottage cheese, then that is allowable but not ideal. And some people shouted from the rooftops about how Tim Ferris was contradicting himself, and didnt make any sense. Whereas, in reality I didnt want to get into the details which related to insulin immune index, and whey, and so forth and so on. So there were a few points like that and I wanted to clarify, but the how to didnt change, the why to and the explanation and mechanism changed a bit, but my perspective really hasnt varied much. I would say that the same investigator assumptions there, all of that starts with tracking data. Ramit Sethi: Okay, great. So let's talk about data and testing. This is one thing that I have been hammering years with, which is the idea that, you know, you may be really smart, you may not be smart, you may be experienced or inexperienced, but ultimately if you can get a testing mentality and testing mindset, and then start doing some tests, you will often walk your own world with the results you can get.

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. Ramit Sethi: And you did a great job with The 4-Hour Body, and you and I have spent a lot of time talking about different tests we've run, whether it be split test, or any other kind of test, so I want to just start by asking you what is testinghow do you think about testing, and give us a couple examples of some things you do test? Tim Ferriss: I think about testing as honestly, fun experiments. I actually get very excited when I prove myself wrong, which may be a mutation, it could be. But I test everything from blog headlines and I can do that a number of different ways, I use Super SU.PR and I can schedule to release blog posts through those broadcasting means at two different times, let's say, and I could hit Facebook on one and hit Twitter on another, like I would just use two different time zones, so I'll test the response, meaning click through right to the same headline across different time zones. I will certainly test advertisements, so tested, I would say, close to a dozen different advertisements that readers designed for the book. We tested in at the top right of the blog underneath the blog post video. We've tested video response, and then from the personal standpoint, of course, I've tested all the physical stuff which would include thousands of blood tests, different types of exercise protocols, different types of drug protocols, and so on and on and on. So I would say that the process of discovery is exciting to me, and people would embrace testing more if they looked at it that way. And I think part of the reason, and I know that we were going to touch upon this, but I'll bring it up now. Part of the reason people are phobic about testing is they think of it as mathematically complex, and you and I both know that it's not mathematically complex at all, you really just have to know a few different numbers, and you're talking to someone who went to Princeton University partially because it didnt have a math requirement [LAUGHS]. Ramit Sethi: [LAUGHS] Tim Ferriss: So it was one of my motivations for going reasons for going... Ramit Sethi: [crosstalk 11:59] of avoiding math. Tim Ferriss: I mean, it was really that I wanted to avoid math, to the extent that it determined my choice of school, so I understand how

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

people feel when they're phobic about math, that you really dont much, especially now with the tools that are available, it's very, very easy to do. Ramit Sethi: I love what you said about: you like to disprove yourself. Because at a certain point it becomes game, it's not likelet me try to test this for some sophisticated mathematical, statistical regression thing. It's just like: hey, let me see if this is right or wrong. So if you're just a normal person, what are like two or three things that you could start testing today? Tim Ferriss: And thats for business purposes? Ramit Sethi: Let's say business... Tim Ferriss: Or any purpose? Ramit Sethi: Yeah, any purpose. I mean, for me, you know, I spoke recently about testing responses when someone asks me what do you do, or where do you live? And I tested it and it was like a huge difference in the response rate, within ten tests I could find a huge difference. So if you could... Tim Ferriss: Yes, I want to... Ramit Sethi: So let's say from a business perspective, what would you touch on? And then let's talk about conversational testing as well. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, alright. So if I'm thinking aboutas broadly as possiblefrom a business standpoint I would do an 80/20 Analysis of your customer-base just to understand your baseline first. This is another mistake that people make, is they dont understand where they are first. And then they jump out and start doing testing. So what I would say, is do an 80/20 Analysis of your customer-base to identify the 20 percent of customers who are saying 80 or more of the profit...80 percent or more of the profit, and then test different cross selling up-selling packages on those most profitable, lowest maintenance customers, meaning can you get those customers since they're already your most profitable, to buy larger packages at the time. Can you get them to buy more frequently by putting them into a continuity program of some type, and this would all be verbal, just like your...or an email. But you dont have to actually, necessarily, think through how you're going to deliver all these things to begin with, and you certainly can't process the credit before you do that, but you could shoot out an email, or talk to them on the phone and see what they

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

would be most open to, and I think thats it, a very clear example of testing using a telephone or email. You're not even...and you're just going to be hitting, let's say, 10 or 20 customers but you should be able to get a pretty clear indication, especially if you have phone, of which options they are most open to, and just by doing that alone, that type of testing, in 2004, I was able to take my management of my customersmy customer servicefrom 60-plus hours to less than two hours a week by focusing on those most profitable customers, and I was also able to increase my profit by about 30 percent just by focusing on those types of customers asking those types of questions. Ramit Sethi: So people can also take this 80/20 Analysis which you wrote about as a 4-Hour Work-Week, and they can also apply it to their own work. So, on a day-to-day basis where are they spending their time and where are they getting their results? And the first common reaction people get when you tell them about 80/20 Analysis, theyll say things like: well that only works if you run your own company. Or I can't do that because I dont live in San Francisco, or all kinds of crazy excuses. Tim Ferriss: Yes. Ramit Sethi: And the truth is likeyou dont have to change anything, just an analysis in and of itself, yes, won't change anything, it's just going to give you some insight. And when people do that, I've done it, and I try to do it ever so often, and I'm always astonished. I'm likereally, I'm spending 40 percent of my time doing that, and it has literally no outcome whatsoever. Tim Ferriss: Right. Ramit Sethi: And I can immediately cut that off or delegate it and you open up, sometimes two hours a day just by doing that analysis. Have you had that experience too? Tim Ferriss: Oh, absolutely. I mean, just two days ago I realized how much email had overtaken my time, and this is after having bat-cave secret email, but you and I know what happens, is you send your secret email to someone, and they're like: hey, meet Joe. And then, Joe is like: hey, let me put you in a group email for my dinner that you can't come to. And then before you know it, you have a thousand people emailing you, and so something that I just split tested and you actually tweeted about this, was my new auto-responder, I dont know if you want to tell people what my new auto-responder was. [LAUGHS]

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Ramit Sethi: Yeah, I literally started cracking up yesterday alone in my apartment, because it said...I sent Tim an email and then the response came back in auto-responder instantly, and it said: Thank you for your email, sadly it will be deleted. [LAUGHS] Tim Ferriss: [LAUGHS] So that is... Ramit Sethi: And I thought that was very classy, very nice. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I've tested a lot of auto-responders, so far thats thats definitely the most effective, it stopped the emails. [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: [LAUGHS] Tim Ferriss: And to be fair, just so people understand what the followup is to that, thats not the entire auto-responder... Ramit Sethi: Yeah, yeah, thats... Tim Ferriss: At the bottom it says: I'm taking four weeks off of email, please email me again in March if it's still relevant. But yeah, I think that that...it can be as simple as that, it can be as simple as that. Ramit Sethi: Yes, absolutely. And for a lot of people who work at nineto-five jobs, one thing that can be done is to start by doing an 80/20 Analysis; in other words where are you spending your time, and where are you getting the results. And when you find something, and often when you do it for the first time, it's almost like going forward...you know, starting to work out for the first time, you can get a lot of benefits when you first start working out or stopping smoking for the first time. When you do this first analysis, you can often find huge things that you're wasting time on and then it becomes a question of: how do I deal with it. So you disentangle those two things. First, understand what you're spending your time on, thats the analysis part, and then it can be delegating it or convincing your boss to let someone else take it over, or simply not doing it, and getting better results which have more meaningful things. But a lot of times people entangle those two things and thats why they dont start testing. They're like...they start worrying about the results when they just need to worry about the analysis upfront. Tim Ferriss: Yes, agreed. Ramit Sethi: What about like...you know, one of the things I hear from a lot of people, and we are going to opeb up for question in a few 7

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

minutes. Is the thing about the idea about fear; so a lot of people talk about fear, they actually dont use this word very often, but theyll say code words for fear, like: I'm nervous about doing this, I dont think I have the ability to test, et cetera. Have you encountered this with people? Have you ever been nervous about at test youve run, and if so what have you done about that? Tim Ferriss: I've been nervous about tests that I've run when I've bet too much, and I think it's important, and still to this very day thats extremely small. So if I test, let's say, the subtitle of my new book, which I did. I put together somewhere between five and ten subtitles that I could live with, with first of all, and then I shot it out with a SurveyMonkey survey; just www.surveymonkey.com very easy, to 50 to 100 of my friends and acquaintances who are good marketers. So I started off with 50 to 100 friends. Once I had a feedback then I tested it on my Facebook fan page in the middle of the nightlike 2:00 in the morningto get a few hundred people perhaps. And then once I had that data and hopefully a little more comfortable with it, I blasted it out to Twitter and Facebook in the middle of the day. But starting off smallone test that I was very nervous about running was something that seemed too good to be true, and it ended up being too good to be true, and that was when I negotiated with a radio syndicate for advertising and there was a I think it was like to $500,000 to $750,000 ad campaign that had been cancelled by a big pharma company and I negotiated and negotiated and negotiated, and I bought it for $10,000. Now $10,000 to me at the time was extremely...it was a huge, huge, huge sum of money. But I was tricked by this...the retail price and what I negotiated it for. So I assumedof course it's going to be worth more than $10,000 because they were selling it for almost $1 million or $0.5 million. And the ads were supposed to be run during Drive Time, and they said: oh, yeah, it would be when people are driving their cars, and then nothing happened, there were no orders coming innoneno phone calls. And I found out that Drive Time was technicallythis is why it's important to know the detailsbetween, I think it was 5:30 in the morning and 8:30 in the morning, so they played them all like at 5:35 a.m. and that was lesson learned. And once again though, start small, and small doesnt mean 90 percent off. Small means an absolute number thats not intimidating to you. And $10,000 was way too intimidating and way too serious for me to bite off at one chunk. Ramit Sethi: Yes, thats great advice, start small. Okay, excellent. Okay, guys, anyone listening right now, if you're listening live, there's a place 8

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

on the right side of your screen to ask a question so go ahead and ask those questions and we will try to answer them in the nextwill do it in about 15 minutes. Alright, Tim, one thing that I want to shift to now, is talk about disproportionate results. When I think of the person who most embodies getting disproportionate results... Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. Ramit Sethi: Thats you, so that is putting in a certain amount of effort but getting 2-X, 3-X 4-X what other people would do. And when I was preparing today I was thinking about you writing a book, the 80/20 Analysis that you did of your customer service, health, so when I go to the gym now and I'm using some of your material, which I do by the way, I dont have work on stuff thats not going to produce results, I can work on stuff thats going to get me disproportionate results. Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. Ramit Sethi: Can you talk about how do you think about disproportionate results and give us a couple examples of how youve implement this into your life? Tim Ferriss: So to determine where your leverage points are, there are few things. I would say that it's helpful and I never recommend this, almost never recommend this, but it makes sense when you're trying to get disproportionate results. I think you should always be trying to do, but I dont usually use this MBA term which makes me crazy, but there's something called a SWOT Analysis; and it stands for... Ramit Sethi: Oh, yeah, here we go. Tim Ferriss: Okay, so SWOT, you can help me, I dont even remember what the T stands for, butStrengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threatsthats what it is. And to give an example, when I began planning 4-Hour Body, before we even had a title for it, it was strengths, I knew I had the blogstrengths. I knew I could get feedback from the blog and identify which content was most likely to be popular from the very outset, just by looking at blog comments. Or by asking, what would you prefer. Would you prefer this, or this? What should I put in the book? Which expert should I contact? That type of thing and I had people fill out Google forms to provide their information.

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

WeaknessesI'd never been in that category, I didnt know the book buyers, let's say, at Barns and Noble, for example, I didnt know the category buyers for health and fitness. Opportunitiesnothing like his had been pushed through the tech channels before so if you look at my eventual launch, certainly you'll notice that I targeted very heavily a handful of outlets that were entirely tech-focus, like: Gizmodo and TechCrunch, Mashable, et cetera. And then threats would be looking at, for me, the timing. Timing is really important so I knew precisely which I competing against yes, okay. So I knew The Guiness Book of World Records was a significant threat, they were number one in The New York Times, I knew that [inaudible 24:23] and Barefoot Contessa would be a threat, and I looked at all the book scale numbers to find out what their sales numbers looked like, and Guiness I had multiple years to look at, so I could identify how many copies appeared, I needed to sell minimum to have a chance at number one, and that was 50,000 copies in the first week. And that then gives me what I would call, and this is very similar to The 4-Hour Work WeekI'm sorryThe 4-Hour Body rather, is the minimum of what these number is. What is your goal, and I think that when many people test, they dont have a goal thats acceptable, so theyll do, let's say, click through analysis, and theyll say, okay we have these three ads, this one is better than the second one, but you kind of dont like the third one, you know, the third one is the ugly one that you hoped wouldnt work, and then it worked. [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: [LAUGHS] Tim Ferriss: Which happens a lot with testing ... Ramit Sethi: All the time. Tim Ferriss: You get an ad and you're likewhat, thats number one, oh, my god, I hate that ad it makes my blog look like it has a Catch The Monkeywith an iPod advertisement on it. But if you define what your target monthly income is, and the click-through rate for the second advertisement, that you actually like sufficient, and you stick with that ad, and in my case for the campaign I knew that my target was 50,000 book in the first week minimum, and I could plan around that and it made everything else easier to put into place. So that would be... Ramit Sethi: Can you give me an example, and when you say you plan around that, what do you mean by that? Do you mean that you were not,

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

for example, going after, you know, places that were going to sell 50 books, is that what you mean? Tim Ferriss: Thats one thing that I would...yes, absolutely, so I decided that I would try to focus on outlets that I felt could produce book sales of 1,000 book or more, and that became one of my criteria, which I broke a few times, but in general, I wanted to try to focus on initiatives and campaigns that could move 1,000 books, and what that would mean then, and recognizing that I had limited time, that I also would, rather than getting a very, very short mention from 100 blogs, I would focus on 10 or 15 and really try to do a in-depth thesis with those people. What that also meant was I wanted to gauge how much work I needed to do early on and if you recall, one of my weaknesses was that I didnt know the buyers at Barnes and Noble, and I wanted Barnes and Nobel, to love me so I did an exclusive signed edition of the book that could only be bought through BN.Com, and ended up selling close to 8,000 copies. This was well before the book came out, probably a month to a month and a half from...if I'm guessing correctlybefore the book came out which gave the buyer the chance to get very enthusiastic and I mean everybody freaked out because I broke just about every record theyve ever had. And I got very excited about the book, and then re-up orders for retail placement. So if you look the SWOT Analysis I just gave, a lot of my planning falls right in line with having that data in front of me. Ramit Sethi: Interesting. Now when we think about disproportionate results and you think about, let's say the average person, I would say that my inclination or my intuition would say most people dont target disproportionate results, they might do the same thing as someone in their very same industry or at their same job, and the thing is, we all want disproportionate outcomes... Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Ramit Sethi: And disproportionate results, but sometimes we dont do the disproportionate work in order to get it. So just listening to your story, I mean, just the fact that you knew who you were going up against, you did all the research, you knew the book scale numbers, that is an extraordinary level of work, but I mean, think about two years from now, your going to look back, you're not even going even remember how much work you put into that, but you're still going to have all the results of that hard work you put in. Tim Ferriss: Yes, absolutely. And I would also say that people, tend to default and this was true for me for a long time as well, to working harder to fix overwhelm, and fixing over...it's generally hard to fix 11

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

overwhelm by working harder, it doesnt work very well, so what I try to do is before game time or at the earliest point possible is to do the hard thinking, upfront so I prevent that overwhelm from happening in the first place. And if you're in state of overwhelm right now, you could still sit down and do the hard thinking so you know where you are, find some numbers that illustrate where you are, how many hours a day you spend on email for example, and then determine what needs to change in terms of process for you to fix the problem in a sustainable fashion. So, for example, as you know, Ramit, I mean two days ago I had 700 unread email and I spent 3 hours going through, picking out some of the most important and then I just threw out everything, and set up my auto-responder; and that will produce some small problems, it will produce some temporary problems, but it's more than worth that to reach...you won't be able to start from scratch and focus on other things. So I think really taking the time to do the hard thinking in the beginning will save you the stress of continually working harder and never seeming to make any progress later. Ramit Sethi: Yeah. Youve always been about not just devoting willpower to something, but actually setting up processes, and systems to make it better. Tim Ferriss: Right. Ramit Sethi: That seems to work really well for you. Tim Ferriss: Yes, exactly. And one think I would throw out there is, there is a great book, it's very short and it's called The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, it's probably 120 to130 pages and it is an outstanding book that I would recommend everyone read. There's a chapter called Know Thy Time, which is about doing a time audit just like we've been discussing. Peter Drucker, for those who dont know is probably the most famous management theorists in the last hundred years, just an incredible guy. And I thought it was going to be a bunch of BS quite frankly, before I actually read any Drucker, I thought it was going to be really high, pie in the sky, type of: work with integrity, be honest, you have to focus on your core values. And dont get me wrong, all that stuff is important but to someone who is treading water and overwhelmed none of that helps, they need really specific tactics and one of the points The Effective Executive makes is that the best executives made very few decisions. Whenever they run into 12

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a problem or something that consumes a lot of time, they ask themselves, is there any chance that this will happen again? And if so, they create a rule for it so they dont have to think about it in the future. They just decide what their default action will be in the future, and how they can prevent it in the future. Ramit Sethi: Nice, very interesting. Drucker also said, similarly, that: Just like we look at our spending and we might try to keep a budget to analyze where our spending is goingdo the same with your time. Look at your calendar for the last, even one...talk about small test, you dont have to do the last ten months of your calendar, look at the last one week, and just say: you know, where am I spending my time, where do I want to be spending my time, and then feel out the difference, how do you get to where you want to be, without sitting down, without getting that baseline as you said, it's going to be impossible for you to get where you want to go. Tim Ferriss: Yes, and he's also very famously quoted as saying: what gets measured gets managed, thats a Peter Drucker quote. Ramit Sethi: Exactly. Okay, so let's move, before our final thing, before we talk about our final topic and then take questions, I'll just ask anyone listening live, if you want to ask a question go ahead, use the panel on your right and we are going to try to answer as many as possible. Okay so, Tim, the last thing I want to talk about, which you have demonstrated very well in the last few months, is the power of your network. So I remember Charlie who worked for both of us, and works for you now, he talked about howyou couldnt have done what you did without all your friends. Right, essentially, you didnt even ask people to promote you, they just wanted to promote you, and they wanted to help out, get your book, going big. And I wanted to talk about the power of the network. Not everyone has a book, but everyone has a network. Tim Ferriss: Right. Ramit Sethi: And everyone can use that network and help that network and nurture. I wonder if you can talk about how you think about your network. Tim Ferriss: There are a few things that I would sayso the first is, you dont...I'll tell you what I dont do. What I dont do is go to an event, figure out who is going to be most useful to me and then do whatever necessary to try to become buddy-buddy with those people; which is how most people think of networking. I will go to an event, try to identify the, let's say, general group of persons who could be very helpful, whether thats 13

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programmer of some specific type or someone who knows about that specific topic, and then I'll go to the organizer of the event, and I'll say: of the people in my group, who do think I'd really get along with? These are the things I'm interested in, I'm kind of weird, I do this, I do thatI like climbing, I like physical testing, I wear implantsah, that sounds bad. I dont wear implants; I put implants in my side to test glucose. You know, who do you think I'd actually hit it off with? I would then meet someone who had a very cool skill set and...but at the same time I would meet someone that I could be friends with even if they did not have that skill set. And I think thats a very important distinction because if you look at, let's say, the people I became friends with initially when I was building the groundwork for 4-Hour Work Week, I'm still friends with those people, you know, it's like...and I've been friends with them for three, four years and it's not like I've only stayed friends with them because theyve had some utility for that entire time. It's because we actually get along and we share things in common outside of whatever our business interests might be. But I would say a few things. So thats the basic. The second point I would make is that you should...friends do...friends help their friends, but let me tell you what that doesnt mean, and this is another common mistake, I think. When you do someone a favor you can hope that theyll help you in future with something, but you should not accept it. Do not do a favor simply as a way to line up something you're going to ask them to do in the future. That makes me fucking insane, and it's so clear when people do it, also. They're like: hey, buddy, do you remember when I did that...don't...it's so crass, I really dislike that approach, and I dont do it, and I really try not to do it to other people, ever, and I really dislike when people do it to me. So help people but dont expect them to come back and then help you because of that favor. I think that that...I mean with your best friends, at least, speaking for myself, you dont keep track of that kind of stuff. And if you're legitimately friends with these people you shouldnt do that either. The last point I would make is that I think many people spend 20 percent of their time building their product and 80 percent of their time thinking about the magical marketing solution, and they should switch that entirely and spend 80 percent of the time making the best product humanly possible and 20 percent of the time on marketing. And it's a hell of a lot more effective.

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

So if I want to come to you for that matter, if I'd gone to you, or if I'd gone to Bryan at Gizmodo and given him a really crappy book, and then like: hey guys, we really love your help by doing a big blog post on thisit would have been horrible, it would have made everyone uncomfortable, and it would probably led a great many people sayingno, we can't do this. Or for some reason making up an excuse why they couldnt do it. So you have to also provide something that theyll actually, your fan base, which includes your network, will actually enjoy and benefit from and want to share, and I cannot overstate that enough. I think that it's...the biggest mistake are...the biggest mistakes I see in networking are those three. Also thinking that networking will fix a bad product, and it won't, because you can effectively buy the first round of customers with marketing, but in a digital world, then you're dead, you're toast, you can't...the word-of-mouth is not going spread through marketing, you need a good product. Ramit Sethi: So well wind this back to Tim pre-4-Hour Work Week, and you were sending emails and meeting bloggers and meeting all these people, you know, for coffee, thats how we met. What did your email say? What exactly did you write, because I want other people to know how they can go; you know, a lot of people, they're stuck, as to what even to say in an email, why would anyone want to meet with them, so what did you say? Tim Ferriss: When I wanted to meet with someone? I'll tell you what I did, because I...well a few things, the first is that I recognized after trying it for a while that it was futile, [LAUGHS] to do it on my own, and let me explain how I fixed that. So for me to send an email...well there were a few things, I could approach people who were let's say, Princeton grads, but for the most part, financial management consulting, not of great interest to me. Second wasI found it much more fun and effective to, in my case, I moved out to California, first job out of college and working in a tech startup, and I wanted to expand my network. I ended up volunteering for a group called the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs which is, www.SVASE.org I'm pretty sure it's still around, and I volunteering, and just doing a kick ass job volunteering at these events which generally included a panel of five to six business titans of some type and the moderator, usually the chairwoman of the organization; and dinners, and they were pretty fancy events. I mean, people would spend 100 bucks, 200 bucks to come to these events.

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

And I volunteered for a few events and I always took on more responsibility than I had to, so I ended up basically managing the other volunteers because I was the one who would step up and volunteer to do it, and you're not getting paid, it's more work. And I made a point of by doing that, getting to know Laura Roden who is the chairwoman of all of SVASE, and I asked her after maybe the third event if I could possibly sit in on a board meeting to hear what their plans are and see how I could help further. She allowed me to come to this meeting, and I then went to two or three of those meetings trying to offer suggestions, where I thought I'd be helpful; and not overplaying my hand and being too aggressive. Then I pushed Laura and asked her if I could actually manage an entire main event. So if I could be the one who effectively produce the event, and here is the point to pay attention toto recruit the five to six business titans to come speak on the panel. So thats how I got to know... Ramit Sethi: Nice. Tim Ferriss: Thats how I got to know Jack Canfield, thats how I got to Ed Byrd who commercialized creatine, Ed Byrd, people will recognize makes a cameo in The 4-Hour Work Week. Jack Canfield many years later, I guess probablylet me think about thisfive years later, he introduced me to the gentleman, Steve Hanselman, who ended up becoming my agent for The 4-Hour Work Week, and so forth and so on. So I built my network in large part through volunteering at nonprofits, that already had access to those people, or whose name will be credible when I contacted those people, and I think thats a very, very practical approach. Ramit Sethi: I love it. For everyone listening, let's try and extract the points. It's not about picking a nonprofit to work for, it's not the point, the point is going and testing different approaches, always offering value. Notice that it wasnt some grand, strategic master plan, it was just a series of systematic steps, offering value, helping people and then one day, seizing an opportunity that most people would want to do because it's more work. But when you put yourself in the middle of a cool transaction or a cool success, good things are going to come your way. Tim Ferriss: Yes, I agree. Ramit Sethi: Tim, let's get to questions. Tim Ferriss: Sure. 16

Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Ramit Sethi: Let's shoot to questions straight away; we've got a ton of them here. Alright so we will start with a couple different ones. This one is from Paul. He sayshow do you sift through the large amount of information you have access to when you research your topics. Do you have any sort of note-taking system? Tim Ferriss: Ooh, thats a good question and I wish I could ask him a follow-up question to clarify, but I do have a note-taking system, for what it's worth, I do have a particular way of taking notes when I read books in particular. If you look up: How to Take Notes like an Alpha Geek, on my blog, I issued an entire blog on how I take notes in books, and it has to do with creating an index and notestypically on the bottom right hand page ofor right hand corner of pages, rather. Or, when I'm sifting through a lot of information, I also try to identify people who have already sifted through that information and if you're simply contacting someone for a clarification they tend to be very, very helpful So you could, let's say, in my case, when I was looking at running for The 4-Hour Body, I had already read a book called Born to Run, and Scott Jurek made an appearance in that book and his name had to come up a number of times, so I reached out and contacted Scott, and it was very, very easy to deal with. And I think that before you do these types of things, and reach out to experts, it's helpful to read and I usually plug this hard, but there is one side bar in The 4-Hour Work Week, called The Expert Builder, and it's about establishing credibility, whether thats by volunteering for SVASE, or speaking at a well-known university as a lecturer or speaking at well-known companies. Having just a few lines of bar...credibility, or writing a piece for a wellknown newspaper, or let's say the blog of a well-known newspaper which is not that hard to do, anything like that that will allow you to say something along the lines of: I work with this organization or have worked with this newspaper and therefore credible, will help you get further when you're contacting people who have already sifted through the information which ultimately, I think, is the fastest way to do so. Ramit Sethi: I love it, love it. Alright, one thing which iswhenever I go t write a post, typically I've been keeping notes on it for two to five years, I have notes in my Delicious tags, I have notes in different email tags, and sometimes I just have text files. It's not organized as well as you would love, et cetera but I know that when I start brainstorming a topic, I dont have to go and look for material, I've already been saving...

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Tim Ferriss: Yes. Ramit Sethi: And pulling up the most important pieces for years. Tim Ferriss: Yes, yes... Ramit Sethi: Thats really saves me a lot of horror. Tim Ferriss: You actually brought up a really good point. I use Evernote...if you're talking about online data gathering. I use Evernote s my default center for gathering everything, so. Ramit Sethi: And what's the name of that software you use for your book, I thought it was really fascinating? Tim Ferriss: Scrivener, is that the one you were thinking of? Ramit Sethi: Yeah, yeah. Tim Ferriss: So I use Evernote to gather data online and then I use Scrivener for writing, and the reason Scrivener is very, very fascinating to me it's typically used or screenplays, and thats just S-c-r-i-v-e-n-e-r, is that you can create a table of contents, it's folders or documents, on the left-hand pane, and then on the right-hand pane you can split the screen, you can have your text document you're working on, let's say the chapter that you're working on, and again, it's a split screen and below that you have you research. And it's such a simple, seemingly simple feature so to have your research and what you're writing on the screen at the same time in a way that is easy to use, was extremely, extremely helpful. So I used Evernote, then Scrivener and the publisher had to use Word, so we moved to Word very reluctantly, but if you're doing it on your own, I would say that Evernote, and Scrivener are very helpful in combination. Ramit Sethi: Alright, let's take this question from Holly. What is your strategy for dealing with naysayers, while it's easy to ignore these people it's not constructive to ignore everyone. So how do deal with naysayers? Tim Ferriss: Try to be polite. The only time that I really try to respond to naysayers is if there's something, if there's someone factually incorrect in their criticism and even then I dont do it very often. I almost never respond to criticism off of my blog, quite frankly, because I could do it all day long. I mean, I could spend the next week straight just responding to

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

negative TechCrunch comments about me [LAUGHS] I mean, forget about YouTube, that would be like months and months of time. So I really very rarely respond, but if it's factual then I'll respond, and typically I'd just be very polite and I'd say something along the lines of: If you think of...there's an approach called the criticism sandwich, which managers use sometimes, where theyll sayhey, George, I want to talk for a minute, you're really doing a great job with A, B, and C and D, but there's this one thing, and then you'd talk about the criticism and then it's like, but you know, I really think that you have a lot of potential to do the following great things in the next few months, so just keep it up and remember that last point I left you with. So you basically have a positive-negative-positive. I try to do that in my comments, so I'll say something like: I understand how you would feel that way, if I had read that other person's post I would probably respond in the same exact way. Here's one point to keep in mind though. You said this, in fact, A, B, C, so you can see how this statement is only accurate if you make his change. Thanks for the comment, you know, I'm always trying to get better and I appreciate it, sincerely, Tim. Even if it's a pretty rude comment, I'll do something like that, and there are two things, even if that person responds back and they're likehey, go fuck yourself. Your readers will have...which happens a...it happens it does, then your readers will...the respect that your readers have for you will go through the roof. Ramit Sethi: Yeah. Tim Ferriss: When you're very graceful and tactfulnumber one. Number twopretty frequently that person will turn around and like oh, man I'm sorry I had a bad day. This guy kicked my dog and my wife split my face, or whatever. Sorry about that, you know, I was just really having a bad day, like I really appreciate your calm response. So I also have an entire post in like a 60-minute presentation on: How I Deal with Haters, so if you searched Tim FerrisHow to deal with haters, then it will pop right up. Ramit Sethi: Love it. Also we will also send a link for that, thats a good one. Let's see here, next question this is the more technical question this is from John JayI've been testing glucose and blood pressure and it's been very frustrating. The last time my glucose was 97 when I went to

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

bed, this morning it was 110. Then I tested it on the arm, one minute later and got 101yowsers, any thoughts? Tim Ferriss: [LAUGHS] Yeah, glucometers are very erratic, they can be very erratic. If you're using a OneTouch, I would abandon it and get what's called a WaveSense Jazz. So the best glucometer that I found that has the least variability is the WaveSense Jazz, and what I would also say, is even when I was using the WaveSense Jazzz, which accounts for environmental factors, I always, very typically, take in three or four finger pricks at a time, and then averaging numbers, omitting any outliers. So if I had my general rule was, if they were within 10 percent of each other, then I would keep them, so if it was let's say, 86 88 84, okay fine then it's 86 I would keep those values. But let's just say that I had 86 88 84 97, I would completely omit the 97. Sadly glucose monitors have a long way to go before they are entirely reliable but I would say at the very least, if you bought your glucose monitor at, let's say, a Walgreens or something like that, you will probably have a OneTouch and they are very, very erratic, so I would use the WaveSense instead. Ramit Sethi: Great. Next one, this one is from Amber-B, I like this question. Can you talk a little bit more about how to use conversational texting in chat room situations? Besides using it in my personal life, they would be extremely helpful in my job. This is a great one. Tim Ferriss: This is the way you should answer, Ramit, about yourI want to hear about your bar testing. Ramit Sethi: So let me put it this way. If I were a...well, I'll tell you about my bar testing. The first thing people do is theyll say: what do you do? Okay, first of all you can tell these were like kind of boring question. But you get remarkable results with testing it, so if you say, I'm a writer, then people will go likeOh, my friend is a writer too, he's been trying to write this story about how a teddy bear can help reduce global warming, blah-blah-blah, and I'm likeyour friend is a loser who is not writer. But then, if you tell people you're an author, you get a totally different reaction. Way more interest, way more engagement and then people say, what do you write about, and thats a whole other opportunity to play with testing. I mean, you could say you write about personal finance, you could say you write about behavioral change you could even just be crazy and say all kinds of crazy stuff, and people get very, very engaged.

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

The beautiful about testing, like this is when you have, it's like imagine youve at bat and you can hit 50 times or a hundred times in a night, thats amazing opportunity for testing. With 50 opportunities in one night you can walk away with 2 to 4 great insights. Tim Ferriss: Yes. Ramit Sethi: So if I were a waitress here's what I test. I would test eye contact, like less eye contact or more eye contact. I would test being overly smiley and like kind of cute and flirty, and then just like kind of prim and proper. I would also test what you write on the receipt. There's a great study indicating if you put a smiley face, or if you draw a picture of a sun you can increase your tips by 14 percent. And then you can test all kinds of other thingswho do you address in the table. You dont have to start with 50 tests, start with one or two, get a winner and then take that winner and compete it against the next test. And my guess would be within two weeks of rigorous testing, I would be surprised if you couldnt increase your tips by 10 percent. What do you think, Tim? Tim Ferriss: I happen to work in restaurants for four summers, so I have some thoughts on this. Alright, so a few thingsI think that restaurants are fantastic places to develop your social interaction skills. I think they are fantastic, because you deal with all sorts of customers, you deal with pains-in-the-ass, you can't be rude to them unless you want to get no tip, so it's a great environment. A few things I would say, you could...the smiley face definitely works but only if you're a chick, generally. [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: [LAUGHS] Tim Ferriss: Or if you live in San Francisco, maybe it will work as a guy. But a few things I would suggestthings that I've noticed. The first thing is that if you give people a strong opinion on the food. So if somebody asksa few things I've tested, when people would always ask, so ask yourself what are the most common questions that I get and then have two or three responses that you test on people. So what s the question that waiters and waitresses always getwhat do you recommend? Okay, the worst answer to isoh, everything is good. Terrible, terrible answer; the best that I've found was my favorite by far is this:

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

My second choice which is also great is thisnotice that this is different from these are my two favorites, I love both of them. You can try that, I just found when I would say: this one is amazingand make sure it's amazing, by the waybut like, this one is amazing, and then this one is also great, it's my second choice. It's extremely effective, the other the other approach, and you can learn a lot by going to really high-end restaurants and just paying out the nose once to see how they do these things, but if...for example, there's a restaurant in New York City that I went to and their policy is, and this is the policy at a few very high-end restaurants. If, let's say, a couple goes out to dinner and they're unsure of whether they want dessert or not, and if they're like, we kind of want it, oh, we shouldnt, maybe we should. You know what we are not going to have any dessert. Then they bring out a dessert for free for that couple. Thats the rule, and so as a server, let's just say it's a $100 meal, so if you get a 20 percent tip, thats $20 and let's say it would cost you personally, out of your pocket, $3.00 to get a free dessert, give them a free dessert, and say, you know, what this one is on me, like thanks for coming in guys. Ramit Sethi: Thats amazing. Tim Ferriss: Thats a good investment of your time is giving them something free that costs you 3 bucks and then it potentially gets you an additional $10 that adds up really quickly. So those are just a few. Ramit Sethi: I love that. I love that you talked about investing and you're actually putting your own money down as an investment. It's so weird because as a waitress, what waitress ever thinks of investing her own money. But thats exactly what you're doing, and if you're less three and you get that 20, you could do that all day, right? Tim Ferriss: Yeah, oh yeah. Thats definitely worth trying for sure. Ramit Sethi: Love itlove it. So maybe we could ask everyone listening, what could you invest $10..[20 percent 55:32] a day in. Try to see if you could get something more back, and it doesnt have to be money, by the way, it could be whatever. It could be feeling good, it could be more free time, whatever. Speaking of free time, here is a question from Anonymous; we will take this one and then one more. What are two specific daily habits that you each employ to ensure that you're maximizing productivity and doing what you love?

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Tim Ferriss: Two daily habitsone would be having one particular todo item that I have identified I would be happy with completing, that would make me satisfied with my entire day, and having won. In other words if I have ten items I could be doing as a to-do list and we always do, going down and asking myself, which of these, if completed today would make me satisfied with my entire day. So for me, today, I'll give you an example, thats a column for Men's Journal, like finishing the column for Men's Journal would be the one item that I should fix that I should complete today; and thats in my power. The secondwould be having Charlie get the forum for The 4-Hour Body up and running today. So those are the two, one is on my plate the other has to be described and delegated to someone else. So thats the first habit. The second habit would bereminding myself that I have more than enough time to do everything thats truly important. So I think it's easy to get very, very stressed out and that stress feeds on itself, and then you just end up juggling too many balls, or spinning too many plates, and you end up sticking your face in email all day. So just remembering that you actually do have plenty of time to do all the things that are truly important, if you do an 80/20 Analysis, and just maintain that calm to the greatest extent possible. Realizing that it should happen, things are going to fall through the cracks, but the big things. If you let the small, bad things happen, you can get the big, good things done. I think it's just a psychological reminder. Ramit Sethi: I love that. Let's get right to the last question here. You both seem very confident, in your products and in yourselves, was there a time when you were first starting out when you doubted yourself or your expertise or your products, and if so, how did you find the confidence and courage to put yourself out there, to pursue your disproportionate results? Tim Ferriss: Hmm? What are your thoughts on that? Ramit Sethi: You know, I usually dont like these kinds of emotional questions, because I have no emotions [LAUGHS]. Tim Ferriss: [LAUGHS] Ramit Sethi: But I'll try to tackle it. I mean, for me I'll tell you this, it has simply a series of small tests and small moves. And with...you know, what is thatthe rolling stone gathers no moss, or whatevermaybe

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

thats the wrong analogy, but as you continue doing one thing, you learn so many insights and you can grow to another. So for example, when I started off with my blog, which by the way, you can go back and look at bothTim's first blog post and my first blog post, and compare that to now. It's way different. And I frankly think that it's not as good. Tim Ferriss: Yes. Ramit Sethi: But of course, we both have gotten better. That didnt happen because we used WordPress, it didnt happen because we know SEO, it happened because we were plugging in and writing every day, or three times a week, and we just got better by experience and then by also talking to other people we know who are masters at what they do. So I would say then, a lot of times people are looking for fixit tools and hacks, and they want to know what software we use, or something like that, but the more difficult thing is actually to change your mindset, which is to saycan I commit to doing this for six months? And if after six months I find that I'm not enjoying it or I'm not good at it, I'm going to quit and I'm not going to feel guilty at all. But I'm going to commit for at least two months or six months, and I'm going to give myself the opportunity to prove that I can get good at this. I think if you can do that you can often get those disproportionate results, because 98 percent of the people will just give up. Tim Ferriss: Yep, I agree. I would just add to that that I think the two areas...if you're trying to improve your confidence overall, the two areas I would focus on is number find some type of sport to train for competition in. I know that sounds very heavy-handed, but I'm serious. I would start rock climbing in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or something, and aim for a specific deadline which is a local competition of some type. Or a competition within your gym, it doesnt really matter. Power-lifting doesn't make a difference, or 10-K or whatever, but give yourself something that is traceable and will provide a constant positive...perhaps not always constant, but positive feedback in terms of progress. And I think thats what people, when people in a modern world, sitting in front of a computer, you finish your work, you close your laptop, and nothing has changed, right, you haven't built a table, you haven't built a house, so there's no tangible results from that, and I think it causes a lot of psychological malaise. So find some type of sport, some sort of physical activity to really take seriousnumber one.

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Audio Title: 2011-02-02- 12:59 Private Webinar with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi February 2011 | Audio Duration: 62:00

Number two would betake a class in negotiation, practice public speaking or negotiation, some type of uncomfortable speaking, and get good at that, and I would say that when those two, in combination, even if one of them fails, should be very effective for building confidence. Most people lack confidence because they dont have enough practice having uncomfortable conversations, or because they haven't failed much, and sports will cause you constantly fail, which is why I would prefer something like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu over running, because you're just constantly going to be getting arm-barred, or whatever. It doesnt have to be dangerous, but you learn to view failures as feedback as opposed to failure as some type of character-flaw. And I think that focusing on those two will be very valuable. Ramit Sethi: I love it. Okay, Tim, I want to thank you for coming. EverybodyThe 4-Hour Body, is his new book and 4-Hour Work Week, as you know I've plugged it many, many times as one of the books that I've used in my life. Tim, thank you very much for coming on. Tim Ferriss: Yes, my pleasure. Have a great day guys. Bye. Ramit Sethi: Talk to you soon.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

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