Hello friends, welcome to the Random Show episode number 87, I'm Kevin Rose.
I am Tim Ferriss.
And we are here at my couch in San Francisco at night.
And to celebrate your new book.
Oh, and the new year.
I've got you and the new year, I've got a little bubbly here for ya.
Woo!
Fuck me, hold on.
You're good, you're good.
I don't know, how do you, like, I guess you spray it if you shake it up, but...
That's how it usually works.
That is, uh, that's for you.
Thanks, sir.
I'm gonna be drinking a beer.
Yes.
That's a little too grilly for me, it's rosé.
He's into it though.
Uh...
You're into it.
Yes.
Shit.
I'm just giving you shit.
Hello toaster, and toaster says hello.
This is toaster.
We'll be demonstrating jiu-jitsu on toaster later.
Yes.
So dude, lots, lots has changed.
Lots, lots going on.
Lots of change, lots of excitement.
Uh, tell me, tell me, give me...
Let me put this little guy down so that we don't have a little option.
Can you watch him?
Um, so tell me, like, and give me the overview of the last few months for you,
because I haven't seen you in a while.
Yeah.
You've been traveling.
You're finishing up your book.
Yeah.
Uh, and then it launched.
It did, and thank God after three years,
exceeded all of my expectations,
certainly all the publisher's expectations.
Hit number one, New York Times, first week out.
That's awesome.
Number one, three out of the last four weeks.
The reviews are awesome on Amazon too, which is insane.
It's been a lot of fun, and all sorts of controversy about Amazon,
which we can certainly talk about.
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that.
Oh yeah, because there are about nine hundred and fifty some odd reviews now,
and what happened is, what a lot of people don't realize is there are advanced copies
that are sent out, so there were maybe three hundred advanced copies sent out,
and people hit the reviews as soon as it came out,
and so of course, when people see a bunch of reviews come up on the first day,
they're like, how is this possible?
Oh, it just came out on day one.
People are gaming Amazon.
You sent me an early copy, and you sent a bunch of people.
So, it's been fun to watch the discussions.
There's one about the Dos Equis guy on Amazon.
Dos Equis guy.
Yeah.
What was the deal with that?
Do you know the true facts about Chuck Norris?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so...
Like his Chuck Norris...
Version of, yeah, Ian, I think it was Specter who did that.
Yeah, yeah, it was like Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer.
The only problem is Chuck Norris never cries.
Exactly.
Things like that.
So, it's been a blast.
It's been a lot of fun.
The book has done much better than the four-hour work week
when the four-hour work week first came out.
So, the media has been really responsive.
The view was fun and pretty hysterical.
Yeah, we got to show a clip of the views.
First of all, men are pretty clumsy animals, myself and included,
but we're teachable.
Yes.
So, here's what we discovered.
If this is the vagina at the top of the clitoris,
let's say 12 noon is the top of the clitoris, okay, at 1 to 130...
You did the track at the time, Barbara?
At the...
At 6'12?
Yeah, at between 1 and 130 is where 90% plus of women will be most sensitive.
So, just instruct your guy at the top right.
Have him focus there so he's not stumbling around blindfolded.
Between 1 and 130.
That's right.
Tell him that.
Okay, got that.
So, how did you get booked for the view?
Did you use like a booking agent for that?
Did they reach out to you?
I worked with a publicist, a guy named Mark Fortier.
A lot of business authors work with Mark.
This is a bit of an exception in his business
because he's working on a health book in this case.
And the general approach was the same as for our workweek.
So, start with all digital, start with the blogs,
work with Gizmodo, Mashable, TechCrunch, etc.
Hit that core early adopter audience.
My, I would say, most direct audience,
which is sort of the 18 to 35 year old tech savvy male audience for the most part.
And then it's spread out by gender and age in both directions.
Then hit print, then radio, then TV.
And I found that in the beginning,
if you go after TV before you get those other precursors,
it's just hard to pitch.
They don't really respond very well.
Whereas if you build the noise up in those other channels,
it's pretty straightforward.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So, you find that the radio would typically not want you if you've already done TV?
No, they'll do it.
Let's do it.
Yeah, the formats are very different.
So, in TV, let's say Fox and Friends or something like that,
you have minimal sound bites.
You really need to take your entire message
and condense it down to the most important 60 seconds.
You know this.
I know this.
And if you do NPR, though, if you have a half hour,
you can talk at length and whatever you want.
Even with the same hosts like Dr. Oz, you do his radio show.
You can talk for an hour, hour and a bit.
You go on the show, you better have your three minutes tops.
Right.
And you have that like fine tune, like home message.
I saw what you were on the view.
You did the a bunch of products.
Yeah.
Yeah, I did.
They like, they like visual demos.
Right.
So if you're going to do TV, anything visual
will make it more likely that they'll book.
And people enjoy it as well.
So had the Zio, which I'm sure you've seen before.
You put on this headband that tracks your brainwaves
when you sleep.
Yeah.
So what did you find with that, that thing?
Did you think it was?
You could track REM sleep.
And I found that it was also helpful for identifying
when I actually fell asleep.
So how much sleep did I actually get?
I knew when I would get into bed,
but I couldn't tell when I fell asleep.
Right.
So a handful of things like that.
Nightwave, something called the Phillips Go Light,
which is a cool blue light device.
Yeah.
The Phillips Go Light is probably one of my favorites.
And that's the one that is just the ambient light
that is in your room?
Or is that the one that flashes on the ceiling?
That's the Nightwave.
OK.
The Go Light you put to the side of, let's say,
your laptop or newspaper in the morning.
And that wasn't me.
And that's what my dogs want when they come out.
That's all right.
And then you can replace your morning coffee
and also helps you get to sleep faster
that subsequent evening, which is fine.
Yeah, I don't know how we're going to do that.
No, no, it's all right.
I'll just pin them.
I'm used to dogs.
We were talking about this earlier.
Tim has no idea how to handle dogs.
Look, this is Cesar Milan.
Dude, he's struggling to breathe.
He's fine.
He carried them in the room like this.
Four legs out like this.
The dog is like, what the fuck is this person doing?
Think about how amazing an experience that was for a dog
to fly through the air like that.
Yeah, that's true.
Good point.
So what's new, man?
So for me, you have a lot going on.
I have a lot going on.
I basically made a bunch of New Year's resolutions.
That's good.
You're fine.
You sure?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We can put him down.
He's the coolest day of the year.
Oh, he's good.
He's being nice.
One of my New Year's resolutions is through, I really,
I've always been fascinated by mobile in the mobile space.
We're going to put him down.
By mobile in the mobile space over the last two years,
just everyone's creating iPhone apps and Android apps.
So if I can block him from here, that'd be perfect.
Yeah, that's good.
So basically, I want to create an app.
I just want to try it out.
It's not going to be something that's big,
or I'm going to make a fortune off of.
But I got together with a buddy of mine.
And the other day, we started working on an app.
So my first little just, well, actually,
it was something that both of us would use.
And I use Google Finance almost every single day.
Track all my stocks online and all that stuff.
One of the frustrating things is that unlike eTrade and Schwab
and all the others that have full-blown apps,
Google Finance makes a mobile edition of their site
that works for the browser.
They also make an Android app, obviously.
It's Google.
But they don't have an iPhone app.
So there's a couple unofficial iPhone apps out there.
And I looked at them, and they're kind of just really utilitarian,
very just plain and just not of the whole lot of style to them.
He's, your audio is being, it's been by your dog.
Hey.
Was it affecting the audio?
Yeah, like I can't hear anything.
He bit through the cord.
Toaster.
So if you couldn't hear me there,
it's because my dog chewed through the audio cable.
I apologize.
But anyway, what we're trying to do is we just want to make
a stylish like Google iPhone app.
And it's not something that, you know,
you're going to make a fortune off of,
but it's one of those things where, you know,
I would use it every morning.
My buddy Jeff that's coding it would use it every morning.
And so it's a great way to get into Objective-C
and in that world and promoting apps and all that stuff.
So it'd be fun.
So I have a question for you related to that.
Yeah.
Because I've seen a number of iPhone apps,
iPad apps.
I have an iPad but I don't have an iPhone because I'm a bloodite.
In any case, I've seen a number of apps that mesh really well
with a number of things that I'm doing.
And I don't want to try to replicate the app.
Do you, have you seen people who have white labeled
or private labeled apps or licensed them and then done
Rev splits?
Have you seen anything like that?
You know, typically I see small boutique kind of design
and coding firms.
So they'll be companies that you can go to.
You can create, you know, a wire frame version of what you want.
They'll throw a couple designers against it,
give you some mockups and then code it out for you
and give you like the fully final delivered product ready
for you to submit to the app store.
I haven't, I mean, it's on a one off or one on one basis.
I mean, I've talked to some guys where I saw a couple apps
I enjoyed and I said, you know, do you want to sell these?
And oftentimes they're like, I don't know,
I'm making a little money off it.
But you know, if you go in there strong and say,
I'll give you 10 grand for your app and they normally make,
you know, $100 a week or 50 bucks a week or something,
you know, you can then take it,
work with them as a contractor rebranded.
Obviously you own the IP for it and all that stuff.
But I think the best way to do that is just to work with
contractors and freelancers to get it done.
So for me, it's basically, you know,
I have some design resources here in San Francisco.
I know a few designers, you know,
you ping them, you sit down, go out and have tea or coffee
and say, I got this idea.
You know, what do you think?
And some of them are like, oh, I'm super busy.
Another one will say like, oh, I'll do it, you know,
in two weeks when I free up or you go and find somebody else
online.
And are the good guys willing to always do straight work
for hire where you pay them and you own the entire product?
Or are they like, you know what?
If I'm going to do it, I'm really busy.
I want to get X percent.
I think it really depends on who you're talking to.
I've seen it both ways.
But most of the time cash is kind of king.
Yeah, I'd prefer to keep it clean.
Yeah, it's nice to keep it clean where you can say,
like, I'll just pay.
But I've got this new model that I actually really like
that I'm doing with my friend.
And basically what we decided to do is that, you know,
he needs a salary to live and pay his bills and all that stuff.
And so, you know, I'll come up with all these different project
ideas and he's very much, you know,
like a universal programmer can go do PHP stuff,
Python stuff, Objective C stuff.
And so all over the place, web apps,
meaning worldwide web apps and then also like apps on the phone.
So basically, you know, I'll come to with a project
and bring it to the table and say, like, okay,
here's the project I want to do.
How excited are you to do this project?
And he's like, you know, I kind of see what you want to do,
but I'm not that into it.
Then I pay him a higher salary and a lower stake of the project.
Oh, that's cool.
All right, so if he really likes it, it's like, all right.
If he really likes it, you know, he'll work for a lot less
and but he gets a bigger chunk of the pie if the revenue,
the revenue split after expenses.
Is that all made official through paperwork
or is more of a gentleman's agreement?
It's a gentleman's agreement right now.
But what we said is that, you know, if there's so the idea
is that eventually down the road when I create an incubator,
which is kind of what eventually I'd like to get to,
you know, we'll say, okay, we'll do a little one page document
that says that that's the case.
And then if we ever decide to spawn it off, let's say I create,
you know, the next dig or whatever it is that comes very big,
that would eventually spawn off into its own company,
its own LLC or C Corp and then have investors and all that stuff
if it needs investment.
When that happens, that's the point when you sit down
with the corporate attorney, drop the proper paperwork,
you know, make sure the splits work out the right way.
But right now it'll be either a gentleman's agreement
or like a one page doc saying
if we ever spawn this into something bigger,
that's one of the basic top line points.
Very cool.
So yeah, that's gonna be fun.
That's so that's doing that from start to finish.
Sorry.
I'm very interested in this right now because I since the book
sounds like you're thinking about doing something.
Yeah.
Well, I've had a few app ideas and then I've also had a lot
of stuff come over the transom from people who are saying,
Hey, check out our app.
We'd love to try to do something together.
Right.
But do something together is an unknown to me as it relates to apps.
So it is of a lot of interest.
So in the case of development from scratch,
how long is that development cycle usually to the point
where you actually submit to the app store?
So I mean, it really depends on the complexity of the app
obviously, but yeah, if you have somebody pretty sharp
was like, I'll dedicate some decent time to this.
Let me just make up an app then.
Let's say I want to create an app that is going to store
your workout routines, how many reps you've done,
the type of workout and pulls all that stuff from a database
on the web and creates a graph and graphs it over time.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's just say that's the app UI on top of that.
You want to look beautiful.
A few revisions of that whole back end.
If you have an iPhone developer, someone who's doing the back
end and all the server setup and all this is admin work
and a designer, that entire app should probably be no more
than I'd say if you're pushing him and you're on,
you're like the project manager on top of that shit.
I'd say two and a half to three months max.
Got it.
Just from start to finish.
That's cool.
I mean, in the sense that if you have the capital to deploy,
if you had five or six of those running concurrently.
We'll figure also, let's talk about cost.
So cost to build something like that would be probably going
to pay the designer probably $2,500 to $3,000.
Developer for the iPhone part of it, a little more expensive.
Maybe let's say they don't get any ownership.
Maybe $8,000 and then back in the kind of web developer,
maybe another $4,000.
All right, so it's $12,000 plus let's just say $3,000, so $15,000.
Yeah.
All right, so between $12,000 to $15,000, something like that.
Let's say you were going to make a bit of a business out of it
or you just had some disposable income and you're like,
instead of putting X amount of cash into three or four angel
investments, I'm just going to put it into iPhone apps.
Sure.
Just for fun.
Yeah.
If you were to take the same people and give them,
let's say, two at a time or three at a time and feed them
more consistently with projects, do you think that that cost
per app would go down or?
It definitely goes down if, well, especially if you're cutting
them into a little bit of the revenue because that's going to
drop it.
Yeah.
And then the other thing is if you actually hire people
versus freelance.
Yeah, I was going to say it because it's 15K.
Yeah, I mean, if you could get, how much would it cost you
think to hire those three people full time?
Well, so a Python PHP medium skill set can scale your
website developer in San Francisco is going to run you,
you know, 80 to 110,000 a year, then you talk about the iPhone
Objective C developer, that's 125,000 to 150,000 a year.
Good skill set to have.
Yeah, I mean, and if they're rock stars, like, so there's a
difference between someone that can make transitions between
screens and things happen and calls to other APIs and someone
that can actually code Objective C like OpenGL stuff.
Right.
It's like, you know, some of these games that are like 3D and
have cool things going on.
That's another level up.
That's like a $200,000 a year kind of developer, 175,200.
So yeah, I mean, it's how much do you think it cost the
people who did Angry Birds?
If you were to hire someone to do that, how much do you
think it cost them to develop that game?
Angry Birds is kind of difficult because there's
some graphic work there in physics stuff.
So I think you could probably build Angry Birds for maybe
there's music and audio work, maybe 35,000 something like
that, maybe 35 to 40.
Pretty good ROI if you have a hit.
I mean, they're doing, you know, freaking, I can't remember.
I went and had lunch with those guys probably about three
or four months ago and at the time it was, I mean, it's
millions of dollars per month kind of thing.
It's insane.
It's so awesome.
What's the lowest cost, like the least sophisticated iPhone
app that you've seen that's just killing it?
So freaking talking T-Rex dude, like, or the farting ones
or whatever.
Those are also like, so if you've seen talking T-Rex, okay,
I'm so happy that I haven't, but I'm so happy about to see it.
All right.
So this is basically, so it's, it's, it's, they've, they've
like set the animation so it can only do certain things.
So like you can throw out a piece of meat.
So it's like playing movie files.
It's not anything crazy here.
Yeah.
So if you talk to Rex, like, hello, Tim, how are you?
So if you talk to Rex, like, hello, Tim, how are you?
So he like, he basically moves his mouth and, and, and in sync.
He like, he basically moves his mouth and, and, and in sync.
And so, and so you can talk real high pitch.
I'm not talking high pitch.
So you can send that file.
You can hit record.
Oh, and so I'll be like, I'll be like, Glenn, I'm hammered right now.
You like doing your drunken stuff and it's fun.
You hammered?
Never.
Never.
No, I just, I drink way less than I used to.
Of course.
I haven't had, this is my first beer in a week battle since Sunday.
I'm waiting to come over and you'll be watching Blue's Q's with your puppy.
It's been almost a week in any case.
Okay.
So I'm treading into severe inferiority complex with this fancy tech stuff.
No, no, I love apps.
No, no, no.
But can I tell you something?
So you're really into apps.
I'm fascinated by them.
Can I share with you one of my new obsessions?
Yes, tell me.
It's very.
You brought a backpack full of stuff.
I brought a backpack full of stuff.
This is a Ben Minkoff bag.
It was a gift.
Actually, it's a, it's a bit of a carrier bag.
Yeah, it's really, really nice with leather work, really nice leather work.
So there are a couple of things.
I'm going to save this one for a minute.
But so I began to realize after I finished my book that I'm spending way too much time
from a computer, three years of working, way too much laptop work.
And I think that people, humans in general, but men in particular, if they get trapped
inside their head too long and they don't do any manual work, they go a little crazy.
So I decided that I want to get outside and really work with my hands.
Hopefully do some type of outdoor training like the Boulder outdoor survival school.
It's called boss.
Some type of survivalist training.
Cool.
Yeah.
So whether that's like tracking school or something along those lines.
And I went to a special ops training course in Arizona where we did evasive driving.
We did weapons training.
Did you learn how to turn a car on its side like by managing it from the back end?
We did what are called bootlegger turns, which is like the 180 and then take off.
We did what are called J turns where you're flying full speed and reverse.
And then you spin around, continue in the same direction.
That is awesome.
We did basically slide blocks where it's used for assassination and whatnot.
But we did all this different type of stuff.
We did it all in case you ever need it.
Wow, that dog has powerful GI tract.
So.
He's a little gassy sometimes.
So this is very timely.
I could actually show how to properly dissect a small labradoodle.
So I started looking at, I found a magazine called blade magazine.
And I started cutting out and obsessing over knives and tactical knives.
What would be the most useful all around multipurpose knife?
And it became really fascinated by military knives.
That's awesome.
There's one I really liked was the bench made.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I have a bunch.
So this is, this is my favorite.
This is a Kershaw.
Do you have one with you?
Oh, nice.
Is this the same?
Oh, really similar.
Yeah.
It's a Kershaw.
Yeah.
Okay.
Look at that.
I had no idea.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it has something called open assist.
Isn't that so funny?
That's so weird.
We have the same knives.
That's crazy.
All right.
So yeah.
The Kershaw, Kershaw makes beautiful knives.
These are general utility knives.
Watch out.
He'll jump up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't want him to stab him, impale himself.
Just so you don't pull a Jennifer on us, although she was burned in any case.
So we have this and then, but this, this is so weird that you have this.
That is pretty crazy.
I had no idea that, but then I became a little obsessed with slightly bigger weapons.
So this is something you'd, this is something you'd mount on your, on your, on your, on
your flak jacket.
And breast.
Yeah.
And you, and that's pretty cool, huh?
Let me see that.
So check that out.
This is, this is a Grayman knife.
It's, it's a mom and pop shop.
And you'll notice if you, it is, look at how thick that blade is.
We'll get some closeups, but so you have Grayman inscribed here and you can have custom
inscriptions.
So I put Seneca on here because I think Seneca was particularly well spoken on the topic
of death and becoming comfortable with death in order to live.
I almost cut off my finger there.
The default, the default inscription is DTAQ.
Can you guess what that is?
That's what most of the military guys have on it.
No, it wasn't me.
Death to Al-Qaeda.
No way.
Yeah.
Now, but this, this is, I wanted to read you.
So we've all seen good copy on the website.
Is this the gift that you got me?
No.
That would be awesome.
No, no.
So we've all seen, you've seen good copy on websites, right?
Yeah.
So this is the, this is the description for the Grayman SB West Nile Warrior knife is
a balanced single edge fighter utility knife with a dramatic recurve bow design for optimal
chopping and slashing performance.
It's not a sharp.
Yeah.
It's not really.
Oh no, no, no.
That will cut you.
Additionally, the wide foreblade causes a disproportionately large wound channel.
It just goes on and on.
It's really pretty amazing.
Now that is okay.
Very efficient for chopping, notching, for building sniper hides, lean twos, deadfall
traps, door breaching, shimming as a weapon in the single bevel, cutting edge is very
effective primarily because it has virtually no shear on one side.
I'm going to feel that.
I just want to, I'm going to give you a few more lines then we'll move on.
In a thrust, it creates a bilaterally asymmetrical wound resulting in a quicker hypovolemic
shock from rapid blood loss.
I just think this is one of the best sales pages I've ever heard.
All right.
So let me show you a couple of others.
This was a gift from my mom actually.
This is a buck knife.
My mom and I used to do a lot of hiking together.
So this is, this is a really beautiful knife.
That's awesome.
Pretty straightforward.
Yeah.
Very gorgeous knife.
Buck knives are really good for the money.
For the, they're good value.
Oh yeah.
Very good value.
Not like really expensive knives, but like they're just.
Very good value.
This, I mean this is, you'll notice all these are fixed blade.
So you can use them for a lot of heavy duty work.
This knife, which is a Boker knife or B, it has an umlaut over it.
It's a Boker maybe, B-O-K-E-R.
This was recommended by Von Schnard, who's the founder of Patagonia.
So also a very practical knife.
I always tried.
So do you know much about the different types of steel?
I am learning.
I was always a, the Bench Mades are made of the ATS 34 steel, which is supposed to hold
a edge a lot better than.
Yeah.
There's a lot, it's, it's, there's a lot of debate on what type of steel is best.
The ceramic ones are pretty awesome too.
Have you seen the ceramic blades?
I have seen ceramic and Damascus among others.
This is a Benchmade.
So, so we looked at a Kershaw.
So this is a Benchmade and this is dedicated to Mark Lee, who is part of the Naval Special
Warfare team in Iraq.
And he was a Fatality H-28.
Now this, this knife is very similar to the Graiman.
I freaking love Benchman.
It's my favorite knife.
Yeah.
Look at that.
You have beautiful that knife is.
I, now I do not like, for the record, I, I do love the Graiman.
The Graiman has, in my opinion, a better sheath.
This particular sheath, you can't open it with one hand very effectively from the chest.
So if you are in some type of military circumstance, I don't like the sheath as much as the Graiman.
But you can see, like, just for sheer girth, the Graiman's pretty insane.
How much does that Graiman run?
Oh, they're up there.
I mean, I'm not sure.
That's, that's probably over 200.
None of these knives are terribly cheap.
Then the last knife I wanted to show is the E-S-E-E-5.
I love these knives, by the way.
Oh, the sheaths.
Yeah.
You can get those custom made for any knife.
Yeah.
They're not cheap sheaths.
This is probably a $300 sheath.
This particular knife is from Randall Adventures.
These are very popular.
Check that out.
I know.
Knife out.
This is probably what.
So this is the bead blasted handle.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
Is that what, is that what they said?
I believe so.
Yeah.
They said it was designed for survival, evasion, rescue.
It was designed specifically to be as multi-purpose and effective as possible for downed pilots.
And I love this knife.
Yeah.
This knife's beautiful.
Yeah.
The one thing, Benchmade makes some knives that have the bead blasted handle.
And the thing they say about them is that when they need to get blood on them, they
won't slip in your hands like they did.
Right.
Right.
That makes sense.
That's what these are designed for.
Very, very practical if you want to slash or terminate some.
This is a awesome knife.
That's a great knife.
So I'm a big, big fan.
It just, the balance, the weight in this is, oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
It's a very, very nice knife.
So.
Sweet.
I become very enamored of collecting 2000, I'm such a freaking wuss now.
Wait till you see what my next hobby is.
Oh, no, no, no.
Yeah.
So let's talk about your next hobby.
The contrast.
So I got to, I have a, I have a new, so basically I decided to start to get into zen flutery.
This is a zen flute.
This is a traditional Japanese flute.
You've heard of it.
I just like flutery.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
In a lot of Chinese artwork.
Yeah.
So I'm learning how to play this, but I don't know yet.
I just got the book and I just got the zen.
So I can barely even make a tune with it.
It's really hard.
Yeah.
You know how like when you get like one of those recorders in high school, it's like
easy.
You can just like jump right into it.
You have to get the wind like.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Anyway.
Yeah.
It's awesome.
When you do hear the, and then Glenn is going to have to put in some footage so I don't
want to get such a dumbass, but when you, when you do hear like the monks playing these
things, it's some of the most peaceful, like relaxing tones, like any flute that you can
hear and you can pick one up for about 150 bucks.
Wow.
And they're just, they're really awesome and relaxing.
And I figured like, you know, I wanted to get into something this year that was like,
you know, like meditation or something that could just be, you know, you spend 15, 20
minutes a day just messing around with.
And I don't know, it seemed to be something cool.
So I'd be cool.
I was to continue with our small world, Kershaw coincidence.
I was actually really into Irish flute for a short period of time.
Really?
Yeah.
I went to Dublin.
This was in 2004 when I did my walk about for about a year and a half, went to Dublin,
went to a few pubs, fell in love with pub music, violin and Irish flute and stopping
on the ground.
Yes.
I've done that in Ireland.
It's amazing.
And they sent me to where they didn't send me.
They recommended I go to Galway and I went to Galway and it was an arts festival.
There were tons of good musicians and you could buy an Irish flute for five to $10.
Really cheap.
And it's got a DVD set, book sat down.
Yeah.
That's basically what I did.
Yeah.
And within a week or so, you can be playing Amazing Grace.
Oh, it's great.
Amazing Grace.
Well, I mean, I'm kind of limited, right?
I mean, it is a flute.
Yeah.
So, 2010, so last year, we made some goals.
Yes.
Resolutions.
Yes.
How have things turned out?
You know, I didn't do so well.
I got...
Do you remember what they were?
Yeah, I talked about these on the stignation that I did, but I have them on my website.
I have to pull them up.
But basically, out of the 10 that I made, I probably did three of them or something like
that, three or four of them, something like that.
Just rapid fire, which were the ones that you hit.
I learned how to fly fish, traveled.
I wanted to travel more, and I went to New Zealand last year.
Is there anything you didn't do that you most regret not having done?
I mean, there's certain things I want to do this year that are from the last year.
Okay.
Like drink more water was one that I wanted to do.
Good idea.
What did you find in your, like, research on water?
Did you do anything about how much water you drink per day?
It varies a lot on what the diet is and what the goal is, but it's possible to hurt yourself
by drinking too much water.
That's not really dying, actually, because they drink too much water.
Right.
So in marathons, when people drop dead, it's very typically from drinking too much water,
in fact.
But that doesn't mean you should constantly be dehydrated, but humans are pretty well
evolved to deal with dehydration.
In any case, it's a long conversation, but we can definitely dive into that.
But it depends a lot on your diet and the electrolytes.
What you don't want to do is make your blood so dilute that the electrolytes, that you
aren't able to conduct electricity properly, because then your heart stops and things like
that.
Right.
Problematic.
So in terms of New Year's resolutions, I only had one really big one, which was the
500-pound deadlift.
So I did not make it to 500 pounds.
You made it pretty high, though.
I did.
I had a series of injuries throughout, because I was doing all these various tests on myself
at the same time, but I did make it, I did 465 times two.
This is with no wraps.
That's from the floor.
And then from the knees doing rack pulls, and we'll show some video or at least some
stills, I was able to get up to about 650 with a double overhand grip.
So not an alternate grip.
What that means is I wasn't holding the bar like this.
I was holding the bar like this, and I wasn't using a hook grip, which is the thumbs like
so, which makes it, in some cases, easier.
Some Olympic lifters do that.
I was holding it like this.
In any case, but the point being, I don't regret having set that as a goal, because I made
so much progress.
Yeah, I remember you talking about the guys you were hanging out and the thickness of
their necks.
That was like a video.
This guy is so strong.
You were like, this dude has a neck like this.
It's insane.
Some of them are so strong.
That's awesome.
So one thing I do want to mention that I kind of did last year was grow some medicinal
mushrooms.
Medicinal.
And so, yeah, so not crazy mushrooms.
Like which ones have you grown?
Remember like the mitake, mitake and something else, but they end up dying off because you
have to really pay a lot of attention to them, and if it gets a little too hot or you don't
like spritz them every like, you know, once a day, you forget one day, like weird things
starts to happen with them.
But one of the things I'd like to do this year, this is a DVD that I got on identifying
mushrooms in the wild.
And so there's areas around Meere Woods and a few other areas around Bay Area that you
can go and go on hikes and actually pick your own mushrooms.
When's the, when we're looking off camera, both outsourcing our knowledge and memory,
do you know when the moral mushroom season is?
It's technically usually after the forest fires.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
So an amazing mushroom hunting now around here.
From what I hear, yeah.
That'd be fun.
That would be fun.
So anyway, that's a cool DVD if anyone wants to pick it up and get into mushrooms.
I really, I wasn't a huge fan of mushrooms.
I think it's basically because I was fed those like button mushrooms my entire life
and I was like, yeah, I don't like those.
But once you start getting into like, you know, more sophisticated mushrooms that have
a lot of more intense like flavor profiles, it's, it's, it's actually kind of cool.
Yeah.
Learning about them is a lot of fun.
I remember you bought that bouquet.
We had a freaking random show where we had a whole bucket full of mushrooms.
That's right.
Did you ever cook those?
I tried and then I let them sit for like two days and like you said, you can't let them
sit.
But they can dry out.
A whole bunch of them just went nasty really quickly.
But I am trying to extend my exposure to new foods.
I got this from my mom.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is, this is a foodsie tasting box full disclosure.
I am an advisor to this company, but the reason I'm an advisor is because the founders
are awesome and the product's really good.
So this is a tasting box.
I get one of these every month.
I just got this today.
So I actually don't know what's in here.
And it's just.
It's the same one my mom got.
I'm not an advisor or investor.
I know them, but they're great people though.
You're right.
Yeah, they're awesome.
Food's amazing.
Yeah.
So foodsie.com offers artisanal or small batch of foods from all over the country, whether
it's desserts or healthy food.
I had some freaking toffee bars, some scotch bars that I ordered from there.
Oh, those are so popular.
You got scotch and caramel and chocolate.
So I wanted to just mention something from an entrepreneurial standpoint.
They weren't sure if this business model was going to take off or not.
So in the very beginning, they had all of these boxes in a fulfillment facility, shared
fulfillment facility.
I think it was in Daly City.
I might be in South San Francisco.
And they hand stamped all the boxes to do the testing.
That's awesome.
And it's taken off.
So then you have a tasting box.
Let's see.
We have dried nectarines and peaches, matcha and chocolate mini cupcakes.
These are from all over.
Yeah, this is what my mom got.
She got the same box.
So you have these goodies, yeah, right?
I haven't eaten.
Can I try some of these?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
This is a assorted Guayasa tea.
I'm actually very interested in this stuff because it's similar to Yerba mate in many
cases, but it has slightly higher caffeine content, which is-
Guayasa?
Let me see this.
Yeah, check it out.
It's not-
That's from Ecuador.
No, no, no.
It's herbal tea.
Yeah, it's herbal tea.
Yeah, almonds.
I'm saying it's different than the tea plant.
It's not camellia sinensis, which is the tea plant.
Correct.
Right.
It's my conolage.
In any case, I get one of these every month, and it exposes me to a lot of new stuff, a
lot of which comes from California and domestically.
These raw bars are crazy.
Yeah.
So I wanted to share this as well.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I got this from my mom, and she freaking loved it.
She thought it was really cool.
So what's 2011?
In the next two to three months, any big things that you want to experiment with?
So I started juicing, started doing that, Darian and I started doing that here at the house.
It's awesome.
It's really neat.
We started doing roids, juicing.
You got to get a toaster on the roids.
Yeah, he's very underdeveloped.
My notes for this meeting is Tim does not know how to handle dogs.
That was one thing I got to bring up.
I'm an expert dog handler.
You just have to watch Susan Milan, red case, you fucking pin them down by the neck, and
then they're cool.
That's horrible.
Susan Milan is awesome.
He's awesome.
What was that?
No, he's dealing with like shebas.
Labradorals need this one too.
Dude, I was going to ask you, investment-wise, are you cool with talking about?
Yeah, we can talk about it.
Whatever you want.
We both made a kind of a co-investment together in Facebook just recently, just like a few
weeks ago.
Yeah, we did.
Before the craziness.
Before the craziness.
So any other investments that you've made recently?
Recently, I'm not sure which I can talk about.
I've shifted my focus a little bit.
I'm actually very interested in apps, but more from a revenue standpoint than an equity
standpoint probably.
Like building your own apps?
Yeah.
I mean, you made a great call with NJMoco.
That was a good job.
Yeah, that was a great decision.
In my case, I'm interested in that.
I'm also doing more in medicine, not too surprisingly, but I'm doing more in the diagnostic space.
That's awesome.
The testing space.
One company in particular.
I'm not sure if I can talk about them yet.
So maybe another time, but they're going to be doing really high-end testing.
So if you want to come in, and not everyone could afford this, but that's okay.
Different business models for different groups.
In this particular case, they'll say, all right, you pay $5,000, you get the platinum
treatment, and you see everything.
And they have an amazing scientific group together.
I mean, tests that you can get nowhere else.
That's scary.
No, it's not scary.
Because you'd be able to get these tests done and go through your entire bathroom full of
supplements and say, okay, these make no sense given my profile and A, B, and C. And I should
buy this type of folate instead of this type, which I'll get five times better absorption.
You were talking about how you were deficient in selenium.
Selenium.
Yeah.
And you didn't know that until you got tested for it.
Didn't know until I got tested with it.
Most people are, though, aren't they?
I wouldn't say that.
Because where do you get selenium from?
I mean, Brazil nuts, but what else?
I think broccoli has it or no?
I'd have to look at the other sources.
It's mostly stuff that's from Brazil, right?
Because it's in the ground in Brazil.
Yeah, I mean, the problem that many people have is even if they purchase food that should
be, have a high content of X-trace mineral, whatever that might be, it depends a lot on
the soil.
Right.
And the soil has been so depleted.
My little dog wants to be over so bad.
Sorry.
I didn't know.
Can you hear that or no?
I can, yes.
Okay.
Fantastic.
All right.
We needed the soundtrack.
You have to get tested because even if you're eating, let's say, people assume in some
cases that eating salmon is better than eating beef, let's say.
And if the salmon's eating grain and you're getting something from marins on farms and
they're eating grass, I would put my money on the couch in terms of health, fat loss,
fertility, et cetera.
So you have to get tested.
Aside from your book, which is awesome, there's, what other movies do you recommend?
I like Food, Inc.
I thought that was a good one.
For people to get, just get like, most people don't know the difference between corn fed
beef and grass fed beef, right?
What's a good primer for something like that?
I think, I think Food, Inc. is not a bad introduction because it's, it's so self-contained.
I mean, it's 90 minutes and you get a decent overview.
If you have the patience to dig into a slightly longer book, I think Omnivorous Dilemma is
an interesting read.
Well, I think the corn gets a little heavy in the middle.
It's like 130 pages on corn, you can probably skip it.
Yeah.
I listen to the audio book.
I mean, like just keeps going on and on with that corn.
Yeah.
It's interesting, though.
I mean, in fact, this is kind of crazy.
If someone wants to train, like, trace a grain of corn or a kernel of corn from Kansas to
consumption, I found that book to be very, very fascinating.
Otherwise, I would say getting tested, not to sound like I'm beating a dead horse, but
it will make you interested in this stuff really quickly.
Yeah.
As soon as you find that you're deficient in something and many people will be.
So I don't want to spend five grand on testing.
You don't have to.
You could do something, first of all, you need the basics, which are comprehensive blood
testing through a doctor.
Right.
I did that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you do that.
The other thing you should do is spectracell.com.
Yeah.
I went there and I couldn't figure out.
Actually, I read it in your book.
Yeah.
I typed in the URL.
I went there.
I couldn't figure out what to do.
You just have to go to, like, find a location.
When you get to the location, that's when you tell them I want to look in.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
So you could go to around here.
You could go to the Clear Center of Health in Marin, in Mill Valley specifically, and
they could do it for you.
What do you ask for?
Well, you just go in and you say, I want to have a spectracell test done.
They go, okay, we need your credit card, and it's $200, $250, something like that.
And I think that there's going to be a lot, there's going to be a lot discovered in the
next 12 months even.
I'm very excited about sites like CureTogether.com, PatientsLikeMe, where people will be submitting
all this data.
I mean, I have learned so much in the last four weeks from all of the readers on Twitter
and Facebook and so forth.
It's just been astonishing to see.
So you're basically, I mean, you need to do an update to your book then.
I'm already doing updates.
Oh, you're already working on it.
Oh, yeah.
It's like six printing.
We're already making corrections and improvements and stuff.
Oh, yeah.
Awesome.
So do you publish all that stuff on your site as well?
This is what I found that's different.
Yeah.
I just put up a list of corrections a few days ago, housekeeping type of stuff, and so far
so good.
I mean, there are a few points that could be clearer in the book, but for the most part,
I don't think it's going to expire anytime soon.
One last question.
My buddy Jeremiah started doing your diet in the book, the slow carb diet.
And the beans, we're killing them.
How do you get around that?
Okay.
So there are a few ways you can get around it.
The first would be that you can omit the beans.
I don't suggest it in the beginning because people will default to like a chicken breast
and leafy vegetables and they won't eat enough and they'll get irritable and they won't
feel well and they'll quit the diet.
You can use lentils.
A big mistake that people make with the beans is they don't soak them.
So if they get dry beans in particular, you need to soak the beans or you will have bad
gas.
So what if you buy them in a can and they've been properly soaked the right way?
You just rinse them and I eat most of the beans that I consume from the can or lentils,
same deal, which I know there are better ways to do it.
But for me, I'm lazy.
I like the convenience.
It's easy and it does have the desired effect.
I also can omit the beans but you need to learn to consume more food and that's challenging
for a lot of people because if you're accustomed to having, let's say, a baked potato, a chicken
breast and just a small amount of vegetables, to get to the point where you're consuming
close to the same number of calories and vegetables, it's a lot of volume.
And I find that for most people, starting off with the beans is easy.
There are different types of spices you can use like epazote, yeah, in any case.
I think you can get it in Mexican supermarkets.
You can also just soak the beans, in most cases, we'll fix the problem right there.
Sweet.
Cool, well that's all I got.
I'm done.
Yeah?
Yeah, I think that's it.
Been doing a terrible job on your beer.
I'm getting there.
You down half bottle of wine.
I don't toasters happy.
All right.
Cheers.
Cheers, man.
Same deal.
Don't tear books out.
Yeah.
To a great 2011, everybody.
Yeah, we're out there.
To be continued.
We'll see you soon.
