Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  ✸ Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?

  Chris says his father and Winston Churchill. Of the latter:

  “There’s a great series of books, The Last Lion by William Manchester, on Winston Churchill. The third volume actually just came out a few years ago posthumously. But the first two, which really only got up to his life at the outbreak of World War II, didn’t even touch on everything that happened after World War II started. I just remember thinking, [even before he did what we associate him with]: He was a best-selling author by 20, he’d fought in wars, he was one of the highest-paid writers, and he was an important member of Parliament.”

  Spirit animal: Mongoose

  * * *

  Daymond John

  Daymond John (TW/FB/IG: @TheSharkDaymond, DaymondJohn.com) is CEO and founder of FUBU, which Daymond grew from his original $40 budget into a $6 billion lifestyle brand. He is a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and appears on ABC’s Shark Tank. Daymond is the recipient of more than 35 industry awards, including Brandweek’s Marketer of the Year, Advertising Age’s Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, and Ernst & Young’s New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He is the best-selling author of three books, including The Power of Broke.

  “If you go out there and start making noise and making sales, people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you are going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.”

  “Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family, business, etc., with expiration dates, and I update them every 6 months.”

  “My parents always taught me that my day job would never make me rich. It’d be my homework.”

  “I don’t care if you’re my brother—if we go play football, I’m gonna try to crack your head open. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. It doesn’t mean that I don’t respect you.”

  ✸ What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made? It could be an investment of money, time, energy, or otherwise.

  “The best investment was when I took the time to be a foot messenger for First Boston while I was in high school. I was running around the entire city of Manhattan and came across all different types of people. Some were completely miserable high-profile executives. Others were extremely happy entry-level employees. I had never had this sort of exposure in my life, and it completely opened up my eyes to opportunity.”

  ✸ Do you have any quotes that you live your life by or think of often?

  “Money is a great servant but a horrible master.”

  ✸ Most-gifted or recommended books?

  Think and Grow Rich, Who Moved My Cheese?, Blue Ocean Strategy, Invisible Selling Machine, The Richest Man in Babylon, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

  TF: That last Genghis Khan book has been recommended to me by several billionaires.

  Spirit animal: Chipmunk

  * * *

  Noah Kagan

  Noah Kagan (TW/IG: @noahkagan, sumome.com) was the #30 employee at Facebook, #4 at Mint.com (sold to Intuit for $170 million), and is the Chief Sumo (founder) at SumoMe, which offers free tools to help grow website traffic. To keep things extra spicy, he’s become a taco connoisseur and has created four separate products that have generated more than 7 figures. Noah was my co-teacher in the “Starting a Business” episode of The Tim Ferriss Experiment.

  Take the Coffee Challenge

  For would-be entrepreneurs (he calls them “wantrapreneurs”), or entrepreneurs who’ve grown a little too comfortable, Noah has a recommendation—ask for 10% off of your next few coffees. “Go up to the counter and order coffee. If you don’t drink coffee, order tea. If you don’t drink tea, order water. I don’t care. Then just ask for 10% off. . . . The coffee challenge sounds kind of silly, but the whole point is that—in business and in life—you don’t have to be on the extreme, but you have to ask for things, and you have to put yourself out there.”

  Improve Tools at the “Top of the Funnel”

  Aim to optimize upstream items that have cascading results downstream. For instance, look for technical bottlenecks (choke points) that affect nearly everything you do on a computer. What are the things that, if defunct or slow, render your to-do list useless? Here are two of Noah’s simple recommendations that I’ve implemented:

  Increase the speed of your track/mouse pad. Go into Settings or Systems Preferences and double your current speed. This takes less than 30 seconds to do.

  Invest in the best router you can afford. Noah currently uses the ASUS RT-AC87U Wireless-AC2400 dual band gigabit router. Kevin Rose (page 340) and others use Eero technology to improve WiFi throughout their homes.

  ✸ Related—“What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made?”

  Lasik surgery.

  Apps/Software to Test

  Facebook News Feed Eradicator: Need to focus? Save yourself from FB and your lesser self.

  ScheduleOnce (get the $99 a year option): This can eliminate the never-ending “How about next Tuesday or Thursday at 10 a.m.?” back-and-forth that eats your life.

  FollowUp.cc: For automating email follow-ups and reminders. I use a close cousin called Nudgemail, in combination with Boomerang. You’ll never have to remember to follow up with anyone ever again.

  Quick Gmail Trick

  Noah and I both use the Gmail “+” trick all the time. Let’s say your email address is bob@bobsmith.com. After signing up for services or newsletters, how can you tell who’s sharing your email, or contain the damage if someone discovers your login email? Companies get hacked all the time. Just use + as cheap insurance. If you append + and a word to the beginning, messages will still get delivered to your inbox. Signing up for Instacart, for instance? You could use bob+insta@bobsmith.com. I use this, or benefit from it, on a daily basis.

  Don’t Try and Find Time. Schedule Time.

  On Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Noah schedules nothing but “Learning.” This is a great reminder that, for anything important, you don’t find time. It’s only real if it’s on the calendar. My Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. are currently blocked out for “Creation”—writing, podcast recording, or other output that creates a tangible “after” product. I turn off WiFi during this period to be as non-reactive as possible. (See Neil Strauss, page 347, and Ramit Sethi, page 287.)

  A Shared Obsession

  The book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman: “If you ever meet me in person, I have an extra copy because it’s just that amazing.”

  ✸ What is the worst advice you see or hear given in your trade or area of expertise?

  “That you should prioritize growing your social following (Instagram, FB, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube). Grow things that you can fully control that directly affect sales, like your email list. ‘Likes’ don’t pay the bills. Sales do.”

  ✸ Who are three people or sources you’ve learned from—or followed closely—in the last year?

  Andrew Chen (Growth team at Uber), Tomasz Tunguz (venture capitalist and software as a service [SaaS] expert), Jonathan Siegel (chairman of Earth Class Mail)

  For Hiring Well—“Who?” Is Often More Important Than “What?”

  “The Who book [by Geoff Smart, Randy Street] is a condensed version of Topgrading, and I learned of it at Mint, where the founder was using it.”

  TF: I now recommend this book to all of my startup founders, who have, in turn, recommended it to others.

  The Classics for Copywriting

  Noah is known for his copywriting skills, and he recommends two resources: The Gary Halbert Letter (also The Boron Letters) and Ogilvy on Advertising.

  ✸ Noah’s best purchase of $100 or less

  The NutriBullet, a tiny blender with removable cup attached, which he gift
s regularly. Just blend, drink, and rinse out. No cleaning required. Noah has a $500 Vitamix blender but has stopped using it entirely, in favor of the more convenient $79.99 NutriBullet.

  No Shame, No Gain—Instagram Incentives

  Not long ago, Noah gained 40 pounds of muscle in ~6 months. One motivational trick he used was loading his Instagram feed with images and videos that killed his excuses. I now do the same. Too old? Too bulky? Too busy? There is someone who can call you on your BS. Here are a few accounts from my personal feed (@timferriss):

  @matstrane: This 53-year-old makes me cringe for complaining about my age. He started training at age 48.

  @gymnasticbodies (Coach Sommer, page 9): Most of their students started gymnastics as sedentary adults.

  @arboone11: Amelia Boone (page 2), the toughest woman I’ve ever met. She’s a full-time power attorney at Apple and the only 3-time winner of World’s Toughest Mudder, a 24-hour race.

  @bgirlmislee: This breakdancer and stuntwoman hits power moves that were considered “impossible” for women in the 1990s (e.g., one-armed hopping handstands).

  @jessiegraffpwr: Female Ninja Warrior competitor. Her grip strength makes my forearms weep tears of weakness.

  @jujimufu: “Muscle-bound” anabolic acrobat who performs capoeira aerials, full splits, and other craziness. Strong and flexible are not mutually exclusive. He’s also hilarious.

  * * *

  Kaskade

  Kaskade (TW/FB/IG: @kaskade, kaskademusic.com) is widely considered one of the “founding fathers” of Progressive House music. He’s been voted America’s Best DJ twice by DJ Times, headlined Coachella four times, and been nominated for a Grammy five times.

  How Did You Get Your First Gear?

  “I hit a local club owner up in Utah, and I asked, ‘What’s your worst night that you have? What’s the slowest night?’ and he said, ‘Monday. I’m not even open.’ I said, ‘Dude, let me come down on Monday night.’ This is a bar that had opened in the 1940s and had all of its original decor. It’s called Club Manhattan. It’s an amazing place in the basement. Anyway, the owner says, ‘I’ll give you a cut of the door. You have your friends come in, invite some people, and we’ll see what happens.’ It turned out the night was a smash. I did it for 5 years, and I ended up doing two nights a week. It was Monday, and then I took on a Thursday . . . I was working at a clothing store trying to support myself going to school, and I quit after the first week. . . . It started clicking, and then, when I was making enough money, I started to buy my first studio equipment.”

  Put the Big Stones in First

  “When I can, I travel with my family. I’m married and I have three children, so I’m always trying to figure out, ‘How can I make this work?’ You know, putting the stones in the bucket. What’s really important here, and how can I fill the bucket with the things that are really important to me?”

  TF: This visual metaphor was first taught to me by a college professor, and it’s a great way to think about priorities. Paraphrasing my teacher: “Imagine you have a large glass jar. Next to it, you have a few large rocks, a small pile of marble-sized pebbles, and a pile of sand. If you put in the sand or pebbles first, what happens? You can’t fit the big rocks in. But if you add the big rocks, then the medium-sized pebbles, and only then the sand, it all fits.” In other words, the minutiae fit around the big things, but the big things don’t fit around the minutiae.

  Remember Who You Are

  “Every time I left the house, my dad would always say, ‘Remember who you are.’ Now that I am a father, this is a very profound thing to me. At the time I was like, ‘Dad, what the hell? You’re so weird. Like I’m gonna forget who I am? What are you saying?’ Now, I’m like, ‘Gosh, that guy was kind of smart.’”

  ✸ Favorite festivals?

  Kaskade loves Coachella, but he also mentioned Electric Zoo in New York. “It’s in Randall’s Island and you’re looking at the skyline while you’re playing.”

  ✸ Iconic albums to start with?

  Daft Punk Homework (Discovery is also great, but he’s a bigger fan of Homework)

  Any Kraftwerk album

  “Frustration is a matter of expectation.”

  Spirit animal: Owl

  * * *

  Luis von Ahn

  Luis von Ahn, PhD, (TW: @LuisvonAhn, duolingo.com) is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Duolingo, a free language learning platform with more than 100 million users. It is the most popular way to learn languages in the world, and I met him as an investor in their first round of financing. Previously, Luis was known for inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow (“genius grant” recipient), and selling two companies to Google in his 20s. Luis has been named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science magazine and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company magazine.

  Catching Cheaters in His Class with “Google Traps” at Carnegie Mellon

  “There was one [problem in an assignment] that was called Giramacristo’s Puzzle. I made that word up beforehand. I made sure there was no such thing on Google. I made a website that had the right solution, but it recorded everybody’s IP address. And at CMU you can figure out their dorm from their IP address. So I could figure out which person was actually checking. It turns out, that time, out of the 200 students, about 40 Googled for the answer, and that was fun. I used to do all kinds of things like that. The students were all usually scared of almost everything being a trick. [I would just say, ‘If you just confess, you get a 0 on the assignment,’ and people confess.] I would do that in the first one or two assignments, and then afterward, they would learn not to cheat.”

  The Origin of Duolingo’s Green Owl Mascot and Logo

  “We were just getting started with Duolingo, and we had hired a Canadian company to help with our branding. . . . It’s called silverorange. They made the Firefox logo, for example. We love working with them, and in one of our first meetings about the branding of the company, my co-founder Severin [Hacker] said, ‘You know, I don’t know much about design, and I don’t particularly care. But I’ll tell you this: I hate the color green. I hate it.’

  “We all thought it would be hilarious if our mascot was a green thing, and so that’s why it’s green. It is literally that we are playing a joke on our co-founder. Ever since then, every day of his life, he has to see this. He shouldn’t have said that.”

  The Value of “I Don’t Understand”

  “My PhD advisor [at Carnegie Mellon was] a guy named Manuel Blum, who many people consider the father of cryptography [encryption, etc.]. He’s amazing and he’s very funny. I learned a lot from him. When I met him, which was like 15 years ago, I guess he was in his 60s, but he always acted way older than he actually was. He just acted as if he forgot everything. . . .

  “I had to explain to him what I was working on, which at the time was CAPTCHA, these distorted characters that you have to type all over the Internet. It’s very annoying. That was the thing I was working on [later acquired by Google], and I had to explain it to him. It was very funny, because usually I would start explaining something, and in the first sentence he would say, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ and then I would try to find another way of saying it, and a whole hour would pass and I could not get past the first sentence. He would say, ‘Well, the hour’s over. Let’s meet next week.’ This must have happened for months, and at some point I started thinking, ‘I don’t know why people think this guy’s so smart.’ Later, [I understood what he was doing]. This is basically just an act. Essentially, I was being unclear about what I was saying, and I did not fully understand what I was trying to explain to him. He was just drilling deeper and deeper and deeper until I realized, every time, that there was actually something I didn’t have clear in my mind. He really taught me to think deeply about things, and I think that’s something I have not forgotten.”

  TF: This week, try experimenting with saying �
�I don’t understand. Can you explain that to me?” more often. (See Malcolm Gladwell’s mention of his father on page 573.)

  Building a Startup Outside of Silicon Valley

  “It’s pretty amazing how when you’re talking to people [from Silicon Valley at industry events], it really does seem like the average tenure of a person in one of these [startup] companies is like a year and half. . . . Whereas for us [in Pittsburgh], people really don’t leave. Because in terms of startups, we’re not exactly the only game in town—that’s unfair to say—but there aren’t very many games in town.”

  TF: I’ve had successful exits from founders based in every place from Oklahoma and Colorado (Daily Burn) to Ottawa, Canada (Shopify). From a recruiting standpoint, not only is Shopify one of the major go-to tech companies in Eastern Canada, but they also don’t have a lot of attrition. People are settled in Ottawa, and they’re not getting poached by Facebook, Google, Uber. These families don’t want to move to San Francisco, and Shopify therefore doesn’t need to enter a bloodbath of bidding wars.