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Other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sun. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of positive sum. This podcast is for information purposes only and should not be relied upon as securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc. My guest today is Tim Ferris. Tim is a writer, podcaster, and investor. He has written 5 best selling books, an early stage investor in Facebook, Uber, Shopify, and other household names, and is the host of one of the biggest podcasts in the world. He started the Tim Ferris Show as an experiment in April 2014, his deconstructed world class performers ever since. Last year, his show crossed 1,000,000,000 downloads. Together, we explore his podcast and approach to life. We talk about the art of interviewing the business behind his show and what motivates him to keep teaching through his writing and podcast. Please enjoy this great conversation with Tim errors. So, Tim, you're coming up on 10 years, 1,000,000,000 downloads, all sorts of cool, fun accolades, I would love to begin by asking you what has changed the most about what you enjoy about the process of learning from other people by getting to ask them questions. It's a very selfish question. I'm just curious how it's unfolded for you. It's something I think about a lot. What has changed the most in the 1st 10 years of you doing this and maybe extra points for anything that is most surprising about what's changed in the 1st 10 years? Well, I would say there are a number of phase shifts in the last 10 years. It started off as purely an exercise for me to try something fun in 2014 that would also allow me to win even if it failed. What do you mean by that is
Praise a little hell. Monday, he called me up and he said, You got an appointment in Dallas at 11:30 on Wednesday. 2 things I wanna tell you. Don't be late. You got 30 minutes. When the 30 minutes are up, leave and don't swear because I've been swearing like I saw a sailor at this party. So I took 2 kids with me out of a corporate finance department. I say, kids, I was only 33 myself. And we went down to Dallas. The scariest thing was exactly at 11:30, I got into his office and there he was sitting behind a big desk. He admitted it and he could have. Hi, fellas. Come on, O'Ville. Sit over here. I'll have a blue chat. Chat. How are you all doing? I said, We're doing fine, Mr. Perot. I said, This is Roger Green. This is Duclen. So we sit down. He lists the firms that he met with Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, White Weld, Chitter Peabody. Every one of the top firms of Wall Street was there to see him. He talks nonstop. The 29th Goldman says this, Merrill says that, Jitters says that, Whitewell says that, and he says, what do you think of that? I'm looking at it. I got 30 seconds left. I don't miss the proof. I think I'll just take advantage of the time I've got left to say goodbye and I hope you'll see me again sometime. What do you mean? I told Jack High, he told me I had 30 minutes and by my calculations, 30 minutes. Forget that. It's dumb, which thing. And I thought to myself, well, I'm on a pro the 30 minute rule. I might have to go all away. I said, Mr. Perot, that's the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever heard in my life. And he backs me to the back wall. Okay, what do you mean? I said, Mr. Perot, this whole process is fairly simple. You're going to pick somebody who's going to tell you what he thinks you can sell your stock for. And your bet is, can they deliver on that number? I said, it's that simple. I said, oh,
Plus an odd one from either side. That number turns out to be the one that has the most influence on your general health and well-being. So the best predictor of your mental health and well-being, your physical health and well-being, and even how long you're going to live into the future from today is predicted by the number and quality of friendships you have in that layer. The 5 is an average. So if you only have 3, don't panic yet. But because introverts tend to prefer to have fewer people but have stronger friendships. As a result, extroverts tend to prefer slightly more people but have weaker friendships. Those kind of effects. But on average, very much 5. So as I like to say, if you really want to live forever, just make sure you've got 5 friends. And what about the 1.5? That seems like a odd number in the at the end of the cycle. I always used to sort of come out with this joke when I was giving talks, because I actually thought it was a joke, which was, well, just look at these series of circles and how very tight the kind of fractal mathematical structure is. Each layer is 3 times the size of the layer inside. And remember these layers count cumulatively. So the your 150 layer includes the 50 people in the layer inside. It's not an addition. But just look at the regularity of this structuring of these numbers, and surely there's a a layer missing. If you project backwards because we only knew about the 5. We thought the 5 was the smallest number. If you project backwards, there's a number missing. And what is it? Well, it's 1a half. And everybody'd say, how can you have 1a half relationships? The answer is obvious. Think about it. Half the population has one very, very close friend in that circle and the other half of the population has 2. What might the difference be? Well, the answer is gender. It's obvious. And if you want to know which way it goes round, he says jokingly, well, it's men only have 1 in
And operational support, I'm sure we could figure this out. It will give her ownership on day 1. So, my wife basically said in 10 minutes of that conversation, well, as long as you're not gonna be an absent dad or husband, let's go. And that night, I wrote a business plan, gave it to Missy the next day. It was 9 pages long, and I've never done that before in my life. And it was a terrible business plan, but she didn't even read it. She read like the first page of it and just looked at me and said, no. And I was like, don't say no so fast. Just take 48 hours and, like, look this over. Let's have another conversation. She said, I love you and I love Maria, but I'm not gonna do this with you. This is the biggest decision of my life, and you've never done anything like this in your life. I need somebody who's done it before. That's my partner. And I was like, well, don't say no so quickly, but I understand. And I went upstairs. Maria looked at me. She was standing at the end. We had 8 stairs up to our apartment, and she was standing at the door listening. She's like, what are you gonna do? And I said, we're gonna be partners with Missy. And for 4 months, every single night, I came home from Anchorage with something to talk to Missy about on why we should be partners. It was a belief that I had a human that I knew she deserved and it wasn't even like we were saving her. But I just believed so deeply in someone that I was willing to do something that I never thought I could do, which was be an entrepreneur or think anything other than being an employee. Can you talk about the role of the word we've been using when you and I have talked is genius that people have? Because I think the way you've articulated everyone having some form of genius and the ways to chip away and find that thing and then embrace it. I like how you tell this story because this is not an easy transition. We can talk lots more
This episode is brought to you by TEGIS, the only investing research platform built for the investor. With traditional research vendors, the diligence process is slow, fragmented, and expensive. That leaves investors competing on how well they can aggregate data, not on their unique ability to analyze insights and make great investment decisions. Tegus offers an end to end platform with all the data you need to get up to speed on a company or a market, up to the minute financials, customizable models, management and culture checks, and of course, our vast and growing library of expert call transcripts. Tigus is changing the world of expert research. Learn more and get your free trial at tigus.com slash patrick. You may have heard me reference the idea of maniacs on a mission and how much that idea excites me. Well, David Senra is my favorite maniac on one of my favorite missions with his weekly crafting of the founder's podcast. Through studying the lives of legends, he weaves together insights across history to distill ideas that you can use in your work. Founders reveals tried and true tactics battle tested by the world's icons, and has David's infectious energy to accompany them. With well over 300 episodes, your heroes are surely in the lineup, and his recent episode on Oprah is particularly great. Founders is a movement that you don't want to miss. It's part of the Colossus network, and you can find your way to David's great podcast in the show notes. Hello, and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts, and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast
