Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 111

Jedi Mind Tricks: How to Get Loved Ones to Lose Weight

Darya Pino Rose, PhD, and her dad, who transformed himself after years of resistance.

“Families are like fudge: mostly sweet with a few nuts.”

- Anonymous

“Language is a means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.”

- Mark Amidon

Losing fat yourself is one thing. Readers of this blog have lost 100-200 pounds without too much trouble.

Getting your mom or dad to take you seriously? To stop eating white bread or drinking 64-ounce sodas? That can seem impossible.

Loved ones — whether family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, or otherwise — can be sensitive. The people who need help most often won’t accept it, especially from those closest to them.

So what to do?

This post gives a real-world example from Darya Pino Rose, PhD. I’ve known and followed Darya for years. Her PhD is in neuroscience from USCF, and she champions a whole-food-based approach to nutrition that avoids pills and powders. This combination produces fascinating results.

The below story, from her new book Foodist, shows exactly how she transformed her dad’s health without butting heads with him… and how you can do the same for your loved ones.

Do you have any tricks that have worked with your family or friends? Please share in the comments!

Note: For the purposes of this post, a “foodist” is someone who uses real food and real science to lose weight permanently.

Enjoy…

Enter Darya

Eating like a “foodist” does not doom you to being ostracized from your friends and family. This post will teach you how to lightheartedly deflect your critics and gently nudge (but not annoy) those loved ones you hope will adopt better eating habits.

This is tricky business, but it can be done.

How To Win Over Friends and Influence Family

It’s hard to see loved ones suffer as a result of their eating habits. Traditional whole foods have been out of fashion for so long that many of our parents and sometimes even our grandparents are completely unaware of the negative health effects caused by the foods they grew up loving. As they age, however, these habits start to take their toll, and we must watch as their health deteriorates. A medical emergency that brings them face-to-face with reality is sometimes what it takes for them to make changes. Other times even that isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, changing the habits of another person is even more difficult than changing your own. Stubbornness, pride, and ignorance can prevent people from even listening to advice that could save their lives, and for whatever reason age tends to compound these particular traits. Pushing a message that people don’t want to hear can cause them to dig in and fight even harder to preserve their way of life, straining and potentially destroying your relationship with them. When dealing with someone like this, it’s first essential to accept the fact that there may be nothing you can do for him or her. No matter how badly you may desire to help, a person has to want to change and cannot be forced.

But still, change can happen. Despite my close relationship with my father and his enthusiasm about my career path, I didn’t expect him to ever alter the way he ate. My dad had suffered from depression since I was in high school, and his outlook got even worse after my mother passed away in a car accident in 2003. Like most people, he had developed the habit of eating processed and fast foods starting in the early 1990s, and as his depression grew deeper, the effort he put into feeding and taking care of himself waned.

“In general, I did not want to continue living and didn’t think I would. With all the health problems I was having, and especially after your mom died—that was a really hard thing for me to deal with—and I thought it would be better if I was gone too,” he told me.

After a series of serious medical emergencies that nearly took his life on three occasions, I had nearly given up hoping for a turnaround, even though he was only in his fifties. But I continued to love him and share my passion for seasonal food whenever possible.

“You were so understanding, you never put any pressure on me or tried to convince me to change, but you always gave me hope that things would get better, things would be better,” he recalled.

From my perspective he had gone through enough and didn’t need me or anyone else telling him how to live out his life. If he didn’t want to live, I didn’t want to bug him about his blood pressure or eating habits. I just wanted to have as many happy and positive times with him as possible until whatever happened happened, and the last thing I wanted was to strain our relationship unnecessarily. I know my dad, and he is not one to do anything just because someone else, even me, thinks he should. Still my excitement about food and health was genuine, and I knew he had always been a fan of a good meal, so I continued to share what I was learning.

My cooking was the first thing that caught his attention. I made a point whenever visiting home in southern California to stop by the San Francisco farmers market before getting on the plane and bringing back something delicious. On one summer trip I brought home a small bag of padrón peppers, some good olive oil, and a crusty baguette. Padróns are small green peppers that are a common tapas dish in Spain and a seasonal delicacy for foodists in San Francisco. They are incredibly simple to prepare. All you have to do is heat some olive oil in a cast-iron pan and cook the peppers over medium heat until they blister and just start to brown. When they’re done, sprinkle them with some coarse sea salt and eat them with your fingers. Padróns have a deep pepper flavor, but are not usually spicy—except when they are. One out of every ten peppers is incredibly hot, so eating a bowl is a bit like playing Russian roulette with your tongue.

My dad has always been a fan of spicy foods, and I knew that padróns would be right up his alley. At his house I cooked them with a little more olive oil than usual, because it becomes infused with the oil from the peppers and tastes delicious. We used the bread to sop up the extra pepper oil and cool our mouths when we got burned on the spicy ones. My dad loved every bit of it and quietly started paying more attention whenever I mentioned food.

His next great epiphany was beets [ubersimple recipe at the end of this post]. All his life he had hated beets, and consequently I had never eaten them as a child. The first couple of times I tried them, even at nice restaurants, beets tasted a little off to me. Something about their flavor reminded me of dirt, and I could never get past that to enjoy their earthy sweetness. But I continued to sample them when they were available, hoping one day something would click. That day came one sunny afternoon at the house of a friend who was hosting a dinner party. We were having Dungeness crab for dinner, which I was totally excited about, but the main course was a long way off, so she put out a huge pile of roasted beets sprinkled with chèvre cheese and fresh mint as an appetizer.

I was starving, so I started reluctantly picking at the giant pile with my fingers, since I didn’t want to scoop myself a serving of food I didn’t expect to like. I popped the first bite in my mouth and, yeah, it still tasted like beets. But I was hungry, so I tried another, this time with a good portion of mint and cheese on it. After a few chews, it hit me. “Whoa, this is good,” I said to myself. Something about the fresh-tasting mint and the creamy cheese balanced the earthy flavor of the beets and transformed them into something I could appreciate. I proceeded to put a hefty dent in the beet mountain, leaving bright pink stains all over my fingers. Beets had finally made it onto my beloved vegetables list, and I started making my own version of the recipe at home.

Proud of my recent conversion, I told my dad about my beet discovery during our next phone conversation. He replied skeptically, saying that he hated beets and always had. But I knew I was onto something and decided to include the recipe in our next Thanksgiving dinner, just so he could try it for himself. I made plenty of other dishes as well, just in case he really didn’t like the beets, but I followed my friend’s lead and set them out earlier than the rest of the food as an appetizer, knowing that someone with a hungry tummy couldn’t resist trying a bite. It worked.

“When you made those beets I was like, ‘Wow, this is so unbelievable! So different from what I remember,’ ” he recalled.

I was stoked, and my dad became a believer. At almost sixty years old, he developed a new appreciation for vegetables and real food (turns out the beets he grew up eating were always from a can), even the ones he thought he didn’t like.

“It made eating and preparing healthy food much more fascinating,” he explained. “It became exciting to me to see what the possibilities are.”

The beets weren’t enough to change my dad’s habits, but he was starting to make the connection between good food and good health. More important, he was now convinced that vegetables and other healthy foods could taste amazing and that eating them would not be a sacrifice. He also began paying more attention to me and the things I would say and share on Facebook about the connections between food and wellness.

Though he still didn’t care much about his own life or health, he was growing weary of feeling sick and drained all the time, and it was becoming obvious to him that his health (and possibly his diet) was the reason. After living for decades on processed foods, my dad had developed prediabetes and his blood sugar swings were having a terrible impact on his mood and energy levels. He also had dangerously high blood pressure, and in 2006 a mild stroke left him with a speech impediment that deeply troubled and embarrassed him. Worse, the stroke made it nearly impossible for him to play his guitar, the only passion he had left in his life. Though he was able to recover his speech and dexterity after a couple of months, this experience scared him enough to at least start taking medication for his condition and paying more attention to his diet. He may not have cared then if he lived or died, but he knew he didn’t want to live without his music.

Because he’s a good father, my dad had always done his best to keep up with my work ever since I started writing in 2007. He’s seen almost all my rants against processed food and praise for seasonal vegetables, pastured eggs, and wild fish, and nothing had ever convinced him to change the way he eats. Then one day in late July 2011, I got a phone call with the words I never expected to hear.

A few weeks earlier I had released a video on Summer Tomato about salt, explaining how it affects your health and what you need to understand to make smart food decisions. My basic argument was that salt itself is not bad for you. In fact, it is necessary to have some sodium in your diet. Moreover, salt makes food taste better, and I encourage everyone to sprinkle some on their vegetables if it helps them eat more of them. There are three reasons salt is a problem for most Western societies. The first is that we eat way too much of it, which can lead to hypertension. However, a whopping 75 percent of the sodium we eat comes from processed foods.11 Relatively speaking, the salt you add to your own home-cooked food is insignificant.

The second issue is that sodium intake must be balanced by sufficient potassium intake, which comes mainly from vegetables. [Note from Tim: avocados, white beans, and spinach are great options.] That is, the more vegetables you eat, the less dietary sodium matters. Most people don’t eat enough vegetables, so eating a lot of sodium poses a bigger risk for developing high blood pressure than it would in the context of a healthier diet. Third, a high intake of fructose, a common ingredient in processed foods, exacerbates the effects of sodium in the diet. This means that the same amount of salt in your food is more dangerous if there is a lot of fructose around as well. All three of these points lead to the simple conclusion that too many processed foods and too few vegetables are the real causes of hypertension, not the little white shaker sitting on your kitchen table.

On that random day in July, my dad called to tell me that he watched this video, and something about it struck a chord. I remember his words so vividly I can still hear him saying them in my head.

“I watched that video you made about salt, and it was really great,” he began.

“Thanks, Dad,” I replied.

“Yeah, I was watching it, and you made me realize that salt is already inside the processed foods,” he explained.

“That’s right,” I answered, almost chuckling at his excitement about this simple revelation. My brain instantly cued the scene from the movie Zoolander in which Hansel realizes that files are kept in the computer and then throws the machine off a balcony, so he could open it up and find them.

“Well, since the salt is already in there, I stopped eating them,” he continued.

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“I stopped eating the processed foods a couple weeks ago. But I needed something else to eat, and I remembered you always saying I’m supposed to eat vegetables, so I went to the store and bought all of them,” he went on.

“What? What did you buy?” I asked, starting to realize the meaning of his words. Maybe he did throw his processed foods off the balcony.

“I bought all the vegetables. They weren’t very well labeled, so I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting. But I think I got some kale and some chard. And I got some peppers, onions, mushrooms, and all sorts of other weird shit. I took it home and cut it all up—it took an hour there was so much of it—and I made three huge batches of stir-fry. It was beautiful, and so colorful, so I call it my Rainbow Stir-Fry. And it was delicious! I take it to work and eat it every day for breakfast and lunch. I also sauté some fish or turkey meat and eat that. After eating that all day, I’m not usually hungry for dinner.”

Laughing again, this time in disbelief, I asked, “So you’ve been eating nothing but vegetables, fish, and turkey for two weeks?”

“Yeah, and I love it! And I’ve had to poke two new holes in my belt. I think I’ll need to get new pants soon.”

To say this was hard to believe is beyond an understatement. Seemingly overnight, my dad, who had nearly given up on his own life, had completely overhauled his eating habits and loved everything about it. At the time I didn’t let myself dwell too long on what this could mean. It was still too new, and too unbelievable. But deep down I knew what was at stake if he was serious: it meant he might make it. It meant he might be around to meet his future grandkids, my future children.

As I hoped, my dad’s change was real and permanent. In just two months he was down twenty-five pounds. I know this because he was so impressed by his own transformation that he went and bought himself a scale to track his progress. It wasn’t out of vanity—the man doesn’t have a full-length mirror in his entire house—but out of curiosity. He wanted to have something tangible to look at and know that what he was doing was making a difference.

“In the beginning I didn’t know I was losing weight because I didn’t weigh myself, but I kept having to put new holes in my belt, and one day there were so many folds in my pants. I wore a size 36, so I tried a 34, and goddamn those were too big! I couldn’t believe I was a size 32—I was so proud of myself.”

Shortly after that he developed an uncontrollable urge to start exercising.

“It only took about two to three weeks of me eating like that every day to feel a complete difference in my body, in the way I felt. It all starts adding together, it has an effect on your whole life,” he explained. “The exercise came along when the weight started melting off. It was just dropping off me. And I felt like I wanted to stretch and move again. I didn’t want to feel weak anymore,” he said.

For over five years he had been using a cane to walk. His knee had been severely weakened from a staph infection, which required surgery that left a massive amount of scar tissue. But when he started losing weight, it was easier for him to move around, and he started using the cane less and less. He started taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work, spent more time walking with his dogs, and bought some used exercise equipment for his house—some dumbbells and an ab roller wheel. Over a year later he is down fifty pounds and doesn’t use a cane at all.

“Now I do a hundred ab rolls every day,” he told me. (If you’ve ever tried these you know how hard they are. I can only do about thirty, and then I’m sore for days). “I remember when I hit eighty the first time I couldn’t believe it. It’s really good because when things don’t go well at work one day, or I have problems with the dogs, I know I did my hundred rolls. I have at least that one thing I’m proud of. It’s a lifestyle that I find very delightful,” he gushed.

As his eating habits and body transformed, so did his outlook on life. “I thought, ‘Well shit, if I’m going to live and see my kids grow up, I don’t want to be in a wheelchair. I better be fit enough to do stuff on this planet,’ ” he explained.

When I asked him what he thought led to his change, he had a hard time putting his finger on it.

He said, “For me it took having the wake-up call of the health issue. Then somewhere in me I decided I really didn’t want to die. I don’t know exactly when it was, but it was definitely associated with you. I always felt better after speaking to you. It wasn’t for me or because of me, but your belief that things could be better.”

My dad’s healthstyle has evolved since he first started on his journey. Eventually he became tired of eating his Rainbow Stir-Fry day in and day out.

“At first,” he explained, “it was a bit like cooking dinner and making a piece of art you could eat. Then after about six months it started being too much of a hassle and started getting old. But that didn’t mean I went back to my old habits.”

He now shops and cooks more frequently, making smaller batches of vegetables and fish that he can whip up quickly in the morning before work. “I mix it up with different sauces, Chinese or Turkish, and I rotate and shop at different places for my vegetables. I found a little produce place by my house now that has better vegetables than my grocery store. I never get tired of this stuff.”

Though he knows his dishes and strategies will continue to change as he gets better at cooking and learns to use new vegetables, he isn’t worried about slipping back into his former habits.

“I’ve gone long enough now that I know in my heart that I’ll never go back to my old way of eating, because I don’t find any joy in it. I still go get sushi or Mexican food occasionally, but I don’t want to do it every day. I’m happy and comfortable with how I’m doing it now.”

My video on salt was clearly a catalyst for my dad’s turnaround, but it would have been impossible for it to have had the impact it did without the years of education and encouragement from me that came before it. Just as important is that he was able to make the adjustments at his own pace, without pressure from anyone to do it a certain way.

“I was able to read on Summer Tomato without interacting with you all the time, and see the reasons for doing all this stuff. Then I had the opportunity and knowledge, which I got because of you, and I stumbled my way through it until I got my own style. Once I made up my mind, I’m pretty hard to keep down. I went whole hog,” he explained.

I asked him if he had any advice for people in the same situation that I was in, wanting to help a loved one make healthier choices.

“As long as they can be patient and present things in a way that’s easy to understand. Let your family see how you eat, read a little, and get some inspiration. Everyone has to find their own path, what works for them,” he advised.

As for my dad, he’s just happy it clicked for him when it did.

“I’m feeling better now than I have in a really, really long time. I’m very confident about the future,” he said.

“So am I.” I smiled.

Beating Beet Aversions

If my dad can learn to like beets at the age of fifty-five, anyone can. This is the recipe that convinced him (and me a year earlier) that the humble beet can be as delicious and elegant as any exotic vegetable.

This is the perfect dish for the beet skeptic and beet lover alike, and it hardly requires any cooking skills. If you are still worried you will not like the flavor of beets, look for the milder and less messy golden or pink-and-white-striped cioggia beets. Whenever possible I like to use a few different colors to mix it up, but if all you have are the common red garden beets they work beautifully on their own.

To begin you must eliminate all thoughts of substituting canned beets for fresh. Fresh roasted beets have a rich, sweet, earthy flavor that is completely unlike that of the flaccid purple slivers that come in a can. You will also need fresh mint leaves. Most grocery stores carry them; ask if you can’t find them. Chèvre is a soft goat cheese that a close friend of mine describes as “like cream cheese only better.” A little bit goes a very long way, so I always buy the smallest amount possible (it usually costs around $3).

Be careful not to add the cheese directly to hot beets or it will melt and form an unattractive pink slime. It still tastes good, but it’s better to avoid this problem by cooling the beets beforehand. An hour in the refrigerator works well, but if you are in a hurry you can get away with ten to fifteen minutes in the freezer. This dish is very easy to scale for large batches, making it ideal for parties and potlucks.

Roasted Beets with Fresh Mint and Chèvre

Serves 2 to 3

1 bunch of beets (3 large), any variety

1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup fresh mint leaves, loosely packed

¼ ounce chèvre

Sea salt or kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 375?F. If the leaves are still on the beets, twist them off, leaving enough stem to use as a handle for peeling. (If the beet greens are still fresh and springy, I recommend cleaning them and cooking them up with some onions and garlic—sauté them like spinach. Beet greens are so full of potassium that they taste naturally salty, so be careful with your seasoning, because they are easy to oversalt.)

Peel the beets using a vegetable peeler and chop them evenly into ¾-to-1-inch cubes. Keep in mind that the larger the

pieces, the longer they will take to cook. Discard stems.

Add the olive oil to the beets and toss to coat. Sprinkle the beets with salt and place in a single layer in a large Pyrex baking pan. Place the pan in the oven on the middle rack and roast until the beets are tender and have a glazed-like appearance, stirring every 8 to 10 minutes. Roasting takes approximately 35 minutes.

When the beets are finished roasting, transfer them to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator. Chill for at least 30 minutes, but 45 to 60 minutes is preferable.

Five minutes before the beets are done chilling, stack the mint leaves on top of each other and chiffonade them by rolling them lengthwise like a cigarette and slicing them into thin ribbons. For very large leaves I like to cut the ribbons in half once by making a single cut through the middle of the pile along the vein of the leaves. Discard the stems.

Using a fork, crumble a small amount of the chèvre into a small bowl or plate and set it aside. When the beets are ready, sprinkle the mint onto the beets and stir, reserving a few ribbons for garnish. Adjust salt to taste. Transfer the minted beets to a serving bowl and sprinkle with the chèvre and remaining mint. Serve immediately.

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Click here to learn more about Darya’s book Foodist.

Have you been able to help loved ones quit bad behaviors or adopt healthy ones? Please share your stories and recommendations in the comments!

Case Studies: How to Build Online Businesses That Gross $250,000+ Per Month

Debbie Sterling’s GoldieBlox is now grossing $300,000+ per month.

My specialty is modeling success. I analyze what works and ask: what recipe can I find that others can use?

In this post, we’ll look at five successful online businesses. Some of them (e.g. GoldieBlox) are now grossing $300,000+ per month…and it’s the founder’s first company! One (Fresh-Tops) has gone from 1 to 20 employees in six months. Some of the other stats are even more impressive.

Out of more than 10,000 contestants in the 2012 Shopify Build-a-Business Competition, these are the five businesses that sold the most in completely different categories:

Design, Art and Home

Gadgets and Electronics

Fashion and Apparel

Canadian [Because Shopify is based in Canada. Go Canucks!]

Everything Else

What do they have in common? And what can you replicate on your own?

For both questions, the answer is: more than you think.

The highest monthly sales by a contestant in the FIRST two months of starting, excluding any pre-existing businesses, was $196,811. How would that change your life?

Without further ado, let’s analyze these five rock stars, looking at what they did right and, just as important, what they did wrong…

5 CASE STUDIES
Electronics & Gadgets Category Winner: GameKlip

Who are you and what is your Shopify store?

Ryan French, Creator of GameKlip

Describe your product in 1-3 sentences.

The GameKlip is a device that attaches your Android phone to a DualShock3 controller, normally used for the PlayStation3. This allows you to use a real controller to play games on your smartphone. It opens the Android platform up to more than just “casual” gaming with touch screen controls, and really gives you a full console experience at a fraction of the cost.

How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

I was frustrated with the controls on my smartphone. Touchscreen controls worked okay for simple games, but anything more complex was impossible. I made a bracket to hold my phone onto my controller, and realized other people might want one too.

I didn’t reject any other product ideas. I set out looking for a solution to a problem I had, instead of looking for a product to sell. Once I had my solution, the GameKlip, I focused on finding a way to share it with others.

What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

The first a-ha moment was when I snapped my phone onto my controller for the first time. I found myself playing games for hours, and really enjoying the experience. I stayed up all night bending plastic and trying out different shapes until I arrived at a design I thought was efficient and presentable.

The second a-ha moment was when I posted a video of my prototype and started pre-orders. I realized there actually was a demand for my creation. I used the pre-orders to fund my first batch of plastic.

The third a-ha moment came when I realized that I couldn’t continue hand-making the GameKlip forever. I spent all my money on a mold so I didn’t have to make the GameKlip by hand anymore. I couldn’t afford a mold for every phone, so I cut the product line down to just two versions, a model for the Galaxy S3, and a universal solution. The community met the new models with open arms and demand increased immensely.

My final a-ha moment was when I could finally contract my assembly process. I was able to use some of the funds generated from the new molded version to contract out an assembly line. Now that my production process was scalable beyond the hours I could put in myself, the GameKlip was finally ready for retail distribution.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time / money?

About half of my time was spent struggling with my spreadsheets and dealing with the post office, instead of focusing on my product, so I wish I found solutions to those earlier.

It’s easy to say that I should have streamlined my manufacturing earlier, but each step along the way was a learning experience. If I had jumped into contract manufacturing and assembly earlier, it’s very possible that I would have taken on too much. If I had unlimited units to sell, with no ecommerce platform to sell them on, it would have been a disaster.

Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

Keep things local. To find a manufacturer, I started with a simple Google search. I found that there was an injection molding company right across the street from one of the restaurants I frequent, but unfortunately their machines were all booked. Even though they weren’t able to take on my project, I was able to use their 3d printer for my prototypes, and they pointed me in the right direction for finding another company that could produce the part.

If you’re just starting out, I’d suggest doing some local searches and talking to as many people as possible. I started by calling a local shop that supplied plastic sheets for home projects. I described my idea, and asked if they knew anyone in the area that could help me make it happen. I found that most people were more than happy to spend a few minutes on the phone to help.

Try searching for a “rapid prototyping” shop in your area. They’ll be able to help make some physical prototypes of your product, and most will have connections with companies that can handle the manufacturing when you’re ready.

When I did get all my manufacturing processes figured out, I was really glad that I kept everything as local as possible. The GameKlip and packaging are made in the USA. It costs a little more to manufacture things here instead of overseas, but the added convenience of being able to drive over and talk to people is incredibly valuable. The packaging is printed, and the units assembled, about half an hour away from my apartment.

As for marketing, I approached that aspect of the company a little differently than most. Instead of making a traditional advertisement, I simply sat down and recorded myself showing the product and explaining what you could do with it. I think it’s important to let the product speak for itself. Everything exploded organically after that.

Any PR wins? Media, well-known users, or company partnerships, etc? How did they happen?

I was an active member on Reddit, and Android forums like XDA Developers, long before I started GameKlip. When I did launch my product, the members of both of those communities definitely helped me spread the word. I couldn’t have done it without them.

The GameKlip has been featured on Gizmodo, The Verge, The Fancy, ABC News, PC World, CNET, Phandroid, Android Authority, Ask Men, as well as many other blogs around the world.

I didn’t make any pitches or hire a marketing firm to get these mentions, they all picked up on my story on their own. In my opinion, having interesting photos of your product is crucial! I made sure I had a somewhat large selection of quality photos available, to make it as easy as possible for writers to feature my story. If I had to do it over again, I would have gone a step further and created a press kit ahead of time. That way it would have been even easier for blogs to pick up on my story.

What software/tools and resources, mentors or groups did you find useful for growing, if any?

The most useful tool to me was Google search. For example, to learn more about international shipping, I simply searched “best way to ship a package overseas” and found that lots of people post on forums with great information. The amount of information stored on forums is incredible!

Software wise, ShipStation is an app which allowed me to automatically pull orders from my online store and create shipping labels. Before I found this I was copying and pasting addresses into the USPS website manually. Now I click one button and the invoices come out of one printer and the shipping labels come out of another. The order processing efficiency still amazes me every morning!

If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Having a real shipping system and the hardware to back it up (a label printer), would have helped a lot. My two most prized possessions at this point are a shipping label printer and an automatic tape dispenser. When I first started I was running sticker paper through my home printer, cutting the labels out with scissors, and using tape from my local office supply store. I managed to ship over a thousand packages this way, but I could have saved a huge amount of time and money if I adopted a better system earlier.

Any other advice to people starting their first online businesses?

Don’t feel like you need to know everything, or that everything has to be perfect before you start. I knew nothing about running a business, had no idea how to have something manufactured, and had no idea how to ship a package overseas. I’ve now shipped thousands of units to over 80 countries worldwide. It won’t be easy, there’ll be many points where you feel like giving up, but it’s worth it.

What’s next?

I am still pushing forward at full speed. I hope to have the GameKlip on store shelves around the world.

Design, Art & Home Category Winner: GoldieBlox

Who are you and what is your Shopify store?

Debra Sterling, Founder of GoldieBlox

Describe your product in 1-3 sentences.

GoldieBlox is a book series and construction toy starring Goldie, the girl engineer. Throughout Goldie’s adventures, she encounters problems she needs to solve by building simple machines. As kids read along, they get to build along with Goldie, learning basic engineering principles with each story.

How much revenue is your company currently generating per month (on average)?

Over 300K per month.

To get to this revenue number, how long did it take after the idea struck?

About 6 months.

How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

When I first started, a lot of advisors were telling me to ditch the idea of a toy entirely and just do an app. I decided to do a physical toy (in addition to an app, which we are launching around x-mas this year) because I felt that the tactile experience of building things was a better way to introduce mechanical engineering principles. Screen play alone just doesn’t do it justice.

My earliest toy sketches were girly Legos… curved shapes, tiny decorative pieces, girly themes like princess castles and stuff (a lot like the Lego Friends line of girl construction toys that just launched, actually). I ditched this idea because I felt like it was reinforcing all the same old gender stereotypes. I wanted to push the envelope and develop an idea that didn’t rely on those stereotypes to engage girls. I knew that little girls are more than just princesses and that I could make something different and empowering that they’d fall in love with.

What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

My big ‘a-ha’ moment came when I realized I needed to incorporate a book into the game element. I did extensive research into the differences between the learning styles of boys and girls. I met with neuroscientists and teachers, and I spent a lot of time playing with kids. I asked kids to bring me their favorite toy. Girls would always bring me a book. Boys would bring me a toy. After the fifth girl brought me a book, I decided I needed to blend the construction components of my boardgame with a story. This was a huge ‘a-ha’ moment for me because it significantly changed the direction of my toy.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time / money?

My biggest waste of money so far was when I first hired a law firm. I met with a few different law firms and I felt really, really good about one with whom I really connected. I liked the lawyer, but he was expensive and because I had limited capital, I hired a cheaper law firm I didn’t like as much. I almost instantly regretted my choice. I eventually had to leave the cheaper law firm and went with my original choice. The cheaper firm made me pay money upfront, while the one I eventually went with was willing to defer payment until I was in a stronger financial position. I wasted a lot of money by making the wrong choice.

Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

1. Prototype and test everything! It’s important to prototype everything beforehand. Then test the prototypes on your target demographic. Long before I approached a manufacturer, I designed the toy myself in my living room. I made crude working prototypes using ribbon, clay, wooden dowels, thread spools, Velcro and pegboard from the hardware store. I wrote and illustrated a book where Goldie built a belt drive to spin her friends, and mimicked the action in the book with the physical pieces.

I probably spent a total of $250 on the prototypes. I tested everything on children around the Bay Area – I went to over 40 homes and 3 schools. I observed girls and boys, ages 4-12, interacting with the game. Every time I observed a child and/or parent playing with it, I learned a new insight, which I incorporated into the next version. I quickly iterated and improved the design until it rocked.

2. Be prepared for the manufacturing part to take a long time. The whole process of prototyping and manufacturing is huge. Example: I sketched out detailed drawings and dimensions for each piece of the board game, but I needed the drawings in CAD. One afternoon, I snuck into an Industrial Designers Society of America “happy hour” to try and find an industrial designer who could assist me. I met a really talented engineer there who was passionate about my mission and agreed to help. Then, I needed the prototypes to be printed, so we used 3D printing technology to take them to the next level. I hired a professional sculptor to create the character figurines to match my drawings. I sent everything to the factory, and they made a manufacturer’s sample. Once I approved the sample, we began the tooling process, which is timely and expensive. It took several months of back-and-forth revisions of the plastic parts until the tolerances were perfect. This resulted in a lot of hair pulling. We are still tweaking the molds. Nevertheless, we finally hit the green light and went into production on a first run of 40,000 toys to fulfill our pre-orders from Kickstarter and our website. Seriously, you can’t underestimate the time that manufacturing takes.

3. Decide if you’re an entrepreneur or an inventor. When I started out I was incredibly secretive because I didn’t want anyone to steal my idea. But then a friend asked me if I wanted to be an inventor or an entrepreneur. An inventor works by themselves in a lab, but an entrepreneur needs to inspire others to lend their expertise. I realized that I needed help. I went out and found the best mentors in the fields I was working in and asked for their help. I had to be specific about what I needed and asked them exactly what I wanted them to do. I was amazed at how much help I got! I saved so much time and money by getting help from someone who had been in the toy business for 30 years.

4. Create an authentic and emotional story behind your product. When it comes to my marketing strategy, I am a brand-driven person and I believe that the most important thing is creating an authentic and emotional story and brand. We’re more than a product, we’re a social mission and I like to give the product a face and personality (mine!) For example, our decision to launch on Kickstarter wasn’t about raising funds. We used it as a platform for sharing our story in a video format. Because then it wasn’t: “Hey! Here’s this toy for girls,” it was: “Hey, here’s this female engineer who is trying to do something about a problem in our society.”

5. Plan your Kickstarter exit strategy. We started on Kickstarter, but a lot of these products just fizzle out when their campaign has ended. We started our Shopify store ahead of time so that people who missed the Kickstarter campaign could still participate. My online store was my saving grace because my video went viral and my shop was up and running to capitalize on the publicity. My online store far exceeded the sales I had made on Kickstarter.

Any PR wins? Media, well-known users, or company partnerships, etc? How did they happen?

Our first PR win happened very early, in fact months before we even launched. I was still in the earliest prototyping stages, but I created a blog to share my stories of building GoldieBlox with friends and family. A friend-of-a-friend’s sister found the blog, she was a writer for The Atlantic. Another friend-of-friend found the blog, who happened to be a writer for TechCrunch. I set up phone interviews with both of them and gave them the “exclusive story.” They both posted wonderful pieces about GoldieBlox the day we launched, which created a ton of buzz.

Another win was that we got Tim Schafer (cult video game designer / Kickstarter celebrity) to make a cameo in our Kickstarter video with his 4-year-old daughter. He then tweeted the link to his 90,000 Kickstarter backers. I met Tim through my banker. When I told my banker I was about to go up on Kickstarter, he made the introduction to Tim’s colleague, Justin, who had just joined on board at DoubleFine Productions (they had raised over $3 million dollars on Kickstarter). I arranged a meeting to learn how they’d done it and to get advice. I hung around there a couple times, until I ultimately persuaded Tim to appear in our video.

When we launched on Kickstarter, we had a lot of influential people in tech backing our project: Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook), Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Alexis Ohanian (Founder of Reddit), Mayim Bialik (Actress, Big Bang Theory), the list goes on.

We also got written up in Forbes, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Wired, TIME, Ms. Magazine, The Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury News, interviewed on BBC world radio, and NPR. We didn’t have a PR agency or anything. These reporters simply emailed into “info@goldieblox.com” and we set up the interviews.

But our biggest PR win to date was on November 14, 2012, we call it “G Day.” Eduardo Jackson from upworthy.com posted our Kickstarter video about a month after the campaign had ended. It instantly went viral. In just a couple days, the video spiked to almost a million views. There were so many orders, we literally sold out of our first shipment and had to push back the delivery date.

What software/tools and resources, mentors or groups did you find useful for growing, if any?

StartingBloc, a social entrepreneurship fellowship program, was by far the biggest game-changer for GoldieBlox.

Pacific Community Ventures, connected us with a pro-bono advisor, Sam Allen (founder of ScanCafe) who has been instrumental to our business.

I got to pitch GoldieBlox on the main stage at SOCAP and met really great contacts in the social innovation space.

The books “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg and “Start Something That Matters” by Blake MyCoskie both inspired me.

And my mentors: Terry Langston (founder, Pictionary), Brendan Boyle (head of toys, IDEO), Bob Lally (co-founder, Leapfrog), Jake Bronstein (founder, BuckyBalls), and Clara Shih (founder, Hearsay Social) played a huge role in helping me learn about the toy business.

If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

I would ask for help from the start. Also, in the beginning I thought I had to make a range of products, but this spread my team too thin and it wasn’t very realistic. I had this idea that if you are a startup, you have to work around the clock until you just about kill yourself. If I had to do it over again, I would only work on one thing at a time.

What’s next?

This month we’re launching into retail stores. And we’re also very busy developing new products to add to the line.

Fashion & Apparel Category Winner: Fresh-Tops

Who are you and what is your Shopify store?

Nella Chunky, Founder of Fresh-Tops

Describe your product in 1-3 sentences.

Fresh-Tops is high end fashion for hipster trendy teenage females. Our products are inspired by pop culture with a girly twist. We sell everything from leggings, accessories, crop tops, sweaters and anything that our customers requests that makes sense.

How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

I experimented with a bunch of brands until we found one that really worked. I ended up with my current brand by being inspired by pop culture, and a love for bright colors and creating fun, cute little things. I believe that to be successful in fashion, you have to stay fresh, and that’s where the name Fresh-Tops came from.

What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

My biggest tipping point was realizing how important social media is to the growth of my company. Being able to interact with our customers 24/7 on various social media platforms has been really, really important.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time / money?

My biggest mistake was with packaging. When I first created Fresh-Tops I was convinced that fancy packaging and the experience of our customers opening our products would increase sales. Nope. Its better to focus on fast delivery and high quality products rather than packaging, which only eat out on your profits. Once our brand became more established it made more sense to invest in pretty packaging.

Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

1. Network. Getting to know people in my industry played a huge role in developing my company. We found all our manufacturers through referrals from personal relationships. Get involved with the market of your specific products. If you’re in the fashion industry go to every fashion event you can.

2. You can’t ignore social media. Our marketing strategy is completely focused on our social media. We use Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter to share pictures of our clothing. Then our fans share those pictures with their audiences. This social influence is very powerful. People tend to shop where their friends shop and they feel left out if they’re not involved.

3. Secure your brand name. We keep our ears open for the next popular network, and we’ll then immediately establish accounts. It’s important to do this for two reasons. First, to secure your brand name before someone else gets. Second, you want to be in these social circles in case they catch buzz. For example, there is a lot of buzz around Keek right now. It’s a social site which allows users to post videos no more than 30 seconds long. We don’t know how we’re going to use this as a marketing tool yet, but at least we have reserved our company user name before anybody else could.

Any PR wins? Media, well-known users, or company partnerships, etc? How did they happen?

No company partnerships as of yet but we are looking to partner with a PR firm and a very well known web development company this year.

What software/tools and resources, mentors or groups did you find useful for growing, if any?

We don’t really use any fancy software or tools. You’d be surprised how much you can do with very little integrated software. A couple of my mentors who I study, and who inspire me are Kimora Lee Simmons and Tony Hseish.

Conference wise, learnt a lot from Fashion Week and Stitch Trade Show in Las Vegas.

If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Our biggest challenges so far have been holiday seasons. During the holiday season, it was tough to keep up with increased demand, so I would have ensured our stock count was big enough.

Any other advice to people starting their first online businesses?

I would really suggest that if you are starting your own business, it’s very important to listen to your customers and use their input to drive the growth of your business. We relied on email requests and suggestions from our social media fans when deciding how to move forward and what items to add to our line, and it worked really well.

The second thing I would say is just do it. Keep experimenting and keep trying different things and different brands until you find something that works. Be versatile and flexible and you’ll learn and grow as you go along. Stick to doing a few things really well and don’t overextend yourself.

What’s next?

This spring we are starting a new line of shorts which are fun and colorful.

Canadian Category Winner: Canadian Icons

Who are you and what is your Shopify store?

Aron Slipacoff, Founder of Canadian Icons

Describe your business in 1-3 sentences.

Canadian Icons is an online museum and store that shares stories about iconic Canadian brands like Canada Goose and Manitobah Mukluks alongside rare objects from Canada’s past. We ship every order overnight for free – and sometimes even faster than that. Our aim was to make our website a place where you can always encounter an inspiring collection of Canadian treasures and find out about organizations working to produce, preserve and protect them.

How did you decide on your product(s)? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

We wanted to offer items with incredibly strong connections to Canada’s past. If it was something that really resonated with what could be considered to be truly ‘Canadian,’ and it was something iconic, the decision wasn’t really ours to make—the items and the stories behind them would just speak loud and clear.

The items in the Canadian Icons collection are as relevant now as they were 50 years ago, and they will be just as relevant 50 years from now. And, of course, everything had to be made in Canada.

What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

The only real tipping point was when the media began talking about our unique concept of combining storytelling with online sales.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time / money?

We spent a lot of time early on pursuing a hard copy version of the Canadian Icons collection. We wanted to make a book that could live in the physical world but the web proved to be a much better medium to tell the stories and conduct business at the same time.

Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

It’s important to learn where you can add value and how you can stand out amongst your competition. We quickly learned that customer service was the way we could really provide value. We saw opportunity to fill a gap with our Canada Goose jackets in particular because our competitors weren’t great on service because the demand for these products is so huge. So we decided to offer the best possible service to our customers. This meant overnight shipping in Canada and 90 minute delivery within 50km of our office. We also decided to offer a full return policy, no questions asked and no postage required. Risky, but ultimately worth it.

Any PR wins? Media, well-known users, or company partnerships, etc? How did they happen?

PR wins: Our PR approach for Canadian Icons was determined right up front, we wanted high quality links for Google juice, and we wanted brand mentions in good publications to help drive traffic and support our reputation. We hired a firm to help with PR and have received lots of positive media mentions in Canada.

Partnerships: First, I developed great historical content. I wrote stories about Canadian icons such as the canoe, the snowshoe, and the Group of Seven. I began to curate a collection of high quality content. Then, I approached national cultural organizations such as the Museum of Civilization and got them on board.

Once I had these great partners and stories in place, I presented an idea to some iconic brands, suggesting that Canadian Icons would be the most authentic Canadian place online to tell their brand stories and offer iconic Canadian products in a new way.

For brands like Canada Goose and Manitobah Mukluks, it was clear early on that they “got it.” Both of these companies take great pride in their product’s deep and unique connection to Canada.

What one thing (knowledge, skill, tool, etc.) would have saved you the most headache if you had it when you just got started?

There really weren’t any headaches. I had a lot of experience in Canadiana, in writing, marketing and PR, and I actually enjoy cold-calling and developing strategic partnerships and building relationships.

The hardest part, for me, was building the business online – the actual coding and backend – but that really wasn’t that difficult.

Any other advice to people starting their first online businesses?

Build it and they will not come! You need to put a lot of work into PR. Get your name out there, get featured in the press, get backlinks. Getting in the media really helped people to get to know us as well, but the links that the media mentions gave us really improved our SEO ranking.

What’s next?

We are going to continue to strive to provide Canadian products delivered in a manner never before seen in Canada, stories and world-class service you can only really get right here at home!

Everything Else Category Winner: SkinnyMe Tea

Who are you and what is your Shopify store?

Gretta Van Riel, Founder of SkinnyMe Tea

Describe your product in 1-3 sentences.

SkinnyMe Tea is an all-natural detox and weight loss program designed to provide fast results and kickstart a healthier you. SkinnyMe Tea is formulated with all-natural, high-potency ingredients rich in antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fibre. The natural ingredients in SkinnyMe Tea aim to cleanse and detoxify, increase metabolism, assist in the digestion of food, suppress appetite and much more.

How much revenue is your company currently generating per month (on average)?

Over 600K per month.

To get to this revenue number, how long did it take after the idea struck?

It took around 9 months after we launched to reach this revenue; however, as we’re still a very young company (we turn 1 next month) our revenue is still increasing.

How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

I had a dream about “teatox” one night which gave me the inspiration for the name. When I woke up, I knew that I had a great idea and I started building my business literally the same day. While I have experimented with various ways to package and sell the product, my vision for the product has been the same from the start.

What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

The biggest tipping point is when our revenue from one week was above my yearly wage at my previous job. That’s when it really hit home. I get so excited when we meet targets we never even considered possible when just getting started. I guess it’s time we start setting more challenging goals.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time / money?

Our biggest mistake was underestimating our rate of growth. We were constantly finding ourselves catching up. Apart from being quite stressful, this meant we had less time to look at the bigger picture and had no time for planning and creating strategies about the new directions our business should be going. That was a big mistake, being able to strategize high-level direction is really important for long-term growth.

Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

1. Make sure you do your research and know which certifications you need. In Australia it’s important to find a manufacturer with TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approval which isn’t always very common for tea manufacturers because tea isn’t often classified as a therapeutic good per say. That was a challenge in itself.

2. Make sure you will be able to scale your business to keep up with increasing demand. When you can afford it, be overstocked rather than under-stocked. In today’s push-button society everybody wants everything yesterday.

3. Social media can work both ways, it drives discussion but not always in the direction you intended. Be ready to deal with negativity, and listen to your customer’s feedback… sometimes that’s more important than the numbers game and driving sales.

4. Take a personal approach to social media. Your overall message should target your key demographic, but your responses should always target the individual.

Any PR wins? Media, well-known users, or company partnerships, etc? How did they happen?

We have a lot of very well known customers but of course for their privacy we cannot reveal who they are. No significant PR or media wins and no company partnerships, we have tried to stay quite low key while getting started.

What software/tools and resources, mentors or groups did you find useful for growing, if any?

We almost exclusively used social media to grow our brand. We found Instagram to be the best tool for us, we now have over 180K followers on Instagram! With social media we are able to harness the broader messages surrounding health and wellbeing and tie them into our marketing. We don’t just talk about the product, we talk about everything in the health industry and emphasis our product as a part of a healthy lifestyle, not a ‘just another diet’ per se.

If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

I would have given us more time to plan things out. If I had anticipated the incredible rate of growth we would be enjoying, I would have embraced it and planned accordingly rather than considering it some sort of fluke that would pass.

What one thing (knowledge, skill, tool, etc.) would have saved you the most headache if you had it when you just got started?

With so many websites around now, it’s really important to be able to give your website an individual look and feel. You should do something to stand out. For example with the ‘Happy Ending’ Shopify app we now add a personal message that says “You’re Amazing!” at the end of checkout. Although it’s a small thing, it’s a nice personal touch which our customers have responded really well to.

Any other advice to people starting their first online businesses?

Just do it! Believe in yourself and your vision. Everyone has an idea, turn your dreams into plans before somebody else does!

What’s next?

We’re working on lots of innovative new products and the worldwide distribution of our existing products. We’re really excited for what’s to come.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Thinking of giving it a shot yourself? You don’t need to go it alone.

Check out Shopify’s “Build-A-Business” competition forums, which include all of the questions and answers from the 2012 competition that the above 5 companies won. The forums cover almost every topic imaginable.

Also check out the “Build-A-Business” mentor lesson videos featuring Tim Ferriss (that’s me), Daymond John, Eric Ries, and Tina Roth Eisenberg.

What other questions or topics would you like explored? Please let me know in the comments.

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ODDS AND ENDS ELSEWHERE: $10,000 MEMORY CHALLENGE RESULTS

Here’s another example of a success “recipe”…

The biggest memory competition ever held now has a winner! The competition was co-created by me and Grand Master of Memory Ed Cooke, then announced on this blog — it challenged “ordinary” people to learn to memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute.

Irina Zayats, a 24 year-old Ukrainian woman, showed just how quickly a brain can be trained. Miss Zayats had no previous experience using memory techniques, but she learned to perform the gold standard of memory skills (memorizing a shuffled deck of cards) in just five days. In doing so, she won $10,000 and, to her surprise, a job offer from Memrise, the learning platform that ran the competition.

Keep in mind that the American record for this feat was, until recently, 1 minute 40 seconds. And those were trained competitors!

So, how did Irina do it? Here’s the full blog post, and an incredible video of her performance is below:

Announcements: Live Q&A Today, $10,000 Memory Challenge, Etc.

Hi All,

This post is simply a few time-sensitive announcements. More juicy content (really fun stuff) coming in the next post.

LIVE AND FREE Q&A TODAY! – 2 HOURS LONG, ASK ME ANYTHING

I’m doing a live two-hour Q&A session today — please join me!

Just go to this Facebook page, click “Like”, and ask me whatever you like. Here are the details:

Date: Today, April 22, Monday

Time: 4:30-6:30 PM EST (1:30-3:30 PM PST)

Where: This Facebook page



$10,000 MEMORY CHALLENGE RESULTS

The biggest memory competition ever held now has a winner. Co-created by me and Grand Master of Memory Ed Cooke, then announced on this blog, it challenged “ordinary” people to learn to memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute.

Irina Zayats, a 24 year-old Ukrainian woman, showed just how quickly a brain can be trained. Miss Zayats had no previous experience using memory techniques, but she learned to perform the gold standard of memory skills (memorizing a shuffled deck of cards) in just five days. In doing so, she won $10,000 and, to her surprise, a job offer from Memrise, the learning platform that ran the competition.

How did she do it? Here’s the full blog post, and an incredible video of her performance is below:

How to Create a Viral Book Trailer (or Get 1,000,000 Views for Almost Anything)

How do you create a viral video?

I am asked this quite a lot. I’ve been asked by authors, TV producers, and first-time Kickstarter entrepreneurs. In my experience, the answers are the same for all of them.

In this post, I’ll deconstruct one example: The 4-Hour Chef (4HC) book trailer, which is now the most-viewed non-fiction book trailer of all time. Roughly 1.5 million views and counting.

Before we dig in…

First, let’s make a distinction: creating a “viral” video is not the same a creating a “popular” video, but both can be valuable.

If you use ads to drive 1,000,000+ views, a video is not viral; it is popular. If your views come from organic sharing (or incentivized sharing like DropBox), it can be considered viral.

This post is also intended as a companion to my post, Behind the Scenes: How to Make a Movie Trailer for Your Product (or Book), which goes into equipment, planning, and (tons of) other details that I’ve omitted here.

For later — below are resources that will save you a TON of time and tail-chasing…

Feel free to skip the box for now if you like:

VIRALITY RESOURCES:

YouTube Channel stats – http://vidstatsx.com/

Viral video chart – http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/all

Trending videos – http://www.youtube.com/trendsdashboard

Good blog posts on the topic, probably in this order:

-http://gawker.com/5912376/

-http://www.socialh.com/a-little-bit-of-math-measuring-virality/

-http://tinyurl.com/bnowj55

Outlets that cover trends and tools in online video well:

-Reelseo.com

-Tubefilter.com

-http://newmediarockstars.com/

YouTube Creator Playbooks

– http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/index.html

– http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/guides.html

Now, without further ado, here’s how we got ~1.5 million views for my latest book trailer…

Step 1: Storyboarding

This is like creating a comic book for the trailer, scene by scene. It’s the same process used by Pixar, among many others (video example here).

Here was my first stab for 4HC:

Click here to enlarge the below.

Click here to enlarge the below.

Optional Step 2: If Budget Allows, Assemble a Team

For the 4HC trailer, I brought in several specialists to help with production and promotion.

Please note that a team is nice-to-have and not must-have insurance. To date, my most viral video had zero budget. Here’s what gets you 4-5 million views:

That said, I like to tilt the odds in my favor whenever possible. Here’s my A-Team for doing so when funds allow:

- Directing and post-production – Adam Patch

- PR strategy and implementation – Ryan Holiday and BrassCheck

- Marketing, YouTube influencers, and experimental campaigns – Mekanism (Thanks, Jason and team!)

But how do you choose someone like Adam, if it’s not Adam? You ask for proposals, of course.

Typically, before you hire a production lead like Adam (who also acts as a general contractor for the production team), they will put together a proposal or “treatment”, which includes an itemized budget.

For 4HC, since I’d worked with Adam before, things started with my storyboarding and an in-person lunch with Adam.

Below is the 4HC “treatment,” cobbled together from our subsequent emails and conversations. It gives you a good idea of what you might expect you see:

4-Hour Chef video trailer Treatment

Step 3: Shot List and Logistics

Once you agree on look and feel, you have to roll up your sleeves: it’s time to scout locations, find talent (if needed), and choose specific shots for a to-do list (the “shot list”) that you check off as you film.

Special thanks to Chris Young and the amazing ChefSteps team for letting us use their Mr. Wizard-like food lab in Seattle. We shot the entire trailer in Seattle as a result. Here’s the kind of fun we had (see first 15 secs):

Our full shot list is below. Note that “CU” stands for “close-up”, and “TT” stands for “tabletop”.

View this document on Scribd
Step 4: Shooting Principal Footage

Not much to say here, other than shoot a TON of material when you have the chance. It’s easier to edit down than to add extra shooting days.

Below an example of original footage that will be magically changed in the next step. Here we used one of my favorite books as a stand in:

Step 5 – Editing

The first step is to cut down hours of footage into 120 or fewer seconds. This is tough but important work.

If you make the finished product look polished enough for broadcast, you might have opportunities (or make opportunities) to get it on major TV. Here’s the process I used to get bookings.

The 4-Hour Chef trailer was featured as my introduction on everything from Dr. Oz to The Hallmark Channel. It’s the perfect adrenaline rush and sales pitch wrapped into one. Especially for short-form TV interviews — typically 3-4 minutes total, with multiple hosts — you’ll be strained to get a word in edgewise. It’s fantastic to let your video hit the talking points, doing the sales job for you.

Now you have a “rough cut” of the trailer. This is first draft, without graphics or special effects.

Once the footage, cuts, and order of scenes is agreed upon, you arrive at “picture lock,” which means that the footage and length can’t be changed. Only at this point does it make sense for anyone to create time-consuming graphics, animation, or sync’d music. Something like this, for instance:

Here’s the complete progression from first “draft” to finished product. Can you tell what changes in each version?

Now that you’ve taken a shot, here’s the full commentary from Adam, taking you though it step-by-step:

And how exactly does Adam work his magic?

Let’s watch how Adam edits the opening atrium scene in The 4-Hour Body trailer, which also has roughly 1,000,000 views. But first, take a look at the finished trailer and notice the opening shot of me at my desk:

Now, we go behind the scenes:

Step 6 – Music

For The 4-Hour Body trailer, I chose music first (Splinter by Sevendust), which I then set visuals to. This turned out to be a licensing headache marathon, and I explain the whole how-to process here. And that was with the band offering it for free! For this new 4HC video, we had custom music produced after the video was complete. The talented Luis Dubuc provided a sync’d jam, and we were ready to roll. No fuss, no muss.

Custom music need not be expensive, and you can even use crowdsourcing with start-ups like Audiodraft. I’ve used them before as well (see here and here).

Step 7 – Launch and Promote

First, a super basic note on uploading. ENSURE YOUR VIDEO CAN BE VIEWED ON MOBILE DEVICES!

25% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices. I screwed this up for The 4-Hour Body trailer, and I’ve been unable to reverse the mistake and make it viewable on mobile; as a result, I’ve lost hundreds of thousands of views.

No option to change — shite!

So, avoid being a dumb-ass like me and get it right the first time. Back to launching once you’ve uploaded…

The 4-Hour Chef trailer premiered on HuffPo, then it was reposted to my blog here. When I announced the post my Facebook fan page, we promoted it through FB’s paid mechanism. Notice that this was all done on 11/7/12 and 11/8/12 — roughly two weeks before official book launch on 11/20/12.

One of the most effective promotions I did was a unique BitTorrent bundle of 680MB+ of free content. For the super-low labor involved, it drove fantastic numbers:

Watched the trailer on YouTube: 293K people

Visited the author’s website: 325K people

Visited the book’s Amazon page: 852K people

But that was just one piece of the YT traffic puzzle.

When it comes to YouTube, you need to realize what you’re up against in terms of noise: 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute. To capitalize on the opportunity (it’s the second largest search engine in the world), you need to plan. Spray and pray almost never works — your competition is too good.

So, what to do?

First off, do not split your ammo. If you’re considering ads to help drive traffic, do it when it counts: the first 24 hours, when you can combine it with all PR for a synergistic effect. Momentum begets momentum, and early success begets later success. I often pile nearly all book launch media/interviews into a 5-7 day period (Check out this madness).

Team Mekanism was responsible for 99% of all my YT-related PR and directly and indirectly 50%+ of traffic. BitTorrent and my PR that week make up the rest. Mekanism combined extensive PR outreach with early judicious use of TrueView ads and StumbleUpon traffic (Disclosure: I advise StumbleUpon).

Here’s Mekanism’s explanation of what they did, first as PDF with screenshots, then as text:

4 hour chef coverage from Mekanism

Bolded emphasis below is mine:

To help support Tim’s book launch, Mekanism took a three tiered approach: connecting him to relevant online influencers, hosting a contest on Pinterest (to expand his exposure among the female demographic), and promoted content within Slideshare.

[TIM: Slideshare is hugely underused for product launches. We used it for The 4-Hour Body as well.]

Online Influencers:

To drive widespread awareness of The 4-Hour Chef, Mekanism reached out to credible online influencers to help drive word-of-mouth. Mekanism reached out to bloggers and YouTubers across a variety of verticals relevant to each of the different chapters within the book. For example:

• Food Enthusiasts

• Male Lifestyle

• Science + Tech Bloggers

• Mom Bloggers

• Lifehackers

In researching outlets and people, Mekanism took an approach very similar to that outlined by Mike Del Ponte in his Hacking Kickstarter post. The key is establishing relationships, and ensuring your content/message is tailored to each individual blogger’s audience. To accomplish this, Mekanism not only crafted custom pitches, but also provided a wealth of assets that could be freely used: exclusive excerpts, interviews with Tim (live or recorded), his video book trailers, images, etc.

Without a doubt, the most engaged audiences were those of several YouTube stars/channels, specifically SourceFed & WheezyWaiter. These appearances led to thousands of comments and likes and contributed to YouTube being the second largest traffic drive to Tim’s target landing pages.

Slideshare:

We wanted to see if it was possible to get a deck outlining the benefits of the 4-Hour Chef on the homepage of Slideshare, vis a vis having it rank on Slideshare’s ‘Top Presentation’s of the Day’ section. Slideshare was chosen because it has a well-educated and affluent user base that matches the target consumer of The 4-Hour Chef (69% college grads, 37% have $100k+ HHI).

First, a Slideshare deck was created to outline the benefits/chapters of 4HC. Next, we did the math to determine how many views, and in what period of time, were needed to drive the into the ‘Top Presentation’s of the Day’ section. Based on our observations, it seemed as though 15,000 views within a 24-hour period was likely enough.

Having this understanding of required viewing density, we uploaded our deck and promoted it via paid StumbleUpon ads and drove the content to the homepage of Slideshare via “stumbles,” ensuring everyone visiting the site the day of launch saw the presentation.

Keep in mind that the sum is greater than the parts. Here are more of the parts, written in a report to Tim:

“Slideshare Presentation

- Made the ‘Hot on Facebook’ and ‘Hot on Twitter’ section (on homepage)

- Was ‘Featured’ (also on homepage)

- Peaked as 2nd most popular presentation last night

Sourcefed Video

-#3 most liked & top favorited ‘How To & Style’ video of the day

-#5 most viewed ‘How To & Style’ video of the day

-#65 top favorited & most liked video on YouTube today (of all videos across all categories)”

BLOG COVERAGE

http://sourcefednews.com/workout-systems-roundup/

http://www.tubefilter.com/2012/11/19/tim-ferriss-book-trailer-youtube-4-hour-chef/

http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/my-interview-with-bad-ass-mother-fucker-tim-ferriss

http://www.tubefilter.com/2012/11/19/tim-ferriss-book-trailer-youtube-4-hour-chef/

http://www.insidehook.com/nation/tim-ferriss/

http://gearpatrol.com/2012/11/21/tim-ferriss-the-4-hour-chef/

http://www.5minutesformom.com/67553/an-interview-with-tim-ferriss-author-of-the-4-hour-chef/

http://newmediarockstars.com/2012/11/tim-ferriss-interview/

YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ggiUlMujSE&list=UU_gE-kg7JvuwCNlbZ1-shlA&index=2&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSnJC3juXw&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw7nZmqiH1I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J8fiuG7z-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJBnwBxAWs

The goal of all of this, of course, is to build a rapid view count number that pushes the trailer above the noise. This then propagates into additional organic sharing, all of which sells books.

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So, those are the basics of stacking the deck in your favor for online video. Most posts on “virality” are vague generalities, so I wanted to dig into the weeds. Hopefully you like this.

Are there any other details you’d like to see, or questions you’d like answered? Please let me know in the comments.

How to (Really) Make $1,000,000 Selling E-Books – Real-World Case Studies

Who will be the JK Rowling of self-publishing? Better still: who will be the legions who make an extra $1,000-$1,000,000 per year? (Photo: The Telegraph, UK)

This is a guest post by Ryan Buckley and the team at Scripted. I have added my own tools and recommendations after “TIM” throughout the piece.

Enter Ryan Buckley and Team

Barry Eisler writes thrillers about a half-Japanese, half-American freelance assassin named John Rain. John Rain is the consummate anti-hero, a whiskey swilling, jazz-loving former CIA agent battling crippling paranoia as he adventures around the globe. Readers love John Rain, so much so that they’ve landed Barry Eisler and seven of his John Rain books on the New York Times Bestseller list. [TIM: Here's how the different bestseller lists work.]

Having conquered all that needs to be conquered in the world of commercial publishing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Eisler’s publisher offered him $500,000 deal for a new two-book deal.

The surprise was that Eisler turned down the deal and decided to tackle self-publishing instead.  In a freewheeling discussion with self-publishing expert Joe Konrath, Eisler says:

“I know it’ll seem crazy to a lot of people, but based on what’s happening in the industry, and based on the kind of experience writers like you are having in self-publishing, I think I can do better in the long term on my own.”

We asked Eisler for a current update, and he told us that this month (March 2013), he expects to sell 8,000 copies of his 10 self-published novels and stories, which are priced $1-5 each. Despite self-publishing his first story only two years ago, it appears he’s made the right decision. With roughly $300,000 in royalties per year, he already beat his publisher’s offer…

The writing on the wall couldn’t be any clearer: the publishing world is changing fast. 

Getting a publishing contract has long been the first litmus test of a writer’s success. Writers spend years in the wilderness accumulating rejections before finding a single buyer (advances usually start at $1,000 to $10,000). Even The 4-Hour Workweek was rejected 20+ times before it got an offer.

But conventional publishing isn’t the only game in town anymore.

Self-published authors are increasingly landing on the NYT bestseller list and hog a fair share of Amazon’s top-20 list. Amanda Hocking became a self-publishing multi-millionaire with her teen supernatural thrillers before bagging a $2M publishing contract with St. Martin’s Press. John Locke sold $2M worth of eBooks before landing a deal with Simon & Schuster.

All this means that perhaps you don’t need a contract to validate you… now or in the future.

Why eBooks, Why Now?

The numbers don’t lie: Amazon now sells more eBooks than printed books. Kindle sales topped 1 million per week by the end of last year. More than 20% of publishing giant Random House’s revenues last year were from digital sales.

[TIM: Here are my personal stats -- the percentage of total sales from ebooks for each of my books, limited to their first year on-sale:

April 2007 pub date - original 4HWW - less than 1%

Dec 2009 pub date - revised and expanded 4HWW - approximately 21%

Dec 2010 pub date - 4HB - approximately 31%

Nov 2013 pub date - 4HC - will surpass 50% by November 2013]

Amazon is at the forefront of this publishing revolution. Through the Kindle eReader and the Kindle eBook store, it has given indie authors a platform to get published and gather an audience. As a $100-billion-plus market cap e-commerce juggernaut, Amazon already has a substantial user base (as per comScore, 282.2 million people visited Amazon.com in June 2011 – or roughly 20% of the total internet traffic). Coupled with high royalty rates (70% compared to 10-15% for traditional publishers), it is the perfect platform for a fledgling writer to make a living, and if fate agrees, even a fortune.

The path to becoming a Kindle millionaire isn’t easy, but it’s possible to tilt the odds in your favor by following best practices. [TIM: Becoming a millionaire using non-Kindle ebooks is arguably even easier -- here's one $1,000,000/month example.]

This how-to post will look at general principles and lessons from real-world successes.

Understanding Amazon and Niche Selection

The first step is market research.

Your first order of the day should be to spend a few hours around the Amazon Kindle marketplace. Browse through the top sellers, be generous with your clicks and read up as much as you can – user reviews, book descriptions, Amazon’s editorial reviews (if any). You want to get an intuitive feel for the market, what sells, what doesn’t. How many non-fiction books end up in the top 10? What genre do they belong to? What is the average price of a Kindle bestseller? What do their covers look like? How many reviews do they have? What is the average rating? What is the correlation between rating and current ranking?

[TIM: For what it's worth, much like Hugh Howey, I write about what I love or would love to learn about. Here's how I did preliminary market research for The 4-Hour Chef:

- I polled my 400,000+ followers on Twitter and Facebook with questions like “What are your favorite 2 or 3 cookbooks?” and “If you were starting over, which 2 or 3 books would get you most excited while learning fundamentals?”

- I then used virtual assistants via Taskrabbit.com to create a list of those titles that pop up more than 3 times. I also asked professional chefs the same questions and cross-referenced the lists.

- Once I had the repeat contenders (let’s assume 20 titles), I headed to Amazon, where I did 2 things:

1. First, I identified the titles on my list that have an average review of 4 stars or higher.

2. Second, I read the “most helpful” critical reviews from those titles, aiming to focus on 3-star ratings, whenever possible. If not, I look for 4-star. The 1- and 2-star are usually written by people who hate everything (look at their other reviews if you

doubt me), and the 5-star reviews tend not to go into detail. From the “most helpful” 3–4-star reviews, I compile a list of:

A) Things “missing” or deficient in even the best books. These are opportunities for me to do or explore something new. For instance, even the best-selling BBQ books were criticized for omitting the “heart and soul of BBQ”: short ribs and brisket. This meant I naturally had to include at least one.

B) I download all 20 books onto my Kindle and read the “Popular Highlights” in each, sorted by “Most Popular.” This often allows me

to read 20–50 pages instead of 300, 500, or even 1,000 pages. Then I can deep dive only where I love what I see. If you don't like the movie trailer, you're certainly not going to like the book the highlights were pulled from.

But this begs the question: how do you go about selecting your niche in the first place?

I’m tempted to say: pick a niche you actually enjoy reading. But this may not always be the best advice. I enjoy reading complicated literary novels and obscure texts in linguistics, but they’re hardly the stuff best sellers are made of. Your niche selection should be in-line with market demands. This is why spending time in the Amazon marketplace is important: it will tell you which niches are popular and which are not.

[TIM: To really determine what will sell and what will not, I highly recommend reading this step-by-step method by Noah Kagan. He built two multi-million-dollar businesses before age 28 using similar methodologies.]

Once you have your niche, spend some time researching your ideal buyer. See where they hang out, how active they are online, what is their average age and income, and what motivates them to buy an eBook in the first place? Are they looking for solutions, or are they looking for adventures and story-telling to ease their boredom?

Once you have a faint picture of your ideal buyer, find out what they do and what they consume online. Entrepreneurs will likely hang out at TechCrunch, while productivity folks will have Lifehacker bookmarked. Quantcast is a good tool to understand market demographics better. Just type in the URL of the target site, and you’ll get a fair idea of their demographic make-up. [TIM: You can also get valuable data from Kickstarter projects you find that might attract similar customers -- which sites are sending them the most traffic?]

Be prepared to spend a few hours over a weekend in market research. [TIM: I'll spend weeks doing this, if necessary. I don't truly know my audience until I could make decisions for them.]

A few power tips for niche selection:

- Weight loss and dieting are a perennial Amazon favorite.

- Business books tend to find a lot of favor with readers as well, especially if you can package scattered information into an easy to digest package (example: Personal MBA by Josh Kauffman).

- Reddit is one of the finest sources to research niches and gather ideas. Spend a few hours in /r/Fitness and its related sub-reddits (/r/leangains, /r/paleo) and you’ll come up with dozens of ideas for a book (example: The Butter and Bacon Diet: Losing Weight With Keto, inspired by /r/keto). This is a nice list of sub-reddits arranged by popularity.

- Don’t go niche-hopping. Stick to one niche and dominate it with a flood of quality content. There are dozens and dozens of ideas scattered all over the Internet. Research these ideas, agglomerate them into comprehensible forms, and synthesize them into consumable format, and you’ll have your eBook. [TIM: This isn't my approach, but it can be done well, even with public domain materials.]

Creating the eBook

This can be the hardest or the easiest part of becoming a Kindle publisher, depending on your comfort level with writing. Writing the eBook yourself can be incredibly fun if you enjoy the creative process, or a mind-numbing chore if you don’t.

[TIM: Writing a book shouldn't be used to determine if you like (or can at least handle) writing. Try and publish a chapter-length (3,000-5,000 words) blog post a week for a month. If you can't do that, don't commit to a book, IMHO. To improve your craft, I suggest On Writing by Stephen King, Bird by Bird, and On Writing Well.]

Alternatively, you can outsource the entire project. But before you jump into the fray, there are a few key steps to consider:

- Brainstorm the title of the book. Along with the cover, your title is the most visible aspect of your book. Dig through the bestseller list in your targeted niche to see how top books are titled, and consider following their lead. [TIM: I actually test both titles and subtitles using cheap Google Adwords campaigns.]

- Brainstorm angles and approaches to the content. What makes your book unique among the competition? What new perspective are you bringing to the niche? How can you deliver most value to your readers?

- Create a detailed outline of the entire eBook. Map everything out, from the introduction to the concluding paragraph. Look to the best selling books in your niche for inspiration and advice on structure and organization. You should have a thorough outline detailing the style, tone and content of each chapter.

[TIM: I typically break my books into 3-5 "sections" which are then broken down into chapters. I use the program Scrivener to map this out. Each chapter has a beginning, middle, and end like a magazine article. Each of them should be independently self-sufficient. This makes the book easier for me to write if I hit a block... and it makes the book easier to read. I can write chapters out of order, and readers can consume them out of order.]

- While it’s necessary to strive for quality and push conventions aside, it is also important to be practical in your approach. You might aspire to write avant-garde literary novels, but that’s hardly the stuff best-sellers are made of. The key is to write an astounding book in a niche that sells. This, of course, doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice on quality; Max Brooks’ “World War-Z” piggybacked on the zombie apocalypse trend, and yet found a way to comment on compelling present day social and political issues. Now it’s a major film starring Brad Pitt.

If you want to write the book yourself, as Tim would have it, there are a few things you can do to sharpen your skills:

- Become a master of the Snowflake Method. Essentially, it means building a comprehensive ‘map’ of your book – character backstories, narrative arcs, plausible scenarios – before you write a single word. It flies in the face of all conventional notions of ‘creative inspiration,’ but it can be deadly effective at writing superior novels with strong narrative arcs, especially in genre fiction. The Snowflake Method has been devised by author Randy Ingmerson, who has used it himself in all six of his best-selling novels.

- Storytelling is a craft, and like any other craft, it too can be mastered with practice. Barry Eisler, who has tackled both legacy and self-publishing (and succeeded wildly), suggests a reading of three books – Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies by Sol Stein, Learning to Write Fiction from the Masters, by Barnaby Conrad, and Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and Principles of Screenwriting to improve the craft of storytelling. [TIM: I personally favor Save the Cat for fiction/screenwriting.]

- Learn from fellow self-published authors. Eisler recommends the blog of novelist J.A. Konrath, who has been self-publishing since 2004 and recording his experiences on the blog. Eisler says, “I think anyone even considering self-publishing ought to be reading Joe, and if you’re not interested in self-publishing, you should read him just to be sure you understand the pros and cons of the various publishing options available today.” Eisler also has a list of indie author blogs on his website that can help you understand the self-publishing process.

- Learn from the masters: the likes of Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, and Robert Ludlum have spent a lifetime perfecting their craft. Comb through their novels diligently. See how they create tension, withhold information to create suspense, and write dialogues. The more you read, the better you will become at grasping the essence of a good novel.

- Create a writing schedule and stick to it. Set aside at least an hour or two for writing each day. This is the hardest part about writing a successful novel, simply because it requires discipline and commitment. Most writers don’t succeed because they give-up midway. Don’t be that writer. [TIM: Most of my friends who are consistently good writers write between 10pm-8am. This means they either go to be really late -- I do my best work between 11pm-5am -- or they wake up really early. It's easier to concentrate when the rest of the world is asleep.]

Otherwise, it’s time to find freelancers to finish your project:

- Insist on a Skype interview before you hire anyone. Pay careful attention to their command of language. Also pay attention to how well they ask you questions.

- Ask them difficult questions: What is their prior experience with writing eBooks? What’s their best and worst published work and why? What mistakes have they made, professionally and creatively?

- Speak with references and include: “He/she seems great. I like them. Of course, all people have strengths and weaknesses. If you had to choose theirs, what would they be?”

- If they pass the above, give them your detailed brief and outline in full. The more information your writer has, the better the finished product will be.

- Consider payment on a chapter-by-chapter basis until a strong working relationship is established.

- Last but not least, have them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

Formatting the eBook for Kindle

You’ll most likely write your eBook as a Word document. Converting a. docx/.doc file to the Kindle format is relatively straight forward with Amazon’s conversion tools. Amazon itself has a comprehensive guide on formatting a book for Kindle.

The key things to keep in mind when formatting are:

1. File size: files larger than 50mb cannot be converted to the Kindle format. Remember that Amazon’s delivery costs are approximately $0.15/mb. The larger the file size, the higher these costs. Compress the document as much as possible before uploading it to Amazon for the conversion process.

2. Amazon has a comprehensive guide to building a book for Kindle that covers every aspect of formatting – creating front matter, table of contents, etc. This is a free eBook that can be downloaded here.

3. The catalog/cover image is crucial for sales. Here’s Amazon’s online guide on how to create the cover.

Designing the Cover

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. On Amazon, however, your cover will go a long way towards setting you apart from the self-published pap that usually litters the Kindle store. If you’ve done your market research right, you already know what I’m talking about: badly formatted books with covers that look like Photoshop disasters and a child’s scribbling in MS paint dominate the low-end of the market.

A quality cover is proof that you’ve put thought and effort into the book – a good signal for a prospective buyer. [TIM: Also think in terms of thumbnail size -- will it grab attention as a tiny image on a handheld device? You won't have a nice big hardcover to show it off. Think like an app designer choosing an icon for the iPhone.]

Depending on your budget and Photoshop skills, you can either design the cover yourself ($0), or outsource it ($5 to $395).

OPTION A: DESIGNING THE COVER YOURSELF

Unless you are a Photoshop whiz, I don’t recommend this option. If you must cut corners and design the cover yourself, I recommend keeping things simple: grab a high quality image from Shutterstock that echoes the generic conventions of your niche and write your book title in an appropriate font. For inspiration, head to the Book Cover Archive.

Pro tip: Fonts, like images in a cover, echo the established values of a genre. Fonts in romance novels are usually florid, while those in thrillers and weight loss books are more contemporary. Make sure that you use fonts that adhere to genre conventions.

OPTION B: OUTSOURCING THE COVER DESIGN

Pick your poison:

Cheap: Set up a competition on 99designs to crowdsource your eBook cover. Prices can range from $50 to $500. OR, hire an established, experienced book cover designer. You can easily find a ton of these on sites like AuthorSupport or Damonza.

Cheaper: For $20-50, hire a designer from oDesk to design a cover for you.

Cheapest: For $5, get a cheap cover from Fiverr.

Marketing and Promoting Your Book

So you’ve written your book, you’ve formatted it for Kindle, and you have a gorgeous cover image to entice readers.

Now it’s game time.

Marketing is what separates the successful Kindle publishers from the also-rans who hug the bottom of the sales charts.

Self-publishing essentially inverts the traditional publishing model, where publishers publish the book, then get the media to drum up enthusiasm before the public can pass it along through word-of-mouth. Self-published authors must do this entire process in reverse: they must get people interested in their books before they actually publish the book on Amazon. It requires building relationships with your readers and establishing a sense of community by leveraging social media.

[TIM: I'll keep this note short. Here's how to create a high-traffic blog (1MM+ unique visitors a month) without killing yourself. It's exactly how I built this blog and manage it.]

ESTABLISH A CONSISTENT AUTHOR PROFILE

In the mid-80s, at the height of his literary prowess, Stephen King started writing books under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. Bachman’s books were failures – Running Man sold only 28,000 copies in its initial print run, but ten times as many when Bachman was outed as a pseudonym for King. The message is obvious enough: readers won’t think twice about buying books from authors they know and recognize.

For amateur authors, this translates into maintaining a consistent author profile across multiple media properties. You are essentially trying to create a personal brand (like Tim’s). Select a good picture and make sure you use it on all author-related websites, including your blog, social media, and Amazon Author Central (more on this below).

START A BLOG

It is 2012; you have no excuses for not running a blog. It is free and downright easy with software like WordPress. The 4-Hour Workweek blog (built using WordPress) was started as a platform to promote a book and foster a community. Today, the blog and its readership are arguably more valuable than the book itself. [TIM: Definitely true.]

Share advice and tips related to your niche. Your blog should serve as a teaser trailer for what’s in store in your book. Be as educative, informative, and creative as you can be. This 4-Hour Workweek blog is a good model to imitate.

[TIM: You don't have to start out sexy! Check out this hideous mess, the earliest version of this blog. It's atrocious.]

HARNESS THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Start with the obvious:

- A Facebook page

- A Twitter account

Then the not-so-obvious:

- Do Reddit AMAs on appropriate sub-reddits (here’s a big list).

- Answer questions on Quora related to your niche.

- Do guest posts on niche specific blogs.

- Create author profiles on GoodReads and Amazon Author Central.

- Engage and communicate with fellow writers and readers on forums like Authonomy and Absolute Write.

Barry Eisler advises “not to use social media to sell, but rather to give away useful information and entertaining content for free, and to build relationships thereby. What you do on your Facebook page and Twitter page should be intended to benefit your friends and followers. If they like it, they’ll like you; if they like you, maybe they’ll become interested in your books.”

BECOME A MASTER OF MARKETING

A foundation in conventional and Internet marketing can go a long way in helping you make Kindle sales. Eisler recommends four books on marketing to the aspiring author:

1. Marketing High Technology: An Insider’s View, by Bill Davidow. According to Eisler, “the sixteen factor he (Davidow) looks for in determining whether marketing is likely to be successful are incredibly useful and adaptable to the book industry.”

2. The Dream: How to Promote Your Product, Company or Ideas – and Make a Difference Using Everyday Evangelism, by Guy Kawasaki. Eisler adds, “approaching marketing as evangelism is a brilliant concept, and unusually applicable to books. Recruiting and training evangelists with the power of social media is something any writer intent on commercial success should do.”

3. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. [TIM: I love this book. Also don't miss this article, perhaps my fave of all-time: 1,000 True Fans.]

4. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers, by Seth Godin. Eisler especially recommends Godin’s book, saying that “the concept of what a customer gives you permission to market and where you’re counterproductively overstepping your bounds is hugely important to bookselling, and this short book should be on any self-published author’s short list.”

PRICING, DESCRIPTIONS and REVIEWS

Price is a major advantage self-published authors have over published authors. $0.99 to $2.99 seems to be the sweet spot for self-published works. Amazon offers two royalty structures for its Kindle Direct Publishing program: 35% or 70% royalty. The 70% royalty option is available only a few select countries – including the United States (see the full list here). However, books with 70% royalty must be priced at least 20% lower than their physical counterparts. If you choose the 35% royalty option, you have much more freedom in setting the list price.

70% royalty is perfect for self-published authors who do not have physical books in the Amazon store. $2.99 is the recommended price point since it nets you more than $2 per sale (excluding delivery costs, which start at $0.15/mb) while still keeping the price low enough for impulse buys.

It is also a good idea to give away your book for free initially to jump start sales. You do this by setting the list price as $0.00 and promoting the book’s initial run through social media. If the product is good enough, it will spread through word of mouth and you can alter the list price accordingly.

The book description is important for telling the readers what to expect in the book. This is where you put your blurb and review snippets from bloggers. Look at books in the Amazon Top 100 to see how they capture reader attention and write their blurbs.

[TIM: I'm astonished when authors spend 1-10 years writing a book and then let a junior copyeditor at their publisher write their backcover and inside flap copy. Don't do this! That copy will end up being your "Description" text on Amazon, which is your most important tool for converting browsers to buyers. Good copywriters know that you spend 80% of your time on the headline of an ad. You should spend at least 10x as much time on backcover/flap/"description" copy as you would on an average internal page.]

Reviews are social proof of a book’s quality and a crucial contributing factor to its success. Gathering positive reviews will go a long way in pushing your eBook towards the bestseller charts. Some authors, including John Locke, confessed to buying reviews for money (as per this NYT expose), but it’s a practice that is unethical and looked down upon in the writer community. Your best bet is to leverage your existing relationships with your Twitter followers, blog readers, friends, and relatives to get positive reviews.

Finally, I’ve found that it is profitable in the initial run to release books within a space of a week or a month, so that your readers have something to move onto if they like your work. It also helps to create narrative arcs that span several books (something that can be done with non-fiction as well) to keep readers coming back for more. [TIM: Haha... I personally prefer to take 2-4 years between books and focus on ensuring that each one sells for decades.]

Closing Words

The beauty of Amazon is that once you have enough leverage in the market, you’re essentially working on auto-pilot. Once you are an established presence in the market, your name alone will attract the curious and the faithful. As far as passive income is concerned, it’s hard to beat a portfolio of Kindle books.

[TIM: Or 1 or 2 books that sell forever. Here's how to maximize the odds -- The 12 Main Lessons Learned Marketing The 4-Hour Body.]

Caveat lector: be aware that success through self-publishing is rare and hard fought. Eisler compares publishing to the lottery, where few can get in and even fewer can succeed. The main difference between legacy and self-publishing, he says, is that “the overwhelming majority of writers who couldn’t even get in the door in the legacy world can now publish just as easily as everyone else, but beyond that, so far I’d say the odds of making a living are roughly the same.”

He adds, “fantasizing about making it big in self-publishing is no more crazy than fantasizing about making it big in legacy publishing.”

Here’s to the crazy ones: take action, research, write, sell, repeat.

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Did you like this post? Would you like more of this type of post? If so, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

ODDS AND ENDS: MEDIA, MAPTIA WINNER

Media from the web:

Your Book is a Start-up (BitTorrent Partnership)

Surrender to Tim Ferriss (New York Observer)

How We Lost 68 Pounds – 4-Hour Body (Globe and Mail)

Maptia:

We have chosen Mexican-inspired Spicy Chocolate Soufflé with Avocado Whipped Cream by @poconversation (Natalie). Here’s the recipe, and here’s her winning tweet:

@maptia @tferriss Fancy a trip to France & Mexico? Spicy Chocolate Soufflé with Avocado Whipped Cream #RTWflavors bit.ly/YwEqmI

— Natalie (@poconversation) March 24, 2013

The First-Ever Quantified Self Notes (Plus: LSD as Cognitive Enhancer?)

The very first Quantified Self meetup, held at Kevin Kelly’s home. Here, Dr. Seth Roberts is speaking, and I’m seated third from the right. (Photo: Kevin Kelly)

Below are the notes I took at the very first Quantified Self meet-up on 9/10/08.

It was held in the picturesque home of Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of WIRED magazine. Surrounded my books, wood paneling, and white boards, we had one hell of a jam session.

From that small, 28-person gathering, “QS” has since grown into a pop-culture term and international phenomenon, with organizations in more than 20 countries. Forbes has even called 2013 “The Year of the Quantified Self.”

Here’s where it started…

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Next, just for fun…

Next, just for fun: a term paper (and some random notes) from my sophomore year in college. It’s far from perfect, but it explores some worthwhile questions.

The late Professor Hoebel, a pioneer in food addiction research, was a fascinating man and incredible teacher. This paper was written when I was interested in later joining the lab of Dr. Barry Jacobs, which was focused on brain monoamine neurotransmitters. Alas, I couldn’t hack the requisite animal testing and later switched from neuroscience to East Asian Studies with a focus on language acquisition.

And now to the question: could LSD function as a cognitive enhancer? Hmmm…

For posts on my own self-experimentation, click here and scroll through.

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A huge styrofoam robot — one of many wonders in Kevin Kelly’s home. (Photo: Telstar Logistics)

The Alchemy of Writing — More Tips from a Pro

Ernest Hemingway used to leave his final sentence of each day half finished. It gave him an easy starting point for the next morning.

This interview on the creative process is part II in an interview with award-winning author Fred Waitzkin. Part I can be found here.

Reading time:

- Bolded points (teaser) – 3 minutes

- All – 15 minutes

—

TF: But what about “inspiration”? Does it exist for you?



For me, inspiration is primarily energy. If I feel energy for a paragraph or a description I can almost always get to the essence of it. If I feel dead to myself, I don’t have a chance. I am always looking for energy. Where can I find it? What or who can give it to me? How can I amp up what I have?

A story can help us here. An older friend of mine was once depressed about his advancing years. He lacked zest or motivation for his regular gym workouts. He couldn’t concentrate on his career. One evening this man found himself in an elevator with a woman, a housekeeper who had worked for him in the past. But she was wearing outside clothes, a tight fitting sweater. She was young and beautiful. They talked a little. There was chemistry. She got off the elevator at his floor. They chatted in the hall. She said that she found him attractive. But he could feel this even before she said the words. She embraced him. And that was it. Nothing more happened between them. He was married and not looking for an affair. But he felt a big surge of life. He felt renewed, deeply so. There was a bounce to his step. He returned to the gym feeling ten years younger… There are many ways to experience the girl in the elevator.

If I’m beginning an important new project I try to get away for a few days to feel a different spirit–islands work for me. My mother was a great painter. She spent much of her life on Martha’s Vineyard because the tree line outside her house felt ominous and that spurred her work along with the sound and smell of the ocean.

I look for energy all over the place. Often just riding my bike along the river for three miles from my house to the office heightens my mood. Then I make a cup of green tea and look at my work from the previous evening. I always read back several pages before I try to write anything new. Moving back through interesting material seems to give me momentum to push ahead…

But what if there is no energy? I read the paper. I switch on sports talk radio. I look at my watch. I pace. I am eyeing the lunch hour. It’s getting closer to lunch. One hour before I meet my friend Jeff for turkey burgers. Forty-five minutes. Now I’m getting nervous. Thirty-five minutes before I have to leave my office! Suddenly I feel an urgency. I CAN’T leave for lunch without writing one good paragraph. I’m sweating, feeling the time pressure… and the words pour out. Sometimes a writer can do more in a fervent half hour than in a dreary eight-hour day. I’ve often played this game with myself.

There are many energy tricks. Sometimes in the afternoon when I’m groggy I wander over to Starbuck’s for a coffee. But it’s not just caffeine. I know all the women who work there. They know me. We chat. I love these talks–okay, innocent flirtations. Sometimes I even get a free latte. When I get back to my office I usually feel fired up.

Here is a story about deep mining for inspiration. Early on in the composition of The Dream Merchant I had an impression of the woman whom I wanted to be the great love of my central character’s life. She would be something like the girlfriend of Eddie the pool hustler, played by Paul Newman, in the great movie, The Hustler. She would be beautiful but a little worn from love and tough living. But her accessibility made her all the more desirable. The actress who played that part, by the way, was Piper Laurie although when I thought about what my character looked like, she was more voluptuous like Marilyn Monroe. This character would be hugely important in my book. She would have to be Jim’s match—she would love Jim and ruin him. Only problem was, I had never known someone like this.

I talked about the problem with Josh [his son, the subject of Searching for Bobby Fischer] and one day he proposed an idea. “There is someone I want you to meet,” he said. He arranged lunch for me with a young actress, Maya, a girlfriend of a friend of his. We met in a restaurant. Maya was sensual, the right body type, and gorgeous. I spent more than an hour describing the character I wanted to write—her name was Ava. Maya listened but said virtually nothing. She was a sweet girl—NOT Ava. This great idea was beginning to feel like a failure. But then when we were leaving the restaurant she turned to me and her entire being had darkened, she had become sultry and damaged. It was thrilling. She was becoming Ava. She was Ava. It gave me chills.

For the next year we would meet in my office about once a month. I would send Ava, no Maya, a long email describing what I needed from Ava in the next chapter of my novel. Then during the course of an hour or two together we would imagine the scenes or she would act them out. When Maya left me at the end of a session I was shot out of a gun to write the new material into the novel. As time went on, I did less talking and Maya held court. After a year of this she had truly become Ava. I put her in dangerous situations and she embodied Ava’s responses, her muted passion, her madness, a reckless impulse to bolt to the edge of the cliff. Would she fall? I think it was deep fascinating work for both of us…Just to say, I’ve never tried to create a character in this manner before or since. But I could never have written Ava without Maya.

TF: Do you have any friends you rely on to help breakthrough deadlock? If so, why do you find them helpful?

I have a couple of friends that I rely upon. They are very perceptive about the human heart. I’ll talk quite specifically about what isn’t working in a section of my book. I listen closely to what they think. I’ve done this many times. My wife Bonnie has helped me many times like this.

Here is the curious thing. Often her advice or the idea of a friend isn’t what I end up doing. But listening to the ideas engenders a new idea. The whole point is that you have to get moving. Movement begets movement. You need to get unstuck.



TF: There are many people with brilliant ideas, fascinating lives, and a good feel for language–but who have never seriously taken on the art of writing. What is some specific advice you would give to up and coming writers?



If a young person is not passionately motivated, talent aside, I would never encourage him to try to become a professional writer.

Even if you love writing, and it possesses you with missionary zeal, it is such a hard thing to do. First you need to learn the art, and the path is littered with generations of talented writers that couldn’t sit alone in a room and apply themselves for thousands of hours to become really good. Then there are legions of devoted writers who did good work but couldn’t crack the profession, they couldn’t get published or if they did they couldn’t make a living. It is a very tough field.

But whenever I happen to meet someone who is talented and possessed by writing, and particularly a youngster, it is a great pleasure to have a chat. However, the conversation needs to be personal to have any real meaning. I need to know my “new friend” somewhat deeply, to feel the play of his mind and what turns him on before I would presume to offer advice. There are many different ways to be a writer.

For a teenager who is dreamy, who makes uncanny associations like a poet, it can be ruinous to force onto him a rigorously academic approach to writing, even with a good teacher. Teaching him to compose organized mannered essays, like all the other smart boys in class, can make him inhibited and ultimately edit the imagination from this unusual fellow. For another classmate who plans to be a lawyer, proper carefully constructed essays are perfect.

A writer has a core, a sensibility to draw from like pulling gold from his own acre of earth. What you have to say on the page will be different than what I would say. Good writers have their own voice. A paragraph by Philip Roth sounds like Roth. His sensibility and prose rhythms are all through his pages. Same for Hemingway or Thomas Mann. A young writer can deepen his voice and make it richer. But a writer is on perilous ground when he moves away from his core into an area he doesn’t know, when he “lies” or when he cheapens himself with compromises.

Let me give you an example. I have a young friend who is gifted with words and sentences. The scenes he writes are emotional. And he feels impelled to write. He’s got the right stuff. This young man has led a difficult life. He is an orphan. As a teen he became an addict and alcoholic. He suffered greatly getting clean. He’s known a lot of women and hurt some badly. Okay, in shorthand, that’s his base. It is very rich with pain and dark-side-of-the-moon adventures. But whenever he writes more than a paragraph he feels the need to say that in his new life he is redeemed and he is so grateful. He proselytizes. The embarrassment about his past life is thwarting this writer who has such an interesting story to tell. It makes it hard for him to dig deeply. It is difficult to get over such habits like a quarterback who has an awkward throwing motion. But he can do it if he wants it badly enough.

Here is one generalization that might be useful: A good writer needs to become intimately involved with “fictive truth.” Bullshitting never works in writing—a good reader can always tell when a writer knows what he is talking about. If you write about the ocean, you must know the movement of the ocean, the smell and taste. Don’t try to invent it. It will smell like a fake. When you are trying to create a character he or she must be “true.” Fiction is not making up stuff out of whole cloth. It is always linked to a writer’s experience. Fiction is a wonderful tango between the writer’s experience and his imagination.

When I write a scene I always put it to a personal test: does it relate to something that has happened in my own life either directly or by analogy? Perhaps something similar happened to my father or a close friend. If I can feel it deeply, and if I know my craft, then chances are you will feel it. If I am guessing, chances are I will fall on my face. Even if you are writing fiction, research isn’t cheating. If you are writing about the ocean, go out on a boat when it’s rough, feel queasy in a breaking sea, smell the salt water. Then read Conrad’s great passages on the ocean for inspiration, or Jack London’s. In The Dream Merchant it was part of my plan that the last third of the book would take place in the dense rain forest of Brazil. I didn’t dare write that section of the book until I travelled there and spent a month in the jungle.

TF: What inspired you to write The Dream Merchant? Tell us a story or two that will help us understand the process behind the book. How did you draw from real life characters when writing fiction?

The inspiration for The Dream Merchant came from many people. Certainly the earliest influence was my father who was a lighting fixture salesman–a great one. I have often referred to him as the Beethoven of fluorescents. During his best years in the fifties, my dad sold the commercial lighting for nearly every new skyscraper in NYC: The Seagram building, the Saucony building, the United Nations building–his jobs sounded to me like poetry. As a boy I would look out at the magnificent night skyline of Manhattan as though it were my father’s work. Like Jim in the novel, my father did some terrible things—he destroyed men who got in his way—but it did not dampen my love for him. I knew that I wanted to explore this undiscriminating father adoration in my book. That was a key connection between Jim and the narrator, insofar as the narrator loves Jim despite his profligacy and shocking moral drift. By the same token, Jim idolizes his own father who has a considerable history of sins.

Without my father there could never have been Jim. But Jim is not a portrait of Abe Waitzkin—not by a long shot. They were both larger than life salesmen. Neither was impeded by conscience or restraint. Abe was perhaps more ruthless. Jim was much more lusty. My dad didn’t care much about women. Jim was a physical powerhouse. Abe was a dominant personality but he was sickly.

The great comedian, Lenny Bruce, has a small but important role in my novel. To write him I felt that I had to know this one-of–a-kind-personality inside and out. If I didn’t get into his skin the scenes would be fake and would ruin the book. I read books about him and his wife and I listened to performance tapes. I learned his dark slicing humor until I could write it myself. I did write it. After a half year I felt like I was Lenny Bruce. Then Lenny moved through the scenes naturally—he fit right in. It was a pleasure writing in his voice. I’ve already talked about Maya who became my Ava, Jim’s wife. Lenny Bruce and Ava become lovers. They go to very dangerous places together. For a while it was hard for me to stop being Lenny Bruce.

Here is an interesting story about inspiration. More than twenty-five years ago, when I was writing feature magazine pieces, I happened to read a short article in Time Magazine about illegal gold mining in the jungles of Brazil. The piece described secluded enclaves deep within the rain forest called garimpos where men slaved in deep muddy pits trying to collect gold to feed their impoverished families living in the cities. Their employers hideously exploited these scrawny little men, lured them into the camps by offering beautiful women. These poor men spent their hard earned gold on a single night of desire. Then they had to go back to the mudpits to work for another month before they could return home. It was an endless cycle. The workers were sometimes murdered by marauders or they died of disease or animal attacks. Many never made it home. This whole jungle scene was so exotic, violent, sensual and unlikely that I felt I had to write about it. I signed a contract to do a long piece for Harper’s magazine and was preparing to leave for Brazil when I received a contract from Random House to write Searching for Bobby Fischer. I abandoned the Brazil trip to write about Josh and the chess world, which greatly irritated the editors at Harper’s–they didn’t return my calls after this. Anyhow, the scene in Brazil haunted me for years and once I began my novel I decided that my character would ultimately save himself or perhaps perish in the Brazilian rain forest. I wrote the earlier sections of the novel aiming for Brazil.

TF: Tell us about the Amazon trip. What were you researching? What did you learn? Why was it so important to go there?

Oh man, what a trip. Josh wouldn’t let me go by myself. He was determined to protect his old man in the jungle. By then Josh was already one of the top martial artists in the world–he had won the Tai Chi Push Hands World Championships in Taiwan a year before, and now he was training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu [Tim note: Josh later became the first black belt under the legendary Marcelo Garcia, the Michael Jordan of BJJ]. I was thrilled for him to come but not so much for protection as camaraderie—so that we’d see it all together. By then I’d already written the first half of The Dream Merchant and as I’ve already said, I’d been pointing toward Brazil. I’d been writing about a great salesman who takes ethical short cuts to make it big and then loses everything. The deep jungle was the perfect pallet for the changes I wanted in Jim who by now was ready to cross any line to win big again—and he did. I wanted the last third of the novel to switch gears and come on like a firestorm—this was my homerun idea. But to work, as I’ve already said, the Brazilian scene would have to be truly rendered, all the smells, the violence, the animals, the decadence, the disease, the astonishing beauty.

Josh and I flew to Manaus, which is an island city surrounded by rivers and jungle. It’s a haunting place, sultry from the heat and danger of the jungle all around. My character Jim would own a big estate in Manaus, where he would sell his gold to buyers, and then after several days he would travel back to jungle—the jungle became Jim’s greatest passion. But first, to set up his operation he needed to hire an army of gunmen to protect his garimpo from marauders in the rain forest, to guard the gold. Josh and I travelled to gun dealers to learn the business of small private armies. We met with gunmen, talked about their malevolent work. We visited steak restaurants where Jim would dine with his top men. We visited poor shacks on the fetid riverbanks where he recruited hundreds of miners and we went to huge ornate brothels that catered to miners, where Jim hired gorgeous sad-eyed girls to work on their backs for him in the remote camp. Really, Jim constructed a little jungle empire that mirrored his runaway ambition.

There were many ways to maim oneself or to die in Jim’s jungle world but also it was a captivating place. Josh and I spent several weeks in the deep jungle, with its dense foliage a crazy tangle of living sculpture. We hiked for miles learning to softly push the vegetation aside like swimming. It was the dry season and watermarks on towering ancient trees were ten feet above our heads. In six months, four hundred pound fish would be swimming where we were walking. We swam in the rivers terrified about piranhas, and tiny fish called a candiru that swim up a man’s penis and with sharp spikes become lodged in the urethra. We played with pink porpoises that swam through our legs. We visited abandoned gold mining operations and met with garimpeiros who explained the work of searching mud pits hoping to find gold and pull themselves out of poverty but rarely did. These men were addicted to this difficult work—I suppose they were addicted to hope.

We spent nights in hammocks suspended between acai trees listening to an infernal racquet of insects and the bleating of hunting creatures. We worried incessantly about being attacked by jaguars. Every night we heard them hunting nearby. Travelers in the jungle worried about jaguars. Every native we ran into carried a rifle. We were told that a man by himself in the rain forest was a dead man walking but parties of two or three men were more likely to be left alone by jaguars. There were little cats, the size of house cats called jaguatiricas. They attacked howling like babies in packs of five or six. They ran up a man’s legs and ripped him apart. The little ones scared the hell out of me.

I could go on and on about the Brazilian Amazon: the beauty of the women, the unforgettable people we met. The jungle has a deep intoxicating call–really it is a siren’s call. It was hard for me to leave and return to the states. My character Jim couldn’t bear to leave even though staying would likely cost him his life.

TF: Last but not least: what are your top ten favorite books?



FW: This is a risky question to answer. For one thing, I have loved so many. How can I narrow it to ten? And to further complicate the process, I’ve noticed that books are always changing for me. Some books that I admired at thirty feel dead to me today. I know that I never got more excited reading any novel than Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece, On the Road. But would I revere it as much today, forty years later? Last week I read This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz. I was so taken by the painful truths in these stories and the amorous Latin rhythms of his prose. Before reading Diaz I was telling all of my friends about Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. These are my recent infatuations. But did I love these books as much or more than The Sun Also Rises? I just don’t know. Last time I read Hemingway’s classic it was a hard push for me…but ten years before it thrilled me.

Here goes:

1. Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Marquez

2. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad

3. The Great Gatsby –F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov

5.

a. For Whom the Bell Tolls — Ernest Hemingway

b. The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest Hemingway

c. The Sun also Rises — Ernest Hemingway

6. On the Road -- Jack Kerouac

7. Death in Venice — Thomas Mann

8. The Sheltering Sky — Paul Bowles

9. Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino

10.

a. The Train — Georges Simenon

b. American Pastoral — Philip Roth

c. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John le Carre

###

Read more about Fred Waitzkin and The Dream Merchant here.

The Alchemy of Writing — Tips from a Non-Fiction and Fiction Pro

(Photo: EJP Photo)

Total read time: 20 minutes

Bolded read time (as a teaser): 4 minutes

—

I first met Josh Waitzkin at a coffee shop in Manhattan.

About 15 minutes into sipping coffee and getting acquainted, I was thrilled to realize that he dropped f-bombs as much as I did. He was no Rain Man, and I felt silly for half expecting him to be. If you’ve read the bestselling book Searching for Bobby Fischer (or seen the movie), then you know of Josh.

Wandering through Washington Square Park with his mom at age six, he became fascinated with the “blitz chess” that the street hustlers played at warp speed. He watched and absorbed. Then he begged his mom to let him give it a shot. Just once! Soon thereafter, dressed in OshKosh overalls, he was king of the hustlers.

Josh proceeded to dominate the world chess scene and become the only person to win the National Primary, Elementary, Junior High School, Senior High School, U.S. Cadet, and U.S. Junior Closed chess championships before the age of 16. He could easily play “simuls,” in which 20–50 chessboards were set up with opponents in a large banquet hall, requiring him to walk from table to table playing all of the games simultaneously in his head.

He was labeled a “prodigy.”

I disagree with this labeling because Josh has a process for mastery, and he’s applied it to many fields, not just chess. As it turns out, he’s not the only one in his family with this skill. His father, Fred Waitzkin, has processes and tricks he uses for writing both non-fiction (he wrote Searching for Bobby Fischer) and fiction…

As of late, I’ve become interested in the craft of fiction writing.

This interest was partially sparked by an early copy of Fred’s latest novel, The Dream Merchant, which is an incredible piece of art with praise from writers like Sebastian Junger. 

This post is a conversation with Fred about his creative process: tactical, psychological, and otherwise. The lessons learned apply to much more than writing. If you like this interview, please let me know in the comments.

NOTE: For those who’d like to skim this to start, I’ve bolded a few of my favorite lines and takeaways throughout.

Enter the Conversation:  Tim Ferriss (TF) and Fred Waitzkin (FW)

TF: You are best known for the book and film Searching for Bobby Fischer, but can you give us some of your background from before that media deluge?

FW: In my twenties, I spent years learning my chops writing short fiction. I felt a lot of frustration. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write and I struggled to publish my work. When I look back on it now, I was too hemmed in by feelings and dark moods—I didn’t give enough sway to the story part of my stories. I didn’t understand the importance of plot. In the early 80’s I began writing feature length non-fiction for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine and a few others. All of a sudden my editors expected that I would be writing about something that really happened. This mandate was hard for me but also it was liberating—writing wasn’t all about what was inside my guts. Still, I thought of what I was doing as “creative non-fiction” which is to say I wanted my stories to have an arc, to build to some kind of revelation or impact ending.

I often wrote in the first person, which was unusual back then. You see, I didn’t believe in the New York Times credo, that a writer’s point of view about the subject shouldn’t be a part of the story. I believed that a writer always has a point of view and that masking it is a kind of fraud. So I didn’t write behind the mask. I put myself right into the story–Fred’s take–and somehow my editors put up with it. In my view, Norman Mailer was the greatest of all the contemporary non-fiction writers. He put himself right in–he let his imagination run wild in his non-fiction. Oddly, his imagination was a better friend to him as a non-fiction writer than as a novelist.

TF: Speaking of influences, or at least favorites, what are your top-5 favorite short stories?



FW: I’ll give you six, in no particular order, although I have never admired a story more than Kilimanjaro:

The Snows of Kilimanjaro–Ernest Hemingway

The Dead–James Joyce

To Build a Fire–Jack London

A Hunger Artist–Franz Kafka

The Swimmer–John Cheever

Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead–Milan Kundera [TF: couldn't locate link]

TF: When you were just starting out as a writer, did you seek formal training?

FW: No. I taught myself. I was a brash young guy, and I couldn’t accept criticism.

TF: Can you elaborate?

FW: I was turned on by Jack Kerouac’s vision of life and writing. I was rebellious. The idea of just digging life and putting it down like jazz improvisation seemed like the essence of great writing to me. Some professor telling me how to write sounded like cheating. Also, I suppose I was insecure, which is why I couldn’t accept criticism then.

TF: Did this solo approach hurt you?

FW: Well for one thing, I never met many writers or editors. I didn’t make connections. To work for magazines you have to know the editors. If you know them, and they become familiar with your work, you get assignments. If you send in stories or story ideas over the transom, it is far more likely that you will be ignored. A good writer can be ignored for years. It’s a shame.

TF: Looking at your writing career — was there a stand-out turning point? Or inflection point?



In 1984 I wrote a long piece for New York Magazine called “The Grungy World of Big Time Chess” that told the story of brilliant guys in New York who played the game with passion and devotion but couldn’t begin to make a living from it. This story appealed to me I suppose because my mom was an abstract painter, a great one, but she never made much money from her work. I loved the fifties idea of “art for art’s sake” and chess players embodied that. Anyhow, this legendary editor at Random House, Joe Fox, who loved chess, read the piece, and invited me to his office. He asked me why I was so passionate about the game when I wasn’t even a player. I told him that I had a six-year-old son who was remarkably good at chess, who beat up adults every afternoon playing in Washington Square Park. “That’s your book. That’s what you have to write about,” said Fox. I gulped. He wanted me to write a book about my six-year-old kid who had only been playing chess for a few months. But Fox was the foremost literary editor in the country. He was Truman Capote’s editor and Roth’s and Mathieson’s —how could I say no to such a luminary?

So I began writing Searching for Bobby Fischer in terror. It was such a risky proposition. What if Josh got bored with the game and quit before he was seven or before I finished writing? What if it turned out that he was just a flash in the pan talent? What would happen to my book? Also, I didn’t know how to write a book. What if the great Fox thought my work was terrible? How could I possibly measure up to Truman Capote and Philip Roth? Yes, I was terrified. Also, there were personal things in my life that had me depressed. I worried that my book would be about gloom because I was feeling that way—that gloom would filter through and darken the writing.

I began taking notes about my feelings about Josh’s chess life. We went to the park and Josh played heroic games against seasoned players—or they seemed that way to me. I wrote it all down on yellow pads. Each decision about his chess life seemed huge. Should he take formal lessons? Should he play in tournaments? Should he play speed chess? I wrote in my journal that his park games were more important to me than anything else in my own life. That was hard for me to look at, but it was true. Was I living my life through my six- year- old kid? Yes, for sure. And it was doubly true because of the book. The book gave an additional layer of urgency to everything that Josh and I did. In a minute, my career had become linked to his terribly youthful hobby–although to me it surely didn’t feel like a hobby. Was it fair to put so much pressure on a kid? Very big question. For sure it was interesting material to reflect on and write about.

TF:  Isn’t it difficult to write so candidly about yourself?  Did you find it embarrassing to take your clothes off in public, so to speak?

FW:  No, I got over that fairly quickly. It became my work to write truly about how I felt about myself and my kid as we moved through the chess world, just in the same way that a lawyer or a financial analyst does his research. I wrote it all down on yellow pads. I developed a working attitude about my confessional approach. I soon stopped thinking about whether or not I would embarrass myself. The book became a work of “introspective journalism.” I used that phrase when people asked me about it. I wrote about myself as if I were composing paragraphs about a fictional character. I adopted this strategy: If I wrote about “him” it wouldn’t hurt me. Of course once the book was about to hit the stores, I had my nerve-wracking moments.

There is a lot of alchemy in writing. You make a soup, put a lot of stuff in. But if it is a really good soup, what comes out is sometimes surprisingly different than what you put in. This is the coolest thing in writing. I have an idea to write a story about a guy I know. I write three or four notes on a legal pad. I’m raring to go. I begin churning out the words. I look at it again after a few days and I ask myself, “Where did that come from? Very interesting, but where did it come from?” If there is greatness in a book, it is usually the magic part–the revelations there were truly revelations to the author himself.

Energy needs to go into the soup. I’ll talk more about energy later, I’m sure, but just one thing here. Moods are energy. Think of a river flowing. If you are sad about some loss or terrible rejection, the river flows slowly in that direction. If you are ecstatic, the river rushes ahead with glee. But the main thing is movement. I mentioned before that I wrote Searching for Bobby Fischer when I was feeling depressed. Early on I discovered that I could divert that river and write passages that were hilarious. I marveled at it. My depression somehow gave me the impulsion to write humor. That was a great revelation to me and I’ve used it over the years. Movement begets movement. It is much better for a writer to feel badly than to not feel at all. If he feels badly he can turn it like a fire hose.

TF: How did you personally respond to the success of Searching?

The success of Searching was confusing and for a time it was even emotionally devastating. Perhaps when I think of that period in my life, I am conflating the book with the movie–all of this happened a long time ago. And people were constantly speaking of them as one and the same. But they weren’t. The book was very close to the experience of our lives, or as close as I could manage. The movie was a 125-minute version filtered through the sensibilities of many creative people, the script writer-director, the producer, a cast of greatly talented actors. The movie was a separate thing. Everyone in my family was upset by the movie when we first saw it. It wasn’t exactly what happened. It wasn’t our lives, not really, although the characters used our names.

Friends and strangers were always complimenting me about the movie as if it were my doing. Some people loved my book as well, but many more admired the Hollywood movie seen by millions. It was deeply confusing. Should I shake hands and say thank you, should I carefully explain that my book was quite different and really they should read it? But that seemed like a big bridge to cross with stranger after stranger who wanted to tell me how great the movie was. I shook hands and felt a bit like an imposter.

Also, for a writer who spends years by himself trying to actualize an inner vision, who covets silence and aloneness, hearing hundreds of compliments takes a toll. In my case there reached a point where I became insatiable. I wanted more and more great reviews. I wanted more people to tell me how terrific it was. This experience was like eating too much of the richest chocolate cake. I wanted more and at the same time my senses had become deadened from too much. I had to get away from the book and movie before I would be fit again to write anything decent. I recall having to wean myself from praise. I had to learn to sit by myself in a room again. That’s what I did.

TF: You’ve written nonfiction for a lifetime. Now you have spent the past ten years immersed in a novel. Can you describe some of the core similarities and differences in these processes? How would you compare the core challenge of writing fiction and nonfiction?

Actually, it feels like I have been writing fiction my entire life. But maybe that’s because I worked on The Dream Merchant for more than ten years– that’s a lifetime for one book. Also, my non-fiction life prepared me for fiction–I learned the importance of story. It was the perfect training ground.

I always wanted to write a novel. It’s just that I took a long time to get to it. And then The Dream Merchant took much much longer to finish than I’d ever imagined. I kept discovering new levels to the story, and every change meant fifty more changes. The novel is a deeper and more mysterious construction, I suppose, than a memoir but I’m not certain about this. For me, the best of non-fiction isn’t so different from fiction. As a journalist, the stories that appealed to me most were like short fictions—a small twist here and there and they might have been short stories. Many people have told me that my memoir, The Last Marlin, reads like a novel. While I was writing it I flirted with the idea of changing a few things and calling it a novel. Read This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. Wolff might have called his great memoir of growing up a novel and no one who didn’t know his history would have blinked. Probably he was tempted.

But to dig into your question, a novel is constantly challenging the imagination. In a memoir, if you are playing more or less by the rules, you know what happened in fact, and the challenges have to do with how you are going to get there, the language you use, the moods you evoke, what you leave in and what you take out. With a novel there is more room to surprise yourself. Characters lead you to unexpected places, introduce you to new characters you hadn’t banked on meeting. Who are these strangers and what are they like? What are their passions? Who are their friends and lovers? All of this sounds obvious. But less obvious perhaps is how the novelist accesses the fictive side of himself.

Working on The Dream Merchant with numerous characters and dramatic scenes to bring to life I had to learn how to access my unconscious. This is an important part of my creative process. Let’s start simply. We all dream but some of us cannot recall our dreams in the morning. You can train yourself to remember your dreams. Put a pad on the shelf beside your bed and begin writing the second you open your eyes. Even before you open your eyes reach for the pad. Don’t turn on the light. Start scribbling in the dark. You will remember your dreams if you do this. The way I think of it, and I’m not a psychologist, you’ve created a bridge between your conscious and unconscious.

As a novelist I want to travel on this bridge, regularly–in fact, every day I want to cross over. Here is a deep trick that I learned from an interview with Ernest Hemingway: At the end of each writing day I leave unwritten a small portion of what I still had in my mind to compose that day.

[Tim note: Hemingway would routinely leave a sentence half finished, as discussed in A Moveable Feast.]

Then riding home on my bike from my office, at some level my mind is working on the unwritten paragraphs that I might have written but didn’t. I’m working on these paragraphs while I’m chatting with my wife or watching the ball game—but I am making connections that I never imagined. Sometimes my thinking is just a vague sense of impressions but other times an idea comes rushing to the surface. I always carry a small pad in my pocket to write it down. I’ve learned that if I don’t write it down, the insight is likely to disappear like many unwritten dreams. Then when I begin writing again the following day, I’ve discovered that the unwritten scene already contains hints and urges about where the narrative might next go–very often there are elements here that I hadn’t consciously thought about before.

When I was writing The Dream Merchant this dalliance with the unconscious felt very natural and I was able to give this hidden part of myself assignments. I would say to myself what does Jim worry about at night in bed? Or how does he tell his wife that he is going to leave her for another woman? Then I would be riding on my bike or watching the game, and the answer would rise to me–this would happen surprisingly often. Although each time it was a little thrilling, this bolt from the blue connection with a shadowy hard working world that we don’t know so much about.

One last point about my unusual dialogue with myself: It takes practice like running or swimming fast miles. When I haven’t written for a month or two I cannot access this part of being and I have to begin training in my fashion. But it gives me confidence to know that I have been there before and will probably be able to get back again.

TF: What do you do when your creative process is blocked? You talk a lot about muses. Tell us about that.



Inspiration is frequently misunderstood. When I was a young writer I looked for it in all the wrong places. In my twenties, I lived with my wife in a studio apartment just off Washington Square. Somehow I decided that the best writing time for me was late at night–I guessed that was when the muses would be running wild and delivering intoxicating poetic secrets. Perhaps I got this impression from Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round about Midnight” which I played over and over–it was so hauntingly beautiful and sad. In those days, after a late heavy dinner with a couple of beers topped off by more than a few drags of weed, I took my yellow legal pad into the chilly unsightly stairwell across from my front door and got ready to write the great American novel. Ugh, wrong move, Waitz. I recall sitting in the stairwell waiting for inspiration to strike until I was dozing off or feeling too cold. Some evenings when my wife was off taking classes at N.Y.U., for inspiration I maxed out the hifi with Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane blasting pure madness solos while I tried to compose my delicate pages. Wrong. Wrong. All wrong, Waitzkin.

Now, many years later, when I’m working on a book I write everyday except Sunday, when I watch football or go to the country with my wife. This routine has settled deeply inside. It gives me confidence. I’ve learned that pages will come if I go to my quiet office and stick with my routine. Back in the younger days, the unsightly stairwell seemed cool, but not now. I could never do my best work after a heavy meal or with the music blasting. It would be a distraction–an energy robber.

TF: But what about “inspiration”? Does it exist for you?



For me, inspiration is primarily energy. If I feel energy for a paragraph or a description I can almost always get to the essence of it. If I feel dead to myself, I don’t have a chance. I am always looking for energy. Where can I find it? What or who can give it to me? How can I amp up what I have?

A story can help us here. An older friend of mine was once depressed about his advancing years. He lacked zest or motivation for his regular gym workouts. He couldn’t concentrate on his career. One evening this man found himself in an elevator with a woman, a housekeeper who had worked for him in the past. But she was wearing outside clothes, a tight fitting sweater. She was young and beautiful. They talked a little. There was chemistry. She got off the elevator at his floor. They chatted in the hall. She said that she found him attractive. But he could feel this even before she said the words. She embraced him. And that was it. Nothing more happened between them. He was married and not looking for an affair. But he felt a big surge of life. He felt renewed, deeply so. There was a bounce to his step. He returned to the gym feeling ten years younger… There are many ways to experience the girl in the elevator…

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This interview to be continued in Part II, coming shortly. In the meantime, read an excerpt of The Dream Merchant here.

A World Map of Flavors – 36 Regions, 36 Herb and Spice Combinations

Inspired by The 4-Hour Chef, the friendly folks over at the startup Maptia (launching soon) have created this fun typographic map of flavors from around the world. You can download a large version by clicking here.

Aside from the map, this post showcases 36 simple recipes and flavor combinations from the 36 regions covered in the map…



Maptia has ambitious plans to re-imagine mapping. They want to make it easy for everyone to create beautiful maps of their lives and the places around them.

Enter Maptia

Here in Morocco, in the kitchen of Maptia HQ, there lies a somewhat battered copy of The 4-Hour Chef – a little dog-eared and spice-stained from enthusiastic use.

Being naturally rather map-obsessed, we loved Tim’s flavor and place pairings on pages 148-149 of his book. They come from all over the world, and range from the perfumed and fragrant herbs of Provence (thyme, rosemary, and sage) to the sweet and spicy tastes of Indonesia (tamari, brown sugar, peanut, and chili). One of our favorite recipes Tim has since shared, based on another of these pairings, is scrambled eggs mixed with garlic, cumin, and dried mint for a tasty North East African twist.

The Recipes

For the more adventurous food lovers out there, we reached out to a few of our favourite chefs and food bloggers to put together a collection of recipes from all of the places Tim featured on the above flavor map.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to share recipes, ranging from mouthwatering main meals to tempting desserts. To give you a quick taste of the spectrum (pun intended) – we have everything Shaheen Peerbhai‘s grandma’s homemade Chicken Curry recipe from India, while from the more temperate European climate, we have a traditional Normandy Apple Tart by Imen McDonnell.

If you’re getting hungry by now, bookmark this page so you can come back to cook these recipes later… It’s possible travel around the world in your kitchen.

Here are the 36 flavor combinations in action!

1. Yucatán (map) | Traditional Sopa de Maiz shared by Sarah Kieffer who told us, “This soup is one of my absolute favorites – so many good flavors happening at the same time. The drizzle of lime juice is the best part.”

2. Mexico (map) | Homemade Tacodeli-style Salsa via Tribeza – thanks to Noah Kagan for the suggestion!

3. India (General) (map) | Homemade Chicken Curry from Shaheen Peerbhai

4. Northern India (map) | Garlic Chicken by Prerna Singh who says, “You don’t need to rush to the supermarket or an Indian grocery store to buy ingredients for this recipe. It’s pretty straightforward! You just need chicken and tons of garlic along with some basic ingredients like lemon and whatever you have in your spice shelf.”

5. Southern India (map) | Deliciously simple Nan Khatai baked by Tanvi Srivastava

6. Bengal (map) | Bengali style Aloo Dum from Archana Doshi

7. Middle East (map) | Quick but tasty Baba Ganoush from Cara Eisenpress

8. North Africa (map) | Harissa Turkey Meatballs by Lydia Walshin

9. Morocco (map) | Vegetable Tagine from David & Luise

10. East Africa? (map) | Pigeon Peas in a mild Coconut Curry by Sukaina

11. West Africa (map) | West African Ginger Drink via The Kitchn

12. North East Africa (map) | Ful Medames on Serious Eats

13. Greece (map) | Greek Nachos from Ashley Rodriguez

14. Italy (map) | Spaghetti with fresh Soppressata by Lindsay & Taylor

15. Northern Italy (map) | Tomato Flatbreads with Anchovy Oil from Nicole Gulotta

16. Southern Italy (map) | Arancini Di Riso by Michael Natkin

17. France (map) | Spectacular baked Mont d’Or cheese from David Lebovitz

18. Southern France (map) | Old-fashioned Merveilles by Mimi Thorisson

19. Normandy (map) | The traditional Apple Tart baked by Imen McDonnell

20. Provence (map) | Provencal Vegetable Tian by Martha Stewart

21. Spain (map) | Gazpacho from Matt Armendariz

22. Hungary (map) | Hungarian Pork Stew by Cheri

23. Eastern Europe (map) | Wild Mushroom and Onion Kasha via Bon Appétit

24. Northern Europe (map) | Swedish Kalops? from Kimberly Killebrew

25. Central Asia (map) | Risotto Balls with Mango Chili Sauce by Sneh Roy

26. Burma (map) | Burmese Tofu Salad from Katherine

27. Nepal (map) | Sekwa Chara (Nepalese Chicken Roast) via Awesome Cuisine

28. Thailand (map) | Thai Shrimp Cakes from Leela Punyaratabandhu

29. Vietnam (map) | Beef Pho Noodle Soup from Andrea Nguyen via Jodi Ettenberg

30. Laos (map) | Spicy Laotian Beef Salad by Katherine Foshko via Victoria Frolova

31. Japan (map) | Mouthwatering Takoyaki from Stephane Lemagnen, who says, “It’s my favourite street snack in Osaka.”

32. Indonesia (map) | Nasi Goreng from Jun

33. Korea (map) | Warm Tofu with Spicy Garlic Sauce by Alexandra Stafford, who says, “Both healthy and satisfying, this warm tofu costs next to nothing to prepare, comes together in 10 minutes, and is completely delicious.”

34. China (map) | Stir-fried Nai Bai via Noob Cook

35. Szechuan (map) | Peppercorn Roasted Chicken from Jaden Hair

36. Canton (map) | Char Siu (Barbecued Pork) by Diana Kuan who reckons that, “Along with Wonton Noodle Soup, Char Siu is the Cantonese people’s greatest contribution to mankind.”

And A Mini Culinary Challenge (Just for Fun)

Whoever shares the most interesting or unusual recipe (with accompanying photo or video) by 5pm PDT this Sunday (24 March) will receive a one-off wall print of our original hand-painted typographic map above.

Your submission could be a family recipe that has been passed down through the generations, or perhaps one of your own experiments in the kitchen. Bonus points for creativity!

Here’s how it works:

1) Post your recipe and accompanying photo or video (perhaps a 6-second Vine snapshot?) somewhere online.

2) Tweet the URL of your submission (and the place it is from) to @Maptia and @tferriss, and make sure to include the hashtag #RTWflavors.

3) Make sure to tweet us your submission before 5pm PDT this Sunday (24 March).

Rules of thumb:

- The recipe must come from (or be inspired by) one of the 36 places listed above in the photographic tributes to the flavors.

- It must be an original recipe, or your own twist on an existing recipe. Do not violate copyrights or other intellectual property.

- The photo or video must be your own and must be of the recipe you are submitting.

As soon as the deadline (5pm PDT, Sun 24 March) has passed we will choose the person who has submitted the most interesting or unusual recipe, and send them the one-off wall print of the typographic flavor map. We will also feature the winning recipe over on our Maptia blog.

We’re really excited to try out some of your recipes and to see where in the world your culinary imaginations have taken you… Good luck!

Bonus: The Flavor Combo Pics

With such diversity and color among the different flavors Tim wrote about, we decided what better way to get people inspired about using them in their cooking than to create a photographic tribute for each place and each set of flavors on the map. Here they are:

(Photos: Sources listed here)

My First Quarterly Shipment! (Plus: Live Event 3/28, Merrell Winners)

Screenshot of my first video “letter” to Quarterly subscribers.

Roughly 2-3 weeks ago, my first Quarterly package shipped out to subscribers, including many of you.

The theme of my Quarterly mailings is obsession–the ideas and objects I just can’t get out of my head. I get obsessed with all kinds of things. Sometimes I’m hooked on a great health product or travel gadget. Other times, I find a new productivity booster or incredible book through my experiments and research.

I never know what I’ll get obsessed with next, and that surprise factor is what makes obsessions great.

Here’s what the first box looked like (click to enlarge)!

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The descriptions are below… and just wait until you see what’s next!…

Quarterly is now accepting 500 more subscribers — first come, first served. Just click here to check out the details. International is no problem — just a $10 shipping fee for Canada and a $15 shipping fee for all other non-US countries.

Anything in particular you’d like to see in future boxes? Please let me know in the comments.

In the meantime, here are all of the products from the first box ($200+ value):

1. Gyokucho Japanese Saw

2. Bird by Bird

3. Letters from a Stoic

4. Buddha Board

5. Prismacolor Col-Erase Colored Pencil Light Blue

6. Bigger, Stronger, Faster (DVD)

7. Athletic Greens

OR

BioTrust Low-Carb Protein (This was only for some international subscribers, who could not receive Athletic Greens due to customs regulations)

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Odds and Ends: Live Event and Merrell Winners

Live Event: “Building the Perfect Human: Tracking Biomarkers for Performance and Health Enhancement”

I use a start-up called WellnessFX for all of my comprehensive blood testing.

Be one of the first 200 people to purchase a WellnessFX package between now and March 28, and you’ll receive an exclusive invitation to see me speak live in downtown San Francisco on March 28th from 6pm-7:30pm. It will be an intimate group, and there will be plenty of time for audience Q&A.

Check out all the details here.

Merrell Winners

The 10 winners of the last comment competition are listed below. To the winners: keep an eye on your email! Also, since so many people have asked about my default shoes, here are my two current favorites:

- For all-around use: The Reach Glove

- For walking and (carefully) running: The Vapor Glove, their most minimal “barefoot-like” shoe

http://bit.ly/13VVpCk – Men’s

http://bit.ly/Z7TOoB – Women’s

THE 10 WINNERS:

It was hugely difficult to narrow these down, but here are 10 that my magic elves and I particularly liked. Thank you to everyone how commented!

1. Adam Brady

Connection for me occurs when purpose meets emotion. You can do things with purpose but without emotion and you can do things emotionally but without purpose, “connection” is when the two sentiments converge. Many individuals work with the purpose of making a living, and many play for the pure emotion of joy but, when one finds a calling or activity that speaks to them they become connected, and that work/activity is executed with both purpose and joy.

My favorite body weight exercises are pull-ups, push-ups, mountain climbers, deep squats and planks. 5 exercises, whole body, simple and effective.

2. Connor Grooms

It is inherently foolish to try to put words to connection. Connection is not possible to describe, just like the tao, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name”. Connection is what makes life worth living, what makes relationships deep, and what makes being alone in wild Nature feel so freeing. There are more literal meanings, but those are insufficient.

Best body weight exercise is Pullups, especially ones on door frames (grip strength)

3. Rachel

When we feel our hearts beating, blood pulsing in our veins, and our breath moving inside of us we are fully alive…we are in connection with ourselves and we are connected to all other living things. Connection is life.

Yoga is connection and is by far my favorite body-weight only exercise for mind, body and spirit!

4. Mike Gopsill

Connection is the noun for Kevin Bacon, who is always connected, by 4GEE and by six degrees.

My favourite bodyweight-only exercises are dips because they are isolated and intense, a one-handed pushup (Rocky-style) and I like a Turkish getup with no weight if that counts.

Great post Tim, looking forward to getting outside myself when the UK summer kicks in.

5. Edmundo Gurza

What does “connection” mean to you??A connection is the perfect mix of focus and calmness, which allows you to be in the moment with all your senses. Whether it is with a person, a task or nature, being in the moment and allowing the connection to happen opens your senses to bring clarity and be able to focus on what is surrounding you.

What are your favorite bodyweight-only exercises??- squats (such a natural movement that has been so lost in our culture)?- anything handstand-ish (pushups, holds, one handed, etc)?- and of course pullups

6. Rebecca

Connection is intangible, invisible and undeniable. Felt as an energy toward someone or something, our ears perk up, our eyes open wide and our hearts start to flutter.

It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. It grabs you by the heart and says “listen up!” It is the extra “something” that we often cannot put words to because there are some things in life that are too unique and special to name or label.

Best body weight exercise is full body squats in sets that make you wonder if you are going to be able to get off the toilet later! :0)

7. Drew

Connection, to me personally, is what I felt the first time I went to Brazil, speaking no Portuguese, and met a Japanese Brazilian girl who didn’t speak English. We had the strongest CONNECTION I had ever felt. We had a “chemical”, as she said, using her English dictionary.

8 years later: she is fluent in English, I am fluent in Portuguese, and we are married.

My favorite bodyweight exercises are the ones that use leverage and creativity to create extreme difficulty – one-armed pushup and one-armed pullup.

8. Ryan Ripley

Connection – a strange attractor that leads to unpredictable interractions and consequences.

Favorite body weight exercise: Face the wall squats (RKC)

9. Monica Ridgway

For me, “connection” means surrender, at least to some extent, allowing unity with whatever one is connecting with – be it nature, God, oneself, a dance partner, a spouse, a friend, or whatever. In order to connect, we have to let go of our own need for control, let go of preconceived ideas and agendas, and allow the external to enter and exert power over us. This surrender and connection changes us, the whole more than the sum of its parts.

As for favorite body-weight-only exercises, my top choice has always been dance. From the strict forms of ballet and modern dance, to ballroom and swing, to the nearly-formless bouncing and shimmying to be witnessed in nightclubs, to break dancing, dance involves all parts of the body – particularly the core – and it is also a great cardio workout. Dance is also an excellent way of connecting, be it with music – giving your body over to the music to drive your movement – or with a partner – surrendering the self to move together as one body.

10. Mark Greenman

1. For me, “connection” means a lot of things, but when I first read it, the connection I thought of was the feeling I get when I connect with a particularly well designed piece of gear, something that has been designed for exactly what I need it to do, and expresses itself instantly. But then I’m a gear nerd!