Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 46

My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse (Includes Extensive Resource List)

Nearly 40 years ago at ~4 years old.

[***NOTE: IF YOU ARE VISITING TIM.BLOG/TRAUMA FOR THE RESOURCE LIST, PLEASE CLICK HERE OR SCROLL DOWN***]

For me, this is the most important podcast episode I’ve ever published.

In it, I describe the most life-shaping, certainly the most difficult, and certainly the most transformative journey of my 43 years on this planet. I’ve never shared it before.

My dance partner and safety net in this conversation is my friend Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman). She has been named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, and she is the host of Design Matters—a great show and one of the world’s longest running podcasts. She is also Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts and Editorial Director of Print magazine, and she has worked on design strategy for some of the world’s largest brands.

But I didn’t ask Debbie to join me because of her bio. I asked Debbie because she’s a close confidante, she’s an excellent interviewer, and she’s been an incredible support for me in the last few years, including late-night emergency phone calls. Last but not least, she and I have experienced similar trauma but have taken two very different paths to healing using very different tools. So, you get a two-for-one deal in this conversation.

#464: Tim Ferriss — My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse
https://rss.art19.com/episodes/3df92572-75d2-4fca-9314-65a7be878f2b.mp3 Download

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.

***

All resources mentioned in this episode—and many more—are listed below. If you have tips, advice, or resources that have helped you, please share in the comments. We will moderate to eliminate any bad actors, snark, or other nonsense.

And if you remember only one thing, remember this: there is light on the other side. I wouldn’t have believed this even five years ago, but I now consider myself living proof that deep, lasting change is possible. Don’t give up. You are never alone, and it is never hopeless. I’m right there alongside you, as are millions of others.

Much love to you and yours,

Tim

P.S. Disclaimer: Debbie and I are not doctors or therapists, and we don’t play them on the internet. This episode and blog post are for informational purposes only, and nothing is intended as professional or medical advice in any capacity. Please be smart and be safe.

LIST OF RESOURCES

CLICK ANY LINK TO JUMP TO THAT SECTION, OR SCROLL DOWN FOR ALL:

DOCUMENTARIES
BOOKS AND SUGGESTED READING
MORE EXTENSIVE BOOK LIST FROM DEBBIE MILLMAN
RESOURCES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND TOOLS
MOST MENTIONED PODCAST EPISODES
LIST OF RELATED PODCAST EPISODES

DOCUMENTARIES

“Trip of Compassion” — The Most Compelling Movie I’ve Seen In The Last Year I Am Evidence

BOOKS AND SUGGESTED READING

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice MillerDr. Leah Lagos (book, website) on HRV, or Heart-Rate Variability, training The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis The Courage to Heal Workbook: For Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Laura Davis The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut by Chanel Miller In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler The Apology by Eve EnslerSome Practical Thoughts on Suicide by Tim FerrissThe Quick-Start Guide to Healing Trauma and Psychological Wounds by Neil StraussA Meditation on Lovingkindness by Jack Kornfield

MORE EXTENSIVE BOOK LIST FROM DEBBIE MILLMAN

Please note that there is some natural overlap with the above list.

Self-help (the books that helped me in my twenties):

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse , edited by Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton Voices in the Night: Women Speaking about Incest , edited by Toni A.H. McNaron and Yarrow Morgan The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children by Florence Rush The Child In Crisis by Patricia Doyle and David Behrens Secret Scars: A Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Cynthia Crosson Tower The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

Newer book about rape culture:

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture , edited by Roxane Gay

Particularly good memoirs, all of which are about sexual abuse and/or rape:

Lucky by Alice Sebold Hunger by Roxane Gay I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison by Chanel Miller The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Novel or Semi-Autobiographical about sexual abuse and/or rape:

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Push by Sapphire

RESOURCES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND TOOLS

Joyful Heart Foundation FAQ | The Rape Crisis Center for Children and AdultsParadigms of Ketamine Treatment | MAPSPsychedelic Science: Magic Mushrooms | MAPSMDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy | MAPSPsychedelic-Assisted Therapy (Resources) | tim.blogAbout Holotropic Breathwork | Grof Transpersonal TrainingWhat is the Hoffman Process? | Hoffman Institute FoundationCognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Mayo ClinicHow Somatic Experiencing Can Help You Process Trauma | HealthlineWhat is Internal Family Systems? | IFS InstituteParts Work Therapy for Complex PTSD | Dr. Arielle SchwartzHakomi Method | Hakomi InstituteImago Relationships The Waking Up app Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders | Mental Health AmericaDissociation FAQs | The International Society for the Study of Trauma and DissociationThe Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research | Johns HopkinsCentre for Psychedelic Research | Imperial College LondonThe Conscious Leadership Group The Enneagram Institute The Center for Nonviolent Communication

MOST MENTIONED PODCAST EPISODES

How to Design a Life — Debbie Millman | The Tim Ferriss Show #214Jack Kornfield — Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy in the Present | The Tim Ferriss Show #300Overview of Psychedelic Fact vs. Fiction — Microdosing, Mind-Enhancing Methods, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #377Blake Mycoskie — Psychedelic Sequencing, TOMS, The Hoffman Process, and Conscious Uncoupling | The Tim Ferriss Show #446

LIST OF RELATED PODCAST EPISODES

Website | Design Matters Podcast | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Debbie’s first, second, and third appearances on this show.
Books by Debbie Millman
Joyful Heart Foundation
Paradigms of Ketamine Treatment | MAPS
What the Psychedelic Drug Ayahuasca Showed Me about My Life | Vox
Michael Pollan — Exploring the Frontiers of Psychedelics | The Tim Ferriss Show #365
Psychedelics — Microdosing, Mind-Enhancing Methods, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #377
Hypermnesia | APA Dictionary of Psychology
Vipassana Meditation
Jack Kornfield — Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy in the Present | The Tim Ferriss Show #300
Psychedelic Science: Magic Mushrooms | MAPS
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide | tim.blog
Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders | Mental Health America
Dissociation FAQs | The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation
FAQ | The Rape Crisis Center for Children and Adults
Advice by Ann Landers | AnnLanders.com
Q&A with Debbie Millman, Designer and Board Member | Joyful Heart Foundation
Defining the Rape Kit Backlog | ENDTHEBACKLOG
I Am Evidence
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller
Dr. Gabor Maté — New Paradigms, Ayahuasca, and Redefining Addiction | The Tim Ferriss Show #298
How Somatic Experiencing Can Help You Process Trauma | Healthline
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (Resources) | tim.blog
What is Internal Family Systems? | IFS Institute
Parts Work Therapy for Complex PTSD | Dr. Arielle Schwartz
MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy | MAPS
Hakomi Method | Hakomi Institute
Imago Relationships
The Center for Nonviolent Communication
Heart-Rate Variability: A New Way to Track Well-Being | Harvard Health Blog
Jim Dethmer — How to Shift from Victim Consciousness, Reduce Drama, Practice Candor, Be Fully Alive, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #434
The Conscious Leadership Group
The Enneagram Institute
Tobi Lütke — From Snowboard Shop to Billion-Dollar Company | The Tim Ferriss Show #359
The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut
Self-Preservation Six | Enneagram Central
The World’s Largest Psychedelic Research Center | The Tim Ferriss Show #385
Centre for Psychedelic Research | Imperial College London
The Underground World of Psychedelics and the Potential of Plant Medicine | NYU
The federal drug scheduling system, explained | Vox
About Holotropic Breathwork | Grof Transpersonal Training
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy | Mayo Clinic
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) | Mayo Clinic
Why Ketamine Is the Best Drug on Earth | Vice
Prozac Uses, Dosage, Side Effects, & Warnings | Drugs.com
Zoloft Uses, Dosage, Side Effects, & Warnings | Drugs.com
Wellbutrin Uses, Dosage, Side Effects, & Warnings | Drugs.com
Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month | tim.blog
The Method and Madness of ‘Einstein on the Beach’ | MetroFocus
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis
The Courage to Heal Workbook: For Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Laura Davis
Tara Brach on Meditation and Overcoming FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) | The Tim Ferriss Show #94
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
A Meditation on Lovingkindness | Jack Kornfield
The Quick-Start Guide to Healing Trauma and Psychological Wounds | Neil Strauss
What is the Hoffman Process? | Hoffman Institute Foundation
“Trip of Compassion” — The Most Compelling Movie I’ve Seen In The Last Year | tim.blog
by Chanel Miller
In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler
The Apology by Eve Ensler
Pavlov’s Dogs Study and Pavlovian Conditioning Explained | Simply Psychology
Josh Waitzkin — How to Cram 2 Months of Learning into 1 Day | The Tim Ferriss Show #375
7 positive changes that have come from the #MeToo movement | Vox
Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face | The Tim Ferriss Show #445

SHOW NOTES

Despite enormous discomfort, here’s why this is a conversation better put in motion sooner rather than later. [04:42]
From amnesia to hypermnesia—how I began to remember what I’d long forced myself to forget. [09:45]
Where my first 10-day Vipassana silent retreat took me, and why I’m grateful Jack Kornfield was there to ensure I made it back. [11:54]
Taking note of behaviors that seemed strange and inexplicable out of context but make perfect sense when memories of the pain and trauma they’re meant to alleviate resurface. [14:23]
Excuses I made to put off this conversation and the realization—whether through breakdown or breakthrough—that choosing not to deal with my trauma was just dealing with it poorly. [17:10]
A concerning symptom of delving deeper into the trauma of sexual abuse that I hadn’t expected to experience and some wise words a fellow trauma survivor had to say about the evolutionary miracle of dissociation. [18:14]
How common is sexual abuse, and why has it been so difficult for victims in our society to seek the help they need to heal? [21:59]
Debbie shares the extent of her own trauma that was imposed upon her beginning at age nine and how she’s tried to cope with it from then to now. [24:44]
What is the Joyful Heart Foundation, and how is it working to eradicate the rape kit backlog that keeps victims from getting justice and allows offenders to walk free? [28:38]
How disclosing her experience to this show’s audience changed Debbie’s life, and what she discovered in the aftermath of telling the truth. [30:32]
Reiterating the importance of having a guide who can help you through the rough parts of an immersive experience that might dredge up darkness you’re not ready to face. [37:45]
Trauma toolkit resources I’ve found particularly helpful. [39:03]
How heart rate variability (HRV) training has been useful in treating my cardiac hyper-responsiveness to daily stressors. In other words, it’s allowing me to better control my physiology in order to change my psychology. [43:32]
While skeptical of Enneagram personality typing, I do think it may be useful in certain circumstances. [46:03]
Why ayahuasca might be an overkill treatment for trauma in many cases, and what might prove to be better alternatives for most—provided they’re legal where you live. [47:06]
What does Debbie recommend to people who are trying to work through their trauma perhaps for the very first time? Where should they begin? [50:22]
What did Debbie’s very first talk therapy sessions look like compared to what they look like now, and what’s the one stipulation she has for them to be truly effective—even during the COVID-19 pandemic? [54:39]
While antidepressants may be helpful for many people, here are some of their potential drawbacks and dangers that patients considering their use should be aware of. [59:34]
What we, according to Stan Grof, are really trying to kill when we contemplate suicide and how a chance delivery was instrumental in preventing my own suicide. [1:05:38]
Trauma toolkit resources that Debbie has found particularly helpful. [1:09:29]
What I discovered while seeking an answer to the one question that truly matters, as conveyed by mindfulness teacher Tara Brach: what are you unwilling to feel? [1:14:39]
How who we are today can be better equipped to help heal the wounds of—and nurture—who we were yesterday. [1:20:48]
You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. Aim for the work that will allow you to retire at the end of the day with, as Debbie says, one notch more hope than shame. [1:25:53]
Why the seemingly perpetual act of recovery isn’t incompleteness—it’s connection. [1:27:47]
How reading the stories of other trauma survivors and learning what they did to incorporate that trauma into their own lives has helped Debbie. [1:32:30]
Why Debbie is hopeful that trauma survivors in our society will increasingly build and adopt the tools required to shift the shame of their experiences where it belongs but also advocate creating a new vocabulary that replaces words like “victim” and “survivor” with terms that don’t paint people who have endured trauma as other. [1:33:37]
Debbie and I share thoughts on tracking and confronting our perpetrators—which today has become as effortless as a Google search. Is there anything to be gained from seeking such contact? Can true forgiveness prevail over our desire for vengeance—and if so, should it? [1:34:39]
Is forgiveness more than just letting go of anger? How do you know where the line is between useful anger and anger that just consumes you? What can you do to reexamine how you process and utilize that anger in a way that’s constructive rather than destructive? [1:44:00]
Beyond the expression of anger, how has childhood trauma contributed to our other signature behaviors? What have we used to keep us “safe” from what we’ve been unwilling to feel? [1:56:19]
Another point in favor of having other people looped in on what you’re going through to act as a support system and, in turn, being available to support others who need you to be part of that system for them. [1:59:02]
When nearly 75 percent of a dozen male friends I’ve talked to about this have relayed their own stories of sexual abuse, is it time for a #HeToo movement? How can we most supportively respond to women or men who choose to share their experiences with us? Here’s how Jack Kornfield responded when I told him about mine. [1:59:22]
How has understanding and integrating my own trauma changed me and my perspective on life to this point? [2:06:45]
What do I hope listeners take away from this conversation? [2:13:07]
Parting thoughts and much gratitude to Debbie for having this conversation—and many other late-night conversations like it—with me. [2:15:28]

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Jack Kornfield
Peter Levine
Bessel van der Kolk
Ann Landers
Mariska Hargitay
Gabor Maté
Richard C. Schwartz
Michael Mithoefer
Annie Mithoefer
Leah Lagos
Jim Dethmer
Beatrice Chestnut
Tobi Lütke
Maria Popova
Stanislav Grof
Ellen Bass
Laura Davis
Tara Brach
Neil Strauss
Chanel Miller
Eve Ensler
Ivan Pavlov
Gautama Buddha
Dalai Lama
Josh Waitzkin
Janna Levin
Jordan Peterson

View more on Timothy Ferriss's website »

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Published on September 14, 2020 09:10

Guy Raz — Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs, The Story of ‘How I Built This,’ Overcoming Anxiety and Depression, and More (#462)

Illustration via 99designs

“There is a natural skepticism that you develop as a journalist, which I think is important. But oftentimes that develops into cynicism.”
— Guy Raz

Guy Raz (@guyraz) is the Michael Phelps of podcasting. He’s the creator and host of the popular podcasts How I Built This, Wisdom from the Top, and The Rewind and the co-creator of the acclaimed podcasts TED Radio Hour and Wow in the World, a children’s program. He’s received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, the National Headliner Award, the NABJ Award… basically, all the awards.

His brand-new book is titled How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Past podcast guest Adam Grant has this to say about it: “[This book is] the mother of all entrepreneurship memoirs. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do.”

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Brought to you by Wealthfront, Pique Tea, and LinkedIn Jobs. More on all three below.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Listen onApple Podcasts Listen onSpotify Listen onOvercast

#462: Guy Raz — Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs, The Story of 'How I Built This,' Overcoming Anxiety and Depression, and Morehttps://rss.art19.com/episodes/730f0636-dedf-4391-841d-68c3d384b60d.mp3 Download

This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.

Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim.

This episode is also brought to you by Pique Tea! I first learned about Pique through my friends Dr. Peter Attia and Kevin Rose, and now Pique’s fermented pu’er tea crystals have become my daily go-to. I often kickstart my mornings with their Pu’er Green Tea and Pu’er Black Tea, and I alternate between the two. Their crystals are cold-extracted using only wild-harvested leaves from 250-year-old tea trees. Plus, they triple toxin screen for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold—contaminants commonly found in tea. I also use the crystals for iced tea, which saves a ton of time and hassle.

Pique is offering 15% off of their pu’er teas for the first time ever, exclusively to my listeners. Simply visit PiqueTea.com/Tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. They also offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so your purchase is completely risk free. Just go to PiqueTea.com/Tim to learn more.

This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.

Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get $50 off your first job. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

Want to hear my interview with an entrepreneur mentioned in this episode? Check out my conversation with Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb. In this wide-ranging and hilarious interview, Joe shares the decisions, hardship, failures, and successes that prepared him for Airbnb.

#301: Joe Gebbia — Co-Founder of Airbnbhttps://rss.art19.com/episodes/11e79eb4-52eb-4b06-b114-23ac7961924d.mp3 Download

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Guy Raz:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Note from the editor: Timestamps will be added shortly.

Is Guy willing to come to this interview and surrender? What are some of the things he’s found helpful for putting interviewees at ease?
As a lifelong journalist, what does the prep work for one of Guy’s podcasts look like? During the research phase, how does he find information not commonly known to the general public, and how might it affect the outcome of an interview?
Since Guy can be somewhat self-effacing, how might his wife explain why How I Built This became as popular as it has become?
How did the name for How I Built This come about?
Why was the period between 2009 and 2012 such a turning point for Guy (and, to a larger extent, the state of journalism)?
What is it that makes George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon especially revealing about the human condition to Guy?
How has Guy’s relationship with depression changed over time?
What factors were involved in Guy’s decision to stop taking antidepressants after relying on them for five years?
How did Guy make the transition from serious military correspondent to NPR host — especially after being told he didn’t have the right personality for it?
How did the Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard help transform Guy’s outlook on an industry he’d been part of for his entire professional life? What would he recommend to anyone who wants to break out of a professional or personal rut?
How Guy’s wife performed a journaling intervention to help him get some sleep one night when his anxiety was being particularly relentless, and what he noticed when he read that passage three months later.
What does Guy believe separates wildly successful entrepreneurs from the masses?
We each share a story about times when we’ve seen Ring’s Jamie Siminoff work to, as Jason Roberts would say, increase his luck surface area.
Habits, practices, and characteristics Guy has picked up from his countless interviews over the years.
What does Guy think the podcasting landscape will look like in two or three years?
What stories and lessons from Guy’s book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From The World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs does he think will still resonate in a few years’ time?
In what ways is Guy conducting business beyond the world of podcasting?
What would Guy cover if he were to give a TED Talk about something for which he’s not already well-known?
What would Guy’s billboard say?
Parting thoughts.

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Dick Tracy
Steve Madden
Mother Teresa
Hannah Raz
Richard Branson
Joseph Campbell
Bill Moyers
George Lucas
Gilgamesh
Harry Potter
Jamie Siminoff
Stacy Brown
Stewart Butterfield
Howard Schultz
Ramtin Arablouei
Beck
Barack Obama
George Orwell
Christopher Hitchens
Francisco Franco
George W. Bush
Arthur Koestler
Joseph Stalin
Faust
Pol Pot
Tom Cruise
Anthony de Mello
Todd Carmichael
Tristen Walker
Herb Kelleher
Mark Cuban
Sarah Blakely
Joe Rogan
Dan Carlin
Genghis Khan
Levi Strauss
Henry Wells
William Fargo
Domingo Ghirardelli
John Sutter
Juice Wrld
Clark Kent

View more on Timothy Ferriss's website »

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Published on September 10, 2020 13:28

Guy Raz on Building ‘How I Built This,’ Managing Depression, and Podcast Ecosystem Predictions (#462)

Illustration via 99designs

“There is a natural skepticism that you develop as a journalist, which I think is important. But oftentimes that develops into cynicism.”
— Guy Raz

Guy Raz (@guyraz) is the creator and host of the popular podcasts How I Built This, Wisdom from the Top, and The Rewind. He’s also the co-creator of the acclaimed podcasts TED Radio Hour and Wow in the World, a children’s program. He’s received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, the National Headliner Award, and the NABJ Award, among many others, and was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard.

His brand-new book is titled How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Past podcast guest Adam Grant has this to say about it: “[This book is] the mother of all entrepreneurship memoirs. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do.”

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Brought to you by Wealthfront, Pique Tea, and LinkedIn Jobs. More on all three below.

Listen onApple Podcasts Listen onSpotify Listen onOvercast

#462: Guy Raz on Building 'How I Built This,' Managing Depression, and Podcast Ecosystem Predictions
https://rss.art19.com/episodes/730f0636-dedf-4391-841d-68c3d384b60d.mp3 Download

This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.

Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim.

This episode is also brought to you by Pique Tea! I first learned about Pique through my friends Dr. Peter Attia and Kevin Rose, and now Pique’s fermented pu’er tea crystals have become my daily go-to. I often kickstart my mornings with their Pu’er Green Tea and Pu’er Black Tea, and I alternate between the two. Their crystals are cold-extracted using only wild-harvested leaves from 250-year-old tea trees. Plus, they triple toxin screen for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold—contaminants commonly found in tea. I also use the crystals for iced tea, which saves a ton of time and hassle.

Pique is offering 15% off of their pu’er teas for the first time ever, exclusively to my listeners. Simply visit PiqueTea.com/Tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. They also offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so your purchase is completely risk free. Just go to PiqueTea.com/Tim to learn more.

This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.

Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get $50 off your first job. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

Want to hear my interview with an entrepreneur mentioned in this episode? Check out my conversation with Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb. In this wide-ranging and hilarious interview, Joe shares the decisions, hardship, failures, and successes that prepared him for Airbnb.

#301: Joe Gebbia — Co-Founder of Airbnbhttps://rss.art19.com/episodes/11e79eb4-52eb-4b06-b114-23ac7961924d.mp3 Download

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Guy Raz:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Note from the editor: Timestamps will be added shortly.

Is Guy willing to come to this interview and surrender? What are some of the things he’s found helpful for putting interviewees at ease?
As a lifelong journalist, what does the prep work for one of Guy’s podcasts look like? During the research phase, how does he find information not commonly known to the general public, and how might it affect the outcome of an interview?
Since Guy can be somewhat self-effacing, how might his wife explain why How I Built This became as popular as it has become?
How did the name for How I Built This come about?
Why was the period between 2009 and 2012 such a turning point for Guy (and, to a larger extent, the state of journalism)?
What is it that makes George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon especially revealing about the human condition to Guy?
How has Guy’s relationship with depression changed over time?
What factors were involved in Guy’s decision to stop taking antidepressants after relying on them for five years?
How did Guy make the transition from serious military correspondent to NPR host — especially after being told he didn’t have the right personality for it?
How did the Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard help transform Guy’s outlook on an industry he’d been part of for his entire professional life? What would he recommend to anyone who wants to break out of a professional or personal rut?
How Guy’s wife performed a journaling intervention to help him get some sleep one night when his anxiety was being particularly relentless, and what he noticed when he read that passage three months later.
What does Guy believe separates wildly successful entrepreneurs from the masses?
We each share a story about times when we’ve seen Ring’s Jamie Siminoff work to, as Jason Roberts would say, increase his luck surface area.
Habits, practices, and characteristics Guy has picked up from his countless interviews over the years.
What does Guy think the podcasting landscape will look like in two or three years?
What stories and lessons from Guy’s book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From The World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs does he think will still resonate in a few years’ time?
In what ways is Guy conducting business beyond the world of podcasting?
What would Guy cover if he were to give a TED Talk about something for which he’s not already well-known?
What would Guy’s billboard say?
Parting thoughts.

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Dick Tracy
Steve Madden
Mother Teresa
Hannah Raz
Richard Branson
Joseph Campbell
Bill Moyers
George Lucas
Gilgamesh
Harry Potter
Jamie Siminoff
Stacy Brown
Stewart Butterfield
Howard Schultz
Ramtin Arablouei
Beck
Barack Obama
George Orwell
Christopher Hitchens
Francisco Franco
George W. Bush
Arthur Koestler
Joseph Stalin
Faust
Pol Pot
Tom Cruise
Anthony de Mello
Todd Carmichael
Tristen Walker
Herb Kelleher
Mark Cuban
Sarah Blakely
Joe Rogan
Dan Carlin
Genghis Khan
Levi Strauss
Henry Wells
William Fargo
Domingo Ghirardelli
John Sutter
Juice Wrld
Clark Kent

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Published on September 10, 2020 13:28

Finding the Side Door: Startup Lessons from RXBar, 5-hour Energy, and More

Photo by Dima Pechurin

This guest post is authored by Guy Raz (@guyraz), the Michael Phelps of podcasting. Guy is the creator and host of many popular podcasts, including How I Built This, Wisdom from the Top, and The Rewind. Guy is also the co-creator of the acclaimed podcasts TED Radio Hour and Wow in the World, a podcast for children. He’s received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, the National Headliner Award, the NABJ Award… basically all the awards.

His brand-new book is titled How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Past podcast guest Adam Grant has this to say about it: “[This book is] the mother of all entrepreneurship memoirs. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do.”

What follows is an exclusive chapter — “Go In Through the Side Door” — from How I Built This.

Enter Guy…

A funny thing happens when you start to find success with a new business. You suddenly find yourself face-to-face with a host of people who are none too happy to see you. These people have a name. They’re called competitors. And whether they’ll admit it to you or not, many of them will try to do everything within their power to legally — and sometimes not so legally — shut you out. It’s a strategy deployed by the big fish in every pond once they notice a new, young fish swimming around and getting bigger by gobbling up the scraps they previously considered too small to care about.

In 1997, as the personal computer business approached 100 million units in annual sales and the dot-com bubble began to grow in earnest, Microsoft was one of the biggest fish in a pond that was about to swamp the world. Late that summer, a Microsoft group vice president named Jeff Raikes sent a now-famous email titled “Go Huskers!” to Warren Buffett, a fellow Nebraska native, describing Microsoft’s business in an effort to get him to invest in the company. In the email, Raikes likens the sturdiness and growth potential of Microsoft’s operation to that of Coca-Cola and See’s Candies (which Buffett had owned since 1972), in no small part because Microsoft’s revolutionary flagship product — the Windows operating system — had created a “toll bridge” that every PC maker would have to cross if they expected consumers to buy their machines.

The graphical user interface that made Windows revolutionary also made it wildly popular, which had the additional effect of creating a “moat,” as Raikes described it, between Microsoft and its competitors in the marketplace — one it was able to widen considerably with a 90 percent market share in productivity software applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.) that were built on top of Windows and were equally popular. This, in turn, gave Microsoft tremendous “pricing discretion,” not just for its applications software but also for the licensing fees the company charged to other computer makers for Microsoft’s operating system software.

What Raikes did not say in his email, but what Buffett surely understood from his decades of experience, was that the wider the moat and the longer the toll bridge, the more aggressively Microsoft could wield its pricing discretion in order to cement its growing advantage in the software industry. They could use it as a carrot, by lowering the licensing fee for Windows as an incentive to get their browser and applications software preloaded onto as many new PCs as possible. They could use it as a stick, by withholding volume Windows licensing discounts to punish PC makers that refused their sweetheart deal, or by offering their applications software at cost or below in order to drive competitors such as Lotus, Novell, and Corel (remember them?) out of business.

Microsoft employed each of those strategies to great effect. A year after Raikes’s email to Buffett, Microsoft would surpass General Electric as the world’s most valuable company and stay in that position for five consecutive years.

Toll bridge. Moat. Pricing discretion. These are euphemisms for the economic term barriers to entry, which is itself a kind of euphemism for all the ways existing businesses shut out competitors and make it difficult for new businesses to compete in a given industry. These barriers are not just conscious strategies deployed by old guard blue-chippers; they are also natural forces that rise and shift within a market as competitors enter and exit, grow and shrink, evolve and pivot. They can become the biggest obstacles you will face as a new business looking to grab, secure, and expand your foothold in a market, because they are the mechanism by which you will either be crushed (if your competitors see you coming) or ignored (if the market doesn’t).

This is why if, like most new businesses, you aren’t doing something completely novel or you aren’t doing it in a totally new way or new place, you should be thinking long and hard about how else you might enter your market besides knocking on the front door and asking for permission to come in. This is something that female and minority entrepreneurs have long had to contend with, whether it means breaking through glass ceilings or breaking down walls built by prejudice. All of which is to say, figuring out how to sneak in through the side door is not new ground you will have to break. A legion of resourceful geniuses have come before you. And what many of them have discovered is that the side door isn’t just less heavily guarded, it’s often bigger. Or, as Peter Thiel put it in a 2014 lecture at the Stanford Center for Professional Development titled “Competition Is for Losers,” “Don’t always go through the tiny little door that everyone’s trying to rush through. Go around the corner and go through the vast gate that no one’s taking.”

A year earlier, in Chicago, without fully realizing it, this is precisely what Peter Rahal had begun to do with his idea for a minimalist Paleo protein bar. Peter hadn’t started out looking for a side door per se, but he knew that with RXBar he was trying to enter a very busy space. Remember, Peter had already conceded that “the market didn’t need another protein bar.” It was a conclusion that was more or less inescapable when he and his partner, Jared Smith, did their initial fact-finding tour of Whole Foods. If there was one fact they were sure to find, it was that protein bars were among the most crowded sectors in the entire food business. Long gone were the days when only one main brand existed in this segment, as Gary Erickson had found in the early 1990s when he developed Clif Bar to go up against PowerBar. Even a decade later, ample opportunity was there for someone like Lara Merriken in a way that did not exist for Peter in 2013.

Can you imagine what the shelves of that Chicago Whole Foods looked like when he and Jared walked in? How many linear feet of shelf space were choked with multiple flavors from how many different protein bar manufacturers? Can you envision Peter even being able to secure as much as a hello from a Whole Foods regional buyer the way Lara Merriken did? Especially when the buyer learned what Peter was pitching? Yet another protein bar?

Peter knew he wasn’t getting into Whole Foods through the front door. Fortunately, that was never his plan. “From the early days, the whole strategy was to make a product that is for CrossFit and for the Paleo consumer, and build it online,” he said. “We’d build a web store and sell directly to gyms. Consumers would be coming directly to us.” That meant a bar with no grains, no dairy, no peas or bean protein, and no sugar. Nothing quite like it existed.

It was just the kind of advantage that a startup could identify and exploit but a larger competitor couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see. “A lot of people look at niches, or look at a small segment, and it’s not big enough for them,” Peter explained. “But we would rather have a CrossFit customer in California than a local Chicago independent grocery store, because in the grocery store we’re among the sea of competition. Whereas in a CrossFit gym, we were by ourselves. RXBar was literally engineered and designed for that occasion. It was perfect.”

It was his side door. Those niches — CrossFit, Paleo, and direct-to-consumer — which were then on the verge of exploding and truly becoming the kind of vast gate that Peter Thiel was talking about, were the combination that unlocked opportunity for Peter Rahal and allowed RXBar the chance to take root, to stand out, and to grow, before his direct competitors could notice and stamp him out. By that point, those competitors included major multinationals like General Mills and Nestlé, which had acquired Lärabar and PowerBar, respectively, and they could have easily shut him out by erecting any number of barriers to entry into the protein bar market.

For Manoj Bhargava, the founder of 5-hour Energy, his side door into the energy drink market did not take the shape of a small niche, but rather of a small product. In early 2003, a few years removed from his retirement from a plastics business he’d turned around and made profitable, Manoj was attending a natural products trade show outside Los Angeles looking for inventions he might acquire or license in an effort to create a business that would generate an ongoing residual income stream for him in his post-plastics years.

Walking the floor of the show, he stumbled upon a new sixteen-ounce energy drink that produced long-lasting effects he’d never experienced with other energy drinks. “Well, this is amazing,” he said to himself, exhausted from a long morning of meetings and now energized enough to continue walking the trade show floor. “I could sell this,” he thought. The drink’s creators disagreed. They were “science guys with PhDs,” while he was “just a lowly business guy.” They refused to sell their invention to him or even offer him a license on their formula. When they effectively told him to hit the road, Manoj decided to hit the lab instead and to create his own version of the energy drink that had fueled him up and blown him away.

“I looked at their label and said, ‘I can do better than this. How hard can it be? I’ll figure it out,’” Manoj said. With the help of scientists from a company he’d founded for the express purpose of finding inventions just like this one, he had a comparable energy drink formula in a matter of months. It would turn out to be the easiest part of the process.

The hard part would be getting his invention into stores. “If I make another drink,” Manoj said of his thinking at the time, “I’ve got to fight for space in the cooler against Red Bull and Monster [Energy]. I’ve also got to fight Coke, Pepsi, and Budweiser for space. So you’re pretty much dead if you want to try that.”

He was dead because he would be fighting for a finite amount of space in brick-and-mortar stores, against the competition not just in his own niche but in the entire beverage industry, which is dominated by some of the biggest companies in the world. If you own a 7-Eleven, or you’re the general manager of a grocery chain like Kroger or Tesco, are you really going to turn over a Diet Coke, Mountain Dew, or Snapple rack to a new energy drink that no one has ever heard of ? Especially when, in 2003, energy drink sales had yet to really spike and there were already two major players — Red Bull and Monster Energy — in the nascent market. Even if you were inclined to give a little guy like Manoj Bhargava a shot, once the regional sales reps and distributors from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo got wind of your decision, they would likely wield their Microsoftesque price discretion against you like a baseball bat, or just pull their products from your store altogether.

Those were the barriers to entry that Manoj was looking at. If he was going to get into this market, he’d have to find some other way. That’s when it dawned on him. “If I’m tired,” he asked himself, “why am I thirsty also?” By which he meant, why should we have to chug ten to sixteen ounces of a cloyingly sweet liquid in order to get an energy boost? “It would be like Tylenol selling sixteen-ounce bottles,” Manoj explained by way of analogy. “I just want to do it quick. I don’t want to drink this whole thing,” he thought. This is how Manoj arrived at the idea of shrinking his product down from the standard sixteen-ounce drink to a two-ounce shot.

Quickly, everything changed. In less than six months, he’d hired a designer to make his distinctive label, and he’d found a bottler who could produce two-ounce versions of his energy formula. “And at two ounces,” he said, “it’s really not a drink, it’s a delivery system.”

This was 5-hour Energy’s side door. It wasn’t a drink, so it wasn’t an immediate threat to Red Bull or Monster Energy. At two ounces, it also didn’t need to be refrigerated or given a large, dedicated shelf, so retailers didn’t have to worry about space. They understood that the perfect spot for it would be at the cash register, right next to the Slim Jims and pickled eggs!

“It just belonged there,” Manoj said. “You could tell it just looked that way, that it should be there.” Moreover, because the ingredients that went into 5-hour Energy were actually less about energy and more about focus — “vitamins for the brain,” Manoj called them — he could position his product beyond the beverage verticals and outside the grocery or convenience store channels. In fact, the very first place he went with 5-hour Energy in 2004 was the largest vitamin store, GNC, which decided to put the product in a thousand of its stores.

GNC turned out to be a genius side door into the energy “drink” market for a couple reasons. The first is obvious — there was much less competition compared with grocery and convenience stores — but the second is more interesting. “It turns out GNC is always looking for new products, because once a product gets mass distribution, GNC is sort of out of it,” Manoj explained. “If it’s in Walmart, nobody’s going to buy it at GNC.” Essentially, GNC was an easier route to retail distribution than a place like 7-Eleven or Safeway, and thankfully the tolerance for a slow start was higher as well, because in the first week they sold only 200 bottles. “Which was horrible,” Manoj admitted. But they waited it out, manufacturer and retailer together, “and at the end of six months it was selling 10,000 bottles a week.” From there Manoj went to drugstores like Walgreens and Rite Aid, which snapped it up, and now 5-hour Energy is near the cash register in most stores basically everywhere.

Today, RXBar, which was acquired by Kellogg’s in 2017 for $600 million, is one of the fastest-growing brands in the protein bar space, and 5-hour Energy has a 93 percent share of the energy shot business. It is a market dominance that Manoj has enjoyed from nearly the beginning, with only a brief dip to 67 percent when all his competitors — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Monster Energy, Red Bull — flooded the market with their own two-ounce-shot offerings . . . and failed. “Whenever people ask me what product are we like, I say we’re WD-40,” Manoj said near the end of our conversation, as we talked about 5-hour Energy’s phenomenal success. “We own the category. We’re the guys.”

This is the great irony of circumventing the barriers to entry that your competition’s apparent monopoly power constructs and then fighting your way in through the side door. If you’re successful, you stand a very good chance of achieving market domination of your own. Of digging and widening your own moat and building the toll bridge that crosses it. Of massive, unbelievable success. For many entrepreneurs, that is the goal.

Four days after Jeff Raikes sent his famous “Go Huskers!” email, Warren Buffett responded. His reply contained the normal conversational pleasantries, glowing commentary on Raikes’s analysis of his position on investing in Microsoft (Buffett wouldn’t), and an envious description of the company’s monopoly power: “It’s as if you were getting paid for every gallon of water starting in a small stream, but with added amounts received as tributaries turned the stream into an Amazon.” At the very beginning of his lecture in 2014, Peter Thiel echoed this sentiment in his own way. “I have a single idée fixe that I am completely obsessed with on the business side,” he said in his characteristic, hitched speaking style, “which is that if you’re the founder-entrepreneur starting a company, you always want to aim for monopoly, and you always want to avoid competition.” You want to be the only one directing traffic and collecting tolls across the widest moat possible.

I mention all this because being really good at going through the side door is an amazing, and sometimes necessary, skill. But it can also be a double-edged sword. It can get you off the ground and set you up for fantastic growth, but it can get you in a lot of trouble, too. Indeed, that tension is present whenever you search for the Raikes-Buffett emails online. They are often held up by aspiring entrepreneurs as brilliant examples of business acumen and strategic analysis, but what many of those people don’t realize is that the entire reason they are able to read those emails at all — most often in the form of pdf versions of a printed-out email chain — is because they are part of the public record, submitted as deposition and trial exhibits in a class action antitrust lawsuit brought against Microsoft in the early 2000s by consumers in multiple American states. This email exchange became a key part of the plaintiffs’ opening statement in that suit, which was settled not long afterward for more than a billion dollars.

All of which is to say, Go through the side door, please! Do everything within your power to find your way into the market where you are likely to have the most success. Just make sure when you get inside and set up shop, you avoid becoming what you fought so hard against in turning your dream of starting your own business into a reality.

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Did you enjoy this post? Check out the rest of the book here .

Excerpted from How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs by Guy Raz. Copyright 2020 by Guy Raz. Published and reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

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Published on September 10, 2020 00:12

How to Find the Side Door: Startup Lessons from RXBar, 5-hour Energy, and More