Featured Recommendation: The must-have video player for Internet Marketers and mediapreneurs:

LeadPlayer is one of the most impressive pieces of easy-to-use software that I’ve come across over the past several years. Basically it “pimps” your YouTube videos on your site.   You can add in opt-in boxes (!), calls to action (!) AND even change out your opt-in boxes and calls to action in all of your videos in a jiffy. Seriously, fantastical. Check out my review right here (and there is an affiliate link below the review).

To Shoot Side-By-Side Videos Online Easily

Ecamm Call Recorder: This is a super simple way to record Skype Video Calls on a Mac. This is the amazingly simple software I use to record interviews on Skype. It is literally one button and you are off to the races, plus some cool bonuses that come with it allowing you to change your file into multiple formats such as MP3. Best part is it is designed to be ridiculously simple so you don’t need certification from NASA to figure it out. Check it out right here.
VodBurner: This is the best option for PCs. I don’t have a PC personally, but I’ve asked around to everyone I know who uses a PC and they love VodBurner. What’s also cool about it is you can edit within the platform if you want to. Cool. Check it out right here.
GoToMeeting: In terms of video quality, I’ve noticed nothing better than GoToMeeting to shoot interviews because it now comes with HD Faces. You can record on a Mac by using GoToMeeting and ScreenFlow and I believe on PC you can record right from GoToMeeting or use Camtasia. Best part is your interviewee doesn’t need an account. They just click the link, accept a couple of things and boom! Check it out right here and click the “Try It Free” button and enter the promo code RISE for 45 days free. Whoop!

Blogging, Video & Web Tools

LeadPlayer: An amazing plugin that basically pimps YouTube when you embed videos on your site. You can create opt-in boxes, change opt-in boxes in ALL your videos, and keep traffic on your site as opposed to kicking it back to YouTube. Seriously one of the most amazing tools I’ve seen in a long time. Check out more about it right here.
ScreenFlow: For Mac, there is no simpler way to turn your screen into videos. I use Screenflow for so many things it is ridiculous, including shooting ads and sponsor plugs for the show, shooting the intro and conclusion and even editing The Rise To The Top (so much easier than iMovie, even though iMovie is really easy, which is saying a lot). Check it out right here.
Wistia: Best place to host your videos and a very sexy player you can use on your site. I use Wistia to host The Rise To The Top videos. It’s just so darn simple. You don’t need to be a tech genius to get your videos uploaded and shared and you don’t have to be a math professor to figure out if your videos are being watched (and are effective). They have great analytics, simple sharing and a really neat player that you can customize without a tech degree (yes, I said neat). Check it out here.
GoToMyPC: All about the virtual lifestyle. Never be tethered to just your computer. I use it to access everything on my computer from my iPad and iPhone as well as any other random computer I might be in front of. SWEET. Check it out right here and click the “Try It Free” button and enter the promo code RISE for 45 days free. Whoop!

Internet Marketing, Web & Digital Product Tools

WishList Member: This is an awesome backend system/plugin for WordPress for delivering your content to people who pay for it. If you are creating membership sites, digital products, etc. you can’t beat it and I’m using it myself for Create Awesome Interviews. More often than not, guests of the show use WishList (examples: Brian Moran, Sean Malarkey etc.). Check it out right here.
WishList Insider: Want to learn how to dominate membership sites and network with other successful membership site owners? Learn everything from getting people in, creating great content and (possibly most important) keeping people in. Check it out right here.
Stealth Seminar: It is no secret that right now one of the hottest ways to educate, entertain and convert folks to buyers is through webinars. For example, in a recent interview on the show Lewis Howes revealed that the most successful way they promoted their latest product launch was webinars, which converted into over $500,000 in sales in one month. One tool he uses and so do other top dogs is Stealth Seminar, which allows you to create one webinar and play it over, and over, and over again to keep those sales rolling in. Check it out right here.
AWeber: I use AWeber for my email lists because I love how easy you can segment lists and send out “personal” looking emails. Check it out right here.
OptimizePress: When launching my digital product Create Awesome Interviews, I asked all the top Internet marketers about what I should use to create the sales page and squeeze pages and all that jazz. Every single one recommended OptimizePress for its ease of use, easy templates and numerous other badass features. Simple wins. Check it out right here.

Online Training Programs & Courses That Rock

iVideo Hero: Ready to learn how you can shoot amazing videos with your iPhone? Jules Watkins, who is a long time video master (worked on Biggest Loser, Pimp My Ride, etc.), teaches you in this course some really cool tricks on how to create amazing high-quality videos with our iPhones. From video blogging to sales videos, these tips can be put to use in all kinds of ways to help your biz. Check it out right here.
6-Figure Outsourcing Secrets: Fun Fact: A major skill set that top 6 and 7 figure earners online develop is the ability to outsource the stuff you either 1. Don’t want to do and/or 2. Don’t have the skill set to do. In this course, master outsourcer and Internet Entrepreneur James Wedmore teaches you step-by-step how to dominate outsourcing. Check it out right here.
FB Ad Queen: How do you use Facebook Ads to get noticed, drive traffic and build your list? Fantastic question. Thanks for asking. Help is here my friend in the form of “The FB Ad Queen” Victoria Gibson, who shows us exactly how to get started, pitfalls to avoid and everything else step-by-step in this course. Check it out right here.
FBinfluence: Created by the trusted trio Amy Porterfield, Lewis Howes and Sean Malarkey, the program is awesome for learning how to get fans to your page and like you up, keep those fans engaged and interested, and turn those fans into super fans who buy everything. Really easy video training (also audio and PDF format). Check it out right here.
Power of Pinning: Pinterest. Unless you are living under a rock, you have probably heard about it. But, is it all about planning your wedding or can we actually use it for some business? In this course Melanie Duncan teaches you all kinds of amazing ways to use Pinterest for biz – including gaining massive exposure, driving tons of traffic, boosting your SEO, making money, and much more. Check it out right here.
Video Traffic Academy: What is your YouTube strategy? Creator James Wedmore didn’t think he needed one for his business teaching bartenders how to maximize their revenue…until he cracked the YouTube code and realized how ridiculously valuable YouTube is not just as a video platform, but a lead generating machine and now he is teaching peeps like you and I to do the same. Check it out right here.

Fitness & Nutrition

Because hey, you should be into that too!
Jet Set Body: This is the fitness program I used which got me into insanely good shape in 90 days. The folks behind it, Rob and Kim Murgatroyd, have been on the show multiple times and just rock at teaching. If you want to work hard and get genuine results, you’ve gotta do this. There is a step-by-step program for men, women and a special deal for couples. Check it out.
Holy Sh*t: Delicious Recipes To Keep You Fit: Best. Cookbook. Ever. Created by former guest and fitness model Kim Murgatroyd. This is opposite of healthy cookbooks that aren’t that healthy or taste like garbage. I keep a PDF of it on my iPhone, which is super helpful (and mobile). Yum. Check it out here.
Protein Shakes & Snacks: Also by Kim Murgatroyd. It is like a party in your mouth. I keep it on iPhone so it goes with me everywhere. Try the “butterfinger”, trust me. It will change your world. I want to go make one right now. Check it out right here.

Legal

Jeff Michelman: The best lawyer for entrepreneurs, small business and mediapreneurs. I’ve known Jeff for years (he is my attorney) and he is not only trustworthy and filled with expertise/knowledge, but he understands the entrepreneur because he is also one himself. Trust me, some lawyers are scary, and Jeff is not. He is one of the good guys. You can email him or (314) 889-7182 (and mention I sent you and you will get a free consultation…I know a TON of viewers have jumped on this opportunity).

Pain and Gain Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Michael Bay Movie HD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SEQ8jyvmYtw

The Best Way to Build Muscle

I want to talk to you today about the best way to build muscle.
If what you’re doing at the moment isn’t working, please pay attention.
What I have to say might be just what you need to get better, faster results.
Step one is to decide how many days a week you’re going to train.
The first option is to train your whole body three times a week on alternate days, normally Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday or Wednesday, Friday and Sunday will work just as well.

Monday: Whole Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Whole Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Whole Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

Option two is to train four days a week using an upper/lower split. You hit the upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, then take Wednesday off. Thursday is upper body, Friday is lower body and you have the weekend off. Each muscle group is trained twice a week. Of all the training splits I’ve used over the years, this one is my favorite.

Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Upper Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

The third option is something called the push/pull/legs split. You train either four or five days a week, doing the pushing movements (chest, shoulders, and triceps) on Monday, the pulling movements (back and biceps) on Tuesday.
Then you take a day off before training legs on Thursday, followed by another day off on Friday. On Saturday you go back to the beginning and do the push workout again.

Week 1

Monday: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Tuesday: Back, Biceps
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Off
Saturday: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Sunday: Back, Biceps

Week 2

Monday: Off
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Friday: Back, Biceps
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Legs

So you train for two days, take a day off, followed by one day of training, followed by another day off. Each muscle group is trained every fifth day. Because you don’t train on the same days each week, you’ll need a very flexible schedule to pull this one off.
While there are literally thousands of different routines available, these are the ones that will pack on the maximum amount of muscle in the shortest possible time.
It’s often said that beginners should avoid split routines and stick with full-body workouts that involve working each muscle group three times per week.
That’s mainly because they can’t recruit as many muscle fibers in each workout, don’t create as much muscle damage, and so can recover more quickly.
But as long as their training program and diet are set up correctly, beginners can still make good progress on split routines that involve training 4-5 days per week.
In this Baylor University study, a group of beginners gained 12 pounds of muscle in just 10 weeks using a 4-day split routine.
A 12-week trial, this time using untrained beginners on a 5-day split routine, shows that guys using milk as a post-exercise supplement gained almost nine pounds of muscle with no additional fat.
In much the same way that beginners can make impressive gains using a split routine, anyone who has moved past the beginner stages of training can still add a substantial amount of size by working their whole body three times a week.
University of Alabama researchers, for example, found that a group of men who had been lifting weights for several years gained almost 10 pounds of muscle on a full-body routine performed three days per week for three months.
As a rule, the heavier you train, the longer it will take to recover. So if you’re using a weight that limits you to 3-5 repetitions per set, you will need more rest between workouts for the same muscle group. With lighter weights and higher repetitions (10-15), you can often repeat a workout for that same body part 2-3 days later.

The next step is to train very hard and concentrate on getting strong at pressing, pulling and squatting.
Make sure to choose big, compound exercises. The best exercises for each movement category are as follows:

Horizontal push (flat/30-degree incline barbell bench press, flat/30-degree incline dumbbell bench press, suspension trainer push-ups)
Horizontal pull (seated row, dumbbell row, inverted bodyweight row)
Vertical pull (chin-up, close grip front lat pulldown, wide grip front lat pulldown )
Vertical push (standing barbell press, standing dumbbell press, seated dumbbell press)
Knee dominant (squat, split squat, leg press)
Hip dominant (deadlift, sumo deadlift, rack pulls)

If there is a secret to building muscle, it’s to keep on getting stronger in the 5 to 15 repetition range on a few basic exercises for each major body part. If you’re not getting stronger, there’s a good chance you’re not getting bigger either.
A total of 20-25 “work sets” per workout (excluding warm-up sets) is more than enough to trigger rapid gains in strength and size. That’s not 25 sets per muscle group, that’s 20 sets in total for the entire workout, divided across 1-3 exercises for each muscle group. There is rarely a need to do more.
Most of your training should be done using heavy weights in the 5-8 repetition range. For maximum muscle growth, you should also include some higher rep (10-15) sets in your workouts.
There are numerous different ways to do this, from higher rep sets (10-15) and short (30-60 seconds) inter-set rest periods to a couple of back-off sets at the end of a series of heavy sets. Even just using a light weight and slowing your reps right down will make your muscles grow.
Don’t get carried away with all the advanced techniques you read about in the magazines. Blitzing your muscles with lots of forced reps and descending sets might leave you feeling sore. It also leads to a greater stress on the neuromuscular system, which is going to extend your recovery time. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to grow any faster.
There’s no proven link between soreness and growth, and no rule that says you have to annihilate each muscle group in order to make it grow. And contrary to what you might think after watching this trailer for Pain and Gain, wearing a unitard or tank top is not a requirement for building muscle. So please don’t do it.
To repeat, building a decent amount of muscle means that you will need to get strong. There is no such thing as big without strong. Don’t let anyone try to kid you otherwise.
You will also need to get into the habit of planning your workouts in advance. Before you even set foot in the gym it’s vital that you know exactly what you’re doing when you get there. If you’re serious about gaining muscle, just “winging it” won’t be good enough anymore. That’s why I highly recommend keeping a training diary.
Probably the most important benefit of a training diary, and the single biggest reason why most people don’t use one, is that it will force you to face facts. Is what you’re doing delivering results? Or are you doing nothing more than simply repeating the same workout over and over again in the hope that it’ll suddenly start working?
It’s also a good idea to include some kind of deload or light week for every 3-9 weeks of hard training.
Yes, I know you’re worried that taking your foot off the gas will leave you smaller and weaker, especially if you’re the type who sees any amount of time off as a wasted opportunity for progress. But your body isn’t a machine and will benefit from a rest now and again, especially as you get older. I know it’s a cliché, but sometimes you do need to take a step back in order to take two steps forward.
What you do in the gym is only half the story when it comes to gaining muscle mass. Without enough food, much of your muscle-building efforts in the gym will go to waste. Here’s a quick and simple way to work out your calorie needs for building size:

1. Firstly, calculate your lean bodyweight. For example, if you weigh 175 pounds at 20% body fat, you have 35 pounds of fat and a lean bodyweight of 140 pounds.
2. Multiply your lean bodyweight by 20. Using a lean bodyweight of 140 pounds, that gives you 2800 calories per day.

If you find that you’re not gaining any weight, increase your calorie intake by around 250 calories per day until the scale starts moving in the right direction.
I know that might not sound like much, especially when you compare it with some of the 5000 calorie “bulking” diets out there. But you can’t force your muscles to grow faster simply by stuffing yourself with food.
That’s because there’s an upper limit on the amount of nutrients you can take in and turn into muscle. If you’re currently eating below this upper limit, then you’ll build muscle faster by increasing your nutrient take.
But once you hit your maximal rate of muscle gain, simply adding more calories won’t automatically lead to a faster rate of growth. All that’ll happen is that you get fat.

Once you have a decent training and nutrition program set up, the key to building muscle as fast as humanly possible is to stick with it. Frequently I read that you should keep changing your routine every few weeks to “confuse” your muscles and make them grow.
For most people, this is a mistake. There is no point in variety for the sake of variety, and the best way to make absolutely no progress at all is to keep jumping around from one routine to the next.
Forget about your body type or your genetics. You can’t change them, so there’s no point even thinking about them. Set challenging but realistic goals for yourself and work as hard as you can towards achieving them.
SHAMELESS PLUG: Muscle Evo is a complete science-based training system that will turn you into a lean, mean strength machine with less than four hours a week in the gym. Click here now to learn more.
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About Christian Finn

Christian Finn holds a master's degree in exercise science, is a certified personal trainer and has been featured on BBC TV and radio, as well as in Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Fit Pro, Zest and other popular fitness magazines.

Modeling Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss has been one of my best teachers because he didn’t just teach me new things but also how to think better. Whenever I find someone who excels in some area of life, I try to figure out what makes them tick. The following are some of the best tips I have picked up from his interviews and articles from around the web.
Lives in: San Francisco, CA
Computer: Macbook Air
Phone: iPhone 5

Favorite Tools

B. Goode handmade knife from North Carolina. It works for everything. The ESEE-3 is an easier-to-find alternative.
blue, lint-free surgical huck towels

Apps

Writing: Scrivener (Word alternative)
Note Taking: Evernote
Time: RescueTime
Email: Gmail + The Email Game + Nudgemail
To Dos: Post-its and 3×5 index cards
Habits: Lift
Language Learning: DuoLingo

 

Services

Odd Jobs: Task Rabbit
Taxi: Uber

 

Tools

Coffee Maker: Aero Press
Knife: $12 Rada Cutlery Chef’s Dicer
Tea:yerba mate tea  Cruz de Malta (con palo)

 

How He works

- Standing desk or at a bar
- Headphones on and music playing (Federico Aubele)
-10pm-5am writing marathons on a deadline. His constant late-night companions are Casino Royale and Shawn of the Dead

 

Favorite Quotes:

You are the average of the five people you associate with the most.
Of all the things you can do with your life I think the highest leverage activity is to increase your learning ability.

 

Other Quotes:

1. Technology is a wonderful slave and a terrible master
2. Productivity is input to output ratio
3. An entrepreneur shifts resources from low to high economic value. An entrepreneur is not a business owner. He is a person who makes things happen.
4. Effective>Efficient. Effective is doing important things, Efficient is doing a thing quickly
5. What gets measured gets managed
6. What we fear most is what we most need to do
7. Go for home runs, everyone else is going for base hits. Seize the day and live now.
8. Gratitude is a prescription I give myself as a daily practice
9. Adversity does not build character is reveals character. (I think it gives opportunity to build character)

 

Most Interesting Ideas:

1. 3 Currencies: income, time, location (or attention)
2. Reading a book is not spending time/money/attention but investing it.
3. He values his blog most for his relationship with readers and access to hard to reach people through having the blog
4. Opposite of David Allen, he likes top down approach of be effective first, then be efficient with organizing
5. Real experts aren’t afraid to simplify. Fake experts who want to be “high priests of the bloggosphere” complicate because they lack depth and bredth of knowledge.
6. Simplify
7. To have good thigs happen to you you need to be able to let small bad things happen.

 

Daily Habits:

1.Have an interesting conversation every day
2. Express gratitude for 3 things when he wakes up and 3 before bed
3. He puts on his dog tags when he wakes up and before he goes to sleep he takes them off and puts them on his laptop.

 

A Day In The Life Of Tim Ferriss

• Wake up
• 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking
• Brew pu-erh tea
• Meditate for 4-5 minutes while tea brews
• Drink tea while doing 60 minutes of non-internet-based work
• Small breakfast (eg. eggs, lentils, spinach)
• Work for 60-120 minutes
• Light workout (eg. kettlebell work)
• Lunch (eg. Mexican restaurant – beef, pinto beans, salsa, & guacamole)
• More work
• Light dinner at 6pm
• Train sometime between 7-11pm (for optimal pain tolerance)
• Post-workout meal
• Bedtime
• Rinse and repeat…

 

Tim Ferriss’ 5-minute Meditation Strategy

1. Choose one song (4-5 minutes long)
2. Sit on a cushion with back against the wall
3. Breathe deeply and slowly
4. Inhalation = visualize vibrant green air
5. Exhalation = visualize grey air (stress and anxiety)
6. During inhalation, focus on all of the things you’re grateful for in life (family, friends, significant other, career opportunities, roof over your head, etc)
7. Repeat to yourself… “I have everything I need and I have plenty of time” over and over until it sinks in and anxiety lifts

Weekly/Monthly Habits:

1. 2-3 Long dinners per week (best predictor of happiness [questionable])
2. 80/20 analysis (biweekly) – look at 20% of people and activities that cause 80% of pleasure and 80% of pain/stress. Do the same analysis of people and activities in terms of how they take up your time. Go on diet for 48 hours afterwards where you cut out the painful people, activities, and time wasting people and activities.Write out a to do list and not to do list and circle the  1-2 people and 1-2 activities that if you do more of that it will be a force multiplier for the next 2 weeks.
3. Fear setting (biweekly/as needed)- look at the top thing you didn’t do over the last 2 weeks and identify the fear behind it. Set up a piece of paper with 3 columns. First column describe the worst thing that could happen (the fear plays out in worst way). Second column how you can minimize those problems. Third column how you could recover and get back to where you are now if worst played out.

 

Identity:

Teacher (he thought he would teach 9 or 10 grade), investor, but experimenter at heart
He gets excited by the hard work of deconstructing skills and then making others better at those skills than he is himself

 

Book Recommendations:

Writing

On Writing- Stephen King
On Writing Well – William Zinsser
Bird By Bird
Letters to a Fiction Writer
John McFee – Author/Writing Teacher at Princeton, model for writing

Poe Bronson – advice: when you get writers block, write about what pisses you off

Life Changing Books For Tim

1. How to Make Millions with Your Ideas – Dan Kennedy – creative and out of the box thinking to be successful in biz, how to be daring and unconventional in biz. Standout concept – informational marketing – taking expertise and turning it into a product. (read at age 16).

2. Vagabonding – Rolf Potts

Marketing
1,000 True Fans
22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
The Truth About Social Media Marketing – Tim Orielly


Public Relations
101 Book Series – Rick Frishman (find real title)


Negotiation
Getting Past No
Secrets of Power Negotiation – get audio version bc you learn alot from the voice intonation, ect
Venture Deals- great book for learning how to structure deals


Other Books:
Guerilla Financing
Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro

 

Strategies

Life Strategies


1. Follow Your Fears
2. Ponder what you will regret not doing on your deathbed
3. Only implement one new habit at a time
4. The good life is a balance between achievement and appreciation (I don’t recc modeling this belief, but its good stepping stone if you are just focused on achievement right now)
5. Framework for ultimate success in life: Ben Franklin’s Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise
6. Retirement will not solve your problems, money will not solve your problems. You simply trade up for a different set of problems. If you expect this and view them as challenges that will cause you to grow then you will ultimately be more effective at achieving your goals (he calls this practical pessimism).
7. He reads letters from a stoic when he is feeling overwhelmed.


Teaching Strategies
1. Figure out why and when people fail (failure points) and prevent them
2. Wants to make himself obsolete as quickly as possible and make the reader an independent thinker/learner


Marketing Strategies
1. Marketing is finding 1k customers (evangelist early adopters) and then creating the ideal product for them
2. Copywriting is a valuable skill (one to many leverage)
3. 2 Main Methods: Paid Aquisition and Public Relations
4. Use Direct Response Mail ad techniques to measure results from all marketing and split test


Publishing Books Strategies
1. See His interview with ramit sethi on self publishing
2. Traditional publishing better for getting on NYT best sellers list
3. “Carpet Bomb (not his words)” the internet (blogs/news media) for a book launch
4. He ran the 4 hour chef like a startup. He had 20-40 people working on it and split it into silos. 4 hc site, launch, editing, sidebars, ect. All in basecamp.
5. Used skitch for editing and screen flow instead of typing out emails.
6. You need to have a recipe or operational manual so that 5 outsourcers can get you lots of interviews.
7. His goal is to make a book that redefines a genre and is a category killer that stays on the best seller list for 5 years.
8. He is ok with not being 100% in all categories of his life. His book is his main thing so he goes the extra mile, that last 5% (working until hes “bleeding out his eyeballs) to make an excellent book. This is how he gets leverage in the world, so it is important to go all in. Have this approach to one thing and be able to say no to other opportunities.


Networking Strategies
1. Meet thought leaders and bloggers with 100k+ readers
2. Meet in person (lowest traffic channel for meeting bloggers/important people)
3. Go to conferences to meet bloggers (Do your homework/lots of gruntwork in the beginning)
4. Sit in on sessions, approach moderator at end of session and tell them about his book (4hww) and ask who he should meet
5. Ask lots of questions and wait for blogger to ask what he is doing
6. Explain book and then offered to send free book with 10 pages/1 or 2 chapters post it noted for them to read. Only offered if they seemed interested.
7. People have to trust the messenger before they trust the message
8. He looked for smaller thought leader blogs which were on the blog rolls of the bigger blogs
9. When you get advice from a potential mentor/blogger the best way to grow the relationship is to put their advice into action and share the results with them
10. Crash a conference by hanging out at a lounge/bar that doesn’t require a badge to get it but is close to the action
11. Asking Advice Email Script
Keep it short, no hard sell
Hi X,
Establish common ground, acknowledge out of left field, I read your piece on Y.
I would love to have your advice on this one question: Q
I totally  understand if you don’t have time to respond but even 1 sentence would mean the world to me.
Sincerely,
Tim
12. Nudgemail – add 2days@nudgemail.com to the bcc field of an email you send someone and you will get a reminder to follow up with them in 2 days. You can use any timer period before the @ and it will work. It is a totally free service.


Investing Strategies

1. Role Models:
Peter Theil and Mike Maples, “Micro-Cap” Strategy
2. Set the right terms with a lawyer – “You can set the price if I can set the terms” Henry Ford
3. dont be a vc unless you have an info advantage over other vcs
4. the best investors invest in founders more than businesses. (if the first biz the founder starts fails, you get first dibs on his next project)


Negotiation Strategies
1. He likes live negotiation
2. Do dry runs beforehand. know all your decision trees.
3. You dont get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. In all relationships.
4. You must get good at empathetic thinking and creative deal making


Identifying All Star Founder Talent to Invest In Startup
1. they should be experienced in high stress environments where they experienced constant failure (sports [helped Tim], previous startup or sales)
2. Do a Beer Test/Mall Test a. do you want to get a beer with him? If no, don’t invest. b. In the mall which do you do? 1. excitedly walk over and say hi and want to talk/chat 2. Wave  and say hi 3. Avoid eye contact and pretend you don’t see them. Only invest in the first one.
3. They have a keen understanding of the competitive landscape, a fairly clearly defined problem, a very clearly defined customer and a basic understanding of the economics of the biz


Customer Service
37 Signals Approach or Satisfaction Approach


Startup Strategies
1. Margin Manifesto – get to profit asap
2. Get profit first, then scale revenue
3. Focus on 1 metrics: Cost per aquisition and lifetime customer value
4. Profile customers with 80/20 analysis
5. You must know how to bootstrap, negotiate, and sell (get something from someone).
6. The same things that makes a great bootstrap founder makes a great vc backed founder.
7. Deal making, sales, and negotiation are all important and related.
8. Work your ass off on the few critical things that matter.


Assistant Strategies
His assistant is a woman who lives off an island in Vancouver Canada
She filters his emails using a set of rules he created and put in a word doc
She filters the emails down to 10 action items and gives them to him over phone
He batches his phone calls for a single afternoon and spends 2+ hours on the phone while going on a long walk. He gets very good at voicemails and emails. He leaves next steps in the email so that he can cut down email by half by pre-empting both sets of options in advance.


Outsourcing Strategies
He uses eLance
He used AskSunday (outdated?)


Email Strategies
He trains himself to only check email at certain times
Get out of email when collaborating, use slide rocket, concept share or a spreadsheet

Favorite Polymaths and his thoughts on them

this is the era of polymaths. people specialize like insects and then they stop exploring.

Richard Feynman – interested in bongos and safe cracking
Ben Franklin – example of the power of the amateur

Jim Khana

Ken block

Ray Curzweil

 

Friends:

Noah Kagan – Likes his market validation idea, was on creativelive class interview

Matt Mullenway – created wordpress, is a coder, good profile on him in Inc

Ed Packard – Author of choose your own adventure book series

 

Uncatagorized Ideas:

1. In the west we don’t have enough appreciation for what we already have. Don’t speed read poetry. Balance efficiency and joy (in present/process).

2. Internet prediction – it will become like cable TV with 500 oprahs in 500 different verticals

3. The internet is a full contact sport.

4. Fear – watching his parents die

5. In pit of despair he takes out his dog tags, which say “Never, ever, ever give up” Winston Churchill

6. He has a sign in his house that says “simplify.”

Inner Game of Tennis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieb1lmm9xHk


In 1970 W. Timothy Gallwey author of "Inner Game of Tennis", demonstrates how to teach tennis without teaching. A woman who doesn't know how to play tennis at all, can play within 10 minutes. His technique is make her at ease by chatting with her while throw the balls to her. Ask her to hit as much as she could. He gives lot of positive feedback.

How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds (Plus: $10,000 Challenge)

(Photo credit: Jystyn)
To become a Grand Master of Memory–fewer than 100 in the world can claim that title–you need to satisfy each of the following in competitions approved by the World Memory Sport Council:
• Memorize the order of 10 decks of cards in 60 minutes.
• Memorize 1,000 random digits in 60 minutes.
• Memorize the order of one deck of cards in less than two minutes.
Ed Cooke first hit this trifecta when he was 23. He later came to international attention when he coached journalist Joshua Foer from ground zero to U.S. Memory Champion in one year, a feat chronicled by Foer in the best-seller Moonwalking with Einstein. To win that championship, Foer had to memorize 120 random digits in five minutes, successfully commit to memory the first and last names of 156 strangers within 15 minutes, and (last but not least) memorize a shuffled deck of cards in less than two minutes.
Ed has memorized a shuffled deck of cards in competition in 43 seconds. Of all memory feats, none is a more compressed act of mental athleticism.
I asked him if he’d open the kimono and explain his method, and he very graciously agreed.
It takes around four hours to get comfortable with Ed’s best-of-breed system. With a little practice, you’ll be a third of your way to becoming a Grand Master.
(Im)practically speaking, it’s just freaking amazingly cool. Few people in the world can pull it off, and that’s reason enough to take a weekend or slow evening to try. Instead of watching another bad movie, you can become one of the memory illuminati.
Last but not least, there’s a $10,000 competition at the end if you want to really give this a shot…

ENTER THE BICYCLESHOP

I’ve taken to calling Ed’s approach the Bicycleshop, a combination of the brand of playing cards and Photoshop.
We will learn the basics of Bicycleshop with a simple version; let’s call it Bicycleshop Lite. Then we’ll upgrade to Bicycleshop Pro. Learn to use them in that order.

BICYCLESHOP LITE

Bicycleshop Lite helps you do two things: memorize the cards and memorize the order of the cards.
Step One: Learning the Cards
First, you convert 52 cards into 52 celebrities.
The mind ignores the mundane and remembers the unusual, whether people (e.g., Lady Gaga) or a sudden motion in the under- brush. The more unusual, the more the brain forms a bookmark for recall.
To make recalling 52 celebrities easier, each suit corresponds to a personality type and each card ( jack, 10, ace, etc.) corresponds to a profession (or category). This means that when you look at a given card, you’ll have two cues to help you remember the celebrity.
The Suits (think: personalities):
Diamonds—rich people
Hearts—people you love
Clubs—tough or crazy people
Spades—amusing or absurd people
The Cards (think: professions):
All even numbers are female and all odd numbers are male, and they’re paired up. You can just remember that, for instance, 9s are powerful men, and the 10s are therefore powerful women. The 5s are controversial males, so 6s are controversial females, etc.
Mnemonic suggestions are included below each “profession” to facilitate the association, but you can create your own. Skim this list once, read Ed’s notes following the list, and then read them over again.
King—Male half of celeb couple
Queen—Female half of celeb couple
Celeb couples are the royalty of the present. Each suit will have its own celeb couple. Contrasting celeb couples—John and Yoko, David Bowie and Iman—can help the pairs stick.
Jack—Religious figures
Jacks are bachelors; religious figures were bachelors.
10 Famously powerful women
9 Famously powerful men
Highest numbers, highest-powered people
8 Famous female physiques
7 Famous male physiques
Hourglass or busty or hunky or ripped—the bodies of your dreams.
6 Controversial females
5 Controversial males
Think of “five” and “effing”; “six” sounds like “sex.”
4 Female movie stars
3 Male movie stars
Think of all those trilogies out there.
2 Sportswomen
Ace Sportsmen
Ace is a term associated with excellence in sports; think of “two” as “deuce” in tennis.
Ed explains how this is all put together:

“Having chosen 13 professions/categories and four personalities—just 17 things to learn—you can use your existent knowledge and opinions to fill out a 52-card matrix. The ace of diamonds, on my scheme, is a sports- man (ace) who got rich (diamonds)—OK, Michael Jordan. The jack of spades on my scheme would be a religious figure who’s amusing—the Dalai Lama has a good sense of humor. The six of spades, a humorously controversial woman—Lady Gaga, no question.
“Using this method, it should take less than an hour to fill the matrix out and come to be able to slowly recall the people who now correspond to the 52 cards. Once you have your cast of card-people, go through shuffled decks and practice translating the cards to their images until it’s automatic. This might take another hour to begin to master.”

The next step is to put them in order.
Step Two: Memorizing the Order of a Shuffled Deck
You will now peg 52 cards to locations along a familiar route. It could be a path through your house, the journey from your front door to a favorite pub—whatever you like. Some memory competitors use their childhood homes: Scott Hagwood, who won the U.S. Memory Championship from 2001–2004, uses rooms from luxury homes he finds in Architectural Digest, 10 locations per room. If you choose that approach, you can mentally position yourself at the entrance to each room and move as follows: at your feet, closest left corner, then clockwise to left wall, then far left corner, opposite wall, far right corner, right wall, closest right corner, then two spots on the ceiling.
Choosing 52 locations should take no more than 30 minutes, and then you can start placing your celebrities (cards) at each point. Keep it simple for now, using a longer path if multiple points per room cause overload. Ed starts at his bed:

“For me, a pack beginning with the jack of spades would mean the Dalai Lama standing at the first point on my route—my bed. At the second point, my wardrobe, I’d deposit the image corresponding to the second card, perhaps it will be Michael Jordan—the ace of diamonds.
“Continue all the way through the pack, taking your time and lots of care to imagine each person vividly in their position. Once you get to the end of the route, retrace it in your imagination and you will hopefully encounter all the people in the sequence that you imagined them. You will probably need to go through two or three times the first time you attempt it.”

And just like that, bingo: you’ve memorized your first deck of cards!

BICYCLESHOP PRO

Now we upgrade you.
Bicycleshop Lite, while perfectly effective, is a little slow. Fifty-two separate goddamn images! Well, what did you expect for trial software? But it’s the right place to start. Biting off all the features of Bicycleshop at once will just give you indigestion. Now that you’ve taken a ride with training wheels, it’s time for phase two.
Bicycleshop Pro, the next step for power users, has a much more efficient compression algorithm. It builds on top of what you already know, but instead of 52 images, we’ll reduce to 17 or 18 images. This makes it three times as fast. Here’s how it works, in Ed’s words:
“The next step is combining several cards into single images, which we achieve by assigning each card (celebrity) an action and an object. Jordan, the ace of diamonds, might have for an action a slam dunk, and his object a basketball. The Dalai Lama’s action might be praying, his object a Buddha. Lady Gaga’s action might be posing in a meat dress (memory, after all, loves to be disgusted), her object a load of paparazzi photographers (also disgusting).”
By adding this syntactic structure, combinations of three cards now form mini- sentences: the celeb from the first card, the action from the second, and the object from the third.
“For example, in my matrix, ace of diamonds–jack of spades–six of spades becomes Michael Jordan praying to the paparazzi; jack of spades–six of spades–ace of diamonds, on the other hand, translates into the Dalai Lama wearing a meat dress while holding a basketball. The two images, utterly distinct and deeply memorable, could never be confused.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Bicycleshop Pro. Elegant and, with practice, as fast as world champions.
Perhaps you need a little incentive? Try a $10,000 card-memorizing competition – the first of its kind. See the next section for more details.

For the type-A, obsessive sorts: once you get reasonably fluid and want to take racing the clock more seriously, I suggest getting a metronome. This will be your plateau breaker. If you stall and seem unable to memorize any faster, set the metronome for 10%–20% faster than you can currently handle. Force yourself to turn cards at this rate until you stop making errors. For instance, if you’re stuck at 10 cards per minute (1 per 6 seconds) after a few weeks, set the metronome to 20% less time, so 4.8 seconds per metronome click. If a particular card causes hiccups, make a note of it (or draw a pen marking on it) and analyze the reasons later.
Just remember: this is fun, so keep it fun. Enjoy the mind games.

The $10,000 Card Memorizing Challenge — For Beginners Only

Ed can learn 16 decks of shuffled cards in an hour. Let’s get you to your first memorized deck, shall we?
In The 4-Hour Chef, we promised a $10,000 prize to the first person who could from beginner to expert (being able to learn a deck in less than a minute). The rules were “coming soon.” Well, after a few delays, the challenge is ON.
Ed has put together a course on Memrise, complete with video tutorials from the clever and charismatic man himself. The exercises are truly elegant… and effective.
To win $10,000, one of the biggest prizes ever given for a memory challenge of any kind, you have to learn from scratch to memorize a deck of cards in under a minute. This is a 6-week competition — just enough time to do this. All of your training has to take place on Memrise, so we can watch the competition unfold and ensure no cheating or fraud.
So is this really possible? Sure. It takes just a few hours to master the images you’ll need. Then it takes a few more hours to get your head around the spatial memory techniques. From that point on, it’s just a matter of practice for speed.
HOW THE COMPETITION WILL RUN
The competition will take place at http://www.memrise.com/tim-ferriss
The competition begins now, Feb 6th 2013 and runs until 11.59 p.m. March 20th 2013.
The winner of the $10K will be the first person who legitimately goes from beginner to being able to learn a deck of cards in under a minute, so long as someone does this by March 20th. There will be various other prizes, including limited edition T-shirts and packs of cards for the top competitors who don’t finish first.
To be eligible for the prizes, all your practice at learning card sequences, as well as the achievement of doing it in a minute, should happen in the cards system found here. *The competition *is* the training, and we need to be able to watch everyone’s progress to ensure a fair winner. We’ll also be gathering collective data for the purposes of science and a later wrap-up.
So, let the games begin! Click here for all the juicy details and training tools.
Note: For additional help — two graphs, representing how to memorize all the cards quickly, can be found in the Appendices of The 4-Hour Chef.

Friend posted this to facebook, looked INCREDIBLY useful for cooking.

Friend posted this to facebook, looked INCREDIBLY useful for cooking.