Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
This episode is brought to you
0:02
by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional
0:04
supplement that supports whole body health.
0:07
I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional
0:09
insurance and that is nothing new.
0:11
I actually recommended AG1 in my
0:13
2010 best
0:15
seller more than a decade ago, the 4-hour body,
0:18
and I did not get paid to do so.
0:20
I simply loved the product and felt
0:22
like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense
0:24
supplement that you could use conveniently while
0:27
on the run, which is for me
0:29
a lot of the time. I have
0:31
been using it a very, very long
0:33
time indeed. And I do get
0:35
asked a lot what I would take if
0:37
I could only take one supplement. And the
0:39
true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers
0:41
a ton of bases. I usually drink it
0:43
in the mornings and frequently take their travel
0:45
packs with me on the road. So
0:48
what is AG1? What is this
0:50
stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of
0:52
vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced
0:54
nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives
0:57
you support for the brain, gut, and
0:59
immune system. Since 2010, they
1:02
have improved the formula 52 times in
1:04
pursuit of making the best
1:06
foundational nutrition supplement possible using
1:08
rigorous standards and high quality
1:11
ingredients. How many ingredients?
1:13
75. And you would be hard
1:15
pressed to find a more nutrient
1:17
dense formula on the market. It
1:20
has a multivitamin, multi-mineral superfood complex,
1:22
probiotics, prebiotics for gut health, an
1:24
antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes,
1:27
and adaptogens to help manage stress.
1:29
Now, I do my best always
1:31
to eat nutrient dense meals. That is
1:34
the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement.
1:36
That is why things are called
1:38
supplements. Of course, that's what I
1:41
focus on. But it is not always possible. It
1:43
is not always easy. So part
1:45
of my routine is using AG1 daily.
1:47
If I'm on the road, on the
1:49
run, it just makes it easy to
1:51
get a lot of nutrients at once
1:53
and to sleep easy knowing that I
1:55
am checking a lot of important boxes.
1:57
So each morning, AG1. That's just... like
2:00
brushing my teeth, part of the routine.
2:02
It's also NSF certified for sports, so
2:05
professional athletes trust it to be safe.
2:07
And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly
2:09
what is on the label, does not
2:11
contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy
2:14
metals, and is free of 280 banned
2:16
substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in
2:18
one easy scoop. So take ownership of
2:20
your health and try AG1 today. You
2:23
will get a free one-year supply of
2:26
vitamin D and five free AG1 travel
2:28
packs with your first subscription purchase. with your first
2:30
subscription purchase. So learn more, check it
2:32
out. Go to
2:35
drinkag1.com/Tim. That's
2:37
drinkag1, the number
2:40
one. drinkag1.com/Tim. Last
2:42
time, drinkag1.com. Check
2:45
it out. This
2:50
episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. I
2:52
have been using 8Sleep Pod Cover for
2:54
years now. Why? Well, by simply
2:56
adding it to your existing mattress on top, like
2:59
a fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or
3:01
warm up each side of your bed. 8Sleep
3:04
recently launched their newest generation of the pod
3:06
and I'm excited to test it out, Pod4
3:09
Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it
3:11
elevates automatically. More on that in a second.
3:13
First, Pod4 Ultra can cool down each side
3:16
of the bed as much as 20 degrees
3:18
Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping you and your
3:21
partner cool, even in a heat wave. Or
3:23
you can switch it up depending on which
3:25
of you is heat sensitive. I
3:27
am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets
3:29
off, closing the windows, trying to crank the
3:31
AC down. This solves all of that. Pod4
3:34
Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits
3:36
between your mattress and your bed frame and
3:38
adds reading and sleeping positions for the best
3:40
unwinding experience. And for those snore heavy nights,
3:42
the pod can detect your snoring and automatically
3:45
lift your head by a few degrees to
3:47
improve air flow and stop you or your
3:49
partner from snoring. Plus with the Pod4 Ultra,
3:51
you can leave your wearables on the nightstand.
3:54
You won't need them because these types of
3:56
metrics are integrated into the Pod4 Ultra
3:58
itself. They have imperceptible. sensors which
4:00
track your sleep time, sleep bases, and
4:02
HRV. Their heart rate tracking is just
4:04
one example is at 99% accuracy.
4:08
So get your best night's
4:10
sleep. Head to 8sleep.com/Tim and
4:12
use code TIM to get
4:14
$350 off of the Pod4
4:16
Ultra. That's 8sleep, all spelled
4:19
out 8sleep.com/Tim, and code TIM,
4:21
T-I-M, to get $350 off
4:24
the Pod4 Ultra. They currently ship
4:26
to the United States, Canada, the
4:28
United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Optimal,
4:31
minimal. At this altitude,
4:33
I can run flat out for a half mile
4:35
before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you
4:37
a personal question? Now, what is
4:39
it you're looking at? I'm
4:43
a cybernetic organism living this year over
4:45
metal and piscality. Hello,
4:55
boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is
4:58
Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the
5:00
Tim Ferriss show where it is my job
5:02
to sit down with world-class performers from every
5:04
field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines,
5:07
favorite books, and so on that you can
5:09
apply and test in your own lives. This
5:12
episode is a two-for-one, and that's
5:14
because the podcast recently hit its
5:16
10th year anniversary, which is insane
5:18
to think about, and passed 1
5:20
billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated
5:22
some of the best of the
5:24
best, some of my favorites, from
5:26
more than 700 episodes over the
5:28
last decade. I could not be
5:31
more excited to give you these
5:33
super-combo episodes, and internally we've been
5:35
calling these the super-combo episodes, because
5:37
my goal is to encourage you
5:39
to, yes, enjoy the household names,
5:41
the super-famous folks, but to also
5:43
introduce you to lesser-known people I
5:45
consider stars. These
5:47
are people who have transformed my life, and
5:49
I feel like they can do the same
5:51
for many of you. Perhaps they got lost
5:54
in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed
5:56
an episode. Just trust me on
5:58
this one, we went to great pains. is
16:01
if you're typing, putting
16:04
stuff down is work. If
16:08
you've got a computer, adding stuff
16:10
is not work. Choosing is
16:13
work. So it sort of
16:15
expands a bit like a guess. If you have two
16:18
things you could say, you say both of
16:21
them. If you have the
16:23
stuff you want to add, you add it. And I thought,
16:25
okay, I have to not do that
16:27
because otherwise my stuff is going to balloon and
16:30
it will become gaseous and
16:32
thin. So what I
16:34
love, if I've
16:36
written something on a computer and
16:38
I decide to lose a chunk, it feels
16:41
like I've lost work. If
16:43
I delete a page and a half, I feel like there's
16:45
a page and a half that
16:47
just went away. That's a page and
16:49
a half's worth of work I've just lost. If I've
16:52
been writing in a notebook and
16:54
I'm typing it up and I
16:57
can look at something and go, I don't need this page
16:59
and a half. And I
17:01
leave it out. I've just saved myself
17:03
work and it feels kind of like
17:06
I'm treating myself. So
17:09
I'm just trying to
17:11
always have in my head
17:13
the idea that maybe I'm
17:17
somehow on some cosmic level paying
17:19
somebody by the word in
17:21
order to be allowed to write. If they're
17:23
there, they should matter. They should mean
17:25
something. It's always important to me. This
17:28
might seem like a very, very mundane
17:31
question, but what type of notebooks do you
17:33
prefer? Are they large, like legal pens? Are
17:35
they leather bound? What
17:37
type of notebooks? When
17:39
they came out, I've used
17:41
a whole bunch of different ones. I bought big
17:44
drawing ones which actually turned out to be a
17:46
bit too big. I kind
17:48
of liked how much I could see
17:50
on the page. Those were the ones
17:52
I wrote Stardust and American Gods in,
17:54
sort of big size. But
17:56
they weren't terribly portable. I
17:58
went over to the moleskins,
18:02
and I loved them when they first came out,
18:04
and then they dropped their paper quality. And
18:08
dropping paper quality doesn't
18:10
matter unless you're writing in fountain
18:12
pen, because all of
18:14
a sudden, it's bleeding through, and
18:16
all of a sudden, you're writing on one page,
18:20
leaving a page blank because it's bled through and
18:22
writing on the next page. And
18:25
Joe Hill, about six or seven
18:27
years ago, Joe Hill,
18:29
the wonderful horror fantasy writer,
18:32
suggested the Leuchtturm to me.
18:35
So my usual notebook right
18:37
now is a Leuchtturm because I
18:40
really like the way you can paginate stuff
18:43
in them and the thickness of
18:45
the paper, and they're just
18:47
like sort of moleskins, but the Porsche
18:49
of moleskins, they're just better. And
18:52
I also have been writing, I wrote
18:54
the Graveyard Book, and I'm
18:56
writing the current novel in
18:59
these beautiful books that
19:01
I bought in
19:03
a stationary shop in
19:06
Venice, built into a bridge.
19:09
Somewhere in Venice, there's a little stationary
19:11
shop on a bridge, and
19:13
they have these beautiful, leather-bound
19:15
blank books that just look
19:17
like hardback books, but they're
19:20
blank pages. And I wrote
19:22
the Graveyard Book in one of those, I
19:24
bought four of them, and
19:28
now I'm using the next one on
19:30
the next novel, and it
19:32
may well go into another one,
19:35
I'm not sure, and then at home,
19:38
I say at home,
19:40
my house in Wisconsin, which is
19:43
where my stuff is. We
19:45
live in Woodstock, but I have
19:47
an entire life's worth of stuff still
19:51
sitting in my house in
19:53
Wisconsin, and it's become archives,
19:56
it's actually kind of fabulous having a house
19:58
that is an archive. would
38:00
be another example, was an investor. And
38:02
he, at some point, wrote in a
38:05
journal. Well, I think it was one of these composition
38:07
notebooks with the sort of modeled black and
38:09
white zebra slash camouflage covers. Oh, I love that. What
38:11
he would be when he was 40 years old, and
38:13
he must have done this when he was 10 or
38:15
12, something like that.
38:17
And he found it in his, I think his
38:19
parents' garage later
38:21
around the age of 42 or something like that.
38:23
And it also predicted, effectively,
38:26
exactly what he would be doing. But
38:29
it was lost in the slipstream,
38:32
and he took this very meandering,
38:35
in some ways,
38:37
odd, seemingly fractured path to come
38:39
right back to where he started in a
38:41
sense. Did you then,
38:43
it sounds
38:45
like you didn't follow that plan that was so
38:47
neatly summarized in this picture, because there are folks
38:49
out there saying, you know, when I was five,
38:51
I knew I always wanted to be X. But
38:55
what was your, when did you
38:57
figure out that you wanted to actually do what
39:00
was in that drawing on some level, that you wanted to be
39:02
a designer? I actually never
39:04
set out to be a designer.
39:07
I thought that I was going to
39:09
be a journalist. The
39:11
only thing that I knew for sure
39:14
when I was in college was
39:17
that when I graduated, I
39:19
wanted to live in Manhattan. At that point,
39:22
I had not ever lived in Manhattan. And
39:25
that was my big dream. And
39:29
I came to Manhattan this summer of
39:31
1983. I often
39:34
say that that was the summer of
39:36
David Bowie's Modern Love and the Police's
39:38
Synchronicity. I saw both concerts that summer.
39:41
I moved into a sublet
39:43
apartment with a friend that
39:46
had also recently graduated. She
39:48
had found a sublet on the corner
39:50
of Hudson and Perry Streets in the
39:52
village. I didn't know it at the
39:55
time, but moving into an apartment
39:57
on the intersection of Hudson and
39:59
Perry almost as if I
40:02
was entering the movie, Gidget Goes
40:04
to Manhattan. I
40:07
didn't know where I was going. It
40:10
was quite serendipitous. My friend Jay
40:13
found the apartment for us. Unfortunately,
40:16
that wonderful summer turned
40:18
out rather unfortunate because the woman who
40:20
Jay and I were subletting from was,
40:24
rather than paying the rent with the rent
40:26
money that she was getting from us, was
40:28
keeping it and not paying the rent. So
40:30
at the end of the summer, we all
40:32
got evicted. Surprise.
40:36
Yeah, I ended up appealing to the landlord
40:40
to please, please help me find someplace else to
40:42
live because I really didn't have any place else
40:44
to go. And he ended up
40:46
being able to rent me another one of
40:48
the apartments he had in another building he
40:50
owned on 16th Street, which
40:52
was a fourth floor tenement
40:55
walk-up, a railroad flat that
40:57
I couldn't afford on my own and
41:00
ended up living with a couple. My roommates
41:02
were a couple. Because it was a railroad
41:04
flat, I had to walk through the apartment,
41:06
which meant through their bedroom to get
41:09
to mine, which often meant I was
41:11
stuck on one side or the other
41:13
depending on their nocturnal habits or
41:17
afternoon delight depending on what they were
41:19
doing and lived there for
41:21
about five years before I ended up moving
41:23
back into the village for a short period
41:26
of time. So that
41:29
was the one thing I knew that I wanted to live in
41:31
Manhattan. I did not know that
41:33
I could be a designer, that I would
41:35
be a designer, or that design was even
41:37
a discipline until
41:40
my senior year of college.
41:42
I had worked my way up to
41:44
be the editor of
41:46
the arts and features section of the student
41:48
newspaper at SUNY Albany where I went to
41:51
school and realized very
41:53
quickly that as
41:55
much as I loved assigning articles and
41:57
coming up with themes for this section.
42:00
of the newspaper, I
42:02
was endlessly fascinated by putting
42:05
the paper together, by designing the paper,
42:08
and thus a baby designer was
42:10
born. I took all
42:12
of one class in design while
42:15
I was in college and really
42:17
learned almost everything I knew at
42:19
that time working in the newsroom,
42:22
putting the paper together, everything was
42:24
done, old school layout, paste-up, computer
42:26
graphic machines, stat cameras. And
42:29
then when I graduated, was both
42:31
doing freelance editorial and freelance
42:34
layout and paste-up for
42:36
the first couple of years of my career. When
42:39
did you start at the student
42:41
newspaper? Was that something you started at the very
42:43
beginning and followed throughout your,
42:45
I guess, undergrad experience?
42:48
I wanted to write for the student newspaper,
42:50
I think the very first issue
42:53
I saw when I got to SUNY Albany
42:56
freshman year and went
42:58
up to the student newspaper, which was on
43:00
the third floor of the campus center, and
43:03
approached the editor at
43:06
the time and asked if I
43:08
could be a writer or
43:10
offered my services, volunteered my
43:12
services. And he
43:14
looked at me and asked me if I
43:17
had any clips. And
43:20
I was like, I didn't say what
43:22
I was thinking, but like hair clips? I
43:24
didn't know what he was talking about. And
43:27
I didn't have anything and I didn't know what
43:29
to do and I was embarrassed and humiliated and
43:31
ashamed and sort of scurried away and didn't
43:34
go back until my
43:37
junior year. I was
43:39
so intimidated by the talent
43:41
and the work that was coming out
43:43
of that newsroom. And it
43:45
was at the time, and very well may still
43:47
be one of the best student newspapers in the
43:49
country. It came out twice a
43:52
week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I was
43:54
just enamored with this newspaper
43:57
and I fantasized about writing.
44:00
really pithy, erudite letters
44:02
to the editor-in-chief that
44:05
would then get published in, you know, the letters
44:07
to the editor section, and they would realize what
44:09
a great writer I was and then invite me
44:11
to be a reporter. And
44:14
I'd sort of walk around like Rosalind Russell with
44:16
a pencil behind my ear and my heels
44:19
click-clacking in the newsroom. And, of course,
44:21
that never happened. I never
44:23
wrote one letter to the editor. And
44:26
for some reason, in, I guess, an aberrant moment
44:28
of courage, I went back up to the newsroom
44:31
my second semester
44:34
junior year, and there
44:36
was a women's uprising at the
44:40
student-read-of-the-student-health food store. And they were like, could
44:42
you go cover that? And I was like,
44:44
yeah, absolutely. And I went and
44:47
did it, and that was how I
44:49
started writing for the paper. I then
44:51
wrote a piece about an exhibit in the
44:53
art center. And by the end of my
44:55
second semester junior year, only because I
44:57
think no one else would take it, I
44:59
was offered the job of being editor
45:01
of the arts and features
45:04
section and began that summer.
45:06
That senior year in college
45:08
was one of the
45:10
most exciting and best years of
45:12
my life, in that for the
45:14
first time ever, I
45:17
felt like I
45:20
had purpose. Suddenly, working
45:22
on this paper, I felt like I was
45:24
part of something bigger than myself. I felt
45:26
like I had some reason
45:29
for being, and I loved
45:32
learning about design.
45:34
I loved being able to work with
45:36
writers, and I felt for
45:39
the first time in my life really excited about
45:41
something. I wanna talk about
45:43
that aberrant moment of courage and
45:45
dig into that a bit. So
45:47
you were rejected from, or maybe
45:49
rejected yourself or both initially
45:51
when you approached the paper. Then
45:54
years later, you have
45:56
this aberrant moment of courage. What
45:59
precipitated that? Was there a... conversation,
46:01
a realization, you watched a movie,
46:03
what triggered that? Do you remember?
46:06
I actually don't. I wish that I did. It
46:08
would make for a much better story and certainly
46:10
a better interview. What I can
46:12
tell you is that all
46:14
these years later, I have noticed a
46:16
pattern in my life of being
46:21
very easily hurt by
46:23
an initial reaction or
46:26
an initial rejection, so much
46:28
so that it thwarts any
46:31
other attempt at making something
46:33
like that happen for
46:36
a very long time. I am
46:39
extremely sensitive and any
46:42
rejection sort of takes
46:45
me off of that path
46:48
for quite a long time. It takes me
46:50
a while to recover. Could you give any examples of that?
46:53
I would say my entire life. I
46:55
can give you 43 examples. Get comfortable, Tim. I'm
46:59
definitely settling in with my water. I'm ready to
47:01
go. Well, there I was rejected
47:03
that first year of college took me then
47:05
three years to go back again. I might
47:08
have been feeling confident about something else that
47:11
had gone well in my life and thought,
47:13
what the heck? Why not go back and
47:15
try and then took those steps up to
47:17
the campus center and went back up to
47:19
the third floor and asked again? I
47:22
am somebody that has a very hard
47:25
time taking no for an answer, but
47:28
it takes me a long time to
47:30
recalibrate and get my courage back to
47:32
continue to keep trying. When
47:34
I graduated, because
47:40
I had such a hard time
47:42
finding a job initially
47:44
that I really
47:47
loved and because I was
47:49
having so much trouble figuring out what I
47:51
wanted to do with my life, I
47:54
kept bouncing around from opportunity
47:57
to opportunity. every
48:00
time I would try something new
48:02
and would ultimately get rejected, I
48:05
used that first rejection almost as a
48:07
permission slip to avoid
48:09
having to try again. So when I
48:12
graduated, I started working at
48:14
a couple of different magazines. I worked for a
48:16
cable magazine and I worked for a rock magazine
48:18
doing layout and paste up and some editing. And
48:21
at the time thought, I'm really enjoying this,
48:23
but I don't really feel qualified to be
48:25
doing this. Maybe I should go back to
48:27
school and get a master's degree in journalism.
48:30
And I lived in the neighborhood of a
48:32
very good journalism school, the
48:35
Columbia School of Journalism. And my
48:37
dad had gone to Columbia and studied pharmacy
48:39
and I thought, why not apply to the
48:41
Columbia School of Journalism? But
48:43
that was the only school I applied to. I thought,
48:46
I want to consider getting a master's degree in journalism.
48:48
There are a lot of good journalism schools in New
48:50
York City, but for some reason I had my heart
48:52
set on this one school. I
48:54
didn't get in, I got rejected
48:56
and abandoned my hopes or dream
48:58
of going to get a
49:00
master's degree in journalism shortly thereafter. Because
49:03
I also am a painter, I had
49:06
been accepted into a show at Long
49:09
Island University, the Brooklyn campus, and got
49:11
some good reviews and thought, hm, maybe
49:13
I should become an artist. I love
49:15
doing this, I'm getting some good response
49:17
from it, but I don't feel qualified
49:19
or educated enough. Maybe I
49:21
should get an advanced degree in art. And
49:24
I applied to the Whitney School, the Whitney
49:26
Museum of Art had an independent study program
49:28
that would allow me to continue working during
49:30
the day. I applied for
49:33
that, I had really good references, wonderful clips
49:35
at that point, some good reviews, and
49:38
got rejected to that and then abandoned that
49:40
dream. And so it's
49:43
been a long history of making
49:46
an attempt, getting that
49:49
early rejection, retreating, and then
49:51
finally sort of licking
49:54
my wounds, re- sort of knitting
49:57
my confidence or hopes and dreams
49:59
together. and then trying to do
50:01
something else or trying again.
50:05
So a few questions. The first is
50:07
what would you have, or
50:10
what would you say to your college
50:13
self after that
50:15
first rejection at the
50:17
newspaper? Or what advice would you
50:19
give someone who had the near identical
50:21
experience and was hardwired the same
50:24
way? Well, it's
50:26
an interesting question, Tim, because I
50:28
have the benefit of hindsight. And
50:31
looking back on those years, yes,
50:35
I certainly could have tried
50:38
again sooner and
50:40
maybe had more
50:43
of a runway to experiment
50:45
and grow and learn in
50:48
that newsroom and in that environment. But
50:52
I also think
50:54
that those years in between, learning
50:58
and growing in other ways contributed
51:01
to my ability to
51:03
then, when appointed
51:06
the editor of
51:08
the Arts and Features section, I
51:11
somehow had a lot more to
51:13
pull from. And maybe this is
51:15
my own sort
51:17
of synthesizing happiness or calibrating to
51:19
my own set point or
51:22
looking back and thinking, well,
51:24
it all sort of worked
51:27
out. So why give
51:29
somebody advice that I wouldn't have necessarily
51:31
taken at that point? What
51:34
I would say is don't
51:36
accept the first rejection ever.
51:40
Give yourself options. The
51:43
timeliness of those options or the
51:45
timeliness of those retries,
51:48
do at your own pace. You're
51:51
not in competition with anybody but yourself. So
51:56
if you are rejected to something
51:58
that you want, and
52:00
think about what it is that
52:03
caused that rejection and
52:05
work to better understand how you
52:07
can present
52:10
your best possible self when you
52:12
try again. Your clips mention where
52:14
you're like clips, hair clips reminded me of a story
52:16
I heard when I was a student. So you work
52:19
with a lot of students and we're gonna come back
52:21
to that. Oh
52:23
Tim, can I add one more thing? Of course.
52:25
I'm sorry. This is an interesting. You
52:27
can add many things, please. So
52:30
one thing that I haven't shared about
52:32
this particular story is that the young
52:34
man that rejected me that first year
52:37
is somebody that I then
52:39
befriended in that experience
52:42
of working at the paper that
52:44
junior year. And I graduated in 1983.
52:47
It is now 2017. And
52:52
I have been friends with that man. His
52:54
name is Robert Edelstein. I
52:57
have been friends with him ever since. So
53:00
just because somebody rejects you doesn't
53:02
mean that they don't like
53:04
you. First of all, he didn't even reject
53:06
me. He asked me for a very reasonable,
53:10
he asked me for something very reasonable. He
53:12
asked me for some examples of my writing.
53:15
I was so intimidated and was so embarrassed
53:17
by not knowing exactly what
53:19
he meant and the fact that I didn't
53:21
have anything other than some things from high
53:23
school, which I didn't feel were appropriate, that
53:25
I was the one that rejected myself in
53:27
many ways. One of the interesting things that
53:29
I have found is, and
53:32
Rob is not the only person that I can point to
53:35
as being somebody that initially provided
53:38
some sort of obstacle or roadblock
53:40
that was a reasonable one. And
53:43
then ultimately I befriended and
53:46
we've become, we are now lifelong
53:48
friends. He didn't even
53:51
remember rejecting me that freshman
53:53
year and is mortified
53:55
now by the notion that he
53:57
might've done anything to hurt my
53:59
feelings. can
56:00
be explained by incompetence or just busyness. The
56:02
person is busy. If they send you a
56:04
really short response to your mini novella of
56:06
an email, it doesn't mean that they think
56:08
you're worthless or not worth their time. It
56:10
could just mean that they have 10 times more to do than
56:12
you do. And it's sometimes hard to
56:15
have that perspective when particularly you're starting out
56:17
and you're a bit fragile and you're on
56:19
wobbly legs and you send
56:21
this huge outpouring of your emotion to someone
56:23
you respect and then they respond with, sorry
56:25
kid, not right now. And you're like, really?
56:27
That's it? And I'm not
56:29
gonna name names, but there's someone who now I'm
56:31
very close friends with, extremely well
56:34
respected writer. And I got one of
56:36
these one line responses in 2005 or 2006 when
56:40
I sent an early manuscript of the
56:42
four hour workweek to this person via
56:45
email. And the response was, effectively,
56:48
thanks, but sorry, don't have time
56:50
to read this right now. No,
56:52
dear Tim, no signature, just one
56:54
line. And I felt
56:56
so slighted by this that I held this
56:58
subconscious grudge for years. And now we're really
57:00
good friends and the whole thing is ludicrous
57:02
in retrospect. One thing that I find about
57:04
human nature is that ambiguity
57:07
is always perceived negatively.
57:10
So there might be nothing
57:12
in that one line email
57:14
that would be in any
57:16
way disparaging or insulting
57:18
or anything, but because we
57:20
as humans perceive ambiguity negatively,
57:22
we tend to read into
57:25
things that aren't there in
57:27
a way that makes us feel bad. But I also
57:29
think that a lot of that for me comes
57:33
from having a
57:35
very fragile center
57:37
and not necessarily
57:39
thinking that they are specifically
57:45
upset with me because
57:48
of something that I've done, but just because everything
57:50
that I do is sort of bad. They're
57:53
just cognizant of that. So it's
57:55
not something specific, it's just something
57:57
all-encompassing. And so that's been something
57:59
I've been. struggling to overcome over
58:02
the decades. So I have a
58:04
few questions about how
58:07
you came to find
58:10
your niche for the first time you clicked
58:14
into place, so to speak, doing
58:16
something that resembles what you ended
58:18
up doing up to
58:20
this point. But before I get to that, just to put a button
58:23
in the anecdote related to clips, you
58:25
mentioned clips, you got clips, hair clips.
58:27
I was told this story by a
58:29
professor in college about Nantucket nectars when
58:31
it was just getting started. And there
58:33
were, I believe, two guys who were
58:36
really faking it until they made it in a
58:38
lot of respects. And at
58:40
one point, they were meeting with this distributor because
58:43
they'd been selling these concoctions via boats
58:45
in Nantucket from boat to boat to
58:47
boat. And they wanted to go
58:49
into retail. And it met with
58:51
this, it was either a retailer or distributor,
58:54
but it was early on. And they were
58:56
really nervous. And the muckety muck they were
58:58
meeting with, at least in their eyes, said,
59:01
do you have a lot of POS materials?
59:04
And they looked at
59:06
each other like, oh, shit. And they said, oh,
59:09
POS, we're all about POS. And
59:11
he's like, good, good, good. And then they walked out, they're
59:13
like, what the hell is POS? Point
59:15
of sale, which of course,
59:17
you know, plenty about. But I wanted
59:20
to, before we get to when
59:22
you first
59:25
clicked into your niche and how that
59:27
happened, you mentioned knowing
59:30
that you wanted to be in
59:32
Manhattan. And I've been thinking a lot
59:34
about the components of, and this is
59:36
a dangerous word sometimes, but happiness. And
59:39
that oftentimes we think of
59:42
the journalist Ws, right? The interactives,
59:44
the why, the what, the where, and so on of
59:46
happiness. And I think humans
59:48
tend to at least put why at
59:50
the top, then maybe what somewhere lower,
59:52
and then where is often
59:54
an afterthought. But I've started to believe that
59:57
the where is much more critical than we
59:59
give it credit. credit for and that you
1:00:01
can actually start there. So I thought about
1:00:03
this a lot for myself, but really the
1:00:05
how important the geography can be because it
1:00:07
determines in large measure who you're surrounded with
1:00:09
all the time and what you're surrounded with
1:00:11
all the time. But I
1:00:13
guess it's more of an observation than a question. But
1:00:16
if you think about that, how do you think
1:00:18
about through the components of happiness
1:00:20
or well-being for yourself? Well,
1:00:23
there's sort of two parts to the question, I think.
1:00:25
And the first is this notion
1:00:28
of New York sort of
1:00:30
being the place that I wanted
1:00:32
to be and what I told
1:00:34
myself at that time. And
1:00:39
then ultimately how that leads
1:00:41
to happiness or fulfillment. And
1:00:45
one of the things that I
1:00:48
struggled with when I first moved
1:00:51
to Manhattan or when I first graduated
1:00:53
really was what was I
1:00:55
going to be? What was I going to
1:00:57
do? I didn't have a lot
1:00:59
of money. I didn't have any
1:01:01
network. And I certainly
1:01:04
didn't have any type of connection
1:01:06
to any ins for apartments or
1:01:08
jobs or anything like that. And
1:01:12
I wanted
1:01:14
very badly to be in Manhattan.
1:01:17
That was something that I knew for sure. In
1:01:19
thinking about what I wanted with my
1:01:21
life, I knew that
1:01:23
I wanted to do something creative. One
1:01:26
of my big hopes and dreams at that
1:01:28
time was to work at Condé Nast and
1:01:31
I did apply and I did get a
1:01:33
call back and I got rejected and then
1:01:35
never tried again another example of that. But
1:01:39
one of the more
1:01:41
high altitude aspirations was either
1:01:44
being an artist or being
1:01:46
a writer. So being more
1:01:48
of a fine artist and not a commercial artist.
1:01:51
But at the time I did
1:01:53
not think that
1:01:56
my chances of success at
1:01:58
that would either
1:02:01
be possible, and certainly, if
1:02:03
it were possible, not fast.
1:02:06
And because I wanted to live in New York
1:02:08
City, because I wanted to live in Manhattan, I
1:02:12
felt that I needed to be able
1:02:14
to get a job that would pay
1:02:17
my rent. Because I didn't
1:02:19
want to be a waitress, and because
1:02:21
I didn't want to be a bartender,
1:02:24
I needed to make
1:02:26
some type of reasonable income
1:02:28
in order to pay that
1:02:30
rent. And
1:02:33
so I have been
1:02:35
telling myself for decades
1:02:37
now that I
1:02:40
decided that I needed to
1:02:42
work as a designer because
1:02:45
I needed to have
1:02:47
some sort of income that
1:02:49
would give me some sense of
1:02:51
self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency has been enormously important
1:02:53
to me, and I've said that
1:02:55
for years and years and years,
1:02:57
and that being safe and
1:03:00
secure and being able to manage
1:03:02
the course of my own life, having
1:03:05
financial stability, was something that was a
1:03:08
bit of a lead gene for me in making the
1:03:10
decisions that I did. And
1:03:12
back in that summer of David Bowie
1:03:14
and the police, I remember coming
1:03:16
home from a club one night, and I
1:03:18
was on the corner of Bleecker Street in
1:03:21
6th Avenue, and it suddenly occurred to me
1:03:23
that I had to make a decision. And
1:03:25
the decision was, what was I going to
1:03:27
do? And
1:03:32
I realized that if I wanted to
1:03:34
be an artist or a
1:03:36
writer, that I would likely have to
1:03:38
take some type of job that
1:03:41
would not necessarily be
1:03:43
able to safeguard what I considered
1:03:45
to be my financial future, and
1:03:48
therefore made this little
1:03:50
pact with myself in my head
1:03:52
that I would become a designer
1:03:55
so that I could make enough money
1:03:57
to be able to... be
1:04:00
secure. And I've been telling
1:04:02
myself that for decades. What
1:04:05
I realized in the last couple
1:04:07
of years was that
1:04:09
I was unbeknownst to my psyche,
1:04:11
my consciousness, I was lying to
1:04:14
myself. I was absolutely positively lying
1:04:16
to myself because more
1:04:19
than the self-sufficiency was
1:04:22
the desire to be in Manhattan.
1:04:26
I could have easily become, or
1:04:28
more easily become, an
1:04:30
artist or a fine artist or
1:04:33
a writer if I didn't want
1:04:35
to live in the most expensive city in
1:04:37
the world. I could have gone and lived
1:04:39
with my mother in Queens. I
1:04:41
could have lived with friends in
1:04:44
Albany. I could have had seven
1:04:46
roommates in a little commune in
1:04:48
Bed-Stuy. There would have
1:04:50
been any number of things that
1:04:52
I could have done if my
1:04:55
lead gene had been artistic purity.
1:04:59
But no, I told myself that it was
1:05:01
because of X, Y, and Z. But really,
1:05:04
what it was, was the most important
1:05:06
thing to me at that point in
1:05:08
my life was being in Manhattan. And
1:05:10
I lived in a fourth floor tenement
1:05:12
walk-up. I had to walk through somebody
1:05:14
else's bedroom to get to mine. I
1:05:17
was living on a floor with people
1:05:19
that were constantly, the other tenants in
1:05:21
the building were locking each other out.
1:05:23
It was an elderly couple and they
1:05:25
were always fighting. There were a whole
1:05:28
family of pigeons living on the fire
1:05:30
escape outside of my window in my
1:05:32
bedroom, which was so decrepit. I couldn't
1:05:34
even open the window in the summertime
1:05:36
and there was no air conditioning in
1:05:39
this apartment. I mean,
1:05:41
the conditions that I lived
1:05:43
in were deplorable, but yet
1:05:46
that was the most important thing to me.
1:05:49
So when I talk to people now about
1:05:51
what do they want to do when they
1:05:53
first graduate, I ask them to
1:05:55
think about what is the one most
1:05:58
important thing to you. organization
1:12:00
to help eradicate domestic
1:12:03
violence, sexual assault, and child
1:12:05
abuse. And I've been
1:12:07
working with Mariska and Miley Zambuto,
1:12:09
the CEO of the foundation now
1:12:11
for the last five years. And
1:12:14
this work, I believe, the branding work that I've
1:12:16
been able to do with them taking into
1:12:20
all the expertise I've had
1:12:22
in repositioning and branding some
1:12:24
of the biggest CPG
1:12:27
companies in the world. And now
1:12:29
dovetailing that with my own background
1:12:33
really truly makes me feel like
1:12:35
my whole life makes sense to
1:12:37
him. That's beautiful.
1:12:40
And I'm really glad
1:12:42
you're talking about this because I can
1:12:45
imagine a very different experience,
1:12:47
but I've had my own
1:12:50
battles with darkness of different types. And
1:12:52
it's very easy to believe that you
1:12:54
are alone or isolated or that
1:12:56
things will never change. And
1:12:59
I'm sure there are people listening who have had
1:13:02
similar experiences to yours who have
1:13:05
never talked about them or have never
1:13:07
found a way to perhaps integrate or
1:13:09
reconcile them. And this might be
1:13:11
an incredible catalyst for them. I
1:13:13
would love to ask if you're open to talking
1:13:16
about it for yourself, have you found any particular
1:13:19
avenues or types of work to
1:13:21
be particularly helpful to
1:13:23
you? Of course, the work
1:13:25
that you're doing with the Joyful Heart Foundation,
1:13:27
but apart from that, are there
1:13:29
any particular types of exercises or
1:13:31
work or anything really that has helped
1:13:34
you to be
1:13:36
more at peace with
1:13:38
your experience? I think
1:13:41
that the work that I've done in
1:13:44
therapy has saved my life. I
1:13:48
have always been really
1:13:52
dedicated to my therapy
1:13:55
and have been
1:13:57
in therapy with the same
1:14:00
analyst now for over two
1:14:02
decades. What type of therapy
1:14:04
is that, if you don't mind me asking? I know
1:14:06
very little about it. The person who I work with
1:14:09
is a PhD. She was
1:14:11
very involved in the psychoanalytic
1:14:14
community in New York City.
1:14:16
She's now living in Santa
1:14:19
Fe. I think that it's
1:14:22
a combination of a number of different
1:14:24
philosophies and theories, probably
1:14:26
at its foundation, psychoanalysis,
1:14:29
but certainly with quite a
1:14:31
lot of variations. It's
1:14:33
talk therapy. I started
1:14:36
back in the early 90s, five
1:14:38
days a week, and then moved
1:14:40
down to three days. Now I'm usually
1:14:43
two to three days. It is
1:14:46
enormously helpful to help me try
1:14:48
to make sense of
1:14:50
these experiences that I've had for anybody
1:14:53
that is either
1:14:55
in the midst of experiencing them
1:14:58
or experiencing the aftermath.
1:15:01
There are a lot of resources. One
1:15:03
of the things that I experienced when
1:15:05
I was in the midst of these
1:15:07
experiences was a sense
1:15:10
of profound aloneness. The
1:15:13
worst experiences I had were in the
1:15:15
70s. At the time, the topic wasn't one
1:15:17
that was as understood. I didn't know
1:15:26
what was happening to me. I
1:15:29
thought I was the only person
1:15:31
in the world that this was
1:15:33
happening to because it seemed so
1:15:36
surreal and unnatural
1:15:39
and punishing.
1:15:42
It didn't occur to me that this
1:15:44
was pervasive, that this was a
1:15:47
cultural epidemic. I was told
1:15:49
at the time by
1:15:52
the perpetrator that
1:15:54
if I told anybody
1:15:56
that he had the
1:15:58
resources, to hurt my
1:16:01
brother and my mother, that he would kill them.
1:16:03
It's horrible. And I believed that.
1:16:06
I was a little girl. I believed
1:16:08
that. And I
1:16:11
was protecting them. And
1:16:15
I didn't know that I
1:16:17
had any other resources. None.
1:16:20
And didn't even tell my mother until after
1:16:22
they got divorced. Because, Tim, I didn't want
1:16:24
to be the reason. I didn't want to
1:16:27
be blamed. And I also didn't
1:16:29
think anybody would believe me. And I didn't
1:16:31
want my mother and my brother to be
1:16:33
harmed. It wasn't until
1:16:35
I was much older that I
1:16:37
realized that this
1:16:40
was pervasive. So for
1:16:42
anybody that is listening, if
1:16:45
you feel alone, know that
1:16:47
you're not. You can
1:16:49
go to the Joyful Heart
1:16:51
Foundation, thejoyfulheartfoundation.org. And
1:16:54
there are resources and phone numbers. You
1:16:56
can also go to nomore.org, which is
1:16:58
another organization that I've helped. And
1:17:01
there are resources and people that are
1:17:03
there to help and listen and get
1:17:06
you out of the situation that you are
1:17:08
in. Thank you for that. To
1:17:10
insert some levity, I'm not sure how to segue
1:17:12
from here. Well,
1:17:14
let's talk about some of the really, really
1:17:17
important things that people are
1:17:19
doing now to not
1:17:21
only eradicate this type of violence,
1:17:23
but also to change the world.
1:17:25
One of the other things that
1:17:27
Joyful Heart is doing that I
1:17:29
am so proud of is ending
1:17:32
the backlog. There are hundreds of
1:17:34
thousands of rape kits that are
1:17:36
not being investigated,
1:17:39
that are sitting in shelves in
1:17:41
police departments all over the country.
1:17:44
And so the Joyful Heart Foundation,
1:17:46
along with Vice President Joe Biden,
1:17:48
has been very involved in getting
1:17:50
funding to help analyze
1:17:52
those rape kits to be able
1:17:54
to analyze the DNA and get
1:17:57
serial rapists off the streets and
1:17:59
get them out of the country.
1:18:01
get justice for the victims of
1:18:03
those crimes. So that's a really,
1:18:05
really important thing that they're doing
1:18:07
and something that I feel can
1:18:10
ultimately change not only the sort
1:18:12
of rape culture that we're living
1:18:14
in, but also the blaming of
1:18:16
victims. So we can change culture
1:18:18
by doing this work together. It's
1:18:21
something I'm super proud of. And
1:18:23
to those people listening, all of
1:18:25
these resources that are
1:18:27
being mentioned throughout this episode will
1:18:29
be in the show notes. So
1:18:31
you can certainly find the links
1:18:34
to knowmore.org, the Joyful Heart Foundation,
1:18:36
and so on at fourhourworkweek.com,/podcast, all
1:18:38
spelled out. Debbie,
1:18:40
I'd love to ask you to shift gears just a
1:18:42
little bit or perhaps
1:18:44
a lot, the Speak Up story. That's
1:18:49
one of my favorite stories. All right, I
1:18:52
will let you run with it. I would love for you
1:18:54
to share. Okay,
1:18:57
so I want to start this
1:18:59
story by letting people know that
1:19:01
this was something that while
1:19:03
it was happening, I
1:19:05
thought was the worst professional
1:19:08
experience of my life. And
1:19:11
it's turned out to be the
1:19:13
most important and life-affirming of my life.
1:19:15
So let me tell you a little
1:19:17
bit about the Speak Up story. So
1:19:20
the year is 2003. And
1:19:24
the time in
1:19:26
the world was quite different than it is now. So
1:19:28
we were online, but we weren't quite online in the
1:19:31
way that we are now. I think
1:19:33
YouTube was just, just, just beginning.
1:19:36
It was a video sharing site more
1:19:38
than anything. We were online,
1:19:40
but we were playing games and we
1:19:42
were ordering from the J. Crew catalog.
1:19:44
I don't know if people remember when
1:19:46
the J. Crew catalog went online, people's
1:19:48
heads exploded. You could buy things online and
1:19:51
they could be shipped to you and
1:19:53
you don't have to leave the house.
1:19:55
Oh my God, that's so amazing. And
1:19:57
we were playing games and we were emailing.
1:20:00
and reading the news. And there were
1:20:02
forums where people would congregate, but they
1:20:04
tended to be more niche
1:20:06
forums and not so much
1:20:09
mainstream cultural forums. Prior
1:20:11
to that, leading up to that
1:20:13
time in my life, I had
1:20:15
joined Sterling Brands in 1995.
1:20:20
And this was one of the first moments
1:20:22
of that click that you had mentioned earlier
1:20:24
where suddenly, without even realizing
1:20:27
it, I had joined
1:20:29
a firm where I was hired
1:20:32
to help grow the business via
1:20:34
the acquisition of new clients in
1:20:36
branding. And the job
1:20:38
was one of the first times
1:20:41
in my life where
1:20:44
I was
1:20:46
almost effortlessly successful. I
1:20:49
think because of my early
1:20:52
childhood in my father's
1:20:54
pharmacy, being surrounded by brands,
1:20:56
I had, and my own sort of obsession
1:20:58
with things like Lay's Potato Chips. I was
1:21:00
too to say Lay's Potato Chips. Exactly.
1:21:04
I had this almost magical
1:21:08
ability to understand why
1:21:12
and how people chose
1:21:14
the objects that they did to
1:21:16
be part of their lives, mostly
1:21:19
the brands that they chose. So
1:21:21
I started working at Sterling Brands and had
1:21:24
this heretofore, unbelievable
1:21:26
level of success, financially,
1:21:29
and I really enjoyed it.
1:21:32
I am also endlessly fascinated by
1:21:35
the choices people make for
1:21:37
the objects in their lives, what
1:21:40
they choose to surround themselves with, the kinds of
1:21:42
things they buy and share
1:21:45
and eat and wear and so forth. And
1:21:48
in as much as I loved
1:21:50
what I was doing and in as much
1:21:52
as I was relishing the level of success
1:21:54
that in my early 30s, I
1:21:56
was finally, finally getting, I
1:21:59
also was... still sort
1:22:01
of longing for that artistic,
1:22:03
creative sort of part of
1:22:05
my life that I felt
1:22:07
was deeply missing. At
1:22:10
that point, what department were you working in?
1:22:12
I was working in marketing and sales. Got
1:22:14
it. And I wasn't at that time doing
1:22:17
very much design work. I was doing some
1:22:19
work freelance. I had
1:22:21
been appointed the off-air
1:22:24
creative director at Hot 97, which
1:22:26
is a whole other sort of
1:22:28
story to share at some point.
1:22:31
But I was working to develop the
1:22:33
identity and the graphics for the first ever hip-hop
1:22:35
radio station, which happened to be in New York
1:22:38
and was called Hot 97. That
1:22:40
was the only thing that I was doing on
1:22:42
the side. I started working at Sterling Brands and
1:22:45
was longing for a design community
1:22:47
and was longing for a
1:22:50
feeling of being part of something bigger than I
1:22:52
was on my own, but something that was much
1:22:55
more creative and had
1:22:58
no commercial implications. And
1:23:00
I found the AIGA, the American Institute
1:23:02
of Graphic Arts, and they
1:23:05
had a special interest group
1:23:07
within AIGA called the Brand
1:23:09
Experience Center. And I
1:23:11
was so excited. I thought, oh my
1:23:13
God, this is the Venn diagram of
1:23:16
my life. I can do branding, and
1:23:18
they have designers, and all these famous
1:23:20
designers are on the board, and I
1:23:22
could meet them, and I could be
1:23:24
part of this great community. And
1:23:27
so I went and I volunteered, and I became a member
1:23:30
of AIGA, and I was working with
1:23:32
this Brand Experience group, and
1:23:34
I loved it, and I was appointed to
1:23:36
the board, and I felt really, really part
1:23:38
of something. And
1:23:40
the board term was, I think, two
1:23:42
years. And at the end of the
1:23:44
term, if we wanted to be on the
1:23:47
board again, we all had to reapply. And
1:23:49
in that two years, I was very active.
1:23:51
I went to all the meetings, and we
1:23:54
weren't funded by AIGA. We had a self-fund,
1:23:56
and so I made cupcakes for bake sales.
1:23:58
and we had a flea market, and I
1:24:00
was very, very involved in the sort of
1:24:02
day-to-day runnings of this little special interest group.
1:24:05
At the end of the two years, we
1:24:07
all had to reapply if we wanted to
1:24:09
be on the board again, and every single
1:24:11
person reapplied. And every single person
1:24:13
was appointed on the board again, except me.
1:24:16
I was rejected. Oh. Oh,
1:24:20
you set me up with the cupcakes. Oh
1:24:22
my God, I know. Oh my God, oh.
1:24:24
No, they were really good cupcakes, and brownies.
1:24:27
And I was devastated.
1:24:29
I was just devastated. And
1:24:32
Rick Rafeh, who was then the executive
1:24:34
director, he had been aware of
1:24:36
how much I wanted to be in AIGA, and
1:24:39
how much I wanted to do, and my aspirations. And I
1:24:41
think he felt really bad for me. He asked me if
1:24:44
I wanted to have lunch, and he took me to a
1:24:46
very expensive lunch at 11 Madison.
1:24:48
And over the course of his lunch, yeah,
1:24:50
it was super wonderful and generous of him.
1:24:52
Over the course of lunch, he said, please,
1:24:54
please don't give up on AIGA. We need
1:24:56
people like you, and don't give up. We'll
1:24:58
find a place for you. And
1:25:01
I guess as a bit of
1:25:03
a consolation prize, he asked me
1:25:05
if I would be a judge
1:25:08
in the upcoming annual competition that
1:25:10
AIGA had, called 365. And
1:25:13
he asked me if I wanted
1:25:15
to be a judge in the package
1:25:17
design category. This to me
1:25:19
was almost worth being kicked to the curb
1:25:22
by this special interest group of the Brand
1:25:24
Experience Center. This was like the biggest honor
1:25:26
of my career at that point, to be
1:25:28
a judge in the
1:25:31
country's biggest design competition was
1:25:34
unfathomable to me. It felt like a
1:25:36
miracle. And so I
1:25:38
went to the judging, and there were
1:25:40
two other judges with me. We had
1:25:42
700 entries that we needed to look
1:25:44
at in one day. And
1:25:46
when I got to the judging at AIGA
1:25:49
headquarters, I met with
1:25:51
the other two jurors. One
1:25:53
was a very well-known designer who
1:25:55
had a bit of a boutique
1:25:58
agency, very posh. She was very
1:26:00
stylish. I did not feel nearly
1:26:02
as stylish. Another guy was
1:26:04
there from Apple, and this was shortly
1:26:06
after the iPod had been released, and
1:26:09
he was on his iPod the whole
1:26:11
time, and really didn't spend a lot
1:26:13
of time paying attention to the judging.
1:26:15
In any case, this other juror, the
1:26:17
other juror. What a dick. Yeah. Anyway.
1:26:20
The other juror looks at me. Sorry, guy, I don't know.
1:26:22
Yeah. The other juror looks at me when
1:26:24
I get there, and she's like, just so you know, I
1:26:27
don't intend to have any mass market packaging
1:26:30
in this competition get an
1:26:32
award. Wow. And
1:26:34
I was like, okay. And
1:26:36
I didn't agree with that. I mean,
1:26:39
I understandably had come, I was working
1:26:41
at a CPG package design firm, and
1:26:43
we had recently designed the Burger King
1:26:45
logo, and the Star Wars Episode II
1:26:47
attack of the clones packaging, and merchandising,
1:26:49
and the Hershey bar, and so,
1:26:51
you know, I was coming from a completely different point
1:26:54
of view. We ended up disagreeing
1:26:57
so vehemently that at one point I thought we
1:26:59
were gonna actually come to Fisticuffs, but we were
1:27:02
only- Was this behind the scenes, or is this
1:27:04
while you're on the panel? No, this is while
1:27:06
we're on the panel, and there's somebody
1:27:08
that's trailing us writing notes for an
1:27:10
article that's going to appear in the
1:27:12
annual. It
1:27:14
was mortifying. In any case,
1:27:16
we were only able to agree, I
1:27:18
think, on seven things that would go
1:27:21
into the competition journal, which
1:27:23
is not a way to encourage future
1:27:27
applicants to apply for
1:27:29
the competition. So
1:27:31
AIGA was not particularly happy with us.
1:27:34
This juror of mine, the fellow juror,
1:27:36
hated me, and I felt
1:27:38
at the end of that day that
1:27:40
I would never ever be asked to
1:27:42
do anything with AIGA ever again. And
1:27:45
I remember walking back to my office, which was at the
1:27:47
Empire State Building at the time, it was sort of dusk,
1:27:49
and I felt like, oh, this
1:27:51
is never, ever going to work
1:27:53
out. And resigned myself to that. Rick
1:27:55
asked for some work of mine
1:27:59
to be included. included in the
1:28:01
journal as evidence of my credentials
1:28:03
for being a juror. And
1:28:06
the two biggest projects that I had done
1:28:08
at the time were the Burger King identity
1:28:10
and the Star Wars identity. And so I
1:28:12
sent those in as my credentials.
1:28:14
They were printed in the journal, and that
1:28:16
was the end of that. Or
1:28:19
so I thought. May 2nd, 2003. I
1:28:25
get a link from a friend of mine. She
1:28:28
sends me an email and she's like, read this
1:28:30
in the privacy of your own home, preferably
1:28:33
with a big drink. And-
1:28:35
Boy, what a set up. I
1:28:37
know, right? And I am not one that
1:28:39
likes surprises or anticipation. I need instant gratification.
1:28:41
So I don't wait to go home. I
1:28:44
don't wait to get a drink. I click
1:28:46
into the link at my desk in my
1:28:48
office and come to a letter,
1:28:50
an open letter to AIGA written
1:28:52
by a designer named Felix Sockwell
1:28:55
on this thing called Speak
1:28:57
Up. And Speak Up
1:29:00
was one of the first web
1:29:02
blogs and the first
1:29:04
design blog. And the
1:29:07
letter chastises
1:29:09
AIGA for
1:29:12
including me, Debbie
1:29:14
Millman, as a juror
1:29:16
in their annual competition. What is
1:29:19
supposed to be the most prestigious
1:29:21
competition in the country. And
1:29:23
accused me of not only being a corporate
1:29:26
clown, but also
1:29:28
because of the work I do, they
1:29:31
called me a she-devil. A
1:29:33
she-devil. Wow. And
1:29:37
proceeded to take my entire career down.
1:29:40
And it was a pylon. So not
1:29:42
only was the open letter quite harsh,
1:29:44
but then there was the pylon of
1:29:46
comments that happened in the early days
1:29:48
of blogging. Remember that? Oh, yes.
1:29:50
So- I'm so glad that hateful
1:29:52
comments are a thing of the past. But
1:29:56
yes, oh yes. Intimately, intimately familiar.
1:30:01
And I'm reading this and my jaw
1:30:03
is agape and I am just in
1:30:06
a state of catatonia.
1:30:11
I couldn't move. I
1:30:14
was ashamed, embarrassed, terrified
1:30:16
that people in my office would see it,
1:30:18
that the reputation of the firm
1:30:21
was being sullied by me. And
1:30:25
I didn't know what to do. I
1:30:28
was despondent. I remember walking home
1:30:30
from work that day crying,
1:30:33
thinking that I had to quit, I had
1:30:35
to leave the design business and my career
1:30:37
was over. This career that I
1:30:39
had finally found for myself was now
1:30:41
officially over. And
1:30:44
I honestly did not know what to
1:30:46
do, Tim. I felt like if I
1:30:48
wrote in that it would seem defensive,
1:30:50
that it would bring more attention to
1:30:52
this story. I felt that if
1:30:55
I didn't write in that I would be
1:30:58
missing an opportunity to at least contribute
1:31:00
to the conversation with a point of
1:31:02
view that might be different than theirs.
1:31:05
I didn't know what to do. And looking back on
1:31:07
it now, I'm actually really ashamed of what I did because
1:31:10
it was disingenuous. But at the time, it
1:31:12
was the only thing that I felt
1:31:15
I could do. And so
1:31:17
a few days after the story broke
1:31:20
and the comments piled in, I contributed
1:31:22
and my first comment
1:31:24
was, you're not going to approve of
1:31:26
this. Oh, we'll see. I
1:31:29
wrote, what a cool discussion. I
1:31:31
love it. I'm
1:31:33
sorry. I'm
1:31:36
so sorry. The
1:31:39
cool girl had not come out at that time, but
1:31:41
had it been out, I would have said, that's what
1:31:43
I was trying to be. I was trying to be
1:31:45
the cool girl. Nothing matters.
1:31:48
I could eat five chili dogs and I don't gain weight. I'm
1:31:52
quoting the book. So yeah,
1:31:54
I came in and that's what I said,
1:31:56
but I ended up having the
1:31:59
best possible. pair
1:34:00
of handcuffs, yeah. Well
1:34:02
said. But I'd still, you know, I'd
1:34:04
go home and look, but whatever. A couple
1:34:07
weeks later, the founder
1:34:09
of Speak Up, a young man about 23
1:34:11
years old named
1:34:14
Armin Vitt, reached out to
1:34:16
me. He wrote me an email and
1:34:18
he apologized. He didn't apologize for
1:34:20
calling my work a pair of turds, which is
1:34:22
what he did. I didn't realize
1:34:24
turds came in pairs. Shows
1:34:26
what I know. Ah,
1:34:30
you. But he, so he
1:34:32
apologized for the bullying and for the
1:34:34
unprofessional way in which the conversation ensued,
1:34:36
as opposed to he made it very
1:34:38
clear that he still thought my work
1:34:40
was a pair of turds, but he
1:34:42
didn't feel that it was right the
1:34:44
way that I had been spoken to.
1:34:47
And I took a lot of care in responding
1:34:50
to him. I accepted his apology. But
1:34:52
at the time, I was really
1:34:54
fascinated by this whole blogging
1:34:57
thing. It was really interesting to
1:34:59
me, this sort of real time
1:35:01
communication, holding people accountable. And I
1:35:03
wrote him this sort of diatribe
1:35:05
about it. And he responded and
1:35:07
said, well, would you like to write
1:35:09
for the site? And
1:35:11
I was like, whoa, didn't expect that
1:35:14
one. So I said, yes.
1:35:16
And I started writing for Speak
1:35:18
Up. The Darth Vader column. Well,
1:35:20
what was so interesting about the
1:35:22
experience, Tim, was that the what
1:35:24
the Speak Uppers were calling the
1:35:26
precious design world, the AIGA world,
1:35:28
they had already rejected me. And
1:35:30
now the renegades, the anti AIGA
1:35:32
contingent, they were rejecting me. So
1:35:34
at that moment, I actually felt
1:35:36
like the most hated woman in
1:35:38
graphic design. Masterless
1:35:41
samurai. Where to? Exactly.
1:35:45
So what happened after that was it was really surreal.
1:35:47
And this is why I say that
1:35:49
what felt like at the time in
1:35:51
May of 2003, to be the lowest
1:35:53
point of my professional career, actually became
1:35:56
the catalyst upon which everything else has
1:35:58
been I started
1:36:00
writing for Speak Up, and all of
1:36:02
a sudden I started to have that
1:36:04
sense of what I had been originally
1:36:06
searching for in my efforts
1:36:08
with Speak Up. I felt like I was
1:36:11
part of something bigger than myself. I felt
1:36:13
like I was part of this sort of
1:36:15
renegade group of misfits that were trying to
1:36:17
change the world through graphic design, criticism, and
1:36:20
online conversations. We all decided that year
1:36:22
in the fall of 2003 that we
1:36:24
were going to go as a group
1:36:27
of sort of guerrilla Speak
1:36:29
Up writers to the
1:36:31
upcoming AIGA annual conference in
1:36:34
Vancouver. We were going
1:36:36
to give out this little brochure
1:36:38
that Armin had put together called
1:36:40
Stop Being Sheep, which was a
1:36:42
riff on the great typographer Eric
1:36:44
Speekerman's book Stop Stealing Sheep, which
1:36:46
is about letter spacing. You
1:36:51
know, thin slicing here to the very best
1:36:53
of our ability. We
1:36:56
went with this little brochure en route
1:36:58
to the conference. So
1:37:01
these people then ended up accepting you,
1:37:03
the people who had previously vilified you?
1:37:05
You were... The people that
1:37:07
had previously vilified me not only accepted
1:37:09
me, but over the years Armin
1:37:12
and his wife, Briany, and
1:37:14
I have become such good
1:37:16
friends that I am now
1:37:18
the godmother to their eldest
1:37:20
daughter. Wow. So sort
1:37:23
of similar to that Robert Edelstein story back
1:37:25
when I was in college where he rejected
1:37:27
me or what I thought was a rejection
1:37:30
of me, then ultimately became one of my
1:37:32
lifelong friendships and now Armin and Briany are
1:37:35
also family at this point, family.
1:37:37
Amazing. So I interrupted
1:37:39
though. You're en route with this
1:37:41
group of heretics and a pile
1:37:44
of brochures or pamphlets. Right,
1:37:46
because brochures change the world, you know that. And
1:37:49
I'm sitting next to people that are
1:37:51
also... There was at that time one
1:37:53
direct flight from New York to Vancouver.
1:38:00
share and I'm sitting next to
1:38:02
a woman who is beautiful and
1:38:05
elegant and I'm wearing sweatpants and carrying
1:38:07
a bag of McDonald's breakfast
1:38:09
you know and the only people that like
1:38:12
the way McDonald's breakfast smell of the people
1:38:14
eating it not the people smelling it. True
1:38:18
fact. You
1:38:21
know I don't know why I didn't think that
1:38:23
I would see people that I knew on this
1:38:25
flight I was well in any case so I
1:38:27
start talking to this woman next to me and
1:38:29
turns out she's going to the conference as well.
1:38:32
I asked her what she does
1:38:34
she says she's a writer at print magazine I
1:38:36
tell her about speak up she's all interested in
1:38:38
what we're doing she gives me I tell her
1:38:40
that we're having this get-together this party over the
1:38:42
course of the conference she's I'd like to invite
1:38:45
her she gives me a card without looking at
1:38:47
it I put it into my bag we
1:38:49
talk through a couple hours and then we
1:38:51
go off into our own thing with whatever
1:38:53
else we were doing on the flight when
1:38:56
I get to my room in Vancouver I
1:38:58
take her card out of my bag and
1:39:00
I see that she's the editor-in-chief choice writer
1:39:02
K. I
1:39:05
invite her to the party she comes and
1:39:07
we start a correspondence I had
1:39:10
I harbored this hope that maybe I
1:39:12
could write for print magazine one day
1:39:14
and a couple of months later she
1:39:17
writes me and asks me if I
1:39:19
want to participate in something she's putting
1:39:21
together for the upcoming how conference the
1:39:23
next year in San Diego and
1:39:26
at the time reality TV had just
1:39:28
sort of burgeoned
1:39:30
into culture and there was
1:39:33
a very popular TV show called Iron Chef about
1:39:36
cooking in real time in the audience
1:39:38
voting and she wanted to do a
1:39:40
riff on that called ironic chef where
1:39:42
three designers would create work
1:39:44
on stage in real time and the audience
1:39:47
would vote this to me sounded
1:39:49
like the definition of hell and
1:39:53
just to clarify for people print magazine
1:39:56
is actually called print it
1:39:58
is called magazine it's It is
1:40:01
called Print Magazine. It's the oldest graphic design magazine
1:40:03
in the country. It's 75 years old. It
1:40:06
has won, I think, five magazine
1:40:08
awards, which is the highest honor
1:40:10
and Fe, I believe it's
1:40:12
called, that a magazine can win. It's
1:40:16
a remarkable magazine and I had
1:40:18
this dream someday writing something for
1:40:21
it. So, ironic chef. Yes,
1:40:23
ironic chef. Debbie Milven's personal version of
1:40:25
Hell. Yeah. I'm afraid to say
1:40:27
no. I feel like if I say no,
1:40:30
I'm never going to be offered an opportunity to do anything
1:40:32
with Joyce again. So, I say yes
1:40:34
and I'm further humiliated when I get to San
1:40:36
Diego, when I realize that I have
1:40:38
to wear a chef's outfit on stage.
1:40:44
There are pictures of this, by the way. I'm not
1:40:46
lying or exaggerating. So, I go
1:40:48
through with this. I am on stage
1:40:50
with the MC Steve Heller, who I
1:40:52
had never met. Steve Heller is one
1:40:55
of the world's foremost design critics. He was
1:40:57
the art director of the New York Times
1:41:00
Book Review for 30 years. He
1:41:02
started numerous programs at the School of
1:41:04
Visual Arts, graduate programs, and
1:41:06
he's written about 170 books about
1:41:09
design and graphic designers. He
1:41:12
is the judge. I am terribly intimidated because
1:41:14
he is Steve Heller, one of the greatest
1:41:16
people that has ever lived. And
1:41:20
there are three of us. I come in second,
1:41:22
which is not terrible. I don't win, but I
1:41:24
don't lose. And in another
1:41:26
aberrant moment of courage, I asked Steve, because he
1:41:28
was nice to me that day, if he'd want
1:41:30
to have lunch in New York City when we
1:41:32
were back, he lived in New York City as
1:41:34
well. He agrees. We
1:41:37
go to lunch. I was so intimidated. I
1:41:39
had a cheat sheet that I'd prepared of
1:41:41
topics in which I could discuss with Steve.
1:41:43
I wrote it on a paper napkin, put
1:41:46
it in my lap, and I
1:41:48
could refer to it if I
1:41:50
choked and knew not what to say next.
1:41:53
In any case, I had some book
1:41:55
ideas. Steve told me they
1:41:57
were both bad. I
1:42:01
went away a little bit discouraged, but still happy that I
1:42:04
had met him and he told me that I'd get a
1:42:06
book just to be patient. Four
1:42:09
months later, a publisher calls at the recommendation
1:42:11
of Stephen Heller with a book that
1:42:14
he had turned down. They had wanted him
1:42:16
to write with the horrific title, How to
1:42:18
Think Like a Great Graphic Designer. Once
1:42:21
again, I think if I don't say yes
1:42:23
to this, I'm never going to be asked for anything again. I
1:42:26
take on this book, but I ask them if
1:42:28
I could do it in a different way because
1:42:31
I didn't believe that there was just one way
1:42:33
for a great graphic designer to think. There were
1:42:35
myriad ways. Could I interview
1:42:37
great graphic designers and
1:42:39
reveal how they think? They agreed and
1:42:41
that became my first book. In
1:42:44
the meantime, Joyce, writer of
1:42:46
K, the editor of Print Magazine, reaches out
1:42:48
and asks me if I'd like to write
1:42:50
a review about Wally
1:42:52
Olin's then upcoming
1:42:55
book on branding. I agree. I
1:42:57
write my first piece for Print Magazine that year and
1:43:00
I've written for every single issue
1:43:02
since. 13
1:43:05
years later, two years ago, I was
1:43:07
appointed the editorial and creative director of
1:43:09
Print Magazine. Well, it seems like
1:43:12
those brochures did play a role. That's
1:43:15
just the start of it, Tim. If it weren't
1:43:17
for Speak Up and that story, I was then
1:43:20
contacted by a fledgling
1:43:22
internet radio network called
1:43:24
Voice America in 2004
1:43:26
shortly after a piece that Mark Kingsley
1:43:28
and I wrote about election graphics that
1:43:30
kind of went viral. They
1:43:33
wanted me to host a
1:43:35
show about branding. I
1:43:37
was worried that if I said no, I'd never
1:43:40
get another opportunity again and asked if I could
1:43:42
sort of do it about branding, but maybe do
1:43:44
it more about design and pitch
1:43:46
this idea to them about Design
1:43:48
Matters, a radio network
1:43:51
show. They said
1:43:53
yes. Just when I was beginning to
1:43:55
think, ooh, I might get rich from this, they told
1:43:57
me that I needed to pay them for the
1:43:59
end. living
1:48:00
graphic designer. He's in
1:48:02
his 80s. He is
1:48:04
responsible for the I Heart New York
1:48:07
logo. He did that
1:48:09
iconic Bob Dylan poster of
1:48:11
Bob Dylan in profile with
1:48:13
the streams of colorful
1:48:15
hair. He is one
1:48:17
of the founders of New York magazine. The
1:48:20
list goes on and on. He's had
1:48:22
more impact and created some of the
1:48:24
most memorable, well-known, and
1:48:27
iconic brands and identities in
1:48:29
the world. My
1:48:31
relationship with Milton really began when I
1:48:33
took a class of his at the
1:48:35
School of Visual Arts. His summer intensive
1:48:38
in the summer of 2005. I had already interviewed
1:48:42
him for Design Matters, but
1:48:44
it was over the phone. And while
1:48:46
I cherished that interview, it was one
1:48:48
of my very, very early interviews. So
1:48:51
I'm somewhat gun-shy to send people to
1:48:53
listen to that one because it's so
1:48:55
early in my journey as a podcaster.
1:48:58
But in any case, I took this class with him. And
1:49:00
that class, you
1:49:03
know, it's interesting about how we started
1:49:05
the show talking about my eight-year-old drawing
1:49:07
and you talking about your friend who
1:49:10
had written this essay that then predicted
1:49:13
his life. Milton taught this summer intensive, I
1:49:15
think, for about 40 or 50 years. And
1:49:17
he used to say that it was one
1:49:19
of the most important things that he did.
1:49:21
He's not teaching it anymore. He had
1:49:24
us do an exercise in that class where
1:49:27
we had to envision the life
1:49:29
that we could have if
1:49:32
we pursued everything that we
1:49:34
wanted with the certainty that whatever it
1:49:36
is that we wanted, we would succeed.
1:49:39
I wrote an essay in July of
1:49:41
2005. It was supposed to be a five-year plan.
1:49:47
And he asked us to
1:49:49
dream big and not to
1:49:51
edit and said that it had
1:49:53
a bit of a magical
1:49:55
quality that he experienced with his
1:49:58
students over and over. to
1:50:00
be careful what we wished for. And
1:50:03
I created this essay
1:50:05
with these long-ranging, far-fetched
1:50:07
goals that I can
1:50:09
tell you now, 12 years later, have almost
1:50:13
all come true. It is spooky,
1:50:15
spooky. And so that's an exercise I
1:50:17
do now with my students. Milton has
1:50:19
had one of the most profound impacts
1:50:22
on my life, aside from the profound
1:50:24
impact he's had on the world. I
1:50:26
feel really, really lucky that I
1:50:29
have been a student of his and have
1:50:31
gotten to interview him now numerous times and
1:50:33
feel that my relationship with him is certainly
1:50:35
one of the luckiest things that's ever happened
1:50:38
to me. Can you
1:50:40
describe the exercise as you
1:50:42
do it with your students now? Well,
1:50:45
I teach undergrad and graduate classes at the
1:50:47
School of Visual Arts. I run a master's
1:50:49
in branding program at the School of Visual
1:50:51
Arts, which I was
1:50:53
given this opportunity via Steve Heller, who
1:50:56
I, again, would not have met had
1:50:58
that whole speak up experience not happened.
1:51:00
So yet another thing, every single thing
1:51:02
that I'm doing now in my life,
1:51:04
Tim, stems from that
1:51:07
experience. Well, so just to
1:51:09
underscore another theme, he
1:51:13
had, in some sense, you could interpret
1:51:15
it as rejected two of your book
1:51:17
ideas, even though he was nice to
1:51:19
you and went out to lunch with
1:51:21
you. But now, later on
1:51:23
down the line, you kept that relationship
1:51:25
and lands you at SVA. Absolutely.
1:51:29
I mean, Steve is one of
1:51:31
the most generous and
1:51:34
engaging people I have had the privilege
1:51:36
of knowing. And I often tease Steve
1:51:39
and say that he's my fairy godfather
1:51:41
because he's the only person in my
1:51:43
life, or maybe one of two people
1:51:45
in my life now, that I could
1:51:48
say has just
1:51:50
been, he has this
1:51:53
sort of generosity that is all
1:51:55
about, here, take this, do that,
1:51:57
make this happen. Do
1:54:00
you have a car? Do you have a
1:54:02
boat? Do you have, talk about your career? What do
1:54:04
you want? What are you reading? What are you making?
1:54:06
What excites you? What is your health like? And right
1:54:08
this day, this one day, 10 years from now, so
1:54:10
one day in the winter of 2027, what
1:54:27
does your whole day look like? Start from
1:54:29
the minute you wake up, brush your teeth,
1:54:32
have your coffee or tea, all the
1:54:34
way through till when you tuck yourself in
1:54:37
at night. What is that day like
1:54:39
for you? Dream big. Dream
1:54:43
without any fear. Write
1:54:45
it all down. You don't have to share
1:54:47
it with anyone other than yourself. Put
1:54:50
your whole heart into it. And
1:54:53
write like there's no tomorrow. Write like
1:54:55
your life depends on it because it
1:54:57
does. And
1:55:00
then read it once a
1:55:02
year and see what happens. It's
1:55:05
magic. It's magic. It is
1:55:07
a magical... I love this exercise. I need to do
1:55:09
this. I'm not asking for some hypothetical listener. Listeners, I
1:55:11
love you guys, but this is also for me. It
1:55:15
is astounding. And I do this now
1:55:17
with all of my students. But
1:55:19
I can't begin to tell you how
1:55:22
many letters I get from students from
1:55:24
10 years ago that are like, Debbie,
1:55:26
it all came true. How did this
1:55:28
happen? And I
1:55:30
am so thrilled that
1:55:33
these things can make
1:55:35
a difference. And this goes back
1:55:37
to the earlier part of our conversation about
1:55:39
my own fears about what I could or
1:55:42
would or should become. And
1:55:45
the idea that at that
1:55:47
same time in my life, that intersection on
1:55:49
Bleecker Street and Sixth Avenue peering deep into
1:55:51
my future and not knowing that anything was
1:55:53
possible for me to give
1:55:55
somebody at that same stage in
1:55:57
their life or any stage, really.
1:55:59
but particularly at that vulnerable stage
1:56:02
when you are so worried about
1:56:04
what you can or can't become.
1:56:06
To give somebody that sliver of a
1:56:08
dream, of a hope that this could
1:56:11
happen, and have them declare
1:56:13
what they want, I
1:56:16
think is a remarkable exercise. That's why
1:56:18
I call it your tenure plan for
1:56:20
a remarkable life. How
1:56:23
long was your essay? Is there
1:56:25
any consistency to length or
1:56:27
their guidelines or is it as long as
1:56:29
it takes? And two pages, some are 20
1:56:31
pages. Some are two pages, some are 20
1:56:33
pages. I think the longer it is,
1:56:36
the more likely it is to
1:56:39
be affirmed for some reason. I find the more
1:56:42
care you put into it, the more care and
1:56:44
detail you put in. Oh
1:56:46
doggy. That's doggy,
1:56:48
yeah. That's my Molly, sorry,
1:56:50
she's excited about this exercise, please give me that. Clearly.
1:56:54
I think that the more care you put into it, likely
1:56:56
the more success you'll have coming out of
1:56:58
it. Mine was, I wrote it
1:57:00
in a journal that I was keeping at the time, so
1:57:03
it was about five by seven and it was probably about
1:57:05
10 handwritten, big
1:57:07
handwriting, I had big handwriting, 10
1:57:09
big handwriting pages. And it
1:57:11
was the whole day. And
1:57:14
then, because I was really excited about it
1:57:16
and because I love lists, I made a
1:57:18
list of everything that I wanted to come
1:57:20
true. Well, I tell you,
1:57:22
I think that might
1:57:24
be a good place to wrap
1:57:26
up this part one, which I
1:57:28
think we may have more conversations
1:57:31
in us. I
1:57:33
have so many questions I'd still like to ask, but
1:57:36
I think that is, given people
1:57:38
have a primacy and recency bias,
1:57:40
I want them to remember this
1:57:43
exercise as one of the
1:57:46
actionable recommendations that they can
1:57:48
certainly explore from this
1:57:50
interview. And there's so much, but let
1:57:52
me ask before I let you
1:57:54
go, and I'll
1:57:56
ask where people can find you and so on, learn
1:57:58
more about your work. out
2:00:00
at Sterling and then leave and
2:00:02
transition to working at SVA
2:00:04
and doing all of the personal
2:00:06
projects that I had been talking for so long
2:00:08
about doing. So
2:00:11
the five years happened and we
2:00:13
had a really wonderful successful earnout, so
2:00:15
there was no excuse for me
2:00:17
to continue on the same path.
2:00:19
And it was time to make
2:00:21
that change. And
2:00:24
the last thing I wanted was to end up
2:00:26
like the characters in Revolutionary Road, that remarkable book
2:00:28
where people talk about making these changes their whole
2:00:30
lives and then never ever do.
2:00:33
But I became terrified. I became
2:00:35
terrified that if I made this change
2:00:38
that I would not have
2:00:41
financial stability anymore, that
2:00:43
I would not be able
2:00:46
to fulfill all of the dreams that I had and would have
2:00:48
to confront that. And so five years turned into
2:00:50
six years and six years turned into seven years.
2:00:54
And just at a point where I was
2:00:56
starting to think about really doing
2:00:58
it, sort of like Al Pacino in
2:01:00
Godfather 3, I was offered
2:01:02
an opportunity to take over as CEO
2:01:04
of the company. Simon Williams, then
2:01:07
CEO, was looking to become chairman and needed to
2:01:09
appoint a new CEO and he came to me
2:01:11
and asked me if I wanted the job. And
2:01:14
here it was. This is the big
2:01:16
decision of a life. Do I
2:01:18
become the CEO and have
2:01:20
this amazing continuation of money
2:01:22
and career and security and
2:01:25
everything else that is
2:01:27
conventionally approved of? Or
2:01:30
do I say no? Actually, I am
2:01:33
not going to double down. I am going to
2:01:36
live the way in which I
2:01:38
have been saying I wanted to
2:01:40
with more freedom and more opportunity
2:01:42
to do personal projects and pro
2:01:45
bono projects and give back. And
2:01:48
I had to decide. And it took me four months
2:01:50
to decide. Simon Williams finally said to me, Debbie, anything
2:01:52
that takes you four months to decide probably means you
2:01:54
don't want to do it. And
2:01:57
it was the hardest decision of my life. But
2:02:00
I turned it down, I turned the CEO
2:02:02
job down. And then two things
2:02:04
happened. First of all, one
2:02:06
of the things that I realized was that I was
2:02:11
in this trapeze. And
2:02:13
rather than just let go of the
2:02:15
trapeze and do something
2:02:17
else, I had every single
2:02:19
crook of my body holding
2:02:22
on to some other trapeze. And
2:02:25
that there was this sense
2:02:27
of, if I am not doing enough, I
2:02:29
am not worthy. If I am not making
2:02:32
enough, I am not worthy. If I am
2:02:34
not producing enough, I am not worthy. And
2:02:37
suddenly I had to not just let
2:02:39
go of the trapeze, but let go
2:02:41
of the entire apparatus. And
2:02:45
I have realized now
2:02:48
two things. One, most people live
2:02:50
in a world of scarcity. We think
2:02:52
that all we have now is all we will ever have.
2:02:54
And if we give something up, we will just have less.
2:02:57
What ends up happening is that we don't
2:02:59
think about all the possibilities of things that
2:03:02
could come up if we give
2:03:04
ourselves openings to receive them. And so now,
2:03:06
as opposed to having less than what I
2:03:08
thought, I have way more because I have
2:03:10
all these new things that I'm doing that
2:03:12
I never would have thought possible. Second,
2:03:16
that hard decisions are only
2:03:18
hard when you're in the process
2:03:20
of making them. Once you make them, they're
2:03:23
not hard anymore. Then it's just
2:03:25
life and freedom. And
2:03:28
it's an extraordinary experience that I really would like
2:03:30
to share with your listeners, with
2:03:32
our listeners. It's such an
2:03:35
important discussion on many
2:03:37
levels. And I want, I'm
2:03:40
thinking it's worth repeating a few things.
2:03:42
And certainly this echoes in my experience
2:03:44
as well. One, that
2:03:48
agonizing over the decision is often
2:03:50
harder than whatever the outcome of
2:03:52
the decision will be. And
2:03:56
for that matter, if you make, in many cases,
2:03:58
not all, but in many cases, if you. make
2:04:00
a decision and you decide
2:04:02
that it's not the right decision for
2:04:04
you, you can quit. You can do
2:04:06
something else. It's not a permanent sentence
2:04:09
necessarily. And also, this
2:04:11
is something that I've had to learn and
2:04:13
relearn many times in my life, which is
2:04:15
if it's taken you that long to make
2:04:17
a decision, you
2:04:20
probably don't and shouldn't, don't
2:04:23
want to and shouldn't do whatever it
2:04:25
is that you're agonizing over with pro
2:04:27
and conless trying to justify in
2:04:29
some fashion. It's
2:04:31
in both of those points, I think
2:04:33
are so, so important. I also think
2:04:35
that if you're waiting for something to
2:04:37
feel right before you do it, if
2:04:39
you're waiting for a sense of security
2:04:41
or confidence, that those
2:04:43
things are sort
2:04:45
of like being on a hedonistic treadmill. If you
2:04:47
think you need enough of this before you do
2:04:50
that, when you achieve whatever that is you think
2:04:52
you need, you're going to then up the ante
2:04:54
and you're never, ever going to be
2:04:57
satisfied with whatever it
2:04:59
is you think you need before
2:05:01
you do something if it's not
2:05:04
something that is real. If
2:05:06
you think, oh, I need this much money before I
2:05:09
do this, when you get that much money, then you're
2:05:11
going to realize, oh, I actually think I need this
2:05:13
much more and it's just going to be this carrot
2:05:15
in front of you that you're agonizing over trying to
2:05:17
reach. And then the other
2:05:19
thing is I'm going to quote Danny
2:05:21
Shapiro here, the great writer Danny Shapiro,
2:05:23
if you're waiting for confidence. And she,
2:05:25
I asked her once about confidence and
2:05:28
she said that confidence is highly, highly
2:05:30
overrated and that most confident
2:05:32
people or overly confident people tend
2:05:34
to be kind of annoying. And
2:05:36
she said what she felt was
2:05:38
more important than confidence was courage.
2:05:41
And I fully, fully agree taking
2:05:43
that first step. Confidence really only
2:05:45
comes from repeated attempts at doing
2:05:47
something successfully. But in
2:05:49
order to take that first step, you need
2:05:51
courage. And that's much more
2:05:54
important than confidence. So for anybody that's waiting
2:05:56
for the confidence to show up, take the
2:05:58
first step in a moment of courage. even
2:06:00
if it's ever encouraged to come full circle
2:06:03
in this conversation. Such good
2:06:05
advice. It reminds me of something that
2:06:07
the brother, Kamal Ravikant, of another
2:06:09
friend of mine, Naval Ravikant, told
2:06:12
me, so Naval is a very,
2:06:14
very successful entrepreneur and
2:06:16
investor, among other things. Very,
2:06:18
very good writer as well, as is his brother
2:06:20
Kamal, who just had a novel come out. But Naval
2:06:23
said to his brother, if I
2:06:25
always did what I was qualified to do, I would be
2:06:27
pushing a broom somewhere. Well said. And
2:06:29
I thought that was very, very encouraging. Touche.
2:06:32
Debbie, I have so much fun every time we
2:06:35
get to spend time together. Where can people find out
2:06:37
more about you? Where
2:06:39
can they learn more about your work? Where
2:06:42
would you like people to say hello on social, if
2:06:44
that, and I'll put all of this in the show
2:06:46
notes for everybody. Sure, absolutely. I'm Debbie
2:06:48
Milliman on Twitter and Instagram. You
2:06:51
can see more about my program at the School
2:06:53
of Visual Arts at the School of Visual Arts.
2:06:56
You can see my program at the School of Visual Arts at
2:06:58
SVA.edu and debbiemilliman.com,
2:07:00
where you can listen to all my podcasts
2:07:03
and see my visual essays and my books
2:07:05
and so on and so forth. For
2:07:07
people who would be novices or
2:07:09
new entrants into
2:07:11
the world of say graphic design, recognizing that
2:07:13
your podcast is about a lot more than
2:07:15
that, which episode or
2:07:18
episodes would you suggest they start with? I
2:07:21
would suggest that they start with Chris
2:07:23
Ware. He is an extraordinary
2:07:25
graphic novelist. It's one of
2:07:28
the most favorite episodes that
2:07:30
I've ever conducted. Have
2:07:32
you spelled his last name? W-A-R-E.
2:07:37
And from there, some of my favorite
2:07:39
episodes over the last year, aside from
2:07:41
my episode with you, which I cherish,
2:07:44
my episodes with Amanda Palmer, my
2:07:46
episode with Alain de Botton, my episode
2:07:48
with Christa Tippett, Nico Mouli,
2:07:51
the great composer. Those are
2:07:53
all episodes in the last year that I'm most proud
2:07:55
of. Debbie, you're a rock star.
2:07:57
Thank you so much for the time.
2:08:00
Thank you. I really appreciate it. And
2:08:02
to everybody listening, as
2:08:05
always, you can find show notes,
2:08:07
links to resources, all sorts of
2:08:09
things that we talked about, and
2:08:11
maybe more at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. And
2:08:14
until next time, thank you for listening.
2:08:18
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one
2:08:20
more thing before you take off, and that
2:08:22
is Five Bullet Friday. Would you
2:08:24
enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
2:08:26
that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between
2:08:30
one and a half and two million people
2:08:32
subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short
2:08:34
newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy
2:08:36
to sign up, easy to cancel. It
2:08:38
is basically a half page that I send
2:08:40
out every Friday to share the coolest
2:08:42
things I've found or discovered or have started
2:08:45
exploring over that week. It's kind of
2:08:47
like my diary of cool things. It
2:08:49
often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading,
2:08:52
albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of
2:08:54
tech tricks and so on that get
2:08:56
sent to me by my friends, including
2:08:59
a lot of podcast guests. And
2:09:01
these strange esoteric things end up in
2:09:03
my field and then I test them and then
2:09:06
I share them with you. So
2:09:08
if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,
2:09:10
a little tiny bite of goodness before you
2:09:12
head off for the weekend, something to think
2:09:15
about. If you'd like to try
2:09:17
it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that
2:09:19
into your browser, tim.blog slash
2:09:21
Friday, drop in your email and you'll get
2:09:23
the very next one. Thanks
2:09:26
for listening. This episode is brought to
2:09:28
you by 8Sleep. I
2:09:30
have been using 8Sleep Pod Cover for
2:09:32
years now. Why? Well, by simply
2:09:34
adding it to your existing mattress on top like a
2:09:36
fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down
2:09:38
or warm up each side of your
2:09:40
bed. 8Sleep recently launched the newest
2:09:42
generation of the pod and I'm excited to test
2:09:45
it out, Pod 4
2:09:47
Ultra. It cools, it heats and now
2:09:49
it elevates automatically. More on that in
2:09:51
a second. First, Pod 4
2:09:53
Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20
2:09:56
degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping
2:09:58
you and your partner cool. even
2:10:00
in a heat wave. Or you can switch
2:10:03
it up depending on which of you is
2:10:05
heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive
2:10:07
pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying
2:10:09
to crank the AC down. This solves all
2:10:11
of that. Pod4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable
2:10:14
base that fits between your mattress and your
2:10:16
bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions
2:10:18
for the best unwinding experience. And for those
2:10:20
snore heavy nights, the Pod can detect your
2:10:23
snoring and automatically lift your head by a
2:10:25
few degrees to improve air flow and stop
2:10:27
you or your partner from snoring. Plus with
2:10:29
Pod4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables
2:10:31
on the nightstand. You won't need them because
2:10:34
these types of metrics are integrated into
2:10:36
the Pod4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible
2:10:38
sensors which track your sleep time, sleep
2:10:40
phases, and HRV. Their heart rate
2:10:42
tracking as just one example is at 99% accuracy. So
2:10:46
get your best night's sleep. Head to
2:10:48
8sleep.com/Tim and use code TIM to get
2:10:50
$350 off of the Pod4 Ultra. That's
2:10:55
8sleep, all spelled out 8sleep.com/Tim
2:10:57
and code TIM, T-I-M, to
2:11:00
get $350 off the Pod4 Ultra. They
2:11:03
currently ship to the United States, Canada,
2:11:05
the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. This
2:11:09
episode is brought to you by AG1, the
2:11:12
daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports
2:11:14
whole body health. I
2:11:16
view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that
2:11:18
is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in
2:11:21
my 2010 best seller more
2:11:25
than a decade ago, the 4-Hour Body, and I
2:11:27
did not get paid to do so. I
2:11:30
simply loved the product and felt like
2:11:32
it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement
2:11:34
that you could use conveniently while on
2:11:36
run, which is, for me, a lot
2:11:38
of the time. I have been using
2:11:40
it a very, very long time indeed.
2:11:43
And I do get asked a lot what I
2:11:45
would take if I could only take one supplement.
2:11:47
And the true answer is invariably AG1. It
2:11:50
simply covers a ton of bases. I usually
2:11:52
drink it in the mornings and frequently take
2:11:54
their travel packs with me on the road.
2:11:57
So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is
2:11:59
a... science-driven formulation of vitamins,
2:12:01
probiotics, and whole food source nutrients.
2:12:03
In a single scoop, AG1 gives
2:12:06
you support for the brain, gut,
2:12:08
and immune system. Since
2:12:10
2010, they have improved the formula 52 times
2:12:13
in pursuit of making the
2:12:15
best foundational nutrition supplement possible
2:12:17
using rigorous standards and high-quality
2:12:20
ingredients. How many ingredients? 75,
2:12:23
and you would be hard-pressed to find
2:12:26
a more nutrient-dense formula on the market.
2:12:28
It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral superfood complex,
2:12:30
probiotics and prebiotics for gut
2:12:32
health, an antioxidant immune support
2:12:34
formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens
2:12:36
to help manage stress. Now,
2:12:38
I do my best, always,
2:12:40
to eat nutrient-dense meals. That
2:12:42
is the basic, basic,
2:12:45
basic, basic requirement. That
2:12:47
is why things are called supplements. Of
2:12:49
course, that's what I focus on, but it
2:12:51
is not always possible. It is not always
2:12:53
easy. So part of my
2:12:55
routine is using AG1 daily.
2:12:57
Both on the road, on the run, it
2:12:59
just makes it easy to get a lot
2:13:01
of nutrients at once and to sleep easy
2:13:04
knowing that I am checking a lot of
2:13:06
important boxes. So each morning, AG1. That's
2:13:09
just like brushing my teeth, part of
2:13:11
the routine. It's also NSF-certified for sports,
2:13:13
so professional athletes trust it to be
2:13:15
safe. And each pouch of
2:13:17
AG1 contains exactly what is on the
2:13:19
label, does not contain harmful levels of
2:13:21
microbes or heavy metals, and is free
2:13:23
of 280 banned substances. It's
2:13:26
the ultimate nutritional supplement in one
2:13:28
easy scoop. So take ownership of your
2:13:30
health and try AG1 today. You
2:13:33
will get a free one-year supply of
2:13:35
vitamin D and five free AG1 travel
2:13:37
packs with your first subscription purchase. So
2:13:40
learn more, check it out. Go
2:13:42
to www.drinkag1.com/Tim. That's
2:13:46
www.drinkag1, the number one. www.drinkag1.com/Tim.
2:13:51
Last time
2:13:53
www.drinkag1.com/Tim. www.drinkag1.com/Tim.
2:14:00
you
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More