Tim FerrissDaredevil Michelle Khare — How to Become a YouTube Superstar
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,026 words- 0:00 – 0:39
A Fear Setting Preview.
- MKMichelle Khare
What are you putting off out of fear? I'm putting off quitting my job. I'm putting off reaching out to all the people I need to to make this dream a reality because it means I have to say it out loud. I'm waiting for a false sense of security to inspire me to take a leap, but I'm actually being challenged and invited to create my own security. I've never designed my own rubric of success, and that's because I don't trust myself to define success. I'm scared to assume that responsibility. That was my fear-setting chart. [laughs] It's a very personal process.
- 0:39 – 2:50
Challenge Accepted: The logline and why breakdowns stay in the edit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Michelle, at long last, here we are.
- MKMichelle Khare
Here we are, Tim. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So nice to meet you in person.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's so nice to meet you, too. This is so exciting and surreal for me.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
So thank you for letting me infiltrate your podcast studio today.
- TFTim Ferriss
Absolutely. I am thrilled. It looks like about three years ago that I first put you and your channel in my newsletter, Five Bullet Friday, and I think it was probably even before that that one of our mutual friends, Adam Grant, had been telling me repeatedly-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... "You have to have Michelle on the show." And the reason [laughs] that I was so excited to put you in the newsletter, I don't even remember the line. I went back and I looked at what I said exactly, and one of the things I said was, "I'm so happy that someone finally cracked sort of this premise and did it right." But since people probably have no idea what I'm talking about, although I would've already said something in the intro, what's the log line, so to speak, for-
- MKMichelle Khare
Of Challenge Accepted?
- TFTim Ferriss
... of Challenge Accepted. What is it?
- MKMichelle Khare
So Challenge Accepted is a show where I attempt the world's toughest stunts and professions, and that can range from learning and attempting Harry Houdini’s deadliest trick, the water torture cell, to training with the Secret Service for a week, to most recently, I recreated Tom Cruise’s stunt from Mission Impossible where I was hanging off the side of a military aircraft as it was taking off.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you have more than six million followers, more than a billion views, and I'm gonna read... You know what? We'll probably just skip the intro because I'm basically getting into it anyway.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
"Michelle hopes to prove that with enough dedication and failure, anything is possible." And that's one of the characteristics that I most appreciate about the show is like [laughs] if you have a breakdown-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... if you're flat on your back, if you stumble and fall, it's in there, right? That's a feature and not a bug.
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly.
- 2:50 – 6:34
Growing up in Shreveport, LA: Movies, the AFI Top 100, and interning on Snitch.
- TFTim Ferriss
So it's not just the highlights. It's also the lowlights. And since we're already getting into it, I'm just gonna read this paragraph. All right. "Michelle's work has earned multiple Streamy Awards, including Show of the Year, has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Vogue India, and more. In 2025, Challenge Accepted made history," congratulations, "successfully petitioning to join the primetime Emmy ballot. Michelle was named a Time 100 honoree for her impact as a creator and storyteller." Let's rewind-
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... way back. We were chatting a little bit before we got started about Shreveport, Louisiana.
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
And-
- MKMichelle Khare
Shout out, Shreveport. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] And I mentioned I had been there, and you were like, "I'm so sorry."
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-
- MKMichelle Khare
There's not much there
- TFTim Ferriss
... why was I there? Why had I been there, and why does that tie into your background a little bit, your history growing up? I'll just say, if you wanna hop into it, because I'll, I'll suppose answer my own question, which is the reason I was in Shreveport is because they have very compelling tax incentives and other incentives for filming.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? So what was your first exposure to sort of the business, broadly speaking, in air quotes?
- MKMichelle Khare
My very first exposure to the business was my dad is a big, big movie and television lover.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
He actually learned English after immigrating from India by watching films even on the plane from India to America.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- MKMichelle Khare
So growing up, because there's not much to do in Shreveport, every Friday night we were at the movies. It didn't matter if it was a blockbuster or a, you know, very low-rated Rotten Tomatoes B-side movie. I saw everything. Kids movies, PG-13 up, like we saw it all. And then we would go to a pizza shop and talk about the movie afterwards. Again, there's nothing to do in Shreveport [laughs] so this was like the pinnacle of entertainment. And so just naturally, I, I started experiencing a homegrown little film school, if that makes sense. We printed out the AFI Top 100 movies and had them in our living room, and we would check them off as we watched them, me and my dad. And what was special is, as I got a little older, all these tax incentives started happening, bringing films to New Orleans and to Shreveport. We got a lot of like Twilight knockoff movies.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
I think one of the Scary Movies was shot in Shreveport. And so our town sort of experienced this little economic art renaissance, which was really exciting. And so all of our friends and, and family members were becoming extras in movies and TV shows and, and feeling, you know, very excited about all of that. And so one of my first jobs was I had an internship on a movie starring The Rock.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
It was a movie called Snitch. It came out in 2013, and I, I think I was like so low on the call sheet. I was like... It was after all the PAs. It was PA intern. It was the last person on the call sheet was me, and I was just getting coffee for people and learning, and it, it was an incredible experience and I loved that because I got a window into the traditional scope of what it could take to tell a story at a higher Hollywood level.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And that's what I hope to bring a lot of to what we do even on Challenge Accepted today, is this midpoint of digital freedom, ownership, but structure and understanding and respect of the history of where our visual storytelling medium has come from.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- 6:34 – 18:43
Podcasting: More work than meets the ear.
- TFTim Ferriss
Part of the reason I said I'm so glad somebody finally sort of cracked this is, [laughs] you'll know this, some people may not, there are basically two reasons why I'm doing this podcast, or the catalysts that led to this podcast, and they both relate to ownership in a sense. The first was The 4-Hour Chef, which was basically a, just a suicide mission of a deadline.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Book that should have taken three years was done in a year, and that's just physically effectively impossible. So ran myself into the ground with that.
- MKMichelle Khare
Because you are self-testing all of these techniques.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm self-test- yeah, exactly. I mean, I was doing everything in the book, full of experiments, and somehow thought it would be a good idea to try to learn photography to do hundreds of photographs in the book myself, which turns out to be a craft in and of itself that takes a lot of time- [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah, I can agree
- TFTim Ferriss
... if you, if you wanna be even halfway decent. And what ended up happening in that case was distribution got hamstrung. I expected some of it, because it was a book... It was the largest title that had been acquired by the then very nascent Amazon Publishing. And because people, in some ways rightly fear Amazon as this omni-powerful, [laughs] you know, omnipotent entity that controls all of these different aspects of, in most cases, distribution, but now Amazon Publishing was gonna be competing with the big publishing houses for author talent.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And this scared the hell out of everybody. So I expected that there would be, say, boycotts by Barnes & Noble. I did not anticipate it would include all the big box retailers and much more. So the book basically d- I w- I don't wanna say died on the vine, because it, it did as well as it could have. But at the same time, roughly, this is the part I haven't talked as much about, I had been filming, and then debuted in 2013, The Tim Ferriss Experiment. And The Tim Ferriss Experiment had me doing these experiments, as you might expect, on a weekly basis, and that was through a startup within Turner Broadcasting called Upwave. But there were all these problems internally at Upwave. Ultimately, that, that got shut down. There was a regime change, and then what ha- what happens? The catalog of episodes, if it succeeds, the new leadership's not gonna get any credit, and if it goes poorly, they're gonna get all the blame. So it just got-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... locked up, and it took me, like, two years or three years to get back the rights and then, quote-unquote, self-publish on Apple, and it, it did very well at the time. But what you just said is so important, I wanna underscore it for people, because I've heard you discuss, and I wanna give a shout-out to Colin and Samir, two of the best interviewers out there, in my opinion, especially when it comes to creator economy and the nuts and bolts of making things in this modern era. I really wanna give them due credit. When you've had conversations, and I'm gonna talk for a second, I apologize. But when you've had conversations with some of these larger, let's call it traditional outlets-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... or platforms, right, and you start to talk about your production schedule, they're like, "Well, wait a second. It takes you six months or a year or," [laughs] fill in the blank, in their mind, excessively long period of time could be compressed into a week.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you have figured out very artfully how to have largely complete editorial control. There are some constraints, right, depending on how you wanna go about it with partners and sponsors-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and things like that. But largely, you control your schedule, your direction. Actually, you do completely, right? You're choosing positive constraints depending on your objectives. But what ended up happening with The Tim Ferriss Experiment is like, okay, we have a week for each one.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And so I would be in compression pants and, like, putting on DMSO and all this crap, because I had a ton of injuries from one episode, but we were already going into post, and then we'd have a day of travel, and then I'm starting the next episode, and it was impossible, right? It was just physically... I'm still contending with injuries from that. We might talk about that with respect to some of the stuff that you're doing.
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh.
- TFTim Ferriss
I wanna hear about it. But there were two issues, right? There was the kind of production side control-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... problem, and then ultimately didn't control distribution. And for those reasons, those two straws that broke the camel's back, I was like, "Fuck this." And I'd use podcasts to launch The 4-Hour Chef, and I thought to myself, "You know what? I like RSS feeds."
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
"I like this idea of being able to do whatever I want, be myself. If I wanna curse, I can curse." Not that that's ultimately... [laughs] I suppose it can be an art form in and of itself-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... depending on where you grow up.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
And that's how we ended up here today, right? So-
- MKMichelle Khare
Just so I understand, you were human guinea pigging 4-Hour Chef-
- 18:43 – 29:14
Quality over quantity: 8–10 episodes a year, scarcity as strategy, and building a defensible moat.
- MKMichelle Khare
day?
- TFTim Ferriss
We're gonna double-click on a few things here.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
And we're gonna go all over the place, folks, so.
- MKMichelle Khare
Buckle up. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Buckle up. Right.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
It's not quite gonna be the vomit comet for-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... astronaut training. Hopefully it'll be a little-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... it'll be more like a tour through the countryside with lots of interesting sights and vistas, but-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... a few things come to mind that I wanna mention and then ask about. The first is that, and Colin and Samir made this point, like, you sort of exemplify something that I hope continues to gain traction, which is a focus on quality over quantity.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Thank you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because there was a point where it's like, hey, you have to post 50 times a day, you have to do this, you have to do that.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
You have to, like, vlog 20 minutes every 12 hours [laughs] no matter what you do. And you're f- you're borrowing a lot of the best storytelling techniques and production quality of, quote-unquote, traditional, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But also applying it to this sort of digital native environment, which has a lot of its own upsides, and also potentially long-term damaging temptations, which you have to be aware of, and I think you very much are. When you're publishing fewer videos, however, right, in a sense, you, not in all senses, but in some senses you're kinda, like, fighting the drive of the algorithm, and there are economic incentives that drive the frequency with which a lot of people publish-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... right? So when you're doing less, and again, hat tip to Colin and Samir, it's like you are... I want you to modify this, 'cause it's been a minute since you spoke with them, but you can keep the lights on, right, to some extent with, like, AdSense and the sort of ad revenue from that. Then you've got brand partners, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that's part of the reason why it seems like it's helpful to have, like, an, an editorial calendar out for a period of time, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because you can have some type of, I don't wanna call it sales process, but you have sort of forward-looking thematic opportunities to look for those types of deals. And then you've got your app, right, among other things.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'd, I'd like to hear you talk about that, but-
- 29:14 – 33:11
"Hard choices, easy life" — Jerzy Gregorek, calling the FAA 300 times, and why no one copies you when the barrier is insanity.
- MKMichelle Khare
And that was part of the strategy with Challenge Accepted, too, is you see many people copying one another online in any form of art.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
People are copying constantly. And part of our defensive strategy was, how do we do something that is so crazy no one [laughs] would be-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... no one would be crazy enough, I don't think, to run seven marathons on all seven continents in, in one single week and make a documentary about it and go through all of the production headache of that, or call the FAA 300 times to get permission to hang off the side of a military plane-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
... to recreate the Mission Impossible stunt.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's almost like the things that feel so untouchable instantly become opportunities for story-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... 'cause it's a great story to try and overcome that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And also, the second-mover scenario will at least take them so long to catch up to us to get there.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right, because you're gonna be the comp. They're gonna say, "It's like Challenge Accepted, but, dot, dot, dot."
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that is gonna be very difficult for other people to overcome, right? And I wanna explore this a little bit more because it's, I think, so critical, and you see it in a lot of different places. Sometimes the hard thing is the easier thing long term, meaning, like, if, if you solve a very hard problem upfront- It makes your life a little easier or a lot easier long term.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And this applies everywhere, right? There's a amazing, amazing guy. You should meet him at some point.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Jerzy Gregorek and his wife, Aniela Gregorek. They're Polish emigres that immigrated to the US with, like, 10 or 100 bucks in their pocket. They were political refugees, landed in California, and still to this day, they both have multiple world records in Olympic weightlifting. And I would say they're both around mid-60s. And Jerzy can get on an Indo Board, like a balance board, with a fully loaded barbell and do a perfect Olympic snatch, like, ass to heels, and then drop the weight and repeat-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... while balancing on a board. He's gotta be at least 65 now. His wife, Aniela, who also, as I mentioned, has a bunch of world records, can... You know, her, her daughter's, I guess, ball got caught in a tree a few years ago, and she just, like, ran up the tree and got it and came down. I mean, they are incredible physical specimens. They take no prescription medications. And the reason I'm bringing them up is [laughs] that Jerzy has this expression, which is, "Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life."
- MKMichelle Khare
Ugh. Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
And so, so it applies in physical training and health. It applies in creation, broadly speaking, right? It's like with what you're doing, right? You're creating a moat that is, is, is very defensible in a lot of ways.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It applies to startups, right? Where it's like, okay, sure, yeah, you can vibe code and create something in 20 minutes, and that's interesting, and you should experiment with that. And the barrier to entry has, has been lowered dramatically on the production of, say, an app, but the barrier to attention has never been higher. Therefore, like, [laughs] there is actually something to be said for the hard startup being the easier startup, where if you're solving a hard problem that requires a really good team and, like, hardware and this, that, and the other thing, most people are never going to attempt it. Therefore, you actually have a margin of safety in some respect if you can execute, right? So I, I just wanted to mention that because I, I see this all over the place where if you spend the time to work on something hard upfront, it buys you a lot of safety.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is at least one way that I think about it.
- 33:11 – 34:46
Dartmouth to Google.org: the Fermi estimation faceplant and not getting the job.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you've talked about assembling this Formula 1 team.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But let's rewind because I'm sure some people are like, "Well, if I don't have any money and I'm just getting started-
- MKMichelle Khare
Sure
- TFTim Ferriss
... how do you afford to hire the Formula 1 team? That sounds expensive." So let's go back a little bit. Before you became active on YouTube, what were you doing?
- MKMichelle Khare
What was I doing? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
Gosh. So I grew up in Shreveport, got my first taste of the film industry there. I went to college at Dartmouth.
- TFTim Ferriss
Good school.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah. It was great. And while I was in college, I did some internships in the industry, but I also did an internship at Google. And so there I sort of saw the behind the scenes of the platform I guess I upload to now-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... which was really interesting. And as I was mentioning to you, Tim, a lot of things that have driven key moments in my life have been moments when my back has been against the wall. And one of those moments for me was when you do a Google internship... I don't think I've, like, talked about this much, but when you do a Google internship, at the end of the summer, like many big internship, you find out if you get the job.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And you can go into your senior year of college like, "Oh my gosh, I'm rocking. I've- I got the job. I'm set. I can chill out the last year." And there was one day where they called everybody, uh, from my internship class letting them know if they got the job, and we're all in a big text chain together. And everyone's like, "I got it. See you next year," blah, blah, blah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
I get my phone call.
- 34:46 – 38:16
BuzzFeed as graduate school of the internet.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sounds stressful. [laughs] Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
I didn't get the job.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
And I would say that this was pivotal and ironic now that I'm so embedded [laughs] in YouTube in a completely different way. But what it forced me to do was my whole life had been about a- as an athlete, finding a coach, doing exactly what they tell me to do. In school, it was, "Here are all the books to do well on the SAT. I will do them. I will wake up at 5:00 in the morning over the summer and memorize everything and do it."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
'Cause that's the formula to success.
- TFTim Ferriss
Executing to plan on the formula.
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
And I think it's part of the immigrant mentality of the holy trinity of [laughs] doctor, lawyer, engineer, is because those are systems for safety.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And also from my family, like with many immigrant families, they know so intimately what instability feels like.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And so that led me on the course that eventually led me to BuzzFeed, which was in many ways sort of the first creative risk I had taken on myself. And at the time it was the fastest growing YouTube channel in the world.
- TFTim Ferriss
What was the job that you had at BuzzFeed?
- MKMichelle Khare
So I started as an intern again.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And eventually I became a producer at BuzzFeed. And producer is such a strange term-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... even in traditional, but what it meant at BuzzFeed was doing everything. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
So I was responsible for everything from ideation to filming, editing, uploading, and I didn't have any of those skills. Even though, you know, my homegrown Shreveport, Louisiana, shout out Vivek Khare, my dad putting on his little AFI Film School in our house, it w- did not cut it for what we needed to do. But what I loved about that was you had to learn every part of the process. Unlike when I interned on a traditional film set, it's very specialized. There are unions. You don't even touch- ... equipment from a department that's not yours
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yeah. I know. I've seen that. You get yelled at.
- MKMichelle Khare
You, and you do get yelled at
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
And there are great reasons for that, but the learning environment was so important for me to, to learn when you ingest footage, you can accidentally delete it all [laughs] .
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
That sucks. I needed to learn all of those processes because even today, now, we have an amazing team, a massive production team, and it helps me as a leader to be able to empathetically chat with each department.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
We've all been at companies or on film sets where the director or CEO has never done the jobs of anyone that they're asking to do a job for. And I like being able to talk to the sound person in my basic understanding of what are the frequencies we're on, is there anything we need to adjust about this set that is, is disruptive to the way you have the boom pole set up. Like, I like knowing all of the details and being able to think critically about each department so everyone can succeed.
- 38:16 – 41:57
My case against starting a company right out of school.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. So I wanna spend a second on this simply to say, because I get asked about starting companies all the time, right? And someone's like, "I'm graduating, and I'm gonna start my company." And [laughs] I think they're sometimes surprised, and a lot of professors disagree with me on this, which is fine, because I think that makes for interesting conversations, but m- my default recommendation is do not start a company right after school.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Go get an MBA or a master's degree in X where you get to do every job, where someone else is paying you for it.
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
So that you are learning-
- MKMichelle Khare
It's a low-pay graduate school. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Learn, make all your dumb mistakes, or make your first massive round of dumb mistakes on someone else's dime.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And if you immediately start your own company, you're also not necessarily going to get the breadth of experience in a more mature... And that, by mature, that could be 10 or 20 or 30 employees. It doesn't have to be a gigantic company. But get that experience first, and then increase the odds of your own success at that point by going and starting your own gig.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'm curious if you think that's still applies, for instance, in the world of, and I know this is painting with a broad brush, but YouTube. If somebody came to you and they said, "I wanna get really good at..." The world has changed so quickly in, in terms of video and entertainment and visual storytelling. With a startup, I would still tell someone, "Hey, if you can," I know we're, we're all painting this dystopian picture of Mad Max in 10 years. Let's just, for the time being, for planning purposes, assume that's not gonna be the case. Work at a startup first, then start your own startup. But in the world of visual storytelling, would you suggest people get a job kind of working at a place like a BuzzFeed or something like that before making the leap into YouTube now, or is there a better way to learn the skills necessary to do in-depth long-form stuff?
- MKMichelle Khare
I definitely think having experience working for someone else in the field that you want to be a part of is so educational. Not just to be in the mail room and see how things work-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... but also to define a core tenet list of what you enjoy about the company and all the little things you don't like.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
When I left my job, I had a very clear list of, this worked great for, for this company, but at my company, I'm never gonna do X, Y, or Z. And that was super, super helpful to define company culture, to ensure people's voices are heard, to keep employee retention high. And I think that's why with Challenge Accepted, our sets operate so differently, that everybody has a digital mind of, we need to shoot it this way because it will perform well, or we're thinking critically about retention and the intro and whatnot, but we're also thinking about storytelling as a medium has been solved.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
Traditional Hollywood, they clearly did something right, and, and let's learn from that. It's as simple as breaking for lunch every six hours. It's as simple as making sure we have enough pre-production meetings, and those are the things that were pain points for me at prior jobs, and I'm able to apply them in this really special space where we have an amazing, amazing culture and, and work environment where people can hopefully feel that they're able to express themselves artistically, experiment, and learn at the same time.
- 41:57 – 45:43
The stolen book: Michelle pulls out a battered 2016 copy of The 4-Hour Workweek and reads her fear-setting chart aloud.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I'm trying to figure out where to go next because I think it's probably gonna be fear-setting just 'cause I wanna hear how that-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... factors into things.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Why don't we just go there? Because I've read about [laughs] the whiteboard of fears and-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and other things. I'm sure we'll spend a second on cycling also. But the way that this interview ultimately happened was because of an X exchange, right? Like, I put, I put up a post about YouTube channels. Are there any YouTube channels out there that have some type of intersection with the 4-Hour Workweek or any- anything in it? And that's how we, we ultimately personally connected. How does fear-setting fit into the story?
- MKMichelle Khare
Well, Tim-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
... it fits into the story in a few ways. Challenge Accepted at, at its core originally began by me taking a whiteboard and writing all of my fears out-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... and then connecting each fear to a circumstance that would cause me to address it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
Not just as a, like, personal self-help type of thing, because I am a very anxious person internally.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
But more specifically because it makes for a better story.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
We realized very early on showing the vulnerability, showing the fear, that's a key part of Snyder's beats of storytelling. So starting with the all is lost moment-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... of the story led us to unlock really, really fascinating episodes, and we would structure the thesis of each of, like, I want to be a firefighter, but I'm not brave enough. Okay, that's an interesting story, and we're thinking about that in every piece of the edit, every piece of the pre-production. And that is the climax of the emotional core of when I finally go in a burning building-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... why we care so much. It's the same in the Mission Impossible project. I would love to be in a Mission Impossible movie, but am I actually brave enough to strap myself to the side of a plane like icon Tom Cruise?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay, I've gotta do that first. But I actually brought something, Tim.
- TFTim Ferriss
You brought something?
- MKMichelle Khare
I brought something to help demonstrate fear-setting.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- MKMichelle Khare
I'm gonna bring it out now.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Let's do it.
- MKMichelle Khare
I'll describe it for the audio listeners.
- 45:43 – 51:35
"I've never designed my own rubric of success" — the nightmare, the repair plan, and what Michelle was putting off out of fear.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- MKMichelle Khare
"Number one, define your nightmare." I'm just gonna read a few of the highlights.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, please. Oh, yeah. No, take your time.
- MKMichelle Khare
"Define my nightmare was going broke, never figuring out what I'm best at since I find the most joy in trying everything-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... rather than specializing. People not thinking I'm funny." And the last one is, "Actually not being funny." [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
And of course, I went through the steps of repairing the damage.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you have any examples to give?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah, of course.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah. Because for, just I wanna give, like, a quick, uh, con-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, do your spiel.
- TFTim Ferriss
D- no, no, not spiel.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Just, like, a quick context dropper. So fear-setting is a pretty straightforward thing. It's basically borrowed from the Stoics. I'm not the first person to look at this. I just tried to systematize it for myself. It was in The 4-Hour Workweek. And it's like goal-setting, but it's identifying your fears very specifically-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and then making them as concrete as possible, then talking about what you might do to prevent them and/or repair them if they inevitably happened. And the objective here is to, in a sense, demystify and take your fears from being this nebulous cloud of anxiety to something that you can put under a microscope-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... to test.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes. So the first part is defining the nightmare. The second is what steps would you take to repair the damage even temporarily. And here I had using some, [laughs] using, using my savings from my Google internship. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
So I did have savings from that. And then making sure that my resume or LinkedIn was ready for other jobs in the industry. This is number three. If you were fired from your job today, how would you get things under financial control? And I, I said that I would temporarily use my savings, and if that didn't work out, aggressively apply for other jobs and listed some other companies I would reach out to. This is where it gets very intense. What are you putting off out of fear? I'm putting off quitting my job. I'm putting off reaching out to all the people I need to to make this dream a reality because it means I have to say it out loud. I've reached out to some people, but I know I can do better. What is it costing you financially, emotionally, physically to postpone action? I'm under emotional high stress. I want to tell stories that really resonate with other people. I want to be around people who share creative joy and the same values of quality that I do. I am unhappy in an environment where I feel like people feel the opposite. What are you waiting for? So this is the last section. I'm waiting for a false sense of security to inspire me to take a leap, a brand offering to collaborate, someone else offering financial stability, et cetera. But I'm actually being challenged and invited to create my own security for the first time. I have... Oh, this is, like, crazy to read. I've continually found success in other people's rubric of success, but I've actually never found happiness. I've never designed my own rubric of success. And that's because I don't trust myself to define success. I'm scared to assume that responsibility. That was my fear-setting chart. [laughs] It's a very personal process.
- TFTim Ferriss
It is.
- MKMichelle Khare
I know you and anyone listening who have actually, like, done it can, can empathize with that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
I'm a very emotional person, as you can see from my videos. It's real.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Anyways, I was so excited to share that with you.
- TFTim Ferriss
I am so moved by you sharing that, and I really appreciate you bringing that.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah, of course.
- 51:35 – 1:01:45
Practicing poverty
- TFTim Ferriss
So here's a follow-up question-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... on the, on the fear-setting, and this isn't a trick question because, uh, when people experience any ambitious or scary journey for themselves, often the same thing, it's not a straightforward line up and to the right. It's a bumpy-
- MKMichelle Khare
No
- TFTim Ferriss
... path. After doing that, when did you take action towards realizing the dream? Could've been a very small thing, I don't know, but, like, what was the kind of defining first step that kind of set you on the actual path to realizing what you laid out?
- MKMichelle Khare
I took action pretty immediately-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... but it took me a year to quit my job. And I'll define what the difference is. I took action immediately by... This might be crazy. This was a Tim Ferriss experiment. I really resonated with what you wrote about coming to terms with the worst possible outcome.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And so I decided I'm going to train myself for the worst possible outcome.
- TFTim Ferriss
I love it. Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
So I moved into a studio apartment with a roommate. I cut, like, like, financially stripped down... I mean, I didn't have much anyways, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... stripped as much as I could to simulate if, if I'm truly failing at this and having, having to live in a Hollywood apartment with a bunch of roommates, I'm just gonna get used to that. I'm gonna get used to it right now. I'm gonna cancel all of my memberships and figure out how to stay healthy with just myself-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... just myself in, in this small place. I am also going to commit to working on my own stories after work, on the weekends because if I can't do it now with stability, I n- I need to prove to myself-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... that I actually give a shit about this really. And I did that for an entire year, growing a little bit of a personal savings, but also growing mental and physical stamina towards, I'm already in still a place of safety, of course, but I am in a situation where I think I can handle this. I got this. Like, LinkedIn is up to date. Little resume is up to date. I, I am so ready. I have define, prevent, and hopefully we don't gotta go to that third column, repair. And so then a year later exactly, I quit my job, and when I quit, I had two months of videos backlogged, ready to go. Also, legally, for the record, on my own machine, not company resources. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
All of that was ready to go, and I knew what my first big project would be, training with stunt doubles. I had a shoot date ready. I had taken a, you know... I only had, like, three months of savings at that point, and I had, had allocated this is going to be for the dream project, my first risk on my channel. Nothing will touch that. The rest is f- is for operating daily life expenses. And I said, "I got three months to, to make this work." And like you said, you know, like we've been talking about, sometimes you gotta put your back against a wall and go.
- TFTim Ferriss
I love this.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So s- this is-- I feel like we were separated at birth. So-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So a few things. I'll, I'll say, number one, to try to, not that I have- I'm not a paragon of self-awareness, but I, I will say that I, for different reasons, have a certain, like, hypervigilance focus on safety and security, which might sound strange to people listening [laughs] but I'm always trying to risk mitigate, right? I'm actually... I don't view myself as a big risk-taker. I have done a few things that have ended up with [laughs] me accumulating injuries that maybe in retrospect shouldn't have done. But broadly speaking, I'm always trying to mitigate risk, which is-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... underscores this entire fear setting exercise, right? 'Cause it's not just about convincing yourself. It's also, in my mind, completely intertwined with what you did, which is preparing and training yourself and your circumstances, right? So [laughs] when I flash back to starting my first company, it's like, how did I start the first company? I started my first company during lunch hours, evenings, and weekends basically while still doing my other job, and doing my other job well.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But I wanted to have a head start so that I wasn't beginning from scratch after quitting a job, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- 1:01:45 – 1:03:48
Kebab-shop destiny: meeting stunt coordinator Steve Brown in L.A. — now he does Avatar and straps Michelle to planes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. [laughs] I don't know if he's still in the game, but Damien Walters, he's a former high-level British gymnast who then entered the world of stunt work and just has the most insane yearly highlight videos that he put out for a while. This is an older vintage. He's been doing it a long time. But in any case, I thought he could be-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, I need him in
- TFTim Ferriss
... incredibly fun to connect with at some point.
- MKMichelle Khare
That's awesome.
- TFTim Ferriss
I've never really interacted with him, so I can't, I can't-
- MKMichelle Khare
I have so much love and heart for the stunt community-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, man
- MKMichelle Khare
... because that's really where the channel started. And the stunt coordinator that I work with today-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... his name is Steve Brown. And this is how crazy the world is, right? Back in, mm, 2016, so a few months after I sent this email, I went to a kebab shop in LA.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Sat down at the counter and was just eating dinner by myself, and I, I remember I was really critically thinking about this decision of going off on my own and applying this. And this guy comes in, sits next to me, we just start talking, have a nice conversation, go our separate ways. I go on to start my channel and do what I'm doing. He goes on to choreograph and do stunts and lead stunts for Logan, several Marvel projects, and most recently, all of the Avatar films.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
That guy also does all of the stunt coordination on our channel.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's incredible.
- MKMichelle Khare
Um, and it, it's amazing that when you meet people who are passionate, like, y- you know when you meet a flavor of a person before they have hit their-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... their peak moment, it's special to connect with them and, and rise together, and that's what's been awesome about Steve is between his Avatar movies, he'll come over and strap me to the side of a plane or throw me in the Houdini tank and, and make sure that everything's okay because we have that, we have that kebab friendship. [laughs]
- 1:03:48 – 1:07:27
Surface area for luck: Bill Gurley, Kevin Kelly's sleeping bag, and Seneca on voluntary discomfort.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Well, this speaks also to putting yourself in the center of the action, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I've, I've had very famous investor named Bill Gurley on the show before. He sat where you're sitting right now. Legendary investor, and he talks about this a lot, which is putting yourself where the action is, right? So if you wanna have those types of connections, it's less likely to happen in a small town in Montana than it is in Los Angeles.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Similarly, depending on your industry, IRL still matters a lot, right? As much as we would like to think it doesn't, it's like if you wanna be in certain games in tech, and you want to have access to the talent, et cetera, still to this day, in s- in a lot of instances, you have to be in San Francisco or somewhere near San Francisco. That's just where you have to be.
- MKMichelle Khare
And this is coming from the, the virtual guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
It is. It is.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
And yet, if you look at what the virtual guy did, because I was trying and wanted to get involved in tech and then ultimately angel investing, where was I? I was in the Bay Area for 17 years.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
If I had not done that, I think my success would've had a 0% likelihood. [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, literally 0%. If I look at how a lot of the ultimately best advising or investing relationships came together, they almost all started with chance encounters at the equivalent of a kebab shop, right? I go to a barbecue at someone's house and, like, accidentally bump into someone and spill their drink and start a conversation, and then boom, that turns into, like, one of the most... Ends up defining 30% of my net worth, right? I mean, it's [laughs] ... And sure, there's luck involved, but you have to provide-
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow
- TFTim Ferriss
... and I'm borrowing this term from someone else, but surface area for luck.
- MKMichelle Khare
So what did we learn? Barbecue, kebab, spilling drinks.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Key to success.
- TFTim Ferriss
It sounds like it's the-
- MKMichelle Khare
30% of Tim's net worth
- TFTim Ferriss
... chapter one. Chapter one.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Bump into people. Actually, it really could be. The other thing I wanted to mention is you talked about, in a sense, and this is not the most elegant way to put it, but, like, practicing poverty, right? That was one of your fears, right? Was, like, running out of money, right? So you move into the apartment where you're sharing a studio with someone else or multiple people, and you get rid of your memberships, and so on. And you prove to yourself, number one, you can certainly survive. Number two, probably it's not that bad. Like, you can figure it out. And sure, maybe if you're, depending on the roommate, I mean, you might want to-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... get rid of said roommate. But it reminded me of, not to belabor this, but since the genesis of fear-setting is stoic philosophy and the stoics, Seneca the Younger talks about practicing in this way. Very close friend of mine, Kevin Kelly, who was the founding editor of Wired Magazine and fascinating person on all levels, also has a big Amish beard and has spent time with the Amish to study how they accept or reject technology, et cetera, et cetera. Really interesting guy, but he also, I don't know if he does it anymore, he's gotta be mid-70s now, but he used to routinely spend periods of time, I wanna say every year, where he would just camp out in his living room in a sleeping bag and have, like, instant coffee and instant oatmeal.
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
And just do that for, like, a week. And he's like-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- 1:07:27 – 1:12:02
Coach, mentor, cheerleader: the three-person Formula One team you actually need.
- TFTim Ferriss
So my question for you, a Formula One team. All right.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Formula One is expensive, right? It's like these cars in some cases are like-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... what, $250 million, right, when you start to add everything in. Pricey. Yes, very high performance. B- but when you quit your job and you're like, "I have three months"-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... [laughs] how did you assemble or enroll the help that you needed in the early days, the first, like, three to six months after quitting your job? Or did you just do everything yourself? I don't know. Right? So what did it look like in the early days? 'Cause once you get some momentum, sure, you get some money coming in, okay, you can start to add, you can start to upgrade, you can start to do various things. But in the beginning, you're very capital constrained, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
What do you do? How did you assemble the help that you needed or enlisted?
- MKMichelle Khare
This is a strategy I employ for every challenge I take on now, and hindsight is 20/20. And with that 20/20 hindsight, I think it comes down to having three people on your Formula One team.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- MKMichelle Khare
And it doesn't need to be fancy. It's really a coach, a mentor, and a cheerleader.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- MKMichelle Khare
What does that mean?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
In a specific episode of Challenge Accepted, the coach is the most important person that I want to find before we pursue an episode.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- MKMichelle Khare
Like, in a recent episode, I attempted to get a black belt in taekwondo in only 90 days. In martial arts, that's a somewhat controversial thing to even attempt to do.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And so I knew I could only do it with the blessing of a really respected master. So objective number one was to find the best master and coach in the world, and I think it's important to, to find someone. And again, I'll give an example for what I did in that specific situation, but that's number one for me because this is the person I'm gonna be spending all of this time with and learning from them. The second person is a mentor who is different from the coach. This is a person who has most recently done the thing you're trying to do. So f- for me, that's other students in the black belt class. They're my mentors. They have gone through this process. They know what it's, feels like to break a brick with their hands and get through that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And it's important that it's different from the coach because coaching is a different skill set and art form from mentoring.
- TFTim Ferriss
Also, it's harder for the coach to put themselves into your shoes because so much of what they do is second nature, and they're probably-
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly
- TFTim Ferriss
... decades removed from the experience you're about to have.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm. You want someone who has the experience of leading somebody to that finish line of greatness, and you also want someone who knows what it feels like to be the man in the arena.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And then the third person is a cheerleader, which is someone who is completely detached from the outcome. So for me, that's my best friend, Olivia. It could be a sibling, friend, family member, someone who is going to root for you and love you no matter whether you succeed or fail. So that's how I approach every single challenge on the channel. Meta-wise-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... at the beginning of the channel, what was that for me? It was the mentor figure or figures for me were other people who had recently started channels and were just a few steps ahead of me in the process. Maybe they had 50,000 subscribers. Maybe they had 100,000 subscribers. They were people I met at little meetups at, rest in peace, the YouTube Space, which doesn't exist anymore. But those peer groups were really special and important to me to keep me motivated and to just reach out to people. Even today, reaching out to other creators, "What do you guys think of this thumbnail? What do you think of these titles?" Having people who are just a couple steps ahead of you or on similar playing fields can be so, so helpful in that process. The cheerleader for me at that time was, was my sister, Madeline, who was one of the only people I told I was going to quit my job and, and fully believed in me. And then the coach figure for me when I was starting from ground zero was cold emailing people I respected. Now, that's not the same as having a coach who's with you every day in the way Master Rhee is training taekwondo with me every day, but I saw those as coaching opportunities because they were people light years ahead who had the teaching component, I should say, of being able to advise, even in small doses.
- 1:12:02 – 1:16:33
The art of the cold email — and cold-calling the FBI tip line to meet "The Hollywood Guy."
- TFTim Ferriss
look like?
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay. I love a great email. You mentioned that you have a, an amazing cold emailer. I, I need to, to see their art and their work because I, I love comparing notes on emails. I personally believe that a really well-written email can open any door.
- TFTim Ferriss
I agree, by the way, assuming the person sees it, right? There's, there's some friction, but-
- MKMichelle Khare
True
- TFTim Ferriss
... but people underestimate what they can do.
- MKMichelle Khare
I agree. And there's, there's something about an email that's different from an Instagram DM or-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- MKMichelle Khare
I don't know. I love an email. I love a Google Calendar. [laughs] This is where we're talking about true passions, Tim.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- MKMichelle Khare
Emails. So when, at the beginning of my channel when we didn't have millions of subscribers, and we wanted to collaborate with institutions like the FBI, the Secret Service, and ultimately we became some of the first YouTube channels to ever do that, came from not a producer, not a friend of a friend sending email, but me sending a cold email. An example of that is I wanted to do a video with the FBI, so I went on fbi.gov. I called the 1-800 number of the FBI, which by the way- Is for, like, crime tips
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Which I didn't realize.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
And I pitched them this idea over the phone and they're like, "So I'm here to receive crime tips, but I can connect you to someone else." And I wasn't anticipating that. I thought it would kind of be a dead end.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I just wanna pause here for the specifics.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Ring, ring. Hello, FBI 800 number. What are you s- what are you saying?
- MKMichelle Khare
Hi, my name is Michelle Khare. I know this might come off as a little strange or unexpected, but I was trying to contact someone in your department who might work with film and television. I'm a content creator online. We have several hundred thousand subscribers, and I was hoping to talk about a collaboration.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. Great.
- MKMichelle Khare
And usually they're like, "YouTube? What?" [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
But this person was, was generous enough to connect me to someone else, and we kinda got kicked down a, a few, a few different routes. But we ended up connecting with someone called The Hollywood Guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
This is a job at the FBI. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
He's just like, "How did I get-
- MKMichelle Khare
The Hollywood Guy
- TFTim Ferriss
... stuck in this department?"
- MKMichelle Khare
The Hollywood Guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Every email that comes over the transom about some kind of film television thing.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's, it's, it's The Hollywood Guy.
- 1:16:33 – 1:20:58
Michelle's three-paragraph, six-sentence formula for emails that open any door.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is there anything else in your email or communication with The Hollywood Guy-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... that you think increased the likelihood of him saying yes?
- MKMichelle Khare
I do. I think a great email and a cold email specifically has to have some key components. The first is the subject line needs to show your value to the reader. For me right now, it would look like something, and I'll be totally honest, collaboration with Michelle Khare, parentheses, this many followers. In the beginning, that was a small number for me, but I still put it in the subject line. It could be a number of views. It could be collaborated with X, Y, and Z institutions. It just needs to be enough for the reader to see some value in what you're doing. Then the body of the email is three paragraphs, very short paragraphs. In fact, three blocks of two sentences each. I wouldn't even call it a paragraph. The first paragraph is one sentence about who you are and your legitimacy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
Has to be encompassed in one sentence. "Hi, my name is Michelle Khare. I'm a content creator with this many followers, and I've done this, this, and this."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's very succinctly proving your value. Second sentence of that first paragraph, what are you asking for or offering to the other person? And ideally, you're doing both. You're, you're offering something. Second sentence of that email to the FBI would be, "I'm reaching out to inquire about an opportunity to film a collaboration for my channels."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
What you're offering there is access to our audience. In the eyes of many of the people we collaborate with, it's a marketing opportunity potentially.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. Recruiting opportunity.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah, something like that. Paragraph two is two sentences or less of what you want to do. This would be the details of we're hoping to do a shoot following just a few days of the academy, embedding in existing activities, ultimately leading up to a final scenario as follows academy protocol. So that second paragraph is about a window into the vision you hope to come to together and a peek at some of the resources you might be asking for. And ideally, you do it in such a way that you show you've done your homework. You know, I'm not just cold emailing the FBI hoping to do a video with them. I know very clearly I've watched everything I can online about what does the academy take to do. What are the activities? What are the ones that are best for camera? So you're showing your... It's an opportunity to flatter them-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... and to, to put them at ease. We speak the same language. So that, there's that. Paragraph three is the call to action. Two sentences or less. Would love to hop on the phone. Let me know a good time. Here's my phone number. Text me any time. I think that's honestly potentially the most important part. Here's my phone number. Text me any time. This is an anti-Tim Ferriss tactic potentially.
- TFTim Ferriss
Not when I'm sending cold emails to-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... to, to people who are very busy that I want-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... to connect with.
- MKMichelle Khare
And what that does is say, "I'm available. I don't know you, but here's my phone number." It, it exhibits I'm trusting you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And it says, "You don't have to respond with a crazy detailed formal email back to me. Hit me up any time and we can talk on the phone." It removes the barrier to entry for them to have to come back to you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And then have a nice email signature, you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
What is a nice email signature? [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Just, uh, in a Sans Serif font.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Maybe add a little color.
- TFTim Ferriss
What, no Comic Sans? I'm not kidding. [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
No Comic Sans, no Times New Roman. Tim, it's not 2007 anymore.
- 1:20:58 – 1:31:06
Tim's cold email playbook: the "via" trick, include your damn cell number, and why "Yo, Ferriss" is an auto-archive.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sans. So let me say a few things about this email.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
I, in some ways, owe my entire career as it is to cold emails, and what you learn in crafting cold emails is directly translatable to in person and talking to people. In a way it's the same thing. There are some differences, but I wanna highlight a couple of things that you just said. Number one, including your cellphone.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
I am shocked by how many emails I get that are actually somewhat interesting, that get surfaced by my team, 'cause I have people who triage my email, that do not have a phone number. And I'm like, "I don't have time to have a bunch of... My team does not have time to do a bunch of back and forth to figure out a time to talk even though you didn't even offer a time to talk, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Archive." Like, I just don't have time for it. Like, this seems interesting, but it's not definitively interesting. If you gave a cellphone, I would figure out a way to maybe call you, and in five minutes I'd be like, "I have three quick questions. Interesting, but, like, this is it, five minutes."
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And in a friendly way obviously. It's like include... If it's important to you, include your cellphone.
- MKMichelle Khare
And I think it's important to include it, this is just me personally, as the final sentence of the email, not tucked under your name.
- TFTim Ferriss
No.
- MKMichelle Khare
You want to-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yes
- MKMichelle Khare
... truly invite them to reach out.
- TFTim Ferriss
Make it explicit.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
100% agreed. So I want to just mention a couple of direct parallels between what you just mentioned is this formula. And if you're open to it, maybe we could share, like, a few examples or a template of like what-
- MKMichelle Khare
Ooh, a downloadable PDF on tim.blog.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Well, p- e- exactly.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
PDF or a blog post or some- or, like, show notes-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... just so people can actually see it.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes, of course.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I will just draw a few parallels. So number one, you need credibility up front, and one way to think about this, and I, I always... If I'm thinking about reaching out to someone who's above my pay grade, and trust me, there's, I mean, there are plenty of people who are way above my pay grade. The first thing in the subject line, I'll give a tip that I sometimes use. So let's just say that, who knows... All right. Somebody knows, you know, MrBeast or Tom Cruise or whoever it might be. Now, practically speaking, everything's gonna have to get routed through someone else for Tom Cruise, and if you do get their personal information they're gonna be very annoyed.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Um, so but where I'll start with the subject line is one of two places or both. So you mentioned, like, the credibility indicator in the subject, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'll use that, but if we actually have someone in common who actually recommended I connect-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... but they haven't made the intro, I will say, for instance, it would be, again, just to use the Tom Cruise example, who I think would make an amazing interview, but, like, "For Tom Cruise via mutual connection"
- MKMichelle Khare
Ooh.
- 1:31:06 – 1:35:46
The fake Tim Ferriss Podcast phishing scam: Zoom calls, screen access, and hijacked Facebook pages.
- TFTim Ferriss
to give people some intel on that, one reason for that is that it just takes more time for someone, and anyth- you need to remove the reasons for them to say no. And you might think to yourself like, "Who the hell doesn't have 30 seconds or a minute to click through?" And I'm like, "Somebody who gets 1,000 email a day." That's answer number one. Number two, anyone who is reasonably well-known has a lot of phishing attacks. Like they have people from different vectors who are trying to get them to click on links that are very dangerous-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and intended to, to steal information or set- The team up for social engineering, so
- MKMichelle Khare
I have been a recipient of a false you're invited to the Tim Ferriss podcast email.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yeah, those.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
That's a very clever scam. Do you know how that works?
- MKMichelle Khare
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. So how that works, this is... Because these are still going around. I think the jig is up because people have realized most of these are fake, but, so I'm guessing the email was like, "We place people," or, "We're inviting you on the show." Either, if they're not very sophisticated, they'll be like, "It costs this much to go on the show." And then anyone-
- MKMichelle Khare
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... who knows me should be like, "Well, that doesn't sound right." But there's, there's kinda like this pay-for-play thing, which most people will sniff out. The other one is, "Let's get on a Zoom call and discuss."
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh.
- TFTim Ferriss
And what happens is you get on a Zoom call, and they somehow figure out a way to get you to provide basically screen access, not just sharing screen, but screen access. And they'll take you to your Facebook page or something like that, and they will hijack your Facebook page, then use it to promote like a crypto scam on a large page, and then hold that for ransom also to get money from you. So this is just-
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow
- TFTim Ferriss
... a way of saying, "Guys, include some fucking text."
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Um, right? A- and then to your point again, like be very clear about the ask.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
The number of emails I get that it's like even if they establish, hey, I'm like credible-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... but I'm not like, you know, a president or the CEO of Fortune 50 company. It's like if, if they're like, "Okay, this might be kind of interesting," right? If it's like Rick Rubin, who's... You know, I, I did his first interview on a podcast ever in a sauna. But it's like if you're like, "Oh, it's fucking Rick Rubin," and he's like, "Hey, let's jump on the phone," you're like, "Yeah, of co-... Okay, fine." As long as I can confirm that's who the person is.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
But otherwise, assuming that you, who's cold emailing, is not Rick Rubin, which is likely-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... then be clear about your ask, right? If it's like, "Would love to discuss something vague. Let's hop on the phone to discuss. How's next Tuesday at 2:00 PM?" I'm never gonna respond to that, right? Because if you can't write a professional first cold email, I'm skeptical of everything that's gonna follow.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? You're not placing a value on the recipient's time that you've thought through. Does that make sense? So it's like be really clear in the ask. And then when I close, again to your point, right, make your cell phone... And by the way, you can use a burner or you can use Google Voice. You can spin up a Google Voice number very easily from any G Suite, et cetera, et cetera. But have a number, right, where somebody can reach you. Do not just bury it in your signature. Make it explicitly clear, "Feel free to text me anytime."
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? "We can schedule, or just feel free to hop on the phone. I promise it will not take more than 10 minutes." By the way, if you say that, do not go over 10 minutes.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah. [laughs]
- 1:35:46 – 1:41:32
Emailing Hank Green, Brandon Sanderson's unpublished novels, and why your first cold emails are just practice reps.
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean? So in the beginning, when you're reaching out to mentors, you ju- you know, you've just quit your job.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
What are you saying in the email?
- MKMichelle Khare
Here, here's an example. I sent a cold email to Hank Green, who is-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh.
- MKMichelle Khare
Just one of the greatest-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yes. D- de- describe, describe who Hank Green is.
- MKMichelle Khare
Hank Green is if sunshine and joy and a human encyclopedia were bundled into one person, just one of the smartest, coolest, groundbreaking people, especially in the YouTube world, ever. He came and gave a talk at BuzzFeed once when I worked there, and I... Maybe this was while I was still working there or shortly after I left. I sent him an email, and this is actually counter to everything we've discussed. I wasn't explicitly reaching out about a, a business i- idea or anything or trying to get something from him, but I wanted to get to know him. And so I sent him an email saying that I'm learning as I consider pursuing my own creative endeavor, and I'm curious, what was the most formative pinpoint for you as a child to pursue this profession? And it's just a fun question, honestly. It... There's not much strategy here, and he sent back a multi-page answer.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
And I think he even-
- TFTim Ferriss
What was your subject line? Do you remember-
- MKMichelle Khare
What was the subject line?
- TFTim Ferriss
... roughly or what might-
- MKMichelle Khare
Uh, the subject line was, "Hello from Michelle Khare (BuzzFeed) ."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Got it.
- MKMichelle Khare
So using the, the title of some, some form of legitimacy. But he sent me this multi-page response, and at the end said, "Thanks for the thoughtful question. No one's asked me before." And so sometimes I find that people are excited to share themselves, and of course, in him sharing that story, I learned a lot about how I could find creative inspiration or even find parallels with someone who externally I don't have a lot of overlap with. And I think that was awesome. And now today, where I know him in a more friendly capacity a- as peers in the space, is really special to have those email. Like, these emails like this are so crazy to go back on.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
So even if you send a cold email and never hear back, it might make for a great story later.
- TFTim Ferriss
And guess what? You're practicing your ability to craft emails and your ability to communicate.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And this would be like, I interviewed Brandon Sanderson, one of the most legendary fantasy writers in the world, who is prolific. And I think he wrote, I think it was five books before he even attempted to publish one.
- MKMichelle Khare
He intentionally said, "I'm not publishing my first several books." Isn't that right?
- TFTim Ferriss
That's right. That's right. I did a, just a huge romp with him, met up at his HQ in, [laughs] in Utah. Fascinating, brilliant guy. But the point is, maybe your first 5 to 10 cold emails are just to improve getting better at cold emails. And by the way, something I did also is I would ask people who I had not sent those cold emails, but who are p- like, better-known folks, I would be like, "Hey, would you mind taking a look at..." I, I would do this at events sometimes. I'd be like, "This is gonna seem like a weird res- request." [laughs] "Don't worry, it's not anything, like, super, super bizarre, but would you be willing to critique this email? Like, I, I've sent this to a couple people. You know, I haven't gotten a response or I only got one response. Like, how would you change this?"
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, like, that is a very concrete question, and it's also not clearly a question that's just setting up the thing you actually want. Do you know what I mean? Like, 'cause sometimes people-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... do that via email. They'll be like-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... "Hey, I loved your sweater. How'd you train your dog?"
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- 1:41:32 – 1:43:46
Michelle's storytelling syllabus: Survivor, Snyder's Save the Cat, and peer review of whatever went viral last week.
- TFTim Ferriss
You mentioned, you know, Snyder's beats of storytelling, I think.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
For s-
- MKMichelle Khare
Don't quiz me on that. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
I won't, I won't qui- I won't quiz you on it, but-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... as far as storytelling goes-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... as far as developing, like, narrative arcs, does not need to be a book, but it could be. Like, are there any particular resources you would point people to where you're like, "Okay."
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, gosh.
- TFTim Ferriss
I know there's, like, being in the trenches and working on it, and s- and testing and split testing and u- using-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... kind of warm audiences in the beginning, et cetera. But if you're like, all right, look, if you wanna do something analogous to what I'm doing on YouTube, right? And there are other examples of people who put, put out very few videos, right? But this sort of longer form narrative arc storytelling. If you were teaching a class on that, like, what's the syllabus? Like, what do you, what do you tell people to read or watch?
- MKMichelle Khare
A challenge acce- like, reality-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... docu-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... class. Okay, welcome to my class.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
On the syllabus, we're gonna be studying a few things. First of all, I'm gonna make everyone watch Survivor.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
And every week we're gonna discuss it, first of all, because it's the best ever. I'm obsessed with Jeff Probst, and I think that part of reality doc in particular, Survivor is a reality competition show, but there's a lot that can be learned in doing your own vlogs or self-filmed human stories. They do an excellent job at taking hundreds of hours of footage and pulling out the story beats that make sense. You watch an episode of Survivor, it might f- feel like things are just happening, and they are, but they're also curated from thousands and thousands of moments, storylines that were left on the floor. And so I think Survivor is an amazing lesson in, first of all, hosting, and second of all, killing your babies in a way.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
We know on that island, they're out there for a month and a half. A lot's gonna happen that's not gonna make the edit. But why have the producers chosen this storyline to tell? Why is it engaging? Why is this the act break for the commercial? I think that's number one, selfishly. Probst is the GOAT. [laughs]
- 1:43:46 – 1:48:16
Jeff Probst: The GOAT host and secret Einstein of reality television.
- TFTim Ferriss
Also, sidebar, Probst is an excellent example also of creating defensible IP. Right, which a lot of-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, please
- TFTim Ferriss
... which a lot of people don't realize.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
They're like, "Oh, isn't he just the host guy?" It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
- MKMichelle Khare
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
He's, he's the Einstein [laughs] of that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... operation.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's amazing. And when you watch his hosting, it's so masterful because he is a fan and also a researcher of the people on the show. I mean, you see him at Tribal Council, he is recounting things that have happened decades ago. He knows the details of the contestant's life, and he asks a question, not as a leading question, but as a way for the contestant to open up. I think that is incredible i- interviewing, and it's something that I study, too. I did a show called Karma on HBO, which was a kids' survival show-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... produced by J.D. Roth, you know, another, like, huge reality legend. And again, I think people watch these shows and, and think the hosts are just there to say lines and deliver information to the audience, but there is a massive amount of research. I mean, you have a binder of every kid's headshot, where they're from, their family. You're taking notes. You're sitting in MCR, which is this trailer with hundreds of video feeds, as it's happening live so that when you go to meet with the contestants, you know what things to ask and how long to sit with them. So I, I think that's just masterful storying f- not from just a, a great host, but also a producer.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. Okay. So s- on the syllabus you got-
- MKMichelle Khare
We got-
- TFTim Ferriss
We're, we're-
- MKMichelle Khare
We're watching some reality shows. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep. This is like Robert McKee, I guess, the story seminar with, like, Casablanca. He's like, "We're gonna walk by this-"
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... "second by second-"
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly
- TFTim Ferriss
... "and look at what's going on." All right. So, so we got Survivor-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... as one part of the syllabus.
- MKMichelle Khare
Survivor is one part of the syllabus. Part two is we are going to study Snyder's beats, and we're going to study the Save the Cat of it all.
- TFTim Ferriss
Those two books are so good.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I have, I have some screenwriter friends who are like, "Yeah, they are really good" and others who are like, "Please, no, don't, don't suggest them." Like, they... I... You know, like, I haven't practiced as much as you have or other folks have. I'm like, these make it very tangible.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right. I think it's important to understand the bones of a s- of a story. What are the, the hills and the valleys? What is the all is lost? And, and I think a lot of people look at that material and think it only applies to scripted content, but it is so important in any piece of content.
- 1:48:16 – 1:53:54
John McPhee's red-ink writing class at Princeton.
- TFTim Ferriss
If you had... And I know we're doing this on the fly-
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... but let's just say project assignments, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'll buy you some time because I'm gonna-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Drink some water.
- TFTim Ferriss
I know this is on the spot, but the most formative writing class that I took, and I really only took one seminar ever focused on writing. I got very lucky in college. But we, there were two components to the class. There, there were these once-weekly lectures, I wanna say like two or three hours long, pretty long, on writing with a tremendous focus on structure primarily, and then there were reviews of work that we had already submitted. So each week we had a writing assignment, and typically in the range like three to 10 pages, but let's just call it three to five pages. And you would, you would write your piece, then you would sort of submit it at the beginning of, of the lecture, then you would have a one-on-one with the professor, in this case John McPhee. If people haven't read John McPhee, they should. [laughs] Just tremendous. If you wanna read something short, Levels of the Game is incredible. He's won one or two Pulitzer Prizes, just a phenomenal writer, can make anything interesting, and wrote an entire book on oranges, for instance, another one on hand-carved wooden canoes, and [laughs] another one on the geology and nature of Alaska. I mean, the guy [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
I- is just incredible. Levels of the Game is, is about basically the entire game of tennis, but told through the lens of one match involving Arthur Ashe. So we had the lecture, and then we have these writing assignments. You turn in whatever your new assignment is at the beginning of each of the lectures, and then you have your one-on-one with Professor McPhee. He gives you back your printed out writing, which typically will have, at least in the big- in the first few weeks, more red ink from his edits and notes than what you put on the page.
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
It is brutal, brutal, but incredibly helpful. Okay? So you've got these writing assignments, and the writing assignments are all over the place. But it might be something as seemingly simple/difficult as find a s- find a sculpture on campus and write three to five pages on it. And we're like, "Can you give us any more direction?" He's like, "No."
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Oh my God.
- TFTim Ferriss
So everybody would take a slightly different approach 'cause you're like, "Wait a second. Should I write about the history?"
- MKMichelle Khare
Whoa, cool.
- TFTim Ferriss
"Should I write about the subjective experience? Should I write about mm-mm, uh, uh-oh. But no matter what I do, I have to think about kind of structure and some of the points that he's made in class." And then at the end of the seminar lecture, we would share our work, right? And so we would, we would actually read out loud some of our work.
- MKMichelle Khare
After the revisions have been applied from him?
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, no. So I guess I'm probably scrambling up the chronology a little bit in the lecture. We would read something that has not yet been corrected, and then subject it to peer review, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And get his comments. So there were a couple of different ingredients, and he's taught this. Uh, he doesn't teach it any longer, but taught it for 15, 20 years, uh, very infrequently, like once every year or two, so I got very lucky. So this is a very roundabout way of asking if there were, like, an assignment component-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... where people are doing their own work, what are perhaps some of the things you would have them do?
- MKMichelle Khare
The assignment component of the class would be making the content.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
So I would require all of the students to make an account if they don't [laughs] already have one on some platform. And at the beginning of the class, I would want them to set and define the type of content. I would want them to define why is this uniquely yours, how is this different from what other people have done, and then at the same time, how is this data backed by what other people have done? And then from there, I would require them to actually make and produce videos. If this... If the purpose of the class is become a YouTuber, let's say-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- MKMichelle Khare
... I would ask them to, to make and produce the videos weekly and actually post them so that we could do some peer review, of course, but then actually see how does it play-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... live in the world. We would al- I would also want them to do data analysis at the end and try to make educated guesses on why something did or didn't perform well and receive critique and feedback, not just on the data and performance, but specifically the work itself. Why did this introduction work or not work? How could the technique be improved next time?
- TFTim Ferriss
You know what I was thinking could also be fun? You'd have to have a pretty small class to make this work.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- 1:53:54 – 2:02:46
Six Thinking Hats broke Michelle's pessimism; Radical Candor taught her how to give feedback.
- TFTim Ferriss
I wanna mention two books, and I'm curious if, if they're still relevant because they came up in doing research for this conversation. Radical Candor by Kim Scott and The Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono. Do either of these ring a bell?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah, of course.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. All right. Got it. So-
- MKMichelle Khare
My boy Edward with his hats.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. There you go.
- MKMichelle Khare
Um [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So, so how do these both factor in? Because these were, these were basically the two books that I was able to find mentioned by title. Some of them, I think, were mentioned by people you work with-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, really?
- TFTim Ferriss
... and not, not directly, uh, by you.
- MKMichelle Khare
Or maybe Garrett mentioned the-
- TFTim Ferriss
It was Garrett
- MKMichelle Khare
... de Bono hats. The Six Thinking Hats, I don't even remember where I learned or heard of this concept or... Oh, I actually think this was Jodi. This was... Shout out, Jodi.
- TFTim Ferriss
Your therapist.
- MKMichelle Khare
Jodi, Jodi puts me on all the great books. I was coming to her talking about just various problems I was facing and, and she told me of this concept of The Six Thinking Hats. And effectively, I'm-- I might butcher this, but it is a way of looking at a problem by filtering only by thinking type. So for example, we're gonna put on a yellow hat and look at this potential idea, and the yellow hat means we're only gonna say things that could go well by pursuing this idea, versus when we put on our black hat, that is we're saying all of the things that could go completely wrong. And it's six different techniques of being able to assess and determine if an idea is good or, or how to solve a problem. That thinking was really helpful to me as someone who often, prior to understanding this, would immediately go to black hat, and this is coming from the mentality of everything's gonna go wrong. I'm gonna fail at everything. I'm a person who growing up always defaulted to black hat. No, no, no, no, no, it's not gonna work. That doesn't inspire creativity. That does not inspire entrepreneurship. It also gives an unfair shot to an idea that, re-spun, may provide a new idea altogether I think this is also something I learned from a design thinking class. I, I might be crossing my wires here, but a- another class I took at Dartmouth was design thinking, where similar to your writing class, it was an engineering class where every week we would have some wacky assignment. Like, the professor would give us each a sheet of poster board and say, "Next week when you come to class, it has to be a chair. Turn this poster board into a chair that supports your body type. You can't use any glue, any scissors, any other structural components. You can make cuts to it and, and shape it, but that's it, and it has to support your body weight." And that class taught me a ton about, you know, myself before that class would look at that and say, "Not possible. Why am I even trying it?" And he, Professor Roby really forced us to think critically through how could something be possible. So that, uh, concept of the six hats is really impactful to me.
- TFTim Ferriss
S- let's pause there for a second because this book, believe it or not, was incredibly helpful to me-
- MKMichelle Khare
Really?
- TFTim Ferriss
... in my first few years of building my first business and trying to figure out what I might be good at, but also as a solo operator effectively. Had lots of contractors, but as a, as a solo operator for the most part, effectively turning myself into a virtual board of directors with different perspectives by using these different hats. Because I also default to black hat, which I think has its place, right? Part of the, part of the genius of this approach is you're not saying, "Oh, that's negative thinking. Shame on you. Let's only look at the bright side." No, it's saying-
- MKMichelle Khare
Exactly. You have to be realistic
- TFTim Ferriss
... there's a place, it's saying there's a place for that, but there's gonna be a set time for it, and we're gonna go through each of these six. I haven't read it in decades, but Edward de Bono, Six Thinking Hats. He also had, I believe, a book called Lateral Thinking, which I found helpful. I don't know how those would age for me if I read them now.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Sometimes it's like I'm like, "Oh, God, have you haven't seen this movie I haven't seen in 20 years? Let's watch it." And within 10 minutes I'm like, "Oh, God, this is not [laughs] as good as-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... I remember." There are definitely others like [laughs] well, it's very un-PC, but Airplane! and others that actually do age shockingly well.
- MKMichelle Khare
I'm trying to remember what the other hats are. I haven't, like, looked at this in such a long time 'cause I feel like we just sort of...
- TFTim Ferriss
I can't recall what the specifics are. I mean, if I had to guess-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah. Maybe I, I can Google it, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
... I'm imagining one is, like, analytical, by the numbers, and one is, like, emotional. I mean, I'm imagining there's probably-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... some version of that. But it is, I, it stuck out to me 'cause I was like, "That's really interesting-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- 2:02:46 – 2:17:13
The slinky org chart: Seven full-timers that balloon to 50 for a shoot, then compress right back.
- TFTim Ferriss
This could include full-time and contractors. What does your org chart look like, so to speak? What does the team look like?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes. I mean, I, I remember reading 4-Hour Workweek and, and the whole virtual assistant chapter. Blew my mind. So we do have someone in Singapore [laughs] .
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
Which is funny. Our internal team full-time is intentionally tight.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's seven full-time staff, so that is myself, Garrett, who's the chief creative officer, Nick, head of production, three editors, and an assistant for me. But we have what I call a slinky operation where that's where it is when it's tight, but when we get ready to do a big project, it balloons up very quickly. But what's cool is all of the people that are on, on the internal team are department heads. So when it's time to recreate the Mission Impossible stunt, each of us know how to staff up camera team of seven people, stunt team of six people, and build that out to a team of 50 who come in to do that one specific project, and then we slinky back down.
- TFTim Ferriss
And your head of production would be responsible for the, like scoping and finding and hiring of those people?
- MKMichelle Khare
Sometimes. Also, just within our en- entire team, we're all very connected and embedded in the industry. So the team I just mentioned is pretty much half people from the traditional entertainment world. Uh, Nick, for example, the head of production, came from working at Broadway Video under Lorne Michaels and did Taco Bell Super Bowl commercials. So he understands feature film, h- high budget commercial world. Then people like myself or our editor, Ryan Gonzalez, we come from the digital first world. So our training was at a, a content studio where it was fast output, but you know how to do everything. And so bringing those worlds together is a really special and cool environment intentionally set because that is exactly the midpoint I want to occupy is the bridge between the two worlds.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. And I'm curious how you, I suppose the sort of context behind my question is, how you separate responsibilities in a sense, with the understanding that on a small team you're gonna end up wearing a lot of hats.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Not to be confused with Edward de Bono. But [laughs] when shit needs getting done, people are gonna roll up their sleeves-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... and kinda, I, I imagine at that size, do whatever. But for instance, on the... You could pick the episode, right? So, uh, it could be any episode, but where do your responsibilities, say, how are they different from chief creative officer, as one example?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes. So we have a giant spreadsheet called the Areas of Responsibility chart.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
Which I learned from a book called The Great CEO Within. Again, I'm trying to learn all this Silicon Valley management stuff on my own. I even like [laughs] called my YouTube partner manager and I was like, "Can I please sit in on the YouTube corporate management training the next time it happens?" And she said I couldn't.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
So I'm trying to piecemeal it all for myself and learn from people like you and Kim. But in that book, it, it details actually making a giant chart that outlines every single action that the company takes, and this can go from, in our case, something as big as decides if brand deal is worth taking, all the way down to takes out the trash.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
Who is going to be doing all these things? So th- this is, I think, hundreds of responsibilities.
- TFTim Ferriss
So what would be some, just so I understand, 'cause it's not a role that I'm familiar with, like chief creative officer.
- MKMichelle Khare
So for chief creative officer in this chart, for Garrett, that includes... So Garrett, Garrett's role as a whole within the company is to define the creative tone and thesis of everything that we do. So he is overseeing story for each of the episodes. He's directing the episodes in post. But he's also making sure that if we're updating our brand book or we're having our Emmys four-year consideration event in a couple weeks, he is going through all of the marketing materials and confirming, yes, this fits-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... the tone and the style of Challenge Accepted. This tells one cohesive story. What we don't want is a channel or a show that is chaotic-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, disjoint, disjointed or-
- MKMichelle Khare
... or unpredictable. Exactly. We wanted to-
- TFTim Ferriss
Incongruous
- MKMichelle Khare
... hit a certain level of quality of storytelling. So for Garrett, that means on a macro level overseeing those decisions, but also on a micro level approving edits and directing edits to make sure the stories we're telling hit that bar of excellence too. So he's sort of like chief creative officer and chief storyteller in a way.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then head of production, what percentage of the time for head of production is spent on kind of in production episodes versus pre-planning beforehand and post-production, would you say?
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, that's hard. I would need to ask Nick exactly, but Nick primarily spends... When we green-light an episode and it's, we're, we're now in preparation to go shoot it, a lot of his time is spent assembling the crew, getting insurance permissions in the case of- The Seven marathons project we did, where we ran seven marathons on all seven continents in one week. He was handling all the logistics of the local crews we were working with.
- 2:17:13 – 2:26:49
Scope creep, saying no to big checks, and why Michelle has never hit creator burnout.
- MKMichelle Khare
I have a lot of empathy with what you're saying about, "Oh, I can just fit in one more recording. I can fit in one more shoot day." I mean, even separate of the channel, this didn't impact the channel, but last year I was on a plane 73 times. Maybe not that high for many of the guests who have been in this chair. It was a record for me, at least.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's a lot of flights.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's a l- it was a lot of flights. And I told Kim this, and she w- she said, "How many, how many vacations did you go on?" And I, and I couldn't answer it. You know, I could think that's a sign. I, I went, I went on, I did a couple things, but she gave me some advice at the beginning of this year. She's like, "The next time you're sent abroad, your assignment is," and I need someone to say, "Your assignment is," for me to take it seriously. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
"Your assignment is you need to take at least six hours of a day. You don't have to stay an entire extra day. Take six hours of a day to do something for yourself." And I did this last week. I was in Italy for a s- a speaking engagement, and my friend Olivia and I took six hours, and we saw the whole city, and it was incredible. And I think that avoiding the scope creep is something we've had to be very, very precise about. As you mentioned, there are so many shiny objects around. "Oh, like, you should just do this collab and, and start a merch line." Or even in our, our world, there's a temptation to promote this product, and big check comes in. Well, I don't know if I agree with this product, and maybe I, I won't do it. And I think being really brutal about if I don't protect this, all of it falls apart. I don't... Not in a, a way of fragility, but in a sense of if I take the brand deal for a lot of money for the thing I'm not 100% on, it fractures trustworthiness. That, as we both know, is something that cannot be bought back. It's so precious to what we're doing. Or even the idea of we've had so many people come to us say, "We'll license the Challenge Accepted brand, and we'll s- we'll start a kids channel, and we'll run the whole thing for you." And these pitches sound great on paper when I know, mm, I'm not gonna like the first few things you do. I'm gonna have to get in the weeds. I'm gonna have to be giving feedback. And you know what? I don't have time for that. I, I have to remain really focused on the tip of the spear, which is making Challenge Accepted the best show it possibly can for all of the reasons that are emotionally important to me, financially important to the team, and, and socially important to our industry. So we've had to say no a lot, which I know you've been writing a lot about recently.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
But the saying of no is something I'm still learning how to do, and I think, like, that has been why the show has lasted so long. I have never... I'm l- literally knocking on wood. I don't even know if this is real wood. Knocking on wood right now. I've never experienced creator burnout in the way that many of my colleagues have. Many of my colleagues have had a time where they hit the wall and have to take months off entirely. That's never happened to me because all along the way, it's been a ki- like, a fast growth, but still slow and steady. You can look at the growth of our channel, and it's, it's not like I blew up on TikTok overnight. It, it's been slow and steady, and for that I feel fortunate because I've had the slowness to be able to make those adjustments, to acknowledge scope creep, where I'm being asked for more things And still learning how to practice that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... better.
- TFTim Ferriss
A few thoughts pop into my head.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, the first is that more so than with most, I actually have... I'm very confident that you'll figure it out, and I'll tell you why.
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, God. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
The first, the first is that, not that I'm... Like, who the fuck am I? I'm just saying I've like... There've been a lot of people in that chair, and I've met with a lot of creators and writers and so on of different types. Number one is that you have an inbuilt novelty in the format of the show, right? So a lot of the YouTubers I run into who are just crashing and burning, they have a few things stacked against them. One, they chose something that was interesting to them five or 10 years ago, but it is a fairly narrow lane.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And at some point they get tired of being that person.
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Or they pretended to be something in the beginning, and they got a lot of positive feedback, and-
- MKMichelle Khare
But it's not who they are, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... they're fatigued because they're wearing a mask.
- MKMichelle Khare
Oof. Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
And there's more to it. There's audience capture issues and other things. But you have an inbuilt novelty in the nature of the show itself, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Every episode my whole life changes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
Right now I'm training for taekwondo nationals. I'm gonna take a flight back to LA and go to taekwondo training for three hours tonight. Every day is different and varied and interesting, and I, I feel lucky that, like, my life changes frequently to adjust for that.
- TFTim Ferriss
So this is something I wanted to take a moment to point out because willpower, discipline, all these things, yes, they sound great, and I agree with a lot of folks that ultimately systems beat [laughs] like certainly dreams and even goals. I mean, you have to have an idea of where you wanna head. But inherent to what you chose to do, there's a kind of cycling and rejuvenation to it, right?
- MKMichelle Khare
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I ju- I just wanted to highlight that because it's a feature-
- MKMichelle Khare
Thank you
- TFTim Ferriss
... of what you chose to do.
- 2:26:49 – 2:29:55
My No Book teaser: 850 pages on renegotiating commitments and getting back on the wagon.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. I'm gonna be diving back into the, the... It's a placeholder name, but the No Book. 850 pages. That's gonna get hacked down. It's gonna be... Just as a teaser, I, I'm just... It makes me so happy. I literally just got a text about this two days ago. I've had quite a few test readers read that book. And it's rough around the edges, but they read this book like six months ago, a year ago, and they text me to be like, "Look at how I am still using this stuff." So I'm, I'm excited to get it out 'cause it's super... Like, just we're, as we were talking about template emails and so on, it's really tactical. It's not just-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh my gosh
- TFTim Ferriss
... hand-wavy stuff. So I'm excited about it. The, but you have the, you have sort of these-
- MKMichelle Khare
And I promise I'll buy it. I won't steal [laughs] it on accident.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm okay, I'm okay with stealing my books. Well, I mean, it's not okay 'cause you're stealing it from someone else, but-
- MKMichelle Khare
Correct. It was not stolen from a Barnes & Noble.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
It was stolen from the desk of a coworker.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Yeah, so I have, I have confidence you'll figure it out 'cause you have the toolkit for correction, right? And I think part of what a lot of folks miss about saying no, it's not like... Saying no is a lot like working out. It's not like you, you figure it out and you do it for a week or two, and then your problems are solved.
- MKMichelle Khare
It's a practice.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's a practice. Not only a practice, but 99.9% of the population, sure, there are a few exceptions, but are going to fall off the wagon occasionally. So the question is, how do you get back on the wagon, right? So in the case of, say, a book on no, like, a lot of the book is case studies of people and their toolkits for renegotiating. It's like if you're reading the book, it probably means you say yes to too much stuff and overcommit. You're probably still gonna do that. It's kinda like-
- MKMichelle Khare
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... AA and Alcoholics, like, right? [laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, once, once an addict, always an addict.
- MKMichelle Khare
Hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, you're probably gonna do that again. So the question isn't how do I avoid it permanently from this point forward, it's how do you actually correct it and how do you renegotiate commitments? How do you cancel things?
- MKMichelle Khare
Which is arguably harder than saying no out the gate. Once you've committed to something-
- TFTim Ferriss
It is. It's, it's-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... it's basically signing up for long-term pain instead of short-term pain.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? But you're gonna deal with both, which is why-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... you know, Kim Scott's teachings are so valuable. I have to recommend, I c- I don't know if it was r- with respect to Kim specifically, but A.J. Jacobs, who I mentioned earlier-
- MKMichelle Khare
I love him
- TFTim Ferriss
... wrote this long Esquire piece called, and his poor wife, the title of it is called I Think You're Fat. And it's like 30 days of experimentation with radical honesty or something like that.
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] I saw him give a presentation-
- 2:29:55 – 2:37:19
The Mindy Kaling manifesto: @MindyKalingFan, The Office, and shattering expectations for Indian women in entertainment.
- TFTim Ferriss
I wanna kinda talk about wishlist stuff because you n-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, my God
- TFTim Ferriss
... be- because you never know who's listening to this podcast.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
You just never know.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
I am constantly surprised. Maybe you can give some backstory, but have you met Mindy Kaling yet?
- MKMichelle Khare
I have not met our Lord and Savior, Mindy Kaling.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay?
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. Why did I even come across this? What... Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
I know why you came across this, and it is because my first Twitter handle was @MindyKalingFan, I think. It's since changed to my name. It's normal now, and I think I've deleted all the tweets maybe. I would love to meet Mindy Kaling one day when we're talking about wishlist items for a few reasons. I feel like we have sort of traveled the same path in different flavors.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
We went to the same college. I obviously admire her work. We're both Indian women in entertainment. And seeing someone like her on a show like The Office was instrumental to me as someone from Shreveport, Louisiana, who didn't see someone like me on Disney Channel. And I think that's why the mentality I had of approaching a job like this was so black hat, if we're gonna go back to that. I was very negative on the idea of doing something in entertainment because I didn't see a path or an example forward for someone like me. And factually, that's incorrect. I mean, there's a very thriving industry of Bollywood, and [laughs] there are many, many amazing women in entertainment. But something shifted for me when I saw her success and felt that parallel path of we're going to the same school. And seeing how she took her opportunity at The Office and spun it into her own production company and new shows that continued to uplift and elevate female-centered stories I think is incredible and something that I look up to often when I think about how I started at a media company and am now doing my own thing and hoping to shift culture and expectation of what it means to be an Indian woman in entertainment, and also what it means to be a content creator on the internet. I love upending people's expectations. It's one of my secret favorite things to do. I love when people hear that I'm a YouTuber, and then they go watch Challenge Accepted and are pleasantly, hopefully pleasantly surprised by what they see and wouldn't expect that maybe from someone on the platform. And I think about how she and Shonda Rhimes and other incredible showrunners have done that.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right, Mindy, if you're listening.
- MKMichelle Khare
Mindy, yo.
- TFTim Ferriss
And there're definitely a few people who have been on this podcast, like BJ Novak-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... who know Mindy. So if you guys are listening-
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, my God. I'm obsessed with both of them, like, as a unit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
They're amazing.
- TFTim Ferriss
BJ's incredible.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
BJ is also incredible. The Office, I mean, there are a few examples like this, but it's kinda like the PayPal mafia where you're like, "How did all these people come out of this?"
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Yeah The PayPal mafia
- TFTim Ferriss
... how, how is it even possible that-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... this density of talent was in one place at the same time?
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm.
- 2:37:19 – 2:39:26
Wishlist shout-out: Norland College, where Mary Poppins meets Secret Service.
- TFTim Ferriss
do that, any- anyone else that you'd like to sort of invoke? Like are there any other-
- MKMichelle Khare
I'm gonna invoke-
- TFTim Ferriss
... partners, partners, companies, people, anything that you'd like to check out your work?
- MKMichelle Khare
This is such a special opportunity to do that. There are many people I would love to meet, and generally, as we move into this really exciting new chapter for the company and, and content creators in general, I'm excited to meet with anyone from traditional media who is excited to join forces.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- MKMichelle Khare
So that's just like a general statement. But if I have one shout-out, here's the shout-out I'm gonna ask for. The Royal Nanny School-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
... in England.
- TFTim Ferriss
You've been working on-
- MKMichelle Khare
We have wanted-
- TFTim Ferriss
You've been working on this one for a while
- MKMichelle Khare
... the Norland College. We're your biggest fans. We've been wanting to collaborate for years. If you see this, hit me up.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Incredible. Perfect.
- MKMichelle Khare
What... Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Perfect.
- MKMichelle Khare
Let me tell you about the Norland Nannies. You're gonna appreciate this, Tim.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm ready.
- MKMichelle Khare
You know Mary Poppins-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... the silhouette with the, the pleated skirt and the little hat. It is based off of a real school called the Norland College, where these are the nannies that are trained to serve billionaires and royal families. So when you look at... And they wear that outfit.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
So you look at f- footage from this school, and it's literally they're wearing this outfit and hat pushing a pram stroller while also wielding a gun.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
Because they, [laughs] they have to protect the kids.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
So they know defensive driving. It's like Secret Service meets Butler Academy-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- MKMichelle Khare
... which you shouted out on the Five Bullet Friday. So it's, it's two amazing worlds coming together. I think more people need to know about it, so I'm, I'm very passionate about it.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] And I imagine the fact that they're like, "No, thank you. We don't need that," makes you just want it that much more.
- MKMichelle Khare
Of course it does, Tim.
- 2:39:26 – 2:44:24
Episodes Michelle would pay to relive.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Of your episodes, when you look back-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
And you can't say all of them. That's disallowed.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
That answer is no, no, no good.
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
No fly. Which, if you were starting, if you did not have a YouTube channel, but you had a thriving career, so you had some money, which of those, you can, like pick two or three of the experiences that you would pay to have looking back?
- MKMichelle Khare
That I would do again in a heartbeat?
- TFTim Ferriss
Do again, or you're like, "Okay, I only get to pick two or three-"
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... but, like, I would absolutely pay for these-
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... if I, if I had to.
- MKMichelle Khare
I would pick, first of all, the black belt challenge. So as this video, I had 90 days to try and get a black belt in taekwondo. Part of this came from a personal passion of having done all of these stunts and working with a lot of stunt performers, all of them come from world-class martial arts backgrounds. And I realized I had never actually taken the time to learn a martial art from the ground up, and that it, it was lacking in my performance a- and mental fortitude, and I wanted to experience that. So what do I do? I make it a challenge [laughs] so that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- MKMichelle Khare
... I can devote my whole life to it. And that experience changed me. When I look at clear before and after, you know, from having put your body through a lot, there are moments when you have a photo before and after. My body changed. But there are moments in life when you as a person change before and after, and that can't be captured by a photo always.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- MKMichelle Khare
That was one of those for me, getting to study with Master, Grandmaster Simon Rhee, one of the greatest martial artists on planet Earth, took me under his wing, and did what most instructors would have never done, which is believe in me and push me to try and actually get a black belt in 90 days. And we were talking about politeness. I think martial arts has taught me all of that. When you bow to the mat before you step on, when you, "Yes, sir," "Yes, ma'am," everything, it might sound gimmicky to someone fr- on the outside, but it does become a practice and an automation and a way of life. And that's something I'm really proud of as a now black belt, and grateful for it. I, w- I would pay to do that again. And in fact, I am, because we're doing a sequel. So I am paying to do it again.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs] Trying to qualify for nationals this year with Master Rhee. So I'm, I'm very excited about it. I would recommend it to anybody. The other one I was gonna say that I would pay to do again for the experience I had ultimately, not when I was going through it, is the Houdini challenge.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
So for that, I had six weeks to learn how to hold my breath and pick locks to attempt Houdini's water torture cell-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- MKMichelle Khare
... which famously is hanging upside down in a glass box filled to the brim with water, escaping a series of lock picks with one breath of air. And that, I would say, is probably among the most physically challenging-
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm sure
- MKMichelle Khare
... challenges I've done. Free diving, breath holding is a level of athleticism that is so bizarre to me because when you're in a workout class and it gets hard, they say, "Keep breathing." This is the one time you can't do that. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
You're, you're holding your breath, so I was having to learn how to push through that. Ultimately, I got to 3:30, and most Navy SEALs is, like, two, three minutes is pretty good. Houdini's was, best time was also 3:30. But on the production side, it was a really fascinating challenge because it was the first time we creatively designed our own obstacle and solution. So in the beginning, we spent months trying to connect with other magicians on Earth who own a water torture cell. There are not many.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- 2:44:24 – 2:49:00
Episodes Michelle would pay to skip.
- TFTim Ferriss
Next question. So this one you may not want to answer-
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... 'cause I understand, [laughs] I would understand why. I have a little bit more freedom in answering this for myself.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, so I can also go first and buy some time.
- MKMichelle Khare
Challenge Accepted, let's hear it. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. So which one would you pay not to do again?
- MKMichelle Khare
Oh, gosh.
- TFTim Ferriss
One or two. And, and the one I would say for me-
- MKMichelle Khare
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... just to offer it up, is, and holy shit did, did I make a mistake, this was episode one of The Tim Ferriss Experiment in terms of filming.
- MKMichelle Khare
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
And we, keep in mind, we had, I think it was 11 or 13 episodes or 10-
- MKMichelle Khare
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... or 13 episodes that we filmed in that number of weeks. So I mean, it was every week we were filming.
- MKMichelle Khare
As a viewer, I never realized that it was 13 consecutive weeks.
- TFTim Ferriss
It was consecutive weeks.
- MKMichelle Khare
That's crazy.
- TFTim Ferriss
And the first one was parkour, and there were a couple of inherent problems with that. Number one, even if you tried to prepare your body for it, the impact of falling onto hard surfaces is very hard to train your body for, even over the course of, say, a year-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... with proper technique because of the The connective tissue adaptations and sort of ligament and tendon adaptations that need to take place, which require quite a bit of time. Secondly, the promise of the show was I haven't cheated, right? So it's like I can't pre-prepare for it-
- MKMichelle Khare
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... if I'm showing what it's like to start from zero. And I am still contending with the injuries from that week-
- MKMichelle Khare
No way
- TFTim Ferriss
... to this day.
- MKMichelle Khare
Wow.
- TFTim Ferriss
You know, thir- 12, 13 years later
- MKMichelle Khare
You guys shot that at Tempest, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- MKMichelle Khare
Tempest?
Episode duration: 3:03:31
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Transcript of episode fmpWGD1OxDo
