13 Timeless Business Lessons Learned from Tim Ferriss

This article was originally published on Just Go Grind July 17th, 2019.

Tim Ferriss is a marketing genius, author of 5 best-selling books, podcaster, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He built a successful blog with over 1 million monthly visitors, a podcast with more than 400 million downloads, and has helped thousands of people through his content.

I first heard about Tim Ferriss in 2011 when I read his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, and preceded to have my life and thinking altered for good. I’ve since met Tim in person, bought all of his books, and generally believe he’s one of the smartest marketers on the planet.

Tim also has built a community so strong that there is even a phrase called “The Tim Ferriss Effect” for his ability to sell the products he recommends.

After years of consuming Tim’s content, I wanted to curate a few of his best business lessons and share them with you to apply them in your own work. Selfishly, I also want them all in one place so I can easily be reminded of them too. What can I say, this desire helped me write this post. You’re welcome.

Let’s dig in.

(The audio version of this blog post which I recorded for the Just Go Grind Podcast is below if you’d like to listen instead)

Test Everything

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Tim Ferriss over the years it’s to test everything. Tim is known as a human guinea pig for all of his various experiments and, when it comes to marketing, he’s no different.

When thinking of a title for his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, he tested different options with Google Adwords to see which would get the highest click through rate then chose the book title based on that.

Furthermore, in preparation for the promotion of the book, Tim interviewed best-selling authors to find out what were the top activities he could do to make the book a success and decided to eliminate book tours and book signings completely. Instead, he tested a new strategy for promoting the book – focusing insanely on building relationships with bloggers and getting them to write about the book.

The Tim Ferriss Show, his podcast with more than 400 million downloads, was itself an experiment after he was burnt out from writing The 4-Hour Chef. Tim enjoyed being interviewed on other podcasts and decided to test the show with 6 episodes to see if he liked the experience. Well, it the podcast blew up, in a good way, and is today one of the top business podcasts on all of Apple Podcasts.

Finally, in an interview on ProBlogger, Tim mentioned:

“I don’t claim to have all of the answers, of course. Not even most of them, but I’m a pretty good “reductionist”. That just means that I question what everyone is doing and ask myself: if I ignore what’s popular, what everyone says you “have to do,” what actually works? I cut out all the fat and look at just the highest-impact variables.”

When marketing your business, you can’t assume you already have the answers – test all of your assumptions. You may find your customers aren’t who you thought, a certain ad works better than another, or a particular feature of your product is actually preferred by more people.

Use the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is another name for the Pareto Principle, which basically says that 80% of outputs come from 20% of the inputs. The original example was based in Italy where the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that about 80% of the land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population.

This 80/20 rule, as Tim Ferriss shows, can be applied to all areas of life and business. Tim mentioned in The 4-Hour Workweek using this rule to find the 20% of his customers that caused 80% of his stress while running his supplement company.

Furthermore, this 80/20 rule can be used to find the 20% of customers that are driving 80% of the revenue in your business.

With wide applications across various areas of life, this 80/20 rule is one of those timeless tools that can be used again and again.

Pursue Less Crowded Channels

To build buzz for The 4-Hour Workweek Tim made connecting with bloggers a top priority. How did he reach so many top bloggers? Through a less crowded channel – meeting them in-person.

What’s the crowded alternative? Email. These top bloggers and online business owners get 100s of emails per day, but meeting them in person presents an opportunity to cut through the noise.

I’ll attest to this strategy as I used it repeatedly to land guests for the Just Go Grind Podcast. I’d connect with guest speakers at USC repeatedly and landed multiple other guests by attending the Startup Grind Global Conference in San Francisco. This was how I was able to get Rand Fishkin, Erik Huberman, Candice Lu, and others on the show.

With your business, how can you leverage less-crowded channels to acquire more customers or form better relationships with other influencers in your space?

Great Products Creates Long-Term Word-of-Mouth

You can’t beat having a great product combined with great marketing. Many people do one or the other, thinking their amazing product will sell itself or that their excellent marketing skills will make up for a crappy product, but having both is the goal.

In an article in the Huffington Post Tim wrote:

“Clever marketing and PR stunts can get customers… but only for so long. It’s the product that will create long-term word-of-mouth and the groundswell needed for a global phenomenon.”

Which is exactly what happened with The 4-Hour Workweek. It became a global phenomenon because of how great the actual book was.

Learn From Experts Then Optimize

There are experts in every field, how can you learn from them to shorten your growth path?

In this article Tim outlines it:

“Before I began writing 4HWW (I sold it before I wrote it, which I explain here), I cold-contacted and interviewed close to a dozen best-writing authors about their writing processes, followed by close to a dozen best-selling authors about their marketing and PR campaigns.”

Regardless of what type of business you want to start or the level of experience you have in your field, there are people who have probably done what you’re trying to do next. Reach out to them and see if you might be able to shorten your learning curve.

Just remember, these people are often busy and prioritizing other tasks – be respectful of their time and don’t ask for too much.

Not-to-do Lists

Similar to the 80/20 rule, a not-to-do list is a tool to help you focus on the right things in your business and life.

Tim wrote about this in a blog post more than a decade ago and he’s talked about it repeatedly since.

What are a few of the not-to-dos Tim mentioned? Here are some of my favorites from his blog post:

Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night
Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time
Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers
Do not work more to fix overwhelm — prioritize

There are a million things we can do in our business in life, but which ones should we really not be doing? This takes creating not-to-do lists combined with ruthless prioritization.

Overdeliver

In every aspect of his business, Tim Ferriss over-delivers. He writes in-depth blog posts and publishes extensive guests posts on a variety of interesting topics. Below are 11 examples:

On his podcast he interviews world-class performers which include Neil Gaiman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, LeBron James, Ray Dalio, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edward Norton, Tony Robbins, Maria Sharapova, Jamie Foxx, Maria Popova, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Amanda Palmer, Malcolm Gladwell, Vince Vaughn, Rick Rubin, Reid Hoffman, Jon Favreau, Whitney Cummings, Mike Shinoda and many more.

Furthermore, with advertisements on his podcast he consistently over-delivers for sponsors by underselling downloads, often giving them way more exposure than they pay for. Check out this article for a real-world example.

Always think about how you can overdeliver in your business.

Play the Long Game

The Tim Ferriss Effect I mentioned earlier was built from Tim playing the long game, investing in relationships for the long-term, and creating evergreen content that would stand the test of time.

This has paid off tremendously over the course of his career and it’s the perfect lesson for how you should approach building your business.

Many of the guests Tim has on his podcast are people he’s known for years. Considering he makes thousands of dollars per episode in podcast sponsorships, these relationships have paid off monetarily, not to mention the other benefits I’m sure these have had for Tim and his business. Tim has a world-class network which has helped him tremendously in business and you don’t build this overnight.

The content strategy Tim has used, relying heavily on his incredible blog with evergreen content, helps people discover Tim through blog posts he’s written years ago. This allows Tim to multiply his writing efforts. He can create one amazing piece of content and promote it over and over again while people also find it organically through search engines.

Furthermore, with relationship building, Tim Ferriss has developed these relationships through guest posts on his website, podcast interviews, and sharing amazing resources from people he knows. Through this process he not only develops relationships with those people, he also becomes a trusted source for recommendations, allowing him to grow his business further.

Understand All Your Different Customers

In your business, you might think your only customers are the people you sell your products and services to. Not exactly.

Tim Ferriss mentioned in his article about creating a bestseller:

“Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution. I then learned that a mention from an A-list blogger might sell thrice as much on Amazon as a national TV appearance, but the latter is what drives book chains to purchase more books and give better placement.”

This process essentially involves reverse-engineering what it actually takes to make a sale. From that diagnosis, you’ll discover who your customers are and develop the right strategy based on your findings.

Create a Movement

Tim Ferriss created a business by creating a movement. Tim introduced the world to Lifestyle Design and the concept of Ideal Lifestyle Costing.

This idea has since spread like wildfire and is a masterclass on branding. Tim Ferriss now owns this space and by creating a new category he was able to stand out as a blogger and author early on.

Other people have done similar with different ideas:

Simon Sinek with his idea of Start With Why
Brené Brown with Vulnerability
Eric Ries with The Lean Startup

Creating a movement for your business can seem overwhelming. Another way of applying this lesson is to think of creating a niche for your business or owning a category. Find an area of the industry you’re in that you can dominate. When you become known for something, the go-to resource, people will recommend you and think of you when they have a problem you can solve.

Master the Soft-Sell

Want to minimize the risk of annoying your audience and potential customers? Learn the art of the soft-sell. While not a new concept, Tim Ferriss has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to use this with great success.

In the guest post on Tim’s blog from Charlie Hoehn about the marketing of The 4-Hour Body, Charlie shares the posts that were published on Tim’s blog between the announcement of the book and it’s launch date:

The New Book Unveiled: The 4-Hour Body (Sept. 29)
Zen, Tea, and the Art of Life Management (Oct. 5)
How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (Oct. 8)
Have a Good Eye for Ads? Try the 4-Hour Body Experiment (Oct. 13)
The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne (Oct. 19)
How Tim Ferriss Makes Money (and Other Things) (Oct. 28)
20 Things I’ve Learned from Traveling Around The World for Three Years (Oct. 30)
How to Email Virtual Assistants: Proven Templates (Nov. 2)
8 Exotic Destinations You Can Afford (Nov. 4)
4-Hour Body Promo – Half-Naked Girls, Erections, and Stickers (Nov. 17)
Clinton’s “Reality Distortion Field” Charisma (Nov. 21)
How to Become a Model Photographer in Brazil (Nov. 25)
Engineering a “Muse”: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Nov. 28)
The 4-Hour Body – Official Movie Trailer (Dec. 1)
The 4-Hour Body – Sample Chapter and Full Table of Contents (Dec. 6)
The Land Rush: 48 Hours to Claim $4,000,000 in Prizes (Dec. 9)
Engineering a “Muse” – Volume 2: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Dec. 11)
The 4-Hour Body is NOW OUT – Live Q&A Today, New Trailer, Free Books, and Much More (Dec. 14)

These blog posts provide a great insight into how Tim has mastered the soft-sell, with the bolded titles being related to The 4-Hour Body and the others driving traffic to his website.

Sure, there is a time for the hard sell, but the soft-sell can be such a valuable tool when used appropriately.

Leverage Bonuses in a Product Launch

This isn’t necessarily anything new, but the depth to which Tim Ferriss has gone to offer bonuses in product launches is a great lesson on how to truly leverage this strategy.

For The 4-Hour Body, Tim offered more than $4,000,000 worth of bonus prizes. FOUR MILLION DOLLARS WORTH!

Want to check out all the bonuses? I know you do. Click here to see them all.

Tim was able to negotiate these bonuses because of the relationships he built over the years, going back to the lesson of playing the long game and the value of building relationships.

How can you leverage bonuses on the launch of your product? Offer free software, physical products, or experiences to entice people to purchase. Oh, and be creative. There’s no limit to what you could offer.

Pay Attention to the Decreases

From an interview with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger Tim mentioned:

“I pay more attention to decreases in subscribers than increases. There are too many variables that could account for increases, and the easily identified reasons (a link from a prominent blogger) are often outside your control, and thus hard to repeat. Unsubscribes, on the other hand — defection — is due to one of two things, in my opinion, TOO MANY POSTS or POOR CONTENT. Whenever I get a dip, I look at the characteristics of the post — How was the headline different? How long was it? Did it have too many photos? Was it too about me without how-to information?

Paying attention to unsubscribes has allowed me to avoid problem posts and build my base not just quickly, but faster and faster.”

This is all about creating products and resources people love – over and over again. Getting feedback helps you do just that.

The idea of 1,000 true fans, written by Kevin Kelly, comes to mind here as well. The overarching takeaway being that you only need 1,000 people to be diehard supporters of you to make a living. You create these 1,000 true fans by, you guessed it, creating things people love.

Your Turn…

What business lessons from Tim Ferriss would you add? Leave a comment below and let me know!