Kelly Slater — The Surfing Legend on Routine, Favorite Books, and Setbacks | The Tim Ferriss Show

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

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It's drinkLMT.com/Tim for this exclusive offer using promo code TIM's Club. One more time, drink LMT element. So drinkLMT.com/Tim and promo code TIM's Club. Check it out. Well, hello boys and girls, ladies and gyrms. This is Tim Ferriss. I'll keep this intro short as Kelly Slater. Many people will know that name. Kelly is widely considered the greatest surfer of all time. He holds nearly every major record in the sport, including 11 world titles and 55 career victories. He also has the amazing distinction of being both the youngest and oldest world champion in men's history. His most dominant days were in the mid-90s when he won five straight titles between 1993 and 1998. After topping Mark Richards' previous record of four straight titles, Kelly tried his hand at retirement in 1999. He failed. He then rejoined the tour full-time in 2002. Suppose he sensed that he had many, many good years left. And over the following five years faced his toughest rival in Hawaii's Andy Irons, who got the better of him for three straight years. Repeated battles became the most compelling in the sports history, propelling it to new heights. Kelly finally reclaimed the title in 2005 and repeated in 2006 and of course went on to gather many more titles. Slater, that is Kelly Slater of course, will also be remembered for the amazing wave pole technology that he and his team of engineers at Kelly Slater, Waveco, brought to life in 2015. The technology has the potential to reshape the serving landscape for generations. And you have to see video to really quite grasp and grok what that means, but I encourage you to do so. You can find him online at kellyslader.com and on Instagram and Facebook @kellyslader. And without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Kelly Slater.

Personal Journey And Inspirations

Detox baths (07:03)

Kelly, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks Tim. I appreciate you making the time. And speaking of time, I want to just sort of set the table for people. So you and I are on opposite sides of the planet in a sense. And I wanted to start with something that came up when we were texting because I know in scheduling this, I am in Texas. You're currently in Australia. And so the choice was do we do crack of dawn your time or really late at night? We ended up doing late at night. It's late your time. And you texted about taking a two-hour bath. I actually do take a lot of baths just because it's kind of an easy way to just let your body detox, not water. And I did, you know, for about the last two months, I haven't been working out or really even surfing very much. So this past week I started working out again and kind of built up a lot of the lactic acid in the muscles. I was working out with a friend of mine who's like a brother, Tom Carroll, who was two-time world champ back in the early 80s. And I was a fellow surfer, lives right up the street here from where I'm standing. And we spent a lot of time together with years surfing and training together. But did a work out the other day. And I've been surfing the last couple of days. Yesterday's surf pretty hard. And the day before that I surfed a bunch. And so, you know, those muscles are just getting kind of worked again that I don't usually sit and let the litharjic side of me build up too much, especially this time of year. I'm surfing almost every day, usually. Let's talk about, we touched on the bats for a second.

Journalism school didn't teach you THIS! (08:35)

And we can't believe everything we read on the internet. But I did see, if we're looking at morning routines, I did see that in an interview with Hockberry, it seems that you start a lot of your mornings with a glass of warm water with lemon. Is that true or is that not true? It is. Yeah. Just to get a little warmth going in the body, loosen up. But obviously, lemon is really good for you. It's alkalizing, even though it's an acid, it's alkalizing in the body. And it's got a lot of minerals and some vitamins. And just a nice clean way to kind of wake your system up. And to me, it feels better than putting something heavy in my body. Do you drink coffee? I do a little bit, but I'm 100% not like a coffee addict. I don't know really what good coffee is. I kind of like to smell a coffee more than I like the taste of it. Has that always been the case with coffee or was there a period I drank? No, I've never been a coffee drinker. I intentionally have really kind of stayed away from coffee. I feel like I drink at a little bit now just to be ready for it. But this one time I went to, this is the reason I really don't drink coffee. I went to France and we spend sort of a two months prior to going to France to compete on West Coast time and Tahitian time. And those are the events prior to going over to Europe. We get to Europe and we compete within like a day or two of getting there. And it's nine hour time difference going east. And that's the hardest thing. When you fly east, I don't care if it's from West Coast to east coast. Just even three hours of stuff to get back on track. But when I fly over to Europe, it's really hard for me. It takes me almost a month to feel like I get into like a morning routine. And I was going for a world title in the early 2000s over there. And I drank a coffee one morning to wake up and I got the jitter so bad. I fell off on every wave. I caught in this heat. It was a really crucial heat for me to try and win. And if I win that heat, it was pretty much a shoe in for the world title that year. And I did everything possible to lose that heat and somehow won it. But it was good I drank a big coffee in the morning. He didn't have any food. So it really kind of scared me away from coffee.

A favorite failure of Kelly's, and what it motivated him to change (10:48)

Now, this might be, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I had asked you for, and I appreciate you contributing to my last book, Treva Mentors. And the question was, how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? And you mentioned I narrowly lost a world title in surfing in 2003 after basically having a locked it up the month prior. And then you went on to talk about how it felt terrible, but drove you to clear up a lot of things. Was that the same competition or a different competition? No, it was a different competition. Could you speak to that loss in 2003? Things were on it, just how that came to be and what it drove you to do afterwards. You had to bring that up, huh, Tim? I did, you know. I just dehumanize the immortal superhuman Kelly Slater, you know. Figure good. No, I'm kidding. Actually, I do look back at that. I mean, obviously there's no world title that is sitting in your hands. It slips through that you're not upset about on some level. But if I could go back and change anything, I really don't think I would because it was a real very clear indication of where things were going wrong for me. And also to sort of charge the battery back up, make me dig deeper and competitively speaking and skill set speaking with my surfing and motivation, all these things. It was just kind of a reset for me. It was rebooting the software in my brain in a lot of ways. And those were tough lessons. I lost that world title to Andy Irons. And I was in a relationship that was just wrong. I literally didn't sleep the night before that competition in a fight with my then girlfriend, literally the whole night. He was fighting with my mom. It was just a nightmare. Sounds terrible. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible. I woke up in the, I didn't even wake up the next morning. I didn't sleep. Maybe I got 30 minutes, 40 minutes of sleep at night. I walked out of my house the next morning, walked behind the house. And I saw two friends of mine and I believe my little brother was a two. And I just started bawling. I just broke down. Like, everything felt wrong. And I was, you know, I knew in my heart I was going to lose a world title that day. And if you're in the right frame of mind, I think as a competitor, if you lose, it hurts. But you know, it's not life. It's just a loss. But that was deeper because I had all these other things that it was such a clear indicator that I was off in a lot of different areas. And I had some work to do. And those things are painful sometimes. And, you know, it wasn't one of those days.

How long did it take Kelly to climb out of a dark year following a loss? (13:21)

Did you find that that loss took you a while to climb out of? Or was it waking up the morning after and immediately deciding on changes that you were going to make? Could you just perhaps describe what the days or weeks were like following that? It definitely wasn't the next day. It was, I would say it was the next year. Maybe about a year. It took me about a year to sort of, you know, get my act together and straighten a lot of things out. I remember going into the next year. My father died no too. And then I'm pretty sure it was his birthday the following year that I lost the world title, actually, on his birthday. I was still a little bit down in the dumps about that. And the loss hurts so bad that I kind of just went into my shell for most of the next year, competitively speaking. And at the start of 2005, I remember we went to our opening, sort of the end of the year, beginning of the year, banquet, and where they crowned the world title officially. But they also start the year. And I remember walking out of there. And at that point, Andy Irens had won 2002, three, and four. And I remember walking out as we were leaving and I saw Joel Parkinson, who was, you know, also a world title contender. And I just said to him, I said, "Who's it going to be this year, me or you?" One of us got to take this guy out. And I remember in that moment, just feeling like, "I'm ready. You know, I'm not scared to lose." And I really felt like I could be Joel and would be Joel. And I felt very confident that, you know, with no fear and just going out and feeling it that I would be Andy. So that year was a huge turnaround. And Andy and I had a lot of head-to-heads. The rivalry really peaked that year. You know, like he won a contest in Japan. And then I won a contest in South Africa. And then he won a contest. And I won a contest. We were going back and forth. And I was thriving in it. It was exciting me. You know, I just thought in my head, you know, I've already lost to this guy before. It's not going to hurt any worse this time. So I might as well put everything into what I can. And I just took a totally different headspace than 2004 when I just kind of shied away from the whole thing. And then it just all just fell in my lap really. And it all just, everything just kind of lined right up. And it was almost unbelievable because it felt like the Matrix kind of thing where you just see it playing out. Even if you make a mistake, it plays out in your favor somehow. And that whole year, that whole year went that way for me.

The 2003 "self-course correction" (15:53)

What did your self-talk or prep look like that particular year when you're seeing the Matrix unfolding, saying some of the more important competitions? How did it differ from years before, if at all? I don't think it differed necessarily. I think it got back into the groove. You know, I think I felt out of that confident place and out of that, you know, when you're getting a flow and you get into zone, you don't question it. And if you start to question it, you kind of, you know, you start to fall out of it. But then you get to a place where you're really, you know, I feel like if you're really mastering that feeling and that place for yourself, that you can kind of step back and watch it also and even get stronger. You kind of embolden yourself into that. So I felt like my surfing was there, my competing was there. I felt unstoppable and I just built on that confidence and I never questioned it. You know, I knew it wasn't going to be easy to be Andy because, you know, I really did have this light and dark, good and evil kind of love, hate, all that kind of rivalry between us. And, you know, we're very different kinds of people, but we also identified with each other a lot. And Andy grew up watching me and saying I was kind of like his inspiration. And then when he became my rival, he said he hated me and wanted me to die, you know. So it was like, it felt real personal. Like he just, he had made no bones about it. He was like the first person I ever competed with it. I felt was really on that level and just said, you know, he just goes, I want to just smash all his dreams and he would say that in interviews and stuff. It's intense. You got to step up to that or, you know, step away. Yeah, it was the first time I ever felt someone that way in my face before. And in the end, it was, I think it was really good for me, but it was, it was tough at time. If we look at 2003, if you're willing to go into it, one of the things that popped out, because I think that the wins and we're going to talk about obviously a lot of the successes people are aware of a lot of the successes, but how you have maintained and honed your skills with such longevity, I think, is one of the more impressive things.

Alcoholism and Shaun's reluctant trajectory (17:37)

And so I like to talk about the bumps along the way. And in 2003, coming back to that, you mentioned your dad died in '02. I was reading an outside magazine interview and I'll just read this and then I'd love to hear you speak to what it means. But losing his father paved the way for what Slater described as an expanded awareness. Then while taking early season break in 2003 between events in Australia, has adopted second home, a close friend challenged him to lead his family's emotional recovery, not be victimized by it. So penetrating in Slater with his friends' encouragement and rolled in a series of local therapeutic workshops that helped him identify troublesome behavior patterns and emotional sand traps. Now, there's a little bit of context we need to fill in here, but could you speak to, I guess, a bit of your childhood for those who don't have any context? And then what happened in 2003, if what I read, is any way to lead into it? You know, my childhood, I think, as for most kids, it feels normal. You know, like what you know, it seems like the normal thing. But looking back now, my dad was drinking a lot. My mom, it really made her crazy. And when you have alcoholism or gambling or whatever you have in your family, if you have some kind of big issue like that in your family, everyone else kind of falls in line. Like some people are enablers, some people are mediators, some people are become aggressive, some become, you react to it different ways. And it kind of creates this sort of maze and puzzle that all sort of makes sense in that environment, but there's a lot of unhealthy survival skills and that kind of thing. Right. You know, but there were other families that were worse off than mine, that were friends of mine, you know. So it didn't seem that outlandish or anything, but my mom probably harbored us from a lot of the stuff and we didn't know maybe, you know, some of the things that were happening, like kids shouldn't. You know, a lot of my feelings are, a lot of my memories are pretty good, you know.

Identifying flaws in the protective shell of our family environment. (19:46)

I don't feel like I grew up in like any kind of a physical abuse situation like some people have or whatever, but getting on with it, I also didn't learn a lot of skills that helped me evolve and mature emotionally at a young age. So I was at times really shy when I was younger and my teenage years. For me, I was a strange mix of, I knew I had talent. So like, you know, surf-wise, it was kind of a place for me to show that, but at the same time with people or with media, that kind of thing, I was really kind of shy to the point where I didn't like to take pictures in front of people because it embarrassed me and that kind of thing. You know, I didn't like signing autographs because I just felt silly. I actually remember my first autograph when I was 10 years old. How'd that go? My mom worked at this little cafe on the beach that we grew up surfing in front of called the Islander Hut and the owner's wife. I won this contest at East Coast Championships and when I got home, she was like, "Oh my gosh, you're going to be a famous surfer one day. You're going to be a professional or whatever." She's like, "You won this big competition. You need to sign something for me." And I was so embarrassed, took me like a half an hour to sign this piece of paper. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to sign an autograph. I remember 15, 20 minutes later, she's like, "You got that autograph from you yet?" I'm like, "I don't even know what that means." Fast forwarding to the context of taking... There's a book I read as a kid that was adult children of alcohol, or something like that. And I read that probably when I was like in my early 20s and I was experiencing a lot of... I was going through a breakup. And as you do, you get really emotional during breakups and experiencing a lot of things. You want to evolve. You want to learn and grow quickly in this situation so you can maybe save the relationship or not blow it by making stupid mistakes. It should be natural to get right. So at that age, I started identifying like, "Oh, there's some weird stuff going down on my family. There's some really unhealthy dynamics around money and around communication." All those sort of things. And as I got older, because I did really well, obviously I started winning world titles and making money in some ways. A lot of the family pressure or focus was around me. And I think if someone stands out as doing something extraordinary in a family, that's kind of natural. So my godson, he's 13. I have two godson's and one of them is 13. And he's a really good surfer. And his dad's one of my oldest best friends. And I heard him say on the other day on an interview, he said, "The thing about when you have a kid, he has two kids." And he said something about when you have a kid who's doing really well or something, it takes so much time up for the rest of the family. And so much of the focus of the family might be around that one person as opposed to equally amongst everybody. And it made me, just in the past weeks, as I heard that, it made me think about that a lot because I haven't older brother Sean. And I think as we got into teenage years, that was probably kind of funny for him that I started doing so well and he didn't keep on that same trajectory as when we were kids. I think it was tough for him. I know it was tough for him. He recently said something to me to the effect that he wished he wasn't a pro surfer. He wished he had done something else at that time, which was really sad for me to hear because we grew up just loving surfing so much. And it created a life for us. It created all our travel and friendships and all these memories around the world and work. And it just became everything. And as a lot of the pressure, I think was on me, I bought a house when I was 17 and I was paying for a lot of things for everybody and that kind of thing. So there's a certain control that happens for someone in that position. And it needs to be handled with care and it might need some help. And we didn't have that help or understanding. And so all of us I think suffered through that time. So in 2003, if we're going to fast forward to then, when my friend said that to me, my friend Trevor, he said, maybe you're the one who needs to sort of handle this because you're aware of it, all the problems that are going on, their family and there's things you can see about your mom's struggle that you could help and your brother and blah, blah, things with your daughter. And I really kind of resented that because in some ways I took on a fatherly role in my family, but I was the middle child. And I think I kind of longed to be put back in that place of like, I'm the middle child. I'm not the oldest. You're my mom, you're my older brother, you're my dad. I'm probably getting ahead of myself here because some of these conversations haven't fully been aired out, but there's just a dynamic that happens and I'm not placing blame on anyone for those, but just trying to objectively look and understand because I'm still growing through this stuff and wanting to understand it from all perspectives. I did become like a mediator in my family. I was scared for my parents to break up as a kid and I just imagined in my head, I think I lived in this dreamland where everyone got along and it was a movie and it was a happy ending. And that's not always the case. The happy ending comes when all the lessons are learned usually. So when I was confronted with the fact that I might need to be the person to kind of help mend a lot of these issues in the family, I resented that because I was longing for someone else to do it and I wouldn't have to do the work and I wouldn't have to come up with those answers. It's easier if it's not you.

Trevor Hendy. (25:48)

Why did Trevor say that to you? What was it about that point in time or the surrounding conversation or background that led him to say that to you? Well, because Trevor, he was one of my best friends or still is on a deep level, but we just don't spend a lot of time together these days. We've been kind of off in different directions, but Trevor was like a six-time Iron Man champion in Australia and he'd been through a lot of the emotional and financial and stardom, if you will, pitfalls that can happen. He on his own level, he had had a lot of stuff happen to him and he was able to get through it. He had, I wouldn't say anything that he hasn't stated publicly or whatever, but he went through divorce and money problems and all sorts of things. He was able to eventually work it out and he got married again. His current wife and his ex-wife were best of friends. All the kids get along. He really has a happy, healthy situation coming out of some things that were not so pretty at the time. I think he saw that with me. He saw that I was learning quickly.

Life course work (27:05)

We were doing these courses together and he was helping me a lot. I was able to talk about things that I couldn't talk about with anyone else before in my life. I think it wasn't so much a challenge to me as it was, "Hey, I see something special here that can make you feel good." I think he could fix these things up and it'll make every other aspect of your life better and more coherent and happy. It's one of those things. What type of courses were they? Were there any particular things that you found helpful or that stuck with you? They were personal exercise courses, maybe metaphysical, if you will. I don't know, just when you spend a lot of time with other people and do these processes of being a listener or being the person who has problems or overseeing those things and doing these little exercises and then just talking about your feelings. Just simple stuff, really simple stuff. In the course, they ask you to not really talk about it too much outside of it, but we would just do these exercises. Then afterwards, you talk about how you feel and you relate those feelings to the rest of your life and the way that you as a person approach and experience life. You just look at all your filters. It's just an experiential kind of exercise. I started realizing that even in the simplest things that you do every day, the way you wake up and think about them and approach them is how you approach life. Everything's a metaphor of another thing. The filters and stories that we might not even be aware of. You mentioned metaphysics and we don't have to get super metaphysical here, but I think metaphor and... We'll just get quantum physical. We'll just get quantum physical here for 20 minutes. Hold on to your panties, everybody. There were two books that you mentioned in tribe of mentors. I'd be curious to know when either or both of them came into your life just in terms of influence and sort of shaping your thinking. The first is actually the second one you mentioned, but the Prophet by Khalil Jibran, which I also have. That's a beautiful little book. It's a great book. Why don't we start there and then we'll get to the second one.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (29:19)

But how did that enter your life? God, that's so weird. He just brought that up. One of my best friends is named Khalil. I met him about eight years ago, seven or eight years ago. He just becomes such a big part of my life. He's an extra addict who was nearly dead and homeless and penniless. He got himself together and now he's more or less a health food addict and owns a bunch of smoothie stores in LA called Sun Life Organics. He's just really like this guy's his success story in his life. But the book, and I'd never known a Khalil before, but I just flashed on that because my mom gave me that book, the Prophet. And I think I want to say I was in my early 20s. She'd be late teens to early 20s and she gave me this book. And I don't know how she knew about it. It was, I don't know. It just seemed like an extraordinary book. To me, it became my Bible because I felt like I could read a little piece of it that would hold me over for a month, maybe one or two pages. Totally. Yeah, you might just open to some aspect of life that you're questioning or whatever. And you read, they say all the great things are simple things. And that book really kind of is a cliff nose to life in a simple way. But I just felt it really was a really inspiring book. And it didn't take a lot of effort to get something from it. Yeah, it's a very, this book found me in a very tumultuous period of my life. And I ended up reading, like you mentioned, one or two very short chapters, two pages perhaps each day. And it had the effect of taking what could seem like an overwhelmingly complex world and distilling it down to something simple that you could reflect on and use for the next few days. The second book, I'll bring it up, is one with a longer title.

The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity by Daniel Reid (31:12)

And that is the Tower of Health, Sex and Longevity by Daniel Reid. Ari, I did. Could you speak to this book and same idea of how it came into your life and what you take from it, what are some of the takeaways or impacts in your life? Yeah, I started reading that book in the early 2000s, maybe 2003, '45, somewhere in there. And I just found a lot of this. Well, if I were to rewind a little bit in the late '90s, I started to learn a lot about the Gracies, Jiu Jitsu. I didn't start practicing, but I was reading a lot about them and reading about Hickson, who I later became friends with. And they talk about a diet, a food combining diet, where you don't mix proteins and carbs together in meals. And you don't mix fruits with either, and you could have greens with sort of anything. That's essentially what food combining is. I had read a book in around '96 or '97 called Fit for Life', which was kind of the same thing. I think I'd been inspired by the Gracies to read that. And then I don't remember who gave me the "Dow of Health" section of longevity, but I started reading that and got really, really into the diet aspect of it, getting into the food combining thing and started following it kind of religiously. I think I read it in '98 originally, and I kept it with me for about 10 years, is what it was. And in '98 I was traveling with Shane Dorian, that's whose son is my god son, and Shane and I were traveling around the tour together that year. And I became kind of like the chef for both of us. He just told me what to eat because he knew I was super into diet. And so we got really into our diets. And I felt like he was helping me be a guinea pig to see if this thing worked. And I found myself sleeping like six hours a night and feeling like I was totally rested. My body just felt much more relaxed and energetic. And you know, there's other things in the book that we're helpful to. There's a lot of breathing techniques that I tried to incorporate myself, didn't really do them practicing with anyone else. And it gets into all sorts of things around, you know, obviously it's the title of sexuality too. So it dives into all that kind of thing too. But like they just using everything in your life in a healthy way. And I don't know, it's one of those books I just, I had to travel with it for years. I just would always keep it. It was like just in case I need to read something, I'll have it with me, you know, it was always in the bottom of my bag for a long time. And I try to recommend that book literally at this point to tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions even after this, it'll be millions for sure. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

DRY FARM WINES SPONSORSHIP (34:04)

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Comparisons And Predictions In Sports

The similarities and differences between Laird and Rorion (Hickson) Gracie. (35:54)

You mentioned a name that I'd love to come back to and that's Hix and Gracie so I know quite a lot about Hixen. I've only met him in person once very briefly so that he wouldn't, I don't think he would remember me, but he has now that I think about it an incredible physical practice that in some ways if I had to guess share some similarities with your physical practice. I remember long ago watching a documentary largely about Hixen called Choke, which was about, I believe, his initial competition in pride, the early iterations of pride and watching his yogic practices, his abdominal work, his breathing, cold exposure, etc. How would you say the two of you are most similar or different? What similarities and differences do you see? It's so funny because you remember years ago everyone was doing that ice bucket challenge. You pour some cold water on your head and that's like a big thing. Right. I remember it back watching Choke and that was before I knew Hixen and watching him go into like basically if ice cold temperature water in Japan and training for these fights, just getting his mind strong and physically, mentally, emotionally, totally prepared for war and his breathing techniques are just out of this world. Wim Hof is the guy who's famous for his breathing stuff, but Hixen was doing that 25 years ago or more. I had heard that Hixen could move every muscle in his body independent of any other muscle. He had such control. For people who don't know Jiu Jitsu, the gracies are learning Jiu Jitsu by the time they're two years old in that family. You know kids wrestle, all boys wrestle, but they were wrestling at a young age, tiny kids with technique and learning the skills and learning how not to hurt each other. It was as natural as breathing or anything for them. I always had real admiration from afar for Hixen before meeting him and then we became friends. I'm not quite sure the first time I met him. I met him at Rington surfing. I think it was the early 2000s or late 90s. Met him one day in the car park and then a few years later, a couple years later, I got invited over to this house to go do a private session with him and taught me and my friend Travis and Jiu Jitsu. Then I kind of think he gave me a few one-on-one sessions and I sort of sponsored him for surf boards and would pay for his surf boards and like an informal kind of, you know, he scratched my back, I scratched yours, but I always had this huge admiration for him and I was just really, you know, happy to know him and get to pick his brain sometimes. But in about 2008, I saw him one day, he came to the surf board factory where I was who I was sponsored by and we were up in Santa Barbara and he goes, he's like, "You know man, I think you should stop now. I think you should quit." And I said, "Why?" And he goes, "You know, you're going to give all these young guys a chance to beat you and you're not going to be as sharp, you're going to lose your desire, you're going to get a complacent, you know, and then guys who shouldn't beat you are going to beat you and when you look back, you're going to be upset about it." And about three years later, I saw him and I had one, two or three more world titles in that time. And I said, "You know, if I listened to you, I wouldn't have this many. You know, if I listened to you, I would only have eight and now I got eleven." And he's like, "Oh man, you're right, you're right."

When should an athlete retire? (39:26)

And there is always that question for athletes like, "When do you stop and what's the right time?" And you go out at the peak or shortly after it. And you know, it's a weird thing because it depends on your purpose, you know. It depends on what message you're sending and that message can change too. And I feel like mine has, but that message, that doesn't have to be so centered around your ego, it can be an evolution. And people who say, "Guys, people need to go out on top." Why? So I mean, yeah, that's great too. But obviously, if you're at the top of your game, you're still beating people. You're still beating everyone. And passing the torch sometimes is, you know, somebody's got to take you out. And you know, that can be a respectable and respectful way too. And I've always kind of welcomed that in my later years here on tour, I've sort of welcomed like, "I want to see the level, be what my mind imagined when I was 15, 20 years old, not somewhere behind me." You know, I wanted to just keep going and I want to be part of that evolution to push that. And you know, at 48 years old, I know nobody takes me lightly in a heat when they compete against me. And you know, I think that's an honor in itself. You know, the best guys in the world are still worried when they get in the heat with me. And I'm not dumb though. I know where my level is. You know, there's certain times that I can be the best guy and there's other times where I got to work on it. Or you know, or I'm not right there. But if you're enjoying it and you love it and it's your passion and it is surfing is a different thing. And I kind of like, what would I compare it to? Strangely enough, golf. They're both sports you can do till you're old. You know, you can do way up and late into your life. You're not going to be doing that with football and baseball or basketball so much. You know, not hardcore anyways. I'm going to ask you about the evolution of surfing in a moment.

What Joe learned from Rickson Gracie outside of combat sports they both love (41:30)

But I want to come back to Hixen just for another minute. And that is what were some of the things you learned from Hixen or that most impressed you. You were mentioned picking his brain about things. Is there anything that you picked up from him or that really astonished you about him? You mentioned that individual muscle control and I had referenced the abdominal exercises which kind of makes it sound like crunches. But what I'm talking about is what you saw and you probably remember this in choke where he's in this freezing cold river, snow everywhere. And he's also moving independently as he breathes his abdomen where it looks like his guts are just moving in every possible direction like an octopus under his skin. That's one of the strangest things I've ever seen. But what are some of the things that you picked up from Hixen, if anything, or took note of? Funny enough, probably one of the simplest things is the first thing that swings to mind and that is efficiency. Because anytime he's given me a Jiu Jitsu lesson, he's given me a few privates and he did the same thing for my little brother one day with me. And it was all about efficiency of movement. You know, he said, "Look, I can fight a guy. I'm like 170 or whatever, 175. He's like, I can fight a guy who's 250 pounds and I'm stronger than him." Not because I have more strength but because I understand leverage, I understand how the body moves and the efficiency of trapping someone's joint and using leverage instead of just energy, instead of just wasting my energy and using strength. I'm using superior method and technique. One thing I really have always respected about Hixen is how disciplined he was, especially seeing that footage of him, knowing that the level he got to with his breathing and his stomach, his muscle movements and his mastery of Jiu Jitsu and his art. The amount of time it took to get there. And he obviously had something special. You know, he had a certain way to look at it that no one else did. And that's why he was the greatest. So it's taking all the best techniques, all aspects, you know, from diet to breathing to understanding his body, understanding his opponents and what they're good and bad at and using all that. It becomes an equation that you, you know, when you get to the highest levels, you don't think of the equation. It just, you understand that. You know the answer. And so you just trust that and use it. And so in the simplicity, there's a mastery. And I think that's what I've picked up from the times I've spent around Hixen.

What Joe thinks the future of surfing looks like (44:05)

I promise I would come back to the evolution of surfing. Where do you think the evolution of surfing might be going? Is there anything that would be inconceivable for most people today to imagine that you think is coming down the pike? Where do you think things are going? I've said to a few people in the last few years, last five or ten years that I would hate to be a young surfer right now. Because the levels you got to go to, whether it's going to be just competing, like just small wave performance and technique, or it's going to, if you're going to be a big wave guy, like the stuff guys are doing now is so crazy that young kids who have any fear of big waves right now must be just like having no understanding of what they can do to get to that level. These are regularly surfing 60, 70, 80 foot waves. And you need to do a lot of preparing for that ahead of time. A lot of putting yourself in unsafe, not unsafe, unfamiliar territory, pool work, underwater work, breathing, breath holds, water safety classes. They have these classes called big wave rescue, there's an acronym for it, BWRAG. Anyways, it's all about big waves and practicing all the water safety. So there's these courses, you know, they're really good for young guys to go to. Actually they'd be good for it. They could translate to anybody, even people who don't surf, you know, but they're kind of built specifically for like being able to become full and big, gnarly situations and also go save people in the middle of the surf. And I'll link to that in the show notes for folks. Yeah, all aspects of water safety. And it's really like a passion played by the surfers who do it. You know, everyone's kind of looking out for each other. And you know, I've had a number of friends drown and not make it. I've had a number of friends drown and be saved. And a lot of those, most of those who were saved were because all these kind of techniques that everyone's been learning from divers and lifeguards and all sorts of water safety people. In fact, there's one friend of mine who drowned and was saved. And then about, I don't know, a couple of years later, he actually did CPR on another friend of ours who drowned and saved him. So there's a real tight fraternity community in the surf world, especially in the big wave world. And you know, guys are looking out for each other because they know it's a life and death thing all the time.

Can technology bridge the skill gap? (46:36)

And if you look at the evolution, just size wise, performance wise, technique wise, over the last say five to 10 years, I mean, as it seems to be mirrored in many other places like MMA, there's this almost exponential curve that seems to be persisting. And I'd be curious to know what you think things might look like in say five years time. And you've been part of course of innovating with technology, right? The calculator wave company producing the longest man made high performance open barrel waves. I remember the actual videos making the circles and just blowing people's minds. What do you think the state of the art training will look like for people who do want to hone their skill given how intimidating it can be now if they want to compete as an example? What do you think it might look like five years from now? I kind of wonder, you know, I think this last five years was really a fast evolution in wave pool technology, man made wave technologies. I think it might, I don't know if it's going to speed up or slow down right now. I feel like it's going to slow down a little bit because there's a number of different technologies. And now it's about perfecting them, just innovating on what is already there and then having surfers ride them and give feedback to what else they would like to see. But there's quite a lot of good waves being made by machines at this time. I want to say three distinct different technologies with different kinds of waves. Five years from now, I just expect there will be more of these made. You know, there's probably six or eight around the world that have become sort of destinations for people to go ride. There's one in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. There was two in Texas now there's one, but I think the other one is going to be rebuilt. There's one going in, at least one going into Florida, if not two. There's one in England, there's one in us down in Melbourne, Australia, and I think another being built on the Gold Coast right now. And then potentially we're building one on the Sunshine Coast as well. So five years from now, I don't think there's going to be a time where surfers are completely stumped for waves. You're always going to have somewhere within your access. You can go get a wave on any given day. The wave full on us, that they have in Australia right now is down in Melbourne. And I was talking to a friend recently and he goes, "Oh yeah, like a bunch of my buddies have gotten a flight from Byron Bay, flown all the way to Melbourne in the morning, surf two sessions at the pool and get home by dark or get home just for late dinner." And that's a two hour flight each way. And he said, "They're happy to do it again next month or in two months or whatever." So these things are becoming destinations for people. It's just like a supplement to your surfing, just like a vitamin who would be to your diet. It's just another way to get your fix of getting in the water and getting something done.

Off-The-Lip 2.0. (49:30)

But now you see people advancing, evolving, they're surfing a lot quicker. And that's going to be the case. That's going to be the thing. Like my god, son, Jackson, I'll probably just keep talking about him, but he's 13. And he's one of the best area lists of his age in the world, if not the best at his age in the world right now. And he's really only been surfing about four years. And I've grown men all the time just going, "Oh my god, how's Jackson? He's unbelievable." You know, people watch his edits and see the things he's doing. But he's spent a lot of time in these different life pools already, practicing the errors over and over again. And Shane was saying how he's like, "Man, the first time I went, it was crazy to see Jackson's evolution over the course of like two days or three days. And how much better he got in that amount of time." Because there's a real crossover now between skate and surf. So you see all the guys who are really good at errors, I would say 90% of them, anyways, are good skaters. And so they understand the rotations and the grabs and that kind of thing. And when we were kids, we didn't really have access to skate parks and ramps and stuff. And now there's a skate park in every city. Almost all these guys have a bunch of friends who are great skaters or pro skaters or even someone in their family. You know, it's a great skater. So there's a real solid crossover there.

Surfing Advancements And Body Care

How wave pools are leveling up surfing. (50:46)

It's just more access, more time on the mat, you know? Yeah, it also seems like with the wave pools, at least I recall a friend of mine joking that surfing, he's very good surfers, said surfing should really be called paddling because you're spending a lot of your time paddling. And it would just seem that with a wave pool, I feel free to chime in. But he said, with a wave pool, it seems like you get a density of repetitions of surfing that is difficult or impossible to replicate elsewhere, just in terms of number of reps per hour, in that sense. I heard you made a sound. How would you respond to that? No, totally. I mean, because in the ocean, you might search all my years. I've thought about certain waves that look good for a certain maneuver. And I might go and surf that wave once every few years. And it might have that section I'm looking for only once every couple times I go there. And I might get that wave, you know, even less frequent than that. So the point is that the sections we need with the right speed and size and all that thing to do certain maneuvers is so rare to find in the ocean. And now we can start to design those into man-made waves. So that if you ever have that situation in the ocean, it's not unfamiliar. You can master that before you ever take it to the ocean. So then you go out in the ocean, you go into competition or whatever, and you've got something in your back pocket that nobody else has or that you're not unfamiliar with. If you were, say, 20 years old and had the level of surfing that you had when you were 20, what, if that were today, what advice might you give yourself about the learning process? It doesn't have to relate to technology. But is there any advice you'd give your 20-year-old self about honing the craft, improving the learning process? Gosh, I mean, I would probably just say go skate a lot.

The evolution of off-the-lip maneuvers. (52:43)

Go skate, go skateboard, go skateboard because you can go carve and you can do airs. And those are the two things you need in surfing. You need to really understand and differentiate the two. You're either in surfing, most guys are either a power surfer or an air maneuver trick surfer. And it's almost rare to see somebody who's really great at both. We're starting to get more and more. There's like John, John, Florence, and there's Gabriel Medina, and there's Jordi Smith. And there's quite a few guys now, but when I was on tour and when I got on tour, I would say there's nobody. And as I was on tour, there were very few over the years that were good at all those different aspects. I mean, my mind almost draws a blank until just this modern era now who have been able to understand there's a real difference in the approach of doing those maneuvers, the base of power surfing where you're just carving up and the air stuff where you kind of have to be more horizontal and lateral and stay over your board unless you're doing grabs. And then, you know, when you start doing grabs and rotations and inverting stuff, then the air thing goes to a little different level. And you have to be schooled in some other skill set, you know, like skating or gym, you know, gym work if you're going to go work with a gymnast, specifically with a gymnast who understands flips and rotate and spinning and that kind of stuff and landing back on your feet. If you're really going to dive into it all, you can't discount your diet. You can't discount body work. You can't discount doing yoga or Pilates and staying supple, getting some extra strength and bone density, but not getting too big from using weights. So there's always this kind of balance for surfing. You don't want to be a giant strong dude, but you don't want to be a little weakling either. You just kind of need this nice balance and blend between all those things. You mentioned body work. This seems to be an important component of, I suppose, just physical practice for you or regeneration. There are a million and one different types of body work. How do you use body work? What are the types that you have ended up focusing on for yourself, if any? I've gone through most everyone you can imagine from Shia Tzu, Thai Massage, Swedish deep tissue, biasing. I mean, all sorts of different, you know, I've tried everything, all the chiropractics and osteopaths and all that kind of stuff. But in general, I do need a little bit of adjusting some chiropractics because I have a scoliosis, I have a pretty big curve in my back. And from that, my muscles get really imbalanced. So I kind of need a blend. I mean, my neck will go out and my lower back will go out. So I need to get adjusted and kind of put that back. I sometimes throw a rib out. It sounds painful. Yeah. It's a little different than breaking rib.

If I were 20 years old and with today's surfing technology, what would Ido? (55:35)

It's just more annoying. You can still kind of surf through the adrenaline, but there's annoying. The way I usually do it, it kind of pinches something in my neck. So I can't turn to the left. I feel like Zoolander. I can't turn left.

On skill vs. luck. (55:53)

I really like Thai massage because it's deep. It's almost like lazy man's yoga, you know, in a way. You know, I've been disciplined for many years. I've been, I've spent over 30 years being pretty disciplined with my body and what I put into it. And, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I've been doing that. I'm never too obsessive about any one thing. I'll go through like binge periods where I'm really obsessive about my diet, but I don't love to work out. So I like to kind of consistently get some body work. I like to surf enough because surfing is fun. You know, I just love to surf. So it keeps me fit. And if I surf enough, I'm at a level that's pretty good for my cardio and for my strength. But I generally always need a little bit of extras. You know, I should spend more time stretching, especially my hips and my hamstrings. If you can picture a surfer paddling, we got our back arch the whole time. So I can actually bend backwards. Amazing. I can put my feet on my head and that kind of thing. But bending forward, I'm stiffer because I spend my whole life with my shoulders back and my back arched. You know, blend for me is just if I feel like something's out, if my back goes out or something like I got to get adjusted, let it relax, gets in anti-inflammatories once in a while because the stress around contest, if your body's out of whack is annoying too. And then, yeah, just get that body work.

Thai massage, Ashiatsu, and the importance of body work. (57:19)

Get those muscles worked out that are imbalanced. You know, if you're a little too tight there and a little too weak there, the ones that are built up too much, you got to kind of like stretch out. And just for folks who don't know, time aside, I'll do my best to do a quick description and then please add anything that we're missing. So you described it as lazy man's yoga. A lot of it is done on a mat. People will often stretch you. This is the one form of massage I've explored quite a bit and use pressure, right? The feet, lots of, you might use blood stops, lots of walking. And also traction, I mean, depending on the style. So it's a really comprehensive system. I've also found time massage extremely helpful. How often do you get, how often do you have body work done? Well, I'd like to get something done every week. But you know, sometimes I get it a couple times a week. If I'm in one place and I got somebody I like to work with, I'll go two or three times in a week sometimes and then I might not go for a month once in a while. If I'm competing, though, I like to try to get some at least once a week. It's a week. If I'm at the contest, sorry to jump in there. If I'm at a contest, we usually have massage therapists there. So each day I'll get a little bit of something during contest days. Just a few more questions, Kelly. I know it's late. What time is it over there at the moment? It's got to be on the late side. Oh, I don't know. 130. Oh my God. 130 A. Hey, we're partying, man. We're partying. Yeah. This is another surprise. And the Kelly Stohari is your history as a night owl, which is pretty astonishing. At least was unexpected for me. But just a few more questions for you. This is one on behalf of a friend of mine who is... If you haven't ever met him, I'd actually love for you guys to meet at some point. But his name is Josh Waitskin. I don't think he'd mind being named. He was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher. So he was considered a chess prodigy as a kid. He hates that word prodigy, but nonetheless, very, very, very successful chess player. And then was a world champion in Tai Chi Push hands, the first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, who's sort of the Michael Jordan of grappling. Oh, wow. He's one of my all-time favorites. Yeah. So Josh co-founded a school with him in New York. And now he is spending his time on the water. And this is his new passion. And he's fascinated by all water sports. And I'd love to, and this is a question that he posed, ask you about foiling. What is your opinion of foiling or e-foiling as a supplement or adjunct to surfing or otherwise? That's my add-on. But really what he was wondering is does it connect or not connect to surfing in your mind? Well, the best guys in the world are surfers. So yeah, it connects. When I was a little kid, there used to be this sort of slogan, "Coco Beach, the small wave world, and a small wave capital of the world," for whatever reason. It was like a big emphasis of surfing in Coco Beach. And it was probably a slogan from Ron John Surfshop or something.

Foiling what is it? Will it take over the world? (01:00:24)

But somehow it became known as a small wave capital. And then in the last 20, 30 years, Coco Beach is not on the surfing radar at all. No one comes to Coco Beach to go surfing from anywhere else in the world. They do from Orlando. And they might from down South Florida. But it's not like a destination from people from other places in the world. You're going to go to Hawaii or Indo or Tahiti or France, for that matter, Portugal. But with the foiling thing, so for people who don't know foiling, just go on YouTube. It's like a surfboard on a hydrofoil. So you don't have the resistance of the board on the water. Yeah, you're riding under the water. And you're riding like it's probably the closest thing you can imagine to flying but being in the water. Just think of all the America's Cup boats now, the ones that lift off. Or those ferries, the super high speed ferries that live right in a foil and all the energy, all the weight lifts up off the water. So there's just so little resistance and the bigger the foil, the more the more lift you have. So the faster you're going, the less foil size you need. I can't really speak to it because I'm a complete cooke and novice. I've done it like three times. I've done the efoil once. And I think the efoil is a little goofy. I'm just going to throw it out there. I think it's really good for learning. It's kind of training wheels for foiling in my eyes. You do it to kind of get the feel of being lifting up off the water and not relying on your board edges and stuff to create the turns. And it's foiling is a little counterintuitive. When we surf, when you lean into a rail and do a turn, you're pushing all your energy and weight down into that rail and you're getting a lift back from that rail. When you foil, when you push on one side, wherever you put your force, it lifts back against you in a way that kind of throws the board the opposite way you think it might. So if I'm surfing and I lean my right rail down in the water, that rail goes down. Of course, I'm getting a push back against it. But in foiling, when you lean to the right, if you lean to the right and then put your energy down to the right, the foil kicks the board back up against you and you kind of fold in half. So when you lean right, you almost got to put equal amount of pressure on the left at the same time. It's hard to explain because I am section of this. So there's a little bit of counterintuitive. It's almost like if you're riding a bike and you're turning right, you have to turn the steering wheel left a little bit to go right. It's the weirdest sensation. But it's so cool looking like the amount of speed you can get. And what I was saying about Florida being like Kogo Beach being the smaller capital world, I'm just starting to think that Florida might be a good destination again for people that want to go foiling because we have these really shallow offshore shoals off of Cape Canaveral. Basically, we're a NASA space center is. And my friends have been getting like mile long rides out there. You can just catch these open ocean swells and they don't break and you just, you can go so fast back and forth on the things. And it's so cool looking. It's completely silent. And there's just no wake and I don't know. It looks like nothing else in the world. I kind of want to get into it, but I'm scared once I do, it's going to mess my surfing up. So I'm kind of waiting. I was telling you, I was working with Tom Carroll the other day and Tom foils almost every morning. And he says, as soon as I'm done foiling, I got to get back on a surfboard. So I don't forget that feeling or else my surfing goes downhill. It is a beautiful and eerie visual to see foiling. If people haven't seen it, we'll put some links in the show notes, but it's very, it's unlike anything you've ever seen, particularly if you're not familiar with water sports at all. It just looks, it's kind of hard at first within the first few seconds to even compute what is happening. There's like, you're just getting a tiny wave. Yeah. Somebody came in on a tiny, little wave and they're going 20 miles an hour.

Favorite Moments And Anticipations

Kelly's all-time-favorite moments from years of surfing. (01:04:30)

Yeah, it's, you know, whatever, just flying. It's really wild. Just a few more questions then, and we'll break here. Are there any, any really great moments in the water that come to mind that we're not captured on camera? Any, obviously there's all of the practice and lots of sessions on the water, but does anything come to mind? Not that you regret that it wasn't captured on camera, but like a stand out moment for you that has just been kind of locked in the amber of your memory. I went on a trip down to Central America one time and there's this really great wave that was happening years ago. Funny enough, strangely enough, it got ruined by the 2011 tsunami, which wasn't huge when it hit there, but it was really powerful and small and it changed this break, in particular that we were surfing. But we went down there and I brought my friend to shoot like 1000 frames a second on a phantom camera like the best footage you could ever get at the time. And we shot the best day I've ever seen at this place. Like a day you get very few times in your life, maybe the best day I've ever had. And he filmed the whole thing and we flew from there to Haiti. And we got to Haiti and I said, "Hey, let me know when I can see that footage." And like the next day I'd call them and I said, "Have you looked at it yet?" And he's like, "Ah, there might be a problem with it or something, but I'll let you know later." And he's like, "I don't know, I just like, try to go through the hard drives and stuff." So I go down, I go and see him the next day and I said, "All right, well what's going on?" And he goes, "There's no footage." I go, "What do you mean there's no footage like you missed some waves?" I go, "No, there's no footage at all." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And he goes, "There's no footage." Like he goes, "I think when we were going out on the jet ski, something came loose from the hard drive to the camera and it just never even got one frame of footage." So we don't have any footage at all of that whole day. I was equally upset and thought it was funny. And actually in a way I'm kind of glad that it didn't happen because this place was so magical and I felt cheap filming it and showing it to the world. And it's renowned for people like dropping their cameras that have filmed good sessions. There's this mystique around this place and a whole bunch of people, my friends that have been down there filmed and stuff like my friends that lived down there. And they drop cameras in the water after a whole day of filming and somehow somebody raised the footage. All these things have happened. So the footage of this place has never really gotten out. And then the tsunami hit and ruined this anbar that had built up for who knows how long decades. So it's kind of funny, it sort of hit itself and although I wanted to see that footage, we didn't have it. Yeah, the Bermuda Triangle and then the beach was like enough of these people with their cameras. Let's change the landscape.

A few things on the horizon that Kelly is most excited about. (01:07:29)

What happened? Yeah, that's amazing. Kelly, last question. What are you most looking forward to in terms of goals for yourself? It doesn't have to be really disturbing, but really it could be of course. Over the next handful of years. Obviously, this period of time with the COVID thing has been a, I hope it's been a time of reflection for everybody. I think it's a time for all of us to sit back and think about our health, think about what's important, put some money away. I think about all the people who lost their jobs and who live on credit and who don't save her any day. And people are in far worse situations than that that don't have a roof over their head.

Personal growth (01:08:10)

I think it's one of those times to really think about kind of everything that's important in your life. And strangely enough, if you look at my YouTube feed, I would say half of the stuff that I watch is converting vans to a home. I have this sort of, after all these years of wanting to make money from when I was a kid so I could buy a house to then buying homes in different parts of the world. And now I'm sort of looking forward to either living on a boat one day or living in a van that I can just live anywhere. I'm making it kind of simple. The only problem is I have too many surfboards and too many golf clubs. You could have a caravan, you could have the first van be the home. Well, in too many countries I like to be in. But yeah, I think just taking some time after being on this whirlwind for 30 plus years, nearly 30 years on tour, but another 10 years on top of that chasing waves from when I was a young kid to just scaling it back to who I like to surf with and where what else I want to include in my life or take out of it. Just looking forward to enjoying the next 40 years of life and 50 years, 80 years. I don't know, how long can we live at that point? Yeah, looking forward to that. And more, I think more personal growth, surfing has become real crowded and you almost have to become spiritual to enjoy it sometimes because there's so many people in the water. So learning to enjoy what I have and to be able to share it, a kid that I surf with yesterday wrote me a message today online and he said, "Hey, I really want to be a pro surfer. I really want to get as good as I can and try to be a pro and make a career." And he's like, "Any advice?" And he's like, "Sorry for bugging you." And I was like, "No." It's probably strange how much I enjoy sharing all this stuff that I've learned with the younger guys if they want to ask me. I think maybe sometimes people are intimidated to ask me or don't think I want to talk about it or something, but I'm really happy to share any of those things I can with younger surfers who are hungry for it. I thought it was cool that he had the balls to just say, "Hey, can you help me out here?" I gave him a nice long rundown, do all these things, go all these places. Don't fake it, put your heart into it and give it your best try. If it works out, great, but there's a long road ahead to get to that point. I totally know how good this particular kid is. I saw a couple clips of him. And in all honesty, there's some work to do there, but somebody who has the desire and is willing to say, "Hey, this is what I want to do." All the best to those people, it sounds like somebody like that's willing to work and to be humble and when you're humble, you're teachable. You're able to learn. It's like even someone in my position who's, "I've won a lot of contests and all that stuff," and I still, a lot of times, I need to just sit back and be willing to learn and be humble and not think I know something or know it better than somebody. A lot of times, they say teaching is the best way to learn because going back to that theme we started with early on with that 2003 when I lost that world title, when you teach you mess up and you learn something from that. And you learn better and better how to understand and comprehend something and be able to share it with somebody, not from a place of righteousness, but a place of you lived it. Yeah.

Outro (01:12:10)

Well, we'll try to track down the comment and the where to go and what to do to put in the show notes. But Kelly, this has been great. I look forward to watching the next 50, 60, 80, 150 years depending on where medicine takes us. And really appreciate you taking the time. I know that you have lots of demands on your time, so I appreciate you carving out a bit of it for this conversation. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. And you can find show notes, links to everything at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, don't be right, just be open-minded. If you think you really understand something, try to go teach it to somebody who's an up and comer. Hey, guys. This is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off.

The ThreePoints campaign (01:12:57)

Number one, this is Phyble at Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Phyble at Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com. I'll spell it out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

LMNT - The best electrolyte drink on the planet! Try it for yourself. (01:13:54)

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Dr. Adam Grant: How to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities

Dr. Adam Grant: How to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities | Transcription

Kelly Slater — The Surfing Legend on Routine, Favorite Books, and Setbacks | The Tim Ferriss Show | Transcription