Less Hustle, More Art — Moving to a New Model

Tim Ferriss (0:00)

Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, my esteemed and lovely listeners. Short version, I'm getting rid of ads and sponsors for a six-month test, and the podcast will continue to be free, 100 percent free, nothing behind a paywall. And you can learn more about that and why at tim.blog/support.

That's tim.blog/support.

I'd really appreciate if you listen to this message in full. It's not going to be super long. So here is a little bit more. Thousands of you, fans, readers, listeners, have asked me over the years, how can I thank you? I want to thank you on Twitter and all sorts of other places. What can I do to thank you besides buy your books? And I've never had a product, I've never wanted to just come up with a product or a course or film the blank. Nonetheless, nearly 400 episodes with the podcast later, 400 million or so downloads, a thousand plus blog posts and so on. I've thought about this, and I've thought about it a lot recently because the sponsorship model, when I actually look at the calendar, it's great on a lot of levels, but it cuts into time and resources. I'm not learning very much. And it's an elegant model in some respects. I don't think advertising or sponsorship is evil, and I turn away 90 plus percent of my sponsor inquiries anyway, test everything, reject another 90% and only share the stuff I end up using personally. So I don't feel badly about that at all. I feel really good about it. But it chews up a ton of time and energy for me and my team, which I would rather spend on doing more experiments, doing more crazy pushing the envelope stuff that I can then report on and share with you. That is in my power zone, and it's why many of you ended up reading my books or listening to this podcast in the first place. So I'd rather do more of that, sort of less hustle, more art and experiment. So this seems to be, that is a fan supported model, the most direct way to fix this, and it's just the cleanest, most attractive way to go about it. I want to simplify, simplify, simplify, do more experiments, do really, really cool stuff. Like, for instance, you've seen me support studies for treatment resistant depression at Johns Hopkins and other places. I want to do more of that kind of thing. I want to do all sorts of wacky things that I can then report back on. And, look, if we try the fan support model for six months and it doesn't work, then we go back to sponsors because the podcast has really become the machine, the engine that feeds everything else. And I want to have a positive dent in the world and the fuel for a lot of that comes from the podcast. And what do you get for that? You don't get a beer cozy. I'm not going to mail you a bunch of garbage that you don't want. It's really if you just feel awesome about supporting what I want to do in the world and the experiments I want to conduct and the learnings I want to share and so on. That's it. So if my book, if the podcast, if anything, has had a significant impact on you or people you love in any way, just consider giving a few bucks a month to it. And you can find it at tim.blog/support. You can finish the entire process in less than two minutes. tim.blog/support. If it doesn't feel great to do, don't do it. You don't have to pay for it. It's always going to be free. It's never going to be behind a paywall. So don't sweat it. It should feel awesome. You should feel really good about doing it if you do it at all. And if you don't, don't do it. Really, you're just going to have an upgraded listener experience for the next six months without sponsors. And if this experiment fails, meaning the fan support and stuff, then we'll go back to the sponsorship model. Okay. Check it out. tim.blog/support. And it would really mean a lot. And it will also give me an opportunity to see how many diehards are there, how many people out there would actually want to support in this way. So I'm really curious. tim.blog/support. Thanks for checking it out. Love you.