Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with daredevil Michelle Khare. Michelle lives life to the extreme in Challenge Accepted, amassing more than 6 million followers and more than 1 billion views. Michelle hopes to prove that with enough dedication and failure, anything is possible. In 2025, Challenge Accepted made history successfully petitioning to join the Primetime Emmy® ballot. Michelle was named a TIME100 honoree for her impact as a creator and storyteller.
Michelle’s full bio
Books, people, tools, and resources mentioned in the interview
Legal conditions/copyright information
Daredevil Michelle Khare — How to Become a YouTube Superstar, Open Impossible Doors (FBI, Secret Service, etc.), Craft Jedi-Level Cold Emails, and Use Fear-Setting to Change Your Life
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Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Tim Ferriss: Michelle, at long last, here we are.
Michelle Khare: Here we are, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: So nice to meet you in person.
Michelle Khare: It’s so nice to meet you too. This is so exciting and surreal for me. So thank you for letting me infiltrate your podcast studio today.
Tim Ferriss: Absolutely, I am thrilled. It looks like about three years ago that I first put you and your channel in my newsletter, 5-Bullet Friday, and I think it was probably even before that, that one of our mutual friends, Adam Grant, had been telling me repeatedly, “You have to have Michelle on the show.” And the reason 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 this premise and did it right.” But since people probably have no idea what I’m talking about, although I would have already said something in the intro, what’s the logline, so to speak, for —
Michelle Khare: Of Challenge Accepted?
Tim Ferriss: Of Challenge Accepted. What is it?
Michelle Khare: 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.
Tim Ferriss: And you have more than six million followers, more than a billion views, and I’m going to read — you know what? We’ll probably just skip the intro because I’m basically getting into it anyway.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim 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 if you have a breakdown, 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.
Michelle Khare: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: So it’s not just the highlights, it’s also the low lights. And since we’re already getting into it, I’m just going to 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 Time100 honoree for her impact as a creator and storyteller.” Let’s rewind way back. We were chatting a little bit before we got started about Shreveport, Louisiana.
Michelle Khare: Oh, yes. Shout out Shreveport.
Tim Ferriss: And I mentioned I had been there and you were like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Michelle Khare: Yes, there’s not much there.
Tim 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? Well, I was just saying, if you want to hop into it, because I’ll, I 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. So what was your first exposure to “the business,” broadly speaking?
Michelle Khare: My very first exposure to the business was my dad is a big, big movie and television lover. He actually learned English after immigrating from India by watching films, even on the plane from India to America. And 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 very low-rated Rotten Tomatoes B-side movie, I saw everything. Kids’ movies, PG13 up, 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, so this was like the pinnacle of entertainment.
And so, just naturally, 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 Twilight knockoff movies, I think one of the Scary Movies was shot in Shreveport. And so our town experienced this little economic art renaissance, which was really exciting. And so, all of our friends and family members were becoming extras in movies and TV shows, and feeling very excited about all of that. And so, one of my first jobs was I had an internship on a movie starring The Rock, it was a movie called Snitch.
It came out in 2013. And 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 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. 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.
Tim Ferriss: Part of the reason I said I’m so glad somebody finally cracked this is, 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 just a suicide mission of a deadline, a 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.
Michelle Khare: Because you are self-testing all of these things.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. 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, if you want to be even halfway decent.
Michelle Khare: Yeah, I agree.
Tim Ferriss: 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 omnipowerful, omnipotent entity that controls all of these different aspects of, in most cases, distribution, but now Amazon Publishing was going to be competing with the big publishing houses for author talent, 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 of the big box retailers and much more.
So, the book basically, I don’t want to say it died on the vine because 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, right? 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 of these problems internally at Upwave, ultimately, that got shut down. There was a regime change, and then what happens? The catalog of episodes, if it succeeds, the new leadership’s not going to get any credit, and if it goes poorly, they’re going to get all the blame. So it just got locked up.
And it took me two years or three years to get back the rights and then “self-publish” on Apple, and it did very well at the time. But what you just said is so important, I want to underscore it for people. Because I’ve heard you discuss, and I want to 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 want to give them due credit. When you’ve had conversations — and I’m going to talk for a second, I apologize.
But when you’ve had conversations with some of these larger, let’s call it traditional outlets or platforms, 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 — fill in the blank, in their mind, excessively long period of time, could we compress it into a week?” And you have figured out very artfully how to have largely complete editorial control — there are some constraints, depending on how you want to go about it, with partners and sponsors 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.
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: And so I would be in compression pants and 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. 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, I want to hear about it. But there were two issues, right? There was the production side control 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 used podcasts to launch The 4-Hour Chef, and I thought to myself, you know what? I like RSS feeds. I like this idea of being able to do whatever I want, be myself.
If I want to curse, I can curse. Not that that’s ultimately — I suppose it can be an art form in and of itself, depending on where you grow up. And that’s how we ended up here today, right?
Michelle Khare: Just so I understand, you were human guinea pigging 4-Hour Chef and shooting Tim Ferriss Experiment at the same time?
Tim Ferriss: They were basically back to back, and there was probably some overlap. So I was doing pre-production while I was finishing The 4-Hour Chef because I’m a glutton for punishment.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: For people who haven’t seen that, it’s my first four-color book, it’s something like 600, 700 pages, cut down from like 1,000 probably. And the biggest difference, I’d say the absolute biggest difference between The 4-Hour Chef and the books that came before it, The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body, is that in the case of The 4-Hour Body, I did all of the experiments, then digested it all, combed through everything, and compiled the book. In the case of The 4-Hour Chef, I was still, because of the deadline, doing a lot of the experiments as I was already beginning to write the earlier sections of the book, which is a very risky gambit.
And then, on top of that, because I did not know — and I thought this was actually a good idea, although there were a lot of pitfalls. Because The 4-Hour Chef was a huge gamble, particularly from a distribution perspective, I expected I was going to get kneecapped in certain ways. And I was like, well, if this doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I still have the benefit of the doubt and the eyes of most people, and I can use the success of the prior book, and the blog at that time — remember blogs, people? To parlay that into the television. So, I was like, let me get the deal before The 4-Hour Chef fully comes out so that I have the leverage that might become a question mark once it’s published.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my gosh. Okay. So, for those of you, I feel like there are so few people in the world who can truly empathize with what you put yourself through. I’m thinking of Morgan Spurlock, the true pioneer of whatever it is we’re doing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, rest in peace, Morgan.
Michelle Khare: And rest in peace, my gosh. David Blaine is another that comes to mind. And I think what people don’t realize when they watch your content or even mine is that it’s not filmed in a vacuum. Life is happening. As you mentioned, you’re not just going to Japan to learn Yabusame for five days, you’re struggling with the jet lag, and then you’re also probably answering questions and emails about what next week’s episode is going to entail. And that is a level of professional athlete that is so unappreciated.
Tim Ferriss: Well, thank you.
Michelle Khare: I much empathize with that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I really appreciate that.
Michelle Khare: We were talking about decisions.
Tim Ferriss: Decisions, yeah. So, decisions, and then we’re going to go back chronologically.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: And thank you for saying all that. And I was also building initially the writing side of things based on, in some ways, models from, let’s call it experiential journalism who came before me. And there were quite a few. Usually it was done with some type of satirical or humor twist, like A.J. Jacobs would be a great example for people who don’t know, The Year of Living Biblically, I think, is an amazing, amazing book.
Michelle Khare: Incredible. I met him a couple months ago and I said, “You need to do that again and make it a YouTube video, it would bang.”
Tim Ferriss: He’s such a sweetheart. He is such a sweet guy. Morgan Spurlock, for people who might not have recognized the name immediately, Supersize Me, really a sort of a genre breaking, category redefining, experiment, and many more who came earlier from a writing perspective, but questions.
Tim Ferriss: So, what I would love to know, and this is going to get in the weeds a bit, guys, but we’re going to zoom out and get the genesis story as well. But part of what I’m so curious about is you have in some ways the dizziness of freedom, right? You have a paradox of choice challenge, where having complete lack of constraints can be almost as bad if you don’t have a framework for figuring it out as having too many constraints.
So, when you have things running concurrently, you might, as I understand it, be working on two or three challenges at the same time, right? You’re doing post-production for one, maybe you’re doing planning for another, and you’re in the middle of a third. First of all, how far in advance do you plan your editorial calendar?
Michelle Khare: The editorial calendar for Challenge Accepted can be anywhere from 12 to 15 months out from idea to upload. And an example of concurrent things happening would be, there was one day where I had to do astronaut training for a NASA episode. So, naturally, I began my day by going up in a fighter jet in the middle of nowhere in California, flying around, having no idea what I was getting myself into.
Tim Ferriss: Hope you took your Zofran.
Michelle Khare: Yeah. I threw up while —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. There we go. There we go.
Michelle Khare: I exited the plane, we finished filming that, I got in my car, drove three hours back to Los Angeles, and had a ballet lesson. I think that is just a good window into what one day of life is like, and often training for multiple things at once. But when you have a situation, and a privilege, honestly, of the gift of choice and getting to choose how you use your time, I like to maximize my output for each year, as far as, it really comes down to something that I learned early, which is the more milestone memories you experience, the longer life feels.
Tim Ferriss: For sure.
Michelle Khare: And I’ve realized that that goes hand in hand with my business. The more milestone memories I create and can capture and turn into stories, it actually is a better episode. It leads to more revenue, more opportunities. And so, I’ve merged those together. But it comes from, I am an athlete, I am a person who operates in an environment where you give me a coach, you give me a training plan, I’ll follow it. I’ll do exactly what you tell me to, and I really thrive in that environment. And being a business owner is such an oppositional to that, because now you are both the coach and the athlete at the same time. And so, what I’ve had to do is, and I’m stealing this term from one of my other friends, is put a Formula One team around myself.
A Formula One team, we love Max Verstappen, he’s an incredible driver, and he’s not able to do what he does without the support of all of the mechanics and engineers. So, what I have done at every step in my life is try to find who are the best people to put around myself to continually challenge me, whether it’s business, personal, relationships, content, story, and assembling that team is really important to me. Those are the people who help me decide, how do I spend each minute of a calendar day?
Tim Ferriss: We’re going to double click on a few things here and we’re going to go all over the place, folks, so —
Michelle Khare: Buckle up.
Tim Ferriss: Buckle up. Right. It’s not quite going to be the vomit comet for astronaut training.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Hopefully it’ll be a little —
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: It’ll be more like a tour through the countryside with lots of interesting sites and vistas. But a few things come to mind that I want to mention and then ask about. The first is that, and Colin and Samir made this point, you exemplify something that I hope continues to gain traction, which is a focus on quality over quantity.
Michelle Khare: Thank you.
Tim 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, you have to vlog 20 minutes every 12 hours, no matter what you do.
And you’re borrowing a lot of the best storytelling techniques and production quality of “traditional,” right? But also applying it to this 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. And when you’re publishing fewer videos, however, in a sense, not in all senses, but in some senses, you’re fighting the drive of the algorithm. And there are economic incentives that drive the frequency with which a lot of people publish.
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 because it’s been a minute since you spoke with them. But you can keep the lights on to some extent with AdSense, and the ad revenue from that, then you’ve got brand partners, right? And that’s part of the reason why it seems like it’s helpful to have an editorial calendar out for a period of time, right?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Because you can have some type of, I don’t want to 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 among other things. And I’d like to hear you talk about that. But when you’re going to break a mold and you’re trying to do something that people say can’t be done, like traditional TV on the internet or whatever it might be, you may have to find a new approach to financing what you want to do.
And so I’d love to hear you speak for just a moment about kind of what you have had to build and how you’ve had to think differently in order to do what you want to do. And then I do want to return to, and you can mention this in your answer if you want, but when you have certain episodes that take a day to film, right? Some that take a week, some that take six months, some that take a year to set up, how the hell do you create like a Gantt chart or whatever to actually do that? And my understanding is like production is one of your superpowers, right? So that is a very gigantic half page question.
But yeah, if you could speak to basically how you make it work.
Michelle Khare: How we make it work.
Tim Ferriss: Right. Because a lot of creators, I think, are succumbing to the culture of cortisol drive where they feel like they have to keep up, keep up, keep up often in terms of just frequency. And I think that’s a really dangerous game to play for a lot of reasons. Somebody else is always going to be able to sacrifice or be willing to sacrifice their entire lives to publish more frequently. So that can’t be your sole metric, right? So how do you do what you do? And how do you have to think differently, operate differently?
Michelle Khare: How do we operate differently? Our business is super antithetical to what most creators are doing. And I started in that place that you’re referring to, uploading multiple long form videos a week. I mean, I was uploading before TikTok existed, so it was all long form. Then of course, short form came along. But what happened at the beginning of my career was I was trying to grow my channel to create financial and personal stability. I had taken a big risk by leaving my job. And as a part of that, the first entry point was stability in some sense.
So I was making videos about anything I thought would perform well, and still with my own lens, of course. But I would have this strategy of, I’m going to do three videos a month for the studio, if you will, which is a term from traditional TV and film where a big director will do a big blockbuster movie and then the studio will allow them to do their passion project. So I would do that for myself where once a month I would do a passion project. And at the beginning of my channel, it was, I would DM stunt performers like Tom Holland’s stunt double, and asked them, “Would you train with me for a week? And can we make a video together?”
And it was cool because we were targeting communities that were undervalued and unseen often. I mean, many stunt performers aren’t allowed to share their work. And so giving them an opportunity to highlight their work was helpful to them and exciting for them and exciting for me selfishly, because I want to learn how to do all these incredible stunts and make an amazing story about it. And I saw a market opportunity because when you see BTS stuff from movies, it’s very —
Tim Ferriss: Behind the scenes.
Michelle Khare: Yeah, behind the scenes. My apologies.
When you see behind the scenes content from big Marvel movies, it’s very manicured and very short, and I really wanted to give space and breathability to this experimental process. And what ended up happening is those passion projects started outperforming the things I expected to just perform well. And it got to this point where I was limited resource wise, just like my own time even, of being able to do more of that passion thing. And I just decided, we decided as a team, we’re only going to focus on Challenge Accepted. Let’s just try that for a few months.
Tim Ferriss: And when did it get named Challenge Accepted?
Michelle Khare: It got named Challenge Accepted after Challenge Accepted existed. So when you go back and look at season one of Challenge Accepted, which is a while ago now, I think we went back and named it that because we’re like, “Oh, yeah, this was the beginning of this show,” which is so funny. But we were doing many things on the channel and we decided to strip away everything and only go in on that. And that is where a true inflection point came on the channel.
I would honestly say, Tim, you were asking earlier about key decisions, I think a lot of the inflection points of my life have happened when my back has been against the wall. Not in a place of “I get to make a decision,” but more like, “I have to make a decision because everything’s going to break if I don’t.” And this was a risky decision to make, to go all in on a show where I am physically committing myself for up to months at a time. At this point in 2026, 2025, we released eight to 10 episodes per year, that’s my upload cadence. And so every opportunity is a big bet. But what I have found is that when I did that, something even more special happened. It created something unique. And I have found that defining something unique can be even more valuable than consistency or mass viewership.
We’re very blessed that Challenge Accepted does get a lot of views and we feel strong about the bets that we make on these episodes. But, I have found that creating something special attracts even more people to want to support it. And so now what we ironically have on the channel is a scarcity mindset for advertisers that if you want to be in an episode of Challenge Accepted, there are 10. The train’s going. Are you getting on or are you getting off? Because we only have so much inventory to sell, we’re able to sell it at a premium, and it makes what we’re doing so one of one. And that’s always been my big thesis is whatever we do has to be one of one.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. A few things come to mind as you’re talking. One is the importance of owning or creating, even better yet, a category. So this category of one idea, Blue Ocean Strategy, I think, is a good — at least at the time I read it, which was a long time ago, 10 years ago, pretty good exploration of this. But separately, as I look at the landscape now, I’ve had a lot of people ask me about podcasting. “If you were to start now, what would you do?” And I could throw out sort of examples of what I might do, but just from a broader kind of meta level, I say, I think it would be very difficult for me to do now or start now what I started in 2014, which was kind of a broad exploration of deconstructing world-class performers in an interview format. Now there are 600 of those.
And if you want something that is sustainable, and this is not exactly the right way to frame it, but premium from a partnership perspective, from a CPM perspective, from a whatever perspective, the best examples that I would try to model are shows like yours. Although I’m not really — I’m kind of shy with video, so I probably wouldn’t do video first, but it would be a show like yours. I mean, if I were 20 right now, I’d be like, “That’s what I want to do.” If I could have a job, it would be Michelle’s job.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, honestly, it would be — but if you want to look at some other examples where I probably wouldn’t pursue it, but they’re doing excellent jobs. Acquired, for instance, Founders, David Senra, highly focused, long form, very hard to replicate because there’s so much God damn work, right?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Which is true with yours also. It’s like, “Oh, you want to spend six months making a video?”
Michelle Khare: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s see. It’s a lot easier to publish frequently without thinking as hard about the lead time of doing something that’s very complex.
Michelle Khare: Right. 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, people are copying constantly. And part of our defensive strategy was how do we do something that is so crazy? No one would be crazy enough, I don’t think, to run seven marathons on all seven continents 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 to recreate the Mission: Impossible stunt.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Michelle Khare: It’s almost like the things that feel so untouchable instantly become opportunities for story, because it’s a great story to try and overcome that. And also the second mover scenario will at least take them so long to catch up to us to get there.
Tim Ferriss: Right, because you’re going to be the comp. They’re going to say, “Oh, it’s like Challenge Accepted, but dot, dot, dot.” And that is going to be very difficult for other people to overcome. And I want to 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, if you solve a very hard problem upfront, it makes your life a little easier or a lot easier long term. And this applies everywhere.
There’s an amazing, amazing guy. You should meet him at some point. Jerzy Gregorek and his wife, Aniela Gregorek, they’re Polish emigres. They 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 while balancing on a board. He’s got to be at least 65 now.
His wife, Aniela, who also, as I mentioned, has a bunch of world records can — her daughter’s, I guess, ball got caught in a tree a few years ago and she just 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 that Jerzy has this expression, which is, “Hard choice is easy life. Easy choice is hard life.” And so it applies in physical training and health. It applies in creation, broadly speaking. It’s like with what you’re doing, you’re creating a moat that is very defensible in a lot of ways. It applies to startups 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 been lowered dramatically on the production of say an app, but the barrier to attention has never been higher.
Therefore, 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, 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. So I just wanted to mention that because 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 is at least one way that I think about it.
And you’ve talked about assembling this Formula One team, 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, how do you afford to hire the Formula One team? That sounds expensive.” So let’s go back a little bit. Before you became active on YouTube, what were you doing?
Michelle Khare: What was I doing?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: Gosh, so I grew up in Shreveport, got my first taste of the film industry there. I went to college at Dartmouth, and then while I was in college —
Tim Ferriss: Good school.
Michelle 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, 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, at the end of the summer, like many big internships, you find out if you get the job. You can go into your senior year of college like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m rocking. I got the job. I’m set. I can chill out the last year.”
And there was one day where they called everybody 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.” I get my phone call —
Tim Ferriss: Sounds stressful.
Michelle Khare: I didn’t get the job. And I would say that this was pivotal and ironic now that I’m so embedded in YouTube in a completely different way. But what it forced me to do was my whole life had been about, 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 while on the SAT. I will do them. I will wake up at five in the morning over the summer and memorize everything and do it.” Because that’s the formula to success.
Tim Ferriss: Executing to plan on the formula.
Michelle Khare: Exactly. And I think it’s part of the immigrant mentality of the holy trinity of doctoral lawyer engineer is because those are systems for safety. And also from my family, like with many immigrant families, they know so intimately what instability feels like. 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.
Tim Ferriss: What was the job that you had at BuzzFeed?
Michelle Khare: So I started as an intern again, And eventually I became a producer at BuzzFeed. And producer is such a strange term, even in traditional, but what it meant at BuzzFeed was doing everything. So I was responsible for everything from ideation to filming, editing, uploading, and I didn’t have any of those skills. Even though my homegrown Shreveport, Louisiana, shout out Vivek Khare, my dad putting on his little AFI film school in our house, it 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.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve seen that. You get yelled at.
Michelle Khare: And you do get yelled at, and there are great reasons for that. But the learning environment was so important for me to learn, when you ingest footage, you can accidentally delete it all. 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. 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 disruptive to the way you have the boompole set up? I like knowing all of the details and being able to think critically about each department so everyone can succeed.
Tim Ferriss: So this is going to be a leading question, but I’m going to try it anyway. Do you think it’s fair to say that if you had not had the BuzzFeed job and you’d gone straight from not getting the gig at Google to YouTube, that the outcome would have been very different?
Michelle Khare: Exponentially different. Yeah. I don’t think I would have succeeded.
Tim Ferriss: So I want to spend a second on this simply to say, because I get asked about starting companies all the time. And someone’s like, “I’m graduating and I’m going to start my company.” And 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 my default recommendation is do not start a company right after school. 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.
Michelle Khare: Exactly. It’s a little, paid graduate school.
Tim Ferriss: So that you are learning to learn, make all your dumb mistakes or make your first massive round of dumb mistakes on someone else’s dime. 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.
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: I’m curious if you think that still applies, for instance, in the world of, and I know this is painting with the broad brush, but YouTube. If somebody came to you and they said, “I want to get really good at…” The world has changed so quickly 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 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 going to 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?
Michelle 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, but also to define a core tenet list of what you enjoy about the company and all the little things you don’t like. When I left my job, I had a very clear list of, “This worked great for this company, but at my company, I’m never going to 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. Traditional Hollywood, they clearly did something right, 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 work environment where people can hopefully feel that they’re able to express themselves artistically, experiment, and learn at the same time.
Tim Ferriss: So I’m trying to figure out where to go next because I think it’s probably going to be fear-setting just because I want to hear how that factors into things. Why don’t we just go there because I’ve read about the whiteboard of fears 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. 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 anything in it? And that’s how we ultimately personally connected.
How does fear-setting fit into the story?
Michelle Khare: Well, well, Tim, it fits into the story in a few ways. Challenge Accepted at its core originally began by me taking a whiteboard and writing all of my fears out and then connecting each fear to a circumstance that would cause me to address it, not just as a personal self-help type of thing, because I am a very anxious person internally, but more specifically because it makes for a better story.
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 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, 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? Okay, I’ve got to do that first.
But I actually brought something, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: You brought something?
Michelle Khare: I brought something to help demonstrate fear-setting.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Michelle Khare: I’m going to bring it out now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, let’s do it.
Michelle Khare: I’ll describe it for the audio listeners.
Tim Ferriss: Oh. I recognize the colors.
Michelle Khare: This is not a plug. Unfortunately, you are dealing with a fan in the chair opposite from you, but reading The 4-Hour Workweek changed my life. This is the original copy I have from 2016. I was a bit young when it came out in 2007, so I didn’t have that version, so this might be slightly revised. But I went back into my archives and I found this email. The date is, what is today? March 31st, 2026. The date of this email — I’m not making this up. March 18th, 2016. It has been exactly 10 years since I sent this email.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. Okay.
Michelle Khare: I have to shout out my therapist, Jody, because she’s the one who told me to read your book. And I wanted to read a section of my fear-setting to you.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. Amazing.
Michelle Khare: Now, as you know, because these are your memories and your brain, this was prior to the define, prevent, repair chart of your 2017 TED Talk.
Tim Ferriss: TED Talk.
Michelle Khare: So this isn’t even in a chart. These are just a couple of questions that you had. But I wrote here, this is so crazy, “My dream is to leave my job, start a YouTube channel, somehow succeed, own my ideas, and start a company where I can grow as a storyteller and help other storytellers grow without traditional barriers to entry.”
Number one, define your nightmare. I’m just going to read a few of the highlights.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, please. Oh, yeah. No, take your time.
Michelle Khare: Define my nightmare was going broke. Never figuring out what I’m best at since I find the most joy in trying everything rather than specializing. People not thinking I’m funny. And the last one is actually not being funny. And of course, I went through the steps of repairing the damage.
Tim Ferriss: Well, do you have any examples there?
Michelle Khare: Yeah, of course.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Because, I want to give a quick —
Michelle Khare: Oh, do your spiel.
Tim Ferriss: No, no, not spiel. Just like a quick context trapper. 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 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 to test.
Michelle 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 my savings from my Google internship.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle 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. Number four. Oh, this is number three. If you were fired from your job today, how would you get things under financial control? And 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 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 in 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 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. It’s a very personal process.
Tim Ferriss: It is.
Michelle Khare: I know you and anyone listening who have actually done it can empathize with that. I’m a very emotional person, as you can see from my videos. It’s real. Anyways, I was so excited to share that with you.
Tim Ferriss: I’m so moved by you sharing that, and I really appreciate you bringing that.
Michelle Khare: Yeah, of course.
Tim Ferriss: And you fucking did it. Awesome. Right?
Michelle Khare: God, that’s crazy. Guys, it works. It actually works. Wait, I didn’t tell you the funniest part of this. Here was the funniest part. So this has obviously been on my bookshelf for 10 years at this point. And I am a copious, like you, hand writer, note taker. I beat up my books. I write in the margins and proof. I mean, you can see the wear and tear on this thing. But when I opened this, there was absolutely no annotation. And I was like, why is this? And I felt stumped on it. And it wasn’t until I found this email where it was revealed.
Okay, this is how I wrote to my therapist with the chart. OMG, all caps. I am obsessed with The 4-Hour Workweek, several exclamation points. I just got the book on Monday from my coworker and I’ve been reading it incessantly every night. Here’s my fear-setting exercise. I stole this book apparently. And I said, I called my therapist last night before the recording. I was like, “Who would I have borrowed this book from? I have no idea whose book is in my lap right now, but it’s been on my shelf for 10 years. Whoever it is, I’m so sorry.”
By the way, I did buy all of your other books, so I did contribute to that economy, but I have a stolen Tim Ferriss book.
Tim Ferriss: That’s amazing.
Michelle Khare: I can contribute to the cycle and donate it to a library or something, but —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. That is so good.
Michelle Khare: It’s so funny because the person from my job who let me borrow and steal this has no idea how much they impact me because I don’t even remember who it was. I mean, we were all in a bullpen with 30 desks. I probably just borrowed it from someone who sat next to me, but —
Tim Ferriss: So here’s a follow-up question on the fear-setting. And this isn’t a trick question because when people experience any ambitious or scary journey for themselves, often the same thing, it’s not a straightforward line-up into the right. It’s a bumpy path.
Michelle Khare: No.
Tim Ferriss: After doing that, when did you take action towards realizing the dream? And what was — it could have been a very small thing, I don’t know, but what was the kind of defining first step that kind of set you on the actual path to realizing what you laid out?
Michelle Khare: I took action pretty immediately, 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. And so I decided I’m going to train myself for the worst possible outcome.
Tim Ferriss: I love it. Yeah.
Michelle Khare: So I moved into a studio apartment with a roommate. I cut — financially stripped down. I mean, I didn’t have much anyways, but stripped as much as I could to simulate. If I’m truly failing at this and having to live in a Hollywood apartment with a bunch of roommates, I’m just going to get used to that. I’m going to get used to it right now. I’m going to cancel all of my memberships and figure out how to stay healthy with just myself, just myself 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 need to prove to myself 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 — it’s still a place of safety, of course, but I am in a situation where I think I can handle this. I got this.
LinkedIn is up-to-date, little resume is up-to-date. I am so ready. I have defined, prevent, and hopefully we don’t got to 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. All of that was ready to go.
And I knew what my first big project would be, the training with the stunt doubles. I had a shoot date ready. I had taken — I only had like three months of savings at that point, and I had allocated this is going to be for the dream project. My first risk on my channel, nothing will touch that. The rest is for operating daily life expenses. And I said, “I got three months to make this work.” And like you said, like we’ve been talking about, sometimes you got to put your back against a wall and go.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I love this. So this is, I feel like we were separated at birth. So a few things. I’ll say number one to try to, I’m not a paragon of self-awareness, but I will say that I, for different reasons, have a certain hypervigilance focus on safety and security, which might sound strange to people listening, 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 me accumulating injuries that maybe in retrospect shouldn’t have done, but broadly speaking, I’m always trying to mitigate risk, which underscores this entire fear-setting exercise, right? Because 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 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, but I wanted to have a head start so that I wasn’t beginning from scratch after quitting a job, right? So I did that. By the way, you’re simultaneously developing skills as you’re doing that and proving that you don’t need the crutch or the training wheels of your company to enable you to do those things, right?
So the moonlighting aspect, this is another thing that, at least in my mind, maybe conflicts with how some listeners might think about me, but there’s a difference between — I’d be curious to hear you speak to this. There’s a difference between putting your back against a wall. In other words, like highly pushing yourself to make a decision and like burning all the ships and burning all the bridges.
And the way I would frame the difference is when like a year to the day almost, right? You quit your job and you’re setting up this groundwork and you have some videos ready to go and you were in — where were you at the time? This was in —
Michelle Khare: In L.A.
Tim Ferriss: — in L.A. So you’ve got probably COBRA, right? You might have some residual healthcare after you quit. I’m not sure how it was set up benefit wise, but like in my company, I knew I had at least like a handful of months where I wasn’t going to have to pay for my own healthcare. And in that case, right, as you’re thinking about what could I do if this fails, right? If it doesn’t work out, what could I do? You’ve got your LinkedIn and resume ready to go, right?
And in my fear-setting, and for a lot of people, it’s like, well, I could get like a temp waitering job. I could bartend. I could sell a bunch of my furniture. I could sell my piece of shit used car and take public transport. I could whatever, right? Sleep on an air mattress in a friend’s room. So in a sense, you’ve proven to yourself that the permanent irreversible risk is actually low, right? While at the same time propelling yourself towards this defining decision, which is like taking the leap.
Michelle Khare: And I think the emotional stability of that decision is important. You want to be able to brainstorm, what should I do in the worst case scenario from a place of safety, which is what I had at the job still. So I was able to be creative about thinking about solutions without being panicked at the same time in that situation.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. What an amazing story. What fun. And it’s a recipe, right? It’s replicable. It’s going to be different for every person, but it is actually, it’s a formula that works, like a lot of things. And I want to also mention a few things that come to mind just to draw some parallels. So you mentioned BuzzFeed where you learn to do all of these different jobs, right?
And there’s a benefit to that above and beyond the expertise of say spot checking your team’s work or something like that. Your team will also respect you more because they know you have done the thing you are asking them to do, which you did kind of mention in passing, but it’s really important. I think of, I have some PTSD memories of this book, but The 4-Hour Chef, which confusingly is a book about accelerated learning, actually tried to do a lot with that book, but very proud of it.
I think it worked. But the reason I bring it up is there’s a chef who’s profiled in that named Grant Achatz who was basically one of two superheroes in a sense. I mean, they both have super powers, right? You had Grant Achatz, the chef wunderkind genius, and then you have Nick Kokonas, who I’ve become very close friends with, who is a former genius options trader in Chicago who then decides to get in touch with Grant. He’s magical at cold emailing, which I want to talk to you about, very good at cold emailing.
And they got together and Nick is from a business kind of challenging and redesigning of systems perspective, incredible. But the reason I bring it up is that Grant can work every station in the restaurant better than everybody else, which is not to say automatically that I or you can do that with all of our team members, but he’s, at the very least, incredibly good at each of the stations so that he can when need be, improve systems, change things.
He can also teach and coach. He can give feedback. And if he gives feedback, people take it seriously because they know he’s done it himself and he knows what he’s talking about, right? So there’s a huge advantage to that and it makes your mistakes, later, less expensive, also, and it allows you to hire more effectively, whether that hiring is a contractor or full-time. Okay. I just wrote this down and I have to mention it because basically I’m like living vicariously through you now —
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: — in a sense because your channel’s like, “Oh, my God.” If I could have sort of self-authored a path to doing that, like, oh, man, what an amazing thing.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my gosh. Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: I know there’s a lot under the hood and behind the scenes that I’m sure is very difficult, which we’ll talk about. But if you have not connected, and maybe you’ve graduated on from the stunt work and so on, but Damien Walters, have you seen Damien Walters?
Michelle Khare: No.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. 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, right? But he’s been doing it a long time. But in any case, I thought he could be incredibly fun to connect with at some point.
Michelle Khare: That’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve never really interacted with him, so I can’t —
Michelle Khare: I have so much love and heart for the stunt community. That’s really where the channel started. And even the stunt coordinator that I work with today, his name is Steve Brown, and this is how crazy the world is, right? Back in 2016, so a few months after I sent this email, I went to a kebab shop in L.A., sat down at the counter, and was just eating dinner by myself. And 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. That guy also does all of the stunt coordination on our channel.
Tim Ferriss: That’s incredible.
Michelle Khare: And it’s amazing that when you meet people who are passionate, you know when you meet a flavor of a person before they have hit their peak moment, it’s special to connect with them 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 make sure that everything’s okay because we have that kebab friendship.
Tim Ferriss: Well, this speaks also to putting yourself in the center of the action, right? And I’ve had very famous investor named Bill Gurley on the show before 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 want to have those types of connections, it’s less likely to happen in a small town in Montana than it is in Los Angeles, right?
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim 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 want to be in certain games in tech and you want to have access to the talent, et cetera, still to this day, 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.
Michelle Khare: And this is coming from the virtual guy.
Tim Ferriss: It is. It is. 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. If I had not done that, I think my success would have had a 0% likelihood. 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 accidentally bump into someone and spill their drink and start a conversation and then boom, that turns into one of the most — ends up defining 30% of my net worth. And sure, there’s luck involved, but you have to provide a, and I’m borrowing this term from someone else, but surface area for luck, right?
Michelle Khare: So what have we learned? Barbecue, kebab, spilling drinks, key to success. 30% of Tim’s network.
Tim Ferriss: Chapter one. Chapter one. 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? It was like running out of money. 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. You can figure it out.
And sure, maybe if you’re depending on the roommate, I mean, you might want to 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. A 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 got to be mid-70s now, but he used to routinely spend periods of time, I want to 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 and just do that for like a week and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, great. Yeah, I don’t really need that much.” And by doing that, it gives you courage, which I think is a practiced skill, right? Your subconscious has to believe that you can do something. You can’t just read books and suddenly have confidence in all situations. And I mean, you’re, I think, a walking example of how you can do that.
So my question for you, Formula One team. All right. Formula One is expensive, right? It’s like these cars in some cases are like what? $250 million when you start to add everything in, pricey. Yes, very high performance. But when you quit your job and you’re like, “I have three months.” How did you assemble or enroll the help that you needed in the early days, the first three to six months after quitting your job, or did you just do everything yourself? I don’t know. So what did it look like in the early days?
Because once you get some momentum, I’m 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?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: What do you do? How did you assemble the help that you needed or enlisted?
Michelle Khare: I think — this is a strategy I employ for every challenge I take on now. And hindsight is 2020. And with that 2020 hindsight, I think it comes down to having three people on your Formula One team, and it doesn’t need to be fancy. It’s really a coach, a mentor, and a cheerleader.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Michelle Khare: What does that mean?
Tim Ferriss: Yep.
Michelle 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. In a recent episode, I attempted to get a black belt in taekwondo in only 90 days. And in martial arts, that’s a somewhat controversial thing to even attempt to do. 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 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 going to 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 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 feels like to break a brick with their hands and get through that. And it’s important that it’s different from the coach because coaching is a different skillset and art form from mentoring.
Tim Ferriss: Also, it’s harder for the coach to put themselves in your shoes because so much of what they do is second nature and they’re probably decades removed from the experience you’re about to have.
Michelle Khare: 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. 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 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 my sister, Madeline, who was one of the only people I told I was going to quit my job and fully believed in me. And then the mentor, sorry, 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 Ree is training taekwondo with me every day, but I saw those as coaching opportunities because they were people light years ahead who had the mentorship component of, not the — the teaching component, I should say, of being able to advise even in small doses.
Tim Ferriss: What did those emails look like?
Michelle Khare: Okay. I love a great email. You mentioned that you have an amazing cold emailer. I need to see their art and their work because I love comparing notes on emails. I personally believe that a really well-written email can open any door and —
Tim Ferriss: I agree, by the way. I mean, assuming the person sees it, right? There’s some friction, but people underestimate what they can do.
Michelle Khare: I agree. And there’s something about an email that’s different from an Instagram DM or — I don’t know. I love an email. I love a Google Calendar. This is where we’re talking about true passions to emails. So at the beginning of my channel, when we didn’t have millions of subscribers and we wanted to collaborate with institutions like the FBI and 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.
And 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 crime tips, which I didn’t realize. 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.
Tim Ferriss: So I just want to pause here for the specifics. Ring, ring, hello, FBI 800 number. What are you saying?
Michelle 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.
Tim Ferriss: All right, great.
Michelle Khare: And usually they’re like, “YouTube, what?” But this person was generous enough to connect me to someone else and we kind of got kicked down a few different routes, but we ended up connecting with someone called The Hollywood Guy. This is a job at the FBI.
Tim Ferriss: He’s just like, “How did I get stuck in this department every email that comes over the transom about some kind of film, television thing.”
Michelle Khare: It’s The Hollywood guy. And now this is the person within the Federal Bureau of Investigation who is assigned to documentaries or even scripted shows to ensure that the seal of the FBI is accurately and not displayed, not misrepresented, or shown in a derogatory manner. This is the guy who did the McDonald’s Monopoly HBO documentary. He was the FBI’s representative for that. Amazing docuseries.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with this. Monopoly, like the game Monopoly?
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God, you’re not familiar. What is this called? Oh, the documentary. It’s called McMillion$.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Michelle Khare: Have you heard of this doc?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, what is it about Happy Meals or something?
Michelle Khare: Riveting documentary series.
Tim Ferriss: McMillion$? Okay.
Michelle Khare: Oh, Tim, you’re going to love it.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Tim Ferriss: I got it. So there’s probably some fraud involved and the FBI gets involved. Who knows?
Michelle Khare: Okay. Do you remember in the ’90s, 2000s, there was the Monopoly game at McDonald’s where you could peel off the sticker and see if you won a vacation or a bunch of money. Turns out all of the winners of that were all related in some way.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, they figured out how to game the system.
Michelle Khare: They’re all family relatives or friends of friends or people within this group of people that they hired to win. I don’t want to reveal how they did it because it’s riveting, but the documentary tells the story from the perspective of the FBI agents who uncovered it.
Tim Ferriss: Right. So Hollywood guy gets an email. Hey.
Michelle Khare: So this guy just did McMillion$, an incredible docuseries for HBO, gets an email from me, YouTuber. And effectively what happened was he was like, “Well, I’m retiring in a couple months. Let’s try it out.”
Tim Ferriss: It’s so —
Michelle Khare: “Let’s try it out.”
Tim Ferriss: — wild how these things work out sometimes.
Michelle Khare: It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Now, so that, again, this surface area for luck, right? You have to have some pinballs in the pinball machine —
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: — for the possibility of something like that happening. Is there anything else in your email or communication with the Hollywood Guy that you think increased the likelihood of him saying yes?
Michelle Khare: I do. 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, I’ll be totally honest, “Collaboration with Michelle Khare (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. It 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.” 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 offering something. The 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.” 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.”
Tim Ferriss: Recruiting opportunity.
Michelle Khare: Right. 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. 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, and to put them at ease. We speak the same language. So, 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.
Tim Ferriss: Not when I’m sending cold emails —
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: — to people who are very busy that I want to —
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: — connect with.
Michelle Khare: And what that does is say, “I’m available. I don’t know you, but here’s my phone number.” It exhibits, “I’m trusting you.” And it says, “You don’t have to respond with a crazy detailed formal email back to me. Hit me up anytime. We can talk on the phone.” It removes the barrier to entry for them to have to come back to you.
And then have a nice email signature.
Tim Ferriss: What is a nice email signature?
Michelle Khare: Just in a sans serif font. Maybe add a little color.
Tim Ferriss: With no Comic Sans? I’m kidding.
Michelle Khare: No Comic Sans, no Times New Roman. Tim, it’s not 2007 anymore.
Tim Ferriss: No. I saw this photograph — I have a lot of friends who work at Google.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: And there was this big printed out sign to employees talking about snacks or things in refrigerators, and it was in Comic Sans. And then someone else took a marker and wrote on it, they were like, “This is Google, and it is a serious place of work. Please do not use Comic Sans.”
Michelle Khare: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: I just thought it was pretty funny, because there are a lot of people with high IQ at Google who may not have the social graces. But I have to agree on Comic Sans.
So, let me say a few things about this email.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim 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 want to highlight a couple things that you just said. Number one, including your cellphone. I am shocked by how many emails I get that are actually somewhat interesting that get surfaced by my team, because 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. Archive. 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, “Hey. I have three quick questions. Interesting, but this is it, five minutes.” And in a friendly way, obviously. If it’s important to you, include your cellphone.
Michelle 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.
Tim Ferriss: No.
Michelle Khare: You want to —
Tim Ferriss: Yes.
Michelle Khare: — truly invite them.
Tim Ferriss: Make it explicit. 100% agree.
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So, I want to just mention a couple of direct parallels between what you just mentioned as this formula — and if you’re open to it, maybe we could share a few examples or a template of —
Michelle Khare: Ooh, a downloadable PDF on Tim.blog.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. PDF or a blog post or show notes.
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Just, so, people can actually see it.
Michelle Khare: Yes. Of course.
Tim Ferriss: And I will just draw a few parallels. So, number one, you need credibility upfront. And one way to think about this, and I always — if I’m thinking about reaching out to someone who is above my pay grade, and, trust me, 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 Mr. Beast or Tom Cruise, or whoever it might be. Now, practically speaking, everything is going to have to get routed through someone else for Tom Cruise, and if you do get their personal information, they’re going to be very annoyed.
But where I’ll start with the subject line is one of two places or both. So, you mentioned the credibility indicator in the subject. Right?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll use that, but if we actually have someone in common who actually recommended I connect —
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim 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” —
Michelle Khare: Ooh.
Tim Ferriss: — “Tim Ferriss,” whatever the credibility indicator is. Right? So, I will mention the mutual connection first, because subject lines often get truncated on mobile or elsewhere. So, if they just see, “For Tom Cruise from Tim Ferriss,” he’s going to be like, “Who the fuck is Tim Ferriss? Archive.” But if it’s —
Michelle Khare: See the name data.
Tim Ferriss: If it’s, “For Tom,” or, “For Tom Cruise via” person who actually made the suggestion, and then my name, you —
Michelle Khare: I love that.
Tim Ferriss: — have a huge advantage, because chances are it’s going to get truncated, or —
Michelle Khare: I love the via.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: I’ve done, “Referral from X.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: And then my stuff after.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: But I like the via, because it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to have to vet, and call that person up. You know?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, that brings up another point, which is if you’re going to mention mutual connections, and I’m shocked by how many people violate this, you better actually know — assume the person you’re emailing is going to immediately text those people.
Michelle Khare: And they will.
Tim Ferriss: And I, certainly, will. And I would say nine times out of 10, that person is like, “Either I have no idea who that person is,” or, “I met that person once and we shook hands at a party. I don’t know them at all.” And I’m like, “You’re gone. You just misrepresented,” implicitly or explicitly.
But when I’m writing an email. Right? I’ll have that subject line. If there is a via, I’ll include that name. And in the subject line, I’ll keep it short as possible. Then always default to Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Something. Like, something that I really appreciate about you, because it doesn’t cost anything is you are very default polite, and, even though, it makes me feel like an old bastard, you were like, “Yes, sir.” And you used sir with me a couple times when we came in.
And, no. No. But you’re always better off being on the safe side. And so, I am consistently surprised, and maybe this just makes me a salty, crotchety old bastard, but when people are like, “Hey, Tim. Yo, bro. Yo, Ferriss,” or whatever. I’m just like, “Did we go to PE” —
Michelle Khare: Someone says, “Yo, Ferriss?”
Tim Ferriss: I’ve got so many guys, it’s always guys, who think that that —
Michelle Khare: Like, founder bro type?
Tim Ferriss: It could be anything, but think that, like, shoulder slapping, immediate camaraderie is helpful. I will say that’s a very risky gambit. Maybe it works one out of 10 times. In my case, I’m just like, “This is a liability.” Right?
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: Because here’s how I think about is I’m like, “Well, even if it doesn’t bother me that shows a general lack of awareness, and if they’re going to ask me to connect them with someone, or they’re going to work with anyone who I care about, and they pull that, it’s going to put…” It’s a reputational risk.
And so, most of the time that’s going to be an auto archive. It’s going to be like, “You know what?” The people you’re reaching out to, if they’re really busy, and if they’re well-known enough that you think to email them, have more opportunities than they can even look at.
So, your job number one is don’t do anything stupid.
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t do anything that’s going to disqualify your email. Right?
Michelle Khare: And the, “Yo, Ferriss” of it all, emotionally, feels as if a stranger is coming up to you at the airport and giving you a hug. “Whoa. Wait. Who are you?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: “What?” Like, that’s what it feels like.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Just another pro-tip, because we’re in Austin, and this is man bun, baggy pants/bitcoin, ayahuasca, CrossFit central is don’t just walk up to someone you don’t know and say, after they offer a hand, “Oh, I’m a hugger,” and just go for the hug. Don’t do that. Just really don’t do that.
Michelle Khare: Right. Right.
Tim Ferriss: Assume you’re in Japan and they’re going to strike you down with a sword if you do that. The person who wants the most distance wins that conversation. It’s like skiing in the back country with an avalanche risk, or something. Whoever is the most concerned gets to veto.
But let’s come back to the cold email. So, we’ve got the subject line, different subject lines for different purposes. In the first line, it’s going to be a credibility indicator. All right. A couple of points on this. Right? So, you’ve got your credibility indicator in the subject line, potentially, which I will also do, be like, “For interview (1 billion plus downloads).” Right? In the case of the podcast. Right? Something like that.
Michelle Khare: Right. And I’ll note for if you don’t have a billion downloads, or millions of followers, in the beginning for me it was examples of the work.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: That would, at least, show I’ve done my homework, no one’s watched this, but it looks really, really good and it’s beautifully edited.
Tim Ferriss: Yup. So, I am going to come back and ask you about, just to plant the seed, the mentors in the very early days when you didn’t really have much. Right? Like, what that email looked like. We’re going to come back to that.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll give my example. When I first got to Silicon Valley, I volunteered for organizations that had name cache. So, I volunteered for, for instance, TiE, The IndUS Entrepreneur. Last time, I’m sure people checked, I’m not Indian, but TiE, super well-known at the time, maybe still, entrepreneurial organization. Like, the per capita density in the Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley with talent was fucking bananas.
Michelle Khare: Shout out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: Those are my people.
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. And so, I volunteered there. And then I could say, “I’m emailing someone in tech,” and it would be for so-and-so via TiE or The IndUS Entrepreneur. And I wouldn’t even put my name, because who the hell am I? And that gets the email open. So, I would volunteer and then do things on behalf of the nonprofit as a way of establishing some kind of relationship. Ideally, inviting them to speak or something like that. All for free, by the way. Right? Like, some of the highest paying jobs you’ll ever get, you don’t get paid for in the beginning, in my opinion.
Michelle Khare: I love that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: It does pay in dividends —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God.
Michelle Khare: — in ways you don’t expect.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I did that, and, ultimately, had, for instance, Jack Canfield, who co-created Chicken Soup for the Soul, which has sold hundreds and hundreds of millions of copies, and then they, ultimately, sold as a franchise, but I met him through an email like that from the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. And we are still friends to this day, 25 years later, or whatever it is, and he’s the one who introduced me to the agent who, ultimately, sold The 4-Hour Workweek after, like, 26 rejections.
So, long-term greedy, not short-term greedy. Right? Like, you don’t need to be paid upfront for something that will, ultimately, be very, very important to your life.
Right. To the email. For the credibility indicator, and, guys, we’ll give some templates just, so, you don’t have to piece this together in a Memento fashion, but I like to, and I suggest, include some text that establishes who you are. If someone says, “Hey. Here I am,” link, and sketchy attachment, I’m like, “I don’t have time to go on some scavenger hunt to figure out who you are.” Right?
So, include a line or two on who the hell you are. Do you know what I mean?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t require them to click through and find this, this, and this, and this, and this.
Michelle Khare: A hyperlink to here. Uh-uh.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not enough.
Michelle Khare: You know what I mean? When it’s, like, “Click here.” No. It should be, “And I’ve done this thing,” hyperlink the, “And I’ve done this thing.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Exactly.
Michelle Khare: So, if I want to learn more —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And just to give people some intel on that, one reason for that is that it just takes more time for someone, and 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 emails a day.” That’s answer number one.
And 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 and intended to steal information, or set the team up for social engineering.
Michelle Khare: I have been a recipient of a false, “You’re invited to the Tim Ferriss Podcast” email.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. Those. That’s a very clever scam. Do you know how that works?
Michelle Khare: No.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So, how that works, 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 who knows me should be like, “Well, that doesn’t sound right.” But there’s this pay-for-play thing, which most people will sniff out.
The other one is, “Let’s get on a Zoom call, and discuss.” 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 a crypto scam on a large page, and then hold that for ransom also to get money from you.
So, this is just a way of saying —
Michelle Khare: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: — “Guys, include some fucking text.”
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right? And then, to your point again, be very clear about the ask. The number of emails I get that it’s, like, even if they establish, “Hey. I’m credible,” but I’m not a president or the CEO of a Fortune 50 company. It’s, like, “Okay. This might be kind of interesting.” Right? If it’s, like, Rick Rubin, who I did his first interview on a podcast ever in Asana, but 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. Okay. Fine. As long as I can confirm that’s who the person is.”
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: But otherwise, assuming that you, who is cold emailing is not Rick Rubin, which is likely, 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 P.M.?” I’m never going to respond to that. Right?
Because if you can’t write a professional first cold email, I’m skeptical of everything that’s going to follow.
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim 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 yourself — 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.” 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.
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And then I almost always say, “If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate it. And if you’re too busy to get back to me, I totally understand.”
Michelle Khare: Okay. That’s a great learning. I’m going to add that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: Love that.
Tim Ferriss: And by displaying as little or zero entitlement as possible, you get a much higher response rate. Why? Because your cold email is an audition for everything else to come. So, if you’re like, “Here’s this vague email. How about next Tuesday or Thursday at 2 P.M.”, it’s like, “Bro, slow down. You’re humping my leg already. We haven’t even established who you are, or what you want.” And that reflects a certain lack of awareness, and business savvy that is going to be a problem later. Right?
Michelle Khare: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: That’s how the train of thought goes. And that’s it. Here’s another pro-tip, if you send that email, do not follow up two days later with, “Bumping this up,” and then do that two days later, “Bumping this up.” You get to do that once. Right?
Michelle Khare: I think it’s got to be, at least, a week.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You’ve got to wait, and you’re allowed to do it once, and then just assume they’re not interested. And that’s okay. Move on. The world is full of great people, and if people are not responding to your email, it’s probably, common denominator, a problem with the email.
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: You know what I mean? So, in the beginning, when you were reaching out to mentors, you just quit your job —
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: — what are you saying in the email?
Michelle Khare: Here’s an example, I sent a cold email to Hank Green, who is just —
Tim Ferriss: Yes.
Michelle Khare: — one of the great people.
Tim Ferriss: Describe who Hank Green is.
Michelle 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 maybe this 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 business 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. There’s not much strategy here. And he sent back a multi-page answer. And I think he —
Tim Ferriss: What was your subject line? Do you remember —
Michelle Khare: What was the subject line?
Tim Ferriss: — roughly or what might —
Michelle Khare: The subject line was, “Hello from Michelle Khare,” or, “Hello from Michelle Khare (Buzzfeed)”.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Khare: So, using the title of 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 as peers in the space, it’s really special to have those email — like, these emails like this are so crazy to go back on. So, even if you send a cold email, and never hear back, it might make for a great story later.
Tim Ferriss: And guess what? You’re practicing your ability to craft emails, and your ability to communicate. And this would be, like, I interviewed Brandon Sanderson, one of the most legendary fantasy —
Michelle Khare: Oh, gosh.
Tim Ferriss: — 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.
Michelle Khare: He, intentionally, said, “I’m not publishing my first several books” —
Tim Ferriss: That’s right.
Michelle Khare: Isn’t that right?
Tim Ferriss: That’s right. And I did just a huge romp with him. Met up at his HQ in Utah. Fascinating, brilliant guy. But the point is maybe your first five 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 better-known folks, I would be like, “Hey. Would you mind taking a look at…” I would do this at events. Sometimes I’d be like, “This is going to seem like a weird request. Don’t worry. It’s not anything super bizarre, but would you be willing to critique this email? I’ve sent this to a couple of people. I haven’t gotten a response,” or, “I only got one response. How would you change this?”
And that is a very concrete question, and it’s also not clearly a question that’s just setting up the thing you actually want. You know what I mean? Because sometimes people do that via email. They’ll be like, “Hey. I loved your sweater. How did you train your dog?” And then five seconds after I reply to that, they’re like, “So, anyway, I was thinking of having myself on your podcast.” I’m just like, “You asshole. Clearly, you’re just setting it up.” So, just be aware of that.
Michelle Khare: [inaudible 02:01:07]. You got clickbaited.
Tim Ferriss: I got clickbaited. So, a few things. Hank Green, I don’t know him personally, but I remember seeing him at VidCon once. And there are two things I want to say. One is just, “What a sweet guy. Seems like a really sweet human being.” Number two is you reached out with, let’s say, a mentoring question to someone who already has demonstrated that they mentor. Does that make sense?
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Right? So, that will make your life easier in the beginning when you’re sending out these cold emails. The other thing is if you do get a response from somebody, treat it like you’re not at a sex party, you are dating someone in the 1800s. Right? This is like Downton Abbey. Do not reply five seconds later with, like, “Oh, great. Now here are 10 more questions.” Don’t do that. Right?
Michelle Khare: Right.
Tim Ferriss: Be patient. Life is —
Michelle Khare: And thoughtful.
Tim Ferriss: And thoughtful. Life is long. If you want these relationships — I’ll also say, “You do not need to have 100 relationships with people who are steps ahead of you.” If you actually develop genuine, mutually respectful communication with a few people, you, in most cases, in a lot of cases, you are set. Right? So, it’s, like, “Don’t be greedy. Don’t be a greedy little piglet. Don’t be in a rush.” And I’ve, certainly, had to learn that by fucking that up over and over again, because I’m constitutionally very impatient. I want to get stuff done very quickly, and some things do not lend themselves to that.
You mentioned Snyder’s Beats of Storytelling I think.
Michelle Khare: Don’t quiz me on that.
Tim Ferriss: I won’t quiz you on it, but as far as storytelling goes, as far as developing narrative arcs, it does not need to be a book, but it could be, are there any particular resources you would point people to? Where you’re like, “Okay” —
Michelle Khare: Oh, gosh.
Tim Ferriss: — “I know there’s being in the trenches and working on it, and testing, and split testing, and using warm audiences in the beginning,” et cetera, but if you’re like, “All right. Look, if you want to do something analogous to what I’m doing on YouTube…” Right? And there are other examples of people who put out very few videos. Right? For this, sort of, longer form, narrative arc storytelling. If you were teaching a class on that, what’s the syllabus? What do you tell people to read or watch?
Michelle Khare: A challenge — like, reality —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: — docu, class — okay. Welcome to my class. On the syllabus, we’re going to be studying a few things. First of all, I’m going to make everyone watch Survivor, and every week we’re going to 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 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. We know on that island they’re out there for a month and a half. A lot’s going to happen that’s not going to 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.
Tim Ferriss: Also, sidebar, Probst is an excellent example also of creating defensible IP. Right? Which a lot of people don’t realize.
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: They’re like, “Oh, isn’t he just the host guy?” It’s like, “No. No. No. No.”
Michelle Khare: No. He’s the Einstein of that operation.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle 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. You see him at tribal council. He is recounting things that have happened decades ago. He knows the details of the contestants’ 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 interviewing.
And it’s something that I studied too. I did a show called Karma on HBO, which was a kids’ survival show produced by J.D. Roth, which another huge reality legend, and, again, I think people watch these shows and think the hosts are just there to say lines and deliver information to the audience, but there is a massive amount of research. You have a binder of every kids’ head shot, where they’re from, your 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 what things to ask, and how long to sit with them.
So, I think that’s just masterful story — not from just a great host, but also a producer.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So, on the syllabus, you’ve got —
Michelle Khare: We got, “We’re watching some reality shows.”
Tim Ferriss: Yup. This is, like, Robert McKee, I guess, the story seminar with Casablanca. He’s like —
Michelle Khare: Nice.
Tim Ferriss: “We’re going to walk by this second by second.”
Michelle Khare: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: “And look at what’s going on.” All right. So, we got Survivor as one part of the syllabus.
Michelle 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.
Tim Ferriss: Those two books are so good.
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: And I have some screenwriter friends who are like, “Yeah. They are really good,” and others who are like, “Please, no. Don’t suggest it.” I haven’t practiced as much as you have, or other folks, but I’m like, “These make it very tangible.” Right? And, I guess, not to interrupt.
Michelle Khare: Right. I think it’s important to understand the bones of a story. What are the hills and the valleys? What is the all is lost? 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.
Tim Ferriss: It’s storytelling.
Michelle Khare: It’s storytelling.
Tim Ferriss: It applies to books. It applies to all of it.
Michelle Khare: Yes, exactly. I would even go as far to say that a five-second vine hits all of the piece — if it performs well, hits all of the pieces of a story arc in just a few seconds. It sets a premise, it upends it, and there’s a resolution where the character is changed by the end. Even a video of a cat leaping off something and doing something crazy has a beginning, middle, and end where the cat is different at the beginning and the end of that, America’s Funniest Home video clip. That’s why we like it. That’s why we laugh. That’s why we engage with it. I think it’s really important to understand that. Part three of the syllabus, let’s see. I feel like if we have to have three parts of the syllabus. The third part of the syllabus would be an area of the class where everyone brings a piece of work released online within the last week that impacted them.
This would be the assess and dissect portion of the class. Why did this YouTube video speak to you? Oh, well, I just Googled, I wanted to learn about how the coronavirus spread originally, and I saw this video on Chris God. Okay, but let’s break it down. What was interesting? What was the title? What was the thumbnail? Why did this TikTok speak to you? Why did it stand out? I would want people to bring things that performed well or didn’t, so we can understand resonance. Resonance, as you mentioned earlier, attention is such a very, very valuable and finite and rare resource these days that I would want a discussion component of the class to talk about relevant impact in recent media. That would be the wackiest class ever, but that’s what we’d be doing.
Tim Ferriss: If you had, and I know we’re doing this on the fly, but let’s just say project assignments, right? I’ll buy you some time because I’m going to — 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 there were two components to the class. There were these once weekly lectures, two or three hours long, pretty long, on writing with a tremendous focus on structure, primarily. Then there were reviews of work that we had already submitted. Each week we had a writing assignment and typically in the range, like 3 to 10 pages, but let’s just call it three to five pages. You would write your piece, then you would submit it at the beginning 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. Just tremendous. If you want to read something short, Levels of the Game, it’s incredible. He’s won one or two Pulitzer Prizes, just a phenomenal writer, can make anything interesting. Wrote an entire book on oranges, for instance. Another one on hand-carved wooden canoes and another one on the geology and nature of Alaska.
Michelle Khare: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: It’s just incredible. The Levels of the Game is about basically the entire game of tennis, but told through the lens of one match involving Arthur Ash. But coming back to the story, so we had the lecture, then we have these writing assignments. You turn in whatever your new assignment is at the beginning of each of the lectures. 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 first few weeks, more red ink from his edits and notes than what you put on the page. It is brutal, brutal, but incredibly helpful. Okay? 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 sculpture on campus and write three to five pages on it. We’re like, “Ah, can you give us any more direction?” He’s like, “No.” So everybody would take a slightly different approach because you’re like, “Wait a second, should I write about the history? Should I write about the subjective experience? Should I write about — “Mm-mm. Oh, oh.”
But no matter what I do, I have to think about structure and some of the points that he’s made in class. Then at the end of the seminar lecture, we would share our work. We would actually read out loud some of our work, and then —
Michelle Khare: After the revisions have been applied from it?
Tim Ferriss: No. This would be — I guess I’m probably screwing 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 and get his comments. There were a couple of different ingredients, and he’s taught this. He doesn’t teach it any longer, but taught it for 15, 20 years, very infrequently, like once every year or two. I got very lucky. This is a very roundabout way of asking if there were like an assignment component where people are doing their own work, what are perhaps some of the things you would have them do?
Michelle Khare: The assignment component of the class would be making the content?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: I would require all of the students to make an account if they don’t already have one on some platform. 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? Then at the same time, how is this data backed by what other people have done? Then from there it would require them to actually make and produce videos. If the purpose of the class is become a YouTuber, let’s say. I would ask them 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 live in the world. 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?
Tim Ferriss: You know what I was thinking could also be fun, you’d have to have a pretty small class to make this work, but assuming the videos are short and they’re doing it weekly, have them show the videos in class and then make predictions. What is your hypothesis? Do you know what I mean?
Michelle Khare: Like you can invest in videos.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, what are your — then they can choose to modify the video or not based on feedback or your thoughts or something. You obviously want to let them learn their own lessons, but I think that would be a good way of refining the thinking process.
Michelle Khare: Someone’s got to teach this class.
Tim Ferriss: You are infinitely — you actually made this whole format work, so I think it’s you.
Michelle Khare: Only if you’re a guest lecturer.
Tim Ferriss: Sure. I mean, yes. The guest lecture is all the fun with none of the heavy lifting.
Michelle Khare: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: I’m very much into that. Are you still — I want to mention two books, and I’m curious 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?
Michelle Khare: Yeah, of course.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. All right, got it.
Michelle Khare: My boy, Edward, with his hats.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, there you go. How did these both factor in? Because 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 and not directly by —
Michelle Khare: But maybe Garrett mentioned one of the hats.
Tim Ferriss: It was Garrett.
Michelle Khare: The Six Thinking Hats, I don’t even remember where I learned or heard of this concept or — oh, I actually think this was Jody. Shout out, Jody.
Tim Ferriss: Your therapist.
Michelle Khare: Jody puts me on all the great books. I was coming to her talking about just various problems I was facing, and she told me of this concept of the Six Thinking Hats. Effectively, I might butcher this, but it is a way of looking at a problem by filtering only by thinking type. For example, we’re going to put on a yellow hat and look at this potential idea, and the yellow hat means we’re only going to 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. It’s six different techniques of being able to assess and determine if an idea is good 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. This is coming from the mentality of everything’s going to go wrong. I’m going to fail at everything. I’m a person who, growing up, always defaulted to black hat. No, no, no, no, no. It’s not going to work. That doesn’t inspire creativity. That does not inspire entrepreneurship. It also gives an unfair shot to an idea that Respun may provide a new idea altogether.
I think this is also something I learned from a design thinking class. I might be crossing my wires here, but another class I took at Dartmouth was design thinking were 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 weekend 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 shape it, but that’s it, and it has to support your body weight.” That class taught me a ton about myself before that class would look at that and say, “Not possible. Why am I even trying it?” Professor Roby really forced us to think critically through how could something be possible. That concept of the six hats is really, really impactful to me.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s pause there for a second because this book, believe it or not, was incredibly helpful to me 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 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 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, you have to realize it. It’s saying there’s a place for that, but there’s going to be a set time for it, and we’re going to 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. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh, God, have you haven’t seen this movie? I haven’t seen 20 years. Let’s watch it.” Within 10 minutes, I’m like, “Oh, God, this is not as good as I remember.” There are definitely others. Well, it’s very NPC, but airplane and others that actually do age shockingly.
Michelle Khare: Well. I wonder what other hats are. I haven’t looked at this in such a long time, because I feel like we just —
Tim Ferriss: I can’t recall what the specifics are. I mean, if I had to guess, I’m imagining one is analytical by the numbers. One is emotional. I mean, I’m imagining there’s probably some version of that, but it stuck out to me because I was like, “That’s really interesting that this book which not a lot of people reference actually also popped up in both of our timelines professionally.” That’s super interesting. All right. Radical Candor.
Michelle Khare: Okay. Kim Scott. It’s like Tim, Adam Grant, Kim Scott, these are Mount Rushmore for me. Kim Scott is just phenomenal. I mean, I thought Radical Candor, and I know many of these works have been critiqued and refreshed in many ways, but her quad chart of how to provide feedback to people was really instrumental to me because effectively what happened was I quit my job when I was 23. I’d never made it to a — I mean 23, a managerial position in a corporate setting. I never had any manager training.
Tim Ferriss: Could you give an example of how Kim’s teaching or frameworks look when applied for an example?
Michelle Khare: Kim talks about four types of management and giving feedback to people. The quadrant I identify with the most is ruinous empathy, which is the idea of you are so nice to everyone around you that when you need to give critical feedback to someone, they might leave the meeting feeling like, “Wait, am I actually doing great? I don’t know, because you’re sandwiching compliments or downplaying the critique and you’re not direct enough.” And so transforming that into radical candor is about being more direct with feedback. Some of the things that Kim has helped me very applicably work through are workshopping, giving critical feedback to people, and hearing live feedback from her on, “Cut off that sentence, that’s fluff.” That is so, so amazing. I think an applicable setting here or an example of this would be…
Let’s say we have a collaborator on set who’s very, very good at what they do but they don’t compliment or uplift other people when they do a great job.
Tim Ferriss: Got it. Good at execution, maybe a little prickly around the edges.
Michelle Khare: Just a little prickly or they don’t — internally, they’re thinking that person is doing a great job, but they’re not vocalizing it.
Tim Ferriss: I see. Got it.
Michelle Khare: And so, it creates an environment on set where everyone’s like, “Oh, does this person not like what I’m doing?” Stepping in as a manager of the feedback, it’s a tough piece of feedback because how do you say, “Dude, I just need you to go out of your way and provide positive feedback to people.” It can be as simple as that. But what Kim, for example, taught me in this specific situation is communication exists on two wavelengths. It is, first of all, the wavelength of communicating the need, the tactical information, but there’s another wavelength that’s equally as important, which is the emotional component. And so, being able to define that with that person and say, “Hey, you’re doing a great job communicating, but there’s an emotional side you’re completely missing that’s actually really important to that communication,” was really helpful because it provided necessary value to that action for that person rather than just like, “I got to tell people they’re doing a good job. I got to take an hour out of my day and send nice emails.”
Tim Ferriss: Giving them the why as opposed to [inaudible 02:27:16].
Michelle Khare: Exactly. Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: This could include full-time and contractors, what does your org chart look like, so to speak? What is the team?
Michelle Khare: I mean, I remember reading 4-Hour Workweek and the whole virtual assistant chapter blew my mind. We do have someone in Singapore, which is funny. Our internal team full-time is intentionally tight. It’s seven full-time staff. 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 the internal team are department heads. When it’s time to recreate the Mission: Impossible stunt, each of us know how to staff up a 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 slink you back down.
Tim Ferriss: Your head of production would be responsible for the scoping and finding and hiring of those people?
Michelle Khare: Sometimes. Also, just within our entire team, we’re all very connected and embedded in the industry. The team I just mentioned is pretty much half people from the traditional entertainment world. 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, high budget commercial world. Then people like myself or our editor, Ryan Gonzalez, we come from the digital-first world. Our training was at a content studio where it was fast output, but you know how to do everything. 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.
Tim Ferriss: Right. I’m curious how you — the context by my question is how you separate responsibilities in a sense. With the understanding that on a small team, you’re going to end up wearing a lot of hats, not to be confused with Edward de Bono, but when shit needs getting done, people are going to roll up their sleeves, and I imagine at that size, do whatever. But for instance, you could pick the episode, right? It could be any episode, but where do your responsibilities — say, how are they different from chief creative officer as one example?
Michelle Khare: We have a giant spreadsheet called the Areas of Responsibility Chart, 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 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?” She said I couldn’t. I’m trying to piecemeal it all for myself and learn from people like you and Kim. But in that book, it details actually making a giant chart that outlines every single action that the company takes. 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. Who is going to be doing all these things? This is, I think, hundreds of responsibilities.
Tim Ferriss: What would be some, just so I understand? Because it’s not a role that I’m familiar with, like chief creative officer.
Michelle Khare: For chief creative officer in this chart, for Garrett, that includes — Garrett’s role as a whole within the company is to define the creative tone and thesis of everything that we do? He is overseeing the story for each of the episodes, he’s directing the episodes and 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 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 or unpredictable.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, disjointed or —
Michelle Khare: Exactly. We [inaudible 02:37:37] wanted to hit a certain level of quality of storytelling. 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. He’s like chief creative officer and chief storyteller in a way.
Tim Ferriss: Then head of production, what percentage of the time for head of production is spent on in production episodes versus planning beforehand and post-production, would you say?
Michelle Khare: Oh, that’s hard. I would need to ask Nick exactly, but Nick primarily spends — when we green light an episode and 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.
Tim Ferriss: I love how you say that as we, the royal we.
Michelle Khare: Shit, I mean, it was a team effort. It was a team effort. Many people did it besides me, but —
Tim Ferriss: Of course. There is a certain level of physical brutality.
Michelle Khare: I did it with the help of an amazing team. He’s also figuring out permissions and cash flow working with our branded partners. He’s sort of touching many things, more like including head of ops in a way, I would say. The physical operation of the company itself.
Tim Ferriss: When you look out three or five years, and I imagine you’ve thought about this because to the best I can tell, you do like planning and spreadsheets and editorial calendars. I imagine that you’ve given this some thought, but it strikes me that this — I mean, this is a very demanding job that you have. And the company can — and the kind of strategic vision and where you go can go in a lot of different directions. So three to five years from now, what would you be happy with in terms of what your life and the channel looks like? And maybe the channel is too constraining. But I’m just wondering, three, five years out, understanding a lot of things can change technologically and otherwise, but what does it look like?
Michelle Khare: What does it look like?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You have a magic wand, and you’re like, “Okay…”
Michelle Khare: I have a magic wand.
Tim Ferriss: “…to some extent, I want to preserve the option that it’ll turn out this way.” Bing.
Michelle Khare: Ooh. It’s worth noting that I’m so privileged to be happy now. I love what I do. I love how our industry is evolving. I love being a part of that evolution of when you hear the word content creator, what that means and the social expectation of what that profession is. I’m really, really proud of, and excited for, the future of the evolution of that. And the convergence specifically of traditional and digital. A future for myself, first of all, I want to be doing this as long as I possibly can. I look to people like Tom Cruise, David Blaine, Jeff Probst again. They’re in their 50s and 60s and they have just decided they’re going to keep going. Richard Branson, he going out there. And I find that exciting and inspiring.
And also, I look forward to a world where the names of the people that I just mentioned are all men. And I look forward to helping lengthen the list of women who have longevity and careers like this too. So I think a future for me, external to the channel, is participating in that bridge. Supporting legacy studios and companies in understanding our world, and helping burgeoning creators find inspiration and solace and a path forward in a very seemingly nebulous career.
I love sharing with other creators the wins and the learnings and, “Don’t do what I did. Here’s my Google Excel spreadsheet. Skip all of the stuff I had to learn.” And so that mentorship component of giving trajectory and systems to younger creators is really, really important to me, and something I’m passionate about. In addition to having to lead by example and practicing what I preach, I look forward to the next three to five years because I know that’s the sphere of where I’m headed. That’s where our arrow is headed. I don’t know where the arrow’s going to land very specifically, but I am so excited about the ride.
Tim Ferriss: All right. I’m going to be the detective here for a second.
Michelle Khare: Oh, do you have a magnifying glass?
Tim Ferriss: Not in a spooky way. Well, I do have my brand new fancy spectacles. But part of the reason I’m asking is that you have to make decisions around how many episodes you pursue, how much they overlap. And for instance, against my, quote, unquote, “better financial interest,” there was a point where I had decided, well, in my best interest, I had realized pretty quickly, well, I make X amount per episode of the podcast, especially during the golden era of 2020 COVID and the two or three years that was just an absurd embarrassment of riches for anyone who was doing something reasonably defensible.
At that point, I was like, “Well, four is pretty easy for me to do per month.” If I want to increase the annual revenue of this thing, which is very high profit margins to do things with the foundation and my employees and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I could just do two more episodes a month, easy, right? And if I wanted to double it, I can do eight. There are other ways you can double it. And I’ve looked at those levers too. But suffice to say, it was very self-evident to me at the time that it was going to be very easy to grow if I so wanted it to grow.
So I ended up at different points doing six, seven, eight episodes a month or doing different types of batch recording. And then a few things happened. About two or three months into doing this, yes, there were more financial resources to bring to bear on the funding science through the foundation and many other things. We could do fancy off-sites for the team and fly to these very far-flung, fun, exotic places, yes, which we can still do. But what I started to notice is there was this very subtle, energetic change. I wasn’t exhausted, but I started maybe dragging my feet a little bit. I started to feel, I noticed when I put a fine point on it, that it was becoming a job in the unpleasant sense. Does that make sense?
And it’s very, very easy for this to happen in people who have small operations that are not dependent on — or in some cases like venture financing or something like that. And I also recognized that I could make it work by, in my case, batching these episodes together, but when I batched them together, I didn’t actually get to retain and study and use and apply what I was learning from these people in these conversations.
Michelle Khare: That’s a really fatiguing day.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Or week, right? And so I decided that I would step back to four or five a month. And I’m in a fortunate financial position to be able to make that type of decision, but it was really important for not just the longevity of the podcast, which is now 11 years or 12 years, whatever it is, but my enjoyment of it. And I’m just curious how you think about what drives the actual work product of the show. Because your priorities may change, I have no idea. For some people, if they’re thinking about family, then you have family consideration, you also have the professional motivations. You can end up getting driven by your team in some cases where it’s like you want to offer them the opportunity for advancement and increase scope and so on, but that can end up steering the ship sometimes.
So there are a lot of pitfalls that are hard to spot because they are gradual in terms of their onset. So I’m curious how you think about the actual work schedule, the number of episodes, the amount you take on, because I hear all the top level priorities, which are awesome, and the vision for three to five years, I think you can do all of those things.
Michelle Khare: Oh, thank God.
Tim Ferriss: But —
Michelle Khare: Tell me if you don’t think it’s possible.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I don’t think it’s possible if the show ends up taking on lots of features and obligations and scope creep —
Michelle Khare: I agree.
Tim Ferriss: — and splintering, that just removes the time and energy required to do those things.
Michelle 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.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a lot of flights.
Michelle Khare: It was a lot of flights. And I told Kim this, and she said, “How many vacations did you go on?” And I couldn’t answer it. I’d think that’s a sign. 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. “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 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, you should just do this collab and start a merch line. Or even, in our world, there’s a temptation of promote this product and big check comes in. Well, I don’t know if I agree with this product and maybe I won’t do it. And I think being really brutal about, if I don’t protect this, all of it falls apart. Not in 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 start a kids channel and we’ll run the whole thing for you.”
And these pitches sound great on paper when I know I’m not going to like the first few things you do. I’m going to have to get in the weeds. I’m going to have to be giving feedback. And you know what? I don’t have time for that. 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 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. But the saying of no is something I’m still learning how to do. And I think that has been why the show has lasted so long.
I have never — I’m literally knocking on wood, I don’t even know if this is real wood. I’m 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 fast growth, but still slow and steady. You can look at the growth of our channel and it’s not like I blew up on TikTok overnight. 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 better.
Tim Ferriss: So few thoughts pop into my head. 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.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: The first is that — not that I’m like — who the fuck am I? I’m just saying, 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. 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. And at some point, they get tired of being that person, or they pretended to be something in the beginning and they got a lot of positive feedback and they’re —
Michelle Khare: But it’s not who they are, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: — fatigued because they’re wearing a mask.
Michelle Khare: Yes.
Tim 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.
Michelle Khare: Every episode, my whole life changes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: Right now, I’m training for Taekwondo Nationals. I’m going to take a flight back to L.A. and go to taekwondo training for three hours tonight. Every day is different and varied and interesting. And I feel lucky that my life changes frequently, to adjust for that.
Tim 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 certainly dreams and even goals. I mean, you have to have an idea of where you want to head, but inherent to what you chose to do, there’s a kind of cycling and rejuvenation to it, right?
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So I just wanted to highlight that because it’s a feature —
Michelle Khare: Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: — of what you chose to do. It’s not just something you have to fit in in the empty pockets with something that is uniform from start to finish. So I think that’s one thing I wanted to mention.
And then separately, just as an anecdote, guest lecturing, you mentioned. So the guest lectures at Princeton High-Tech Entrepreneurship that turned into The 4-Hour Workweek, the notes from that class, was based on a talk initially called Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit, because my first company was sports nutrition. The through-line of that lecture from start to finish, because I was one of the few entrepreneurs my professor invited, maybe the only one who bootstrapped. Everyone else was venture-backed. And that’s why it was interesting to him. Because I was like, “Ed,” who’s Ed Zschau, amazing guy I’ve had him on the podcast, said, “I don’t think I have anything to offer. I’m only a few years out of college. I’m bootstrapping this thing. It’s a lot smaller than any of the other companies that get highlighted by these CEOs who are taking companies public, et cetera.” And he said, “Well, that’s kind of the point.”
Michelle Khare: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: “You’re closer to the students, so they can see emulating or borrowing from what you’re doing more easily than they can someone who’s 20 years older and has taken four companies public.” But the —
Michelle Khare: And aligned with your through-line of owning everything you do.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: That’s a really special component.
Tim Ferriss: Owning, yeah, exactly. And there are times where like debt and venture and all that stuff, I’m just constitutionally allergic to it. It doesn’t make me feel safe and pleasant.
Michelle Khare: Same.
Tim Ferriss: So I generally avoid those things.
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I didn’t even have a credit card until a few years after college because I thought, foolishly, that if you have no debt, you’re going to have good credit. That’s just not how it works. So I had to get credit cards. But I have never carried a balance except for like a very short period. The reason I bring that up though is that in my class, it changed over time, this two-times-per-year guest lecture, it kind of followed what I was learning. The one thing that never changed was how I started it.
And how I started it every time is I’d say, “How many people here want to be a salesperson?” And this is Princeton, right? It’s in an electrical engineering operations research finance class, and no one raises their hand. They’re like, “Salespeople? Yuck.” And I’m like, “Okay, how many people here want to be good at negotiating?” Every hand goes up. I’m like, “Okay, how many people here want to be good deal-makers?” Almost every hand goes up. I’m like, “Guess what? They’re all the same thing.”
Michelle Khare: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Good news, bad news. You’re all going to have to be salespeople.
Michelle Khare: It’s true. It’s true.
Tim Ferriss: Whether you’re selling a position, whether you are selling yourself as a romantic partner, whether you are trying to persuade someone of anything and everything, the skillset is the same. And because you have that ability and you also have the — you’ve honed the ability to communicate with the cold emails and everything else, you have a lot of practice with that. And you have someone like Kim Scott in your corner on the honesty — you can take it too far, but honesty above people-pleasing, right?
Michelle Khare: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: This — what did you call it? It was the, not insidious empathy, but something close.
Michelle Khare: Ruinous empathy.
Tim Ferriss: Ruinous sympathy.
Tim Ferriss: That is where I tend to lean also, or have historically. And if you are trapped in that quadrant and you start to see the ship heading towards this iceberg of burnout for you personally or overall, you’re kind of fucked. Like, that’s not the time to learn how to steer the ship, which means these other quadrants, right?
Michelle Khare: And you write about that in your upcoming book too, about how when you say yes to everything, you become resentful towards other people when it’s actually you creating the problem.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I’m going to be diving back into the — it’s a placeholder name, but The No Book, 850 pages, that’s going to get hacked down. It’s going to be, just as a teaser, 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 excited to get it out because it’s super — as we were talking about, template emails and so on, it’s really tactical. It’s not just hand-wavy stuff. So I’m excited about it, but you have sort of these —
Michelle Khare: And I promise I’ll buy it, I won’t steal it on accident.
Tim Ferriss: I’m okay with stealing my books. Well, I mean, it’s not okay because you’re stealing it from someone else, but —
Michelle Khare: Correct. It was not stolen from a Barnes & Noble.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: It was stolen from the desk of a coworker.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So I have confidence you’ll figure it out because you have the toolkit for correction. 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 figure it out and you do it for a week or two and then your problems are solved.
Michelle Khare: It’s a practice.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a practice. It’s 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? So in the case of say a book on no, 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 over-commit.
You’re probably still going to do that. It’s kind of like AA and alcoholics. Once an addict, always an addict. You’re probably going to 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? And really —
Michelle Khare: Which is arguably harder than saying no out the gate. Once you’ve committed to something —
Tim Ferriss: It is. It’s basically signing up for long-term pain instead of short-term pain. But you’re going to deal with both.
Michelle Khare: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Which is why Kim Scott is, and Kim’s teachings, are so valuable. I have to recommend — I don’t know if it was with respect to Kim specifically, but A.J. Jacobs, who I mentioned earlier —
Michelle Khare: I love him.
Tim Ferriss: — wrote this long Esquire piece called, and his poor wife, but 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.
Michelle Khare: Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw him give a presentation last fall and he included this anecdote.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And “I Think You’re Fat” is like — when his wife was like, “How do I look in this dress?” And also, the point is, his wife has put up with so much with his experiments, but she’s like, “Are you even listening to me?” And he’s like, “No. Honestly, I stopped listening five minutes ago and I’m thinking about A, B, and C.” Oh, what a saint his wife is, but also makes for pretty good reading because everything in excess kind of becomes its opposite.
I want to kind of talk about wishlist stuff —
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: — because you never know who’s listening to this podcast. You just never know.
Michelle Khare: Okay, okay.
Tim Ferriss: I am constantly surprised. Maybe you can give some backstory, but have you met Mindy Kaling yet?
Michelle Khare: I have not met our Lord and Savior, Mindy Kaling yet. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Why did I even come across this? Yeah.
Michelle 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. 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. 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 going to 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 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.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Mindy, if you’re listening.
Michelle Khare: Mindy, yo.
Tim Ferriss: And there are definitely a few people on, or who have been on this podcast, like B.J. Novak who know Mindy. So if you guys are listening.
Michelle Khare: Oh, my God. I’m obsessed with both of them, as a unit. They’re amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, B.J. is incredible. B.J. is also incredible. I mean, The Office, I mean there are a few examples like this, but it’s kind of like the PayPal Mafia where you’re like, “How did all these people come out of this?”
Michelle Khare: The PayPal Mafia.
Tim Ferriss: How is it even possible that this density of talent was in one place at the same time? It was crazy. All right. Well, let me ask a question, right? Let’s just say Mindy’s listening and she’s like, “Maybe I’ll check her out.” Which episode should she start with?
Michelle Khare: Okay. Let me think.
Tim Ferriss: And that applies more broadly to people listening.
Michelle Khare: More broadly.
Tim Ferriss: But where should Mindy go?
Michelle Khare: This is a really tough question. For Mindy specifically, I’m going to recommend “I Try Tom Cruise’s Deadliest Stunt” because Mindy is in the Hollywood world, and I think that’s the most Hollywood episode we’ve done. It’s an episode where I strapped myself to the side of a C-130 to become the first person to recreate the stunt that Tom did for the Mission: Impossible franchise. And I truly am hanging off the side of a plane. And what’s interesting about that story is not just the stunt, which is cool, of course, but it’s an amazing story of being an underdog. The only people who have accomplished this previously are literally Tom Cruise and Paramount Studio.
And so to come at it from our angle was me sending more crazy cold emails. It was calling foreign militaries at three in the morning asking if they would lend us a plane. Those are the phone calls I’m making. And additionally, when you’re doing something that’s only been done once before, or in some cases has never been done before, you have to get really creative with the training and testing, which maybe you experienced in all of your work too. How do you prepare your body to do something like that? And it led us to training in wind tunnels. But even more interestingly, I had to go to a specialized optometrist who fabricated custom scleral contact lenses for me to wear, because for this stunt, you don’t wear goggles. And so there was a dedicated person on set called a lens technician, and his only job was to insert and remove these massive contact lenses that went over my eyes.
Tim Ferriss: That sounds so uncomfortable.
Michelle Khare: Because when you’re up there at multi-hundred mile per hour winds, even just a tiny pebble could blind you.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah.
Michelle Khare: So I think it’s a really cool story of being a little bit of an underdog and accomplishing something great in an unexpected way. So I hope you watch it, Mindy.
Tim Ferriss: Amazing. All right. This is going to sound, it’s a non-sequitur/sequitur, but people should study, take a look at peregrine falcons and how their eyes and noses and nostrils are evolved. It’s fucking wild. And aircraft have actually been designed based on peregrine falcon evolved —
Michelle Khare: Why do I feel like —
Tim Ferriss: — form.
Michelle Khare: — you’ve spent a week in Mongolia training falconry?
Tim Ferriss: I would love to do that. I had my first experience with falconry on New Year’s Day this year, so it’s fresh in my mind.
Michelle Khare: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: Got to work with some amazing hawks. There are different birds that are appropriate for different levels of training, and it’s not necessarily the easiest bird. In some cases, they’re going to give you slightly more stubborn or difficult birds because if you have a very easy bird, you don’t actually develop the trainer technique that you need to use for a spectrum of birds. It would be kind of like giving, if you give everyone a really intrinsically motivated, high-energy dog, like a Belgian Malinois to train, that is like bred for being very, very, very, very trainable, you’re going to develop a false sense of confidence around your ability to do that with other breeds.
Michelle Khare: I see.
Tim Ferriss: So yes, I’m interested in falconry.
Michelle Khare: Have you seen that meme that went viral recently that’s like, “You hit at a certain age and all of a sudden you’re obsessed with birds”?
Tim Ferriss: That’s really funny. Maybe that’s what’s going on. Next thing you know, I’ll just like smoking a pipe on a porch talking about World War II all the time. I don’t know.
Michelle Khare: There you go. That’s in your future, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Worse things could happen. All right. So here’s — I’m going to ask more, I want to ask more episode questions, but before we do that, anyone else that you’d like to sort of invoke?
Michelle Khare: I’m going to invoke.
Tim Ferriss: Are there any other partners, companies, people, anything that you’d like to check out your work?
Michelle 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 content creators in general, I’m excited to meet with anyone from traditional media who is excited to join forces. So that’s just a general statement. But if I have one shout-out, here’s the shout-out I’m going to ask for, The Royal Nanny School in England. We have been wanting —
Tim Ferriss: You’ve been working on this one for a while.
Michelle Khare: — the Norland College, we’re your biggest fans. We’ve been wanting to collaborate for years. If you see this, hit me up.
Tim Ferriss: Incredible. Perfect.
Michelle Khare: Okay. Let me tell you about the Norland nannies. You’re going to appreciate this, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: All right. I’m ready.
Michelle Khare: You know Mary Poppins, the silhouette with 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. So you look at footage from this school, and it’s literally they’re wearing this outfit and hat pushing a pram stroller while also wielding a gun because they have to protect the kids. So they know defensive driving. It’s like Secret Service meets Butler Academy, which you shouted out in the 5-Bullet Friday. So it’s two amazing worlds coming together. I think more people need to know about it. So I’m very passionate about it.
Tim Ferriss: 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.
Michelle Khare: Of course it does, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Michelle Khare: But also, I respect it. What have we been talking about? Saying no. So I have to respect when someone else says no too. But also, I’m just letting you know, we’re still available, still interested and excited. Love you guys from afar, big fan.
Tim Ferriss: Of your episodes, when you look back, and you can’t say all of them, that’s disallowed, that answer is no good, no fly, if you did not have a YouTube channel, but you had a thriving career, so you had some money, which of those, you can pick two or three, of the experiences that you would pay to have looking back?
Michelle Khare: That I would do again in a heartbeat?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, do again or you’re like, “Okay, I only get to pick two or three, but I would absolutely pay for these if I had to.”
Michelle Khare: I would pick, first of all, the black belt challenge. So 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 was lacking in my performance and mental fortitude and I wanted to experience that. So what do I do? I make it a challenge so that I can devote my whole life to it.
And that experience changed me. When I look at clear before and after, 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. That was one of those for me.
Getting to study with Grand Master 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 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 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. I’m trying to qualify for nationals this year with Master Rhee. So I’m very excited about it. I would recommend it to anybody.
Michelle Khare: The other one I was going to 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. So for that, I had six weeks to learn how to hold my breath and pick locks to attempt Houdini’s water torture cell. 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 challenges I’ve done.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sure.
Michelle Khare: 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. You’re holding your breath.
So I was having to learn how to push through that. Having breath hold, a time of — ultimately, I got to 3:30. And most Navy Seals, two, three minutes is pretty good. Houdini’s 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.
And ultimately, we came to the conclusion of designing our own, which was really, really incredible and creatively challenging. How do you create a glass box that can be filled with so many gallons of water and maintain the structural integrity when there’s a person inside? And function with all the locks and the hinges with water as an involved substance? It was a huge, huge engineering challenge for our team.
And I’m really, really proud of the final result. Because both of those things are things I would have never guessed that 2016 me would have been able to do. First of all, holding my breath that long. Second of all, taking the creative liberty to design something that was inspired by a work of history, but also our own.
Tim Ferriss: Next question. So this one you may not want to answer.I would understand why. I have a little bit more freedom in answering this for myself, so I can also go first and buy some time.
Michelle Khare: Challenge accepted. Let’s hear it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So which one would you pay not to do again?
Michelle Khare: Oh, gosh.
Tim Ferriss: One or two. And the one I would say, for me, just to offer it up is, and holy shit, did I make a mistake, this was episode one of the Tim Ferriss Experiment, in terms of filming. And keep in mind, we had, I think it was 11 or 13 episodes or 10 or 13 episodes that we filmed in that number of weeks. So I mean, it was every week we were filming.
Michelle Khare: As a viewer, I never realized that it was 13 consecutive weeks.
Tim Ferriss: It was consecutive weeks.
Michelle Khare: That’s crazy.
Tim 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 with proper technique because of the connective tissue adaptations and sort of ligament and tendon adaptations that need to take place, which required quite a bit of time.
Secondly, the promise of the show was I haven’t cheated. So it’s like I can’t pre-prepare for it if I’m showing what it’s like to start from zero. And I am still contending with injuries from that week to this day. 12/13 weeks later.
Michelle Khare: No way. Wow. You guys shot that at Tempest, right?
Tim Ferriss: What was that?
Michelle Khare: Tempest?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Amazing gym.
Michelle Khare: Incredible.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, those guys are amazing. Tempest free running, check it out, it’s incredible.
Michelle Khare: Yeah. But I will say I have dropped from the monkey bars and pulled my back. It’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, I ended up tearing multiple heads of the quadricep in both legs.
Michelle Khare: And then you continued filming for 12 weeks after?
Tim Ferriss: For 12 more weeks. So you can imagine —
Michelle Khare: And that included the Yabusame episode. That’s different?
Tim Ferriss: No, the Yabusame episode is actually from a totally different TV show, a pilot of which was filmed right after the first book came out, it might’ve even been before. I think it was right after the first book came out. So that was a completely separate thing with a production company in Singapore. It was kind of wonky to be honest.
Michelle Khare: Oh, wow.
Tim Ferriss: But the Yabusame was way earlier. Back when I had hair or a little bit of hair. I was white knuckling.
Michelle Khare: Okay. Because all of my experience, transparently, of the show has been in online rips because many of this material is no longer available.
Tim Ferriss: All of the Tim Ferriss Experiment stuff, I got the rights back for a launch on iTunes, as it was called back then. And it was the number one nonfiction show when it launched for a while, which I was very happy about. Although it was excruciating, you can imagine, talking about negotiating with a big behemoth where you just don’t really have any leverage whatsoever. And they were helpful, but a lot of employee changes and so on that made it difficult. And then ultimately getting the rights back completely so I could just release it for free on YouTube.
But which would you pay not to do, any come to mind?
Michelle Khare: What would I pay not to do? I have a few answers for this actually. First one is chess. And again, I recognize the people who have sat in this chair, I feel like 99.9% of people in the Tim Ferriss sphere, everybody plays chess. Everybody is on chess.com. When you go to these entrepreneur events, there’s always a chess board. Everyone loves chess. So I feel a little shameful saying this. Chess was very challenging for me.
Tim Ferriss: There are plenty of people on this show who don’t like chess, including people who used to be professional players.
Michelle Khare: Really? Oh, my goodness. Now, I loved many aspects of it, but the challenge for that was originally I had one month to prepare for a competition. And I did the month of training. I got to the competition. I didn’t do as well as I had wanted. And something about the episode just felt empty.
And I think, you and I both know this, you know when you haven’t gone the distance with something, you haven’t given it your all. And I knew that deep down. So I continued training for nine more months, 10 months in total I believe, to achieve this goal of my Elo rating. And finally did it. And I was like, “I’m good.” I am so good on the London system, all this stuff. I was studying so hard. And I’m so glad I did it, but I’m good to be a casual chess player. Good to be a casual chess player.
I think the other one I don’t think I’ll do again is one that hasn’t come out yet. Which makes it interesting I suppose. The most challenging physical thing I’ve ever done is the seven marathons on seven continents in one week. Which is going to be coming out this April, a three part series on the channel. We’re so excited about it. Specifically within that, the Antarctica marathon is —
Tim Ferriss: Sounds terrible.
Michelle Khare: — something I probably won’t do again. People got frostbite when we were out there. It was insane.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sure they did.
Michelle Khare: But the sneaky sleeper marathon is — most people think Antarctica is the worst when they hear about this challenge. But the sneaky one is marathon number six, which is in Colombia. And the reason this one is so crazy is because historically people have gone to the hospital from heat exposure. It’s marathon number six, so you have five other marathons in your body that you have done in the five previous days before. And they actually schedule this marathon to happen overnight to try and avoid the sun. But because our flight was slightly delayed, we started around 3:00 AM. And that meant we were literally racing against the sunrise. And the slower you go, the more heat exposure you have. So it was 100% humidity. It’s so hot. And psychologically, you feel like you’re at the finish line because tomorrow’s the finale, tomorrow’s Miami, tomorrow’s race number seven. But really number six is the unexpected one.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that sounds brutal.
Michelle Khare: What’s crazy about that is there are the most unexpected people who do this marathon. Okay. There was a guy, you’re not going to believe this, there was a guy named Adrian, for whom his first marathon he ever ran was marathon one of that week. He knew some of the race organizers and just decided to come along. And originally he was going to run half-marathons and just decided, “I’m going to go for the full.” That’s crazy to do your very first marathon in a week where you’re going to do seven. Yeah. So that was nuts.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. There are sort of breeds and then there are breeds also. I mean, there are mutants for each of these disciplines. There are mutants for all these disciplines we have discussed. And you meet some folks, and you mentioned stunt work on Avatar, but I remember, I’ve met people who are professional high jumpers. And I’m just looking at them and I’m like, “We are not the same species.”
Michelle Khare: No.
Tim Ferriss: Just like your attachment points and where your Achilles is.
Michelle Khare: Built different.
Tim Ferriss: Everything is different. I mean, that’s true for every discipline, including chess of course.
Michelle Khare: There’s an 83-year-old man named Dan Little who does this event. It was his fourth time doing it.
Tim Ferriss: The seven in seven?
Michelle Khare: Seven in seven. He’s done it four times. He’s 83 years old. He’s this guy named Dan from Oklahoma. And just the most incredible person you’ll ever meet. So joyful and excited. And he’s the last person on course every day. He takes seven or eight hours to do the full marathon. And he is smiling the whole time. I think that’s one of the coolest things about our job, our jobs, is perspective, the people you meet. It really redials your compass.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, if you’re the average of the people you spend the most time with, choose those people really carefully.
Michelle Khare: Gosh. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I mean, the older I get, it’s not that surprising, but the more I enjoy spending time with people who are doing things like that, not necessarily in that much of an extreme. But it could be like Arthur Brooks, who we were just talking about, because there was some footage from a prior interview of mine up there. He’s a busy guy. Or Adam Grant. But they take fantastic care of themselves. And particularly with each passing year it seems as you get older, the sort of entropy that leads people to gather and just complain about their new aches and pains or how little time they have or how busy they are with the kids, whatever it might be, increases.
And I try, and I’ve succeeded fortunately, I have a lot of friends who are counter examples, and I’m like, “Okay, if there’s only one counter example in the world, okay. Well, maybe it’s just inevitable.” And I’m like, “If I’ve gathered five to 10 close friends who are all counter examples, that’s something you can do.” Because all of these people, from a personality perspective, from a life perspective, from a financial perspective, very different. Which means if you want it badly enough, you can be the counter example. And I find that super uplifting.
Michelle Khare: I love that.
Tim Ferriss: Let me ask a couple of very quick questions and then we’ll land this plane.
Michelle Khare: Okay. This has been so fun.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m really happy to spend time together. You mentioned McMillion$. Other favorite documentaries? I know you like documentaries. Are there any other documentaries that stand out to you?
Michelle Khare: My favorite one is Free Solo.
Tim Ferriss: Free Solo, that’s so good.
Michelle Khare: So good. Alex Honnold, what you doing? Talking about counter examples here. I am just endlessly inspired by him as a person. And I think Jimmy Chin’s work, directing, filming, it’s just outstanding given the care and the sensitivity of the subject nature.
Tim Ferriss: Terrifying.
Michelle Khare: And how he executed it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So for people who maybe watched the recent live Netflix climbing of Taipei.
Michelle Khare: Taipei.
Tim Ferriss: Go watch Free Solo if you haven’t seen it. And fun fact, I actually interviewed Alex about six months before he did his Free Solo ascent of El Cap.
Michelle Khare: I just got chills.
Tim Ferriss: And he was in that white van that is in the movie. And freaked me out because he parked outside of my house. And I was like, “Who’s in this creepy van with no windows parked in front of my house?” And it’s also before he got media training. So if you want to see pre-polish Alex.
And I want to give a nod also, Free Solo is an amazing movie, to Chai Vasarhelyi. So Chai is married to Jimmy Chin. She is, I mean, in a lot of ways, the filmmaker. And Jimmy obviously, without his expertise and these crazy complicated rigs and the ability to climb and actually be suspended around Alex and so on, I won’t ruin anything with spoilers, there are a lot of adjustments that needed to be made with that, but that is a fantastic one.
I think it was The Dive, they’ve also had some follow-up films that are just incredible.
Michelle Khare: I remember seeing a tweet when Alex did the Taipei climb that was like, “Everyone’s freaking out about this. What if I told you this is actually not the craziest thing he’s ever done.” Referring to Free Solo.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, it is so far not the craziest thing in the sense that, watch the El Cap climb, it is infinitely hard. To any really, really seasoned climber, yes, it’s risky to climb with no ropes. Yes, the tower is dangerous if you make a mistake. From a technical perspective, from a technical perspective, it’s actually not that difficult. Doing what he did on El Cap is very much in the death defying category.
Michelle Khare: Yeah. I’m out. I’m sure people ask you this too, but people are always like, “What’s something you wouldn’t do?” I’m like, “I’m going to let Alex Honnold own the category of whatever it is he’s doing.” I think that category is well covered.
Tim Ferriss: The category of things I wouldn’t do is pretty broad. And it gets broader every day. After a few very scary avalanche experiences with back country skiing and heli-skiing where people have gotten really injured and could have been buried. I’m done. Avalanche risk, if there’s any real avalanche risk, I’m out.
Michelle Khare: So you’re out from Everest?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, there are many reasons I’m out from Everest.
Michelle Khare: Okay. There are many reasons I’m out from Everest too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, no, there are a lot of reasons I’m out from Everest.
Michelle Khare: Yeah. People ask me all the time —
Tim Ferriss: Not the least of which is plenty of people have already done it, why would I?
Michelle Khare: Exactly. I think the story’s been told.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Why would I risk my life for something that’s not even going to be a notable footnote for anything or anyone?
Michelle Khare: There you go.
Tim Ferriss: Book or books you’ve given most as a gift or recommended a lot, any books come to mind?
Michelle Khare: have recommended Radical Candor to pretty much everybody I know who’s a content creator trying to figure out their business. The other one is The Great CEO Within, which is a really fast and easy read. And for anyone who didn’t start in Silicon Valley or a startup culture or a startup of any kind, was really helpful to me to just understand here’s what a company is and how it works. And then I’ve given Adam Grant’s Originals to a few people too.
Tim Ferriss: Dig it. All right.
Michelle Khare: I would say this, but I feel like that’s cheating, so I’ve tried to exclude it from my answer.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s fine.
Michelle Khare: So I can’t say that, but obviously I talk about it all the time.
Tim Ferriss: If you could have one giant billboard anywhere, obviously this is metaphorically speaking, with anything on it, it could be a quote, nothing commercial, but could be a mantra, quote from someone else, a picture, anything, question, what might you put on that?
Michelle Khare: I feel like this one has been overused at this point, but one that was really helpful for me starting my channel was, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” Very simple. Again, overused at this point. But I love that one because it’s what I return to when things are hard in any aspect of life and especially when I’m doing a challenge. It’s a way for me to remind myself, this is the struggle I asked for to make myself better at the thing I want to be better at. And it’s also a reminder to move forward through it and not shy away from it.
As we talked about, Challenge Accepted was born out of writing my fears on a whiteboard. And so for me, I have a very intimate connection with that sentiment. And I think about it even in an exterior capacity when I get nervous about something, personal life, business, whatever, exterior to the challenge itself, I return to that often.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I have quotes related to that.
Michelle Khare: Let me hear them.
Tim Ferriss: Etched onto driftwood, ranging from Anaïs Nin to others all over my house.
I think I’ve done enough talking today, so I’m going to keep the focus on you. Michelle, where can people find you, where would you like to point people to?
Michelle Khare: You can follow me @michellekhare on everything. And the three-part series of my experience attempting seven marathons on all seven continents in one single week will be coming out on my YouTube channel in three consecutive weeks throughout April and May. And we’re going for a primetime Emmy this year, which I’m really excited about.
Tim Ferriss: So exciting.
Michelle Khare: We’re on the ballot for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special. It’s a very long title for a category. And I’m excited about it for a lot of reasons, most of which is I want to be a part of a future where it’s not unheard of that a YouTube channel is going for something like this. And that’s why I’m excited about it for myself and other creators.
Tim Ferriss: I’m excited for you.
Michelle Khare: Thank you. So if you’re a voter, please vote for me.
Tim Ferriss: I’d vote for you. I’d vote for you. And just for people who may miss this, Khare, K-H-A-R-E.
Michelle Khare: Oh, yeah, yeah. M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E K-H-A-R-E.
Tim Ferriss: Michelle, is there anything else you’d like to say, any parting words, anything you’d like to add before we wind to a close?
Michelle Khare: I want to say thank you, Tim. It was really special to go back through the archives and realize that your impact in my life started 10 years ago. And to almost to the date be meeting you 10 years later is really full circle and affirming for me. And I hope that anyone listening can hear the very grassroots fear-setting chart that I had for myself in the beginning. And I think it’s a special moment for me to reflect on the length of time it takes to do something special. And how that commitment can lead you somewhere unexpected.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you for that. And I have to say, it makes me so deeply happy, I mean, joy is probably a better word, I get so much joy out of the fact that you exist and you’re doing what you’re doing. Because it tests a lot of assumptions about a direction that I would view as pretty dystopian about online content creation. You’re putting out long form, positive, life affirming, nonfiction where you show that failure is not a terminal sentence, it’s just feedback along the path. And I just love that you’re doing what you’re doing. And I’m such a fan of your work, such a fan of Challenge Accepted. And I hope you keep doing it for a super long time.
Michelle Khare: Me too. Thank you, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. All right, everybody, until next time, we’re going to put show notes, including some template emails for people, in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. I assure you if you search K-H-A-R-E, there will be only one response. And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in.
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