I first met filmmaker Adam Patch, courtesy of David Brundage on Facebook, over Thai food in San Francisco.

It was a warm evening in the Mission district, a good omen and unusual blessing. The goal of our meeting was simple: to see if we clicked and, passing that hurdle, to plot the making of “the best book trailer ever made.”

Whether we pulled it off or not, that ambitious mission statement was necessary to survive the many all-nighters and hiccups that would follow.

August of 2010 was the starting point.

On November 30th, the end product was a 59-second trailer, which debuted on Huffington Post Books. It immediately took The 4-Hour Body from near #150 to #30 on Amazon, where it later climbed to #1.

The launch was initiated by a simple poll post, which was followed by an analytical second post. Due to its high production value, the video then made the jump from online to offline, eventually making it to national TV for The Dr. Oz Show (see the clip at :40).

This post will explain exactly how the trailer was created, including early concepts, tools, the team, and more…

Hitting the Pink Elephant First

Let’s hit the most common question first. How much did it all cost?

I paid close to $12,000 total, but I also brought a lot of resources and co-promotional opportunity to the table. The same trailer done with a good freelancer could cost $40-50,000. If you choose a production company, which involves more moving pieces, it could add up to $100,000+.

But don’t be scared away by the above numbers. Can you sometimes make budgetary miracles happen? Most certainly.

Emulating a Hollywood film is much more expensive than a slick demo trailer such as those produced by Epipheo, and the latter is better suited to many start-ups and services:

Second, it’s easier to contain costs if you have a clear vision of your goal, as well as a clear picture of your would-be partner’s longer-term goals. In my first fateful meeting with Adam, I slid a piece of paper across the table within ten minutes of us sitting down — the draft storyboard:

Click here for larger version.

Following up on our meeting, I sent him this e-mail:

Hi Adam,

OK, so here are some goodies to get your juices flowing.

Here is the basic book idea — I’ve made myself a guinea pig so you don’t have to:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/06/22/the-next-book-from-rapid-fat-loss-to-strongmen-a-guide-to-becoming-superhuman/

The video clip in this mock-up vid (attached) is from an incredible gymnast in the UK, Damien Walters. I have an email in to him to see if we’d be able to use any of his stuff. Pretty amazing, but it’ll give you an idea.

Current book cover is attached. I imagine it, some variation, or book/combo would appear at the end after the dude jumps over the car (perhaps even mid-air), or whichever visual we use.

Other potential vids for ideas:

Breathholding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn6cley8WDE (jump to :25 or so, seems very low-cost but potentially HD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0 (just for fun)

Deadlift: http://www.youtube.com/user/Konstantinovs

Running: 2:35 or so forward here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRZvlQTTCMg

These are all starting points, but feel free to go nuts with your imagination. I want your ideas and input.

Look forward to your treatment!

Tim

How did it all hold up? Here’s the final product in HD (give it some time to load):

Getting from that scrap of paper to spots on national TV was not easy.

The music portion alone almost killed the project. But the success of this trailer IS replicable.

The following interview and footnotes will explain the process and the lessons learned.

Adam Patch, interviewed by Charlie Hoehn (with comments by Tim)

Tell us a bit about your background.

My name is Adam Patch, and I directed and edited the trailer for The 4-Hour Body. I went to film school in San Francisco to learn directing, and got my start doing music videos, commercials, and motion graphics editing. I’ve been a freelancer for the last five years or so.

How were you chosen to direct the 4HB trailer?

I received a call from Tim one day, out of the blue.

He introduced himself, told me about the new book, and said he wanted to do a trailer for it. It sounded cool, and I hadn’t really seen many book trailers, so I was intrigued by the idea.

When we first met up, Tim laid out his entire vision, which was pretty clear from the beginning. He already had the track from Sevendust (“Splinter”) picked out, and knew he wanted to base all of the trailer’s visuals around that song.

After our first meeting, I wrote up a treatment (which is just a specific outline of how I wanted to shoot the trailer and the energy I wanted to bring to it), presented it to Tim, and he was on board right away. Shortly after that, we went and filmed it on a two-day shoot.

[TIM: Here is the original treatment Adam presented to me]

What happened after The 4-Hour Body trailer came out?

It blew up. The trailer got a ton of great comments on YouTube [896 at the time of this writing], the hits on my website took off, and I got several calls from other publishers interested in doing book trailers. I’ve also been getting emails from film students who are interested in learning how I did certain effects. It’s been really cool to see such a positive response to the video.

The trailer opens with a shot of Tim working at a table. Can you talk about that day of shooting?

We basically did a full day’s worth of shooting at the atrium inside Tim’s house. We knew that we were going to split it up, so we took our time finessing everything and really made sure all the shots looked nice. And visually-speaking, the atrium was super cool to photograph.

How Adam gave the atrium a cinematic feel in After Effects.

We brought all this stuff to make it look like a mad scientist lab, like he had been doing experiments on himself and taking notes. We shot that 30-second part of the video for probably six hours in one day. Then the following day, we drove all around the Bay, meeting up with each of the people in the video and shooting their little vignettes.

What goes into a six-hour shoot like that? Why does it take so long?

Almost all of that time was spent setting up lights. We lit up his whole atrium so it looked cool on camera, laid out a dolly track, and set up two cameras for shooting. We had a rough idea of what we wanted to shoot, but we were also exploring while we were there and coming up with ideas on the fly. For instance, there was one shot from overhead where the camera kind of drops down on Tim, and we didn’t really plan for that shot.

Typically, a shot like that would be done with a jib. But we didn’t have a jib, so what we did is we had the camera up on two C-stands and had two of our grips lower them down slowly. That looked pretty amateurish while we were doing it, but we also couldn’t see what we were shooting. We just put the camera up there and hoped it would work. So it was cool because it actually turned out pretty great.

There’s also a shot of a dilating eye. How did you guys shoot that?

We just had Tim sit in front of a camera with his eye closed for 20 seconds or so. We had a light nearby so that his eyes would quickly dilate when he opened them. Then I actually enlarged his pupil in post-production to make it even more noticeable.

What were the “holding your breath in the pool” shots like?

Those little pool shots were with Nathan Zaru. I remember it was kind of cold outside, and the water was freezing. And we had to keep doing take-after-take to make sure we got it right.

The camera we were using was the GoPro HD Cam, which is this really small HD camera where you can’t see what you’re shooting at all. It just has a fisheye lens. You shoot with it, and then you have to download the footage to see what it looks like. So we would do several takes with the camera from different positions, hoping one of them would work. In the meantime, poor Nathan is just sitting there freezing his ass off. By the end, his lips had literally turned solid blue, and we finally said, “Okay, that’s probably enough. I’m sure we got it.” It worked out.

How about the deadlifting shot in the gym?

We went down to Mark Wild’s Wild Iron Gym in San Jose, which is a really tiny, grimy old-school gym. It’s basically a big storage unit with a roll-up door, and there’s a whole bunch of huge dudes working out inside. It was pretty awesome.

What was amazing about that shot was that powerlifter Mark Bell [our photo subject] was just in the middle of a workout. It wasn’t like we were telling him to do the lift. I mean, he helped move stuff around to make it look good, but it wasn’t as staged as I thought it would be. He was lifting about 600 pounds, repeatedly. He kept saying, “You guys want me to do it again?” It was nuts.

[TIM: Just for fun, compare the above "after" post-production shot with the below "before" still. The footage is exactly the same. Notice any differences?]

We also shot Tracy Reifkind with the kettlebell at the same location. We were trying to find a good spot to film her workout, and it was basically a parking lot and storage units. So we ended up lugging all of our gear onto the roof of the building and shooting.

Her scene is on the roof of this huge industrial building. It was kind of sketchy; you’re not supposed to be able to get up there. But we shimmied up the ladder with all of our gear and shot her at the top, just so we could have a nice view of the sky.

What about the running portion?

We were driving around with Brian MacKenzie, trying to find a good spot to shoot his stuff, and we ended up finding a cool place right off of the freeway in San Mateo. We pulled over and ended up shooting a lot of different angles, because I wasn’t sure I was going to use them at cut. There’s a ton of footage of him just running around and going through trees and trails, but we only ended up using a tiny portion of it.

And the second to last shot: the Parkour jump over the wall?

We shot that with Brian Orosco at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and he was just coming off of a sprained ankle, so he wasn’t even up to par. It was a little scary because we weren’t sure how many takes we would get. He was totally doing us a huge favor and after the first jump, we didn’t expect to get another take. We figured he would hurt himself or something and we’d have to move on. But he was great. He did that jump four times, I think. And the one we ended up using in the trailer was what he called “The Lazy Boy,” where he puts his hands behind his head and jumps off.

We have to talk about the original ending. The first time Tim and I watched it, we busted out laughing. It just didn’t work.

[Laughs] Yeah. When Tim first spoke to me about the trailer, he told me a theme of his book was “becoming superhuman.” And one of the things that I put in my original treatment was that it would be cool at the end (after Brian jumps off the wall) if it were actually Tim who slams down in the final shot. So I wanted to do this totally epic comic book-style, like “Sin City” or something, where Tim would smash down on his knee and look up at the camera. That was the plan, at least.

[TIM: Here's what the rough cut looked like, using placeholder numbers for experiments, test subjects, etc. Try and keep a straight face at the end.]

Keep in mind that this shot would only look good after a lot of work in post-production. But it was basically Tim softly dropping down to the ground, which looked extremely silly while we were shooting it. I still think that if I’d had some time to fix the shot, it probably would have turned out cool. But in the first round of edits, it just looked like a joke.

Tim called me right after he saw it for the first time, and he couldn’t stop laughing. He suggested we replace him with the book slamming down instead.

The book was just a high-res still of the cover, and I rebuilt it in 3D using After Effects. I took the different planes, rebuilt a book shape, and just slammed it down. I added dust particles and concrete cracking and all that stuff to make it seem more energetic than just a cut to the book’s title.

What kind of gear did you and your crew use during this shoot?

My crew consisted of Phillip Briggs (cinematographer), Jeremy Wong (1st AC), Chris Galdes (gaffer), and Chris Bennett (grip). Below is the full list of video gear I had to use for this shoot (minus lighting equipment).

Cameras from the shoot:
- Canon 5D
- Canon 7D
- GoPro HD Camera (for the underwater shot)

Camera Lenses:
- Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro
- Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 Mark II USM
- Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

My workstation set up:
- 8 core Mac Pro (2 x 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) with 10GBs of RAM
- 2 x 24″ Apple Cinema Displays
- Medium Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet (I use this instead of a mouse)

Software/Plugins I used for trailer:
- Final Cut Pro
- After Effects
- Twixtor (for all slow motion shots)
- Magic Bullet Looks (for color correction)

Footnotes and Cautionary Notes from Tim

But what about the music? Ahhhhh…. music. You capricious little minx, you.

The entire trailer started as a fantasy while listening to Sevendust’s “Splinter” track in an airport. I chartered Charlie with identifying the route to licensing and the costs involved.

At first glance, it appeared that, for online use only, we needed to pay approximately $320 to either ASCAP or BMI, two large clearing houses for licensing music.

In the beginning, it seemed so simple. That is, until is wasn’t simple at all. Here’s what we found in the rabbit hole, partially from ASCAP and partially from industry mentors:

There were six writers on the title “Splinter” performed by the band known as “Sevendust”:

John M Connolly
Vincent E Hornsby
Edward Clint Lowery
Corey French Lowery
La Jon Witherspon

There were four related publishers, listed below, Chrysalis being the primary and the place the start:

Publishers/Administrators:
CHRYSALIS MUSIC
DARK NEW MUSIC
KAYLA 1 PUBLISHING
VEH PUBLISHING

Once determining the above, the standard next steps were then:

Issue a “quote request” to the publishers (starting with Chrysalis) indicating the various rights and terms we were looking to clear. The request could start with “initial rights”, the most narrow we could manage, followed by “options” for broader rights. To begin the quote request, we’d need to define the scope of rights sought:

Initial Rights:

Media: Internet and TV (Need to specify if this is “all tv”, free tv, cable, satellite, etc.)
Territory: For Internet, it’s the world; for TV, is this for “Good Morning America” in the US only? North America?World?
Timing: What is the length of the use — how much of the track? Is it edited or interrupted?
Nature: Is it a background vocal? Background instrumental? Visual vocal? How is the song being used (i.e. In what context)?
Term: 6 months minimum with two options for 1 year, then 3 years? Additionally, there would be a master recording which needs separate clearance.

Sevendust’s “Splinter” also came out through Asylum, who would be the label to clear the master, typically on an MFN basis (most-favored-nation) with the publisher’s quote. While it might be helpful to have a relationship with the band (to approve the use and help expedite the process), ultimately we’d have to deal with the publisher and label at the end of the day.

Sound complicated? It should, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

It was then time for disaster-recovery planning.

Since the trailer made no sense without accompanying music, and “Splinter” was up in the air, I began to look for sound engineers as a back-up insurance policy. For a 60-second original track, the cost could range from $500 to well over $10,000, all depending on the complexity of the score, their reputations, past clients, etc.

Based on Adam’s original recommendations, I ended up working with two engineers/musicians: Steve Emerson and Dave Groseclose.

Re-editing the visuals before launch was impossible, so their tracks would need to match the cadence of our cuts. Both Steve and Dave were excellent to work with. Here are two of their samples:

Steve Emerson:

Dave Groseclose:

Incredibly, at the 11th hour — literally, late the night before the final video deadline — we received the official go-ahead to use Sevendust’s track online, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alvin Witherspoon, LJ’s father; Tony Couch, Sevendust’s manager; and Aaron Ray of The Collective for making it happen.

Last but certainly not least, thank you to Sevendust for creating such incredible music. If you haven’t heard their stuff, you should absolutely grab either Cold Day Memory or their acoustic Southside Double-Wide.

In summary: If you’re on deadline and need music, either hire a professional (such as a seasoned production company) to manage the complexity, or hire a sound engineer from the outset. Licensing tunes is not for the faint of heart.

The Morale (and Moral) of the Story

This trailer was incredible fun to create. It was also extremely stressful towards the end, with more than a few late-night sessions fueled by wine and caffeine.

The entire experience was infused with an anticipation wouldn’t have existed without the ambitious “create the best X ever” goal. I also believe, as smooth as most things were, it could have gone horribly wrong without a few key ingredients:

- A well-defined vision for the end product
- In-depth review of Adam’s prior reels, as well as in-person discussion, to ensure an aesthetic match.
- Two brainstorming sessions with Adam prior to making things official, to ensure a collaborative match. Creative headbutting, as opposed to give-and-take, creates delays. The request for treatment was also to observe his response time, which was outstanding. Remember: reliability and on-time delivery is more important than optimal skill set.
- Alignment of interest: Instead of focusing solely on price, Adam and I looked at how we could help each other. He was eager to show-off his killer directorial abilities in addition to his post-production skills, and the trailer provided an outlet.

As I’ve written before and still maintain:

It’s lonely at the top. 99% of the world is convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre middle-ground. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming. It is often easier to raise $10,000,000 than it is $1,000,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve for yet another reason.

Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort. I’ll run through walls to get a catamaran trip through the Greek islands, but I might not change my brand of cereal for a weekend trip through Columbus, Ohio. If I choose the latter because it is “realistic,” I won’t have the enthusiasm to jump even the smallest hurdle to accomplish it. With beautiful, crystal-clear Greek waters and delicious wine on the brain, I’m prepared to do battle for a dream that is worth dreaming. Even though their difficulty of achievement on a scale of 1-10 appears to be a 2 and a 10 respectively, Columbus is more likely to fall through.

The fishing is best where the fewest go. There is just less competition for bigger goals.

As the Romans (or at least Turnus) would say: “Fortes fortuna adiuvat!”

Fortune favors the bold. Have fun with it.

Charlie’s job entails many things. Feeding tigers not excluded.

Charlie Hoehn first reached out to me through Ramit Sethi in 2008. Almost three years later, he is still working with me.

Here is his initial e-mail routed to Ramit, which I think is instructional for those looking for mentorship of some type:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Charlie Hoehn
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:25 PM
Subject: Re: Response requested
To: Ramit Sethi

Hi Ramit-

Below is the email I wrote up for Tim Ferriss. Thanks again so much for your insight on how to approach this, and for your willingness to pass it along. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Also, I’d be willing to help you out in any of the ways I outlined below.

Mr. Ferriss-

After visiting your site countless times since May ’07, I’ve come up with a few suggestions that could improve your readers’ experience. Here are two of the things I think you need…

1) A network for your followers: Right now, you have a lot of passionate and devoted readers who comment on your blog. These are people who are likely to spread your ideas. You need a place where your loyal readers can interact with each other more freely, and share their stories about how your book has inspired them.

What it would take: A micro-network. You could frame it as “a crusade against the 9-5 workday.”

How I could help: While I was interning for Seth Godin, I learned how to create micro-social networks for very specific niches. I could easily set this up for you, making it a more exclusive “invite-only,” if you wish.

What the benefits are to you: Allowing your most devoted readers to share their lifestyle design stories will provide you with even more case studies for blog posts (or for a follow-up book). It will also serve as a spot for your readers to get to know one another, and they’ll appreciate that you’ve given them that opportunity.

2) A more dynamic “About” page: Currently, this page starts off with a quote about you from Albert Pope, followed by three thumbnail pictures of your face and a great deal of text outlining your achievements. While your credentials are impressive, this page doesn’t really capture your personality or the lifestyle you’ve designed for yourself.

What it would take: You need a video, between 2 and 5 minutes, that captures the excitement that comes with lifestyle design. The video would showcase exciting things you’ve done (skydiving, tango, motorcycling, etc.), and would be a great way to show your readers that you are the real deal.

How I could help: I can make this video for you for free. I’ve been editing video for more than four years, and started a business in creating movies for special events. All I would need to make your video are great pictures and videos of you. The more they show the human side of you, the better.

What the benefits are to you: Reading something is fine, but an image is far more powerful. This video will establish an even deeper credibility with your new (and old) readers. Even if you end up deciding that it’s not right for your site, you’ll still be getting a great video about you that would normally cost several hundred dollars. If you like my work, we can discuss other ways to implement videos into your site (including higher quality and more exciting videos for your blog).

In exchange for these things, I hope that you’d consider taking me on as an intern (real-world or virtual). I would love to help you out on future projects. Let me know what you think, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Charlie Hoehn
http://www.charliehoehn.com/

MY RESPONSE:

“Charlie! Thanks very much for the suggestions. I currently have the forum and other Ning sites, so I’d be eager to hear how what you propose is different, as I’m always interested in fostering connections between my readers. Last but not least, can you please elaborate on what you mean by “intern”? Would you expect this to paid or unpaid? How many hours per week, etc.? What do you hope the pay-off to be for you during or after the experience? Thanks for letting me know, and for writing. -Tim”

HIS RESPONSE:

Tim- Thanks so much for your response. Here are my answers to your questions:

What I suggest that’s different – I’ve looked at your message boards and Ning sites (I don’t know if you started any of the Ning ones or moderate them). They’re pretty good but they are just places where your readers connect and idly discuss your ideas. The boards and Ning don’t have any call-to-action, really. They aren’t places for your troops to rally for an assignment, so to speak – that’s mostly what you’ve used your blog for. I think you need an exclusive network that has some hurdle to get in (e.g. invite-only).
This could be a group reserved for the people who have actually used and implemented your ideas to create unconventional and extreme lifestyles.

With these people, you compile their stories together and sell it as an ebook (all money going to “Room to Read” or some other good cause). Or you could create a video of the top 3-5 unique lifestyles, following them around and filming them to get a feel for their daily life. This is much more ambitious but something that could turn out really cool. I’d definitely be willing to help you execute these ideas, if you’re interested.

What I mean by “intern” – Non-paid virtual internship for two months, then possibly discussing a real-world internship at the end of the year. For a virtual internship, you could delegate tasks to me, or I could help you with executing ideas you have.

Paid or unpaid – For virtual, unpaid. For the real-world, I’d work for cheap.

How many hours per week – Varies, depending on how busy you are. Five (5) or more for a virtual internship.

What’s the pay-off for me – I would learn firsthand about your methods for extreme productivity and efficiency. Reading has given me a solid level of understanding, but actually seeing it would help me comprehend it more fully. Second, you’ve already done what I want to become: an entrepreneur who travels a lot. Working with you would allow me to really mentally shift gears and help move me towards my goals faster.

That being said, I have a great deal of respect for you and the things you’ve done. I think it’d be brilliant to work with you in some way, but if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. Thanks for your time, Tim, and I hope to talk with you again soon.

Charlie

Not bad, right? So I decided to give Charlie a shot. He promptly proceeded to f*ck it all up.

My first assignment was: find three possible movie theaters to rent out for the James Bond premiere of “Quantum of Solace.” At the time, Charlie had a horrible cell phone and missed every third word of the task, which I found out later. Rather than ask for clarification, he assumed he had the gist and missed a few critical details.

The reason that wasn’t the end of Project Charlie: He immediately took the blame, hustled overtime, got it fixed, and the event (a thank-you to readers) went off without a hitch.

We both learned a few lessons. I learned to always ask my assistants to briefly summarize what I’ve asked them to do. Charlie learned how to organize a small event, and that erring on the side of too much detail is better than guessing with too little.

Since then, we’ve both learned hundreds of lessons, and Charlie has been able to travel (hence the tiger).

Now, in 2011, Charlie works for me full-time as my “Director of Other.” This is something like a Director of Operations, but Charlie is also responsible for a diverse range of often unpredictable tasks. These motley odd jobs range from identifying revenue opportunities (apps to hard goods), to photoshopping explicit vajajays pics for 10 hours straight to try and make them look like illustrations (See “15-minute orgasm” chapter in 4HB). Publisher’s orders. For those gents who think the latter sounds awesome, I assure you: it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Moving onward…

This post is Charlie’s first guest post on this blog. In it, he describes 12 lessons learned while marketing The 4-Hour Body, as he was involved from the earliest editorial stages straight through to #1 on The New York Times.

Enter Charlie

For the last two years, my main project has been working with Tim on The 4-Hour Body. While the making of this book brought me countless memories (many great, some hilarious, and a few cringe-worthy), it was a tremendous learning experience that has undoubtedly changed how I will approach any product launch from this point forward.

The most fun period during this whole ordeal was planning the marketing for the book, and witnessing a world-class marketer’s thought process. And now that 4HB has hit the two biggest milestones we were aiming for (#1 New York Times, #1 Amazon overall), it’s time for me to share a few of the things I learned while marketing a bestselling book.

In this post, you’ll find a list of the key elements that made the 4HB launch such a huge success, ranked in order of “moderately impactful” to “extremely impactful.” You’ll notice that this list is missing a lot of the common marketing advice new authors receive. For instance, Tim set these rules for himself early on:

- No book tours
- No paying for access to email lists
- No intense focus on building Facebook and Twitter accounts
- No paying for consultants who buy your way onto the bestseller list
- No email drip campaigns
- No multi-month pushes for pre-orders

Without further ado, here are 12 lessons I learned while marketing “The 4-Hour Body.”

12. Amazon Review Overload

The sheer volume of 5-star Amazon reviews for 4HB caused confusion and outrage. A lot of people just couldn’t imagine how we were able to get more than 140 reviews (over one hundred 5-stars) in the first 24 hours without paying for them. The reality is not as sexy as you’d think.

Tim had sent out more than 1,000 advance copies of the book. He gave copies to friends, companies where he’d been a guest speaker, and people who’d helped or had volunteered to help with the book. At 5:00am Eastern on December 14^th (the day of the launch), we emailed all of those people with the word “Urgent” in the subject line, and asked them if they could spare 30 seconds to write an Amazon review within the next 24 hours, whether they enjoyed the book or not (we never asked anyone to leave a 5-star review). Plain, simple, and it got the job done.

Although this generated a fair amount of backlash from skeptics, it was an immense boon for us to have a solid foundation of 200 positive reviews in the first week.* Having a solid Amazon rating gives the book an enormous amount of social proof that can last for years, and (although immeasurable from our end) boosts the conversion rate on the sales page substantially.

[* To put into perspective how ridiculous it is to have this many reviews: The 4-Hour Workweek has been out for almost four years, sold over one million copies, and has just over 1,100 Amazon reviews (Cumulative: 5-stars). The 4-Hour Body has been out for just shy of THREE MONTHS, and now has more than 1,200 Amazon reviews (4.5-stars).]

11. “I’ll let you figure it out”

There are very few phrases that can simultaneously empower and give you an anxiety attack. “I’ll let you figure it out” is one of them. For the last two years, it’s been repeated to me over and over…

Party for 200 Silicon Valley VIPs on a warship in 24 hours?
“I’ll let you put it together.”

Assemble a draft of a magazine article, based on scattered content?
“Please take care of it.”

Edit and rewrite another bestselling author’s work?
“Go for it.”

Act as the sole point of contact for more than 10,000 customers?
“Get it done!”

At first, these kinds of tasks would elicit Tourette’s-like verbal outbursts and generally stress me the hell out. But after successfully getting through each of them alive, I felt confident enough to take on almost anything that was thrown my way.

“I’ll let you figure it out” was not just Tim’s method of dismissing me or passing along work he didn’t care about; he’s always had a very active role in overseeing my daily output. During the book launch, we’d talk constantly about the progress we were making, and usually had a daily analysis over wine/whiskey where we discussed our marketing efforts. Because he had given me free reign to “figure things out,” I was making most business decisions on my own. This would occasionally get me into trouble during our post-game wrap-up (“I would appreciate it if you’d ask me next time”) but more often than not, it helped that I didn’t need his permission so much during the launch. Because there was no decision-making bottleneck, we were both 10X more productive than an entire team of people would have been.

The next time you feel compelled to micromanage someone you’re working with, say the magic words: “I’ll let you figure it out.” You’d be surprised at how capable most people are. Sure, mistakes are bound to happen, but it will ultimately result in more confident, self-reliant workers.

10. “Perfectionism,” redefined.

Throughout the writing process, Tim was ruthless when it came to cutting away the inessential. He’d frequently ask me which five chapters I would take out. I’d answer, he’d remove a few of those chapters, and then he’d ask me again. Finally, we reached a point where he’d cut more than 100 pages of material. Everything that remained was necessary for the book to be great. After three years of writing, he finally sent it in to Random House.

After submitting a book, an author will typically get two revision rounds before it goes to print. Tim somehow managed to squeeze out SIX rounds of edits for a 600-page book. By the sixth round, he was still suggesting several hundred minor edits, fine-tuning each page. Even though his publisher probably (definitely) hated him for this, he ended up with the groundbreaking book he envisioned.

9. ”He who cares less, wins”

Tim’s negotiations have been among the most memorable conversations I’ve heard over the last several months. He makes enormous requests, and almost always gets what he asks for. I’ve watched him get more than $250,000 worth of inventory for free with a 10-minute phone call. When I asked for his best bit of negotiating advice, he said, “He who cares less, wins.”

All of Tim’s negotiating experience came in handy when it was time to promote the book. He was able to accumulate more than $4,000,000 worth of bonus prizes to give out during the launch, a lot of which came from personal phone calls he made.

Most people don’t have the ability to negotiate effectively, simply because they’re not put in enough situations that call for it. I’m a pretty terrible negotiator, but I’ve improved with Tim’s help. He spotted tics of mine early on (I fill pauses with forced coughs, and say “you know?” to finish thoughts), and gave me a bunch of other helpful advice. For instance, replacing the word “um” or “uh” with silence is the fastest way to sound more intelligent, calculated, and crisp while negotiating (or speaking, in general). You can fix this behavior over time by filming yourself on Skype calls and reviewing the footage.

Another bit of wisdom is to place a time constraint at the beginning of each call (“I can only talk for ten minutes”). The longer you stay on the phone, the less likely your desired outcome will be reached. If phone calls are your weakness, you should stick to email for negotiations so you don’t have to respond in real-time.

8. Timing the Release to Maximize Sales

Most health authors time the release of their books with New Years’ resolutions. Tim was able to dominate his impending competition by launching 4HB two weeks ahead of them. When all the other health books came out in the weeks that followed, Tim’s book was already leading in the weight loss category. His competitors’ promotional efforts were drowned out by the conversations surrounding 4HB.

Having the right timing is just as important as the quality of your promotional efforts. Know what you’re going up against and when. You don’t want to be in the process of creating your position when buyers are most receptive; you want to already be established as the category leader.

Tim elaborated on this on Huffington Post:

After reviewing the top bestsellers in health over the last two years, it was clear that a full third of those books had been published in the traditional “New Year, New You” window, with big promotions rolling out on Janurary 1st. In the below chart, produced when I wrote the proposal, you’ll notice that a full half of the December releases fell at the end of the month for planned Jan 1st promotions.

The first order of business was to somehow avoid the category noise and competition for consumers and media outlets of that window.

Great content is absolutely necessary for long-term sales, but you must also take charge of your “windowing” and finding the best combination of low-noise (relatively lower category competition), high-signal (the best call to action to your base with the highest response rates), along with optimal store traffic is the way to go. So, the strategy in a nutshell is NST: low-Noise, high-Signal, growing-Traffic. I didn’t want to come in at peak traffic and then track to diminishing foot traffic.

What did we do? I pitched hard for a December 14 release date. This required flying from San Francisco to NYC to present my case in person to my publisher, Crown.

I felt it would allow me to mobilize my base for multi-copy purchases for the holidays, starting with pre-orders late November, which would increase initial retailer orders, improve placement (even if unplanned), and then perfectly set up strong in-store promotion starting January 1. Books in the same category would be getting started from a standstill in January, whereas I would, i hoped, be steering an absolute avalanche that started as a snowball more than a month earlier.

The publisher, however, had some legitimate concerns.

Moving the book right into the busiest holiday shopping window would mean a few things: little or no available promotions, and, in some cases, little time for retailers to get books out onto shelves.

Making this move, risky from an in-store promotion standpoint, required taking a Hollywood holiday blockbuster approach to the launch. The unusual video trailer/teaser launched last week was intended as a viral focal point of other base-mobilizing efforts.

The video worked beyond all expectations. [more on this later]

7. Offering Irresistible Incentives

Offering incentives is Online Marketing 101. Offering $4,000,000 in bonus gifts for a book launch is online marketing on steroids.

The Land Rush post Tim put up a week before the book came out had a huge impact on sales. It took a few weeks to plan out, but ultimately resulted in more than 15,000 pre-orders over the span of three days.

The basic premise was to offer 2-10X more value in bonus gifts than the number of books being purchased. For instance, if you bought $16 worth (1 book), you’d get $140 in bonus gifts (8.8X value). If you bought $480 worth (30 books), you’d get $1,623 in bonus gifts (3.4X value). This pushed prospective buyers off the fence to impulsively buy multiple copies of the book.* It was a win-win for everyone.

However, Tim and I think we could have sold a lot more copies. The problem with The Land Rush post was that there were WAY too many choices. Tim had gathered so many bonus gifts to give away that we ended up with 16 different book packages. If we were to do it again, we would have had five different price tiers at most. Everything worked out great, of course, but we could have been smarter about it.

In any case, the takeaway here is that if you want to get people to buy copies of your book, give them something of high value in exchange. Make their purchase a no-brainer by over-delivering.

[* We received a fair amount of flak for encouraging bulk orders. There are two things that need to be taken into consideration: One, almost every author you know already does this, but in a less organized fashion; Two, if you think bulk orders were the sole reason we hit #1, you're dreaming. Our bulk order campaign was to drive pre-orders for 72 hours (Dec 9-12), and we ended up moving about 15,000 copies. By the end of The 4-Hour Body's debut week (Dec 14-20), more than 70,000 hardcovers had been sold in the US, an additional 25,500+ in Kindle, and another 32,000 overseas. In the seventh week after pub date, 4HB sold about 30,000 hardcover and 8,000 e-books. The 4-Hour Body also hasn't dropped off the NY Times list since it came out: three weeks at #3, two weeks at #2, and six weeks at #1. There are very, very few books in the world that can reach and sustain those numbers.]

6. The Motherf***ing Book Trailer

This was not so much of a “lesson learned” as it was merely having my beliefs reaffirmed. Before 4HB, I’d witnessed video teasers boosting sales upwards of 10X. Video converts like crazy when it effectively highlights the product.

The 4HB’s trailer wasn’t just great; it was fantastic. Adam Patch put together a professional teaser that looked good enough to be shown in a movie theater:

Immediately after releasing the trailer, the book’s Amazon rank jumped from #150 to #30, and hasn’t dropped below that number since.

If you’re going to make a teaser video for your product, spend the extra cash on a professional videographer. It is absolutely worth it.

5. The Art of the Soft-Sell

Tim announced his book in September – three months before it came out. After the initial announcement, he ensured that the content on his blog stayed interesting and varied, while keeping the “Buy my book!” posts to a minimum.

Take a look at the sequencing of his posts between announcing The 4-Hour Body and launching it (bolded titles are 4HB-related):

1. The New Book Unveiled: The 4-Hour Body (Sept. 29)
2. Zen, Tea, and the Art of Life Management (Oct. 5)
3. How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (Oct. 8)
4. Have a Good Eye for Ads? Try the 4-Hour Body Experiment (Oct. 13)
5. The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne (Oct. 19)
6. How Tim Ferriss Makes Money (and Other Things) (Oct. 28)
7. 20 Things I’ve Learned from Traveling Around The World for Three Years (Oct. 30)
8. How to Email Virtual Assistants: Proven Templates (Nov. 2)
9. 8 Exotic Destinations You Can Afford (Nov. 4)
10. 4-Hour Body Promo – Half-Naked Girls, Erections, and Stickers (Nov. 17)
11. Clinton’s “Reality Distortion Field” Charisma (Nov. 21)
12. How to Become a Model Photographer in Brazil (Nov. 25)
13. Engineering a “Muse”: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Nov. 28)
14. The 4-Hour Body – Official Movie Trailer (Dec. 1)
15. The 4-Hour Body – Sample Chapter and Full Table of Contents (Dec. 6)
16. The Land Rush: 48 Hours to Claim $4,000,000 in Prizes (Dec. 9)
17. Engineering a “Muse” – Volume 2: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Dec. 11)
18. The 4-Hour Body is NOW OUT – Live Q&A Today, New Trailer, Free Books, and Much More (Dec. 14)

Tons of great content, and more than half of it had nothing to do with the new book! Tim kept the promotional efforts for his readers to a minimum, as they already had a high likelihood of buying. As a result, he didn’t annoy his readers and all the promotions on his blog seemed crazy, fun, and spontaneous when they finally happened.

4. Carpet-Bombing the Internet: Brief Periods of Intense Noise-Making

A lot of marketers promote their product for several months before they release it. This is not only exhausting for them, but it’s also far less effective than a highly concentrated effort over the span of a few weeks.

Tim’s strategy for marketing on other sites was to deluge readers with quality 4HB-related content. He wanted people to open their RSS on December 14^th to find five to ten posts on 4HB, all from different blogs. In order to do that, he had to make sure that all of these sites were promoting “exclusive” 4HB-content in sync with one another.

Brace yourself for the mother lode. Below is a list of promotional blog posts leading up to the launch, along with all the press pieces that followed them:

11/8/10
- BODYBUILDING – The 4-Hour Body Book Promo

11/26/10
- HUFFINGTON POST - America Needs The 4 Hour Body: A Look Inside The New Book by Timothy Ferriss

11/29/10
- WIRED MAGAZINE – Tim Ferriss Wants to Hack Your Body

11/30/10
- HUFFINGTON POST – Tim Ferriss’ New Book ’4 Hour Body’ And Crazy Video

12/1/10
- BUZZFEED – Tim Ferriss’ New Book: 4 Hour Body

12/7/10
- APPSUMO – Healthy Holidays Bundle Part 2: Manly Man

12/12/10
- NEW YORK POST – The 4-Hour Body: Advice from the guy who knows everything

12/13/10
- TECH CRUNCH – Keen On… Tim Ferriss: How To Turn Your Body Into A Startup (TCTV)
- GIZMODO – 4-Hour Body – The Principle of the Minimum Effective Dose
- NATE GREEN – Become Superhuman: Nate Green and Tim Ferriss
- LIVING SOCIAL – Tim Ferriss Book Package for $16
- BODYBUILDING – Tips from “The 4-Hour Body”: Overview
- BODYBUILDING – The Kettlebell Experiment: Bring one to life for $10
- BODYBUILDING – Activate Superhuman Glutes
- BODYBUILDING – Tracking Results
- BODYBUILDING – Kettlebell Swing
- BODYBUILDING – Top Secret Contents Of A Mad Scientist’s Gym Bag

12/14/10 – Launch Date!
- HUFFINGTON POST – The 4-Hour Body: How Do You Follow Up A #1 Bestseller Without Repeating Yourself?
- GIZMODO – 4-Hour Body – The Slow-Carb Diet
- LIVESTREAM – Live Chat with Timothy Ferriss
- MIXERGY – (Quickly) Hacking The Human Body – with Timothy Ferriss
- 37 SIGNALS – Tim Ferriss explains how “The 4-Hour Body” came to life with Basecamp and Highrise
- ZEN HABITS – The 4-Hour Body: The Tim Ferriss Interview on Zen Habits
- ROBB WOLF – The Paleo Solution – Episode 58 (Tim Ferriss Edition)
- MICHAEL PORT – Tim Ferriss interviewed by Michael Port (Part 1)
- CRAIG BALLANTYNE – Tim Ferriss and the Four Hour Body

12/15/10
- COPYBLOGGER – Tim Ferriss on How to Reinvent Yourself with Blog Marketing
- BUSINESS INSIDER – The Guide To Dieting And Sex That Every Trader Should Read
- GIZMODO – Six Minute Abs
- I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH – Sample: The 4-Hour Body: From Geek to Freak
- DRAGON DOOR – Interview with Tim Ferriss, RKCII, about Kettlebells, Preparation for the RKC course, and his New Book The 4-Hour Body
- ABC NEWS – Brr! Can Frigid Temps Lead to Weight Loss?
- CNN REPORT – Exclusive: Tim Ferriss talks with Chris Ashenden about The 4-Hour Body

12/16/10
- ZEO – Children of the Revolution: Tim Ferriss and Zeo
- ABC NEWS – Lose 20 Lbs. in 30 Days? A 15-Min. Orgasm?
- ABC NEWS – Faceoff: Superhuman Bodies, 15-Minute Orgasms

12/17/10
- MIKE GEARY – How GLUT-4 shuttles calories into muscle instead of fat
- PDF PEN – Case Study: Tim Ferriss

12/18/10
- YANIK SILVER – How to Make Yourself Superhuman and Super Productive

12/19/10
- TERRY LAUGHLIN – How Tim Ferriss Learned to Swim in 10 Days

12/20/10
- TERRY LAUGHLIN – Could Tim Ferriss turn The Situation on to Swimming?
- GALLEYCAT – How Timothy Ferriss Hit the Amazon Bestseller List
- FOX AND FRIENDS – Become Superhuman
- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE – Consumers Turn to Custom Diets to Achieve Their Perfect Bodies for 2011

12/21/10
- EVERNOTE – How Tim Ferriss used Evernote to write The 4-Hour Body
- CNN REPORT – Five Holiday Time Savers
- FORBES – Weighing In On Worst Words On Diet, Exercise And Body Image
- FORBES – Names You Need To Know In 2011: Tim Ferriss

12/23/10
- BLOOMBERG – ’4-Hour Body’ Author Ferriss on Rapid Weight Loss: Audio

12/27/10
- SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS – Author Timothy Ferriss says his book holds key to weight loss, great sex

12/29/10
- CNN REPORT – How one man’s shame sparked a 300-pound weight loss

1/4/11
- NEWSWEEK – Tim Ferriss’ Latest Book Wows
- DUCT TAPE MARKETING – The 4-Hour Entrepreneurial Body

1/7/11
- NEW YORK TIMES – New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!

1/13/11
- 37 SIGNALS – Tim Ferriss on tolerable mediocrity, false idols, diversifying your identity, and the advice he gives startups

1/14/11
- THE VIEW – The 4-Hour Body

1/15/11
- TECH CRUNCH – The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself (Review)

1/24/11
- DOCTOR OZ – Four Hours to Your Perfect Body

1/26/11
- HUFFINGTON POST - Why The 4-Hour Body Was Years in the Making

1/27/11
- ASK MEN – Tim Ferriss Interview

1/28/11
- FORBES - Success Secrets of ’4-Hour’ Guru Tim Ferriss

1/31/11
- MACLEANS - Fat loss, Great Sex, and Lentils

2/9/2011
- THE NEXT WEB - ‘My book was yanked from Costco shelves because of explicit sex chapters’

2/22/2011
- CBS LOS ANGELES – Author Says Taking Ice Baths Will Keep You Trim

3/25/2011
- NEW YORK TIMES – The World According to Tim Ferriss

The following internet marketers and health/fitness specialists emailed their lists the week of December 14th.

[Warning: Several of these links direct to squeeze pages.]

- Buck Rizvi
- Chad Tackett
- Craig Ballantyne
- Eben Pagan
- Isabel Del Rios
- Joe Polish
- Joel Marion
- John Romaniello
- Jon Benson
- Josh Bezoni
- Josh Waitzkin
- Kareem Samhouri
- Michael Lovitch
- Michael Port
- Mike Geary
- Neil Strauss
- Pavel Tsatsouline
- Rob Poulos
- Vince Del Monte

[If I left anyone out, please let me know in the comments!]

If you look closely at how many bloggers helped Tim promote the book, you’ll realize it would have been impossible to do if he’d approached them in a sleazy “Pitch my book to your audience!”-kind of way. This behavior is actually very common, but Tim avoided it like the plague. In fact, I don’t recall him asking anyone to promote the book as a favor. He would just tell them about it, and they’d usually want in. Of course, Tim wrote 4HB in such a way that his buddies would want to write about it. In the early stages of creating the Table of Contents, before he’d written anything else for the book, Tim was coming up with chapter titles based on what he thought would make great guest blog posts for his friends.

Most of those bloggers wanted to see Tim and his book succeed, simply because he’s developed meaningful relationships with so many of them. In my mind, this is what separates Tim from a lot of the other online marketers, who might be great at selling and making money, but never do anything truly remarkable. Tim has worked just as hard at building good karma among quality friends as he has at promoting his work, and the former has enriched his life far more.

Most online marketers have a short attention span, a weak filter, and an inability to communicate face-to-face. They salivate when they hear the word “viral” and send out 40 links a day to their friends on Facebook and Twitter. They unknowingly sabotage their own credibility and ensure people won’t pay attention to them when they need it most.

The marketers who will last are the ones who think relentlessly long-term, put out quality content, and recognize the value in building deeper, real-life relationships with their peers. Tim is one of these marketers, and I believe the root of The 4-Hour Body’s rapid success can be attributed to this underlying philosophy.

3. Offline Viral: The Power of Before/After

Before/After of Patrick Thomlinson, who did the Slow-Carb Diet

The 4HWW markets itself with a great title and a loyal fan base. Most people hear about it through friends who say it changed their life. As a result of word-of-mouth, the book has been on the bestseller list for four years.

The 4HB is far more effective at marketing itself because the content in the book can physically transform the reader in a short period of time. If you lose 20 pounds of fat or gain 30 pounds of muscle in a month, all your friends will be approaching you saying “What the hell did you do?!” I know this because both of my parents lost 25 pounds on the diet, and everyone in their social circles was asking them for advice. Their response: “Pick up a copy of The 4-Hour Body.” BAM, even more books sold!

The beauty of “offline viral” is that it can result in spill-over on Twitter and Facebook. In our case, we see tons of messages every day about 4HB. Here’s a small sample:

“First week on the slow-carb diet done. I’m 5lbs lighter with no added exercise. Now 6 people I know are working with your book.” – Frank Johnette

“Two of my Soldiers lost a combined 35lbs in just over two weeks thanks to @tferriss. Thanks for helping me keep my men in shape!” – Matt Bragoni

“Started @tferriss slow-carb diet on 12/31. Down 20 lbs in 34 days. The Four Hour Body is the book that may just save my life.” – Eric Discher

When you can actually see a book’s effects right before your eyes – when a person looks like the “After” in a Before/After photo – well, there’s no form of marketing that’s more powerful than that.

2. The Honeypot: Top 1,000 Blog

Tim will readily admit that his greatest asset is his blog. In terms of sheer traffic, it’s in the top 0.001% of all blogs online (top 1,000 of more than 120,000,000). With the push of a button, he has access to hundreds of thousands of people, many of which are influencers (e.g. New York Times journalists) and folks who are willing to help. But how did he build such a huge following of quality readers?

The answer is that his blog gives WAY more than it takes. A lot of bloggers are constantly trying to extract from their readers. They are in a perpetual state of pitching products and injecting ads. Tim rarely asks for anything; he just focuses on putting out quality content that his readers will like. When he does make a big ask, he’ll do it in a way that rewards the reader if they take action. For instance, “Help me promote my book” becomes “If you help me promote my book, you can win a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world.” Every “ask” Tim makes is a painless win-win, and after years of doing this, he now has a loyal army that’s ready to help whenever he needs it. Their assistance is called upon when he’s doing something ambitious (getting the book to hit #1 on NYTimes) or something small and random (having two people show up in a Texas airport to sell him their MacBook chargers). His readers go above and beyond what’s reasonable to help in any situation. That kind of loyalty can’t be bought.

If you don’t believe that the blog is Tim’s greatest asset, consider this: what author in their right mind wouldn’t think of using their 100,000+ subscriber email list during a book launch? Tim didn’t, because his blog is more powerful.

1. Write an amazing, definitive book.

Most of the advice aspiring authors seek out is on how to market their material, but marketing is actually the easy part. The hard part is producing worthwhile content, and holding your writing to a higher standard than everyone else on the playing field. I believe this is why 4HWW and 4HB will continue to do well for years to come. Tim held both works to the extremely high standard of “Will this be the defining book in its category, and will it be just as valuable five years from now?”

Tim will be the first to admit that he’s not the greatest writer, but he has more empathy than just about anyone I’ve ever met. He knows what people want, and he knows how to give them the least painful solution they need, all while minimizing confusion. Put simply, he knows how to make great content.

In the end, that’s what everything boils down to: great content. Without it, marketing is nothing more than flash and noise.

###

(Photo: Dyobmit)

Let’s start with what you think you want.

“I want to get on Oprah eventually, and we’ve been pitching The New York Times, who’s interested.”

Good news or game over?

I hear some version of this on a weekly basis from start-up founders. Sadly, most of them aren’t prepared for national media and do more harm than good with a premature (and non-strategic) jump into the spotlight. The New York Times doesn’t often do two major stories on a single company, so that first — and possibly only — appearance is what counts.

But what of lack of media attention? Indeed. There are two main media challenges:

How do you get media interest? Big media interest?
How do you ensure you’re prepared when a big opportunity presents itself?

In both cases, you chart a course and execute. In this post, I’ll show how I went from my first real TV exposure to appearing repeatedly as a guest on national TV shows. I’ll also share the exact e-mail pitch that led to a Wired feature, as well as recorded radio interviews.

Media coverage isn’t magic, and it need not depend on luck. It can be a step-by-step process…

Step 1 – Create a Reel

The time was mid-February, 2007. The 4-Hour Workweek was slated to publish on April 27th, and I had a problem: no one in television knew who I was, and I wanted to be on national TV for the launch.

The chicken-or-the-egg problem was simple: big TV doesn’t want you on until you’ve proven yourself on big TV. What to do?

My answer was: look for a local affiliate of big networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC, and find something controversial and timely to discuss. I began to read the news (a rare event) and realized that a soon-to-be-published book was making waves — Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.

I knew a few people directly involved with BALCO, and — as a sports nutrition company CEO at the time — I was in a qualified position to talk about drugs in sports. Digging into advanced excerpts of Game of Shadows (GOS), which was billed as a “drug-by-drug account” of high-level athletics, I formulated a simple and valid position: far from decreasing drug use, the book would end up serving as a how-to guide.

GOS was going to be published on March 1, 2007. The week before publication, I reached out to all local San Jose or bay area-based big networks. I called the switchboard or main number, requested “the newsroom,” and started the pitch, which was written out on paper in front of me and never lasted more than 20 seconds:

“My name is Tim Ferriss and I have a timely pitch for you. I work with professional athletes and… [establish credibility as CEO and someone with experience in drugs in sports]”

“Game of Shadows, about Barry Bonds and BALCO, comes out next week and it’s getting a lot of attention. Most of the world is viewing it as an exposé that will decrease drug use. They’re wrong. I can discuss why it will actually increase steroid and drug use.”

Most calls went to voicemail, a few people said they’d get back to me, and only one did: NBC 11 in San Jose.

But one is all it takes. The short NBC clip ended up being the social proof later needed to get me on The Today Show and others for The 4-Hour Workweek.

Remember: make it timely and controversial. “Controversial” doesn’t necessarily mean scandalous; it means a position that runs counter to the mainstream or expectations.

But does the “reel” only apply to TV?

Not at all. The same can be done for radio, which is a far easier sandbox to play in, as there are more players. I started with Lamont and Tonelli on KSJO 92.3 and a stunt for Fairtex kickboxing. I invited the hosts to a demo and encouraged their sidekick, Sully, to get in the ring and do some light sparring.

It was fun and had absolutely nothing to do with anything I’d do in media later. It didn’t matter. The producers of radio — just as in TV — simply want to know you’ll speak clearly, be entertaining, and not embarrass them. The subject matter doesn’t matter. On a higher level, they want to know: can you help design a fun segment?

I later parlayed this early radio, along with other random samples, into booking “radio satellite tours” with the help of Peter Marchese. “Radio satellite tours” entail sitting in a room with obscene quantities of coffee and doing back-to-back 10-30-minute radio interviews from 7am to 5pm with almost no space for even bathroom breaks. It’s batching at its efficient best… and punishing worst.

Here are four of my 20+ interviews, here listed in order from December 16, 2009. You’ll note that I launched the revised edition of The 4-Hour Workweek in the same week as I later launched The 4-Hour Body. It was a dress rehearsal for the big game, a dry run for understanding the dynamics and competition of the X-mas season.

Note the talking points (we’ll return to this) and examples, which I repeat ad nauseam with slightly different segues:

0920-0930 – Reg IA-Nebraska
1105-1115 – Albuquerque-SantaFe
1145-1155 – Denver
1410-1420 – National

But what of these talking points?

Step 2 – Know Your Subject: In Depth vs. Talking Points

To prepare for the NBC TV interview, I had to:

- First, visit a Borders and literally get on bended knee to beg for a copy of Game of Shadows the afternoon before release. The simple begging didn’t work. Several book chains had been shipped Harry Potter late as punishment for releasing a prior Potter before the mandated midnight release time. I finally offered, “What if I do headspins for you? I’m totally serious. Puleeeeease?” after which, I jumped into a breakdancing freeze on the floor. I’m not kidding. Pretty pathetic, but they laughed, relented, and went to the back storage room to get the book.

- Second, digest a 368-page book in one evening, which I did over espresso (limit: two singles per hour) and wine (limit one glass pinot noir per hour) at Santana Row in San Jose. Here is a one-page index from that session:

- Third, prepare main talking points and sound bites. This involved taking the above notes and observations (I had several other pages) and whittling them down to 3-6 major points I could convey in a total of 120 seconds, 20 seconds or so per point.

Here are the talking points I used for a recent Newsweek interview on The 4-Hour Body, which became a feature piece called “The World’s Best Guinea Pig”:

I answer a few things on this small sheet:

“Why is what I’m doing different or controversial?” (Answer: using new tools to scientifically test all of the myths and old wives’ tales on myself and others)

“Why is this timely and important?” (Answer: I’m part of a much larger trend; cite books and growth of Quantified Self, etc.)

“What are some actionable examples of counter-intuitive findings?” (Answers: 30g within 30 min of waking, replacing milk in coffee with cinnamon, etc.)

For the last group of actionable takeaways, I list them first, then number them in descending order of priority for inclusion. If these sound familiar, you’re right. They’re the same talking points I used in the above radio satellite clips.

NEVER assume you’ll get to cover everything you hope or rehearse. Media is unpredictable. I had to account for this in my recent appearance on The View, as just one example (notice we skipped over half of an entire table, as questions from Barbara required it). I didn’t get frazzled, as I had planned for this and prioritized my points, both mentally and logistically — the latter by ordering props on the tables.

Step 3 – Pitch Properly

Why is pitching step 3 instead of step 1?

Because it makes no sense to pitch until you have your prep (reel or sample clips) and basic positioning (timely and controversial angle with examples) in place.

Then, before you start spamming people with template emails, keep in mind: Thou shalt know thy media outlets. Don’t pitch the same thing — or something general — to niche outlets. It’s a waste of their time and yours. Know the magazine or program and customize.

Here is the actual pitch I used for Wired Magazine that ultimately led to the 4+-page feature entitled “Tim Ferriss Wants to Hack Your Body.” It lacks a self-intro, as I’d met this editor in person, an approach I always encourage, as e-mail is the most crowded channel.

Notice that I provide different options/ideas for different lengths:

Hi [Name],

OK, here are a few ideas. They’re in three categories:

1) Feature
2) Shorter 1-2 page piece
3) Book mention in Playlist

My preference if possible, no big surprise, would be 1, 2, and then 3. Here are the toplines:

1) Feature:

For Wired readers, being one myself and having been in the mag before, I think one of my chapters as an exclusive excerpt would be the least work for Wired and the best fit. It’s ready to go and would just need to be tightened for space. I’ve attached the latest version (sorry for the hand edits). Here are some headlines and toplines:

BLOOD HACKING: Creating the Perfect Fat-Loss Protoplasm

I implanted a medical device in my side that sampled interstitial glucose levels every 5 seconds. It’s used by cutting-edge Type 1 diabetics, but I used it to figure out which foods and meals would make me fat. I wore it 24/7 for weeks, including a trip through customs to Nicaragua. There some sweet graphics and nice how-to takeaways I can provide.

Other potential headlines:

Tracking Blood to Lose Bodyfat
BLOOD: Self-Experimentation for Losing Bodyfat (could appear on the cover like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timferriss/5388565667/ [NOTE: In the actual e-mail I used a private Skitch link]
Diary of a Blood Tracker

2) Shorter 1-2 page piece

This would detail 5 or so of the coolest and craziest drugs and tools I used in my experiments over the last 3 years, ranging from the above medical device to stem cell growth factors, anabolic steroids, IGF-1, and more. I could write it or it could be a Q&A with me. Potential headlines/titles:

BECOMING SUPERHUMAN: Drugs and Gadgets to Make You a Mutant
Gadgets and Tools for Becoming Superhuman [this one would omit drugs]
BECOMING SUPERHUMAN: An Interview with Human Guinea Pig Tim Ferriss

3) Mention in Playlist — Pretty straightforward here. Just a book mention and little blurb.

Look forward to your thoughts, [name]. Wired is a great place to break this one.

Cheers,

Tim

###

Afterword: Is this type of media how-to of interest? If so, I’ll do a “Part 2″ continuation of this post and talk about media training and other little-known aspects of the game. In the meantime, please find my most recent Dr. Oz clips below.

Also, if you’ve read The 4-Hour Body and haven’t yet left an Amazon review, please take 30 seconds to do so here — I need a few more to pass 1,000 reviews (currently 965)! Thanks for your feedback, all. It’s what keeps me going.

Elsewhere on the web:
Financial Times – The Last Word: Lessons in Online Marketing
AskMen – Long Q&A, including questions on anabolics and other performance-enhancing drugs

Two days ago, I saw the following tweet:

@tferriss so self-promo by referring to yourself in the third person can work. It’s ironic given the content of this http://su.pr/3BZbFL

This was in response to my tweet, which read:

Inc. Magazine – Tim Ferriss on the Pitfalls of Personal Branding: http://su.pr/3BZbFL

Ironic? Not really. Let me pose a question: what does a follower need to do if I write “My take on the Pitfalls of…”?

Before they retweet it (even with “RT @tferriss”), many will feel compelled to rewrite “My” as “Tim Ferriss’s” or “@tferriss’s”. Editing means fewer retweets. The same logic applies to some blog post titles, like this one, both for ease-of-sharing and SEO…

I have reasons for most of what I do.

David Siteman Garland dug into some of those reasons recently in an interview on Rise to the Top. He describes the content:

In this interview, I pick Tim’s brain on:

The shift from The 4-Hour Workweek to The 4-Hour Body. Why did he decide to go this route from a business, marketing, and personal perspective?

The business behind his books.

How has his perspective on marketing and promoting changed since the first book became an international phenomenon?

How he spent less than $10,000 and successfully took the 4-Hour Workweek to the New York Times Best Seller List.

The best approach for forming genuine relationships with bloggers.

The difference between hard selling and soft selling (and what it means for your brand).

How Tim Ferriss makes money.

An alternative to the typical “author model” of write a book and then speak/consult.

His advice for creative entrepreneurs like all of us.

Plus, much, much, much more.

###

Odds and Ends: Advertising Competition

Wow! More than 500 submissions, and there are a lot of good ads. It will take me and my small army a while to get through them all, so please be patient! Some incredible gems were produced and, more important to me, the creativity was outstanding. More coming soon, and thank you for the awesome performance.

(Image: X-ray Delta One)

Some of you have no doubt noticed that I’ve been experimenting with advertising for several months, whether at the top-right, through skyscrapers in the sidebar, or even under posts on a rare occasion.

It’s been a learning experience. Sometimes, it doesn’t turn out totally awesome. Case in point:

I think I can do better. I also have an incentive: the new book, The 4-Hour Body. But then I realized, I think you all can be FAR better. Collectively, I think you can be AWESOME.

So, I’m running a competition. Here are the prizes:

1) The fantastic North Face Prophet 65 Trekking Pack (Retail: $319)
2) A round-trip anywhere in the world Star Alliance airlines fly (or $1,000 cash)
3) All 4-Hour Body revenue via ads on my site for two weeks (potentially every post ever written), using your Amazon affiliate code. Untold riches.
4) Fame, public credit, and eternal glory for being the best.

The deadline for the competition is next Wednesday, 10/20, at 10pm PST. It pays to get started as soon as possible. Here’s the idea…

The Basics

1) Create an ad or a few ads (can be text only) for The 4-Hour Body.

2) Optional but encouraged: Test your ads

3) Post your best four or fewer ads as pics on my Facebook fan page. If you did testing, indicate what you did in the pic description or in the pic comments. Deadline for submissions is next Wednesday, 10/20, at 10pm PST.

4) Of those submitted, I will test “a bunch” (technical term) of the best on this blog using split-testing. I’ve heavily biased towards those that have been tested. I’m also biased towards early submissions, so don’t worry too much about someone copying you.

5) I’ll do a follow-up post describing the process, real-world results, and top 3-5 performers for each ad type. I am happy to link to your site or company site if you are among the top performers. This is valuable.

6) If your ads perform the best, not only will you get glory and recognition for being the best, I’ll also use your ads (subject to my approval) on the blog. The kicker: for the first two weeks, I will use your Amazon affiliate code, which means you get all of the affiliate revenue.

The Details

1) Create one or more ads for The 4-Hour Body.

The sizes are 300 x 250 (seen at the top right of this blog) and 468 x 60 (which would go at the bottom of every blog post on the site). These sizes can be seen here. Text-only ads are absolutely allowed, but they could only appear at the bottom of posts.

Create one or both sizes (or text). Do so from scratch and/or using the book cover, elements from the book cover, any of my Flickr photos without a copyright attribution in the description, or any of my YouTube videos without someone else’s copyrighted material in them. Of course, feel free to use any other materials or images you own or are legally permitted to use (including stock images that are royalty-free or licensed).

In other words, text, display images, and video are all OK, but they need to be static unless the reader clicks on something.

Keep them R-rated or less, and use your common sense (nothing racist, etc.).

2) Optional but encouraged: Test your ads, even just a little.

If possible, test your ads on your site or through an ad network (Google Adwords, Facebook, wherever) to determine which have the highest click-through and (ideally) conversion. Please link to The 4-Hour Body on Amazon if possible, and that’s my request if using any book elements or my materials above. Of course, feel free to use your own affiliate code.

Here’s a note on Amazon affiliate code and PPC, from reader Tyler:

If you look at amazon’s FAQ for PPC
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/promo/paidsearch

One of the Questions/Answers is:

“Q: If my paid search advertisement directs a user first to an interstitial page, then to http://www.amazon.com, http://www.endless.com, or http://www.amazon.ca, will I earn advertising fees?

A: No. However, if you place paid search advertisements to send users to your own website, and then your website displays links to http://www.amazon.com, http://www.endless.com, or http://www.amazon.ca in accordance with the Operating Agreement, you may earn advertising fees for qualifying purchases made by users who click on your paid search ad, click through to your site, then click through to an Amazon site.”

Essentially, how I understand this is that you can’t have a PPC that leads to your website and then automatically re-directs the “clicker” to Amazon.

But, you can have a landing page with a big picture of your book cover with a link that like “buy it now” or “more info”. One would probably want to make the image of your book, also an affiliate link when clicked.

If you need an alternate landing page for testing, besides Amazon or your own landing page, please use this blog post.

How do you test “conversion”? Look at actual book sales. Use your Amazon affiliate ID (get one here, if needed) and see which ads actually convert to sales. That dancing gorilla or Swedish swimsuit model might get the most clicks, but what actually moves books?

If you can prove conversions another way, go for it.

3) Post your best four or fewer ads as pics on my Facebook fan page. Once you become a fan on the page by “Liking” it, here’s how you submit your ads.

In text: To upload a photo to my page, all you need to do is click the ‘Attach: Photos’ icon on the wall. Select the photo, then hit the ‘Share’ button.

4) I will test the best of these on this blog using split-testing

5) I’ll do a follow-up post describing the process, results, and top 3-5 performers for each type, linking to their sites as credit.

6) If your ads perform the best, you will all the goods and recognition described at the beginning of this post, including all Amazon affiliate revenue for your ads throughout my entire site for two weeks.

The Deadline and Fine Print

The deadline for ad submissions on this Facebook page is next Wednesday, 10/20, at 10pm PST.

This competition is void where prohibited, blah, blah, blah. If you’d be doing something illegal, in bad taste, or that would cause your ancestors to cry, you are not allowed to participate. Es tut mir Leid.

I really look forward to seeing what you can do :)