Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is booked for the question his entire body of work is built around: what the best people in a field actually do, as opposed to what they say they do, and how much of it can be taken apart and copied.

The 4-Hour Workweek, published in 2007 and expanded in 2009, made the argument that most work is filler and most of the rest can be automated, delegated or refused, and it did so with enough specificity that it became the founding document of a generation of remote businesses. The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and The 4-Hour Chef in 2012 applied the same method, self-experimentation and rapid skill acquisition, to physical performance and to learning itself.

The Tim Ferriss Show, launched in 2014, has passed one billion downloads and is the reason the later books exist. Tools of Titans in 2016 and Tribe of Mentors in 2017 are distilled from hundreds of long interviews with performers across fields, and they are the closest thing available to a catalog of what world-class people have in common, most of which is unglamorous and reproducible.

He holds a degree in East Asian studies from Princeton, built and sold a supplements company, and was an early investor or adviser in companies including Shopify, Duolingo, Uber, Facebook and Twitter, which is the operating experience behind the writing.

The booking fact that matters most is his own: he does very little speaking, capped at a handful of events a year, and chooses them for fit. Paid inquiries go through his agent. For an organization that is the right fit, the session is usually a fireside conversation rather than a prepared keynote, since the interviewing is what he does best, and it suits innovation, performance and founder audiences who want method rather than motivation.