Joshua Fields Millburn On Writing & Thinking

Joshua: Wait a minute! Crossface, the daily talk show, a conversation sometimes worth recording with Josh Janson and Tommy Jackett.

Josh: It's a daily talk show in Los Angeles with my friend Joshua Fields Milburn. How you going, mate?

Joshua: Hey, thanks for— thanks for, uh, well, we're here in, in my studio. Thanks for having me, but we're But thanks for coming to our studio here, The Minimalist studio.

Tommy: Josh, this is the first time me meeting you, you meeting me, but I love it that your studio is very in line with what you do and what your whole brand is about.

Joshua: It's aggressively simple.

Tommy: 100%.

Josh: And it is the name of the podcast, Aggressively Simple. The Minimalists, yeah, for, uh, if people are recognising the voice They can't see the hair.

Tommy: Oh, man, that was one of the—

Joshua: You didn't bring your cameras with you.

Tommy: No, no, no. We will get a pic, but I get a comment a lot about my hair and it's— I can't tell if it's like people having a dig at me, but I walk in, they're like, bro, you're 3 feet taller, look at that quaff. And I walked in and thought, mate, my quaff's got nothing on that.

Joshua: Yeah, I'm 6'2", 6'5" with hair.

Josh: And so we— you were just saying before we pressed the record button that this studio space that we're in has a bit of podcasting history.

Joshua: Yeah, we got really fortunate to find this space. We moved to Los Angeles about a year ago because this is where people go to tell stories, and we're working on our second documentary. We've got just a bunch of projects, plus there's a lot of people that either live here or come through here. I mean, I ran into you on the street.

Josh: I know.

Joshua: And we haven't seen each other since earlier this year, back in March, when you— we did some video work together out in Australia. And And I'm just walking down the street, all of a sudden my brain like freezes because I saw both of you.

Josh: Yeah.

Joshua: And I'm like, well, wait a minute, this can't be right. And I thought there was something going on with my head. But anyway, like, um, we moved to Los Angeles a year ago because there are people that come through here or live here. And, uh, we found a particular community here of creative people who are interesting, who are doing fascinating things, who are sort of bucking the status quo. And we wanted to build a podcast studio here. And so we started looking and we were looking for office space and it's not cheap to live in Los Angeles. It's also not cheap to have office space in Los Angeles. But then we stumbled across this WeWork. It's the first WeWork in Southern California. There are 18 of them now. And it's here in Hollywood. And because it's in Hollywood, they built these rooms that are like production studios. It's different from any other WeWork you would go to. And it was the day The podcast called How Stuff Works used to be recorded in this studio along with all the other— I think the name of their— here's some irony for you. The name of their podcast network was Stuff Incorporated, I think. And then the Minimalists move in here. We just remodelled the room, put up sound panels and painted and brought in our own furniture. We tried to make it look like our aesthetic. It's, it's simple, and but it's also functional, and we want it to be beautiful. Like, the bones are the beauty of the place. I don't need to have a bunch of bookshelves with random books that I haven't read or anything like that. I wanted it to be simple. And so here we are a year later. Um, we've been doing the podcast now for about, about 3 years, and I feel like we haven't hit a stride yet, but it feels good to keep doing it.

Tommy: Well, 3 years in, that's a good effort. Most people are pulling the pin quite early. Yeah, we've experienced quite a few different studios. We were at Seth Godin's studio.

Joshua: What's this like?

Tommy: Well, it's a complete opposite of this.

Josh: It's like the Stuff Co. Stuff Co. It almost feels like you're in the room of an inventor.

Joshua: Well, you are. I mean, he's a genius. There's— I think I once called him the best living blogger, but that would mean that there's a dead blogger that's better than him, and I don't think that's the case. I mean, he's so prolific, and then every day he puts out something meaningful that people find immense value in. Uh, I think I subscribed to 2 blogs and his is one of them. So tell me about his space.

Tommy: Oh well, one thing that I can remember was just a random chicken, a squeaky chicken that was just lying down. And I, I said when I got there, I said, um, he said, would you like a cup of tea? And I said, yeah, great, I'd love one. And on the cup was just a number, it was like 250, I think. I said, what's the significance of the number? And what did he say?

Josh: So, he's got, I think he loves prime numbers. I think so. He's got like a prime number generator. This is going completely over our heads. Yeah.

Tommy: But he said, do you want, do you need a prime number?

Josh: Because I've got a generator.

Tommy: I don't think I do.

Josh: But it felt like we were in Willy Wonka's, you know, Willy Wonka and I was Augustus Gloop. Like, I was very excited by all the knickknacks and things like this.

Tommy: Yeah.

Joshua: I mean, that's quite the awesome obscure reference from the late '70s. I mean, You certainly weren't born yet, so it's great that— in fact, my, uh, my daughter's 5, and literally the only movie she's ever seen is, is Willy Wonka.

Tommy: The new one or the old one?

Joshua: The, the old one.

Tommy: Okay, the new one's too scary.

Joshua: Yeah, and she's terrified of— she won't watch Frozen because it's too scary for her, uh, and she's like, for whatever reason, she just thinks movies are scary.

Tommy: But, uh, has she walked down Hollywood Boulevard with all the characters?

Joshua: Just once.

Tommy: Oh, that would be scary for her.

Joshua: Yeah, there was, uh, two spider men, Spider-Mans walking side by side, and it totally freaked her out. Like, she could not figure out how that's possible. Yeah, anyway, Seth Godin— I have a friend who, who I won't mention the friend, but he was at a party at which Seth Godin was at, and you can tell Seth is the consummate creator because in this party where everyone's mingling, he was off in the corner writing a blog post, like laptop out and just sort of typing away, writing a blog post. This is probably a decade ago or close to it. And yeah, I mean, he puts out a blog post every day, but for every one he puts out, he writes 3. So think about the sort of output there. 1,000 blog posts a year kind of thing.

Tommy: He was saying he comes up with ideas in the shower and then forgets by the time he gets out. And so it has to be a numbers game.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: You know, putting everything down and having lots.

Josh: A lot of people might know you, Josh, from the documentary Minimalism. Right. Which for a long time on our Netflix, I don't know if it was skewed our way, but we saw the, the poster as, you know, one of the top documentaries.

Joshua: Yeah, we got, we got really fortunate with that thing.

Josh: Yeah. And so a lot of people know you from that, but you have a rich history in blogging. Like, you know, the blogging is almost where it started for you. Yeah.

Joshua: And it's still our biggest audience, surprisingly. I've become more vehicle agnostic over the years. Yes. For the longest time— I'm 37 now— but throughout my 20s, I wanted to just write fiction. I wanted to be an author and write books. That's all I wanted to do, just write novels. Then when my 30s came around and I realised I needed to make some changes in my life, it's when I discovered minimalism. My mom died, my marriage ended, and I started making some changes in my life. So did my best friend Ryan, who runs The Minimalist with me. Started writing some stuff, putting it up online. And in fact, we didn't even know it was called a blog at the time. Um, we called it a website and we didn't know they were called blog posts. We called them essays. And, uh, cause that's what I was used to reading. You pick up the New Yorker, you read some essays or, and, or the Atlantic or wherever. And I was used to reading essays. So we put up a website. I thought a blog was like where 83-year-old women catalogue pictures of their cats.

Josh: And that does happen as well.

Tommy: It's now called Pinterest.

Joshua: Those are the really popular blogs. And so it was just a way for me to start sharing my writing via nonfiction. And so it all started 8 years ago with theminimalists.com. The reason Ryan and I are The Minimalists is because the domain was available for less than $10.

Tommy: Great domain. Yeah.

Josh: I've started so many things based on a domain name.

Joshua: I know, right? And it just sort of cascaded from there. We wrote the blog for about a year and people kept asking us, "Well, you're The Minimalists. When are you going to write—" A book about minimalism. So we wrote a book called Minimalism, and we put it out there in the world. And then we went out on our first book tour with that, and then eventually put out our second book. We started a podcast, we started doing more tours, but it all started with, with that blog. And, um, the rising tide sort of lifts all boats. So when, when the documentary came out on Netflix, uh, back in 2016, all of a sudden brought more people to the blog. More people to the podcast. The podcast we actually started so we could start talking about the documentary and inform people about this documentary, but in a weird way, the documentary brought people to the podcast. And our biggest audience is actually in Australia, as you saw.

Josh: Huge crowds in Sydney and Melbourne. We had a massive crowd in Auckland as well. Yeah, yeah.

Joshua: And what was fascinating about that is I think what you all have realised is that the American dream has permeated your borders, and you're like, wait a minute, We don't want it. We don't want part of this, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with consumption, but the consumer culture is problematic. And when we want to do nothing but pursue our everyday ephemeral pleasures, um, and forsake the things that are most important— our values, our relationships, our health, our creativity— then we start to suffer. Yeah, we start to— we stop living in a meaningful way.

Tommy: With that, you said you weren't kind of agnostic to one type, or you're not now. You were thinking writing is something that is the passion. I've had the same with making videos. But, you know, do you think you need that sort of drive for one thing to start with to then realise that, no, there's other areas that can contribute to that? And do you need the others, or can you be just all in on one thing?

Joshua: I think you kind of have to be all in on one thing. Ryan and I, we work on one major project a year. So we're working on our second documentary right now. And everything else we do feeds that project. The nice thing since 2010 when we started The Minimalists, I can sort of go back and chart every year we've had one major thing that we've worked on. And I've gotten really good at saying no to pretty much everything else. In fact, when Josh asked me to do this, I'm like, I usually say no to this, but I really like you. So I've done, I think this is the fourth interview that I've done all year.

Josh: We did not fuck this up.

Joshua: And, and, uh, and the reason, the, the reason that I say no to most things, like, I'm not in a mode where that makes sense right now. I'll say yes to interviews. We, in 2014, we did a 100-city book tour, 119 events, and I did over 400 interviews that year. It was for our second book, Everything That Remains. And so it really made, it made sense to do that then. But you go all the way in, I get really obsessive about a a project. So whether it's blogging, and yeah, for that, that first year it was all in. It was building that foundation. And after that it was like the book, and after that it was doing this immense tour. And then we wrote our second book, we moved to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, uh, middle of nowhere Montana for 4 months. Sounds like so much fun. Yeah, it's sort of like, um, well, the Boston Globe said it was like Henry David Thoreau but with Wi-Fi. Um, that would That doesn't translate as well, I've realized, in Australia. A lot of people don't know who Thoreau is for some reason, but it's just a very American thing. He sort of lived in the woods, but he didn't completely remove himself from society either. Like, I still had access to grocery stores, but I had to drive a couple hours to make it happen. But yeah, I tend to go pretty deep on a project. So I think if you were to put it on like a pie chart or some sort of graph, it would look like I don't I don't actually do much because I don't have a very busy life.

Tommy: So you've got a central focus and the other things sort of feed that and make sense based on that central or center, that focus point. Yeah, I think it used to be the opposite though.

Joshua: Like, I had a very busy life, and in fact, isn't that like, it becomes a status symbol? Like, I can't, I'm very busy. And really what I was saying, I realized, is I can't, my life is out of control. Yeah, someone else is dictating my schedule, my to-do list. And we do that now, whether it's Twitter and, uh, wanting to respond You know, I don't have any social media apps on my phone, and it's not because I think social media is inherently evil. It's because I don't trust myself with having Instagram on my phone because, well, the inventor of Instagram called it visual crack, and it kind of is that. We get lost in the scrolling, and there are teams of engineers now. It didn't start out this way, but there are teams of engineers who are paid six-figure salaries to keep your eyeballs on their product or service for as long as possible. And so I was very busy, but I wasn't focused on doing anything meaningful, what Cal Newport would call the deep work. I just wasn't focused on, on the deep work. And, and once I started removing some of those distractions, I became less busy, but I came—

Josh: became more, more focused. Tommy and I were talking before this chat about the fact that the way I feel about you is you talk a lot about minimalism, but you have such a good business and sort of creative mind. And people can go and cheque out The Minimalists on, you know, through iTunes and listen to the podcast. But it'd be great, you know, to get the perspective of some of these other elements. Like for instance, you know, Tommy and I have just started a business together. This is, you know, a partnership, having a crack at the partnership thing. We got a good domain.

Tommy: We got— That's basically why.

Josh: Bigmediacompany.com.

Tommy: I love it. It's a play on it though, because we are a nimble team, right? And we want to make big impact, not the size of the business.

Josh: Yes. And so yeah, bigmediacompany.com is our website. We've registered the company and all that sort of thing. And obviously that's, that's the fun bit, that's the glossy bit.

Tommy: What have you— I mean, there's work now.

Josh: Yeah, we're gonna actually have to do shit. Uh, what has been the learning for you going from, say, corporate America and selling phones and doing all that sort of thing to being in a partnership with a friend, Ryan? Right.

Joshua: Yeah. I mean, so I, at the sort of pinnacle of my corporate suffering, I was director of operations for 150 retail stores. So I learned a lot through, through that whole process. But I also learned a lot about what not to do because in fact, it got to a point where I was doing a job that no longer aligned with my values, no longer aligned with the person I wanted to become. And so one of the things I've learned now is, uh, in fact, you were at our event in, in, uh, in Auckland with Derek Sivers, and his big thing is there's no yes. It's either hell yeah or no. Absolutely. And it's one of the things— and when, in fact, it was— I thought about that when you asked me to do this. Is this a hell yeah? So for me, it was like, yeah, like, I really want to reconnect. I really like Josh, and, and this would be a great opportunity to have a conversation. By the way, way. It's weird now how with podcasts, one of the ways that you get to have conversations with people is if you turn some microphones on. Ryan and I talk more on microphone, I feel like, than off mic. I don't think that's actually true, but it's becoming closer and closer to that, where we'll sit across from each other for an hour or two a week and just have these conversations and answer questions. And, and if that ever becomes, uh, I don't know if I want to do this, if it feels like suffering, or if it feels like, well, this is no longer aligned with what I want to do, it doesn't mean that that's a failure necessarily. It just means that, hey, going forward, the past doesn't have to equal the future. You can graduate from certain things as well and sort of move on, as opposed to thinking that this is going to last forever. On a long enough timeline, everything's ephemeral.

Josh: And within, within a in a partnership context, how do you get to a double hell yes with everything? Or is there sometimes— is it okay to have one hell yes and the other one is a maybe? No, no.

Joshua: I mean, in fact, that has to be— we say no to a lot more because of that, because one of us will come in with a hell yeah and the other one's like, eh, and we'll provide some perspective. But we also, whenever we, we challenge each other, it's always in a way that is loving and supportive. Ryan and I don't ever argue. We'll disagree I can tell your two dynamic, you probably do argue a little bit.

Josh: Oh yeah, we love to beat each other up.

Tommy: But what I also love is coming off the back end of it, because we're like a good relationship. My wife and I, we argue as most couples do, you know, they have disagreements or whatever it be, but we love each other and we know that we love each other. And at the end of it, we're living together and we have a baby together and we love each other. So we get through it and it's almost cathartic on the other side because you take, you take from it the things that will allow you to grow. And I love that my relationship with you, Josh, is that. Yeah. As well as my wife.

Josh: Well, it definitely feels like we, um, you know, like we are opposites in a lot of, in a lot of ways.

Joshua: That's good. Ryan and I are, are like exact opposites. Yeah. Um, in fact, if you look at a, like a Myers-Briggs test, uh, we are literally exact opposites. He is an extreme extrovert I am an extreme introvert. For every 1 hour I spend around people, I spend 8 or 9 hours by myself. Yeah. And my life is now designed that way, and it's difficult for some people to grasp, but it allows our relationship— that allows our relationship for the time that we are together to be better. I can be the best version of myself because of that. Whereas if Ryan and I were around each other 12 hours a day, it would just be like, oh, we wouldn't be happy with each other. Yeah. He is a very spontaneous, in-the-moment kind of guy. I'm a planner. I plan things out way in advance. I'm a thinker. He's a feeler. People often describe us as the head and the heart of the Minimalists. That sort of dual perspective, it provides just that. It provides different perspectives, so we're not just regurgitating each other's information. Yeah.

Josh: Do you find that you take on those different roles? So, one of the things that Tommy and I are looking at is like, well, what are we best to do? What is Tommy's strengths? Versus my strengths so that we don't have overlap? Have you come up with prioritisation mechanisms?

Joshua: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's often more through trial and error, but, but more— it's more or less via curiosity. Like, what are you curious about? And it's probably gonna be different from what Tommy is curious about. And you follow that curiosity because we're often, we're often sold this bill of goods. Like, uh, in fact, you see it on like these successory posters and stuff where where people say, uh, follow your passion. And I think that's total bullshit advice, right? Because it presupposes you were born to do something. Yeah. But the truth is like, maybe follow your curiosity is better advice because you have to cultivate a passion. It requires a lot of drudgery, a lot of hard work, a lot of drudging through the drudgery. And so for me and Ryan, it's like, oh, you're curious about that? Why don't you pursue that thread? I'm curious about this. I'll pursue this. And then we'll come back together and bounce some ideas off of each other. Quite often with many of the things that we write, I'm the architect of a lot of it, but Ryan is sort of the idea guy, where he and I will hash out this conversation. He'll hand me this really ugly chunk of gold, and I will fashion it into one of those beautiful bricks that they keep in the Federal Reserve. Yeah.

Josh: Is the writing part of it— how is that informed the filmmaking and the podcasting? Do you, when you are podcasting, are you thinking the same way that you are when you are writing an essay?

Joshua: Writing is thinking for me in many ways, right? So, so I write sometimes to figure out what I think, and, and that helps me in any of those other domains, especially on, in the podcast, like knowing what I think about a particular question. I— you, you mentioned earlier, like, Ryan and I are known for talking about minimalism, and that's true, but minimalism is really the Trojan horse that gets us in the door to talk about whatever we want to talk about. Yeah, so we might do a podcast about leadership, we might do a podcast about debt, we might do a podcast about what— advertisements, whatever it might be. And, and really, it's via the lens of minimalism, but that's the 20% that allows us to talk about the 80% of everything else, because ultimately minimalism is You know, if you were to redefine it, it's just about intentional living, right? And so, so that's the sort of broader concentric circle around minimalism and allows us to talk about so much more than just like cleaning out your closet. Like, we'll talk about that occasionally, but it's not— that's not that interesting to me.

Tommy: And what's Ryan's approach to that?

Joshua: Yeah, I think, I think with, with Ryan, what he does— he's the, he's the bigger picture guy. I'm the details guy. And so when you talk about, uh, accenting each other, Ryan will have sort of these, these grandiose ideas that I will help him dial in, or I will be extremely, extremely neurotic and he'll help me look at the big picture in a way that I, you know, I'm so stuck in the forest I don't even notice there are trees here until he drags me out of the forest.

Josh: But is there a process of you getting pissed off about that, like him dragging you out? Is it always—

Joshua: Yeah, I get pissed off every time. Um, I wish, I wish that wasn't the case. And thankfully we're both really understanding of each other, and he understands my personality enough to know when something frustrates me, and he knows how to— through many years of trial and error— Ryan and I have known each other for almost 30 years now, since we were fat little 5th graders. And, and so through many years of trial and error, he knows how to bring an idea to me, and I know how to fine-tune an idea in a way that is not insulting to him, but is bringing the best of both of our worlds together.

Josh: What does that look like?

Joshua: What does what look like? The process?

Josh: That conversation, like what can we learn from that experience in collaborating with others? You know, you've got a great team like, you know, Jess and Sean. How has that informed those conversations?

Joshua: I think quite often it has to do with not placing blame on the other person. So instead of saying you, you, you, if we're ever critiquing or criticising or providing feedback, it's either the collective we Uh, yeah, I even noticed this with my daughter. It's not like, what are you doing? Stop doing that. It's, hey, that's not how we behave in this household. And, and I think that's true with our team. You know, we have about 10 people on, on the team total if you count me and Ryan. And, and whenever we are providing feedback to each other, it's not you, you, you. It's, hey, here's what I would find beneficial. And then there are 5 words that totally changed my life and the way that I approach conflict.. And those 5 words are, would you be willing to? Yeah. As opposed to saying, hey, I need you to do this. And this could even be for a simple business transaction. You know, you're, you're going to fly back to Australia, they screw up your tickets, and what are you going to do? You're going to go to the counter and say, hey, fuck this, you're going to fix this right now, you piece of shit. Are you likely to get much?

Josh: That's Tommy's vibe. I dropped the fuck.

Joshua: Yeah, you're not, you, you're not likely to, to, uh, provoke them to want to help you in that instance. I actually had this happen recently. Ryan and I were going down to São Paulo, Brazil to give a talk last month, and they screwed up our flight. Something happened at the last minute. We show up and it's like the wrong flight, the wrong seats, we're not together, like all this, these problems. Um, and she's like, she's pawning us off to the next division, next person. At one point they tried to give us a phone number to call even though we're right there at the airlines counter. And I eventually just looked at her, I said, I said, okay, but would you be willing to help us? Yeah. And she looked at me and she tried to go through her spiel again of like, well, it's gonna have to be at this counter. I said, look, I understand that, but would you be willing to help us?

Josh: There's something a little bit scary when you do it. Yeah, I am.

Tommy: Yes. What do you need help with, mate?

Joshua: Because really, it's an empowering question, because what I'm saying there is, hey, look, I know I'm empowering you. I know that you are able to do this. I know you're competent enough. I know you have the power. I know you have the knowledge in order to take care of this. Just with those 5 words, would you be willing to? And when I ask it that way, I'm giving you 2 options. Either yes, I'm empowered, yes, I will help you, or what's the alternative?

Josh: Just a cog in the machine. Yeah, right.

Joshua: Or were they gonna say no, fuck you, I don't like you. And it's the same with our team. If Ryan comes to me and I and says, would you be willing to help me out with this? What am I gonna say? No, screw you.

Josh: Yeah, we're like, fuck, I know that trick, you motherfucker.

Tommy: It's a frequency shift. Like, you're bringing a different energy to the table. Yeah, you're being more clear and thoughtful, I guess.

Joshua: And you're making a request as opposed to a demand. But even with requests, you have to be, you have to be careful. You, you don't— because if you're constantly just asking, asking, asking, you become a parasite. If you're just taking, taking, taking from relationship and not providing anything— in the middle of every relationship, there's like this invisible invisible us box, and you give whatever you can give to that, but you also get what you need from it, right? And if you're just giving and giving and giving, not getting from it, you're gonna feel used. But if you're just taking and taking and taking, then you're a parasite, and no one feels good about working with a parasite. And so what I found is we've curated relationships that are based on shared values, and I think that's really important. Know what your values are. Everyone on our team knows what our values are, what The Minimalists are trying to accomplish We're trying to create something meaningful for the world, but they also know what my values are, and I know what their values are. And in knowing that, we're working on the same page. Now, it doesn't mean we're gonna always be the same. We have radically different beliefs. Ryan and I have different religious beliefs. We have different political beliefs. We voted for two different people in the last election, which in the States freaks people out. And so, So what I've learned is even though we're radically different people, those beliefs are just different paths that get us toward those same values. So know what your values are and you can both find different paths to get there.

Tommy: I've always found the biggest change in my life has been when I've gone too far one way. Like even thinking about this, I remember an exchange with someone at a hotel where I went back and apologised because I was like, I was out of line. So I've almost like, I know I've pushed it over the line and I think about the minimalism movement and my thoughts towards that when I first saw the doco and loved it, but hadn't thought about adopting it to my life. And then I have a kid. Yeah. And then I realize, holy shit, I need more space or I need to get rid of shit. Right. And I've always tried to, and I spoke to Josh about this, finding it hard to reconcile having a child and and adapting the minimalism principles. It's hard, mate. I've— you haven't seen how many socks my son has, and it's because we need him to have a lot of socks. And so you're a father, how do you, how do you reconcile that?

Joshua: Well, it's— it is more difficult with a family. When I first discovered minimalism, I was 28. My marriage had just ended. I just moved out on my own. I was like the, the bachelor living in Dayton, Ohio, and and I saw the corporate job and like, so I had a radically different life from what I have right now. It was about a decade ago and my life looked different, but minimalism was still applicable to me then. But what I learned over the years is that as you bring other people into the fold with a wife and a kid, what you realise is, yeah, it's more difficult, but it's also more important because it's no longer just for me. Before it was just like, I'm doing this for me. And that makes sense. I think you do have to start with yourself. That's really it. Important. And it's not about imposing your values on someone else. It's about showing other people the benefits of simplifying. The question I often start with is, "How might your life be better with less?" And that question helps people identify what the values— what the things that they value are through this process. For some people, it's like, "Yeah, I just feel better with a cleaner closet," or whatever. Other people might say, "You know what? I've been so focused on acquiring all these stupid trinkets. I'm spending tens of thousands of dollars with money I don't have, by the way, because I put it on credit cards, money I don't have to buy things I don't need to impress people I don't even like. And when you frame it like that, you start to realise like, wow, I can regain control of my finances, or I can regain control of my time, I can regain control of my attention. What are the benefits for you? And by the way, the benefits for my 37-year-old self are different from from the benefits for my 28-year-old self. So they're obviously different for my 5-year-old daughter. The benefits for her, she can hardly pronounce minimalism. Um, it'd be cute though, whatever she said. Well, she— so the beginning of our podcast, we have a little like drop, um, we do on, on our YouTube channel where she says The Minimalists, but she says it wrong. So like the logo goes across and it— she says the minimists. And, uh, yeah, so she doesn't understand what it means intellectually, but she understands viscerally what it is because every month we go donate some old toys if she wants to bring new toys in her life. And the thing that, that, uh, I've taught her and that I've taught myself really is that minimalism isn't about deprivation. You can temporarily deprive yourself and that's fine. Learning what may or may not add value, getting rid of, you know, the extra gear, the extra equipment. I'm sure you know this as a filmmaker, like You can have all the best gear in the world, but we fetishize the equipment in a way, right? I think of recording studios, and we're in a fairly simple studio. It looks nice, but like, we can do everything we need to do in here for our podcast just as well as if we had, you know, the big 128-channel console that Dr. Dre spends a million dollars on. It looks really cool. It looks like you're getting ready to fly a spaceship, "but what is that gonna do for me?" Nothing, right? Now he may need it, but we fetishize those things. What I've realised is like, you can get by with very little. You can remove those things temporarily and then bring the things back in that you figure out will add value. With Ella, my 5-year-old daughter, it's not like she doesn't have any toys. She has an appropriate amount of toys for her. And so we have a bin of toys and those toys augment her experience of life. They do help make life better, more meaningful, and then ultimately happier. Happiness is a byproduct of a meaningful life. But if I bought her 10 huge bins of toys, is she going to be 10 times happier? No, she'll probably be 10 times more overwhelmed, and it's actually going to chip away at her contentment.

Tommy: I was just thinking about 10 things of toys in my house. I couldn't stand that.

Josh: It's funny that you're talking about that idea of the mixing console and all that sort of thing. I remember both Tommy and I have worked in radio in Australia. They talk about focusing on what comes out of the speakers. Specifically in the context of as digital was getting bigger and people were getting distracted with, you know, doing other bits of content, it always came back to that. It's like, what does it sound like through the speakers? What are people hearing? And yeah, and even then you can sacrifice some quality of sound.

Joshua: I mean, I think, you know, our podcast sounds really good now, but it didn't always. We used to meet in the echoey conference room and and, uh, it was more about creating something meaningful given the resources we had. Quite often our affinity for perfectionism is so high that we just don't do anything. And many of my biggest regrets in life are that I didn't start something sooner. We started TheMinimalists.com 8 years ago. I wish 7 years ago we would have started the podcast instead of less than 3 years ago because 'cause I've gotten a lot better at that over the course of 3 years and figuring out a particular aesthetic that you develop over time. But we waited because it was like, well, I gotta have the right podcast producer, we need to have the right equipment, and let's research microphones again.

Josh: I'm geeking out at the Micah stands. I looked at these at a recent conference.

Joshua: Yeah, they're nice, man. I mean, they're good. But we, we got by with the little, the cheap Rode ones for a long time, and they worked just as well. Uh, they didn't look as good on camera, so we got these. Actually, they didn't work just as well. These do actually work slightly better, but it's a marginal improvement. So yeah, you can, you can, once you have built a foundation— we were talking about that earlier, building a foundation— you build on top of the foundation. You can make incremental improvements over time, but it really starts with like, okay, how do I get this out there? What Seth Godin was just talking about about how do I ship this? So not that it's perfect, but given the resources I have, one of those is going to be time, then equipment, so money, energy, skill set. What are the resources I have? Given the resources I have, what's the best I can do? And I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and say, okay, this isn't perfect. Nothing that we do is perfect, but this is the best I could have done given those resources I have. Why—

Tommy: what do you think the biggest barrier for people to not be shipping things Well, it's weird.

Joshua: I teach a writing class online, and one of my biggest challenges is teaching students— and I got this from David Foster Wallace— teaching students that they are simultaneously more interesting and less interesting than they think they are. And what I mean by that is like You are the person inside your head, right? And so when you are inside your head, everything to you— at the grocery store, all of a sudden you really want to buy these tangerines. They're really interesting to you for whatever reason, but they're actually not. That experience of you shopping for tangerines is likely so banal, it's not going to serve the greater good in a way. And so I think right now when people are afraid of shipping, so to speak, afraid of publishing their work, afraid of getting their voice out there in the world, it's because they haven't figured out the difference between what will serve the greater good and what is just sort of vapid content generation. In fact, that's a word we avoid at The Minimalist. We do not use the word content, and if we're ever creating content, then that's a problem for me. I'm much more interested in meaningful creations than just generating more content. And so what I want to do is create something meaningful that other people are going to find value. And ultimately, uh, what I've learned is that if you help people solve problems, that you're adding value to their lives, then that's what they're going to show up for. That's how they're going to support you. Yeah, 98%, 99% of what we do is, is free, whether it's the podcast, which we don't do any ads on, um, or our website or whatever we're doing is mostly free. But then we do put something out in the world like, hey, would you be willing to support us? We have a book out here. We have, you know, we put a documentary out. Would you be willing to support us in that way? And people often do.

Josh: Do you think people try and get that support too early before they build the audience?

Joshua: Oh God, do you know how many people have reached out to me, hey, how do I start a Patreon page? And I always say I think it's a terrible idea to start a Patreon page.

Josh: You'll make $5 a month.

Joshua: It won't be worth it. Right. And then the resources going into it. And then also it shows up— there's nothing wrong with failing, but it shows up as a failure early on that people aren't going to be willing to back later because they say, oh, you already tried that and it didn't work. And now you're doing the same thing again later. I'll give you some context. So our podcast gets up to 3 million downloads a month. That's on an outstanding month. Month. And I think we have 1,600 Patreon supporters, so you do the math there. It's staggering how few people are going to— even though we provide immense value to those 1,600 people who support it, we do a bonus podcast every week, and we do, you know, Ask the Minimalists Anything once a month. We do a livestream for them. We do all these additional things that provide value to the audience, most people, they find that the free version of whatever— they've been acculturated to expect free. And so we tend to make money on our creations in other ways, ways that we're proud of still, like writing books.

Josh: In a lot of ways, you are at the forefront of all of this, this type of stuff. I saw that you spent some time with Dave Ramsey, who— yeah, um, um, in Australia he's not on the Australian radar, but in the US he's massive, right?

Joshua: Yeah, uh, second or third largest radio show in the country. And yeah, uh, yeah, 14 million listeners, uh, per week. So all about—

Josh: yeah, like I've been getting into all the stuff now, the beans and rice and— yeah, that's all that stuff for sure. What have you, um, what did you learn from spending time with sort of more traditional media guy?

Joshua: Yeah, well, he's weird, weird in a way because He is in traditional media, but I was talking to him before we went on his radio show. We did a tour with his whole team. We brought out Chris Hogan, who is America's premier voice on retirement, basically. He has a book called Retire Inspired. His next book coming out in January is called Everyday Millionaires. How does a guy become that?

Josh: Because I guess he's retired.

Joshua: Young, has he? No, I mean, he's, he's in his— I, I don't know how old he is. He's, he's, he's older than I am, but, um, he is sort of ambiguously young, uh, and, and, but he's like, also he has the voice of God. I don't know if you, if you let's go back and listen to that part. There was a YouTube comment, um, it said this guy sounds like he has 4 testicles, um, and that's Chris. I mean, he sounds Maybe they were talking about you. I'm certain it was Chris. He sounds like, uh, I mean, man, you had done some serious modulation on his voice. But, um, anyway, um, he's a retirement guy. We went out with Anthony O'Neill, who really helps kids get through college without any debt, which is a huge, huge problem in the United States. And, uh, and then, uh, we went out with Rachel Cruz, who is, uh Dave Ramsey's daughter. And we did a tour stop with her, but then we were chatting with Dave beforehand, and the thing I told him was like, hey, we're just— we're trying to be a very small version of what you're doing. We went down there. He has a campus. I mean, you go to his campus, and we're in a little one-room studio here, right? He has 749 employees, and his radio show was on for 3 hours a day every day. But their YouTube channel, he— I think he puts 3 clips on their YouTube channel every day. He has an app that costs multi-millions of dollars to develop. It's called EveryDollar. They teach something called Financial Peace University. They have their curriculum, I think, in over 50% of high schools now. Wow. Trying to teach kids how to better manage their money, which I wish I would have had. I would have found a whole lot more value in that. And so he he actually is very— he's independent even though he's most known from being on— he's on 680 radio stations across America, I think. But he owns all of his own stuff. He owns the building, he owns the studio. There's a bookshop there on their campus, there's a coffee shop there. And so in many ways, like, what Ryan and I have done, everything we've done, we've done independently. And, and so we started our own publishing company in 2012. We have organised all of our own on tours. Uh, we have a really good team, and I learn a whole lot from someone like Dave who uses those vehicles of the traditional broadcast spectrum, but he owns it all and he's still independent.

Tommy: Yeah. Was the goal for you guys to ever create a movement, or did it come from just doing the work? No, I mean it I—

Joshua: my objective when I left the corporate world— so when I simplified, I was still in the corporate world, and then when I realised like, oh man, this is not aligning with the person I want to be— I was two blocks from a coffee shop, the— my favourite coffee shop in Ohio called, called Press. So if you're ever in Dayton, Ohio, cheque it out. Voted the best coffee shop in Ohio, uh, and they're, they're really the ones who made me, um, fall in love with coffee. But my objective was to work there enough to pay for my little $500 a month apartment. I downsized everything, lived in this $500 a month apartment, and write fiction full-time. That's all I wanted to do. That was my objective. And maybe eventually I'd make enough money from writing these fiction books that I could just make a living off of writing. And then this whole minimalism thing was a really beautiful accident. We started The Minimalists, and, and you know this from our talk, but like 52 people showed up the the first month. And that was amazing to me because now 52 people were reading my writing. Like, holy shit. Because throughout my 20s, the only people who read my stuff were people who told me no. Like, agents and publishers were like, nah, this isn't good enough. Which, unbeknownst to me at the time, it actually wasn't very good. But, um, that 52 turned into that movement. It turned into 5,000 and, uh, then 500,000, and now it's about 4 million at the blog and over 20 million people a year that we touch through the different mediums.

Tommy: So I think we're always trying to gamify it, and people are looking for the handbook of how to do it. And yeah, is it— do you think about it in that respect ever, just going, what were the elements for me? And I couldn't imagine you selling the ebook of how to make a movement. It's not— it doesn't seem like your type of thing.

Joshua: No, it kind of reminds me that you all are from the sort of mega church capital, right? Hillsong. Oh yeah. Um, and, uh, like, do you see— like, I have a lot of friends in that world. Like, in fact, the, the Ramsey folks are all very Christian folks. And, um, the, the— there's, there's a fascinating sort of sub-movement in that movement where, like, it's like guides on how to create a movement, basically, right? And it's, it's, it's like this strange thing because that was never the objective with us. In fact, I look at numbers once a year So the reason I can tell you what these numbers are, they're actually— I actually had to look at them twice this year, and there's a weird reason for that. But it's only—

Josh: Lush Google Analytics login and two-factor authentication.

Joshua: Yeah, I just don't look at it because I don't want the metrics to dictate creativity, because then I realise what will happen is like, oh, that episode performed really well, what's the secret sauce so that I can get more clicks or views? That's not what we do. In fact, what we're constantly asking each other— every week we have a staff meeting and we're just— I always ask— in fact, the staff meeting begins and I say, hey, this is your weekly reminder that everything we do in the staff meeting is not productive. This meeting is not productive. What is productive is hopefully we get something out of here, we create something meaningful for our readership, for our listenership, for our audience. So the question we're always asking is, how do we add value to the audience? How do we improve the reader experience on on our website. I just had a, a phone call right before you got here with our web developer, and we're just, we're constantly making these little tweaks and never has anything to do with numbers. It has to do how can we make this more, more beautiful, more simple, more elegant? How can we help people better? Right? And we don't have a sidebar on our website. We don't have any advertisements. We don't, uh, cram graphics or anything on there. And that's, it's very intentional. And so whatever we're trying to do, I don't want the numbers to dictate it. Once a year we have a publicist, we have a booking agent, and we have a literary agent who ask about these numbers. And so I have to go like digging and look this stuff up, and I will present that to them whenever they ask for it. But otherwise I try to avoid it altogether because I think that stuff's toxic.

Josh: Yeah. Was that from the very beginning?

Joshua: Oh, hell no. At first you're like, oh, someone retweeted my tweet, like One of my, you know, 78 followers retweeted this. How awesome is that? Um, but I realised that's those— that's sort of empty calories, man. Like, you can indulge in— like, if I give you a piece of candy and you eat it, like, that's fine. But if your primary diet consists of refined sugar—

Josh: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups we don't have really in Australia, so I have not at the level. Yeah, so I've probably overdone it, to be honest.

Joshua: And so you end up like, but if that's your primary intake, you get sick. Yeah. And I think creatively you get sick when, when we're— I use those vehicles like social media, and, and you, you met Jess. Jess is our social media manager, um, and every, everything we put on social media, every word that is written on social media is either mine or Ryan's word. So we all, we create everything, but she's a curator. She curates our social media for us, and she does so in a way— she actually, she's worked at several several museum, like, like art galleries. Um, and, and so she's a literal curator. She's just figured out a way to do that in the social media world because it's so noisy. And I don't want to add to the noise. I want to be able to whisper and have the people who want to get close enough be able to hear it.

Tommy: Well, I'm a filmmaker as well, you know. I guess that's how— that is our business. But I was giving you context more than you, Josh.

Josh: You know, I'm a filmmaker. I was shocked. Breaking news.

Joshua: Yeah, we did this thing on On the podcast the other day, Ryan was like, "Hey, did I announce this on the podcast? I'm not gonna buy a Tesla?" And he didn't mean to say it that way, but our filmmaker Jordan, who I wish was here, you could meet him, he's a great guy, he put one of those breaking news banners, like, "Breaking news, Ryan is not going to buy a Tesla." Yeah.

Tommy: This is a breaking news moment, guys. I am a filmmaker. But Josh and I have talked about, getting into the craft and the nitty-gritty of it versus having to chase the work and land the jobs that pay the bills and how it's like, it would be great to just— or what would be the situation if we weren't looking at that? And I get the same thoughts around, feeling around not looking at the numbers and focusing on the craft. But then I think, you know, you were doing at one point and we are amongst it. At what point do you pull back?

Joshua: Yeah, immediately. I mean, if I could go back and just shake my my 30-year-old self who was like obsessed with analytics, I would say, hey man, like this isn't producing something meaningful. In fact, a lot of the stuff you're producing right now, you're gonna have to rewrite several years from now because you're doing it wrong. And just focus on the craft. If I could go back and talk to my 30-year-old self, that's exactly what I would do. In fact, in 2015, that's what we did. We went and rewrote every essay that was on our website. There was hundreds of them. We hired a full-time editor to do this, actually.

Josh: What does that do to SEO? I guess you don't give a shit.

Joshua: I honestly didn't know what SEO was until a few years in. Someone brought it up at a conference, and I'm like, look, I hear you keep saying this term, but can you explain that? Because I really didn't know, man. Like, I couldn't spell HTML barely. Like, we figured out— one of the main reasons our site is so simple is we figured out how to cobble together a website, and I had no experience whatsoever. I've designed one thing in my life,, and it's the minimalist logo, and I've— I'm retired from design now. Yeah, um, the silhouettes.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, that's when I think of the minimalism— minimalist— the silhouette. Yeah, I mean, what's the, uh—

Josh: everyone's writing now in the sense of if you're doing an Instagram post, you're writing a bit of, you know, text for that. It's, it's in our culture to be emailing, to be slacking, by design we are communicating more in the written form. Yeah. As a writer, what is your advice to, to people to move the needle in how they write and to create better writing?

Joshua: There's a difference between communicative communication and expressive communication. Um, I'll try to illustrate it with an example. Uh, if you get a calculus textbook, it is strictly communicative. It communicates communicates the information to you, right? Here are the equations, but you're never going to go to the beach with that calculus textbook and like, ah, it's a relaxing day. Let me figure out what the quadratic formula is, right? Like, this sounds terrible because it is just communicative. It doesn't express anything. It doesn't make you feel, feel anything other than boredom. And even then it doesn't do a good job of even communicating that. The other side is expressive communication. The most stark example is sort of the Tourette's mad person on the subway, right? Like if you go on the subway and you see someone in the car like just sort of blurting out words.

Josh: It sounds like New York where we just were.

Joshua: Yeah, yeah. So you were in New York, so you see this regularly. Now the weird thing about that is it's expressive, but it doesn't require an audience whatsoever, right? Like, you realise that that person who's on that train is— and I think I got this from David Foster Wallace— like, that expression is— you don't have to be there for that at all. Yeah. But it's interesting. Yeah. You sort of stop to look at it. But what if you can merge the two? And I'm talking even in a simple text message. Um, what if you can communicate what you want to communicate, but you can do so in a way that's beautiful and compelling? And if you can do that on, on the grand, the grand scale, the— on the book level, that's the outer layer of a concentric circle. You should be able to do it in a, in a single text message as well.

Josh: I feel like whenever I'm writing to you, I I pick up on my— right, because your writing is so beautiful, I realise how many exclamation marks I use. I'm always, I'm always yelling. What does it take for you to do it? When will you use an exclamation mark in a text?

Joshua: When I'm exclaiming something. What about dot dot dot? Uh, I mean, generally I'll, I'll use an ellipsis if, if, um, I knew that if there's If it makes sense to, like, hey, I'm omitting a certain amount of information here so I can make this more brief, then I'll use it. But yeah, we overuse— although, I mean, I'm not a strict prescriptionist, uh, prescriptivist either. Like, I don't think that— language is always changing, and text messaging is changing that language. In fact, you could argue that your generation is the most literate generation in all of history, because the generation that came before me, the sort of, I guess what we would call baby boomers, right? If I'm Gen X and y'all are millennials, the baby boomers and the generation before them, the last time they wrote a paragraph is when they were 18 years old. Yeah. And then they may have stopped. There are some people who did, the last paragraph they wrote is in their teenage years. And now we're communicating all day, every day via the written word, and it's morphing in a way. And I'm resisting the, the, the fast change, but I also understand when people, when people communicate that way, it's, it's different.

Josh: Yeah. Talking about the fast change, being in Los Angeles, what's— what have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about the world being in such a unique city? And Tommy and I are constantly going to these places like New York and LA and thinking, can we have a crack here? And you know, you're having a crack, you've had a crack, you're doing it. Sure. What's the, uh, what's the learning? Well, you tell me, when you—

Joshua: if you think about moving to a place like that, how, how is this place— would this place be different for you from, say, moving to Sydney, which is a city you're probably— you're more familiar with than here, but you, you don't live there?

Josh: It's a scale thing. I think that what we notice, it's like what you're talking about with Bree and I are walking on the street and we bump into you as we're walking along. The, the calibre of people in regards to entertainment seems to be here. And what we're— what we try and, you know, discuss and think about is, can we actually get there from, yeah, every 6 months visiting and doing these experiences and then going back home and taking that inspiration? Sure.

Tommy: I've always thought traveling, I approach it with this openness that I don't necessarily have at home or choose to have at home because essentially I am just choosing to have it when I go away. And today we were even just talking about what if we sort of take that approach of seeing, you know, America as this land of opportunity, which we do, we see how many, and it's, we see it based on the scale of people here. You see the extremes. It is extremes. And what if we just take that and decide to do it at home.

Joshua: Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you can become a tourist in your own town. I'm from Dayton, Ohio, which is the birthplace of aviation, also the overdose capital of America. And, um, both highs. Yes, yes indeed. Um, it's a fascinating town. It was basically the Silicon Valley of the, of the early 1900s, but then, you know, a lot of problems hit, hit town the, the latter part of the 20th century, and, and, uh they're working on fixing a lot of those problems now. There's a lot of hope there, but there was certainly been a lot of despair the last few decades. But I look at a place like that, and I grew up there, but the Air Force Museum is there, and like, people come from all over the world to go to this Air Force Museum. And the first time I went there as an adult was after I'd moved away from Dayton. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, like, there are all these places in your own city that I guarantee you've never been to. Once a week week, actually every other week, Bex and I, my wife, we will go out and explore a new neighbourhood in Los Angeles. Just yesterday, no, 2 days ago, we're doing this thing called Screenless Saturdays right now. So literally, it's just an experiment, temporary deprivation, right? Getting rid of our phones for the entire day, in fact, all screens on Saturday. And literally, like, no GPS, no Uber or Lyft, no music. So we drove to the CD store. I shit you not, one of the best music stores in the country is right down the street from here, Amoeba Music. And like, it's a weird experience because I don't know when's the last time you went to CD store to buy CDs.

Josh: I don't even know where you'd go.

Joshua: Yeah, I didn't either. And then I realised like, oh yeah, Amoeba was right down there. So we drove over there and they had parking for free, which was strange. And, uh, and like I went up and like I bought a David Gray CD for a dollar. And I realized— and I'm gonna return it because like I'm not gonna need it. I have it on my phone most of the time. But like I essentially got to rent this CD for a dollar and I'll just bring it back to them and sell it back to them for a quarter or whatever. And then we just went out exploring neighborhoods. We went out to Boyle Heights and, and we went downtown and like we just go explore a little neighbourhood without, without the GPS, without— because that's the time, I don't know if you all even remember this, there were times we had to learn a city by, by just driving around and getting lost. And that was—

Josh: now it's following a blue dot.

Joshua: Absolutely, but then you don't know, you don't get familiar with everything that's outside of the highway, or you don't get lost appropriately. And, and, um, when my mom was dying— she lived down in St. Petersburg, Florida, that's why we own a coffee shop down there now— like, I really fell in love with the community. It was, it was the tail end of the sort of, um, this was 2008, so the iPhone was around but it wasn't ubiquitous. Maps on your phone weren't ubiquitous yet, so you still had to print out directions from MapQuest. And so I learned the city of St. Petersburg just by getting lost and driving around the city. It's a perfect city to, to, to figure this out because the streets are numbered correctly. And so like, you could— if you're on 79th and 6th, you kind of— it's a perfect grid. Um, and so I learned the city and I fell in love with that city. And I realised like, whenever I go to a new city, I don't really know how to get around the city. The stupid device in my pocket tells me how to get around. And so even now, I've been in Los Angeles and I can get to a few places, but it's harder because I'm so reliant on the technology. So one day every other week, we just hide the phone at the house and go out and explore. And it strangely feels dangerous because you don't have your phone with you, which is so fucking silly.

Josh: It's all right. I definitely noticed that when Bree and I were traveling. Joshua Fields Milburn, mate, I, uh, I had the privilege of seeing you behind the scenes uh, in Australia and New Zealand, and seeing the hundreds of people that were lining up to— it wasn't even to absorb what you had to say, but many people were just wanting to say the impact that you and Ryan have had on their lives through teaching minimalism. And it's an honour that you've, um, given us the time today to chat.

Joshua: I'm grateful. Thanks for having me.

Josh: Thanks. Have a good one.