678 Jake Muise — The Lava Cowboys’ Rescue Mission, Lessons from a Three-Year Hunt, How to Build Exceptional Teams, Repairing Ecosystems, and Tactics for Relationship and Parenting Success

This is a OPEN AI summary of the Tim Ferriss Podcast #678- visit www.TinyTim.blog for more AI summaries, or www.Tim.blog for the official Tim Ferriss Podcasts.

In this episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim interviews Jake Muise, CEO of Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is a company that works to balance invasive axis deer populations on the island of Maui. The company was selected for Fast Companys Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Agriculture of 2023. Prior to Maui Nui, Jake was executive director of the Axis Deer Institute for 12 years.

A fissure erupts on the Big Island, cutting off a several thousand acre area including homes, people, and animals. State and federal officials arrive and begin helicoptering people and animals out of the area. A cattle rancher is trapped with 50-plus animals between two lava flows. The Bat Signal is seen in the sky as the first of its kind live capture net system is used to pick up cows live and get them out of the area.

A team of workers used a live capture system to rescue cows from a lava flow.

A community of people in Hawaii are working to rescue cows that are trapped beneath a lava flow. They are using a helicopter to try to lift the cows to safety. The pilot has never done this before, but he is the only one with a helicopter big enough to do the job. The team is hoping to use the heat from the lava flow to give them a boost and get the cows to safety.

Maui Nui is a reference to the Hawaiian Islands, which are made up of several islands including Maui. The name Maui Nui means "big Maui" in Hawaiian. The islands are home to several volcanoes, including two that are currently active. In 2014, one of these volcanoes erupted, causing lava bombs to fly through the air. One of these lava bombs hit a cow, vaporizing it. However, the cow's owner, Jake Muise, was able to get all 50 of his animals out of the area before the volcano eruption shut down the area.

Maui Nui is the name of the company co-founded in 2017 by Jake Muise and his wife Kuulani. The name Maui Nui refers to the three islands of Maui, Molokai, and Lnai, which were once joined together as one giant island. The company is based on the axis deer, which are located on the three islands. Maui Nui is committed to preserving the history and culture of the Hawaiian islands, as well as the agricultural traditions of the pre-colonized Hawaiian people.

Jake Muise talks about his friend, who is an expert on Hawaiian culture. She is extremely knowledgeable and would be an asset to anyone wanting to learn more about the Hawaiian people and their history. She is also a gifted writer and designer.

Jake Muise discusses the ingenuity of the pre-colonial Maori people of New Zealand, who developed sophisticated agricultural systems despite the island's isolation and limited resources. He describes the Kohala Field System, which was an network of permaculture lines that produced high yields of sweet potatoes.

In 1868, Kamehameha IV was given a gift of axis deer from the ruler of the Hawaiian Islands. These deer were able to maintain an extraordinary level of biodiversity, which points to the connection between the deer and their environment. The Ahupuaa system was a land segregation system that protected water and maintained clean water throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

The axis deer is a species of deer that is native to India. In the late 1800s, seven axis deer were introduced to the Hawaiian island of Molokai. These deer had no natural predators on the island, and they quickly reproduced. As a result, the population of axis deer on Molokai grew exponentially. Today, the axis deer is considered to be a nuisance species on the island, and efforts are underway to control its population.

The introduction of wild pigs to the island of Molokai has resulted in massive die-offs of the population due to overpopulation and famine. This has had a negative impact on the island's ecology, as the pigs are able to denude landscapes in a matter of days.

The study found that watersheds are operating at 50 percent of their previous capacity, which has consequences for runoff, nearshore fisheries, and reefs.

The Axis Deer Institute was started as a way to collect information and facilitate research on the impact of axis deer on the Hawaiian Islands. The institute has been working to find and remove the deer for the past three years.

A three-year project to remove axis deer from the Big Island resulted in the removal of five deer. The project was extremely difficult, as the deer are very difficult to find and extremely agile.

It took researchers seven months to get the first camera trap image of the average hunt, and then another four months to get the first actual sighting. They did this by setting up 50-plus camera traps at all water sources in a 100 square mile area. Once they had an image, they started doing ground transects to look for sign. They also used forward-looking infrared to increase detection rates.

In this interview, Tim Ferriss speaks with Jake Muise about using FLIR technology (forward-looking infrared) to locate and track animals. FLIR allows you to see heat signatures, so it is effectively like 'Predator vision' from the movie of the same name. This technology has been used for 11 years and has been successful in finding animals that would otherwise be difficult to locate.

Jake Muise explains that the introduction of new species to Hawaii is a major problem, as a new species is introduced every 8 days. He tells the story of how mongoose were introduced in an attempt to control the rat population, but they ended up decimating the native bird population instead. Kauai is the only island that does not have mongoose, as they were never introduced there.

Jake Muise describes how they successfully removed an invasive species of axis deer from the Big Island in Hawaii. They did this by developing a technology that allowed them to accurately survey the deer population. This technology was then used to Maui Nui, which is an area that is home to many different types of animals.

The speaker describes a project where they used a tool to accurately count the number of deer in a large fenced area. They were able to remove deer and then accurately count the number of deer again to show the impact of their management. The project on Maui was the first phone call to the USDA to say, How do we use these animals? Because they were talking about having us remove thousands and thousands of animals and they didnt care what we did with them.

Jake Muise is a Canadian entrepreneur who played a lot of hockey as a kid. He later went on to study business statistics in college. After learning about confidence intervals, he decided to apply them to a real-world problem: the overpopulation of deer in New Hampshire. He worked with the USDA to create a program that would allow the deer to be harvested and donated to food banks. The program was a success, and it led to Jake starting a similar program in Maui.

Jake Muise talks about how he got into volleyball and ended up playing professionally for three years. He notes that volleyball is much more popular in Hawaii and Europe than in the US, where it is often seen as a niche sport.

Volleyball is the second sport to football or soccer. So you were associated with another club. Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Jake Muise: And you just got basically spillover of all the soccer fans or football fans. But a huge professional league there that for great players pays extraordinarily well. And for me, which was not a great player, was this amazing opportunity to go to Europe, see all of these different places. And the professional teams only ever accepted two international players. So you were embedded and immediately assimilated into whatever culture you were in, which its just such an amazing way to be a part of those places versus some outsider, right? So that leads into the story of free pizza. So my first week playing in Harlingen, which is in northern Holland. Tim Ferriss: Gesundheit! Jake Muise: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well that plays into this story. I had a week of practice and our first game was coming up and I was still very much getting used to the language. The coach was this 68 Olympic legend. He was this legendary Dutch player. And I think he was happy I was there, but I was just another player. And youre paid to be there, so you play really well. Tim Ferriss: Hes trying to mime with you to get things done, right? Jake Muise: Hes not giving it a lot of effort. And then were playing one of the best teams in the league for the very first game, were doing really well. He puts a play together to finish the game. I had no idea what he was saying, okay? Tim Ferriss: What could go wrong? Jake Muise: Completely screw it up, embarrassing level screw up, and we lose. And after the game, he comes aside in broken English and hes just like, You play better or we fire you. You werent playing for fun anymore in college, you were getting paid to play really well. And the reason I didnt play well is because I couldnt understand what he was saying. Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Jake Muise: So the very next day we were reviewing film and he was going off again

Tim Ferriss talks to Jake Muise about how he used the phrase "Does that mean we get free pizza?" to ask dumb questions when he didn't understand what was going on. Jake explains that this practice has helped him become fearless in asking important questions, even if they may be seen as dumb.

Jake Muise talks about how he found success in volleyball by taking an oblique angle and helping other players find contracts. He explains that he was not the best player, but he was able to find teams that were willing to pay him to play. This allowed him to extend his career in volleyball.

Maui Nui is a food company that Tim Ferriss invested in because he saw potential in their innovative and experimental approach. One unique feature of the company is that their employees work seven days on, seven days off. This schedule was originally designed to help with the sleep schedule of their harvesters, but it has turned into an extraordinary benefit for the company.

Jake Muise, co-founder of Honeycrisp, explains that the company offers unlimited overtime to its employees, but no one has taken advantage of it. He believes that this is because time is the most important thing to their employees, and they are happy with the seven-day vacation they get.

local people, were looking for people of those places, is youre giving them an opportunity to leverage that place and enjoy it. So half of them will just fish for six days or go hunting or enjoy surfing or something else. And its just this amazing schedule that really allows them to enjoy the place that they are from and live in. But more importantly, we have an extra extraordinary group of people. And it just had to roll over the hill a little bit and combine with the other things like through COVID when nobody could hire anybody, we had stacks and stacks and stacks of resumes on my desk. It just has turned into this amazing work environment and weve had no lack of essentially efficiency or production. Tim Ferriss: So lets talk about some of the processes and metrics that inform that output and efficiency. Jake Muise: Sure. Tim Ferriss: Because it doesnt happen by accident. Jake Muise: No. Tim Ferriss: And Ive visited your operation a few times now and Ive always been, this wont surprise anyone whos followed me for a while, Im always impressed with very finely tuned tracking. So could you speak to some of the metrics that you track and why theyre important? Jake Muise: Sure. Tim Ferriss: And then well segue from that into lets have you describe what a shift actually looks like. Jake Muise: Sure. Tim Ferriss: When youre going out at night. Jake Muise: Yeah. So we have two Tim Ferriss: And you can feel free to switch back and forth or do one first and then the other afterwards. Jake Muise: So the harvest side of what we do, which is really the unique aspect of what weve built, is these field harvesting systems that comply fully with USDA standards, i.e. everything that operates in a brick and mortar were able to do in the field through a combination of forward-looking infrared and these different software systems that we built. And we were only able to create those systems and levels of efficiency with what youre pointing to is an

Jake Muise and Tim Ferriss discuss the data that Muise's company collects on their hunting grounds and how they use it to inform their decisions. They also mention a grant that Muise's company has submitted to NASA in order to continue their data collection efforts.

Maui Nui is a very well-known industry with well-known inputs and production efficiencies. The company is constantly iterating and collecting data to see if they can produce a better product faster with more quality. Tim Ferriss asks Jake Muise about the company's kill efficiency and humane kill measurements compared to a conventional facility. Jake Muise explains that the company has to follow the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which requires that animals are harvested humanely and that the meat is safe to eat.

The average brick and mortar facility has a 98% rendering efficiency, while Jake Muise's company has a 99.9% rendering efficiency. This is due to their shooting system which allows for 30% of the shots to be misses.

Jake Muise is able to hunt and sell wild game meat because the animals are considered a public resource in his state of Montana. He is able to do this because the animals are owned by the public, and the state dictates the management of them.

This process is only legal in the instance where it is an invasive species on private land. We are not allowed to operate on public land in Hawaii. The quality and nutrient density of the product is what attracted Tim Ferriss to invest in Maui Nui. Jake Muise explains that they sleep on site and get up at 10:00 p.m. to start making dinner and breakfast together. They then move from site to site to do the hunting process.

The author describes how a mobile slaughter facility is moved to a new site to get closer to the deer. The facility has to be cleaned and processed in an hour. The team members are asked to be snipers, rally car drivers, CrossFit athletes, butchers. The author describes how the team members carry the animals on their backs into the next stage of life with the food. The USDA shows up and it is game time.

The technology used to harvest deer at night includes forward-looking infrared drones and scopes. This allows for a large number of animals to be harvested without scaring them away with lights.

The USDA is able to view and approve the conditions of animals being harvested for food. The animals are shot and then collected by a team of people who take them back to a processing facility. The whole process happens at night.

In this excerpt, Tim Ferriss interviews Jake Muise about building and running a successful UTV hunting business. Muise stresses the importance of communication and training, and explains how his experience as a coach helps him in his current role.

Jake Muise talks about how they focus on individual language and created their own harvest language to avoid confusion when things are moving quickly. They also have a system called HHS that measures humility, work ethic, and emotional intelligence in order to ensure they have the right people on staff.

The HHS system is a way to evaluate and score employees' performance. If an employee is scored a C, they are let go on the spot. This system is in place to help ensure that only the best employees are kept on.

The big boss sits down with employees who have received a bunch of Bs on their quarterly performance review and talks to them about how they can improve. This helps to create tension within the team and allows for growth.

In order to ensure that the best people are in the best positions, companies will sometimes move people around to different roles based on their skillsets. This can be difficult for some employees who may have to train their replacement and give up a role that they enjoy.

In order to build extraordinary teams, Jake Muise realized that he needed to change his approach to team conversations. He started using an anonymous team scoring system that has attracted better fits and helped the team to grow.

The following is a conversation between Jake Muise and Tim Ferriss in which they discuss Muise's process for conducting performance reviews. Muise has created a system in which employees are given a score in each of 24 different categories. The categories are then averaged to create an overall score. This score is used to determine whether or not an employee is meeting the standards set by the company. If an employee is not meeting the standards, they are given a specific plan to improve their performance. This system has been successful in helping to identify areas where employees need to improve and providing a way to address those areas.

In order to reward and compensate employees for being extraordinary individuals who make their whole team better, Tim Ferriss and Jake Muise created a system that grades employees on their humility, work ethic, and emotional intelligence. If an employee gets two As or A-pluses in a quarter, they receive a raise.

The author discusses how hard skills are important in order to be successful. He also talks about how people who are willing to learn and improve their skills are more successful than those who don't.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution is a book that outlines a system for achieving goals. The system involves setting a "wildly important goal," breaking the goal down into smaller goals, and then taking daily actions to move closer to the goal. The book also includes a section on how to create an "accountability chart" to help track progress.

Jake Muise, the Head of Learning & Development at Athletic Greens, discusses the importance of having genuine apologies and assigning reading material to staff in order to create an ideal team player. He also recommends the book "Confessions of the Pricing Man" for anyone in product strategy.

Nutrient density is a measure of the quality of food, and Jake Muise believes that it has the potential to completely change our food system. By measuring the nutrient content of foods, we would be able to make better choices about what we eat. Regenerative agriculture is a type of agriculture that focuses on taking care of the soil and water.

Jake Muise and Tim Ferriss discuss the quality of food in different cultures. Jake Muise explains that in some cultures, food is measured by the quality of its nutrients, not just by its five main metrics. He also talks about how Patagonia Provisions was one of the first companies to be fully tested for its nutrient levels.

The USDA databases from the 1930s are very outdated. Tim Ferriss and Jake Muise met with Dr. van Vliet at Utah State University, who has one of the most advanced food labs in North America. They found that the nutritional comparison to beef were not even actually able to do it because the data was so dated and you're able to be off within 20 percent on a label.

Jake Muise discusses the idea that the nutritional quality of food is a direct reflection of the fertility of the place where it is grown. He argues that if consumers were more aware of this, it would completely change the way people look at the food system.

Axis deer are a virile, fertile animal that happen to make up a tiny percentage of the world's soils. However, their ability to choose what they eat and their high nutrient density makes them an exciting possibility for those looking to improve the world's soils.

Maui Nui is a source of omega-3s that can be helpful for people who don't eat fish. The company is working with professional sports teams to see if the product has an impact on athletes' health.

This is a discussion between Tim Ferriss and Jake Muise about how to get children to be more helpful around the house. They talk about how allowances can unintentionally train children to only do things if they will be paid for it. They came up with the idea of "clawback allowances" where children can earn money for doing jobs around the house, but they can also lose money for having a bad attitude. This system has worked well for their family over the past few months.

In order to keep peace in their home, Jake and his wife came up with the idea of secret Pinterest boards. This has allowed them to communicate their desires to each other without causing arguments.

The speaker's wife is very difficult to buy gifts for, so he came up with a system where he would find out exactly what she wanted and then give it to her as a surprise. This has worked well for him and his family.

Jake Muise's wife is amazing. She has a talent for making people happy, even when they're monsters. She does this by closing her eyes and pretending she's 80 years old.

The author describes a game his mother plays where she imagines herself as an 80-year-old woman looking at her 9-year-old daughter. The game is designed to help her appreciate the present moment and be grateful for what she has.

Ric Elias introduced the idea of parenting as a tug of war that you have to lose. The visual of kids pulling a line across from you and that line moving through your hands is a great way to think about how to parent effectively.

The metaphor of "letting go of the rope" is a useful way to think about parenting and making decisions about when to allow children more independence. The idea is that you gradually let go of the rope, rather than suddenly, so that they can learn to be responsible and independent gradually and safely.

The goal of the company is to help achieve balance in the ecosystem by providing tools to measure the impact of harvesting and to help landowners make sustainable decisions. The company hopes to see deer become a part of our food system in a way that is healthy for both the animals and the environment.

Maui Nui is working to find the balance between ecosystem, food system, and human communities. They are constantly iterating and adjusting to find what works best. Their hope is to create a balance that is good for all communities involved.

In his book The Little Red Book of Selling, Jake Muise read a quote that has stuck with him for years: "Pick up the phone." This quote has helped him to take action and not waste time on things he doesn't want to do.

In this conversation, Tim Ferriss and Jake Muise discuss Maui Nui Venison, a company that Jake founded. They talk about the impact that the company is having, and how its products are helping Tim with his protein intake.

In this conversation, Jake Muise and Tim Ferriss discuss the importance of connection to place. Muise shares how this connection can solve for many of life's problems, and Ferriss agrees. They encourage listeners to be kind to themselves and others.

https://tim.blog/2023/06/21/jake-muise/