The # 1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make That's Killing Their Growth

23:14It's the number one skill that I see most people not spending the most time on is their ability to communicate, their ability to persuade people. And because they're constantly trying to go to a different course or they think that somehow if their product is good enough or they get the right sales pitch that somehow they're gonna win. But the fact of the matter is you've got to become a better persuader. I'm constantly personally working on that skill and refining it. My ability to persuade from the stage through the camera here to get you to make the decisions that are in your own best interest, to persuade you that I can help you, to persuade my children.

23:47When I'm negotiating, I'm buying a company or buying a car or buying a jet. It's my ability to persuade people to make the decision that's in their own best interest to participate with me. And so if I was a quarterback in football, it's my ability to persuade the team to work the hardest, to run the best routes, to get open, to give it all they've got. Head coaches in football, school teachers, their ability to persuade and influence, pastors, you name it, personal trainer, they've got to persuade people to do the exercise of it, they're the expert. So it's our ability constantly to influence and persuade people that I think is the number one skill in life.

24:20And so if that's the case, what are some of the keys in doing that? So the number one thing as a business leader that you should be evaluating is, are you constantly refining, constantly getting better, constantly making alterations constantly being aware of how you can improve in all of these areas the thing that happens when I say that to most people that are average let me tell you what their response is I already have that I already got that down I'm already persuasive I already can do that and even as I say that to people I hear people all the time say oh I'm already good at that let me be very very clear with you as a friend if you were really good at that you'd be more wealthy you'd be happier you'd have a bigger business You'd have a better family life than you have.

25:01So it's your vast overestimation of your ability about that one skill set that is probably gonna hold you back more than anything. As a friend, let me tell you, you're nowhere near as good as you think you are at that skill. And the fact that you think you're great at it may be your greatest detriment to moving forward in your life because you don't think there's this gap between where you should be and where you are that'll cause you to do the work to get there. And so I never overestimate my ability to persuade. I always think I can get better. I always think I can grow and I know there are multiple areas and sectors in which we persuade people So I might be really good speaking from the stage But the question is how am I in front of 30 ,000 people or 100 people?

25:42How about one-on-one? How about in my family? How about to a group of three? What about in a boardroom? What about the white-collar people? What about the blue-collar people? What about in my personal life, right? What about getting people just to make their best effort? What about in putting money somewhere and so there are thousands of areas in which we persuade people persuade people to like you persuade people to laugh at your joke right so you're constantly when you buy something persuade them when you sell something persuade them persuade your children so it's your s it's your overestimation and thinking you're great at that that constantly holds you back you're nowhere near as good at that as you think you are and the fact that you think it is already an indication you're not very good at it so you might be great in one area but not great in the others and so please don't check the box and think you're outstanding at that because if someone who's spoken in front of millions of people on stages from 60 ,000 people to six people who's made millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in business, traveled the world in multiple different businesses, in athletics, I've coached athletes, entertainers, politicians, business people one-on-one and I coach in large groups.

26:46If I know I need to get better in those areas I would submit to you that you probably do as well because I'm not as good as I could be or as good as I should be in almost every area of persuasion having said that let's take the business context for a second one thing I want to challenge you to be as a leader of your business whether it's just you're a leader of one which is you as a salesperson or a leader of ten as a team or a company of 25 ,000 employees is you must become evangelical about your cause and your mission the greatest business people have an evangelical property about them they're evangelizing all the time they're propagating the strengths the benefits of their business of their mission of their cause one of the great evangelist of all time is Steve Jobs.

27:26There's a great book written by a guy named Guy Kawasaki many years ago called Selling the Dream. And in that book, he talks about the way that Steve Jobs sold the dream of Apple. And he literally called him an evangelist for the cause. There's a great story in that book about Steve Jobs when he was recruiting. He knew he needed to have a CEO of his company and he wanted to have the best. And at that time, there was a man named Scully who was the head of Pepsi. And Jobs was this young kid in his 20s trying to recruit this executive who'd made millions of dollars and he couldn't get them and he couldn't get them and he couldn't get them and finally he gets the voicemail back in those days the answering machine actually of scully and he says listen listen man when you're tired of selling sugar water to kids over there at pepsi and you want to come change the world freaking call me back and we'll do it together boom and he hangs up right he was evangelical the cause sugar water and pepsi changed the world at apple right and scully who's making millions of dollars he's ceo of one of the most powerful companies in the world looks to his wife and she says I think he's right we aren't changing the world and it was that one cause-oriented evangelical phone call from Steve Jobs and it exuded out of his pores every stage speech he gave every one-on-one every board meeting when he'd meet with their software engineers when he'd meet with the programmers he was always evangelical internally and externally and built a culture of one of the greatest movements of all time in the history of business There's great lessons there about being evangelical the greatest presidential or political leaders have an evangelical property about them The greatest salespeople do the greatest dads the greatest pastors.

28:58They're evangelical aren't they? So you've got to become more of an evangelist for your cause and your mission number one number two You have to sell a big enough dream To your team to your company to your clients to the people around you that the dreams of everybody associated with you can fit inside the one you're selling it's got to be big it's got to be bold it's got to be expanding number three it's got to be repetitious you can't get tired of saying the same things over and over and over again one of the deficiencies of leaders that are weak is they constantly think they have to say new things to old people creating new things to say to old people the best leaders say old things to new people they say the same things over and over again to more and more new people new teammates new employees new recruits new clients new speeches new groups right they say old things to new people they're repeating over and over the vision and the cause of their business of their movement these are great communicators the next thing all great communicators understand whether it's words physiology the look you give somebody or writing influence is energy it's the transfer of energy it's getting you to feel about my company, feel about my mission, feel about my product, feel about my cause, what I feel.

30:16They're conscious of transferring energy to people because that's what moves people. That's what gets them to act. It's not just the words. It's not just your face. It's not just how you're dressed. It's an energy transfer. There's a hook, by the way. You can't transfer to me that which you're not experiencing yourself. You have to physically be experiencing it in the moment. it can't just be the words you're reading from a sheet you have to really believe it one of the reasons a lot of salespeople struggle or recruiters struggle is they just don't believe enough they don't spend enough time making the case like a lawyer litigating to themselves about how powerful what they do is and the more and more you really but if you're a true believer you can evangelize your product you can evangelize your message so invest more time in your own belief in your research in your knowledge finding third-party articles, magazines, blogs, things that reinforce whatever it is you're doing that feeds your own belief.

31:12That way you can give it to me. You can't give it to me if you don't have it. And so they don't spend enough time. Spend more time feeding your own belief and be conscious of the transfer of energy to another person. There's a great study out right now that I was just reading about bees and them deciding which flower to pollinate is based on the energy the flower puts off. They sense the energy from the flower and they move towards that one deciding to pollinate that one Well if you want more people to pollinate your business Pollinate your life if you want to track the right relationship the right amount of money the right clients the right employees the right recruits the right vendors the right support you gotta be putting off that energy because people are going to pollinate it somewhere You want to pollinating with you, right?

31:57And that's an energy feeling they get from people the bottom line is people got to be when they get around you they got to feel something special about you, special about where you're going, special about your cause, special about your mission, that something special is happening, something historic, something big, a big old dream. In fact, one big enough that my dream can fit inside the one these people are selling me, right? And so this is the key of moving people. The number one skill, go all the way back to the beginning. My number one skill that if I could keep only one would be this right here the ability to persuade people in multiple areas of my life how do I get better at it transfer energy number one feed your belief number two number three make sure that it's repetitious over and over again say old things to new people right and you got to be evangelical and sell a big old dream the bottom line is is that this is a process that never ends of growing us of growing our ability to persuade people one of the things about communicating as well is doing it with a lot of specificity.

33:02Great communicators, great influencers, great persuaders are very specific and very clear about what their message is. And so even communicating to yourself and leading yourself, I grew up walking this beach right here, this exact beach. And I didn't live like this, but I told my family someday, told myself someday, I'm going to live on this beach. I didn't know who these people were that owned all these beach houses. I didn't know exactly how you got one, but I began to repetitiously transfer that energy to myself about my dream over and over again literally thousands if not millions of times and now someday it happened now that day is here and i live on this beach is one of four homes that i own and so that's how you communicate with yourself and others that transfer of energy i can tell you that in my own situation i'm always trying to how do i evolve it how do i modify it how do i feed my own belief more how do i sell it bigger how do i back it up with more facts.

33:52The best leaders sell a big old vision. They tell a great story. The best people I know are great storytellers. Remember this, facts tell, stories sell. Most people make decisions emotionally from the story. They rationalize it logically with the facts. So make sure you're selling a big dream, a big story, and then you give people the facts. This is the way we begin to move people in our lives. This is the skill of entrepreneurs. This is the skill of building something big and building something small and building something permanent too is your ability to persuade focus on your energy focus on your belief level and focus on refining your message the last thing is this say it faster and say it quicker less is more you don't have to tell them everything you know leave a little bit to the imagination one thing that happens the longer and longer we're in business the longer and longer we're around the more and more we learn we feel compelled to tell someone everything we know about our product, everything we know about the business.

34:52And that's not how you energize people. You give them just enough and then shut up. My dad used to tell me when I was a kid, when I'd be asking for money to take my girlfriend to the movies, he'd say, hey, don't sell past the clothes, right? He had already agreed and I'd keep selling them. I'd keep selling them. And sometimes I'd lose them with this extra BS I'd be giving them. So I want to challenge you, don't sell past the clothes. So of all things in business, right time management goal setting vision identity all those things we're going to talk about in on this channel are very important but if you can't communicate if you can't persuade you are toast the last thing I would say to you how do I get better there's lots of books lots of tapes but it's really for me it's modeling I learned to model certain people initially and then modify model and modify so I would model people not copy them but I would model certain people's styles, one or two different people, and then I'd modify it to fit my own personality.

35:49Model and modify, right? Don't try to create everything on your own and don't try to copy somebody else that's different than you. You got to be you. So model and modify. The last thing I would tell you is to the extent that you can transfer this skill to other people will be to the extent that you can scale your business. So it's one thing to be able to persuade yourself and transfer energy. It's an entirely other thing to equip other people around you to do likewise. The best leaders are not just evangelical about their cause, can't just transfer energy. They have the ability to transfer that skill of transferring energy to other people.

36:25And then you begin to build your movement, whether that's one or two or 10 or 25 ,000 or millions and millions of people. Sometimes your clients can be your top evangelizers for you when they use your product. So it's your ability to transfer that skill and you have to do that through repetition. The way to transfer the skill of energy to people is through repetition and role play. Repetition and role play. Far too many people just talk and teach their teams how to do things. They talk at them rather than work with them. The way you get me to do it is there's no substitute for experience. A hundred hours in the classroom is worth one hour in the field.

37:02A hundred hours of teaching is worth one hour of role play where we do it together. getting them on the stage getting them when I started speaking one of the great speakers that he was an older guy so this is gonna date him but when I first started speaking I got on the stage and I would open up for this one speaker and then when I'd come off stage he was really older guy but he'd say what was it like to play on stage with Elvis meaning he was the Elvis right but I got to know what it was like to be on the same stage with the Elvis of speaking at that time and in business too often we just talk at people and don't let them get on stage with you Elvis There's not enough role play.

37:38There's not enough engagement. And so it's repetition over and over. Repetition is the mother of learning. Repetition is the mother of skill. It's the mother of owning it over and over and over and over again until it becomes reflexive. Because when the words and the message and the energy becomes reflexive, then when you're under pressure, when you're stressed, when you're down, when the client's objecting, you reflexively respond with your habit but if you don't have that habit that reflex you begin to respond and lose energy and so the reason repetition matters is it allows your responses to be reflexive under pressure and then the second thing is role play there's no substitute for that experience of being on stage with Elvis I say it you say it I say it you say it and it's not just the words it's the feeling it's the transfer of energy the number one skill of entrepreneurs and leaders of entrepreneurs is the ability to persuade and hope these were some of the tips that you should be conscious of, of becoming world-class at it, knowing you'll never be world-class at it, knowing we can always get better.

38:37We can always stretch. We can always grow and improve our skills in multiple areas. Hope this helps you.

38:46This episode brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can get a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

39:22When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now onto our next guest.

40:03I'm so excited today. We have a guest that founded this little company you've never heard of before. He was the first CEO as well. And we're just real proud of him. He's getting his little business career going. I say that with some humor because this man founded a company called Netflix, Netflix, which every single one of you is probably a subscriber to by this point. Mark Randolph, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Oh, it's a pleasure, Ed. Thanks for having me. And, you know, I know I'm sure everyone in the show has heard of Netflix. My real question usually is how many of you are paying for it?

40:35I read this blog you wrote. I think you might have wrote it a year ago, but you republished it recently, or at least it came out, about the elephant in the room. And when I was coming up in business, I had a good fortune of getting to know Jack Welch just a little bit. And one of Jack's big principles was candor, being candid with people. Could you share with everybody the story about when you were let go at your job and then your philosophy about, you know, discussing the hard things in business and the elephant in the room? This is huge, everybody. Yeah. You know, it's people have this false sense of wanting to preserve people's not hurt somebody's feelings.

41:13Yeah. And you know, what I've kind of learned is that you're never fooling anybody. And worse, when there's an employee who's not working out and out of perhaps your sense of goodness, you're trying to make it work or you don't want to hurt their feelings or you go, this person, it's terrible for two big reasons. One is people aren't stupid and they can see that this person is not performing. And then they worse, they form the opinion about you and they go either either Mark is stupid and he cannot tell that this person's a loser or even worse. Mark is weak and he's afraid to do something about it.

41:58And wow, that is always kind of resonated with me when all of a sudden I realized how it backfires when you're afraid to take action. And there's so many examples of this. I mean, listen, listen, we've all worked for companies before. And there's this classic thing when someone is not performing and they put them on a, I get what you call it, a PIP, a product, a performance improvement plan or something like that. Right. Yeah. And I go, that is such cruel and unusual punishment that we're going to do this kabuki theater for six months where I'm going to pretend that you're going to actually get good at your job.

42:36And you're going to pretend you're going to go through with it. But both of us know you're going to get ultimately fired. And all I'm doing is covering my ass. How much better it is to call the person in and say, Ed, it's not working out. You know it. I can know it. We all know this, but it's not because you're a bad person. It's because you're just not a good match for what we need right now. And let me help you find a great job. I'll give you the recommendations. I believe in you. Let's find something that works. God, that's just such a I mean, listen, the person is going to be shocked. It hurts to lose your job.

43:06I'm not saying it makes it easy. But when you look back on it, everyone feels better about there being honesty behind this whole this whole approach. I agree. And just so you know, this was born out of a situation where you lost your job and you basically talked your boss into letting you stay. Yes, that's right. They got ridiculous. Yeah, I said, I heard this stupid story that this is, you know, years and years ago, but I had heard that it's easier to get a job when you have a job. So I talked him into saying, let me stay for whatever it was, two months or whatever the severance they were going to give me.

43:40And it was terrible because I was the walking dead. Everyone knew that I'd been fired, but you are all playing along with this ridiculous uh play acting and of course i didn't use the time to get another job yeah what it does is it erodes your culture when you don't have candor when you keep people around that shouldn't be around at least move their butt to a different seat it erodes the culture in your company and you just don't perform to the at the level that you could and you can business is millimeters it's inches these little things are the differentiation between having an exit someday or becoming a world-class company or even you becoming a millionaire or multimillionaire and not these little things that we're talking about here.

44:19The other one, though, that you speak very eloquently about, I really love the way that you talk about this is dealing with failure. So the more and more as I get older as an entrepreneur and just observing humans, my son wants to become in one of my companies in the financial industry and sales. And dad, do you think I do well? Because he's articulate and patient and hardworking. And I said, I said, Max, yes, but here's my concern. Can you, can you really deal with rejection and failure? Because ultimately that's what takes people out most of the time. Yet it's talked about in the 10 things you should do.

44:53But to me, it may actually be the most important thing is your ability to deal and how you process failure ultimately. And you, you speak about like 97.3 % of all the tests you run were failures, but talk to everybody about this notion of failure and what it means. And someone like yourself, how you process what most people would call failure. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, I do a fair amount of work with entrepreneur programs and I mentor entrepreneurs. And that question gets asked so often and they put it a different way. They go, how do I know when to give up? How do you deal with failure?

45:33And it's always kind of been a strange question for me because I don't resonate with that. I don't really get it. And I've kind of realized, and this is not something that's corny. I don't think about failure as failure. And I've kind of only now realized in the last handful of years what's going on is that I never fall in love with the idea. I always fall in love with the problem. And when you fall in love with the problem, well, the problem never goes away. The problem never fails. The problem is always there. And then what happens is all these things which were your ideas, when they fail, who cares?

46:15It was just an idea that I was trying. And I've learned something from that idea that each of these failures is a jumping off point to more exploration. Even when something goes totally wrong, well, at least now I can cross those three things off the list. And I've narrowed down the possible approaches I have which actually might work. And for me, that this is great. That's the fundamental reason that I'm so motivated and excited that I've gotten to spend my entire life as an entrepreneur, not because it's worked out economically well for me, not because of any of the other things that go on. It's because every day it's this adventure of I've got this thing I'm trying to solve and I get to come into work and I get to sit around the table with these smart people and try things.

47:00And wow, sometimes some of them really work. Most of the time they don't. but that's okay. That's what makes it fun. And it's always been this positive spin. Mark, were you this way before you were successful? Like this was a philosophy you've carried most of your life? Oh, absolutely. You know, back, I started as an entrepreneur 40 years ago. And back then, I mean, there were entrepreneurs, but no one called it that, or no one talked about it. And there sure as hell weren't classes or business majors or shark tanks about it. You just were a person who was compulsively driven to see something which wasn't working and go, there's got to be a way to fix that.

47:42Go to the problem solving thing for a second. I'm just curious because if that's the thing you love doing, I used to think there's a problem. What's the right and the wrong thing to do? And I don't feel that way anymore. Do you have a personal problem solving sort of philosophy that you would share with everybody, if that's so critical, if that's something you love doing, do you have a philosophy regarding that? Oh, of course I do. And it's one of the things that's taken me a long time to learn. And I've learned that ideas don't count for shit. They don't. I hear so many pitches. You know, I do a lot of angel investing.

48:19I work with entrepreneurs all over the world. They all want to pitch me their idea and they're fun and you're listening. But But the thing is no idea, zero ideas end up turning into the companies that they become. The successful companies all are this winding path of one thing leads to another. Almost never, in fact, never do things that are successful go lead directly from the idea they started with. And so what I've learned is that the key thing is you got to do it. That the more time you spend thinking about it, the more time you're wasting. Then you're trying to envision, can I see around the corner?

48:53Can I figure it out? And even worse, entrepreneurs get these things stuck in their heads and they're safe and they're warm and they can build them and they can make them into multinational corporations. And they can imagine all the amazing things when everyone's using this app without spending the first moment figuring out how they're going to actually get the one person to use the app. And here's the trick. The one way is you just got to do it. You've got to say, I'm just going to start and I'm going to start completely half assed and I know I'm going to stumble. It's not going to work. But by taking that first step, I'm going to start the process of learning what might work.

49:27And what I've learned, my process is to break down all pride, to break down all sense that this is going to happen to work well and just frigging do it. And what's taken me a while is to get more and more comfortable with how crappy it can be and still be a learning experience. And I've come to learn that this, in my opinion, is the skill that separates the great entrepreneurs from the mediocre ones. It's not how good their ideas are, but how clever and creative they can be about figuring out ways to try their ideas quickly, simply, and cheaply. And I do not mean minimal viable product bullcrap because that is still way too much effort.

50:10It's thought experiments, It's simple tests. It's ways of colliding your idea of the reality as quickly as you can. Like the classic story. And listen, I'm getting wound up here. So you got to stop me if you need to. But the classic story is that when Reed Hastings and I were driving, commuting to work and we were brainstorming ideas for what I could sell on the Internet. And we had a bunch of them, which I could share with you if we have time. But we had this idea for let's maybe we could do video rental by mail. and then that was a bad idea but a few months later we heard about the dvd and all of a sudden wow this could unlock the old idea now we did not go cool let's go to the office and write a business plan we did not go amazing let's go put together a pitch deck we said let's figure out whether this is ridiculous or not and we turned the car around in mid commute and drove back down to our town where we lived and looked for a DVD because it was a DVD business and couldn't find one.

51:10So we said, let's just buy a used music CD. Wow. And we mailed that in a little pink gift envelope to Reed's house in Santa Cruz and found out less than 24 hours later that this idea actually might work because the CD got to read in less than 24 hours for the price of a stamp. But we found that out within 24 hours of having the idea. That is the kind of thinking that I look for in entrepreneurs. That's the kind of way that I pursue. You know, one of these you said, I'll unpack something and then ask you about this. That's one thing. There's all this entrepreneur skills. You got to have a vision, you have a vision, you have a vision.

51:47And I think oftentimes I made this mistake. And I got so committed to my original vision that I was paralyzed and inflexible by it rather than having the flexibility to evolve like what you've described here. It's a huge distinction for sure. And then the second thing I think I'd ask you is my threshold for looking like an ass is really you don't saying I think that's one of the traits like I don't mind looking really stupid. And I think too many people it's not just the low level messages. Don't worry about what people think about you. That's low level. High level is can you enjoy looking like a fool?

52:23Right. And that's the would you not agree with that? because that's ultimately what's going to have to happen for you to take the risks to do all these tests, do this evolution that you've described. Of course. Absolutely. And, you know, it's like one of my lifelong challenge has been learning foreign languages. And I've concluded the key is you've got to be willing to sound like you're an eight year old, because if you don't, if you're constantly just translating in your head, you never make that rapid connection. But startups are exactly the same way. You've got to make a fool yourself. How many do you speak?

52:56What? I'm sorry. How many do you speak now? I speak for them terribly. In other words, I don't know. For me, I can tell you that. Yeah, I do. English is OK, but it's for me, it's more the challenge of learning something rather than is perfecting it because I get bored. So there's this idea of being able to look like a fool that you talk so eloquently about. Then there's this other element that isn't discussed much. And I've heard you talk about it, that I relate to, which is that oftentimes trying to do something great, this is called being an entrepreneur, but could be wanting to be a great athlete.

53:28You want to be a great mother. It can be lonely, you know? And I wonder if you ever felt that way on your journey. I think there's millions of people, you know, that are going to be listening to this in their car on the treadmill right now, and they're feeling connected and they're getting inspiration and value. And then when this is over, they're back to feeling pretty alone. And I think an acceptance that that's actually an indicator, you're on a good journey is something that you should all know. Do you agree with that? Did you ever feel alone and lonely as you were pursuing this? Because I think that's one of the emotional things you have to deal with as well.

54:01I completely agree. And it's something that doesn't get taught. And it's something that isn't talked about. And it's such a shame because it is the reality of being an entrepreneur. I mean, people, when they see entrepreneurs portrayed in the media, they're on Shark Tank and it's exciting or they're pitching or they're having the launch party when they watch the social network movie, whatever it is. But it's not like that. A lot of it is this overwhelming responsibility. I mean, I remember early at Netflix, we were probably only a year in and things were not going well. We had this idea that everyone said it will never work, turned out to be right.

54:39And we were really struggling. And I remember standing in the stairwell, just looking out at the parking lot and thinking, I'm responsible for all those car payments. I have to make this work. I have my friends and family who've invested. I have to make this work. I have this dream of making this company. I have to make this work. And it's on your shoulders and you think about it all the time. And it's a very, very natural thing. But it's one of the reasons why they consider a two-person founding team a more stable configuration. Doesn't mean you have to, but it certainly makes it easy. And one of the roles that I've kind of played over the last 15 years or so since I left Netflix was as a mentor, as a person that a CEO of a company could talk to who did not have an agenda.

55:29I wasn't their board who was their boss. I wasn't their employees who they had to be careful what they communicated about. I was someone who understood the problem well enough who they could talk to about it. And that's a really, really rare thing. And And it's something a lot of founders, including myself, have struggled with. I see you being incredible at doing that. Even we're talking now, I feel some of that for myself and I'm grateful for it. And, you know, I think one thing entrepreneurs need to know, by the way, people need to know, even if you're going to lead a family. Because one of the things that comes with that is you will probably carry what I call the emotional load to a degree, maybe even more than you estimate.

56:08There's an emotional load you're going to carry that you need to be equipped for and prepared for, for the moments like you had in the stairwell. You know, for the moments when you get back on that jet coming back from Dallas, for the moments when, you know, inventory runs out or your order gets shipped the wrong way. These are all part of the emotional load, regardless of your business model. When someone quits that you depend on, if you're in the sales business, one of your top producers leave or a client account goes the other way. Can you carry the emotional load? And so I hope everybody senses that.

56:38You know, I think you all probably know a lot about Gunnar. There was a lot of kind of anticipation about the show here today. And I don't want to go down this direction, so I just want to get this out of the way in the beginning. If you don't know, Gunnar trains some of the most successful business people that walk the earth, some of the most successful entertainers and athletes, anyone from J-Lo to the Kardashians to Sampras to NBA players. But I'm also in the right zip code, in fairness. I'm in the right space for that. I get people reach out at trainers. I want to do what you do. I live in Coeur d 'Alene, Idaho.

57:06I live in Scotland. And I'm like, those are great, wonderful places. But the demographic of the potential clientele is just not there to do what I do. I've heard you say this before because you're a trainer. But you approach the business. I thought this was awesome because it's true of almost any business we would describe. What business are you really in? So you're a trainer. But what business would you say you're in above all? I'm great at connecting people. I can't monetize it for shit. I wish there were a way to say, let me introduce you. Oh, you need a contractor? Oh, you're looking for a car?

57:44Oh, your wife needs a new OBGYN? Oh, you want? I can connect to so many things that have nothing to, and, you know, we all, in our trade, we develop certain go-to lines. And I always say, I can't get you into any restaurants or clubs, but anything in health, wellness, medical, I got you. I know the top shoulder surgeon. I know the top knee surgeon. I know the top nutritionist, the top dentist. dentist I got dentist I got orthodontist and then I have just yeah so but it's being years where I am yeah and I can also call them on their cell and connect you like that yeah right yeah but I'll tell you clubs I don't even know what clubs are hot now restaurants I got a couple go-to restaurants but it's nothing that you'd probably want to go to right um and I and I and it makes me happy nothing makes me happier than someone I had a call two weeks ago yeah a couple weeks ago somebody He said, I chipped my tooth.

58:35What can I do? And it was a Friday afternoon. I go, stand by. Boom. Yep. And they were in the chair within two hours getting the video. And I thought, yeah, that's what I can do. Because you approach it like a, I've never heard this before. You approach it. This is such a lesson because a lot of trainers watch this. How do I grow my practice, right? That goes both ways. If that dentist gets someone who's lying there going, and you know, I feel so fat when I lie in this chair, it makes me really see my stomach. Well, I mean, the analogy I would use is a restaurant analogy, right? It's you pull in, you pull into the gym, you pull up to a restaurant.

59:12Is there a place to park? And I goof about parking, but in LA, parking is a very real thing. Yeah, it is a big deal. Is that difficult? How much of a headache was that? Getting into the place, you walk in, is there someone who stops you, greets you? Do they remember you? Is there a rhythm and a flow to what you do when you get there? Or is it a whole check-in, who are you again? I mean, little things like that can slow the roll and it's a lot less fun overall. And the next time the person has to go to that, they go, I'm not going. And then to me, then your cancellation rate goes up. Even if you're charging for cancellations over time, that goes away too.

59:48You won't go back to the same restaurant if, forget the food, the food I take for granted. If the whole experience that preceded the meal was a pain in the ass. I had one of those last night the food was great, the experience was crap and the experience can be bad on either end usually we tend to selective amnesia we tend to forget what happened in the middle if the food was good but if you ask for the bill it's 20 minutes it puts you in a bad mood on the way out you get to valet 20 minutes, and valet is a real thing in LA every restaurant is valet, or a lot of them that kills the whole vibe Yeah.

1:00:29Right? Yeah. Or the waiter just disappears and you can't even ask. You're like, we've been here 15 minutes. You were at my dinner last night. All of those things happen. No, but I think as you're an entrepreneur, if you are one watching this, how conscious are you from the entire experience the client has with you? Are you in the service from the minute they got there? Cold water or room temp? Some of my clients like cold, some like room temp. We have water and towels out for every person. That's a service. Well, I don't provide it. Well, you should. And if you don't, we can't afford that. But raise your rates.

1:01:00If I ran a hotel, the minibar would be free. Now, the room would cost a lot more, but the minibar would be free all the time. Yes, you're going to get a couple of jerk-offs who empty the minibar out as they leave. Okay, fine. But you're also going to get people who don't touch it. And you need to find that sweet spot in your price point to make that work for you. Because nobody at the higher end of any service wants to be nickel and dime. I 100 % believe that. And I think you entrepreneurs, listen to this. I don't care if you have a bakery, dry cleaners, or you're a software engineer. All of these things are so important as an entrepreneur.

1:01:36See, these are the things like, and I mean this with respect, you know this, it's not just the zip code. Because for someone, they have to want to come back. They have to want to keep coming back. It's their disposable income. Watch this. It's their disposable income, their limited free time for something that is arguably painful. Right. How are you making that, hey, want to come back? Right, right. You have to make it as fun or as positive as it can be. There should be so many, and in fact only, positive associations with their experience with you that when training comes up, when cold water comes up, or room temp water, or your name comes up, there's a positive association that happens.

1:02:20That is the best PR machine you could ever create. You were saying earlier, we were talking, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you're very well known that you don't have a publicist. I've never had a publicist. And I think the reason you're so well known is what you just described. When your name comes up, there's a positive association and your clients are raving fans about you. The man to my right, I chased down today because today's show is for me, everybody, and you guys get to listen in. Because we're going to talk about anti-aging, we're going to talk about living longer, we're going to talk about living better.

1:02:48and the man to my right is the foremost expert, I think, on the spinning earth today. Dr. Sinclair, David, thank you for being here. Call me David. Thanks, Ed, for having me here. Going forward, it will be David. If you were an entrepreneur, knowing that this, see, if someone could have knocked on my door in 1985 and said, hey, the internet's coming, maybe you ought to start thinking about that as a businessman. This thing's coming, this wave's coming. Start to think strategically about businesses, products, services, methods of delivery that could help there. I feel like what we're describing, this longevity industry, we'll call it that, is the next big wave.

1:03:27And if I were an entrepreneur listening to this, I'd be thinking, how do I prepare myself? What should I be thinking? What should I be looking at? So I know it's a difficult question, but what advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's hearing these things from you and all the possibilities that come along with it? What should they be thinking or doing? Yeah. So the world has changed a lot in the last few years. I was the first young guy to start companies on longevity. And if people are wondering, it's all on my website. I've started more than 15 companies. I've helped dozens. And I've taken four public.

1:04:00Awesome. I reinvest all that money, by the way, in startups and jobs and philanthropy. So I'm not trying to make money. I'm trying to leave the world better. But if someone could have instructed me when I was young, And what I would have said to them is, identify a trend. And if you don't have the money to invest, get involved in startups. But work with the best people. Don't work with mediocre people. Because things are going to get really hard when you start up a company. Things are going to fail. You may be near bankruptcy. And you want to be with people that you can trust. So I don't work with assholes anymore.

1:04:34Done with that. Really, that's the first criterion. And my friends are all like family to me and vice versa. So that's actually one of the best bits about getting older is you have this group of people you can trust. But from the outset, I wish that I had always worked with the best of the best. So look for that. If you have a little bit of money, you can invest in something like this. Some of these companies are just getting started. And the field is exploding. So I agree with you that longevity research is going to make the iPhone look like old news. I do, too. And I love what you said about trends and finding the best people.

1:05:07Those are two huge keys. If you're an entrepreneur thinking about this, you should be thinking about what are the trends. How does it impact the business you're in currently? Right. What are the changes going to be there? I have one last question for you, because I'm just fascinated to know this. Are you doing are you afraid to die? No, you're not. That's an easy question. In fact, I used to be afraid to die when I was in my 20s and 30s because I wanted to see where things would go. Yeah. And there's this natural fear in all of us. But I now know that I'm not afraid because I fly a lot. And a few times those planes were going down and I had felt that I was going to die.

1:05:40It was gonna be sad that I'd miss my family my family would have to do without me But personally, I'm not worried about that. My wife is the opposite She grabs under my arm and she's I'm gonna die and say if we die we die I don't want to die and I'm just like as long as it's not too painful. I'm good with it So letting go of the fear of death was one of the best things I ever did in my life Because now I can live without fear you got it. That's the key

1:06:05abercrombie kids knows how to make outfitting easy mix and match sets are their ultimate outfit hack for fall their sweatshirts and sweatpants are super cozy and they always have the cutest colors and patterns shop fall's easiest outfit at abercrombie kids in the app online and in stores

1:06:34When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. all protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way.

1:07:11If you want to get more customers, if you want to learn how to create the right content and how to get that content to people, I have the best dude on planet Earth sitting to my right here. So, Billy Jean, thank you. Hey, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. It's long overdue. What we're going to do now, we're going to step in. We're going to finish the story piece, but now you're going to step into what I know about this man. We're going to step into his brilliance. He calls them superpowers. You have a lot of them. You distill it down to one, but I think one of them is you're, and you won't acknowledge this.

1:07:39I think you have a high IQ. I think you critically think quickly, and I think you have an unbelievable which all great visionary people do to take very complicated things and make them sound very simple, which is why this is going to be so good we're about to transfer into but we need we need to know how you get there to step in because it almost became out of almost like necessity that you end up in the space i worked at a call center enrolling people into online colleges it was a called ashford university and my job was to make 600 calls a day enrolling people into the school i'm not even get started on there but that's where my passion for education really sparked because it was the opposite like before it was you know what do these people university of san Diego know that the people in welfare don't know, but at that school, and I don't want to talk bad about anybody ever, but to me, they were calling people who never graduated college and they were saying, do you want your degree?

1:08:34They were getting them to fill out FAFSA forms to get money and then giving it to them. They would never finish and the company would still get paid, but they were really taking advantage of uneducated people. And once I understood it, it just validated everything I said in the beginning, the difference between welfare and educated, like it was just, I got really upset. But then I also learned things from there. And I learned that like there's a 6 ,000 employees and I learned about online education at the time. And so I found this company that was selling online quit smoking programs to help people quit smoking.

1:09:05And I said, dude, if I can take your program and put it into the online classroom format, then we can make billions of dollars. This is crazy. And so I called up a friend whose mom just made a bunch of money from inheritance or selling a house and I knew that so I said hey man let's get to this online education stuff I pitched him he gave me 30 ,000 bucks I made the stupidest mistake I've ever made in business you guys should listen to this this is why you never people ask me what's the fastest way to build a business find somebody who's already done that and ask him how to build a business that's step one and always step one dude I bought 30 ,000 bucks from my buddy okay I spent 27 ,500 of those dollars on the biggest mistake ever which was it was on technology to actually host the online courses and in my brain I called one company and they said we can do it for X price so I thought that's just what it was so I took all of the money my friend let me borrow gave it to there didn't think about anything else and we lost it and here's what I found out a year later the platform that I paid for was actually free I paid them to customize it for us, but it was actually free.

1:10:14Oh my gosh. I could have, and then later I ended up redoing the same thing. I ended up paying someone 500 bucks to do the same exact job except better. Oh my gosh. That's crazy. I'm telling you, if you are an entrepreneur underneath the million dollar mark, there's only two things stopping you, ignorance and arrogance. I embodied both at the time. This isn't so hard. I can just figure this out. I've been there. And then ignorance killed me and I cost myself everything. Wow. Long story short, through trying to sell this online course thing, I stumbled across this thing called Facebook ads. Yes.

1:10:44And that is where it all changed for me because I made money literally while I was sleeping. Sleeping. And it changed my relationship with the thought of money, trading time for money. And I was like, this thing's going to take over everything. Yep. I got obsessed with it. Yep. I started buying courses on it because I wasn't going to try and figure my stuff out. And I started practicing and practicing and practicing. And literally for two years, I took on a couple clients. I didn't make any real money. Yep. But you were willing to work for free for a while too. And that's a lesson entrepreneurs need to hear, right?

1:11:12So that's how I got all of my experiences. I started just telling people, hey, I can work for free. I went my own way with that smoking company. And I was like, this is actually what I did. I'll give you guys a play by play if you're really hungry for clients or customers. And you can apply this to any industry. I went to Monster, Craigslist, and Indeed. And I looked for people who were looking for marketing. I would make them a screen capture video. meaning there's a software, it's called Camtasia. It's free, 30 days for a trial. And you can film your screen, plug in a microphone. So I would go to their website and say, hey, what's up, my name is Billie Jean.

1:11:44I know you don't know me, but I'm looking at your website and here's what you can fix to start making more money right now. If you'd like more advice, call me. Bro, I didn't sleep. I woke up every single day, I did the same process. Again, finally I got a call. And there was this Swedish lady, this company called Kids in the House, big parenting company, probably still around doing the thing. And she calls and she says, hey, I love your video. we'd love to help you can I hire you to be a consultant hmm I said what the

1:12:11consulting is this is crazy but like I just needed my I was like whatever sure yes I guess man absolutely tell me what your consulting needs blah blah blah long story short she ends up paying me a thousand bucks to consult for her I went up there I showed him what I can do and I realized it was validated I knew what I could do yeah and then I did that same process again and again and again it again. I started getting clients and now I had an agency on accident, not on purpose. And then finally I took all of the winnings I was getting, cause I was killing it for people and I recorded a short video and here's exactly what I did.

1:12:41I'll give you guys tactical step by steps. I went on Amazon. I got a green screen for like 40 bucks. I got a tripod, which cost me like 20 bucks. I got a microphone cord, a lavalier mic, which probably cost me$7. And I sat down at my parents' house. And I said, there was a wetsuit company I was working at the time. I said, hey, everybody. I made a short video. I said, hey, everybody. Here's how I sold$150 ,000 worth of wetsuits using Facebook ads on a$6 ,000 budget. If you want to see how I did it, click here. And I brought them to this 10-minute video of me outlining exactly what I did. And at the end of it, I said, if you want to work with me and you want me to do the same thing for your business, click the button below and schedule the time to talk with me.

1:13:24$10 ,000 the next day. Oh, my goodness. So here we go, everybody. $10 ,000 the next day. I went from nothing. Parents' house. My parents talking like, are you ever going to figure this thing out? You're really just playing video games. Everything you can imagine. $10 ,000 next day. Okay. We're going to talk entrepreneurship today. We're going to talk business. And the man to my left is impeccably qualified. He's the CEO of Walmart e-commerce. He's built and sold multiple different companies. Sold one of them to Amazon. Sold another one to Walmart. This man knows an awful lot about building businesses, starting businesses, scaling businesses, selling businesses.

1:14:01And so we're going to get a chance to talk about all that today. So Mark Laurie, thank you for being here, brother. Thanks, Ed. Great to be here. I want to start out a little bit just to give them context because you haven't just done this once. You've had multiple successes. Just give them a little bit of your background because I don't think that was an adequate introduction about the businesses you built and what you did with them. Yeah. So, you know, I started my career actually in banking. So, you know, there wasn't really the startup scene back when I was in high school. You know, I graduated high school in 1989.

1:14:30Me too. Oh, did you? Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. College in 93. Yeah. There wasn't really this startup scene. And so, you know, being from New York and the stock market and stuff was kind of a hot thing to think about as a kid. And I got into stocks at a young age, you know, from 10 years old, I had a little book that I would look in the newspaper every day and write down the stock prices. Kellogg, here's what it was, it was up this, and tracked them. Read about stocks as a kid and started getting and reading books on derivatives when I was in seventh grade, eighth grade. Wow. But my whole childhood was filled with all these entrepreneurial things that I did, not realizing that that could be a thing.

1:15:14I could actually be an entrepreneur and start something. It never even occurred to me. Don't you also think, though, like if you're a parent to listen to this, because I had that entrepreneur bug and I didn't know as a kid, too. We both had baseball card businesses and you and I both had lemonade stands and I had an auto detailing business. And I think if your kid shows that proclivity early, you should be feeding that because we are great. We are in that world today. So in your case, though, it fascinates me. So you kind of this entrepreneurial spirit. You go to college. First dude in your family really to do that.

1:15:40You do well. You're doing very well in the banking space. yeah and then but you've got this entrepreneurial bug sort of floating in you the whole time and there's a lot of people listening to this that want to be entrepreneurs but they're out of job right now you know they're they're winning where they're planted for now but in the they've always wanted to have their own thing or start something and in your case what i love is you didn't even know what the hell it was right so one day tell them you just basically walk into your boss and go hey and what did you say yeah i just walked into my boss's office one day this was like almost seven years into my banking career, and I was executive vice president, chief risk officer for this bank, making a ton of money.

1:16:20Never thought I'd make that much money, you know, just because, you know, it just wasn't a thing, you know, growing up, thinking that that was possible at that age. And, but I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I had to just go all in. And so I went to my boss's office and just said, his name was Jerry Goldstein. And I said, Jerry, hey, I just want to tell you that I'm going to resign. And he goes, he laughed. He goes, come on. What do you mean? Nobody's going to pay you more than I'm paying you. And I said, no, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to do a startup. And he's like, really?

1:16:49Well, what? You must have a great idea. I said, well, I don't really have the idea yet, but I need time to think about it because I need to go all in and do it. But didn't people think you were crazy? He thought I was crazy. He really thought I was crazy. What do you mean to the people around you? Like, you're going to leave this really good job, but you don't even know the idea. Yeah. Everybody thought I was crazy. No capital either, right? Like, not a lot of capital. Well, he thought I was so crazy. He said, you know what? Put me down for your first, I think it was 50 grand. No way. As an investor.

1:17:1525 or 50. The guy you're resigning from goes, well, when you figure it out, I'll give you$50 ,000. And so I knew nobody. It wasn't like, you know, we had family, friends, and things that had money. And I started with angel investors. It was that first bit of money. And then he basically introduced me to two people. He said, hey, you should go talk to these two people. and then from that seed I wound up talking to I don't know maybe 200 angel investors and I got 60 investors to invest a total of five million bucks no venture I didn't know any VC I didn't know anything about the startup world I didn't know what a cap table was you know it was like I knew nothing I just but I got 60 angel investors to give on average what was you know about 80 grand each and it was like five million bucks and that was the thing I try to tell people all the time.

1:18:02You don't have to have everything buttoned up and know exactly what you're going to do. You kind of just go all in. And a great example of this was we started, you know, there's like a CPA, chartered accountant, and there's the CFA, chartered financial analyst. There was nothing for financial risk managers. You couldn't get certified. So I was talking to my boss and became a friend and I was like, you know, why don't we just kind of create an exam for risk managers because it doesn't exist. And he was kind of like, yeah, well. You created an industry. Yeah. How do you create an exam? And so we started talking to people and basically they're like, well, you can't just create a certification.

1:18:45Like, who are you? You're like 24 years old. You can't just start an exam. Like who's going to like credit it or who's going to. And I said, no, no, we're just going to start an association. Wow. And a not for profit association and that association will credit it, you know, and then we'll kind of do the exam. And so everyone's like, you know, that's crazy. You can't do it. So I said, you know, forget it. I'm jumping in. What we're going to do is we're going to set up a website. We're going to put up a date for the exam. The first thing we do is a date. We just pick the date. Like it's May, you know, whatever.

1:19:15I don't remember the year, 98. Here's the date. It's New York City, actual date. And here's the outline of all the things that are going to be on the exam. sent a check for 500 bucks and you got your seat and then that's it and so we just put it up there and all of a sudden we started getting checks people started sending checks and it was like so we looked at each other like I think we need to write this exam now oh my gosh there was no exam at the time no it was just we just started with the date and the and the agenda you know the topics yes we started getting all these checks and we got 34 checks $17 ,000 and 34 people.

1:19:52And so we decided, so me and Lev sat down and we spent weekend after weekend, nights and things, writing this entire exam on every topic. And we gave also recommended readings as well. And then we went to New York City, we rented our place and we administered this exam to 34 people. And then we went home and corrected it. We decided where the pass fail was. We sent certificates to the people that passed. And now today, it's still in like 50 countries around the world. There's like thousands of people taking this exam. You're a trip, man. Like, like, no, but, but it's just a great, I'm just, I'm just saying that only because people think that when you start something, it has to be like buttoned up or you need to have a plan or you need to know your next step or whatever.

1:20:38And what I always say is, you know, just take the biggest step you can with your next move yeah that's it like toward your vision you have the vision and just take the biggest step you can and for us the biggest step we can take was here it here's the date i believe that here's the common line of the entrepreneurs on the show or my friends that are entrepreneurs is they're willing to step into spaces they're ill prepared for and they go when i get in there i'll figure it out and then when i get in there i'll figure it out when i get in there i'll figure it out and in your case and then i want to go to some clues because success leaves clues.

1:21:09And what I want to spend our time today on are those clues, are those lessons you've learned. But just for everybody to give some context, what made me attracted having you on was the diversity of your success. So this is an exam for risk managers, right? Success in that space. You take diapers.com, sell it to Amazon. I think even in your own case, because it's your story, I think even in your own case, you don't have quite the appreciation for how remarkable it is. So you take diapers.com, sell it to this little company called Amazon, right? I'm kidding. And then you build jet.com, you sell that to Walmart.

1:21:45Like you've had a really crazy career for a dude who literally walks out of a job one day that's really successful and doesn't even have the damn idea yet. Like it's remarkable. I am so excited to talk to this gentleman here today. He has the life I aspire to have. And he's just a very fascinating man. He's an expert on leadership and he's proven it with his results in his life. He's great at recognition culture also, as well as what I would call it. But he's the co-founder, former CEO of Yum, one of the best, biggest brands in the world. He's a New York Times bestselling author already one time over.

1:22:22And he's got a new book out right now called How How Leaders Learn, Master the Habits of the World's Most Successful People, of which he is one of them. He also just put the group together to bought Valhalla Golf Club, and I'm going to have him get me out there to play some golf. So anyway, David Novak, let's have a great conversation today. Thank you for being here. It's my honor, Ed. I really love everything that you do and the fact you want to make a difference in the world. So I think we're kindred spirits. Merge these two things together for me because you own this content because you've lived it.

1:22:52what's managed two up and two down mean i know what it means but i want you to tell them after reading and and self-awareness wrapped around it okay manage two up and two down okay i think if you're coming up in an organization you obviously want to have a great relationship with your with your boss okay and and you know so you you need to know how they're thinking what they're thinking and you you want them to know that you have their best interest at heart and that you're trying to help them in the organization. Okay. But you got to manage two up. You just can't focus on your boss. You got to focus on your boss's boss or go as high up as you possibly can.

1:23:32Okay. And that's when you got to realize when you get in with that person, that's one level or two levels up or more, that's when you got to make the most of it because that's when you show people you've got potential. You're not just doing the job that you're in. You want, when you get a chance to have that meeting or be with that person you want to go in and you want to talk about the things that you would be doing if you were them or what the company could be working on the shows that you think about the business bigger and so that person's going to look at you when it's time to look when they have your review process they're going to say oh boy yeah you know that person has a heck of a lot of potential okay so it's you know it's two up two down you have to motivate the people that work for you.

1:24:16You really do. Your direct reports and you want them to feel a part of your team. There's a law on leadership, which I believe is no involvement, no commitment. So you definitely want to get people involved and make sure that everybody on your, every one of your direct reports knows that you need them, you value them, and that you're looking for them to make you better because you know that you need them. Okay. The two down is going to the front line. Go as close as you possibly can to the customer where it really happens and make sure that whatever you're thinking is really, really happening where it matters most, which is with the front line who's making it happen for your customers and make sure that it really works.

1:24:59You need to validate, you know, your own assumptions and the thoughts that you may have. But I think that two up, two down is a great way to think about it And yeah, I love it. If you really want to grow in a company, you better show the people above your boss that you got a heck of a lot of potential. What about their awareness level of themselves? Like to me, I can I connect with people who have a sense of themselves, their strengths and their weaknesses. Right. Couldn't agree more. You know, that's where I had what I call my three by five exercise. okay and every year i do it myself and i put my i do a three by five card and i write down who am i today and what do i want to be tomorrow okay so for example uh believe it or not when i was coming up i i was really enthusiastic really passionate that's hard to believe yeah i mean you know but you know what when you're 26 27 years old you're working around a lot of people because you're getting promoted faster than other people, you got to temper that enthusiasm.

1:26:05You got to temper that passion so that people will see you as more mature. But you have to be aware of how people think of you. You know, in my book, Taking People With You, I write about, you know, my leadership style. And I'm a marketing person. That's how I came up. But in marketing, I always ask the question, what perception, habit, or belief do you need to change, build, or reinforce to grow your business or grow yourself. Okay. So when it came to people and leading, I would always ask myself, what perception, habit, belief do I have to change, build, or reinforce to take people with me? And they might say, like when I was at Pepsi, Wayne Calloway was the chairman of PepsiCo.

1:26:50I loved Wayne. I was at Paul Barrett at his funeral. We loved each other. Okay. But he saw me as a marketing guy. I went to him one time and I said, you know, and I'd always go in with those four or five ideas to show him I have potential. And then he finally asked me faithfully, he said, you know, David, what do you want to do with your career? I said, well, I want to be a division president. He said, well, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, Dwayne, I want to be a division president. He says, you're a really good marketing guy. I said, well, Wayne, I want to be a president.

1:27:21He says, I'll make you president of marketing. We could improve PepsiCo's marketing function. But when I walked out of that room, I had the self-awareness. I had the self-awareness that I was going to have to demonstrate that I was more than just a marketing guy, that I wasn't just an airy, very creative person, that I could make money, you know, work with the front line, get things done. And that's when the job came open to be the chief operating officer for the Pepsi Cola company. And I went in and I took on a new challenge. And I definitely learned from this new challenge. But it was like I said to my boss, I said, look, you know, Craig Weather, he I said, if I don't do a good job in this job, you can fire me in six months, put me back in my fire, me, put me back in marketing.

1:28:04But you got to give me a chance. I begged him for the opportunity and I got that job. And that's how I end up being the president of KFC. That's awesome story. That is an awesome story. And what I got to say, everybody's like, to some extent, it's read the room. You know, I've watched my intensity over the years be a bit too much for people when I was younger And I learned to temper that and soften it to some extent actually even poke fun at myself for having it Just like what you just did and it's an important quality of a great leader I've been dying to ask you this question and it's not in the book, but it's got to do with leadership So maybe the most read business book the last decade or so is good to great by jim collins Have you read the book?

1:28:47Yes. You know what I'm talking about? Okay. I'm interested, if you can be candid, philosophically, whether you agree. And so everybody, let me just put it to you this way. Colin's premise is basically get the right people on the bus if you're a leader of a company, but that ironically, most companies aren't led by great visionary, super charismatic, high energy people. That's an overall summary that's not fair to what the book truly says, but I'm making a generality. And then I've always thought, yeah, that's true. But then I've looked at business. I'm like, well, that's that's Steve Jobs. That's not Sam Walton.

1:29:20That's not Elon Musk. That's not Mark Cuban. That's not Jack Welsh. So I've watched some pretty charismatic, vision stretching, dynamic people lead great movements in my career. And so I've always wanted to ask somebody who is an expert and has known these actual people. You know them and you've seen companies of all different types succeed and fail. Where do you come down philosophically on that? Well, I think that Jim Collins, if I recall in that book, talked about these leaders that he's talking about being level five leaders. They didn't necessarily have to have that charisma and all that kind of good stuff.

1:29:59OK. And I think it is possible to be an excellent CEO without having a ton of charisma. but i i think having a little charisma actually helps a hell of a lot now here's what he's trying to get at is that the leader that's got all this charisma and is in and is a promoter okay nailed it i know you're going this then you know that that leader okay that leader is is not you got to watch out for them so that's why he talks in his book about the importance of being a clock builder. Okay. And that's putting process and discipline around what really matters. So I would say, Hey, if I could have somebody on my, in my company, lead my company that had charisma, okay.

1:30:55That can fire up the troops that could be inspirational and had an appreciation for building the clock process and discipline around what really matters. I'd take that person over a, let's say a level five boring leader that that you know everybody really appreciates them for how smart they are now they both can be very effective but you know leadership has to flex you know it's you mentioned Elon Musk I read his book uh the book Walter Isaacson's autobiography or biography on Elon Musk have you read that yet Ed no you gotta read it okay okay because Elon musk is is a furniture breaker i wouldn't do hardly anything that he does because he's just damn he's just damn tough on people you know yeah but what he's tried to do and to be a true innovator he had to break some furniture to get it done and he worked his ass off and he's got his vision and he got people around him who ultimately will follow him now yeah he's not worried too much about taking people with you you kind of find you get on his highway or you get off of it.

1:32:01Okay. Yeah. And that's rare, right? I, I look at it like, I, to be honest with you, I, by the way, I've recommended Colin's book as much as any book I've ever recommended, but I've also looked at business. And I think what he's warning against is these super high energy charismatic leaders lack humility. Sometimes lack self-awareness, lack that lack the ability to still learn. So to me, if you're a high energy, super charismatic leader, you especially need to read David's book because it's, it comes with the territory when you're a big driver and high energy and visionary, you really better have the skills of learning, fostering this environment that he's describing, recognizing other people.

1:32:42So to me, it's kind of the combination of both. I, I, I just love your answer about that too. What about process and discipline? Like, but you, you use it like in the book, like a golf comparison is the way that you do it in the book. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. You have to have a process and discipline around what really matters. In every business, in every team, there's things that really matter. And if you want to have great execution, you can't leave them to chance. You've got to have process and discipline. So think about, let's just take Jason Day, for example, okay, a great golfer.

1:33:15You watch him on television, right? He closes his eyes, okay? You know, he visualizes the shot, okay? What's a good shot look like, okay? he opens his eyes he sees that shot he goes in there and he does the same thing every single time because he knows that he's got visualization visualization is the key to him really pulling off the shot all these guys have great golf swings but do they see the shot yeah and and if you see the shot you have a real good chance of hitting that shot and and and and i think in business, you know, you have to have process and discipline around what really matters.

1:33:59I mean, if you, if you, if you want to make your customers happy, you got to measure customer satisfaction in some kind of way and hold people accountable for that. You know, you know, measures a lot of times can be boring, but they're very important because measures show people what you really expect as you well know. And, uh, but those measures should be around what really matters. You know, so many times people have a thousand measures. They're measuring everything. I remember when I went to pizza, you know, I couldn't believe the measurement book we had. And I said, people, you know, I think people can only remember what, three of the Ten Commandments?

1:34:37What makes you think you're going to remember 20 things here? And all these things are not created equal. So leaders have to be disciplined enough to figure out what really matters in their business and then build the clock around it. So good. I just think in listening to you, how cool this time in history is that for free right now, somebody is in your brain about this topic because this space exists now. 25, 30 years ago, there'd be no access to you in a live conversation. I guess what it goes to is my gratitude for what we're doing right now. Every once in a while in these interviews, I go, this is crazy good.

1:35:15This is crazy good. And I want to acknowledge that with you. I'm just so grateful for your wisdom. It's just very special that we get to talk about this. This is the Ed Mylon Show.