678: Jamie Siminoff (Ring Doorbell Inventor) - Shark Tank Rejection, Selling to Amazon for $1 Billion, Surviving $3M to $480M Hypergrowth, Hiring Passionate People Over Experts, and Jeff Bezos's Leadership Lessons

17:27Ryan Hawk:But you had started and sold two companies prior to this.

17:30Jamie Siminoff:Yeah, but for like very little money.

17:32Ryan Hawk:Okay. So online, it looks like you've made millions. It sounds like you did not. No. Okay.

17:36Jamie Siminoff:I wasn't broke, but I was definitely not like, I was not rich. Like I was not like, I should not have been in the garage just tinkering.

17:43Ryan Hawk:Like I didn't have that kind of money at all. Like I definitely did not.

17:46Jamie Siminoff:And so I'm kind of like working on this door bot thing. it's eating cash because it's hardware. A guy says, listen, I'd love to go to lunch with you and chat about my business. And so I'm like kind of driving to this lunch and I'm literally thinking in my head like, I'm like, Jamie, this is why you never make it. Like, cause you're literally like, you can't focus. Like you're literally going out to lunch while you're basically, you're burning to the ground, your family and your garage. And so I go to lunch, super nice guy, great business thing to talk the whole time. He's like, what are you working on?

18:14Jamie Siminoff:I'm like, oh, I'm working on this doorbell. And by the way, when I would tell people about doorbell at the time, they would laugh. And they'd usually say, come on, seriously, what are you working on? Because it was like, I'm working on a doorbell that goes to your phone. And they're like, ah, like that's hysterical. Like, you know, it's like, that's the stupidest they've ever heard. I mean, literally that was the response. And so he's like, oh, that's so cool. Have you thought about going on Shark Tank? Still a big show, but like at the time was like, I mean, it was the biggest, I think it was the biggest show.

18:40Jamie Siminoff:I think it was the biggest show on TV at that time, or like the top five or something. It was crazy. 30 plus thousand people were applying a year to be on the show. So I'm like, no, I didn't apply. Like send in my one of 30 ,000 application, which I should have, by the way, I just was, I just was like down on my luck kind of talking. And he's like, oh, the one of the producers is asking, they're trying to get bigger products and stuff like this. Here's his email. So I emailed the producer person. I'm like, hey, it's Jamie. Here's my website. You know, kind of like, and I started driving home from the the lunch the guy calls me he's like this is great you gotta be on shark tank and i'm like holy shit you know it's just like insane so that was kind of my getting to shark tank which then i started to a million things to actually get on the show from there like i i thought at that point that i was just like i'm like oh my god i'm on but it turned out there was still a million things to do and then we go on shark tank it's like to your point of the taping and if you re-watch the episode which you did so they said like you have these producers and they have like your pitch and you got to do all this and they're like you need to do a live demo of your product and i'm like yeah we you know because i'm like not telling them that it's like really not working very well like i did not of course like did not disclose that but like this thing is like super challenged and like barely working if if at all didn't seem like the right thing to tell them so they're like yeah you have to do a live demo.

20:05Jamie Siminoff:I'm like, okay, yeah, but let's do a live demo where we just tape it beforehand. And then we show it because it's just like, you don't want to have all the like things happening. They're like, no, I'm like, well, let's do a live demo beforehand because like we could tape it because like there's interference. Like, I mean, I tried everything. They're like, no. So we do a live demo on the show and like, it wasn't working. Like the engineer I had was like literally dying, trying to set this thing up. Like they're breaking the ones that really had like four in the whole world doorbots that had been like produced by hand so i go to ring the doorbell if you look at my face when i like turn around because i look up it's actually the live feed like that's on there and you kind of see this face it's like it looks like i'm kind of excited i'm actually like i can't believe that the picture came up like i'm like i'm like i'm like flabbergasted i was like i just watched i was like this was really impressive it's a live demo in fact that picture quality from doorbot never was is that good again ever like that was like the best if you could ask for like the genie for like one wish it was like just make that that one goddamn doorbell push work on shark tank please like just make that one work i don't care if anything else works just in my life just make that one thing work and it worked you even

21:21Ryan Hawk:held up mr wonderful's face right in front of it i was like going crazy i like yeah i went for it oh my gosh okay and so they're all saying no no no no offers mr wonderful is the last i watched it it's a family show for us right mr wonderful is like hey oh let's do some royalty garbage that he tries to do with everybody else and you kind of stand firm and you ultimately walk away without

21:41Jamie Siminoff:a deal like how were you feeling in that moment i cried in my car on the way home i mean i mean i really did go in there being like mark's gonna give me the money we needed money like i needed money. I wasn't trying to just get markets around. Like I needed money. I mean, it's now people are like, Oh, it's so great. You didn't get a deal. I'm like, it's like, I knew it was gonna be a billion dollars. So like, why take a deal? You know, it's like, but at the time I needed money badly and Mark was out immediately. And then the Mr. Wonderful deal, just, you can't like, I was just telling you how bad hardware is on cashflow.

22:14Jamie Siminoff:If immediately you're giving cashflow out. Like it just, there's no way it would have worked. I left it. I was, I was devastated.

22:21Ryan Hawk:Doesn't he know that though? Why offer a stupid deal like that? On certain things that can work, but not like yours where there's all that cost.

22:28Jamie Siminoff:First of all, you offer it because like someone's willing to give you like a crazy good deal on a business. Like you take it like, you know, so I think that's like the first thing. The second thing is the way the show format works. If you don't have that negotiation at the end, it's likely you won't air. and so a lot of what he's doing is actually he's probably the most friendly to the entrepreneur because by us having that negotiation it creates the bookend to put the intro to the end and if he hadn't done that deal i might not have ever got on air a lot of people knows a lot of people that go on shark tank to tape don't actually go on air because it's just like it's a boring episode like it's just like you know i get on there and pitch and nothing happens and i leave no one wants So watch that.

23:12Ryan Hawk:Got you. So you leave, you're crying in your car. I literally cried. Devastated. But something changes. What happened to go from that to where we don't have any money, I genuinely need money, to a billion dollars?

23:27Jamie Siminoff:The good news is at that point, I was too far into it. So I couldn't back out of the business. If I had at that moment just went back to the garage and said, I'm done, I would have basically been personally bankrupt because I had already ordered too many products and I owed too much money already. So it was a kind of a boiling the frog thing. I didn't realize I was that deep in, but it was like 30 ,000 for this. You're kind of like, okay, great, we'll sell these. And then all of a sudden you realize if you don't sell them, I was in a bad place financially from that side if the business didn't continue.

24:00Jamie Siminoff:So I couldn't stop. I didn't have the right to stop. So people always say like, oh, people think I'm tough. That's so tough that you kept going. It's like, no, I actually had to keep going. It's actually the opposite of tough. I was like a chicken shit. I just couldn't stop. And so I kept going. And then when Shark Tank did air, it gave us a huge boost of sales. That gave us a cash injection, which then we were able to hire some more people to build Ring. Then we were able to raise some money around that. And so there still was a lot of hard sort of things along the way, but I'd say the airing of Shark Tank would start the clock on if you wanted to plot success, like that's when it kind of started.

24:42Jamie Siminoff:Because from that moment on, we kind of had like momentum that we could kind of keep trading on.

24:47Ryan Hawk:I also read that you were naive at times, and sometimes that can be really, really helpful. How was being naive helpful to you?

24:57Jamie Siminoff:What's a superpower? I mean, everything that you try to do, I mean, great inventions are things that people say can't happen because if people said they could happen, then they'd already be out there. So like, you know, if you look at like James Dyson and some of these amazing inventors, you know, Elon, I mean, people said the electric car couldn't work. You can go back and there's all this stuff about how it like can't have enough this and you You won't have enough capacity. So you have to be smart enough to sort of not put yourself into too bad of a situation, but naive enough to say, like, I think I can do this.

25:32Jamie Siminoff:I don't even know that I can't. And so people said you couldn't build a battery-operated camera at this time to go on Wi-Fi. Like, but I didn't know. I never built anything. So like, what did I know? So we just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed like they would work together.

25:47Ryan Hawk:It's funny. My first sales job after I got done playing football after college, Jamie, was this sales rep. And it was 2008. And people were like, dude, oh my God, that had to be the worst thing ever. Terrible market, all this stuff. And I was like, I honestly didn't even realize it. I didn't watch the news. I didn't do anything. I was just like, you know, going to work out in the gym, do my sales job, hang out with my buddies. I didn't even realize that there was anything going on. I'm like, I'm glad it was just like a complete meathead idiot. but sometimes that can be really good for you i think a lot of times it is because we get so

26:21Jamie Siminoff:wrapped up and like the gdp is going to be down one percent off of whatever and the stock market is crashing oh my god but the reality is like the markets are still huge the consumer still huge like but people build more businesses usually when things are down than when they're up and so you're right i think sort of like it's a hard thing to tell someone because you don't want to give somebody advice to be like, be stupid. Like it's not like good advice, but the other side is if you try to sort of like do everything right, it usually doesn't work.

26:49Ryan Hawk:Yeah. And there is

26:50Jamie Siminoff:something about like naive is kind of part of that is like, and again, especially breakout big things usually come from people that were like, and you'll see it like everyone says like that,

26:59Ryan Hawk:you can't do this. And part of it too, is if you are thinking and analyzing the whole world, that's time you're not doing the thing. You're not working. You're not inventing. You're not building. You're not making the calls. And so sometimes it can, knowing too much or trying to know too much gets in the way of actually doing the work. And I think that's a key takeaway for anybody. It's if you're sitting there, like building all these plans and thinking about stuff and all, it's like, well, when are you actually doing the work? Yeah. Because that's ultimately what's going to build Ring. And speaking of Ring, the guy who owned ring.com i believe wanted to sell to you for two million bucks right two million bucks and you're like i don't know what two million bucks are you out of your mind can you tell me the story of how you were able to get ring.com might even be more he wanted to sell it for a lot of

27:48Jamie Siminoff:money i ended up getting it down to like 750 000 and um the day i'm supposed to pay him i have 178 thousand in the bank. So like, you got to start to figure out that math. So I call them up and I'm like, Hey, listen, my board said we can't do the deal. Like I, they just, you know, which is sort of true. Cause it's like, I didn't have a board, but it was me. So like, I, it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't completely untruthful. So my, my board said I can't do the deal, but they did approve me to do 175 ,000 today and a total of 1 million for the purchase. So I'm increasing now the price and paid over two years.

28:29Jamie Siminoff:And so the guy is like F bombs and just, I mean, the guy thinks he's getting$750 ,000 that day. And I like basically tell him the day of the wire. And so just, you know, just not happy, hangs up the phone, calls me back. Like, you know, he's like, fine. You know, it was like, well, I was like, like, it was like, but, and then I'm like, okay. So because I'm like, figure I'm like, listen, we'll give him a 175. And like, if we can't afford the domain, it's because the business went out anyway. So I don't need the domain for a bankrupt business. And if a business works, we'll buy it. And so it ended up working out for us.

29:04Jamie Siminoff:I guess for him, it worked out because he got 250 ,000 more than he thought he was going to, but it certainly wasn't my best from a negotiation side. I would say it wasn't my most moral negotiation. But you gave him all the money you had. Isn't that a very scary moment? it? It was a terrifying moment. I had a venture capital investment from True Ventures coming in. And that's why I kind of like was timing it. But I didn't tell True Ventures. I didn't tell them that I was buying a domain because I was worried that... So they were giving us like 5 million, I think. And I was worried if I told them that basically like 20 % was going to a domain name that killed me.

29:39Jamie Siminoff:I'm trying to keep everyone happy without like blowing the thing up. and so then true ventures delays their wire like a week or two just like but they're just like yeah like we have this going on do you like you know i'm like oh sure it's okay and they're like oh we want to do this why i'm like can we maybe do monday because like tuesday was payroll and so i'm like can we maybe do monday though whenever you know and they're like uh sure okay i'm like great great and so they like wire the money on that monday and like you know tuesday we make payroll but like that was definitely like i was like we're not making payroll like we're not making people.

30:11Ryan Hawk:I cannot, I don't know if I can live that. I mean, that's why you're, you know, whatever you don't, you're done. But I also read you did struggle to sleep mainly because you're working so much, but I would imagine that would hurt sleep too.

30:23Jamie Siminoff:Stress was like, that's the thing I'm not, there are different types of entrepreneurs. I met lots of different types. There are people that can do that and literally sleep like a baby. They don't even care. I internalize this stuff and it just destroys me. So like I I wasn't sleeping. I was super stressed. I mean, so I wasn't doing it out of like a chest pump, like I'm tough, whatever. It was more like survival and doing things to survive, but it was affecting me terribly. I mean, it was really bad.

30:51Ryan Hawk:How did that affect you in your personal life?

30:54Jamie Siminoff:My son was like three when I started. So he was kind of like at that point, probably six years old or something. I just have one kid. So we actually were very like like transparent at home, which helped. I just talked like openly, like when my son was six, like he knew like where the business was, like he would be like, literally like a kindergarten teacher would say to us, like, I hear the business isn't going well. I'm like, yeah, but we were just open. Like it was just a very open adult conversation always, which I think helped on that because it wasn't like I was trying to hide anything from them, but it also takes a village.

31:24Jamie Siminoff:I mean, like having my wife and son sort of supporting me the whole way, but yeah, it was, still pretty tough. I mean, it was definitely stressful.

31:33Ryan Hawk:What is your messaging around work-life integration, work-life balance, not killing yourself along the way with stress and not sleeping and trying to stay healthy, but also trying to build something extraordinary? How do you think about all of that now? What advice do you give to others?

31:50Jamie Siminoff:I just integrated my work and life and family together. So like my son, the first doorbot that came off the line in China, like my son came with me. so we just integrated the work life together and so there wasn't like a balance it was just integrated and i think that's everyone's different but for me that was the best way to do it so we spent a ton of time together my son's been to like 40 countries and he's almost been every state like i mean i literally i'd bring him to every meeting i didn't care we're gonna meet with home depot like oliver was there when he was seven six five wow and then people would say like it's funny people would be like, how do you bring your kid to a meeting?

32:27Jamie Siminoff:And I said, who do you think they're going to remember more? The guy that brought his six-year-old to a meeting or just some idiot with another product? It's so amazing. We're always scared to be different. But I can guarantee you, if someone brings their kid to a meeting with me right now, I will remember that meeting over the 3 ,000 meetings I'm going to have this month.

32:47Ryan Hawk:What a life for him. He's been in some crazy rooms, I bet and heard some amazing stories. How old is he now? He's 17 now. Jeez. What's it like for him? Cause now he's an adult basically. I mean, God,

33:00Jamie Siminoff:it's pretty funny. It's just like he, and it's funny. He's like, he doesn't, you know, maybe cause he saw all this stuff. Like he just like loves basketball wants like work in sports. It's not like he's like trying to sort of follow in the footsteps and be an inventor and stuff. Like he's like, he's happy. He wants to do sports stuff, which is great. I think everyone should, again, to the thing, like people should follow their passion. Like you should do what you want to do.

33:24Ryan Hawk:Like that's the best way to do it. So I've gotten all sides of this. I'm glad you brought this up. Some say that's what you should do. And other people say that's insane advice that billionaires give after they become a billionaire, because it's easier to say, what you need to do is go earn a living. You need to get good at something and then you'll become passionate about it afterwards. Like, how do you feel about that passion and work and doing the thing that you're passionate about? What's your overall thoughts?

33:50Jamie Siminoff:I think it's a fair argument that someone becomes wealthy and then says, oh, go do what you love. It is hard to see anyone, though, that's achieved anything of greatness in the world that didn't do what they loved. And so I think the other side of it is there are times when I was a bellhop and valet parking cars, that wasn't my passion. I did that in high school and college. I did it to make money. There are times when you have to like work your ass off to make money. Like I've done sales or like, and so, but I think when you start like the career of what you want to try to do, and you're going to set out to do something, like do something you care about versus, I think the worst thing is when people do entrepreneurship and they're trying to do something to make money because they, if they fail, like if you fail trying to make money, that really sucks.

34:35Jamie Siminoff:If you fail trying to do something you love, at least like you try to do something you love. Like I always just say, like if ring fails, we try to make neighborhoods safer. We worked on something noble. If it fails because we just tried to make a buck, that's not fun.

34:48Ryan Hawk:You talk about sales. I also think you're a much more effective sales professional when you are deeply passionate about the mission and about the product that you've created because of that mission. You can feel it in your voice. I have since the second we connected on Zoom. You can feel that this oozes out of the person versus someone who's just like, Like, all right, I got to make some money, so I got to sell. I think that's a real thing. And it's certainly aspirational, I hope, for most people. If you want to become excellent at anything, there's got to be that care, love, and passion behind it.

35:21Jamie Siminoff:If you look back at almost any brand, the original, again, over time, they lose this and it doesn't matter. But usually very authentic when they start.

35:30Ryan Hawk:Yeah.

35:31Jamie Siminoff:Like Nike was extreme. Phil Knight is an authentic person. person. Nike might now just be more of just like a big brand that like produces shoes, whatever. I actually still like it. But at the beginning, like these brands have usually true authenticity to them that goes deep. Ring is, it's a big brand, but it's because it was so authentic. It's, it is authentic. Like we care about what we do. You know, we just launched this dog search party thing. That was my Superbowl commercial yesterday, which was kind of cool. But you know, it's like, How do you invent something like that? Why do you do it?

36:03Jamie Siminoff:Because you care. That's authenticity, which then drives also the brand.

36:08Ryan Hawk:So as the company grows and you're adding more and more people, there are odds that some of those people are taking it as a job to earn a living. And they'll work hard, right? But they don't care like you do or like some of the earlier people do. That's just natural as a company grows in size. So how do you maintain this culture of authenticity and care and get after it as you grow and scale?

36:33Jamie Siminoff:One is you have to be realistic that, yes, as you get bigger, not every single person in the company is going to wake up eating their making neighborhoods safer cereal. I get it. That's just the reality. I think leadership, though, is that from my side, if I truly am authentic with it, it does usually trickle down. So that keeps it, I think having a founder that's there that like keeps that energy and authenticity to it matters. Having other people around us, you know, helps. I do think also you have to, as a company gets bigger, just be willing to be accepting that, yes, like it's going to be a slightly less, it can't be perfect.

37:14Jamie Siminoff:Because if you try to like keep it to perfect, you're going to like die. That said, I think you can also do a lot of things to keep it much better than just letting it go to just a big corporate board.

37:25Ryan Hawk:There is a difference between being an inventor and being a CEO of a company, especially a company that gets bigger. There's more and more people involved. There's a lot of elements of management, leadership, vision, public speaking, communication. I mean, a million things that go on with being a CEO. How did you get good? You're a world-class inventor, one of the best of our generation, right? But how did you get good at being a leader? How did you get good at being a CEO and running a business?

37:56Jamie Siminoff:I think this is where people overthink what it is to be a CEO. A good CEO, a good leader is someone who's leading. It's like first principle thinking. How do you lead Ring? You lead it by leading it. You lead it by going out and installing devices. You lead it by caring. You lead it by continuing to invent. You lead it by being transparent with people and honest, everyone knows at Ring that I will work harder than they will. And so that's leadership. I think people have come down to leadership as a process. And it's a, how do you do this? And how many emails do you send a week? But everyone knows they're coming from some group that's writing the emails.

38:31Jamie Siminoff:And I think authenticity with AI is going to get way more important as a leader. Just be authentic. I mean, I think people want to follow someone that is authentic and cares and wants to do it. And so for me, it's like, I'm not a good CEO. I am a great leader. Because I'll charge over the hill when the bullets are coming any day.

38:53Ryan Hawk:It feels to me like you still have and maybe have never not had a frontline obsession. The guy who started on the front lines, and even as the company has grown, has stayed on the front lines. You know the business inside and out. You're authentic. I mean, we didn't have a comms team before this meeting. You can just show up and talk because you're on the front lines. You understand what's actually going on. Yeah.

39:20Jamie Siminoff:I mean, my email is still on every box. The letter J at ring.com is my email. It's on every box, has been from the beginning. And when you're on the front lines, everyone else respects. When customer service knows that if someone emails me, I'm going to respond. They don't feel like they're doing a lesser job. Because they're not. They're doing the most important job, as am I. We're all there for the customer.

39:42Ryan Hawk:Do you get bombarded with emails?

39:44Jamie Siminoff:Not really. People are pretty respectful. I'd say every once in a while, there's always these edge things that happen where someone's just sadly not respectful with it and stuff. I would say most people, but we mess things up. And so I don't care if someone's unhappy. They can email me. If they're unhappy and we mess something up, we'll fix it. So overall, I'd say like, I don't get a ton because we're pretty good overall. And by the way, the reason I don't get a ton is because our customer service knows if at a scale of over a hundred million cameras in the, in the field, our customer service knows like if they do something egregiously bad and someone emails me like I'm on it, like I'm going to call them, like they know it, they know it.

40:25Jamie Siminoff:And so that everybody I'd say works at a level that they know that like I'm here. And so it does keep everyone, like I'd say everyone on their toes a little more.

40:33Ryan Hawk:I'm fascinated by that element. I emailed you and I think you responded in less than an hour about doing this podcast. And I thought, wow. But it's funny. I'm curious to get your take on this, but maybe it's different now that you're a more powerful person. But I feel like some of the busiest people that have the craziest jobs and that you think are literally building the things that are changing the world respond so fast. And this has happened to me over the past 11 years. they're such fast responders it blows my mind it's a weird thing where i've found that the

41:09Jamie Siminoff:people that are the most successful you can almost tell who's successful by how fast they respond yes and it was just so flip-flop of what it should be a successful person should respond to you in you know a month yeah yeah you're totally right this is a commonality i've seen over the past 11

41:25Ryan Hawk:years that blows my mind it's better for me now with the show that has you know shown to give others a good platform. So I get it. It's more common now, but it's still even over a decade, people who I would think, oh, no way. And then 15 minutes later, they're like, sure, dude, let's do it. How about tomorrow? I mean, it's wild to me how often that happens.

41:46Jamie Siminoff:When you're running at the highest levels, you're actually very efficient. And there's something about it, but it's 100 % right. And I even find it when I look at investing to people, I'll get like a founder. They're like, I'm sorry, I'm so busy. I didn't get back to you or something. And I'm like, and it doesn't mean that they won't be successful, but it is a like warning sign because yeah, like when the most successful people get back to me in five seconds, it's like there's something wrong here.

42:15Ryan Hawk:Yeah. I've been studying a lot, Jamie, recently, great teams, specifically the DNA of great teams, whether it's sports, business, any team. I would love to hear your frontline obsessed version of what are some of the attributes or the dynamics or the DNA of excellent teams?

42:33Jamie Siminoff:I think the DNA is that people know what they're doing on the field. I think the best company runs the same as the best sports team. Seattle yesterday, that team ran freaking great. And they ran great because the quarterback didn't think he's a kicker. And the kicker didn't think he was a linebacker. And so like, and he trusts the kicker, trust that the linebacker is going to do his job. He's not like when they're about to hike it off as the kicker and go back to the guys. Hey, listen, are you going to block that guy over there? I just want to make sure we should have a meeting about this. So I think like there is an autonomy that happens where everyone knows a play, like the play is set.

43:11Jamie Siminoff:So you know what that is. And so I think like people know a ring, the play is making neighborhoods safer. We know kind of where we're going, but we don't have to all meet and talk about each other's jobs. Like Jason Matera, who runs my technology, like Jason and I talk all the time, but we don't have meetings. I don't even have a standing meeting with the team in any cadence because we meet when we need to meet. We talk about what we need to talk about. But like, why do I need to? If these are the best people in the world, why do we need to get together every week? Do you not have a lot of meetings?

43:39Jamie Siminoff:I have a lot of meetings on things that need to get done. Say more. What do you mean by that? The best day for me is like a product's having an issue that we're going into production and we need to fix something. Like that's a meeting. Like not standing meetings of, we're doing the budget meeting and we're doing this meeting. Like those two. How many direct reports do you have? I couldn't even tell you.

44:00Ryan Hawk:I mean, not a ton. You don't have reoccurring one-on-ones or anything? No, no, zero. Man.

44:07Jamie Siminoff:No, but I talk to people like, to your point of responding. I talk to people that work with me and I don't care if you're a skip level. I don't even know what that shit means. I talk to people all day long, all night long, Sunday. Like we're talking about like things, but it's event-based. We have to get the sales up on this. We have to get like where there's issues, where there's whatever we work on it. And I trust that people, but like, and if you're not doing your job, we fire you. Like that's kind of how it works. Like that's the reality.

44:32Ryan Hawk:I just think reoccurring meetings should be absolutely eliminated from the world. I hate them. I don't have any, if I can get rid of the button that

44:43Jamie Siminoff:allows for them, I would nuke it.

44:45Ryan Hawk:Yes, man.

44:46Jamie Siminoff:Like it's not first principle thinking. Like there's no way every single Monday at 9am, you have something important to talk about. It just doesn't like the world can't exist like that. There are times that you should meet, but like, it should be based on like when you need to do something, not some cadence and that, and they do, they just become like, and they just stack and stack and stack. And like, I don't have the best quarterback, have the best kicker, have the best coach, let them work together, let them practice together, have the plays, but you don't need to get together every day to talk about how we're feeling.

45:19Ryan Hawk:Yeah. Jamie, one more question. This is a little bit maybe adjacent to what we've been talking about and maybe it's personal, maybe it's professional, maybe it's both. So let's say we're meeting or I'm seeing what's happening with you one year from today, exactly a year from day. And it's called a champagne question. And you've got a bottle of champagne. I don't know if you drink that or not with your wife your son he's 17 18 at that point you guys are celebrating what

45:43Jamie Siminoff:are you celebrating probably something probably something on the charitable side of things like what you know we we do a lot of work in uh south central la probably something more on that but we do a lot of work with the police lapd we also do a lot of stuff we have a house in missouri that this farm and we do a lot of stuff out there with people so probably celebrating something like again i think the best thing you can do is kind of service to others and so it's probably something where we somehow help someone do something and and it wouldn't be like the champagne thing is like we wouldn't be like clicking it you know we're not that sort of family we're like oh we did it again like you know we sold the business like yeah you know like like cigars and stuff but it would be celebrating that like we were able to sort of do something good with our brains and minds and whatever that helps someone.

46:35Jamie Siminoff:More service-oriented. Yeah, I read 75-acre farm in Missouri.

46:39Ryan Hawk:Are you there a lot?

46:40Jamie Siminoff:What do you do there? I love it. I'm there all the time. It became a passion project. I invested in a business out there called Moink. Actually, when I was on Shark Tank, I went there, fell in love with the place, became like a... I'm part of the town now. I love the people. The town had definitely been certainly impacted by opioids and by industrial farming and all the things that are impacting these towns. These towns are all over the US, small little town. And so we started to kind of work there with the townspeople and fix the streets and the sidewalks and put a little coffee shop. And everyone's kind of come together.

47:19Jamie Siminoff:And it's a really cool place. And I love going there and bringing people there. And it's been fun.

47:24Ryan Hawk:Love it, man. Well, I really appreciate you being here and all the work you do. You're making my home safer, my neighborhood safer. So thank you so much for that, man. I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Absolutely. Thanks, Ryan.

47:39Ryan Hawk:It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jamie Siminoff. A few takeaways from my notes, frontline obsession. I love that Jamie still has his email address on every ring doorbell. Also, by the way, he's a very fast responder, which we found to be a commonality among leaders who sustain excellence over time. Back to frontline obsession. The moment you stop touching the actual work is when you lose the feel for what's really happening.

48:15Ryan Hawk:Distance from the frontline is distance from the truth. I think CEOs and senior leaders should be obsessed with being on the front lines. And then the next one got me kind of tuned up during the conversation. No recurring meetings in the calendar. No standing Monday morning meetings. That doesn't mean you shouldn't meet with people, but only meet when you need to get something done, when you need to actually have a meeting. Other than that, there should be no standing meetings on your calendar. If you disagree, please email me. I'd be happy to talk about it. And then the next part of that was pretty cool.

48:49Ryan Hawk:Why Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie quote, a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied with the status quo. What a cool part. It was, it was neat to have that part of the conversation with Jamie. You could tell it meant a lot to him. And then I liked his hiring filter. He calls it looking for marathon runners. And also he hires fast, but then fires fast if he realizes he makes a mistake. And I think that's something we all could get better at. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message, telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jamie Siminoff.

49:27Ryan Hawk:I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it five stars, hopefully write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.