WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:05.320 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and 2 00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:08.680 this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books 3 00:00:08.680 --> 00:00:12.240 podcast, episode number 182. 4 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:18.560 Reading directly from our book today, 5 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:26.280 ladies and gentlemen, I have traveled over just a about half 6 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:30.000 our stake to get here this evening. I couldn't get away sooner because my 7 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.240 new well was coming in at Lobos River and I had to see about it. 8 00:00:33.880 --> 00:00:37.720 That well is now flowing 4,000 barrels and paying 9 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:41.240 me an income of $5,000 a day. I've got 2 others 10 00:00:41.240 --> 00:00:44.920 drilling and I've got 16 producing at Antelope. So ladies and 11 00:00:44.920 --> 00:00:48.680 gentlemen, if I say I'm an oil man, I'm 12 00:00:48.680 --> 00:00:52.280 an oil man. You've got a great 13 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:55.610 chance here, ladies and gentlemen, but bear in mind you can lose it all. If 14 00:00:55.610 --> 00:00:59.450 you ain't careful. Out of all the fellers that beg you for a chance 15 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:03.170 to drill your land, maybe 1 in 20 will be oilmen. The rest will be 16 00:01:03.170 --> 00:01:06.370 speculators, fellers trying to get in between you and the oil. 17 00:01:07.170 --> 00:01:10.610 Oilmen to get some of that money that ought by rights come to you. 18 00:01:11.489 --> 00:01:15.210 Even if you find one that has money and means to drill, he'll maybe know 19 00:01:15.210 --> 00:01:18.890 nothing about drilling and have to hire out the job on contract. And then 20 00:01:18.890 --> 00:01:22.530 you're depending on a contractor that's trying to rush the job through so as to 21 00:01:22.530 --> 00:01:25.090 get another contract just as quick as he can. 22 00:01:26.770 --> 00:01:29.890 But ladies and gentlemen, I do my own drilling, and the fellers that work for 23 00:01:29.890 --> 00:01:32.650 me are fellers I know. I make it my business to be there and to 24 00:01:32.650 --> 00:01:36.210 see their work. I don't lose my tools in the hole and spend months 25 00:01:36.210 --> 00:01:40.010 efficient. I don't botch the cementing off and let water into the hole and 26 00:01:40.010 --> 00:01:43.810 ruin the whole lease. And let me tell you, I'm fixed right now like no 27 00:01:43.810 --> 00:01:47.610 other man or company in this field, because my Lobos River well has 28 00:01:47.610 --> 00:01:50.660 just come in. I got a string of tools all ready to put to work. 29 00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:54.180 I can load a rig onto trucks and have them here in a week. I've 30 00:01:54.180 --> 00:01:57.260 got business connections so I can get the lumber for the derrick. Such things go 31 00:01:57.260 --> 00:02:01.060 by friendship in a rush like this. That's why 32 00:02:01.060 --> 00:02:04.379 I can guarantee to start drilling and put up the cash to back my word. 33 00:02:04.379 --> 00:02:08.020 I assure you, whatever the others promise to do, when it comes to the showdown, 34 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:12.740 they won't be there. Ladies and gentlemen, it's not 35 00:02:12.740 --> 00:02:15.300 up to me to say how you're going to divide up the royalty, but let 36 00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:19.110 me say this. Whatever you give up so as to get together, it'll 37 00:02:19.110 --> 00:02:22.070 be small compared to what you may lose by delay and by falling into the 38 00:02:22.070 --> 00:02:25.870 hands of gamblers and crooks. Ladies and gentlemen, take it from me as an oil 39 00:02:25.870 --> 00:02:29.670 man, there ain't gonna be many gushers here at Prospect Hill. The 40 00:02:29.670 --> 00:02:32.549 pressure under the ground will soon let up and it'll be them that get their 41 00:02:32.549 --> 00:02:36.390 wells down first that'll get the oil. A field plays out very 42 00:02:36.390 --> 00:02:40.150 quick. In 2 or 3 years, you'll see all these here wells on 43 00:02:40.150 --> 00:02:43.790 the pump. Yes, even this discovery well that's got you all crazy. 44 00:02:44.940 --> 00:02:48.740 So take my word for it and don't break up this lease. Take a 45 00:02:48.740 --> 00:02:52.580 smaller share of the royalty if you must, and I'll see that it's a 46 00:02:52.580 --> 00:02:56.380 small share of a big royalty so you won't lose in real money. 47 00:02:57.660 --> 00:03:01.420 That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to say. 48 00:03:10.790 --> 00:03:14.070 No one likes to talk about work, 49 00:03:15.510 --> 00:03:17.670 at least not in real terms, right? 50 00:03:20.950 --> 00:03:24.790 When we talk about work, of course, we tend to glamorize 51 00:03:24.790 --> 00:03:28.510 work. We tend to talk about the grind or the hustle, which of 52 00:03:28.510 --> 00:03:32.350 course you can find all about by looking it up 53 00:03:32.350 --> 00:03:36.170 on Instagram or TikTok, you know. Next to 54 00:03:36.730 --> 00:03:40.210 videos of Kobe Bryant talking about how much work he put in as an 55 00:03:40.210 --> 00:03:43.850 athlete, or, well, some other football 56 00:03:43.930 --> 00:03:47.530 star, hockey star, sports star of your choice. 57 00:03:49.370 --> 00:03:52.890 But the real work, the work of showing up every day, 58 00:03:52.970 --> 00:03:56.010 the work of grinding 59 00:03:56.730 --> 00:04:00.570 every day on things that you may not like— work 60 00:04:00.570 --> 00:04:03.810 is a part of growth that we don't talk about because it isn't 61 00:04:03.810 --> 00:04:07.410 glamorous. And if you fail at work, your status 62 00:04:07.410 --> 00:04:11.130 declines in other people's eyes. I think of many people in 63 00:04:11.130 --> 00:04:14.850 my own life who have worked very, very hard and earned 64 00:04:14.850 --> 00:04:18.290 absolutely— well, maybe not absolutely— almost 65 00:04:18.770 --> 00:04:22.370 nothing. But then I think of the people 66 00:04:22.930 --> 00:04:26.330 on the flip side, or on the other side of the continuum, who seemed to 67 00:04:26.330 --> 00:04:29.930 have done almost no work at all and fell 68 00:04:29.930 --> 00:04:33.310 inevitably ass backwards into success. 69 00:04:38.670 --> 00:04:42.390 What warms my heart at the end of the day is 70 00:04:42.390 --> 00:04:45.950 that no growth comes without friction, 71 00:04:46.670 --> 00:04:50.510 and friction comes from work. And putting in the work without 72 00:04:50.510 --> 00:04:54.310 applause or recognition or even acknowledgement, that is 73 00:04:54.310 --> 00:04:56.510 what creates quality. 74 00:04:57.880 --> 00:05:01.000 Quality in writing, quality in acting, 75 00:05:01.400 --> 00:05:05.160 quality in athletics, and even quality in the topic that 76 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:08.360 we are going to talk about today— quality 77 00:05:08.840 --> 00:05:12.560 in entrepreneurship. We 78 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:16.240 don't talk too much about entrepreneurship on this show, and it's kind of weird. We've 79 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:20.040 done 400 and some odd episodes, and we'll talk here and there about 80 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:23.680 it when it pops up, but directly talking about the entrepreneur, directly 81 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:27.260 talking about the work that the entrepreneur puts in, we We haven't really 82 00:05:27.260 --> 00:05:30.980 focused on that, but today on the show we're going 83 00:05:30.980 --> 00:05:34.740 to do that. We're going to drill our way deep down 84 00:05:34.740 --> 00:05:38.540 through the exegesis of entrepreneurship and what 85 00:05:38.540 --> 00:05:42.380 that actually means in putting in the work so that other 86 00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:44.260 people can come along and work with you. 87 00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:48.900 We're going to do that today by 88 00:05:49.940 --> 00:05:53.540 framing the work in terms of The first 89 00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:56.220 100 or so pages of our book today, 90 00:05:57.900 --> 00:06:00.620 Oil by Upton Sinclair, 91 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:05.260 the basis of the 2007 motion picture with 92 00:06:05.260 --> 00:06:08.819 that monster actor Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be 93 00:06:08.819 --> 00:06:12.380 Blood. Leaders, 94 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:17.180 the work of leadership we should be doing in public and everyone 95 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:20.540 should see us doing it. With all of its potential for 96 00:06:20.540 --> 00:06:24.300 failure, heartache, grief, and even recrimination. 97 00:06:26.220 --> 00:06:29.980 We could either do it gladly or we could do it sadly, but 98 00:06:29.980 --> 00:06:31.420 we have to do it publicly. 99 00:06:33.820 --> 00:06:37.620 And back to Discuss Insights on Entrepreneurship, even though 100 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:40.780 I did not give him notes for today, so he's going to do this 101 00:06:42.380 --> 00:06:45.670 by the seat of his pants. Is my old friend 102 00:06:46.070 --> 00:06:46.870 off the cuff 103 00:06:49.910 --> 00:06:53.630 and very hush-hush. Now he's going to do it out loud 104 00:06:53.630 --> 00:06:57.270 as usual. Is my good friend Tom Living. How are you doing 105 00:06:57.270 --> 00:07:00.990 today, Tom? I am living my best life, my friend. I am 106 00:07:00.990 --> 00:07:04.710 loving it. Every time. Every time he's living his best life. Every time. 107 00:07:04.710 --> 00:07:08.390 Well, because I can't live anybody else's. Well, exactly. Yeah, they won't let you. 108 00:07:08.870 --> 00:07:12.680 They won't let you live that way. Although I recently watched 109 00:07:12.680 --> 00:07:16.240 a movie. It went slightly under the radar. Keanu 110 00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:19.760 Reeves just came out with a movie with Seth Rogen and Aziz 111 00:07:19.760 --> 00:07:23.480 Ansari called Good Fortune. Okay. It's basically 112 00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:26.480 about a rich guy, poor guy swapping, you know, Freaky Friday thing, 113 00:07:27.280 --> 00:07:29.360 like Trading Places, Trading Places. 114 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:35.240 Really low key, kind of good. I like— I like that. It was actually a 115 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:38.480 decent movie because to your point, like, you can't live anybody else's. Well, 116 00:07:39.170 --> 00:07:42.770 these guys switched places and they were living 117 00:07:42.930 --> 00:07:46.570 it. And the whole point was to show the other person, like, okay, so 118 00:07:46.730 --> 00:07:50.410 take the poor guy, put him in the rich guy's shoes, and then basically tell 119 00:07:50.410 --> 00:07:53.890 the poor guy that, that he's missing out by not being the poor guy anymore. 120 00:07:54.050 --> 00:07:57.810 And Aziz Asari went, go fuck yourself, I'm 121 00:07:57.810 --> 00:08:01.090 staying right where I am. I love this now. I love this life. It was 122 00:08:01.090 --> 00:08:04.850 really funny anyway, but I'm not changing places. 123 00:08:05.890 --> 00:08:09.730 It was low-key pretty good. Good deal. I'm glad to hear that, like, Keanu 124 00:08:09.730 --> 00:08:13.550 Reeves is actually like, you know, doing work outside of, you know, John Wick, 125 00:08:13.870 --> 00:08:17.670 you know, 12 or whatever the hell. Back to his roots too, right? Like, like, 126 00:08:17.670 --> 00:08:20.790 if you think about where he came from, he didn't— he wasn't an action star 127 00:08:20.790 --> 00:08:24.431 first. He was Bill and Ted. It was like, come 128 00:08:24.431 --> 00:08:27.790 on, everybody forgets about Bill and Ted. Everybody does. 129 00:08:28.910 --> 00:08:32.640 Everybody forgets about Bill and Ted. Um, this was closer to his roots, 130 00:08:32.640 --> 00:08:36.110 closer to the beginning of his career than, than— good, good. 131 00:08:36.270 --> 00:08:39.990 The Matrix and John Wick thing, that was great. And don't get me wrong, Keanu 132 00:08:40.430 --> 00:08:44.190 Reeves is Keanu Reeves, he's awesome. But the beginning stuff, him 133 00:08:44.190 --> 00:08:47.990 being funny, in my opinion, is when he's at his best. He's at his best 134 00:08:47.990 --> 00:08:51.510 when he's being funny. Well, speaking of actors who are at their best, 135 00:08:51.510 --> 00:08:55.190 Daniel Day-Lewis. I opened up with that entire 136 00:08:55.710 --> 00:08:59.510 speech there, which is the opening of There Will Be 137 00:08:59.510 --> 00:09:03.350 Blood from 2007, directed by one of 138 00:09:03.350 --> 00:09:06.690 my favorite modern directors, Paul Thomas 139 00:09:06.690 --> 00:09:09.690 Anderson. I put him up there with 140 00:09:10.890 --> 00:09:14.570 Christopher Nolan, who we talked about on the show. He's coming out with The 141 00:09:14.570 --> 00:09:18.250 Odyssey this year. And the last movie, of course, that I saw with him 142 00:09:18.250 --> 00:09:21.850 was Oppenheimer. But I always 143 00:09:21.850 --> 00:09:24.810 watch whatever it is that Paul Thomas Anderson does ever since he did 144 00:09:25.530 --> 00:09:29.330 that great ensemble 145 00:09:29.330 --> 00:09:33.030 piece in the 1990s, Magnolia. That's 146 00:09:33.030 --> 00:09:36.590 when I sort of stumbled onto him. I know he'd done Boogie Nights 147 00:09:36.590 --> 00:09:40.390 beforehand. I watched Boogie Nights years afterward, but Boogie Nights, 148 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:43.630 Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, these are— 149 00:09:44.270 --> 00:09:47.989 he seems to have this ability to take on landmark films 150 00:09:47.989 --> 00:09:51.350 and to pull something out of actors. And Daniel Day-Lewis 151 00:09:51.750 --> 00:09:55.390 always brings it. He never mails it 152 00:09:55.390 --> 00:09:59.100 in. He's never sort of just hanging around. I mean, we were 153 00:09:59.100 --> 00:10:02.900 talking about before we were recording, uh, Gangs of New York, which you did 154 00:10:02.900 --> 00:10:06.740 not necessarily particularly care for, um, but, um, but 155 00:10:06.740 --> 00:10:10.540 you did like Daniel Day-Lewis's, uh, acting in that character. In that, 156 00:10:10.540 --> 00:10:12.820 I thought he was fantastic. He was the best part of the movie, in my 157 00:10:12.820 --> 00:10:16.540 opinion. He was absolutely— he was— he— him on screen was the— 158 00:10:17.020 --> 00:10:20.740 was worth watching. I thought the rest of the movie kind of fell apart without 159 00:10:20.740 --> 00:10:23.660 him. Well, and the thing that— wow. 160 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:30.160 I agree. There's all kinds of third act problems in Gangs of New 161 00:10:30.160 --> 00:10:32.200 York that we don't need to get into right now because that's not the focus 162 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:35.080 of the show. But There Will Be Blood, 163 00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:39.200 I know it's been a while since you've seen it, so you may not necessarily 164 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:42.880 remember all the specifics of it, but it is about the oil man J. Arnold 165 00:10:42.880 --> 00:10:45.240 Ross and about his 166 00:10:48.920 --> 00:10:52.630 entrepreneurial journey. All the way from being 167 00:10:52.630 --> 00:10:56.270 a guy who starts out— and 168 00:10:56.270 --> 00:11:00.070 There Will Be Blood opens not with that speech, but it opens 169 00:11:00.070 --> 00:11:03.910 with the music opens and it goes— 170 00:11:04.870 --> 00:11:06.310 it's not even music, it's a sound effect— 171 00:11:08.950 --> 00:11:12.470 and then you're in like the Nevada desert and Daniel Day-Lewis 172 00:11:12.830 --> 00:11:16.560 is in a hole using a pickaxe to 173 00:11:16.640 --> 00:11:19.920 pull silver out of the ground to 174 00:11:19.920 --> 00:11:23.640 establish, um, a silver mine. And 175 00:11:23.640 --> 00:11:26.800 there's no dialogue, there's no music, 176 00:11:27.520 --> 00:11:31.360 it's just the sound of the pickaxe and, and him 177 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:35.080 pulling dirt out of the hole. And the opening goes on 178 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:38.840 for 5 minutes, 7 minutes. He's digging, he's pulling, he's digging, 179 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:42.480 he's pulling, and he thinks he's got it. He finds a piece of silver, 180 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:46.200 right? And I can't remember all the specific details 'cause it's been a little bit 181 00:11:46.200 --> 00:11:49.840 of a minute, but his, his tools fall down the hole. And so of course 182 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:53.160 he goes down into the hole to pull out his tools. He slips, 183 00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:56.280 falls back into the hole, breaks his leg. 184 00:11:58.280 --> 00:12:01.960 Again, no sound. Drags himself out of the 185 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:05.520 hole, drags his silver find back to 186 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:08.680 town, and the next scene that you see 187 00:12:09.250 --> 00:12:12.930 is them staking his claim and basically saying, yeah, you can 188 00:12:13.250 --> 00:12:17.050 pull silver out of here. And that's the first introduction we get 189 00:12:17.050 --> 00:12:20.610 to J. Arnold Ross. Every 190 00:12:20.610 --> 00:12:24.170 time I watch this movie, and it's been a little bit, I should have 191 00:12:24.170 --> 00:12:27.290 refreshed and watched it beforehand, and it's a good use of your time if you 192 00:12:27.290 --> 00:12:31.010 haven't watched it. Um, and I'll talk about Upton Sinclair 193 00:12:31.010 --> 00:12:34.770 in a minute, and I'll talk about oil. Every time I watch this movie 194 00:12:35.470 --> 00:12:39.190 I think finally a director has actually captured 195 00:12:39.190 --> 00:12:42.870 exactly what entrepreneurship is like and put it on screen. I was gonna say 196 00:12:42.870 --> 00:12:46.470 that one scene is basically it. That's the whole thing. Just that 197 00:12:46.470 --> 00:12:49.750 one scene. Never mind the rest. Never mind the rest of the two. I think 198 00:12:49.750 --> 00:12:53.231 the movie had, uh, 2 hours and 40 minutes or something like that. Oh, it's, 199 00:12:53.231 --> 00:12:56.071 it's a monster. Yeah. It's a long movie. But so take the rest of the 200 00:12:56.071 --> 00:12:59.910 2 and a half hours out of it. That 10 minutes is entrepreneurship all 201 00:12:59.910 --> 00:13:03.660 by itself. Work your ass off, fall 202 00:13:03.660 --> 00:13:05.980 down, break a leg, drag yourself up. 203 00:13:07.660 --> 00:13:10.940 That's entrepreneurship in a nutshell right there. 204 00:13:12.780 --> 00:13:16.620 Um, and it gets to this idea because Paul Thomas Anderson as a director 205 00:13:16.940 --> 00:13:20.540 and as a writer, right, because I think he, he wrote and directed the, 206 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:23.180 the film, or co-wrote and directed the film if I remember correctly, 207 00:13:25.330 --> 00:13:29.080 um, he He's part of a line that 208 00:13:29.080 --> 00:13:32.920 goes back to Upton Sinclair himself, right? And there's a lot 209 00:13:32.920 --> 00:13:36.480 of things going on in the book Oil. Um, but Sinclair was— 210 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:40.320 I'll just read directly from his, his Wikipedia page for those of you who 211 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:43.280 maybe haven't listened to the Shorts episode that precedes this, where we talk a little 212 00:13:43.280 --> 00:13:47.120 bit about Sinclair and his writing. Um, he was born September 213 00:13:47.120 --> 00:13:50.960 20th, 1878, and he died November 25th, 1968. 214 00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:56.920 Um, He was an American author, a muckraker journalist, and a 215 00:13:56.920 --> 00:14:00.640 political activist. And interestingly enough, he was the 1934 216 00:14:00.640 --> 00:14:04.440 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He, 217 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:07.920 um, he wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. 218 00:14:08.240 --> 00:14:11.880 Sinclair's work was known, well known and popular in the first half of the 20th 219 00:14:11.880 --> 00:14:15.680 century, and he won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for 220 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:19.560 fiction. His first book was The Jungle, which talked about the 221 00:14:19.560 --> 00:14:23.240 U.S. meatpacking industry, um, in Chicago. And when 222 00:14:23.240 --> 00:14:25.330 he, um, when he published that book 223 00:14:27.090 --> 00:14:30.410 in, in 1906, it caused a public uproar that 224 00:14:30.410 --> 00:14:33.730 contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 225 00:14:33.730 --> 00:14:37.490 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. 226 00:14:38.050 --> 00:14:41.570 In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking 227 00:14:41.570 --> 00:14:45.050 exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of journalistic 228 00:14:45.050 --> 00:14:48.850 malpractice in the United States. 4 years after the publication of 229 00:14:48.850 --> 00:14:51.810 The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. 230 00:14:52.590 --> 00:14:56.110 Time magazine called him, quote, a man with every gift except 231 00:14:56.110 --> 00:14:59.790 humor and silence, based on his wife Mary Frank Sinclair's 232 00:14:59.790 --> 00:15:03.630 book Southern Belle: A Personal Story of a Crusader's Wife. 233 00:15:04.430 --> 00:15:08.030 He also is well remembered for the quote— I love this one— 234 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:12.150 quote, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends 235 00:15:12.150 --> 00:15:14.030 upon his not understanding. 236 00:15:16.990 --> 00:15:20.550 He was a deeply socialist progressive during a 237 00:15:20.550 --> 00:15:24.250 time in America. Tom and I were just talking about this as 238 00:15:24.250 --> 00:15:27.850 well. During a time in America where socialism 239 00:15:28.330 --> 00:15:32.050 wasn't a boogeyman, because in 240 00:15:32.050 --> 00:15:35.730 the West we did not know— we are— not only 241 00:15:35.730 --> 00:15:39.490 did we not know, we did not have accurate reporting on exactly what 242 00:15:39.490 --> 00:15:41.850 was going on inside of Stalin's Russia. 243 00:15:43.370 --> 00:15:47.170 We also had the Great Depression on during the time 244 00:15:47.170 --> 00:15:50.430 of much of Sinclair's writing. And World War II. 245 00:15:51.630 --> 00:15:55.430 Now, what is modern progressivism back in the day would 246 00:15:55.430 --> 00:15:58.950 have just been called social reform. They didn't use the term social 247 00:15:58.950 --> 00:16:02.630 justice, they used the term social reform. And Sinclair 248 00:16:02.630 --> 00:16:05.990 was a social reformer, and he used his 249 00:16:05.990 --> 00:16:09.230 talents, he used his ability to write and turn a phrase, 250 00:16:09.870 --> 00:16:13.670 um, to critique and reform the society around him. He, he had 251 00:16:13.670 --> 00:16:17.490 a vision for a better world, and he used his talents to, to 252 00:16:17.490 --> 00:16:20.590 try to bring that world into into 253 00:16:21.550 --> 00:16:25.110 reality. He wanted to convert his 254 00:16:25.110 --> 00:16:28.910 readers and his fans from a constrained 255 00:16:28.990 --> 00:16:31.510 vision of tragic trade-offs 256 00:16:32.670 --> 00:16:36.470 in a world that just was. If you just worked at a meatpacking plant, well, 257 00:16:36.470 --> 00:16:40.270 it just is. Or if you're a journalist, it just is. Or 258 00:16:40.830 --> 00:16:44.510 in the case of oil, if you're an oil man or a landman, 259 00:16:44.510 --> 00:16:47.950 you're part of a system that just is. You just operate in the system and 260 00:16:47.950 --> 00:16:51.650 there's no way for you to reform it. Sinclair didn't 261 00:16:51.650 --> 00:16:53.530 believe that, and he didn't write from that position. 262 00:16:56.800 --> 00:17:00.410 Um, he, he believed in an unconstrained vision and 263 00:17:00.410 --> 00:17:03.890 utilizing— well, you creating entertainment out of the 264 00:17:03.890 --> 00:17:07.529 paradoxes of human nature. So one of the things you see in Oil 265 00:17:07.610 --> 00:17:11.370 is that J. Arnold Ross, well, he is an 266 00:17:11.370 --> 00:17:15.130 oil man and a land man, and he is, for lack of a better term, 267 00:17:15.450 --> 00:17:18.959 portrayed as being greedy and venal. His son 268 00:17:19.439 --> 00:17:23.159 is portrayed as being a social reformer, basically rejecting all of 269 00:17:23.159 --> 00:17:26.839 that venality and greed and being able 270 00:17:26.839 --> 00:17:30.519 to see through his father's hypocrisy, such as it 271 00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:34.158 were, in order to create a new 272 00:17:34.158 --> 00:17:37.959 world. Now, those things are very interesting about St. Clair, and that 273 00:17:37.959 --> 00:17:39.519 frames sort of the book. 274 00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:45.670 I opened up with differing perspective because unlike Paul 275 00:17:45.670 --> 00:17:49.150 Thomas Anderson, well, no, let me frame it this. Let me use 276 00:17:49.470 --> 00:17:52.270 a different framing. I think that being a movie director 277 00:17:52.910 --> 00:17:56.390 inside of the Hollywood system is about as close as you can come to being 278 00:17:56.390 --> 00:18:00.070 an entrepreneur inside of a system in any 279 00:18:00.070 --> 00:18:02.910 modern system that we have. Because think about what a director has to do, right? 280 00:18:03.070 --> 00:18:06.830 They've got to obviously arrange for things to be on set. 281 00:18:06.910 --> 00:18:09.670 They have to make sure the writing is clear. They have to make sure the 282 00:18:09.670 --> 00:18:13.370 storyboards are correct. They have to make sure the actors hit their lines. 283 00:18:13.610 --> 00:18:17.290 They have to have good relationships with the actors, all of the 284 00:18:17.290 --> 00:18:21.130 members of the crew, everyone from the grip to the caterers. They 285 00:18:21.130 --> 00:18:24.930 also have to have good relationships with the financiers and the money men who 286 00:18:24.930 --> 00:18:28.530 will come by and have an opinion because they're giving money. Case in 287 00:18:28.530 --> 00:18:31.650 point, a meeting that we had this morning, Tom and I, on another project that 288 00:18:31.650 --> 00:18:35.450 we're involved in, right? Money men are going to have an opinion. And 289 00:18:35.450 --> 00:18:39.210 the director sits even more so than the cinematographer who just points 290 00:18:39.210 --> 00:18:42.650 the camera— well, not just, but points the camera and makes sure the shot is 291 00:18:42.810 --> 00:18:46.550 good. Or the writer who writes the words that the actors say. 292 00:18:46.710 --> 00:18:50.150 Heck, even more so than the actors themselves, who quite frankly are puppets on a 293 00:18:50.150 --> 00:18:53.910 string if we're really going to be direct about this. Um, some puppets are 294 00:18:53.910 --> 00:18:57.710 just better than others. Um, the director is the 295 00:18:57.710 --> 00:19:01.550 guy who has to have the vision and keep all of those people on the 296 00:19:01.550 --> 00:19:05.230 straight line towards the vision. And if he deviates 297 00:19:05.230 --> 00:19:08.070 even just a little bit, if he's allowed to be distracted by the money men 298 00:19:09.010 --> 00:19:12.570 or by the actors, or by, um, the 299 00:19:12.570 --> 00:19:16.290 situations that will surround him on the set. If 300 00:19:16.290 --> 00:19:20.090 he deviates even just a little bit from that, you don't 301 00:19:20.090 --> 00:19:23.090 get a masterpiece, you don't get quality, you don't get excellence. 302 00:19:24.530 --> 00:19:28.350 Um, heck, you don't even get a mediocre product. I think of the 303 00:19:28.350 --> 00:19:31.810 movie that came out this week, Maggie— Maggie Gyllenhaal directed Bride, 304 00:19:32.450 --> 00:19:35.930 and it was a $100 million movie And I think it 305 00:19:35.930 --> 00:19:37.330 grossed $9 million. 306 00:19:40.050 --> 00:19:43.890 Brutal. It didn't look exciting to me either. I, I, I, you 307 00:19:43.890 --> 00:19:47.530 know, we talk about— we're both pretty good movie— we're movie people, 308 00:19:47.530 --> 00:19:51.090 and I, I watched the trailer and I went, what are we doing? 309 00:19:53.890 --> 00:19:57.690 Like, I'm sorry, I just didn't get it. And now, by the way, 310 00:19:57.690 --> 00:20:01.490 by the way, the original Bride of Frankenstein, great movie. That was a 311 00:20:01.490 --> 00:20:05.130 great movie, by the way. It's not, you know, it was 312 00:20:05.130 --> 00:20:07.490 just this ver— I didn't, I didn't get it. 313 00:20:10.290 --> 00:20:13.410 But back to your analogy here though. So, and, and pulling— yes, back to the 314 00:20:13.410 --> 00:20:17.010 analogy, pulling this back to entrepreneur, uh, entrepreneurship. 315 00:20:17.010 --> 00:20:20.570 If you think of that, so the director in your analogy is the startup 316 00:20:20.570 --> 00:20:24.130 founder, and keeping that North Star to their 317 00:20:24.130 --> 00:20:27.690 mission and what their plan is and what they're trying to build can get very 318 00:20:27.690 --> 00:20:31.430 easily get distracted by the developers 319 00:20:31.430 --> 00:20:35.270 that are producing the software. Let's just say on the left-hand side, you've got 320 00:20:35.270 --> 00:20:39.030 a whole slew of operational things, whether they're developers, your first 321 00:20:39.030 --> 00:20:42.390 hire, hiring the right team, etc., etc. 322 00:20:42.910 --> 00:20:46.630 On the right-hand side, you got all the money people, right? So, the VCs and 323 00:20:46.630 --> 00:20:50.030 the angels that once they give you their money, they want to have an 324 00:20:50.030 --> 00:20:53.510 opinion. So, to your analogy there, 325 00:20:53.830 --> 00:20:57.270 it's interesting to me that you chose the movies and the director 326 00:20:57.350 --> 00:21:01.110 is basically the startup founder. The director is that person that's supposed to have the 327 00:21:01.110 --> 00:21:04.870 North Star, that's supposed to have the steering compass 328 00:21:04.870 --> 00:21:08.510 to steer the startup in the 329 00:21:08.510 --> 00:21:11.750 movies that is the director. So that, like, to your point, it's the closest to 330 00:21:11.830 --> 00:21:15.590 entrepreneurship in the movie industry is that director. I agree with that. 331 00:21:15.590 --> 00:21:19.030 I didn't really put those two and two together, but it's a good analogy. 332 00:21:19.830 --> 00:21:22.510 So I look at directors like, you know, we're not going to talk all about 333 00:21:22.510 --> 00:21:25.750 directors this episode, but we're going to talk more about entrepreneurs. We're going to sort 334 00:21:25.750 --> 00:21:28.390 of lean into that. And I want to talk about the work too. I want 335 00:21:28.390 --> 00:21:31.010 to tie it into what I said there in the opening because I think there's 336 00:21:31.010 --> 00:21:34.610 something something valuable. Not something— there is something valuable there, 100%. 337 00:21:36.130 --> 00:21:39.730 Um, but I think of directors like, um, directors I, I 338 00:21:39.970 --> 00:21:43.770 particularly care for, and directors who are— who have been 339 00:21:43.770 --> 00:21:47.410 acknowledged as creatives who produce something of quality, right? 340 00:21:47.970 --> 00:21:51.610 They all had the ability— and I'm going to name 5 of 341 00:21:51.610 --> 00:21:55.330 them, right? Actually, I'm going to name 3 more because I already named Paul 342 00:21:55.330 --> 00:21:59.130 Thomas Anderson. And I named, uh, Christopher Nolan. I'm going to name 343 00:21:59.130 --> 00:22:02.930 3 other ones, okay? All 5 of these 344 00:22:03.410 --> 00:22:06.690 men, quite frankly— oh no, I'll throw a woman in there actually, 345 00:22:08.690 --> 00:22:12.530 um, had strength of vision, to your point, and they had strength of singular 346 00:22:12.530 --> 00:22:14.210 vision. So 347 00:22:16.690 --> 00:22:19.730 the man at the top of that mountain was Orson Welles. 348 00:22:20.210 --> 00:22:23.410 I mean, he created Citizen Kane at what, like the age of like 349 00:22:23.410 --> 00:22:26.760 26? Yeah, that's nuts. 350 00:22:27.160 --> 00:22:30.400 By the way, Michelangelo also created the David at like, you know, 20-some-odd 351 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:34.520 years old. So like, you know, genius in youth is 352 00:22:34.520 --> 00:22:38.280 not just limited to like— you're telling me that Mark 353 00:22:38.280 --> 00:22:41.400 Zuckerberg wasn't the first, wasn't the first child genius? 354 00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:46.640 It's been done before, Mark. And 355 00:22:46.960 --> 00:22:50.640 by individuals who— anyway, doesn't matter. I won't go down that road. Don't you 356 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:53.440 tempt me. So you got Orson Welles, Um, 357 00:22:55.830 --> 00:22:59.310 then you have, of course, the great British master. I have two 358 00:22:59.310 --> 00:23:02.870 Britishers on this list. Alfred Hitchcock. Oh yeah, I mean, 359 00:23:03.110 --> 00:23:06.870 please. From the silent films, um, that 360 00:23:06.870 --> 00:23:10.390 he directed, um, in the, um, in the '20s and '30s— 361 00:23:10.550 --> 00:23:13.950 or not, sorry, not '20s and '30s, in the '40s and '50s. Um, and then 362 00:23:13.950 --> 00:23:17.750 the remakes that he did, um, in the, uh, in the '60s and later 363 00:23:17.750 --> 00:23:21.150 on into the '70s. The man was just— the man was just ridiculous. So you've 364 00:23:21.150 --> 00:23:24.910 got Orson Welles, You've got Alfred Hitchcock. And I said 365 00:23:24.910 --> 00:23:28.550 I was gonna throw a woman on there because, you know, I'm not gender-specific here. 366 00:23:29.190 --> 00:23:32.870 Kathryn Bigelow, you know, The Hurt Locker, Point 367 00:23:32.870 --> 00:23:36.550 Break. I mean, those are singularly visionary, 368 00:23:36.790 --> 00:23:40.630 visionary films. And then of course, Christopher Nolan, like I said, Paul 369 00:23:40.630 --> 00:23:44.030 Thomas Anderson. Those are 5 directors I can name just off the top of my 370 00:23:44.030 --> 00:23:47.750 brain. And I know that our listeners can name more where they had that 371 00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:51.540 vision. And they drove the vision. Sometimes I think of 372 00:23:51.540 --> 00:23:55.260 Stanley Kubrick, actually, a man, by the way, whose vision I could not understand 373 00:23:55.340 --> 00:23:57.820 on most of his movies. I just could not. 374 00:23:59.420 --> 00:24:02.740 Um, but I cannot deny that he had a vision. He 375 00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:06.380 absolutely did. It's just one I didn't understand. You know, the interesting thing too here 376 00:24:06.380 --> 00:24:09.180 is, if again, pulling it, pulling it back to entrepreneurship, 377 00:24:09.980 --> 00:24:13.620 film— the film directors and entrepreneurs are very similar in this respect as 378 00:24:13.620 --> 00:24:17.420 well. If you've done it once and you've made a lot of money at 379 00:24:17.420 --> 00:24:20.340 it, you are less likely to get those 380 00:24:20.900 --> 00:24:24.580 left-right side influences trying to change your vision if you've 381 00:24:24.580 --> 00:24:28.140 already been there, done that. So, yes. So, second, you know, second-time 382 00:24:28.420 --> 00:24:32.100 entrepreneurs, third-time entrepreneurs, when you hear people talk about having 2 383 00:24:32.100 --> 00:24:35.700 or 3 successful exits and they want to start another company, I mean, 384 00:24:36.420 --> 00:24:40.260 funders will just throw money at them because they think that if they've been successful 385 00:24:40.260 --> 00:24:43.900 3 times already, it's like The same thing with the film, 386 00:24:43.900 --> 00:24:47.580 right? Like, so Christopher Nolan— now don't get me wrong, I 387 00:24:47.580 --> 00:24:51.420 wouldn't say I'm in love with every movie he's ever done, but the fact 388 00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:54.580 of the matter is most of them produce a lot of money. Like, let's just 389 00:24:54.580 --> 00:24:57.980 be realistic, with his name on it alone, even the 390 00:24:58.580 --> 00:25:02.100 bad movies that he has made have made a lot of money because his name's 391 00:25:02.100 --> 00:25:05.460 on it. So it's like that. But the 392 00:25:05.460 --> 00:25:09.100 entrepreneurship journey is very similar in that respect as well. 393 00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:13.360 Like, a first, a first-time founder is very hard to get money. I 394 00:25:13.360 --> 00:25:17.040 hate to tell you guys this, but it is what, statistically speaking, 395 00:25:17.040 --> 00:25:20.840 it is now in the current landscape, less than 1% of, 396 00:25:20.840 --> 00:25:24.680 of companies that start actually get significant funding. I'm not 397 00:25:24.680 --> 00:25:28.440 talking about your uncle or your grandparents that give you a couple hundred thousand 398 00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:32.080 dollars. I'm talking about significant influen— influential 399 00:25:32.080 --> 00:25:35.810 money, uh, anything over 7 figures. It's 400 00:25:36.610 --> 00:25:40.450 less than 1%. But if you've kind of, if you've done this 401 00:25:40.450 --> 00:25:43.970 and you've exited once or twice, let's say 402 00:25:43.970 --> 00:25:47.330 twice, now you're starting a new company when you got this new idea, 403 00:25:47.890 --> 00:25:51.610 you are not 1% chance of getting 404 00:25:51.610 --> 00:25:52.610 money. That 405 00:25:54.770 --> 00:25:58.356 exponentially grows. Like, you're talking probably a 50-50 406 00:25:58.730 --> 00:26:02.300 shot on whether you get money. Which is unheard of 407 00:26:02.380 --> 00:26:06.180 in the startup world. But those producers, those filmmakers are the same 408 00:26:06.180 --> 00:26:09.660 way. My, my only part to this tangent 409 00:26:12.060 --> 00:26:15.900 is— No, you're right. Yeah, this jog we're doing around the block. Yeah, 410 00:26:16.740 --> 00:26:20.540 there's a direct correlation, I guess, is my— There is. There is. Well, and 411 00:26:20.540 --> 00:26:23.220 it's not just on, on the money and on the exits, which is a good 412 00:26:23.220 --> 00:26:27.030 point. It's also on the work. Yeah. So I had 413 00:26:27.030 --> 00:26:30.750 a meeting today with somebody where I said to them, and this 414 00:26:31.070 --> 00:26:34.870 person probably in their late 20s, and after I 415 00:26:34.870 --> 00:26:37.590 said it, he was like, I've never actually heard that before. I said 416 00:26:38.670 --> 00:26:42.230 to him, advice is easy. Getting money, or no, 417 00:26:42.230 --> 00:26:45.910 getting money is easy. Getting good advice and acting on it is hard. 418 00:26:47.670 --> 00:26:51.510 And he didn't understand that. He's like, that's, oh, okay, that's an interesting position. 419 00:26:52.560 --> 00:26:54.680 I think there are a lot of people who would disagree with you on that. 420 00:26:54.680 --> 00:26:57.120 And I said, that's fine. They could disagree with me on it, but it's true. 421 00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:01.120 Getting money is easy. 422 00:27:02.560 --> 00:27:06.040 Getting good advice, notice I said good, not bad, good 423 00:27:06.040 --> 00:27:08.880 advice and acting on it is hard. 424 00:27:09.760 --> 00:27:13.200 And the reason why it's hard is because 425 00:27:13.360 --> 00:27:17.080 we forget about the part that unites the advice to 426 00:27:17.080 --> 00:27:20.330 the money. And that's the work. Yeah. 427 00:27:21.610 --> 00:27:25.290 Work is hard. And so I already sort of went 428 00:27:25.290 --> 00:27:29.010 on my tangent about that. What is the important part of work? This is 429 00:27:29.010 --> 00:27:32.410 my question in red, which you would have seen it if I sent you the 430 00:27:32.410 --> 00:27:34.490 notes today. What is the important part of work 431 00:27:36.170 --> 00:27:39.770 in getting an idea from napkin to reality that we don't talk about as 432 00:27:39.770 --> 00:27:40.090 leaders? 433 00:27:44.180 --> 00:27:47.860 Good Lord, there's probably 100 different, like, cliché comments 434 00:27:47.860 --> 00:27:51.580 that people make here, right? That are— I know all of them are true. And 435 00:27:51.580 --> 00:27:55.220 at the same time, like, we don't understand how to put them into practice, right? 436 00:27:55.220 --> 00:27:58.900 Like, for example, and we— the one of the conversations 437 00:27:58.900 --> 00:28:02.700 that we, um, that we had, uh, this 438 00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:05.660 morning, we— you and I had a brief conversation. I won't bring up the— but 439 00:28:05.660 --> 00:28:09.340 it was a brief conversation about it. But so about this particular comment, 440 00:28:09.340 --> 00:28:12.880 which is you know, don't let perfection get in the way of 441 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:16.680 good enough, right? Like, right. So, like, but, but what, like, so you can 442 00:28:16.680 --> 00:28:20.520 say that to a startup founder and that's good advice, by the 443 00:28:20.520 --> 00:28:24.320 way, but acting on that good advice is not 444 00:28:24.320 --> 00:28:27.720 that easy because it's, it still leaves too much up to the 445 00:28:27.720 --> 00:28:31.360 interpretation, right? Like, so what, what is good enough to 446 00:28:31.360 --> 00:28:35.160 you and good enough to me may be very different. So it goes back 447 00:28:35.160 --> 00:28:38.700 to your point about the the whole, the founder's vision 448 00:28:39.580 --> 00:28:41.420 and reaching for that vision. 449 00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:46.620 It's like, well, it's very 450 00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:50.140 difficult. So again, my kind of like, there's a lot of cliché things in here. 451 00:28:50.140 --> 00:28:53.980 What I will say is this, the biggest problem in 452 00:28:53.980 --> 00:28:56.700 my opinion about people starting businesses today 453 00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:01.460 is this, and I'm going to use the word ridiculous people and 454 00:29:01.460 --> 00:29:05.110 I'll explain in a minute what I mean by this. The ridiculous 455 00:29:05.110 --> 00:29:07.230 notion of work-life balance. 456 00:29:08.590 --> 00:29:12.030 You will never start your own company to work less. 457 00:29:12.430 --> 00:29:16.150 That just doesn't happen. And if you think you're going to, then you're 458 00:29:16.150 --> 00:29:19.630 insane to start with, right? Like, so when you're talking about 459 00:29:19.790 --> 00:29:23.070 like what is the work that needs to be done, the idea— 460 00:29:23.390 --> 00:29:26.910 listen, I know you've started companies in the past, Hazar. 461 00:29:27.110 --> 00:29:30.910 I've started companies in the past. I remember the very first company I ever started. 462 00:29:32.380 --> 00:29:35.900 I, I didn't take a solid day off. Not 463 00:29:36.300 --> 00:29:40.140 a solid day, meaning, meaning I didn't look at an email, I didn't 464 00:29:40.140 --> 00:29:43.980 look at social media, I didn't look to— I didn't look at anything. I didn't 465 00:29:43.980 --> 00:29:47.820 think about the company. I didn't think about it for a whole day. One 466 00:29:47.820 --> 00:29:51.580 day. Not once in the first probably 2 467 00:29:51.580 --> 00:29:55.428 years of the company. Now, did that mean that I worked 24/7? 468 00:29:55.780 --> 00:29:58.940 No. What it meant— what it means is on a Saturday when I was supposed 469 00:29:58.940 --> 00:30:02.570 to be with my family an email would come in and I would tell 470 00:30:02.570 --> 00:30:06.210 them, I'm really sorry, but I have to address this. Give me 5 minutes. 471 00:30:07.330 --> 00:30:10.570 So maybe it was only 5 minutes of work on that day. But I'm telling 472 00:30:10.570 --> 00:30:14.370 you, every single day for 2 years, there wasn't a single day 473 00:30:14.370 --> 00:30:17.490 that I took off to get that company off the ground. 474 00:30:18.050 --> 00:30:21.810 Now, I successfully exited that company about 5 or 6, 475 00:30:21.890 --> 00:30:24.770 6 years ago now and started another company. 476 00:30:26.270 --> 00:30:29.910 Started from square one, just started doing it all over again. But, uh, but the 477 00:30:29.910 --> 00:30:33.070 point, the point I think that, I, I think that people 478 00:30:33.230 --> 00:30:37.030 misunderstand, I think that that statement of work-life balance, I 479 00:30:37.030 --> 00:30:40.630 want to find work-life balance, I, I want work-life balance, I think 480 00:30:40.630 --> 00:30:44.150 people misunderstand what that term means. Or let me 481 00:30:44.150 --> 00:30:47.750 rephrase, my definition of that is very different 482 00:30:47.750 --> 00:30:51.070 than most people's, I'll put it that way. To me, work-life 483 00:30:51.350 --> 00:30:54.880 balance is not a 50/50 amount of day and 484 00:30:54.880 --> 00:30:58.640 time that you work versus not work, or— no, to 485 00:30:58.640 --> 00:31:02.440 me, work-life balance just means one of two things 486 00:31:02.920 --> 00:31:06.520 that you accomplish. Sometimes it's both, but one of two things: 487 00:31:07.160 --> 00:31:10.960 what you do for work aligns with the person that 488 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:14.640 you are so well that they just kind of blend in, and 489 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:18.480 you're not worried about how many hours of the day you're working. It's just 490 00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:21.250 kind of like, it is what it is, right? Like, Like I just said, like, 491 00:31:21.410 --> 00:31:24.210 and even now at this point, if I have to 492 00:31:24.770 --> 00:31:28.610 interrupt my wife's— I'm at a christening with my 493 00:31:28.610 --> 00:31:32.210 wife. If I tell her I have to excuse myself, she knows it's really 494 00:31:32.210 --> 00:31:36.050 important. That's balance. If it's a run-of-the-mill email, 495 00:31:36.209 --> 00:31:39.610 I don't care. But if it's something that really, like, is unbelievable, earth-shattering, 496 00:31:40.090 --> 00:31:43.930 like emergency, I will still take the time out of my day to answer 497 00:31:43.930 --> 00:31:47.290 it on a Saturday or a Sunday or in the evening or whatever. It doesn't 498 00:31:47.290 --> 00:31:50.270 matter. Because to me, that balance is 499 00:31:50.910 --> 00:31:54.590 if I lose that client, then my work sucks. Like, 500 00:31:54.590 --> 00:31:58.110 and I'm not willing to lose that balance of work. 501 00:31:58.430 --> 00:32:01.710 So, it's that allowing that 502 00:32:02.270 --> 00:32:05.950 what you do to marry and match who you are 503 00:32:05.950 --> 00:32:08.990 as a person, that's balance. 504 00:32:09.470 --> 00:32:13.230 Or the other side of it is that when you are 505 00:32:13.230 --> 00:32:17.070 at work, you are focused on work and your personal life does not 506 00:32:17.070 --> 00:32:20.910 interrupt you as much as when you are in your 507 00:32:20.910 --> 00:32:23.710 personal life, you don't allow your work to interrupt you. 508 00:32:24.350 --> 00:32:28.070 That's balance. Now, whether you work 8 hours a day or 12 hours a day 509 00:32:28.070 --> 00:32:31.790 is irrelevant. That, that is not— that's not what I'm talking about. I'm 510 00:32:31.790 --> 00:32:35.550 talking about being in the moment and working through whatever's in front of you 511 00:32:36.110 --> 00:32:39.950 and not allowing interruptions so that you can actually focus on it. 512 00:32:40.350 --> 00:32:44.190 That's balance. And when you allow that balance— when what, what creates 513 00:32:44.190 --> 00:32:47.150 the balance is when you allow it to happen on both sides of the coin. 514 00:32:47.780 --> 00:32:51.020 So again, that scenario, like when you are with your family, you are with your 515 00:32:51.020 --> 00:32:54.660 family. You do not allow your work to interrupt that. When you're at work, you're 516 00:32:54.660 --> 00:32:58.300 at work. Now again, in both cases, emergencies are 517 00:32:58.300 --> 00:33:02.100 emergencies. You can't— there's nothing you could do about that. There are going to be 518 00:33:02.100 --> 00:33:05.820 times where you interrupt one of those things because it's just absolute 519 00:33:05.820 --> 00:33:09.060 necessity. That does not mean you don't have balance. 520 00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:13.270 That just means that you have an order of importance in your life.. And I 521 00:33:13.270 --> 00:33:16.950 think from an entrepreneur standpoint, that's where I think they start 522 00:33:16.950 --> 00:33:20.670 to fail in today's world. That order of importance 523 00:33:20.910 --> 00:33:24.710 and misunderstanding what work-life balance is, is the surefire 524 00:33:24.710 --> 00:33:28.390 way to failure, in my opinion. So 525 00:33:28.390 --> 00:33:32.110 I also think, so I think two things. One, the 526 00:33:32.110 --> 00:33:35.910 idea of work-life balance is the way you're talking about it, the way 527 00:33:35.910 --> 00:33:39.720 it's conceptualized, not what you have defined. The way the 528 00:33:39.720 --> 00:33:43.120 popular culture conceptualizes work-life balance, is a 529 00:33:43.280 --> 00:33:47.120 direct outgrowth of the work of Upton Sinclair and the other social reformers of the 530 00:33:47.120 --> 00:33:50.640 '20s and '30s who looked 531 00:33:50.720 --> 00:33:54.120 at work through the lens of a society that 532 00:33:54.120 --> 00:33:57.920 was transitioning from being primarily farming to 533 00:33:57.920 --> 00:34:01.520 being primarily manufacturing, where the 534 00:34:01.600 --> 00:34:05.040 manufacturing conditions and the industry conditions 535 00:34:05.120 --> 00:34:08.960 were demonstrably worse than what would have been 536 00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:12.800 on the farm. And 537 00:34:12.800 --> 00:34:15.200 then the social reformers 538 00:34:16.560 --> 00:34:20.320 failed. The progressive social reformers failed 539 00:34:20.400 --> 00:34:24.160 to update their software when the transition was 540 00:34:24.160 --> 00:34:27.680 made post-World War II from a 541 00:34:27.760 --> 00:34:31.360 manufacturing society to a mostly white-collar working 542 00:34:32.999 --> 00:34:36.359 society. Where work shifts from being a 543 00:34:36.519 --> 00:34:39.719 physical thing to being a mental and emotional 544 00:34:40.759 --> 00:34:43.639 thing. And the only update the social reformers 545 00:34:45.159 --> 00:34:48.679 had was the popular conception of work-life 546 00:34:49.479 --> 00:34:53.279 balance, because work looks different 547 00:34:53.279 --> 00:34:56.279 when it is emotional or 548 00:34:57.319 --> 00:35:01.110 intellectual versus when it is physical. 549 00:35:01.110 --> 00:35:04.950 That's right. So, um, 550 00:35:04.950 --> 00:35:08.430 case in point, right? The Jungle. The Jungle was written about meatpacking 551 00:35:09.790 --> 00:35:13.550 plants. Um, I lived in Chicago for about 5 seconds when I was in 552 00:35:13.550 --> 00:35:17.270 my early teenage years, long enough to remember it and long enough 553 00:35:17.270 --> 00:35:20.150 to talk about it and long enough to forget it, except when it comes up 554 00:35:20.150 --> 00:35:23.390 in examples like this. And when you would drive 555 00:35:23.950 --> 00:35:27.430 through, uh, and they still had slaughterhouses in Chicago back in the early '90s, like 556 00:35:27.430 --> 00:35:30.510 that, that whole culture hadn't yet sort of all completely 557 00:35:31.790 --> 00:35:35.510 transitioned over. And you could, if you were stuck in traffic on certain 558 00:35:35.510 --> 00:35:38.270 parts of the expressway, whichever one it was, I can't 559 00:35:39.790 --> 00:35:42.430 remember, you would smell 560 00:35:43.910 --> 00:35:47.390 the slaughterhouses and the meatpacking plants. You could smell them driving by 561 00:35:47.390 --> 00:35:51.190 the highway. When I went to high school in 562 00:35:51.190 --> 00:35:55.030 northern Louisiana, at that time in northern Louisiana, there were paper 563 00:35:55.030 --> 00:35:58.540 mills all over the place and you could smell paper mills. Oh God, 564 00:35:58.540 --> 00:36:02.380 it's horrible. I'd rather drive through 565 00:36:02.620 --> 00:36:06.220 a— I'd rather drive through a fertilizer, like cow manure, 566 00:36:06.460 --> 00:36:09.940 than a paper mill. Closing the loop on a previous conversation that we've had. Okay, 567 00:36:09.940 --> 00:36:11.900 now we're talking about manure again. This is 568 00:36:13.740 --> 00:36:17.460 great. But these are the kinds of jobs, whether it's a 569 00:36:17.460 --> 00:36:21.180 fertilizer plant, a papermaking 570 00:36:21.180 --> 00:36:23.420 mill, or a meatpacking plant, 571 00:36:24.860 --> 00:36:28.660 where The, the work that is being done is physical and 572 00:36:28.660 --> 00:36:32.460 messy and smelly and, and for many people, 573 00:36:32.620 --> 00:36:35.420 disgusting. They associate that with work. No 574 00:36:36.220 --> 00:36:39.900 one, no one associates, for 575 00:36:40.140 --> 00:36:43.940 black, for good or ill, no one until recently, and by recently I mean 576 00:36:43.940 --> 00:36:47.220 within the last 30 years in our culture, associates the 577 00:36:47.780 --> 00:36:51.460 white-collar effort of 578 00:36:51.460 --> 00:36:55.300 Being mentally and emotionally focused on making a decision, either 579 00:36:55.300 --> 00:36:59.140 in a startup environment or a white-collar corporate environment or a white-collar medium-sized 580 00:36:59.140 --> 00:37:01.660 business environment. Nobody associates that with 581 00:37:03.420 --> 00:37:06.780 work. Most people throughout the history of the 20th century associated that 582 00:37:06.780 --> 00:37:10.420 with ease because that was the bourgeois class. That was 583 00:37:10.420 --> 00:37:14.180 the capitalist class. Those were the folks that Sinclair was writing against. Those 584 00:37:14.180 --> 00:37:17.750 were the owners. They were And that's— and this is how he frames 585 00:37:17.750 --> 00:37:21.550 J. Arnold Ross. He frames him as an owner, but he frames him 586 00:37:21.550 --> 00:37:24.550 as an owner who is willing to get down in the 587 00:37:25.190 --> 00:37:28.710 dirt, but he's working really hard to make sure his 588 00:37:28.710 --> 00:37:32.390 son doesn't have to get down in the dirt. And 589 00:37:32.630 --> 00:37:36.470 Sinclair critiques this in Oil, using the 590 00:37:36.790 --> 00:37:39.030 son to critique the assumptions of the 591 00:37:40.550 --> 00:37:44.230 father and to call out the father and say, to your point about 592 00:37:45.370 --> 00:37:49.090 work, How dare you not have work-life balance? How dare you not this? And 593 00:37:49.090 --> 00:37:52.570 how dare you not that? Which is, of course, is the lament of every child 594 00:37:52.570 --> 00:37:55.530 whose father works 24/7, 595 00:37:56.090 --> 00:37:59.850 365, and doesn't see them. I was talking with my wife, 596 00:37:59.850 --> 00:38:03.050 totally different context, but it applies here. I was talking with my wife about liquor 597 00:38:03.050 --> 00:38:06.850 stores the other day. You would think that owning a liquor store would be 598 00:38:06.850 --> 00:38:10.700 an easy kind of retail. Thing 599 00:38:10.700 --> 00:38:14.540 to do. Uh-huh. I would— I'm going to go on 600 00:38:14.540 --> 00:38:17.780 record right now. I would never— and never is a long 601 00:38:18.500 --> 00:38:20.740 time— never want to own a liquor store. I don't want to be a part 602 00:38:20.740 --> 00:38:24.500 of a liquor store. Don't come to me with any ideas about liquor stores. 603 00:38:24.660 --> 00:38:28.340 No. Distilleries, distribution, that's a different thing. But the 604 00:38:28.340 --> 00:38:29.700 actual retail store 605 00:38:32.660 --> 00:38:36.410 itself— the reason liquor store— owning a liquor store is hard is because 606 00:38:36.410 --> 00:38:40.050 everyone's trying to rip you off. From the people who are, from 607 00:38:40.050 --> 00:38:43.570 the people who are doing the customer service to 608 00:38:43.570 --> 00:38:46.970 your customers, to your distributors, to the 609 00:38:47.450 --> 00:38:50.930 landlord. You have to be there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to 610 00:38:50.930 --> 00:38:53.850 make sure no permit, the government. Oh, and I haven't even talked about the government 611 00:38:53.850 --> 00:38:57.570 and taxes yet. I haven't gotten into that yet. Right. Um, just 612 00:38:57.570 --> 00:39:00.130 the people on the ground trying to rip you off. Forget the other people, like 613 00:39:00.130 --> 00:39:03.850 3 levels up trying to rip you off. And guess what? If you— oh, and 614 00:39:03.850 --> 00:39:07.650 by the way, the government, if you do anything wrong with like the stamps on 615 00:39:07.650 --> 00:39:10.730 the liquor, oh, forget it, your life is over, 616 00:39:12.890 --> 00:39:15.770 right? And you know how I know this? Because Gary 617 00:39:16.570 --> 00:39:19.930 Vaynerchuk, who is the son of, I believe, a 618 00:39:20.250 --> 00:39:24.010 Russian Jewish immigrant, talked about how when his parents came 619 00:39:24.490 --> 00:39:27.970 over, he never saw his father until he was in 620 00:39:27.970 --> 00:39:30.650 his 20s. Because his father owned a liquor 621 00:39:31.530 --> 00:39:35.170 store and coming over from what was terrible conditions 622 00:39:35.170 --> 00:39:38.170 in Eastern Europe or in Russia, wherever the Vaynerchuk came out 623 00:39:38.890 --> 00:39:42.250 of, coming here, work in a liquor 624 00:39:42.410 --> 00:39:46.250 store looked like paradise in 625 00:39:46.250 --> 00:39:48.730 comparison to what they came from and emigrated 626 00:39:50.570 --> 00:39:54.370 from. Work. This is the thing. We have to change 627 00:39:54.370 --> 00:39:57.680 our conceptions around work. So I'm supporting your point around 628 00:39:57.920 --> 00:40:01.440 work-life balance, but I also think we have— and not but— 629 00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:06.040 and I think we have to take into consideration that we have to 630 00:40:06.040 --> 00:40:08.960 reconceptualize what work actually is, which is part of our struggle that we're having right 631 00:40:09.680 --> 00:40:13.240 now. No, and I agree. And we both have children in 632 00:40:13.240 --> 00:40:16.960 their 20s, and that's another fight. Oh, yeah. I 633 00:40:17.120 --> 00:40:19.520 mean, the whole idea— 634 00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:24.590 so without giving away too much and without talking too deeply about whatever, 635 00:40:25.380 --> 00:40:28.820 so We have a very large house, right? And so my house 636 00:40:28.980 --> 00:40:32.620 is about 5,000 square feet. This 637 00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:36.740 disillusion— they're delusional in thinking— my 638 00:40:36.740 --> 00:40:40.300 kids, I'm not saying everybody's kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My kids 639 00:40:40.300 --> 00:40:43.940 are delusional in thinking that they should be 640 00:40:44.580 --> 00:40:48.340 afforded the ability to go work 40 hours a week and 641 00:40:48.580 --> 00:40:51.780 live the way they want to live or the way that they were accustomed to 642 00:40:52.390 --> 00:40:56.190 living living in my house. So, you know, 3 643 00:40:56.190 --> 00:40:59.870 acres of land, 5,000 square feet, 2, you know, 3, 644 00:40:59.870 --> 00:41:02.990 4 cars in the driveway. They, you know, when they turn 16, they could just 645 00:41:02.990 --> 00:41:06.150 take the car whenever they want, like, whatever, right? They want to work 40 hours 646 00:41:06.150 --> 00:41:09.910 a week and live the way they want to live. And I keep trying to 647 00:41:09.910 --> 00:41:13.750 explain to them, you can't start like that. Like, 648 00:41:13.750 --> 00:41:17.350 you want to run like Usain 649 00:41:17.870 --> 00:41:21.390 Bolt when you're— you haven't even learned how to crawl yet. 650 00:41:21.950 --> 00:41:25.230 Like, when I, when I came into the workforce, I had to work two jobs. 651 00:41:25.230 --> 00:41:28.470 And they always have this, like, they always get this— they always try to get 652 00:41:28.470 --> 00:41:32.190 very analytical on me and talk about how inflation is, 653 00:41:32.270 --> 00:41:35.830 like, isn't there— their salaries are not keeping up with inflation, etc., etc., 654 00:41:35.830 --> 00:41:38.990 right? Whatever. And that might be true. I don't really care, to be honest with 655 00:41:38.990 --> 00:41:42.830 you. I don't, I don't care because I, 656 00:41:42.830 --> 00:41:45.590 I don't care that my first apartment that I ever rented was 657 00:41:45.590 --> 00:41:49.250 only $450 a month. I 658 00:41:49.250 --> 00:41:51.330 made $3.25 an 659 00:41:53.170 --> 00:41:56.930 hour. And I understand that, you know, that, 660 00:41:56.930 --> 00:41:59.970 that, that math may not math for, for my kids, 661 00:42:00.530 --> 00:42:03.890 but I remember when I lived on my own, very first time I lived on 662 00:42:03.890 --> 00:42:07.650 my own, I, I had to work 2 jobs. 663 00:42:08.050 --> 00:42:11.490 So you're right, the idea of work-life balance to me at that 664 00:42:11.570 --> 00:42:14.970 time was just simply I didn't have to live at my parents' house anymore. I 665 00:42:14.970 --> 00:42:18.280 was happy. The balance to me was living on my own, 666 00:42:18.280 --> 00:42:22.100 working 75 hours a week. Didn't matter. I lived on my own. Didn't matter. 667 00:42:22.100 --> 00:42:25.760 That's the balance was there was always like a give and take, right? Balance is 668 00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:29.280 about give and take. They don't understand 669 00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:32.920 that today. So, when I tell my kids like, well, if you want to earn 670 00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:36.400 more money, just go get a second job. I shouldn't have to do that. I 671 00:42:36.400 --> 00:42:39.440 should be allowed to work. Well, why? Because I can work 40 hours a week 672 00:42:39.440 --> 00:42:43.250 and afford my— well, I've got 30 years of experience behind me. I've 673 00:42:43.250 --> 00:42:46.930 done the— I've scrubbed the toilets. I, I've wiped the 674 00:42:46.930 --> 00:42:50.730 floors and picked up kids' puke off the bathroom floor. 675 00:42:50.730 --> 00:42:54.210 Like, what are you talking about? Like, you— to your point about the whole difference 676 00:42:54.210 --> 00:42:57.130 between white collar and like— so let me get this straight. You want to walk 677 00:42:57.130 --> 00:43:00.731 in the door at— you have a psychology degree. You want to walk in the 678 00:43:00.731 --> 00:43:04.410 door as the director of HR with never having HR experience? Yes, 679 00:43:04.410 --> 00:43:07.943 yes, that's exactly that. Yes, that's exactly— that's exactly it. Yes. And make 680 00:43:08.070 --> 00:43:11.760 $150,000 $140,000, $150,000 a year. No, it doesn't work that way. You have 681 00:43:11.760 --> 00:43:15.520 to earn that. You have to go work your ass off to 682 00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:18.720 earn that. You have to go 683 00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:22.560 scrub toilets, if that— whatever, whatever the equivalent. And I 684 00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:26.240 apologize for HR professionals here, that's not my— my intent is not to crap on 685 00:43:26.240 --> 00:43:29.360 HR. It was just the one that popped into my head because of the psychology 686 00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:33.160 degree that she has. Anyway, but like, whatever the equivalent to that is, you 687 00:43:33.160 --> 00:43:36.980 have to take that $50,000, $60,000 a year job, maybe 688 00:43:36.980 --> 00:43:40.780 it's $40,000, I don't know. You need experience before you can 689 00:43:40.780 --> 00:43:44.380 demand those salaries. But because we put so much emphasis on higher 690 00:43:44.460 --> 00:43:48.140 education and the fact that when we were coming out of higher 691 00:43:48.540 --> 00:43:52.220 education, the jobs were better for people who had that 692 00:43:52.300 --> 00:43:55.580 degree, no doubt, no doubt. When I graduated high 693 00:43:56.300 --> 00:43:59.820 school, at the time I graduated high school, the workforce 694 00:43:59.820 --> 00:44:03.552 was probably closer to 695 00:44:04.160 --> 00:44:07.960 70-30 of college degrees, like about 30%. And it 696 00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:11.200 was going up. It was definitely on the upward swing. By the time I was 697 00:44:11.680 --> 00:44:15.280 about in my early 30s, it was probably closer to about 40-45% 698 00:44:15.280 --> 00:44:19.040 of jobs that were— that required degrees. Now it's much higher than 699 00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:23.120 that. So guess what happens to you, the value of your college degree, now 700 00:44:23.840 --> 00:44:27.550 that 90% of the jobs out there require college degrees? The value 701 00:44:27.550 --> 00:44:30.950 of that college degree goes down, not up, right? Which 702 00:44:31.190 --> 00:44:34.710 means that now they can offer that $40,000 a year job to 703 00:44:34.710 --> 00:44:38.510 the college graduate instead of the person who never went to college. 704 00:44:38.510 --> 00:44:41.470 Well, and this is— and this is— they don't get that. They don't get that. 705 00:44:41.470 --> 00:44:45.030 They want $100,000 out the gate. Well, because we just told them that 706 00:44:45.030 --> 00:44:48.750 a $200,000 education is going to be worth it for them. Well, 707 00:44:48.750 --> 00:44:52.390 and this— and, and the thing— well, the thing we also don't consider 708 00:44:54.510 --> 00:44:57.870 is, um, human nature in this, right? So one of the things that, that Sinclair 709 00:44:57.870 --> 00:45:01.230 does really, really well in his book, right, um, is 710 00:45:01.310 --> 00:45:04.590 he describes and defines human nature, 711 00:45:04.910 --> 00:45:08.630 right? So whether it's Bunny's nature, um, whether it's 712 00:45:08.630 --> 00:45:12.430 the nature, which is the son, um, if it's the nature 713 00:45:13.310 --> 00:45:17.030 of, um, the, um, the, the dad, right, J. Arnold Ross, or 714 00:45:17.030 --> 00:45:20.070 if it's the nature of— and I'm going to talk a little bit about this 715 00:45:20.070 --> 00:45:22.830 because this gets directly to what you're talking about here— the 716 00:45:22.830 --> 00:45:26.220 society, right, that 717 00:45:26.220 --> 00:45:29.660 is consumed with this new product, right? This new thing called 718 00:45:29.740 --> 00:45:32.460 oil, which we 719 00:45:33.580 --> 00:45:37.420 forget— in the early 20th century, oil drilling in and 720 00:45:37.420 --> 00:45:40.460 of itself was 721 00:45:40.460 --> 00:45:43.980 as dangerous— and no, more dangerous 722 00:45:44.060 --> 00:45:47.260 and harder than mining, because people have been mining 723 00:45:48.860 --> 00:45:52.660 for millennia, thousands of years by, by that, by the point the 20th century 724 00:45:52.660 --> 00:45:56.300 showed up. By that point. But oil, oil was a 725 00:45:56.300 --> 00:46:00.060 totally new thing. Totally new product, pulling it up out of the 726 00:46:00.540 --> 00:46:04.220 ground, refining it, which no one ever talks about refining. You know, we have 727 00:46:04.220 --> 00:46:07.860 this, we talked about the show Landman. We have this idea that 728 00:46:07.860 --> 00:46:11.620 it's just, oh, you go, you, you find a spot in the ground, 729 00:46:11.620 --> 00:46:15.180 you drill it, boom, like there's oil that pops up. 730 00:46:15.500 --> 00:46:18.580 Now, that's no longer the case. We now have fracking and a whole bunch of 731 00:46:18.580 --> 00:46:21.700 other processes that exist. And by the way, the reason I know about all this, 732 00:46:21.700 --> 00:46:25.530 ladies and gentlemen, is because I live in Texas. And I'm going to talk 733 00:46:25.530 --> 00:46:28.450 about my dealings with landmen in a minute. I've dealt with 734 00:46:29.570 --> 00:46:32.370 landmen. I've dealt with guys like J. Arnold Ross. I've dealt with these 735 00:46:33.650 --> 00:46:37.010 guys. And so we forget that in the early 20th 736 00:46:37.410 --> 00:46:41.250 century, wildcatting, you know, making 737 00:46:41.250 --> 00:46:44.530 bets on wells, making bets on this new 738 00:46:45.010 --> 00:46:48.770 commodity, all of the speculation, all of that that existed that 739 00:46:48.770 --> 00:46:52.090 Sinclair critiques All of that existed 740 00:46:52.650 --> 00:46:56.170 because there were people who were, to your point about 741 00:46:56.810 --> 00:46:59.530 education, who were what we would consider to 742 00:47:00.490 --> 00:47:02.970 be poorly educated people who were looking 743 00:47:04.570 --> 00:47:08.170 for, um, a way to get rich. How? 744 00:47:08.170 --> 00:47:10.090 Not slow, but get rich 745 00:47:12.010 --> 00:47:15.370 quick. And they wanted their kids, to Tom's point about his 746 00:47:16.170 --> 00:47:19.610 children, They wanted their kids to get rich quick so their kids could be in 747 00:47:19.610 --> 00:47:23.450 a better spot. No, I want them to work their ass off. Right, exactly. 748 00:47:23.450 --> 00:47:26.730 I want— 100 years later, we're like, no, you got to go to work. You 749 00:47:26.730 --> 00:47:29.290 got to go get a job. Well, so like with my 750 00:47:31.529 --> 00:47:34.730 children, um, I will say this. My children 751 00:47:35.210 --> 00:47:38.890 have been raised with the principle of work, right? 752 00:47:39.370 --> 00:47:43.210 So small case of this. My wife and I have gone off and on 753 00:47:43.210 --> 00:47:46.750 on like allowances, right, with kids, right? 754 00:47:47.550 --> 00:47:50.750 And when we're off, we're really off. And when we're on, it's in a spurt, 755 00:47:50.750 --> 00:47:54.560 kind of like an oil well, and then we're back off again because we 756 00:47:54.560 --> 00:47:57.550 can't. And it's not that we disagree on it, it's just that our minds shift 757 00:47:57.550 --> 00:48:01.230 and change based on whatever happens to be going on. 758 00:48:01.230 --> 00:48:05.030 And so we were having a conversation, gosh, probably about a month ago about this 759 00:48:05.030 --> 00:48:07.590 with our youngest kid, and he's 760 00:48:08.830 --> 00:48:12.680 9, and he's gotten to the point where you can start 761 00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:16.520 doing work, right? And I don't mean work 762 00:48:16.680 --> 00:48:20.480 like chores. So for us in our family, chores are— particularly for 763 00:48:20.480 --> 00:48:24.240 younger children, I always used to tell my kids, chores are preparation for 764 00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:27.559 you going out working in the real world. Yeah. Your 765 00:48:28.200 --> 00:48:32.040 pay is that you get to live here. That's the pay. 766 00:48:32.120 --> 00:48:34.840 Your, your, your compensation is 767 00:48:35.880 --> 00:48:39.620 that, um, you get to feel good about having a clean room 768 00:48:39.620 --> 00:48:43.300 or clean kitchen or clean whatever, right? A clean 769 00:48:43.300 --> 00:48:47.020 bowl and plate. That's your compensation, right? And let me tell 770 00:48:48.620 --> 00:48:52.220 you, when I was a kid, it was framed in a lot harder terms 771 00:48:52.220 --> 00:48:55.900 for me. My father was old school 772 00:48:55.900 --> 00:48:59.620 blue collar, so it wasn't, you know, do 773 00:48:59.620 --> 00:49:03.420 this and I'll pay you, or do this chore and you can complain. It was, 774 00:49:03.420 --> 00:49:07.180 no, shut up and wash the dishes. Or, you know, are you going 775 00:49:07.180 --> 00:49:10.780 to get something and you're not going to like it? Oh, you're right, sir. Yes, 776 00:49:10.780 --> 00:49:14.340 sir. All right. May I go over there and dry that dish? Yes. Thank you. 777 00:49:14.340 --> 00:49:16.860 And my mother was the same way. So let's not be— let's be clear. It 778 00:49:16.860 --> 00:49:20.540 wasn't just my father. Okay. And so 779 00:49:20.540 --> 00:49:21.820 the principle of 780 00:49:24.460 --> 00:49:28.100 work, but not tied to compensation, right? Not tied 781 00:49:28.100 --> 00:49:31.790 to material compensation is something that I've tried to pass on to my children. Because 782 00:49:31.790 --> 00:49:35.190 at the end of the day, our children are going to— like your 783 00:49:35.470 --> 00:49:38.950 20-year-old daughter. I've got a 20-year-old daughter. You know, I've 784 00:49:39.350 --> 00:49:42.910 got, I got another daughter who's in her— she's getting ready to be 16 here 785 00:49:42.910 --> 00:49:46.630 in about a spit of a minute. And my 9-year-old boy, and then 786 00:49:46.630 --> 00:49:50.470 my oldest, my oldest son is, he's in his late 20s. 787 00:49:50.470 --> 00:49:53.510 He's already in the work world, thank God, and doing the 788 00:49:55.030 --> 00:49:58.590 work. My 20-year-old is transitioning into the work world and is putting in the effort 789 00:49:58.590 --> 00:50:02.180 of doing the work. Because what I think the next thing is, particularly with 790 00:50:02.180 --> 00:50:05.700 our LLMs and all of that, is that 791 00:50:05.700 --> 00:50:09.220 the ways to get money have become so easy 792 00:50:09.220 --> 00:50:11.420 that people think the work should be easy 793 00:50:13.340 --> 00:50:16.980 too. And I take the position that Dana White takes of the UFC. He's been 794 00:50:16.980 --> 00:50:20.060 quoted, I see this quote all over Instagram and he's right. Somebody talked to him 795 00:50:20.060 --> 00:50:23.380 in an interview and he said, he tells his kids kind of the same way 796 00:50:23.380 --> 00:50:25.860 I tell my kids, all you have to do is just be a little bit 797 00:50:25.860 --> 00:50:29.420 better than the next person because everybody's just so, he uses the term weak. I 798 00:50:29.420 --> 00:50:33.180 don't use that term. Everybody's so flat. They want everything so 799 00:50:33.340 --> 00:50:36.820 easy. All you have to do is just work a little bit harder, just a 800 00:50:36.820 --> 00:50:40.460 little bit, and you will just be a monster. 801 00:50:41.100 --> 00:50:44.900 So I'm raising monsters. I'm raising them not to be a little bit 802 00:50:44.900 --> 00:50:48.540 harder, but to work a lot harder because the 803 00:50:48.540 --> 00:50:51.860 compensation level between the people who have chosen to not do the work or who 804 00:50:51.860 --> 00:50:55.660 just want it handed to them, the gap between them and the people who 805 00:50:55.660 --> 00:50:58.870 are just willing to put in this massive amount of work. That compensation gap is 806 00:50:58.870 --> 00:51:02.630 going to be huge. It's just going to be huge. Yeah, I 807 00:51:03.350 --> 00:51:06.550 agree. And it's just going to get bigger and bigger as our digital 808 00:51:06.870 --> 00:51:10.470 tools continue to delude us into this idea that work is something 809 00:51:10.470 --> 00:51:14.150 that just doesn't matter. Well, they're— the 810 00:51:14.230 --> 00:51:17.270 digital tools are commoditizing it. Right. 811 00:51:17.750 --> 00:51:21.590 Yeah. Essentially, we're commoditizing entry-level work. Right. 812 00:51:21.590 --> 00:51:25.050 That's what we're doing. So to your point, So, the work harder, 813 00:51:25.050 --> 00:51:28.760 et cetera. But it's not just about, to your point a few 814 00:51:28.760 --> 00:51:32.160 minutes ago, it's not just about the physical work harder. You have to mentally 815 00:51:32.160 --> 00:51:34.560 work harder. You just have to 816 00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:40.720 be— when you tell your kids you have to be better than everybody 817 00:51:40.720 --> 00:51:44.480 else, you're not talking about— I used Usain Bolt a few minutes ago as 818 00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:48.040 the reference. So, again, you're not telling them that you have to go beat Usain 819 00:51:48.040 --> 00:51:51.800 Bolt in a race. No, but, you know, my kid 820 00:51:51.800 --> 00:51:55.400 being the wise guy that he is, he'll be like, I'll beat Usain Bolt in 821 00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:58.480 a race any day and twice on Sunday. He can run all he wants. I'm 822 00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:02.320 getting in my car. You know what I'm saying? Like, so to 823 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:05.880 your point, it doesn't always have to be the physicality of it. You just have 824 00:52:05.880 --> 00:52:09.360 to be better. You have to be better than the next guy or girl. Yeah. 825 00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:13.000 Whichever. Yeah. And, and, and that, and that's where 826 00:52:13.000 --> 00:52:16.810 I find, that's where I think The creativity of being better is 827 00:52:16.810 --> 00:52:20.290 going to really accelerate people because, again, to your 828 00:52:20.610 --> 00:52:24.210 point, can it be physically better? Absolutely. Of course, you can be physically 829 00:52:24.370 --> 00:52:27.330 better. I spent the first 10 years of my career in a restaurant and my 830 00:52:27.330 --> 00:52:30.970 knife skills were better than most people's. I could fly 831 00:52:30.970 --> 00:52:34.290 by people with knife skills. Not today, by the way, just so you know, not 832 00:52:34.450 --> 00:52:37.330 today, but I haven't done it in a long time. 833 00:52:38.730 --> 00:52:41.490 But it's so there are physical skills like that, 834 00:52:42.270 --> 00:52:46.030 sure.. But if there are also mental skills, 835 00:52:46.350 --> 00:52:50.030 there are not just mental, but there's, there's 836 00:52:50.270 --> 00:52:52.830 creative skills. There's like the 837 00:52:54.590 --> 00:52:58.310 ability to problem solve, problem solving skills. If you are better at 838 00:52:58.310 --> 00:53:01.590 any one of those than the next person, you'll 839 00:53:01.590 --> 00:53:05.230 accelerate. You'll accelerate your, your— and by the way, getting back to 840 00:53:05.230 --> 00:53:09.070 the entrepreneurial conversation, that's half of entrepreneurship right there is 841 00:53:09.620 --> 00:53:13.300 figuring out the better mousetrap or the new mousetrap or 842 00:53:13.620 --> 00:53:17.220 the faster mousetrap, whatever, bigger, better, faster, stronger, smarter, whatever 843 00:53:18.260 --> 00:53:22.060 that is. That's the entrepreneurial journey. You just have to decide whether 844 00:53:22.060 --> 00:53:25.619 you're doing it for someone else or for yourself. So let me ask you 845 00:53:26.100 --> 00:53:29.860 this question. What is the scariest thing about entrepreneurship that very few people 846 00:53:29.860 --> 00:53:30.580 consider before they 847 00:53:36.430 --> 00:53:40.070 jump in? I think I— to me, I think this is 848 00:53:40.070 --> 00:53:43.910 going to sound counterintuitive here. I think everybody thinks the 849 00:53:43.910 --> 00:53:47.350 fear of failure is the biggest problem, 850 00:53:47.350 --> 00:53:51.110 and I don't agree with that. I think the fear of failure is actually a 851 00:53:51.110 --> 00:53:54.670 halfway decent motivator. I think 852 00:53:54.990 --> 00:53:58.750 people underestimate— to your point, if you— throughout this whole conversation so far, I 853 00:53:58.750 --> 00:54:02.590 think people underestimate the sheer volume and level 854 00:54:02.670 --> 00:54:06.470 of work they're going to have to do when 855 00:54:06.470 --> 00:54:10.190 successful, not if, because all the work you do to get 856 00:54:10.190 --> 00:54:13.990 to do, if you're trying to be successful, if you're not quite there 857 00:54:14.150 --> 00:54:17.790 yet, is expected. You're expected to continue pounding your head against 858 00:54:17.790 --> 00:54:21.430 the wall. You're expected to continue running uphill. You're expected— 859 00:54:21.430 --> 00:54:25.230 no, you're— that's— that work is expected of you. When you hit 860 00:54:25.230 --> 00:54:28.670 the pinnacle, when you hit the top and you say, now my 861 00:54:28.670 --> 00:54:32.070 startup is successful, I think people underestimate 862 00:54:32.550 --> 00:54:35.110 how much work there is from that 863 00:54:36.150 --> 00:54:39.750 point forward. There's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done after 864 00:54:39.910 --> 00:54:43.430 that fact. And I think that, I think the fear 865 00:54:43.590 --> 00:54:47.350 of success is actually very real. People, 866 00:54:47.350 --> 00:54:50.950 once people can start seeing the skyline and they go, 867 00:54:50.950 --> 00:54:54.790 oh crap, if I get to this point that's in front of 868 00:54:54.870 --> 00:54:58.610 me, oh boy. Maybe I'm not sure I want that. And that's 869 00:54:58.610 --> 00:55:02.290 what— maybe they exit out their company before they hit it, which is fine too, 870 00:55:02.290 --> 00:55:05.970 by the way. So maybe you don't exit at $200 million or $300 million. 871 00:55:05.970 --> 00:55:09.810 Maybe you exit at $2 million and you're perfectly fine with 872 00:55:09.810 --> 00:55:13.130 that because you don't want to do the work. 873 00:55:13.770 --> 00:55:17.170 Like, that's just to let you know, people, $2 million, if you're in your 20s, 874 00:55:17.170 --> 00:55:18.890 is not going to last you the rest of your life. It's not going to 875 00:55:18.890 --> 00:55:22.170 last you the rest of your life. It'll barely 876 00:55:22.650 --> 00:55:26.370 last you. Well, it won't even last you through retirement these 877 00:55:26.370 --> 00:55:29.470 days. So that— I, I think there's a big piece of that that people don't 878 00:55:30.510 --> 00:55:33.870 think about. I remember when I first made my 879 00:55:35.630 --> 00:55:38.510 first $100,000, um, and that was a big milestone for 880 00:55:40.430 --> 00:55:43.390 me. Sure. Um, and I 881 00:55:43.950 --> 00:55:47.710 remember watching the invoice come in where it clicked over right 882 00:55:47.790 --> 00:55:51.390 in my, um, in my bank account, and I sat there and looked at it 883 00:55:53.240 --> 00:55:55.720 for about I don't know, maybe a minute. And 884 00:55:57.480 --> 00:56:01.260 I thought, hmm, that's interesting. And then I went right back. 885 00:56:01.260 --> 00:56:04.880 I went right back to doing the things that I needed to 886 00:56:04.880 --> 00:56:08.400 do in order to make the next $100,000 and the 887 00:56:08.719 --> 00:56:12.200 next $100,000 and the next 888 00:56:15.160 --> 00:56:18.970 $100,000. And I'm a weird entrepreneur because I'm 889 00:56:18.970 --> 00:56:22.610 not driven by, or my entrepreneurial mindset is 890 00:56:22.610 --> 00:56:25.810 not driven by, um, 891 00:56:26.690 --> 00:56:30.170 the normal benchmarks of success, 892 00:56:30.170 --> 00:56:33.410 uh, or failure, quite frankly, you 893 00:56:34.450 --> 00:56:38.250 know. So I've had the nights where like I've laid awake and like it's 894 00:56:38.250 --> 00:56:40.730 Wednesday and I've got to make payroll on Friday and I have no idea how 895 00:56:40.730 --> 00:56:43.890 I'm going to cover. I've had that happen, right, more times than I 896 00:56:45.320 --> 00:56:46.760 can count. I have 897 00:56:50.400 --> 00:56:53.680 had the creditors chasing me around the block and 898 00:56:53.680 --> 00:56:57.400 I'm pushing invoices and moving things around. 899 00:56:57.400 --> 00:57:00.520 Rob and Peter to pay Paul. Rob and Peter to pay Paul. You know, yeah. 900 00:57:00.520 --> 00:57:03.800 I've had the— Tom's previous point, I've 901 00:57:03.800 --> 00:57:07.320 had to prioritize what are the things that I'm going to 902 00:57:07.320 --> 00:57:11.090 do this week or today. And trying to figure 903 00:57:11.090 --> 00:57:14.810 out without knowing what the answer is, what are the things that are going to 904 00:57:14.810 --> 00:57:18.570 produce the most money, or they're going to— that are going to knock down 905 00:57:18.570 --> 00:57:21.770 the most dominoes. So by the end of the week, the thing that has to 906 00:57:21.770 --> 00:57:24.610 be knocked down gets knocked down. I've done all that. I've done all 907 00:57:26.050 --> 00:57:27.330 of that. None of 908 00:57:31.970 --> 00:57:35.570 those things, um, none of those things scared me, but all of 909 00:57:35.570 --> 00:57:39.340 those things drive me. Weirdly enough, 910 00:57:39.420 --> 00:57:42.740 I found— not weirdly enough, interestingly enough— talking to entrepreneurs, talking to people 911 00:57:42.740 --> 00:57:46.140 who are entrepreneurial adjacent, those are the things that 912 00:57:46.860 --> 00:57:50.580 scare people. Those are the things that I remember talking to an employee years 913 00:57:50.580 --> 00:57:53.900 and years and years ago, and I was telling 914 00:57:54.540 --> 00:57:58.140 him, listen, I haven't taken a check from this company to feed my family in 915 00:57:58.140 --> 00:58:01.940 like 3 months. And he was stunned. He's like, 916 00:58:01.940 --> 00:58:04.820 I'm getting a check every week. Like, yeah, I know. Because it's important that you 917 00:58:04.820 --> 00:58:07.540 get a check every week so you can show up and do 918 00:58:08.980 --> 00:58:12.020 the thing. Now you may ask, well, how are you feeding your family? We don't 919 00:58:12.020 --> 00:58:15.460 need to get into all that. I figured out ways to do that. My 920 00:58:17.060 --> 00:58:20.580 point is that thing that I had 921 00:58:21.140 --> 00:58:24.900 committed to, that thing— and not Peter Thiel, 922 00:58:24.980 --> 00:58:28.260 another entrepreneur has said it this way, I can't remember who, but I was able 923 00:58:28.260 --> 00:58:32.070 to stare that thing in the face and not 924 00:58:32.070 --> 00:58:34.830 flinch. And I think that's the scariest thing for people. To 925 00:58:36.350 --> 00:58:39.950 your point, it's not even success, I wouldn't even say, or failure. It's 926 00:58:39.950 --> 00:58:42.910 can you stare into the 927 00:58:42.910 --> 00:58:46.430 abyss of uncertainty day in, 928 00:58:46.990 --> 00:58:50.750 day out for multiple weeks and then months and 929 00:58:50.750 --> 00:58:54.470 then sometimes years? Can you stare into the abyss of 930 00:58:54.470 --> 00:58:57.990 uncertainty and never lose your optimism? And by the way, optimism doesn't 931 00:58:57.990 --> 00:59:01.590 mean like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, everything's going to be 932 00:59:01.910 --> 00:59:05.710 sunshiny tomorrow. Optimism just means— I used 933 00:59:05.710 --> 00:59:09.550 to think this, actually, I still think this, not as sharply as I 934 00:59:09.550 --> 00:59:13.270 used to because things have changed, but I still get up every morning and I 935 00:59:14.070 --> 00:59:15.990 think, okay, nobody alive has 936 00:59:18.070 --> 00:59:21.880 lived today. Nobody. Like the next minute 937 00:59:21.880 --> 00:59:25.720 that I'm going to be talking, no one's lived in that next minute 938 00:59:25.720 --> 00:59:29.560 yet. So there's still all kinds of things that can open up, just like 939 00:59:29.560 --> 00:59:31.120 we're recording this in, in, in 940 00:59:33.040 --> 00:59:36.880 early March, uh, 2026, right? No 941 00:59:36.880 --> 00:59:40.320 one's lived in April of 2026 yet. Not any human being, 942 00:59:40.880 --> 00:59:44.520 you know, not one. And actually I got that idea from a 943 00:59:44.520 --> 00:59:47.600 boss of mine who I absolutely despised and had a 944 00:59:49.870 --> 00:59:53.590 problem with. But that was one good lesson that he taught me. 945 00:59:53.590 --> 00:59:56.750 And when he said it and then he walked it out, I 946 00:59:57.550 --> 01:00:01.070 thought, huh, I do not respect any other thing about you, 947 01:00:01.790 --> 01:00:04.590 but that is correct. You are correct 948 01:00:05.710 --> 01:00:08.510 on that. And so as an entrepreneur, I've been 949 01:00:08.910 --> 01:00:12.710 able to channel that into getting up 950 01:00:12.710 --> 01:00:16.280 every day and staring into the abyss of uncertainty. Company and doing it 951 01:00:16.920 --> 01:00:20.600 for years and being okay. I think somebody with a mindset 952 01:00:20.600 --> 01:00:24.440 who is more, shall we say, socially, social, more of a 953 01:00:24.440 --> 01:00:28.160 social reformer or more of an employee, which I think, not I think, the 954 01:00:28.160 --> 01:00:31.240 statistics are 99% of people will never start a business. They just never will. They'll 955 01:00:31.320 --> 01:00:35.080 never start because they can't. They had that expression on 956 01:00:35.080 --> 01:00:38.880 their face. I'll never forget it from that employee. Like he looked 957 01:00:39.120 --> 01:00:42.720 like he would, he couldn't, It was like I was talking to him 958 01:00:42.720 --> 01:00:46.040 in a foreign language. I was like, I was talking to him in Chinese at 959 01:00:46.040 --> 01:00:49.840 that moment. Like somehow we'd switched from English to Chinese in the conversation. He didn't 960 01:00:49.840 --> 01:00:53.520 understand what I was saying. And I think the people who have a mindset of 961 01:00:53.520 --> 01:00:56.440 I have to get paid because my bills have to get paid. If my bills 962 01:00:56.440 --> 01:01:00.040 don't get paid, then somehow the 963 01:01:00.200 --> 01:01:03.800 world collapses into this ignominy of like lack of status and 964 01:01:03.800 --> 01:01:06.770 I'll be homeless and I 965 01:01:07.570 --> 01:01:11.410 don't know, searching for gum underneath, like, you know, benches on the 966 01:01:11.410 --> 01:01:14.410 side of the street, like, whatever. Like, whatever the thing is that people think is 967 01:01:14.410 --> 01:01:18.250 a horrible thing, they go right to that. And then they— the fear of 968 01:01:18.250 --> 01:01:21.970 going right to that is what drives them to, to working for people 969 01:01:22.690 --> 01:01:26.370 like me, because the fear of being kicked to the 970 01:01:26.370 --> 01:01:29.970 curb and, like, living in a cardboard box doesn't— I mean, 971 01:01:29.970 --> 01:01:33.750 that's not optimal. I wouldn't want that. But it's not scary. 972 01:01:33.750 --> 01:01:37.190 That's not the scariest outcome. There's other scary outcomes 973 01:01:37.190 --> 01:01:38.990 that are scarier to me 974 01:01:41.790 --> 01:01:44.830 than that. And I don't think— I think that's just the distinction with the difference 975 01:01:44.830 --> 01:01:48.590 between an entrepreneur mindset and an employee 976 01:01:48.590 --> 01:01:52.350 mindset. Yeah, no, that's true. Like, and I don't disagree with any of 977 01:01:52.350 --> 01:01:53.470 that because I also 978 01:01:56.110 --> 01:01:59.720 think like if you If you take Stephen 979 01:01:59.720 --> 01:02:03.400 Covey's theory of beginning with the end in mind, right? Like, if you 980 01:02:03.400 --> 01:02:07.200 look at Stephen Covey's 7 Habits book and you think of like 981 01:02:07.200 --> 01:02:10.840 at the end of your life and you're all— everyone's standing around and 982 01:02:10.840 --> 01:02:14.680 talking about your eulogy. What do you want them to 983 01:02:14.680 --> 01:02:17.960 say? Do you want them to say like he was a good provider for his 984 01:02:18.200 --> 01:02:22.000 family? Right. If that's your end goal, then you're 985 01:02:22.000 --> 01:02:25.240 right. Stay an employee, get a decent job, and just keep providing for 986 01:02:25.690 --> 01:02:29.530 your family. At whatever that level is that you feel. Now, at what 987 01:02:29.530 --> 01:02:32.250 level do you provide for them? Sure. That, you know, like we talked about a 988 01:02:32.250 --> 01:02:35.850 few minutes ago, you know, you started the bar, by the time you retire, 989 01:02:36.010 --> 01:02:39.690 you're making six-figure, whatever. That's fine again. And if that's 990 01:02:40.170 --> 01:02:43.010 your goal. But if you're at the end of the eulogy, you want people to 991 01:02:43.010 --> 01:02:46.770 be saying things like, my God, he was such a risk-taker. He 992 01:02:46.770 --> 01:02:50.570 always did like he threw caution to the wind. He wanted like, you're 993 01:02:50.570 --> 01:02:54.250 probably going to be an entrepreneur. Like, you're going to probably you're going to 994 01:02:54.330 --> 01:02:58.090 be. But to your point, and that's why I 995 01:02:58.090 --> 01:03:01.770 did— that's why I don't equate the uncertainty thing. I don't think I view 996 01:03:01.770 --> 01:03:03.690 it that same way because 997 01:03:07.050 --> 01:03:10.490 to me, the uncertainty doesn't make or break me, right? 998 01:03:10.650 --> 01:03:14.370 Like, like whatever is uncertain, to your point, I'll just go figure 999 01:03:14.370 --> 01:03:17.930 it out. Like, I'm— I've never worried 1000 01:03:18.130 --> 01:03:21.570 about— and by the way, the same— to me, the same rule applies about just 1001 01:03:21.570 --> 01:03:25.150 about anything in my life. Anything. So my daughter made an 1002 01:03:25.150 --> 01:03:28.070 observation of me when she was about 16 or 17 1003 01:03:30.470 --> 01:03:34.310 years old. She had asked me a question about a particular sport we 1004 01:03:34.710 --> 01:03:37.430 were watching, and I was showing her. I was like, no, but if you do 1005 01:03:37.430 --> 01:03:40.110 this and you look at the way they're doing that, and she goes, oh, have 1006 01:03:40.110 --> 01:03:43.310 you played this sport before? I went, no. She's like, how do you— how the 1007 01:03:43.310 --> 01:03:46.790 hell do you know, like, about— and I go, well, because if I don't know, 1008 01:03:46.790 --> 01:03:50.520 I go learn it. Like, I Education to me does 1009 01:03:50.520 --> 01:03:54.080 not happen in four walls in some high 1010 01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:57.760 school or college, university. No, education happens when you 1011 01:03:58.240 --> 01:04:01.760 seek out knowledge. Seeking out that knowledge is the 1012 01:04:01.760 --> 01:04:05.520 most important thing. So, to me, I've never viewed uncertainty 1013 01:04:05.520 --> 01:04:09.200 as a problem or a fear because if I don't 1014 01:04:09.200 --> 01:04:12.600 know it, I'll go figure it out. I'll go find out. I'll go learn it, 1015 01:04:12.600 --> 01:04:16.070 right? So, there's not a lot of problems you can throw at me that will 1016 01:04:16.380 --> 01:04:20.100 scare me. What I think, like I said, in my little 1017 01:04:20.100 --> 01:04:23.780 spiel on this topic, 1018 01:04:23.780 --> 01:04:27.580 I would be more fearful of how I would react— 1019 01:04:27.580 --> 01:04:31.380 one of the projects that you and I are involved in, if somebody 1020 01:04:31.380 --> 01:04:35.220 came to us tomorrow and said, I'll give you guys $500 million 1021 01:04:35.220 --> 01:04:38.820 for that right now, 1022 01:04:38.820 --> 01:04:42.380 that would scare me more than uncertainty. So I 1023 01:04:42.890 --> 01:04:45.290 would laugh. No, no, no, I know. No, no, I would, I would, I would 1024 01:04:45.290 --> 01:04:48.730 lie, I would laugh. It wouldn't be— I would laugh and then I'd be like, 1025 01:04:48.730 --> 01:04:52.330 uh, where's the other shoe? 1026 01:04:52.330 --> 01:04:55.290 All right, again, again, I know that. But yes, I know you're— I know your 1027 01:04:55.290 --> 01:04:57.690 point. Yeah, I know that project is not worth that right now. I just thought 1028 01:04:57.690 --> 01:05:01.370 a very large number to just— no, no, just to throw it out. Yeah, 1029 01:05:01.450 --> 01:05:05.250 but my, my thing would be, okay, so does that 1030 01:05:05.250 --> 01:05:08.970 mean that we're out? Like, we're bought? We're selling it to them? Are, are 1031 01:05:08.970 --> 01:05:12.360 we staying in? Like The fear of that success, 1032 01:05:12.360 --> 01:05:15.760 that successful conversation, that has more to do 1033 01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:20.000 with my hesitation than anything else. Because I wouldn't— interesting— 1034 01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:23.680 I would not— I'd be nervous to what the rest of the 1035 01:05:23.680 --> 01:05:27.440 people involved in that, in that project with us. Yeah, I'd be more 1036 01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:31.040 concerned about what they would do. Well, because, 1037 01:05:31.040 --> 01:05:34.720 because I can't dictate what they do. No, you can't. There's no— I have 1038 01:05:34.720 --> 01:05:38.520 no control over That's— so your uncertainty, 1039 01:05:38.520 --> 01:05:42.320 mine is the lack of control. It's control. Once you 1040 01:05:42.320 --> 01:05:45.520 get to the success point where you no longer control 1041 01:05:46.480 --> 01:05:50.320 the outcomes, that's a problem for me. And I'm not a control freak either, by 1042 01:05:50.640 --> 01:05:53.640 the way. I'm not one of those people that have to control every little detail 1043 01:05:53.640 --> 01:05:56.880 and every little aspect of every little thing in life. I'm not a 1044 01:05:57.760 --> 01:06:01.560 control freak. I'm just saying that that's what would— Well, and I 1045 01:06:01.560 --> 01:06:05.360 would be like, So 1046 01:06:05.360 --> 01:06:09.080 first, after I got past the whole, like, is this like, am I on 1047 01:06:09.080 --> 01:06:11.810 Candid Camera? Like, is there a camera around somewhere? Like, do I need to be— 1048 01:06:11.810 --> 01:06:14.880 I need to worry about Green. Is Draymond Green to pop 1049 01:06:17.520 --> 01:06:21.360 out? Sorry, if he is, I got, I got some words for you 1050 01:06:22.560 --> 01:06:26.240 too. But, um, after I got past that, my initial 1051 01:06:26.240 --> 01:06:29.970 thought would be I 1052 01:06:29.970 --> 01:06:33.770 don't care about the money. Now, I'm not— this 1053 01:06:33.770 --> 01:06:37.330 is not from a moral high horse perspective. I want to be very clear, this 1054 01:06:37.330 --> 01:06:41.050 is not from a moral high horse perspective. If somehow I 1055 01:06:41.050 --> 01:06:44.890 were able to, to, to, to make off of this, 1056 01:06:44.890 --> 01:06:48.690 this thing that we're involved in, if somehow I were able to make, I don't 1057 01:06:48.690 --> 01:06:52.370 know, $50 to $75 million after taxes, 1058 01:06:52.370 --> 01:06:55.930 that's for someone like myself in my position, in my life, what I've 1059 01:06:55.930 --> 01:06:59.550 got going on, that would indeed be at the stage of 1060 01:06:59.550 --> 01:07:02.790 life I'm at life-changing money for at least a couple 1061 01:07:03.190 --> 01:07:07.030 of generations. Nothing to sneeze at. I got to be very honest about that. So 1062 01:07:07.030 --> 01:07:10.870 it's not from a, I'm on a moral high horse perspective, 1063 01:07:10.870 --> 01:07:14.470 right? That's not what I'm talking about at 1064 01:07:14.470 --> 01:07:18.230 all. The reason I would go to, I don't care about the money is 1065 01:07:18.230 --> 01:07:21.910 because what's way more interesting to me in thinking about the people that are 1066 01:07:21.910 --> 01:07:25.750 on this project, what's way more interesting to me is the shenanigans that 1067 01:07:25.750 --> 01:07:28.910 are going to jump off because of 1068 01:07:29.470 --> 01:07:31.870 that offer. And so 1069 01:07:33.790 --> 01:07:37.550 for me, the curiosity on that is, wait a minute, wait 1070 01:07:37.950 --> 01:07:41.790 a minute. So we're not being candid camera'd. Draymond Green isn't going to show 1071 01:07:41.790 --> 01:07:45.150 up. Okay, that's cool. That's fine. Drew Carey's not going 1072 01:07:45.550 --> 01:07:49.110 to somehow run around screaming Cleveland rocks or something. Okay. All right. So this is 1073 01:07:49.110 --> 01:07:52.200 legitimate. Okay. We vetted it. It's a legitimate deal. Now let 1074 01:07:52.360 --> 01:07:55.960 me watch everybody's around the table, like in those old Westerns where like, it's all 1075 01:07:55.960 --> 01:07:59.080 like, as my wife would say, it's all just eyes and looking. Everybody's just looking. 1076 01:07:59.080 --> 01:08:01.800 All of a sudden I start looking around and everybody's seeing who's going to do 1077 01:08:01.800 --> 01:08:05.120 what, who's going to jump on what. Because for me as an entrepreneur, I go, 1078 01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:08.440 well, yeah, that's life-changing money. And even if it's not $50 to $75, let's 1079 01:08:08.600 --> 01:08:12.440 say it's $25 to $30 million. That's still a pretty good chunk of 1080 01:08:12.440 --> 01:08:16.160 change. I could think of things to do with that that will last me 1081 01:08:16.160 --> 01:08:19.970 my entire life. Because I have very small appetites. I live 1082 01:08:20.130 --> 01:08:23.730 very conservatively. Same. My point 1083 01:08:23.730 --> 01:08:27.010 is the ways in which people react for me are 1084 01:08:27.170 --> 01:08:30.930 that abyss. That's what's in the abyss of uncertainty. You 1085 01:08:31.490 --> 01:08:35.090 know, my master's degree is in conflict resolution and 1086 01:08:35.090 --> 01:08:38.890 reconciliation and negotiation and all that kind of stuff. And what drew me to all 1087 01:08:38.890 --> 01:08:42.250 of that was I am 1088 01:08:42.250 --> 01:08:45.650 a control freak. I do like to be 1089 01:08:46.130 --> 01:08:49.610 in charge, particularly when it's stressful. I get more of that, like more 1090 01:08:49.610 --> 01:08:53.370 of that pops out. And so I've had to 1091 01:08:53.370 --> 01:08:57.130 really, and I'm not a master of it, ask my wife and kids, but I've 1092 01:08:57.130 --> 01:09:00.970 had to teach myself to let go of 1093 01:09:00.970 --> 01:09:04.530 control and be okay with uncertainty 1094 01:09:04.530 --> 01:09:07.930 in that abyss. And an offer 1095 01:09:07.930 --> 01:09:11.660 like that creates massive uncertainty. It just does. 1096 01:09:11.660 --> 01:09:15.340 It creates massive uncertainty. And so the easiest thing is to just, for me anyway, 1097 01:09:15.340 --> 01:09:18.860 the easiest thing is because to your point about, well, we haven't really talked about 1098 01:09:18.860 --> 01:09:22.540 money here, but to your point about entrepreneurs, people associate entrepreneurs with a 1099 01:09:22.540 --> 01:09:25.260 lot of money because of these big exits and things like that. And the reality 1100 01:09:25.260 --> 01:09:28.980 is most entrepreneurs wind up broke. They 1101 01:09:28.980 --> 01:09:32.660 don't wind up with a huge amount of life-changing money. That is the 1102 01:09:32.660 --> 01:09:35.500 reason you read about those things in Fortune magazine or you see them on LinkedIn 1103 01:09:35.500 --> 01:09:38.760 or you see them on posts on Facebook or on Instagram or wherever it is 1104 01:09:38.760 --> 01:09:42.480 you go and look at, um, is because they are 1105 01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:46.400 rare. Most entrepreneurs wind up either broke 1106 01:09:46.400 --> 01:09:49.720 or they, or they barely break even for what they put in on 1107 01:09:49.960 --> 01:09:53.320 a 10-year project. And by the way, kids, all 1108 01:09:53.320 --> 01:09:56.720 of you listening, it is 10 years. It 1109 01:09:57.360 --> 01:10:00.720 is 10 years before you see a dime in profit as 1110 01:10:00.960 --> 01:10:04.200 an entrepreneur. 10 years to be an overnight success. Yeah, I was just gonna say, 1111 01:10:04.200 --> 01:10:07.800 and every time you hear the term overnight success, it's It's a bunch— it's crap. 1112 01:10:07.800 --> 01:10:11.120 There's no such thing. No such— every, every single, 1113 01:10:11.760 --> 01:10:15.560 every single time you see the words overnight 1114 01:10:15.560 --> 01:10:19.400 success, it's— yeah, it's because you didn't know their name yesterday, you 1115 01:10:19.400 --> 01:10:23.160 now know it today, so that's overnight. I get that. So overnight 1116 01:10:23.160 --> 01:10:27.000 success to you, but that doesn't negate the 5, 8, 10 1117 01:10:27.000 --> 01:10:30.240 years that they've just put into their blood, sweat, and tears to build to the 1118 01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:33.880 point where yesterday happened. Like, right, well, and 1119 01:10:33.880 --> 01:10:37.260 that's— and that's part of what Sinclair sort skips over because 1120 01:10:37.260 --> 01:10:40.780 the social reformer doesn't put any value on that. Like 1121 01:10:40.780 --> 01:10:44.460 the first part of Oil, if you read the first 1122 01:10:44.700 --> 01:10:48.340 few chapters, one of the points that he definitely is trying to build as 1123 01:10:48.340 --> 01:10:50.460 he's building this 1124 01:10:52.500 --> 01:10:56.140 character of J. Arnold Ross, he's 1125 01:10:56.140 --> 01:10:59.500 building him into a character where 1126 01:10:59.500 --> 01:11:02.900 he invites corruption. He's looking 1127 01:11:02.900 --> 01:11:06.680 for a shortcut. He's resentful that the government is taking 1128 01:11:06.680 --> 01:11:10.440 his money and not spending it correctly on the roads. He wants to drive 1129 01:11:10.440 --> 01:11:13.880 as fast as he could possibly drive, and he wants to run over everybody to 1130 01:11:13.880 --> 01:11:17.720 get to where he's going. He understands the value to 1131 01:11:17.720 --> 01:11:21.160 us, to our point earlier about education. He understands the value of education because he 1132 01:11:21.160 --> 01:11:24.720 wants his son to be educated, but he himself does not need to be educated 1133 01:11:24.720 --> 01:11:28.160 because he knows everything he needs to know about pulling oil up out of 1134 01:11:29.640 --> 01:11:33.480 the ground. He is framed as a person who will bribe 1135 01:11:33.480 --> 01:11:37.000 an official, a local official— not framed. He is a person who will bribe a 1136 01:11:37.400 --> 01:11:40.760 local official to get a shortcut to make 1137 01:11:41.160 --> 01:11:44.880 things move. And the local official is the one that is the victim of this 1138 01:11:44.880 --> 01:11:48.480 bribery, not Mr. Ross, of the system that has 1139 01:11:48.480 --> 01:11:52.280 been created around him that encourages the need for bribery. And 1140 01:11:53.000 --> 01:11:56.400 so Sinclair definitely takes a position that is in opposition 1141 01:11:56.400 --> 01:12:00.120 to the entrepreneur. And by the way, I think this is what attracted Paul Thomas 1142 01:12:00.120 --> 01:12:03.780 Anderson initially to There Will Be Blood, because we've always had a problem in 1143 01:12:04.340 --> 01:12:08.020 this country with people who build things and 1144 01:12:08.020 --> 01:12:10.900 have that ruthless vision. We've always had a problem 1145 01:12:12.660 --> 01:12:15.700 with that. Um, and I think the reason why is it genuinely 1146 01:12:16.340 --> 01:12:20.100 scares people who, quite frankly, to my point earlier, have 1147 01:12:20.100 --> 01:12:22.340 to get up and go to work for 1148 01:12:24.100 --> 01:12:27.860 somebody else. It's, it's to your point about your 1149 01:12:27.860 --> 01:12:31.200 point early that you made about You know, who do you want at your eulogizing 1150 01:12:31.200 --> 01:12:34.360 you when you're dead, right? He was a great provider. I think most people are 1151 01:12:34.360 --> 01:12:37.800 fine with that. I think 99% of the 99% of people who have employee 1152 01:12:37.800 --> 01:12:41.600 mindset are absolutely fine with the great provider at the end 1153 01:12:41.600 --> 01:12:45.360 of their lives sort of eulogy. I think the people 1154 01:12:45.360 --> 01:12:47.600 with that mindset are 1155 01:12:48.720 --> 01:12:52.560 absolutely stone scared of the 1156 01:12:52.560 --> 01:12:55.980 person who was ruthlessly focused like this 1157 01:12:55.980 --> 01:12:57.540 General Ross 1158 01:13:02.420 --> 01:13:06.020 character, or, um, I'm gonna say a few names, or, uh, the 1159 01:13:06.020 --> 01:13:09.380 Mark Zuckerberg type, or the Elon Musk type, 1160 01:13:10.419 --> 01:13:13.140 or the, um, the Henry Ford 1161 01:13:14.180 --> 01:13:18.020 type, right? Um, or any of the folks who did build the big 1162 01:13:18.020 --> 01:13:21.770 oil businesses, the Andrew Carnegie types. I think those 1163 01:13:21.770 --> 01:13:25.410 people Like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, these guys started working when they were 8, 9, 1164 01:13:25.410 --> 01:13:28.570 10 years old. They didn't care about school. They 1165 01:13:28.570 --> 01:13:31.850 were ruthlessly focused on business and 1166 01:13:32.410 --> 01:13:35.850 making money. And they did not lose 1167 01:13:36.090 --> 01:13:39.930 the North Star of that because they didn't care about the provider 1168 01:13:39.930 --> 01:13:43.170 thing at the end of their lives. They cared about— and there's another great scene 1169 01:13:43.170 --> 01:13:46.810 in There Will Be Blood. I'm going back to the movie here for 1170 01:13:46.810 --> 01:13:50.170 just a second. There's a great scene where Daniel Day-Lewis is sitting with a man 1171 01:13:50.170 --> 01:13:53.760 who claims to be his brother. And he's actually a grifter trying to 1172 01:13:54.400 --> 01:13:58.200 hustle him. But before he finds out that he's a grifter, they're 1173 01:13:58.200 --> 01:14:02.000 sitting by a fire outside on an oil field. 1174 01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:04.600 You know, he's pulling oil out of the ground or something like that. Or maybe 1175 01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:07.839 it was a home. I can't remember the specifics of the 1176 01:14:09.480 --> 01:14:13.040 scene. But Daniel Day-Lewis has this line and it is the line 1177 01:14:13.040 --> 01:14:16.880 of the entrepreneur. He says, actually, I should look 1178 01:14:17.130 --> 01:14:19.930 it up. I should look it up because I don't want to miss it. It's 1179 01:14:19.930 --> 01:14:23.570 actually a really good line. And it defines what entrepreneurship 1180 01:14:23.570 --> 01:14:27.050 is for the entrepreneur, but it defines it in such a way 1181 01:14:28.490 --> 01:14:31.850 that it, it, it sets it up as being 1182 01:14:31.850 --> 01:14:35.570 scary and horrific to someone of an employee mindset, 1183 01:14:35.570 --> 01:14:39.050 right? He says, yep, there it is. There Will Be 1184 01:14:39.130 --> 01:14:42.730 Blood. Yes. Beautiful. Just typed it in. It came right up. Look at 1185 01:14:44.580 --> 01:14:47.540 you, IMDb. Goose credits, 1186 01:14:48.180 --> 01:14:51.940 storyline, taglines, quotes. Here we go. And I'm not getting into, by 1187 01:14:51.940 --> 01:14:55.700 the way, the religious elements of the book. I'm not getting into the 1188 01:14:55.700 --> 01:14:58.819 parts about higher education. Those are some of those are explored in the movie as 1189 01:14:58.819 --> 01:15:01.700 well. I'm just focusing on 1190 01:15:02.500 --> 01:15:06.020 the entrepreneurship. This is the variation of it. But it's at the end 1191 01:15:07.780 --> 01:15:10.330 of his speech, he says basically, There 1192 01:15:12.250 --> 01:15:15.930 are times when I see people and I see nothing worth liking. I 1193 01:15:15.930 --> 01:15:19.490 want to earn enough money where I can get away from everyone. I 1194 01:15:19.490 --> 01:15:22.930 have this thing inside of me that doesn't want other people, and 1195 01:15:22.930 --> 01:15:26.690 now I'm paraphrasing, but doesn't want other people, doesn't want other men to 1196 01:15:26.690 --> 01:15:30.370 succeed. Daniel Day-Lewis says this, and I think that that's the 1197 01:15:30.370 --> 01:15:34.090 way the employee, a person with an employee mindset, looks at a person with 1198 01:15:34.090 --> 01:15:37.300 an entrepreneurship mindset. What they fail to understand 1199 01:15:37.940 --> 01:15:41.180 is that, and this is the Hollywoodization a little bit of this idea, what they 1200 01:15:41.180 --> 01:15:44.740 fail to understand is that many 1201 01:15:44.820 --> 01:15:48.500 entrepreneurs, yes, don't want other folks to succeed, but just as 1202 01:15:48.500 --> 01:15:52.180 many do want others to succeed, and that's why they're leaders. They want 1203 01:15:52.180 --> 01:15:56.020 to bring people along. 1204 01:15:56.020 --> 01:15:59.460 And the challenge they have is 1205 01:16:00.510 --> 01:16:04.230 other people I'm going to paraphrase from Michael Jordan in The Last Dance. Other people 1206 01:16:04.230 --> 01:16:07.990 don't want to be led. Michael Jordan said most infamously in The Last 1207 01:16:07.990 --> 01:16:11.590 Dance, he said, was I a horrible— the interviewer 1208 01:16:11.950 --> 01:16:15.630 asked him, people call you a tyrant, right? 1209 01:16:15.630 --> 01:16:19.390 And Michael Jordan goes, maybe I was a tyrant. 1210 01:16:19.390 --> 01:16:23.150 Maybe I was. Maybe I led people where they didn't want to go. 1211 01:16:23.150 --> 01:16:26.870 Maybe I did get up into them, right? Maybe I did force them to do 1212 01:16:26.870 --> 01:16:30.160 things that they didn't want to do. But you know what? That's the way I 1213 01:16:30.160 --> 01:16:33.680 played the game. You don't want to play the game that way? Fine. Don't play 1214 01:16:33.680 --> 01:16:37.400 it that way. But like, you're just saying these things because you've never 1215 01:16:38.280 --> 01:16:40.040 won anything. And to Michael 1216 01:16:42.840 --> 01:16:46.560 Jordan's point, we are a results-oriented society. I've been saying 1217 01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:50.400 this since college. We can talk all we want about process, and we love to 1218 01:16:50.400 --> 01:16:54.250 talk about process. The result is what we actually like. This is 1219 01:16:54.250 --> 01:16:57.930 why Tom Brady— no one's ever going to step over Tom Brady. 1220 01:16:57.930 --> 01:17:01.570 No one's ever— God bless you, LeBron. No one's ever going to step over 1221 01:17:01.570 --> 01:17:05.250 Michael Jordan. It's not going to happen. It's just not. Not in my 1222 01:17:06.290 --> 01:17:09.729 lifetime anyway. Because the result is the thing that 1223 01:17:10.050 --> 01:17:13.850 we value. Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent. We'll talk a lot all day about 1224 01:17:13.850 --> 01:17:16.330 process, but the result is the thing that we value, and it's the thing we 1225 01:17:16.330 --> 01:17:19.730 put money on. And entrepreneurs produce results. But along 1226 01:17:20.300 --> 01:17:24.140 the way, They want to hire A-players to help produce those results. And when all 1227 01:17:24.140 --> 01:17:27.100 they see are players from their perspective that 1228 01:17:28.060 --> 01:17:31.860 aren't A-players, they really do struggle with how do I raise these people up? 1229 01:17:31.860 --> 01:17:35.460 That's what Steve Jobs struggled with. How do I raise these people up? That's what 1230 01:17:35.460 --> 01:17:38.460 Michael Jordan struggled with. How do I raise these other players 1231 01:17:39.180 --> 01:17:42.620 up? Right? So there's a number of different threads that come together here. But at 1232 01:17:42.620 --> 01:17:45.700 the end of it, I think there is a horror that a person has who 1233 01:17:45.700 --> 01:17:49.450 comes from that employee mindset. When they look at that entrepreneurship mindset, when it's 1234 01:17:49.450 --> 01:17:53.090 actually laid bare for them. Yeah, there's also— 1235 01:17:53.090 --> 01:17:56.770 I think there's, there's, there's, there— I think there's a lot more. 1236 01:17:56.770 --> 01:18:00.170 I think there's a lot to it as well from a different vantage point. Like, 1237 01:18:00.170 --> 01:18:03.730 I also think that there's, like, there's this 1238 01:18:03.730 --> 01:18:07.370 weird, like, misnomer that comes with entrepreneurship. 1239 01:18:07.370 --> 01:18:11.170 Like, people think, oh, you own your own company, you must be wealthy. Like, 1240 01:18:11.170 --> 01:18:14.100 they, like, they immediately think that you're in a 1241 01:18:14.500 --> 01:18:17.780 different financial status just because you own your own company or you 1242 01:18:18.340 --> 01:18:20.420 have a— And I'm like, 1243 01:18:22.260 --> 01:18:25.980 listen, people, to your point a little while ago, it's not the case. 1244 01:18:25.980 --> 01:18:29.379 Like a very good majority of these people are never going to make it. They're 1245 01:18:29.379 --> 01:18:33.220 not wealthy to begin with and they're not going to be wealthy afterwards. It's not 1246 01:18:33.220 --> 01:18:36.900 about wealth. It's about building something that 1247 01:18:37.580 --> 01:18:41.090 you can be proud of. But to your point 1248 01:18:43.570 --> 01:18:47.410 about entrepreneurs, not hoping for success for other entrepreneurs. I 1249 01:18:47.650 --> 01:18:51.330 think you're— I think in today's landscape, that's actually more 1250 01:18:51.330 --> 01:18:55.130 likely than not. I think entrepreneurs want to see other 1251 01:18:55.130 --> 01:18:58.730 entrepreneurs win. I think that's a very thing. Now, but, but I think there's a 1252 01:18:58.730 --> 01:19:02.050 caveat to it. I think they want them to be in different industries than 1253 01:19:03.970 --> 01:19:07.070 they're in. Okay. So what you're talking about is, is the I call 1254 01:19:08.350 --> 01:19:11.750 it the— it's the thing that happened in the 1255 01:19:12.350 --> 01:19:15.390 NBA post-Kobe. So there's the Michael Jordan era, there's the Kobe era, and now we 1256 01:19:15.390 --> 01:19:18.430 live in the LeBron era. And in the 1257 01:19:18.830 --> 01:19:22.549 LeBron era, everybody's friends, everybody sub-tweets each other, 1258 01:19:22.549 --> 01:19:25.630 everybody's friends on Instagram, nobody's trying to dunk on 1259 01:19:26.790 --> 01:19:30.030 each other. We're all going to be collaborative together. We're all going to high-five and 1260 01:19:30.430 --> 01:19:34.020 jump, and maybe I might beat you by 1 point or whatever. 1261 01:19:34.020 --> 01:19:37.780 The thing that, and tell me if 1262 01:19:38.020 --> 01:19:41.700 I'm wrong, I think it's also happening in entrepreneurship and I think it's because of 1263 01:19:41.700 --> 01:19:44.980 the internet and social media has allowed for globalization of 1264 01:19:46.020 --> 01:19:49.740 this. But when you are a person who has that Jordan 1265 01:19:49.740 --> 01:19:53.340 or Kobe level in entrepreneurship or 1266 01:19:53.340 --> 01:19:57.140 the J. Arnold Ross level, Daniel 1267 01:19:57.140 --> 01:20:00.860 Plainview level of killer instinct. I don't think there's a place 1268 01:20:00.860 --> 01:20:04.580 for you anymore. I think you get run out of town. I 1269 01:20:04.580 --> 01:20:08.060 think you get called all kinds of names. I think people accuse 1270 01:20:08.220 --> 01:20:11.740 you of, to Upton Sinclair's point, bribery, grifting, manipulating 1271 01:20:11.740 --> 01:20:15.540 the system, whatever. Like, I think, so Mark Zuckerberg's a good example. 1272 01:20:15.540 --> 01:20:19.100 I look at him and yeah, he's a weaselly guy for sure. And yes, 1273 01:20:19.100 --> 01:20:22.780 he's a, he's a whatever in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It's fine. I'm a thing in 1274 01:20:23.020 --> 01:20:25.830 Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Mark can come find me anytime. We can work it out on the 1275 01:20:25.830 --> 01:20:29.590 mats. Tell Mark where I live. It's fine. Actually, he could find it out anyway. 1276 01:20:29.590 --> 01:20:33.270 I got a Facebook account. He can find me. I'm not worried 1277 01:20:33.270 --> 01:20:37.110 about it because here's the thing. I think Mark has that thing inside of 1278 01:20:37.110 --> 01:20:40.950 him that Daniel Plainview has. I don't think he likes other people. 1279 01:20:40.950 --> 01:20:44.230 I don't think he wants to roll and subtweet like LeBron wants to roll and 1280 01:20:44.230 --> 01:20:47.070 subtweet with everybody and maybe kind of make a $100 million business on the side 1281 01:20:47.070 --> 01:20:50.470 and maybe be a celebrity too. And he wants to do all these other things 1282 01:20:50.950 --> 01:20:54.730 and be— No. Killer instinct. He doesn't 1283 01:20:55.130 --> 01:20:58.490 have it, and I know he doesn't have it, and he knows he doesn't 1284 01:20:59.690 --> 01:21:03.170 have it. Jordan had the killer instinct. Jordan would roll around 1285 01:21:03.170 --> 01:21:06.930 with John Starks in the offseason, and that was fine. They would 1286 01:21:06.930 --> 01:21:10.250 go gamble in Vegas or whatever, but when it got on 1287 01:21:12.890 --> 01:21:14.850 the court, he was going to touch his kid. He was going to cut your 1288 01:21:14.850 --> 01:21:16.410 heart out, and then he was going to go to work 1289 01:21:18.510 --> 01:21:22.230 on you. And that's what I see happening in entrepreneurship. Or maybe I'm 1290 01:21:22.230 --> 01:21:25.270 wrong. No, no, I think you're— like I said, I think you're right to a 1291 01:21:25.470 --> 01:21:29.310 degree. But again, I think it's like— and we've seen it, right? Like, so 1292 01:21:29.310 --> 01:21:33.150 you and I have been judges on pitch competitions and stuff like that, 1293 01:21:34.110 --> 01:21:37.870 right? So, and you're right. It's almost like this, 1294 01:21:38.110 --> 01:21:40.950 like they're in the room together and they're like, oh my God, you did so 1295 01:21:40.950 --> 01:21:44.510 well. It's good for you. And I'm like, I remember, I'm telling you 1296 01:21:44.510 --> 01:21:48.180 my first company, I didn't give a rat's, 1297 01:21:48.180 --> 01:21:51.900 you know what, about any other— like, no, I wanted to 1298 01:21:51.900 --> 01:21:55.020 go and succeed and I didn't care if I stepped over 1299 01:21:56.860 --> 01:22:00.460 somebody. Right. So, to your point, I do think it takes a certain type 1300 01:22:00.620 --> 01:22:04.220 of person to be that person for sure. Like, 1301 01:22:05.540 --> 01:22:09.380 but I also think that you're right with the whole globalization of things because the 1302 01:22:09.380 --> 01:22:12.480 Olympics was a good example of this. Too. Think about this for 1303 01:22:13.360 --> 01:22:17.120 a second. The US hockey team just won gold. US men's hockey team hasn't won 1304 01:22:17.120 --> 01:22:20.840 gold since 1980. 46 years, they finally won gold again. 1305 01:22:20.840 --> 01:22:24.440 They come back to the US, now they're back in the NHL. The 1306 01:22:24.440 --> 01:22:28.240 first time around, players on opposite 1307 01:22:28.240 --> 01:22:31.880 benches were pulling each other onto the ice to wave to the crowd. Now 1308 01:22:31.880 --> 01:22:34.880 it's a week later and they're basically checking each other through 1309 01:22:35.840 --> 01:22:38.640 the boards, right? Like, it's like they don't care that they were on the same 1310 01:22:38.640 --> 01:22:42.350 team a week 2 weeks ago. That's all done. Like, that's all 1311 01:22:42.350 --> 01:22:45.830 done. We high-fived each other, we hugged it out, we're good. Now guess what? You 1312 01:22:45.830 --> 01:22:48.950 have a different color jersey on than I do. I'm gonna knock your teeth out 1313 01:22:48.950 --> 01:22:52.790 because that's how, that's how hockey is. That's just— but, but, 1314 01:22:52.790 --> 01:22:56.390 and I think entrepreneurs— I, but again, I think to your point, 1315 01:22:56.390 --> 01:23:00.030 like, that, that is a good representation of what you're talking about in 1316 01:23:00.030 --> 01:23:03.630 the entrepreneur landscape right now, where if there's, if there's 5 people in 1317 01:23:03.630 --> 01:23:07.410 a pitch comp— oh, better yet, And I'm not gonna 1318 01:23:08.130 --> 01:23:11.930 single out the— I can't even say that word because you'll know exactly who 1319 01:23:11.930 --> 01:23:15.610 I'm talking about. We recently watched 1320 01:23:15.610 --> 01:23:19.290 a group of entrepreneurs pitch to us 1321 01:23:19.290 --> 01:23:23.130 that are very kumbaya. Oh yeah. Okay, 1322 01:23:23.130 --> 01:23:26.730 they're very kumbaya. And I know for damn 1323 01:23:26.730 --> 01:23:30.530 certain that there's one or two of those people that should be killers. And 1324 01:23:30.530 --> 01:23:34.170 if they were killers, they would be successful the day they stepped out 1325 01:23:34.410 --> 01:23:38.250 of college. Yep. Like, or the day they stepped out of the environment 1326 01:23:38.250 --> 01:23:42.090 that they were in or whatever, wherever they are right 1327 01:23:42.410 --> 01:23:46.090 this minute, they're going to be successful. They've got to stop 1328 01:23:46.090 --> 01:23:49.890 the kumbaya BS because if they turn on 1329 01:23:49.890 --> 01:23:53.130 that killer instinct, there's at least 2 of them that I think 1330 01:23:54.170 --> 01:23:57.850 would be wildly successful right out the gate. But they have 1331 01:23:57.850 --> 01:24:01.390 got to stop looking at their peers 1332 01:24:01.790 --> 01:24:05.510 as peers and start looking at them as people they can step over 1333 01:24:05.510 --> 01:24:09.350 to get where they want to go. So I will tell you that 1334 01:24:09.350 --> 01:24:12.870 the level of smothering that occurs 1335 01:24:12.870 --> 01:24:16.550 of that instinct from other people 1336 01:24:16.550 --> 01:24:20.390 is a dynamic that I've experienced myself. So 1337 01:24:20.390 --> 01:24:23.950 I'll tell a small story here. 20-some-odd years ago, I was in 1338 01:24:25.160 --> 01:24:28.600 art school. I was not a great artist. It doesn't matter. I went to art 1339 01:24:28.600 --> 01:24:31.680 school because I loved art. I'd done a few art projects, blah, blah, blah. It's 1340 01:24:31.680 --> 01:24:34.600 something I've been doing ever since I was like 10, 11, 12 years old. Decided 1341 01:24:34.600 --> 01:24:36.880 I was going to go to college for it. By the way, I paid for 1342 01:24:36.880 --> 01:24:40.520 my own school out of my own pocket. Didn't take on 1343 01:24:40.840 --> 01:24:44.600 any loans, whatever. Okay. 1344 01:24:44.600 --> 01:24:48.360 In art school, I got into so much trouble when I would say 1345 01:24:49.400 --> 01:24:53.124 to people, and I was a little bit older than all these folks, who were 1346 01:24:53.176 --> 01:24:56.850 like 18, 19 years old, but I would say to them, 1347 01:24:56.850 --> 01:25:00.610 we're in competition against each other. We're 1348 01:25:00.690 --> 01:25:04.170 in competition for an A. 1349 01:25:04.170 --> 01:25:07.810 We're in competition for the professor's attention and 1350 01:25:08.610 --> 01:25:12.410 good critique. We're in competition for who can put 1351 01:25:12.410 --> 01:25:16.170 up the best, the best 1352 01:25:16.170 --> 01:25:19.890 display of our art. And quite frankly, in some cases, we're in competition for 1353 01:25:19.890 --> 01:25:23.650 who can sell the most art. And do you know what the 1354 01:25:23.650 --> 01:25:26.930 feedback was that I would get from people? They would say, oh, hey, son, you 1355 01:25:27.970 --> 01:25:31.650 don't understand. We're just all here hanging out. I remember one— We're building a community. 1356 01:25:31.650 --> 01:25:35.010 We're building a community. We're not in competition with each other. We're not in competition 1357 01:25:35.010 --> 01:25:37.970 with each other. We can't be in competition with each other. I remember one person 1358 01:25:37.970 --> 01:25:41.210 who I considered a very dear friend at the time, he said, we can't be 1359 01:25:41.210 --> 01:25:44.450 in competition, man. We're like, we're like just— And he was sort 1360 01:25:44.850 --> 01:25:48.690 of like a little bit like the dude in The Big 1361 01:25:48.690 --> 01:25:52.110 Lebowski. He was a little bit like that guy. He was like, dude, we're 1362 01:25:52.110 --> 01:25:55.510 just, Like hanging out, man, just vibing, 1363 01:25:55.990 --> 01:25:59.630 man. And I learned from that interaction 1364 01:25:59.630 --> 01:26:02.070 that the people around you smother 1365 01:26:03.510 --> 01:26:07.110 the instinct. And so you could hold it, hold it 1366 01:26:07.910 --> 01:26:11.750 like a— I learned for me, I have to hold it like a, like 1367 01:26:11.830 --> 01:26:15.430 a weapon, right? And I have to figure out where 1368 01:26:15.430 --> 01:26:19.160 I can deploy it. Either to cut 1369 01:26:19.160 --> 01:26:22.800 those people off, right, or to, 1370 01:26:22.800 --> 01:26:26.080 in some cases, like in art school, try to ruthlessly 1371 01:26:26.640 --> 01:26:30.240 crush them, or to combine it with a talent 1372 01:26:30.480 --> 01:26:34.040 and skill that they may not possess because 1373 01:26:34.040 --> 01:26:37.760 they're all kumbaya over here, but I'm going by a 1374 01:26:38.800 --> 01:26:41.800 different metric. And the close of that story is, when I was in art school, 1375 01:26:41.800 --> 01:26:45.530 I put on my Bachelor of Fine 1376 01:26:45.530 --> 01:26:49.210 Arts printmaking show. I sold almost every single one of my prints that was in 1377 01:26:49.690 --> 01:26:53.290 that show. Almost every single one of the other folks who 1378 01:26:53.290 --> 01:26:57.090 was in a, in that printmaking program struggled to sell a print. 1379 01:26:57.090 --> 01:27:00.170 And these are all people that said it wasn't a competition and they were just 1380 01:27:01.290 --> 01:27:05.130 hanging out. And I went, I understand business and you don't, but 1381 01:27:05.130 --> 01:27:08.980 you just told me it wasn't a competition. You have a good day. 1382 01:27:09.140 --> 01:27:12.980 I win and I clear the deck. Right? And 1383 01:27:13.620 --> 01:27:17.140 that's where— and like, I've never lost that thing, but I learned, and 1384 01:27:17.140 --> 01:27:19.380 even through entrepreneurship, I learned 1385 01:27:21.380 --> 01:27:25.220 like, okay, this is where I have to navigate it because the smothering from 1386 01:27:25.220 --> 01:27:28.740 others, once you reveal that, is so 1387 01:27:29.060 --> 01:27:32.780 intense sometimes that it can almost smother the fire out. It can almost smother the 1388 01:27:32.780 --> 01:27:36.480 killer instinct out if you don't have it well developed enough. Well, or, 1389 01:27:36.480 --> 01:27:40.240 or you redirect it into— so there's something to be said on the flip side 1390 01:27:40.800 --> 01:27:44.560 of this that you go from, 1391 01:27:45.120 --> 01:27:48.800 from competing to mentoring, right? Like, that's a, that's 1392 01:27:48.800 --> 01:27:52.360 a good use of that creative energy. So you get to a certain point 1393 01:27:52.360 --> 01:27:56.160 where you're successful enough that you don't need to compete with anybody anymore, but 1394 01:27:56.160 --> 01:28:00.000 now you're gonna redirect your— that same competitiveness 1395 01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:03.840 goes into your mentorship. Which, by the way, so in one 1396 01:28:03.840 --> 01:28:06.720 of those conversations with that group of people that we were— that I was just 1397 01:28:07.120 --> 01:28:10.560 talking to, first thing I said to this 1398 01:28:10.800 --> 01:28:14.600 gentleman was, I'm not your parent. I'm not, I'm not your— I'm not your 1399 01:28:14.600 --> 01:28:18.400 uncle, your brother, your mother. I'm not your family member. I'm not a 1400 01:28:18.480 --> 01:28:22.160 college professor. My job is not here to go rah-rah, you're the 1401 01:28:22.160 --> 01:28:24.480 best. I'm gonna tell you like it is. I'm going to tell you what's wrong 1402 01:28:24.480 --> 01:28:27.000 with your stuff, and if you don't like it, you 1403 01:28:32.760 --> 01:28:35.520 don't like I would have appreciated that when I was his age. 1404 01:28:36.760 --> 01:28:39.560 He did too, by the way, at that point. I think at that point 1405 01:28:41.040 --> 01:28:44.360 I saw something change in his eye. I saw 1406 01:28:45.400 --> 01:28:49.200 him go— and I asked him, I said, "So what do you do next? 1407 01:28:49.200 --> 01:28:53.040 What you do next is the most important decision you're ever going to 1408 01:28:53.040 --> 01:28:56.880 make. If you decide that what you're building right now is 1409 01:28:56.880 --> 01:29:00.600 never going to be a company, then what are you 1410 01:29:00.600 --> 01:29:04.200 doing? Then this conversation is irrelevant unless you really want to 1411 01:29:04.440 --> 01:29:08.160 make this into something. So you have to decide, 1412 01:29:08.160 --> 01:29:11.400 is this real or is it not? Are you playing around with this or are 1413 01:29:11.400 --> 01:29:13.600 you not? And if you're going to make it real, then you're going to listen 1414 01:29:13.600 --> 01:29:17.200 to some good advice and you're going to start treating this 1415 01:29:17.200 --> 01:29:19.560 like it's real. Do we have 1416 01:29:21.620 --> 01:29:25.060 to start So I do believe that that instinct, and then we'll move on, we'll 1417 01:29:25.060 --> 01:29:28.340 sort of close here. I do believe that that instinct exists inside 1418 01:29:28.500 --> 01:29:31.940 of leaders, inside of entrepreneurs. I almost repeat 1419 01:29:32.260 --> 01:29:35.820 myself there, athletes, but I also believe it exists 1420 01:29:35.820 --> 01:29:39.460 inside of creatives, 1421 01:29:39.540 --> 01:29:43.220 journalists, almost every sort 1422 01:29:43.540 --> 01:29:47.300 of area of life, modern life even, or postmodern 1423 01:29:47.300 --> 01:29:50.620 life. Where anyone can either make a buck 1424 01:29:50.620 --> 01:29:54.220 or gain status or increase their class, there's going 1425 01:29:54.900 --> 01:29:58.460 to be competition. Now, I think 1426 01:29:58.460 --> 01:30:01.860 that instinct comes out in a few different places. I think 1427 01:30:01.860 --> 01:30:05.260 the social smothering is huge, but I think it comes out in different places in 1428 01:30:05.260 --> 01:30:08.100 different ways because that's the human spirit that you can't 1429 01:30:09.300 --> 01:30:12.780 snuff out. How do we— this is a core question, and this is why I'm 1430 01:30:12.780 --> 01:30:16.590 a big fan of entrepreneurship in schools, entrepreneurship programs in 1431 01:30:16.590 --> 01:30:18.830 schools, because I don't— we got rid 1432 01:30:19.950 --> 01:30:21.950 of gym. Ambassador schools don't have 1433 01:30:24.390 --> 01:30:27.470 gym anymore. It's, it's nuts. 1434 01:30:28.110 --> 01:30:31.910 Sports is a whole other kind of thing. I mean, the NFL even is 1435 01:30:31.910 --> 01:30:35.630 leaning into flag football. I mean, come on, people. 1436 01:30:35.630 --> 01:30:39.310 Right? Sports is a whole other kind of thing. I mean, I coach 1437 01:30:39.310 --> 01:30:43.030 my, my, my kids' soccer team, right? Oh, assistant coach my 1438 01:30:43.030 --> 01:30:46.620 kids' soccer team right now. And one of the principles 1439 01:30:46.620 --> 01:30:50.220 of the organization that the team is under is that everybody 1440 01:30:50.220 --> 01:30:53.900 plays and everybody has a good time, but we don't keep score. And I literally 1441 01:30:53.900 --> 01:30:57.580 told the director of the program a couple of weeks ago, not literally, I told 1442 01:30:57.580 --> 01:31:01.380 the director of the program a couple of weeks ago, the kids all keep score. 1443 01:31:01.380 --> 01:31:04.780 They all know. Who 1444 01:31:04.780 --> 01:31:08.340 are we fooling? Yeah. You're not 1445 01:31:08.420 --> 01:31:11.580 fooling me. I'm keeping score. You're not fooling them. They're 1446 01:31:13.660 --> 01:31:17.420 keeping score. Okay, anyway, we, we have 1447 01:31:17.420 --> 01:31:21.220 a globalized society that flattens, 1448 01:31:21.220 --> 01:31:24.940 uh, the competitive spirit a little bit into like 1449 01:31:25.980 --> 01:31:29.500 this weird democratic globalized 1450 01:31:29.900 --> 01:31:33.540 mash of meaninglessness, right? Where the nail 1451 01:31:33.540 --> 01:31:37.350 that sticks up Sometimes by the algorithm gets 1452 01:31:37.350 --> 01:31:40.630 pounded down, but then weirdly enough, all the nails are trying to stick up and 1453 01:31:40.630 --> 01:31:43.670 try to be noticed because, you know, everybody wants to be 1454 01:31:45.190 --> 01:31:48.630 noticed, right? Um, and then of course we have the, the, the 1455 01:31:48.630 --> 01:31:51.670 areas where competition has always existed, which 1456 01:31:52.790 --> 01:31:56.470 is in, uh, reproduction, sexual competition, um, competition 1457 01:31:56.470 --> 01:32:00.310 between women over men, between men over women that has not gone away. And then 1458 01:32:00.310 --> 01:32:03.950 that will never go away in our lifetimes. So my question 1459 01:32:05.070 --> 01:32:08.750 here is, how do we, other than entrepreneurship 1460 01:32:08.750 --> 01:32:11.710 programs in schools, huh, or bringing back shop 1461 01:32:12.510 --> 01:32:16.030 and gym, how do we provide opportunities 1462 01:32:16.270 --> 01:32:19.550 for people at a younger and younger age to access that 1463 01:32:19.870 --> 01:32:23.430 killer instinct and really, for lack of a better idea, 1464 01:32:23.430 --> 01:32:27.230 start to separate themselves from other folks? Because right now athletics 1465 01:32:27.230 --> 01:32:30.600 is really the only place where that can actually occur. And athletics 1466 01:32:31.160 --> 01:32:33.480 is even gradually being winnowed down and 1467 01:32:35.000 --> 01:32:37.960 flattened out. I don't know. I think, I think there's something to be said 1468 01:32:38.920 --> 01:32:42.120 about like, like even like, so if you think about like, if you think of 1469 01:32:42.120 --> 01:32:45.720 the, or the stories of like Mark Cuban and guys like that 1470 01:32:45.960 --> 01:32:49.760 who like, listen, I was an entrepreneur at 12 years or 10 years old. 1471 01:32:49.760 --> 01:32:53.480 Like I went out and got a paper route and when I figured out I 1472 01:32:53.480 --> 01:32:57.130 could get like deliver more papers by talking my buddy 1473 01:32:57.130 --> 01:32:59.370 into doing one street for me and I'll give him back, you know what I 1474 01:32:59.370 --> 01:33:03.010 mean? Like, so like, but to your point, there's 1475 01:33:03.010 --> 01:33:06.810 no way to encourage that, right? Like there's no way, like, 1476 01:33:06.970 --> 01:33:10.650 and I, by the way, I still firmly, firmly, firmly believe 1477 01:33:10.650 --> 01:33:13.490 in a very old 1478 01:33:14.610 --> 01:33:18.250 statement that necessity is the mother of invention, right? Like, 1479 01:33:18.250 --> 01:33:21.820 so if you find, Again, 1480 01:33:22.220 --> 01:33:25.820 I think to your point about the globalization and the 1481 01:33:25.820 --> 01:33:29.260 socializing, we socialize our problems now too, right? So 1482 01:33:29.580 --> 01:33:33.020 poor people are universally poor. So 1483 01:33:33.740 --> 01:33:36.620 we're now like we're— and by 1484 01:33:37.500 --> 01:33:41.260 the way, I know this from experience because I grew up very poor. 1485 01:33:41.980 --> 01:33:45.540 So like, but like, but when I was a kid, nobody paid attention to 1486 01:33:45.540 --> 01:33:49.220 the poor neighborhoods. Nobody. Except 1487 01:33:49.220 --> 01:33:52.580 the police departments for all the wrong reasons, but that's— we won't get into that. 1488 01:33:52.660 --> 01:33:56.180 But like, but nobody, nobody cared. Like nobody, nobody took, nobody 1489 01:33:56.340 --> 01:34:00.180 took interest in ideas coming from those poor neighborhoods or 1490 01:34:00.180 --> 01:34:03.940 any. But now even the poor neighborhoods have social 1491 01:34:04.180 --> 01:34:07.900 media, so you could turn yourself into an influencer in your, in your 1492 01:34:07.900 --> 01:34:11.500 bedroom of a studio apartment that you're, that you're, you know, 6 people 1493 01:34:11.500 --> 01:34:14.740 are living in. Like, you know what I mean? Like 1494 01:34:14.740 --> 01:34:18.460 So, we're globalizing and socializing even that part of 1495 01:34:18.460 --> 01:34:22.020 our lives. So, it's very— I think it's very difficult to 1496 01:34:22.020 --> 01:34:25.420 find those needles in the haystack because to your point about not every entrepreneur is 1497 01:34:25.420 --> 01:34:27.820 going to be successful, not every idea is going to be 1498 01:34:29.100 --> 01:34:31.500 the next Facebook, not every— like you 1499 01:34:33.180 --> 01:34:36.780 have to nurture those types of ideas. So, 1500 01:34:37.100 --> 01:34:40.710 do we start looking at them through different lenses like meaning 1501 01:34:40.710 --> 01:34:43.790 like So, we're not going to look at that kid in school that just had 1502 01:34:43.790 --> 01:34:47.310 a science fair project that could actually be a product on the market if somebody 1503 01:34:47.310 --> 01:34:50.950 actually paid attention to it. No, we're going to wait until he becomes an 1504 01:34:50.950 --> 01:34:54.790 influencer and then see him creating some garbage online 1505 01:34:54.790 --> 01:34:58.270 that we go, oh, wait a minute, that kid's got a nice— like, I don't— 1506 01:34:58.270 --> 01:35:01.590 yeah, I agree with you that some of this is broken. I certainly don't know 1507 01:35:01.590 --> 01:35:04.870 the answer to it because if I did, I'd be the 1508 01:35:07.270 --> 01:35:10.230 next Facebook. I would have already turned on the spigot. Like, I would have already 1509 01:35:10.230 --> 01:35:12.670 turned on the spigot if I knew how to answer that question. But I do 1510 01:35:12.670 --> 01:35:13.190 agree with 1511 01:35:16.870 --> 01:35:20.630 you that there are some new— there's new 1512 01:35:20.630 --> 01:35:24.350 ways that we're trying to globalize this that 1513 01:35:24.350 --> 01:35:27.950 makes it very tough for people to get that competitiveness. And to 1514 01:35:27.950 --> 01:35:31.790 your point about— I 1515 01:35:31.790 --> 01:35:35.250 tried really hard with my kids to get that competitiveness because Just so 1516 01:35:36.210 --> 01:35:40.050 you know, I was not that guy. Like, I was not that dad to 1517 01:35:40.050 --> 01:35:43.610 like, okay, shoot the basketball, honey. Oh my God, look at— oh, you 1518 01:35:43.610 --> 01:35:46.370 won. No, no, no. If you're going to beat me, you're going to beat me 1519 01:35:46.370 --> 01:35:49.610 and it's going to be legit. Which is why, by the way, so when I 1520 01:35:49.610 --> 01:35:53.170 taught my daughter how to play chess, like, she— out of all I have, out 1521 01:35:53.170 --> 01:35:56.450 of my 5 kids, my daughter was the only one that enjoyed 1522 01:35:57.650 --> 01:36:01.340 playing chess. She has a competitiveness to her. That is— and 1523 01:36:01.340 --> 01:36:04.660 I hate this, I know that you and I are both competitive. I'm telling you, 1524 01:36:04.660 --> 01:36:07.900 you would take both of our competitiveness and just crush them. She would 1525 01:36:08.060 --> 01:36:11.820 crush them. She's way more competitive than any human being I've ever seen in my 1526 01:36:11.980 --> 01:36:15.700 entire life. She would sit and play hours, chess game 1527 01:36:15.700 --> 01:36:19.020 after chess game after chess game, because I would beat her and I wouldn't, I 1528 01:36:19.020 --> 01:36:22.620 wouldn't let her win ever. Yeah, I would beat her every time because I felt 1529 01:36:22.620 --> 01:36:26.250 like it was going to improve her chess game. So 1530 01:36:26.250 --> 01:36:29.130 she So the handful of times that she 1531 01:36:29.930 --> 01:36:33.770 beats me, it's like the world is like opening up 1532 01:36:33.770 --> 01:36:37.050 her— it's like the world is her oyster and she can— it's 1533 01:36:37.050 --> 01:36:40.690 like she accelerates that 1534 01:36:40.690 --> 01:36:44.170 joy. Not accelerates, sorry, exacerbates that joy. 1535 01:36:44.330 --> 01:36:47.930 Like it's like she just hit the lottery. 1536 01:36:48.650 --> 01:36:51.930 But I can't do that with a kid down the street that I don't know 1537 01:36:52.080 --> 01:36:55.800 that, like, that you're trying to encourage entrepreneurship to. Yeah, like, you 1538 01:36:55.800 --> 01:36:59.000 just can't do that, right? Like, you— now, I will say though, I remember when 1539 01:36:59.000 --> 01:37:02.640 I was a kid, strangers weren't dangerous. I could walk— if there 1540 01:37:02.640 --> 01:37:05.320 was a guy— and by the way, the way I learned how to play chess, 1541 01:37:05.320 --> 01:37:08.440 being in the neighborhood that I was in, being a very poor neighborhood, we used 1542 01:37:08.440 --> 01:37:12.280 to go down the street into a little bit wealthier neighborhood, and there 1543 01:37:12.280 --> 01:37:15.920 was always a guy there. They had these— they had these like park, 1544 01:37:15.920 --> 01:37:19.690 uh, park benches, park like tables, like that 1545 01:37:20.090 --> 01:37:23.810 had chessboards on them already. They were built in to the— oh, that's awesome. Yeah. 1546 01:37:23.810 --> 01:37:26.730 And this guy would sit there and play chess with anybody who wanted to play 1547 01:37:27.930 --> 01:37:30.050 chess with. So I would go and I would tell him I don't know how 1548 01:37:30.050 --> 01:37:32.690 to play chess, and he would— he taught— he taught me how to play chess. 1549 01:37:32.690 --> 01:37:36.490 Now, by the way, same thing, his rule— he was a— I found 1550 01:37:36.490 --> 01:37:40.210 out much later in life that guy was like a grandmaster, like 1551 01:37:40.210 --> 01:37:43.650 chess, like he won chess competitions around the world. Like, this guy 1552 01:37:44.440 --> 01:37:47.800 was really He could beat somebody in chess with 1553 01:37:48.520 --> 01:37:52.280 5 moves. 5. No doubt. Like, he would sit 1554 01:37:52.280 --> 01:37:56.040 there and he'd go, he'd ask, are you a chess 1555 01:37:56.040 --> 01:37:58.680 player novelty, or do you like, do you know? And if you said, no, no, 1556 01:37:58.680 --> 01:38:02.040 I'm a chess player, I enter chess competitions, he'd 1557 01:38:02.200 --> 01:38:05.800 go, okay, on. He would beat that person in 5 1558 01:38:05.880 --> 01:38:09.400 to 6, like, no doubt. I was like, I would watch this and go, what 1559 01:38:09.820 --> 01:38:13.660 just happened? What just happened? Like, so anyway, but if 1560 01:38:13.660 --> 01:38:16.700 you sat down with him and said, listen, I'm a beginner, I don't know chess 1561 01:38:17.580 --> 01:38:21.260 very well, different story. His competitive— like I talked about a few 1562 01:38:21.420 --> 01:38:25.100 minutes ago, his competitiveness went away because 1563 01:38:25.579 --> 01:38:29.420 his mentor, his mentor side came out. Came out. Yeah, he wanted to be 1564 01:38:29.420 --> 01:38:32.220 a mentor. Now, he again would not just quote unquote let 1565 01:38:33.580 --> 01:38:37.020 you win, but he would play as if he was 1566 01:38:37.350 --> 01:38:40.950 a novice so that you could play on equal playing ground so that you could 1567 01:38:40.950 --> 01:38:44.710 learn. He would ratchet it down. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 1568 01:38:44.710 --> 01:38:48.430 And I think, I think that that's part of the key to all of this. 1569 01:38:48.430 --> 01:38:52.070 Right? So if you're a leader and you have that competitiveness and you've built 1570 01:38:52.070 --> 01:38:55.750 this business and you, you started from nothing. And, and by 1571 01:38:56.150 --> 01:38:59.430 the way, to Tom's point earlier, most entrepreneurs start 1572 01:39:00.150 --> 01:39:03.870 from nothing. It is the very rare entrepreneur that gets gifted you 1573 01:39:03.870 --> 01:39:07.590 know, $100 million by their daddy. That is not a normal 1574 01:39:07.590 --> 01:39:11.350 story. Most people start from, like I did, $500 1575 01:39:11.350 --> 01:39:14.270 and I'm into my last $500 and I guess I got to do something. So 1576 01:39:14.270 --> 01:39:18.030 like, let's go. You know, most people start like that 1577 01:39:18.030 --> 01:39:21.830 and then build something over the course of time. But 1578 01:39:21.830 --> 01:39:24.630 I think if you're a leader, it's— you 1579 01:39:25.750 --> 01:39:29.510 have to, you have to understand innately how to ratchet that down 1580 01:39:29.510 --> 01:39:32.350 and how to ratchet that up. You know, and I think that's, I think that's 1581 01:39:32.350 --> 01:39:36.070 at the core of what you're saying. I also think that, um, I 1582 01:39:36.070 --> 01:39:39.590 mean, the closest analogy I can have is to a martial arts 1583 01:39:39.910 --> 01:39:43.750 master, right? Like a person who's, and I'm not going to use 1584 01:39:43.750 --> 01:39:47.590 the term black belt, a person who is an advanced practitioner in any kind of 1585 01:39:47.590 --> 01:39:50.950 martial art, whether it's boxing all the way to 1586 01:39:51.750 --> 01:39:55.190 jiu-jitsu, uh, karate, all the way to tai chi. I don't care what 1587 01:39:55.350 --> 01:39:58.640 they're doing, right? A person comes in who's 1588 01:39:59.360 --> 01:40:03.040 a beginner, they're not going to— if they know 1589 01:40:03.040 --> 01:40:06.800 anything about how to handle their killer instinct, they're not going to manhandle 1590 01:40:07.920 --> 01:40:10.920 that person. They're just not. Can I, can I tell you a very, very quick 1591 01:40:10.920 --> 01:40:14.760 story about that? Yeah, go ahead. So I, I— one of my favorite things, 1592 01:40:14.760 --> 01:40:18.240 I— so I, I don't know, I would not consider 1593 01:40:18.240 --> 01:40:22.080 myself an expert because of my definition of expert, but I 1594 01:40:22.080 --> 01:40:25.480 I can, I can spin chucks really, really well. Okay. And 1595 01:40:25.760 --> 01:40:29.160 the first— yourself in the face. First time somebody ever came to me and 1596 01:40:29.480 --> 01:40:33.200 was like, oh, I could do that. I was like, here you 1597 01:40:33.200 --> 01:40:36.600 go. And then just watched them beat the ever-loving crap out 1598 01:40:37.800 --> 01:40:41.640 of themselves. And I said nothing. Nothing. And I was like, that is not a 1599 01:40:41.640 --> 01:40:42.200 very 1600 01:40:46.440 --> 01:40:50.120 good mentor. Or is it? Like, you know, to your point, like because there are, 1601 01:40:50.120 --> 01:40:52.880 there are some lessons that I feel like you need to learn on your own. 1602 01:40:52.880 --> 01:40:56.420 And one of the lessons you need to learn on your own is that just 1603 01:40:56.420 --> 01:40:59.880 because you— to your point— just because you see somebody swing those things and do 1604 01:40:59.880 --> 01:41:03.680 it really, really well— so I think watching it and doing it 1605 01:41:03.680 --> 01:41:07.320 are two different things. And so I have to start at step one. You can't 1606 01:41:07.320 --> 01:41:11.160 just swing them. You have to learn how to, like, how they move, what they 1607 01:41:11.160 --> 01:41:15.000 do, how they— you have to learn how they hurt before you can learn how 1608 01:41:15.000 --> 01:41:18.580 to— well, really well. Okay, so this goes back to what you were saying earlier 1609 01:41:18.580 --> 01:41:22.340 in our conversation as we wrap up here about your kids, right? They want to 1610 01:41:22.340 --> 01:41:26.100 start with the master's degree and go directly to the $100,000 job. They don't want 1611 01:41:26.100 --> 01:41:29.580 to do the things like with the nunchucks. They don't want to get hit in 1612 01:41:29.820 --> 01:41:33.620 the face because getting hit in the face sucks, you know, 1613 01:41:33.620 --> 01:41:37.220 right? Except getting hit in the face, you know, maybe not physically. As the 1614 01:41:37.220 --> 01:41:40.460 comedian Marc Maron would say, it's all going to be thinky pain now. It's not 1615 01:41:40.460 --> 01:41:43.420 going to be pain in your body, right? Like you're— or pain in your mind. 1616 01:41:43.420 --> 01:41:47.080 Like you're done with the physical pain part. Now you're going to go into thinky 1617 01:41:47.080 --> 01:41:50.840 pain. Psychological pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain. Nobody wants to go 1618 01:41:50.840 --> 01:41:54.480 through that, right? They'd rather skip all the pain parts. And what a 1619 01:41:54.480 --> 01:41:58.240 good mentor does is— a good leader who's a 1620 01:41:59.120 --> 01:42:02.960 good mentor, they give good analysis at the beginning and 1621 01:42:02.960 --> 01:42:06.760 they see the difference between someone who can, who maybe 1622 01:42:06.760 --> 01:42:10.320 can come in and experience that thinky pain and maybe in 1623 01:42:10.320 --> 01:42:13.990 some cases physical pain, like the nunchucks. They see the difference 1624 01:42:13.990 --> 01:42:17.830 between that person who's willing to go on that path and the 1625 01:42:17.830 --> 01:42:21.510 person who, to your point, is just arrogantly coming in thinking they 1626 01:42:21.510 --> 01:42:25.350 can do something. Like, we've seen this with entrepreneurship. We've seen this with businesses. 1627 01:42:25.750 --> 01:42:29.550 You wanna know a really good experiment to figure this out? Take one 1628 01:42:29.550 --> 01:42:33.390 of the most complicated subject matters you can think of, 1629 01:42:33.390 --> 01:42:36.630 theoretical physics, space travel. I don't care. Whatever you think is difficult 1630 01:42:37.110 --> 01:42:40.010 to understand, put it in ChatGPT and then prompt it 1631 01:42:40.810 --> 01:42:44.090 to say, tell me this like I'm a 5-year-old, and 1632 01:42:44.090 --> 01:42:47.810 watch what ChatGPT spits back to you. Because to your point, 1633 01:42:47.810 --> 01:42:51.490 that's where you're starting, people. If you're 1634 01:42:51.490 --> 01:42:54.970 trying, if you're trying to be a mentor to somebody, you have to assume 1635 01:42:54.970 --> 01:42:58.450 they know nothing. They— you just, you have to give them the basics 1636 01:42:58.450 --> 01:43:01.530 and the foundation before you can start, you 1637 01:43:02.010 --> 01:43:05.730 know, throwing master classes at them. Well, and you also have to sort of, you 1638 01:43:05.730 --> 01:43:09.410 have to sort of Sometimes you have to, and I will 1639 01:43:09.410 --> 01:43:13.250 go specifically into jiu-jitsu, sometimes you have to humble the 1640 01:43:13.250 --> 01:43:17.090 arrogant. Of course, yes. Sometimes you do. We have people, it 1641 01:43:17.090 --> 01:43:20.890 happens in our tiny little school in my tiny little town that I live in, 1642 01:43:20.890 --> 01:43:24.570 in Texas, right? We will have people who walk into that school and 1643 01:43:24.570 --> 01:43:28.330 they'll go, they will say sometimes with their mouths, but most often with 1644 01:43:28.330 --> 01:43:30.810 their body language, oh, well, that crap doesn't work 1645 01:43:31.950 --> 01:43:35.390 on me. Or I love this one, I'll just see red, bro, and go in 1646 01:43:35.790 --> 01:43:39.550 a fight. And I'm thinking of a few months ago, someone came in for 1647 01:43:39.550 --> 01:43:43.270 a trial class. And I've been 1648 01:43:43.270 --> 01:43:46.990 doing this for a minute. And my instructor was like, 1649 01:43:46.990 --> 01:43:50.510 you go ahead, you go with the new, the new guy, 1650 01:43:51.390 --> 01:43:54.670 right? And I always ask new people, like, what's your background? Like, do you have 1651 01:43:54.830 --> 01:43:58.540 any experience doing this before I get into anything with them? 1652 01:43:58.540 --> 01:44:01.940 Right? Just to test and see, to your point about the nunchucks, who am I 1653 01:44:01.940 --> 01:44:04.770 dealing with? Am I dealing with someone who wants to just hit themselves in the 1654 01:44:04.770 --> 01:44:08.460 face all the time? Because I'll accommodate you. That's fine. Or 1655 01:44:08.460 --> 01:44:11.740 am I dealing with somebody who genuinely wants to learn? And 1656 01:44:12.060 --> 01:44:15.340 this person was not genuinely interested 1657 01:44:15.900 --> 01:44:19.660 in learning. And so when it came time to— so we did our drills 1658 01:44:19.660 --> 01:44:22.940 of our moves or whatever, it was fine. Move of 1659 01:44:23.990 --> 01:44:27.830 the night, and then we were going to actually put 1660 01:44:27.830 --> 01:44:30.830 it into practice. We're going to roll, we're going to wrestle, right? 1661 01:44:31.830 --> 01:44:35.590 "Poleada," which is Portuguese for fighting with 1662 01:44:35.750 --> 01:44:39.349 intent, right? So, fighting with intent is different than fighting without intent, right? 1663 01:44:39.349 --> 01:44:42.350 Fighting without intent is what you see on 99% of the videos that you see 1664 01:44:42.350 --> 01:44:44.710 on Twitter of people 1665 01:44:46.070 --> 01:44:49.670 getting jacked or getting surprised or getting ambushed. It's what 1666 01:44:49.670 --> 01:44:53.030 Tom has experienced in his life, I've experienced in my life when you get into 1667 01:44:53.270 --> 01:44:57.030 a brawl, It's all of that, right? That's without intent. The people with the haymakers 1668 01:44:57.190 --> 01:45:00.750 flying and all that kind of good stuff, right? When you 1669 01:45:00.750 --> 01:45:04.550 roll with intent though, none of that factors 1670 01:45:05.110 --> 01:45:08.310 in, right? Now, if you don't have intent but I do 1671 01:45:09.670 --> 01:45:13.430 have intent, um, I'm going to beat you every single time. This is not pride 1672 01:45:14.310 --> 01:45:17.590 or arrogance. You have no intent. You're just out there 1673 01:45:18.800 --> 01:45:22.240 doing stuff. I know enough and I'm not, I'm not even close 1674 01:45:22.560 --> 01:45:25.440 to mastery. Not even close. I'm on a 10, talk about 10 years of being 1675 01:45:25.440 --> 01:45:29.040 an overnight success. It takes 10 years to get a jiu-jitsu black belt 1676 01:45:29.440 --> 01:45:33.160 at minimum. Most of the time in America, it takes people between 12 and 15 1677 01:45:33.160 --> 01:45:36.960 years at my age. Gonna be going a long time. I'm 1678 01:45:36.960 --> 01:45:39.840 all the way at the beginning of the journey. This is not a pride thing. 1679 01:45:39.840 --> 01:45:43.480 This is just a fact. If you are engaging with 1680 01:45:43.480 --> 01:45:45.450 me without intent, I'm going to 1681 01:45:48.250 --> 01:45:51.050 maul you. I'm just going to maul you and I'm not even going to really 1682 01:45:51.050 --> 01:45:54.770 sweat that hard. And so like the person came in and 1683 01:45:54.770 --> 01:45:57.570 he does, he starts, I was like, okay, I put a bully grip on him. 1684 01:45:57.570 --> 01:45:59.610 Like, like when you were a kid and they were like, give me my money. 1685 01:45:59.610 --> 01:46:02.530 Like they grabbed your collar or whatever. And I put a bully grip on him 1686 01:46:02.530 --> 01:46:06.370 and I watched his eyes shift and I went, oh, okay. He 1687 01:46:06.370 --> 01:46:10.130 has no intent now because he's panicking. And he did. He started 1688 01:46:10.130 --> 01:46:13.450 like lashing out and going around and I just moved around him and moved around 1689 01:46:13.450 --> 01:46:15.770 him and moved around him and did my thing. And all I was doing was 1690 01:46:16.130 --> 01:46:19.850 playing defense. And I looked over at my instructor and he was laughing. 1691 01:46:19.850 --> 01:46:23.410 Sit with me a while, um, or be with him a while. And 1692 01:46:23.410 --> 01:46:26.690 he started laughing and I was like, can I just go? And I did. I 1693 01:46:26.690 --> 01:46:29.650 looked at him, can I just go? I raised my eyebrow, can I just go? 1694 01:46:29.650 --> 01:46:33.490 And he goes, yeah, go ahead. And so like, I just, I wrapped him 1695 01:46:33.490 --> 01:46:36.810 up, wrapped the guy up. Guy's flailing around. I wrapped him up. I didn't even 1696 01:46:36.810 --> 01:46:39.130 submit him. I didn't even put like a choke on him. I didn't knock him 1697 01:46:39.130 --> 01:46:41.880 out or anything. I just put him on the ground. I was like, you gotta 1698 01:46:42.350 --> 01:46:46.150 calm down. Like you're flapping all over the place. You have to stop. 1699 01:46:46.150 --> 01:46:49.750 You have to stop. That's with intent. And by the way, this is not 1700 01:46:49.750 --> 01:46:53.150 a small dude either. This can 1701 01:46:53.310 --> 01:46:57.150 be applied to leadership. Are you leading with intent? 1702 01:46:57.150 --> 01:47:00.990 Are you doing it in an intentional kind of way? Are you doing your entrepreneurship 1703 01:47:01.070 --> 01:47:04.870 with intent? And when we talk about getting that killer instinct, are you using that 1704 01:47:04.870 --> 01:47:08.590 killer instinct with intent? Or is it just like a weapon you're just waving around 1705 01:47:08.590 --> 01:47:12.060 like your nunchucks? You got to get hit yourself Hit yourself in the face and 1706 01:47:12.060 --> 01:47:13.180 then a bunch of people are going to laugh 1707 01:47:17.340 --> 01:47:19.500 at you. It's been a good conversation. I didn't know what we were going to 1708 01:47:19.500 --> 01:47:23.140 pull out of Sinclair. I will say 1709 01:47:23.140 --> 01:47:26.900 to everybody who's listening, this is 1710 01:47:27.220 --> 01:47:30.980 a 575-page book. I have covered maybe the first 100, 120 1711 01:47:30.980 --> 01:47:34.620 pages of it. So we will be back with Sinclair. I will have a follow-up 1712 01:47:35.100 --> 01:47:38.380 to this episode. We'll talk a little bit more about it after I do a 1713 01:47:38.380 --> 01:47:41.300 little bit more of a deep dive into it. Go watch the movie There Will 1714 01:47:41.300 --> 01:47:44.900 Be Blood. It's a great example of entrepreneurship from the beginning to the end. By 1715 01:47:44.900 --> 01:47:48.180 the way, it's based on probably about the first 100 pages too, 1716 01:47:48.340 --> 01:47:51.779 right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very small chunk of it because there's so 1717 01:47:51.779 --> 01:47:55.140 many other dynamics. A very small chunk of the book that is a 2.5-hour movie. 1718 01:47:55.140 --> 01:47:58.660 It's a 2.5-hour movie. That should tell you something about Sinclair's 1719 01:47:58.820 --> 01:48:02.480 writing. Again, a guy who was also playing for keeps, by the way, on 1720 01:48:04.080 --> 01:48:07.880 the work. Tom, final thoughts. How can we integrate all 1721 01:48:07.880 --> 01:48:11.560 these lessons together for leaders? What's our final thoughts 1722 01:48:11.560 --> 01:48:14.720 here? Well, I think you pretty much summed 1723 01:48:15.960 --> 01:48:17.760 it up just a couple of seconds ago. 1724 01:48:20.040 --> 01:48:23.600 I think the difference between a leader, a 1725 01:48:23.840 --> 01:48:27.360 true leader, and somebody who just wants to, as you put it in 1726 01:48:27.720 --> 01:48:31.350 your jiu-jitsu example, of just going, a true leader wants to bring 1727 01:48:31.350 --> 01:48:35.110 people with them, right? A true, a true leader wants to 1728 01:48:35.110 --> 01:48:38.190 elevate everybody else around them. And the only way you do 1729 01:48:39.230 --> 01:48:43.070 that is, is to meet them where they are and help them get 1730 01:48:43.470 --> 01:48:47.230 better, not push them down and just suppress them. The 1731 01:48:47.230 --> 01:48:51.030 killer instinct is different in those cases, right? So you need the killer instinct 1732 01:48:51.030 --> 01:48:54.630 to get yourself there. But once you're there, you need to kind of suppress it 1733 01:48:54.630 --> 01:48:58.090 a little bit. And use the killer instinct to elevate everybody else 1734 01:48:58.090 --> 01:49:01.450 around you. Instill that killer instinct around the people that 1735 01:49:02.090 --> 01:49:05.730 you're around, in the people that are around you. So I think that's the other— 1736 01:49:06.250 --> 01:49:10.090 there's a phrase in the medical field, and I'm not in the medical field, 1737 01:49:10.090 --> 01:49:13.530 so I'm not going to get it 100% right, but I know it's something to 1738 01:49:13.530 --> 01:49:17.250 the effect of like, you 1739 01:49:17.250 --> 01:49:20.810 know, learn about it, watch it, 1740 01:49:21.030 --> 01:49:24.670 do it, teach it, right? Like, so you, you— what— taking 1741 01:49:24.670 --> 01:49:27.990 what you're learning in a book, seeing it 1742 01:49:28.710 --> 01:49:31.910 in practice, and then trying it in practice, and then teaching it 1743 01:49:32.470 --> 01:49:36.030 in practice— that's how you, that's how you elevate everybody around you. 1744 01:49:36.030 --> 01:49:39.350 And being humble enough to start at the beginning 1745 01:49:39.750 --> 01:49:43.550 multiple times, I think that's also important, because nobody knows everything, right? 1746 01:49:43.550 --> 01:49:47.310 Nobody knows it all. So again, so you and I have talked about 1747 01:49:47.310 --> 01:49:50.990 martial arts a lot in our in our friendship. I didn't take 1748 01:49:51.230 --> 01:49:54.270 Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I was a Jeet Kune Do guy. If I walked 1749 01:49:55.950 --> 01:49:59.710 onto a Brazilian jiu-jitsu mat right now, regardless of how much I 1750 01:49:59.710 --> 01:50:03.550 knew about Jeet Kune Do, I would feel humbled by the 1751 01:50:03.790 --> 01:50:07.150 art form. I would want to be 1752 01:50:08.350 --> 01:50:12.030 taught. So, even knowing what I know with Jeet Kune Do, I would not be 1753 01:50:12.030 --> 01:50:15.640 that guy that you experienced on the mat. Right. There's no way I 1754 01:50:15.640 --> 01:50:19.240 would be. My intent would be to learn. I'm new here. I'm the new guy. 1755 01:50:19.240 --> 01:50:21.560 I don't give a shit what I came to the— I don't care what I 1756 01:50:21.560 --> 01:50:25.400 come to the mat with. I don't know your art 1757 01:50:25.400 --> 01:50:29.160 form. I'm gonna— I want to learn it from a 1758 01:50:29.640 --> 01:50:33.240 perspective of teaching me, not what that guy experienced, 1759 01:50:33.240 --> 01:50:37.000 which was basically humility. Like, you had to teach him 1760 01:50:37.000 --> 01:50:40.680 humility. That you're, you're not going to teach me humility. I think that's the 1761 01:50:40.680 --> 01:50:44.470 difference between somebody who is I'll put it this 1762 01:50:44.470 --> 01:50:48.190 way. I feel like, I feel like if I wanted, if 1763 01:50:48.190 --> 01:50:51.830 I chose to go learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu right now, I would eventually be 1764 01:50:51.830 --> 01:50:55.550 a leader in that dojo. Yeah, because 1765 01:50:55.550 --> 01:50:59.110 I would— I know, I know myself. I know I would start at the bottom. 1766 01:50:59.110 --> 01:51:02.190 I know I would want to learn from the best. I know that, and I 1767 01:51:02.190 --> 01:51:05.790 know I would elevate myself eventually to being good at what that, what that 1768 01:51:05.790 --> 01:51:09.020 art form was. But ultimately My goal would be 1769 01:51:09.340 --> 01:51:12.780 to then teach people how to be that good 1770 01:51:12.940 --> 01:51:16.700 and to exactly what you would have did with that guy, teach them 1771 01:51:16.700 --> 01:51:20.500 the humility of it because I hate to say it, but no 1772 01:51:20.500 --> 01:51:24.140 matter how good the Western world and Western 1773 01:51:25.420 --> 01:51:27.980 philosophies are, well, I guess Brazilian jiu-jitsu is kind of 1774 01:51:29.420 --> 01:51:33.060 Western, but the martial arts art forms come from the East. All of 1775 01:51:33.060 --> 01:51:35.500 them, the foundations are all in the East. It doesn't matter 1776 01:51:37.100 --> 01:51:40.040 which one you're in. And you're practicing 1777 01:51:41.640 --> 01:51:45.400 right now. But they— it's, it's all, it's 1778 01:51:45.640 --> 01:51:49.320 all foundational, right? And it's no matter how many times you go back, you start 1779 01:51:49.320 --> 01:51:52.760 at the bottom and you work your way up. Like, and I, I think people 1780 01:51:52.760 --> 01:51:55.000 lose that. Like, I think 1781 01:51:56.280 --> 01:51:59.920 people— like, I, I can't even count how many times in my career somebody has 1782 01:51:59.920 --> 01:52:03.760 said to me— and by the way, I've been sales manager, I've been 1783 01:52:03.760 --> 01:52:06.050 a VP of sales, etc., etc., right? So I 1784 01:52:07.850 --> 01:52:11.450 was a sales manager at the time, and I went to interview for another sales 1785 01:52:11.450 --> 01:52:14.570 manager job, and they basically said to me, you don't know this industry well enough 1786 01:52:14.570 --> 01:52:17.410 to be a sales manager. We're going to start you back as a sales rep, 1787 01:52:17.410 --> 01:52:20.370 and then if you work out, then we'll put you as a sales manager. I 1788 01:52:20.370 --> 01:52:23.770 did that like 3 times until finally I was like, I'm not 1789 01:52:23.770 --> 01:52:27.490 doing that anymore. Like, I'm going to go do 1790 01:52:27.490 --> 01:52:30.370 my own thing because I'm not going to start at the bottom and work my 1791 01:52:30.950 --> 01:52:34.630 way up. In the same, the examples are different. 1792 01:52:34.630 --> 01:52:38.390 The martial arts example is exactly, that's a perfect example 1793 01:52:38.390 --> 01:52:42.070 of it's completely different, right? The art forms are completely different. To 1794 01:52:42.070 --> 01:52:45.910 me, sales is sales. Sales is sales. Yeah. Yeah. I'm selling, 1795 01:52:45.910 --> 01:52:49.590 I'm selling a phone or I'm selling this mouse, like my computer mouse or my 1796 01:52:49.590 --> 01:52:52.870 phone to be, it doesn't, I don't care what this 1797 01:52:53.110 --> 01:52:56.750 product is. Sales are sales and people are people. So I was, I was done 1798 01:52:56.750 --> 01:53:00.570 doing that. But But what I did learn throughout that process is exactly what 1799 01:53:00.570 --> 01:53:04.170 I'm talking about, taking that step back and then taking 1800 01:53:04.730 --> 01:53:08.410 that role. I learned that the people I wanted working 1801 01:53:08.570 --> 01:53:12.170 for me had to be people that were willing to learn. They had to be 1802 01:53:12.330 --> 01:53:16.090 people willing. I would hire guys that have been in sales, like not 1803 01:53:16.090 --> 01:53:18.770 management, but I've been a sales rep for 20 years. I just want to be 1804 01:53:18.770 --> 01:53:21.450 a sales rep. I never want to be anything more than a sales rep, but 1805 01:53:21.450 --> 01:53:25.180 I'm going to go from product to product to to better myself in finances 1806 01:53:25.180 --> 01:53:28.780 or whatever, right? And I would interview a guy that's been in sales for 1807 01:53:29.100 --> 01:53:31.980 20 years, and the only thing I cared about was, was 1808 01:53:33.340 --> 01:53:37.100 he teachable? Was he stuck in his own ways or her own ways? Were 1809 01:53:37.100 --> 01:53:40.940 they stuck? Were they stuck in a philosophy of sales that I 1810 01:53:41.180 --> 01:53:44.540 couldn't break? And if the answer was yes, I didn't hire them. I don't care 1811 01:53:44.540 --> 01:53:48.300 if you've been in sales for 5 years or 50 years. It didn't matter. What 1812 01:53:48.300 --> 01:53:52.100 mattered to me was are you open-minded enough to 1813 01:53:52.100 --> 01:53:55.660 listen and learn and be— and then, by the way, 1814 01:53:55.660 --> 01:53:59.260 if you do and I put a new sales rep with you, can you teach 1815 01:53:59.260 --> 01:54:02.460 them? Like, can I pair a new sales rep with you so you can teach 1816 01:54:02.460 --> 01:54:05.380 them? Those are the two things I cared about. Can you learn and can 1817 01:54:06.020 --> 01:54:09.740 you teach? That's it. And I think 1818 01:54:09.740 --> 01:54:13.060 that's a good— I think that's a good overall 1819 01:54:13.380 --> 01:54:17.210 kind of turn to what we're talking about. Today, even from entrepreneurs. You 1820 01:54:17.210 --> 01:54:20.530 have to have the killer instinct, yes, but you have to be willing to be 1821 01:54:20.530 --> 01:54:23.250 taught and you have to be willing to teach. If you're not willing to be 1822 01:54:23.250 --> 01:54:26.090 taught and willing to teach, then you're probably not going to be successful 1823 01:54:28.570 --> 01:54:31.890 at it. That's a good spot to stop. So I'd like to thank Tom Levy 1824 01:54:31.890 --> 01:54:35.370 for coming on the show today once again in 1825 01:54:35.370 --> 01:54:38.650 our Wild West ranging conversation 1826 01:54:39.290 --> 01:54:42.730 around Oil by Upton Sinclair. Go ahead and pick up that book. And with 1827 01:54:43.600 --> 01:54:44.180 that, well, We're out.