Oil! by Upton Sinclair w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and

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this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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podcast, episode number 182.

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Reading directly from our book today,

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ladies and gentlemen, I have traveled over just a about half

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our stake to get here this evening. I couldn’t get away sooner because my

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new well was coming in at Lobos River and I had to see about it.

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That well is now flowing 4,000 barrels and paying

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me an income of $5,000 a day. I’ve got 2 others

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drilling and I’ve got 16 producing at Antelope. So ladies and

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gentlemen, if I say I’m an oil man, I’m

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an oil man. You’ve got a great

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chance here, ladies and gentlemen, but bear in mind you can lose it all. If

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you ain’t careful. Out of all the fellers that beg you for a chance

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to drill your land, maybe 1 in 20 will be oilmen. The rest will be

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speculators, fellers trying to get in between you and the oil.

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Oilmen to get some of that money that ought by rights come to you.

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Even if you find one that has money and means to drill, he’ll maybe know

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nothing about drilling and have to hire out the job on contract. And then

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you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so as to

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get another contract just as quick as he can.

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But ladies and gentlemen, I do my own drilling, and the fellers that work for

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me are fellers I know. I make it my business to be there and to

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see their work. I don’t lose my tools in the hole and spend months

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efficient. I don’t botch the cementing off and let water into the hole and

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ruin the whole lease. And let me tell you, I’m fixed right now like no

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other man or company in this field, because my Lobos River well has

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just come in. I got a string of tools all ready to put to work.

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I can load a rig onto trucks and have them here in a week. I’ve

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got business connections so I can get the lumber for the derrick. Such things go

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by friendship in a rush like this. That’s why

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I can guarantee to start drilling and put up the cash to back my word.

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I assure you, whatever the others promise to do, when it comes to the showdown,

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they won’t be there. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not

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up to me to say how you’re going to divide up the royalty, but let

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me say this. Whatever you give up so as to get together, it’ll

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be small compared to what you may lose by delay and by falling into the

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hands of gamblers and crooks. Ladies and gentlemen, take it from me as an oil

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man, there ain’t gonna be many gushers here at Prospect Hill. The

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pressure under the ground will soon let up and it’ll be them that get their

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wells down first that’ll get the oil. A field plays out very

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quick. In 2 or 3 years, you’ll see all these here wells on

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the pump. Yes, even this discovery well that’s got you all crazy.

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So take my word for it and don’t break up this lease. Take a

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smaller share of the royalty if you must, and I’ll see that it’s a

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small share of a big royalty so you won’t lose in real money.

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That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to say.

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No one likes to talk about work,

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at least not in real terms, right?

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When we talk about work, of course, we tend to glamorize

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work. We tend to talk about the grind or the hustle, which of

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course you can find all about by looking it up

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on Instagram or TikTok, you know. Next to

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videos of Kobe Bryant talking about how much work he put in as an

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athlete, or, well, some other football

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star, hockey star, sports star of your choice.

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But the real work, the work of showing up every day,

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the work of grinding

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every day on things that you may not like— work

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is a part of growth that we don’t talk about because it isn’t

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glamorous. And if you fail at work, your status

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declines in other people’s eyes. I think of many people in

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my own life who have worked very, very hard and earned

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absolutely— well, maybe not absolutely— almost

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nothing. But then I think of the people

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on the flip side, or on the other side of the continuum, who seemed to

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have done almost no work at all and fell

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inevitably ass backwards into success.

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What warms my heart at the end of the day is

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that no growth comes without friction,

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and friction comes from work. And putting in the work without

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applause or recognition or even acknowledgement, that is

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what creates quality.

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Quality in writing, quality in acting,

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quality in athletics, and even quality in the topic that

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we are going to talk about today— quality

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in entrepreneurship. We

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don’t talk too much about entrepreneurship on this show, and it’s kind of weird. We’ve

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done 400 and some odd episodes, and we’ll talk here and there about

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it when it pops up, but directly talking about the entrepreneur, directly

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talking about the work that the entrepreneur puts in, we We haven’t really

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focused on that, but today on the show we’re going

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to do that. We’re going to drill our way deep down

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through the exegesis of entrepreneurship and what

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that actually means in putting in the work so that other

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people can come along and work with you.

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We’re going to do that today by

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framing the work in terms of The first

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100 or so pages of our book today,

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Oil by Upton Sinclair,

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the basis of the 2007 motion picture with

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that monster actor Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be

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Blood. Leaders,

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the work of leadership we should be doing in public and everyone

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should see us doing it. With all of its potential for

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failure, heartache, grief, and even recrimination.

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We could either do it gladly or we could do it sadly, but

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we have to do it publicly.

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And back to Discuss Insights on Entrepreneurship, even though

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I did not give him notes for today, so he’s going to do this

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by the seat of his pants. Is my old friend

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off the cuff

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and very hush-hush. Now he’s going to do it out loud

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as usual. Is my good friend Tom Living. How are you doing

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today, Tom? I am living my best life, my friend. I am

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loving it. Every time. Every time he’s living his best life. Every time.

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Well, because I can’t live anybody else’s. Well, exactly. Yeah, they won’t let you.

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They won’t let you live that way. Although I recently watched

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a movie. It went slightly under the radar. Keanu

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Reeves just came out with a movie with Seth Rogen and Aziz

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Ansari called Good Fortune. Okay. It’s basically

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about a rich guy, poor guy swapping, you know, Freaky Friday thing,

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like Trading Places, Trading Places.

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Really low key, kind of good. I like— I like that. It was actually a

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decent movie because to your point, like, you can’t live anybody else’s. Well,

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these guys switched places and they were living

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it. And the whole point was to show the other person, like, okay, so

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take the poor guy, put him in the rich guy’s shoes, and then basically tell

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the poor guy that, that he’s missing out by not being the poor guy anymore.

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And Aziz Asari went, go fuck yourself, I’m

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staying right where I am. I love this now. I love this life. It was

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really funny anyway, but I’m not changing places.

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It was low-key pretty good. Good deal. I’m glad to hear that, like, Keanu

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Reeves is actually like, you know, doing work outside of, you know, John Wick,

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you know, 12 or whatever the hell. Back to his roots too, right? Like, like,

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if you think about where he came from, he didn’t— he wasn’t an action star

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first. He was Bill and Ted. It was like, come

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on, everybody forgets about Bill and Ted. Everybody does.

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Everybody forgets about Bill and Ted. Um, this was closer to his roots,

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closer to the beginning of his career than, than— good, good.

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The Matrix and John Wick thing, that was great. And don’t get me wrong, Keanu

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Reeves is Keanu Reeves, he’s awesome. But the beginning stuff, him

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being funny, in my opinion, is when he’s at his best. He’s at his best

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when he’s being funny. Well, speaking of actors who are at their best,

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Daniel Day-Lewis. I opened up with that entire

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speech there, which is the opening of There Will Be

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Blood from 2007, directed by one of

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my favorite modern directors, Paul Thomas

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Anderson. I put him up there with

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Christopher Nolan, who we talked about on the show. He’s coming out with The

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Odyssey this year. And the last movie, of course, that I saw with him

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was Oppenheimer. But I always

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watch whatever it is that Paul Thomas Anderson does ever since he did

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that great ensemble

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piece in the 1990s, Magnolia. That’s

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when I sort of stumbled onto him. I know he’d done Boogie Nights

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beforehand. I watched Boogie Nights years afterward, but Boogie Nights,

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Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, these are—

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he seems to have this ability to take on landmark films

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and to pull something out of actors. And Daniel Day-Lewis

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always brings it. He never mails it

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in. He’s never sort of just hanging around. I mean, we were

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talking about before we were recording, uh, Gangs of New York, which you did

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not necessarily particularly care for, um, but, um, but

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you did like Daniel Day-Lewis’s, uh, acting in that character. In that,

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I thought he was fantastic. He was the best part of the movie, in my

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opinion. He was absolutely— he was— he— him on screen was the—

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was worth watching. I thought the rest of the movie kind of fell apart without

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him. Well, and the thing that— wow.

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I agree. There’s all kinds of third act problems in Gangs of New

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York that we don’t need to get into right now because that’s not the focus

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of the show. But There Will Be Blood,

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I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, so you may not necessarily

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remember all the specifics of it, but it is about the oil man J. Arnold

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Ross and about his

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entrepreneurial journey. All the way from being

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a guy who starts out— and

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There Will Be Blood opens not with that speech, but it opens

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with the music opens and it goes—

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it’s not even music, it’s a sound effect—

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and then you’re in like the Nevada desert and Daniel Day-Lewis

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is in a hole using a pickaxe to

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pull silver out of the ground to

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establish, um, a silver mine. And

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there’s no dialogue, there’s no music,

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it’s just the sound of the pickaxe and, and him

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pulling dirt out of the hole. And the opening goes on

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for 5 minutes, 7 minutes. He’s digging, he’s pulling, he’s digging,

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he’s pulling, and he thinks he’s got it. He finds a piece of silver,

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right? And I can’t remember all the specific details ’cause it’s been a little bit

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of a minute, but his, his tools fall down the hole. And so of course

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he goes down into the hole to pull out his tools. He slips,

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falls back into the hole, breaks his leg.

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Again, no sound. Drags himself out of the

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hole, drags his silver find back to

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town, and the next scene that you see

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is them staking his claim and basically saying, yeah, you can

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pull silver out of here. And that’s the first introduction we get

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to J. Arnold Ross. Every

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time I watch this movie, and it’s been a little bit, I should have

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refreshed and watched it beforehand, and it’s a good use of your time if you

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haven’t watched it. Um, and I’ll talk about Upton Sinclair

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in a minute, and I’ll talk about oil. Every time I watch this movie

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I think finally a director has actually captured

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exactly what entrepreneurship is like and put it on screen. I was gonna say

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that one scene is basically it. That’s the whole thing. Just that

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one scene. Never mind the rest. Never mind the rest of the two. I think

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the movie had, uh, 2 hours and 40 minutes or something like that. Oh, it’s,

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it’s a monster. Yeah. It’s a long movie. But so take the rest of the

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2 and a half hours out of it. That 10 minutes is entrepreneurship all

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by itself. Work your ass off, fall

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down, break a leg, drag yourself up.

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That’s entrepreneurship in a nutshell right there.

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Um, and it gets to this idea because Paul Thomas Anderson as a director

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and as a writer, right, because I think he, he wrote and directed the,

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the film, or co-wrote and directed the film if I remember correctly,

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um, he He’s part of a line that

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goes back to Upton Sinclair himself, right? And there’s a lot

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of things going on in the book Oil. Um, but Sinclair was—

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I’ll just read directly from his, his Wikipedia page for those of you who

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maybe haven’t listened to the Shorts episode that precedes this, where we talk a little

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bit about Sinclair and his writing. Um, he was born September

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20th, 1878, and he died November 25th, 1968.

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Um, He was an American author, a muckraker journalist, and a

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political activist. And interestingly enough, he was the 1934

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Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He,

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um, he wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres.

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Sinclair’s work was known, well known and popular in the first half of the 20th

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century, and he won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for

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fiction. His first book was The Jungle, which talked about the

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U.S. meatpacking industry, um, in Chicago. And when

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he, um, when he published that book

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in, in 1906, it caused a public uproar that

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contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the

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1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

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In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking

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exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of journalistic

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malpractice in the United States. 4 years after the publication of

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The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.

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Time magazine called him, quote, a man with every gift except

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humor and silence, based on his wife Mary Frank Sinclair’s

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book Southern Belle: A Personal Story of a Crusader’s Wife.

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He also is well remembered for the quote— I love this one—

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quote, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends

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upon his not understanding.

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He was a deeply socialist progressive during a

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time in America. Tom and I were just talking about this as

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well. During a time in America where socialism

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wasn’t a boogeyman, because in

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the West we did not know— we are— not only

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did we not know, we did not have accurate reporting on exactly what

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was going on inside of Stalin’s Russia.

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We also had the Great Depression on during the time

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of much of Sinclair’s writing. And World War II.

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Now, what is modern progressivism back in the day would

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have just been called social reform. They didn’t use the term social

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justice, they used the term social reform. And Sinclair

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was a social reformer, and he used his

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talents, he used his ability to write and turn a phrase,

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um, to critique and reform the society around him. He, he had

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a vision for a better world, and he used his talents to, to

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try to bring that world into into

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reality. He wanted to convert his

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readers and his fans from a constrained

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vision of tragic trade-offs

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in a world that just was. If you just worked at a meatpacking plant, well,

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it just is. Or if you’re a journalist, it just is. Or

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in the case of oil, if you’re an oil man or a landman,

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you’re part of a system that just is. You just operate in the system and

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there’s no way for you to reform it. Sinclair didn’t

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believe that, and he didn’t write from that position.

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Um, he, he believed in an unconstrained vision and

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utilizing— well, you creating entertainment out of the

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paradoxes of human nature. So one of the things you see in Oil

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is that J. Arnold Ross, well, he is an

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oil man and a land man, and he is, for lack of a better term,

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portrayed as being greedy and venal. His son

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is portrayed as being a social reformer, basically rejecting all of

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that venality and greed and being able

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to see through his father’s hypocrisy, such as it

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were, in order to create a new

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world. Now, those things are very interesting about St. Clair, and that

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frames sort of the book.

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I opened up with differing perspective because unlike Paul

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Thomas Anderson, well, no, let me frame it this. Let me use

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a different framing. I think that being a movie director

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inside of the Hollywood system is about as close as you can come to being

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an entrepreneur inside of a system in any

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modern system that we have. Because think about what a director has to do, right?

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They’ve got to obviously arrange for things to be on set.

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They have to make sure the writing is clear. They have to make sure the

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storyboards are correct. They have to make sure the actors hit their lines.

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They have to have good relationships with the actors, all of the

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members of the crew, everyone from the grip to the caterers. They

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also have to have good relationships with the financiers and the money men who

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will come by and have an opinion because they’re giving money. Case in

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point, a meeting that we had this morning, Tom and I, on another project that

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we’re involved in, right? Money men are going to have an opinion. And

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the director sits even more so than the cinematographer who just points

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the camera— well, not just, but points the camera and makes sure the shot is

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good. Or the writer who writes the words that the actors say.

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Heck, even more so than the actors themselves, who quite frankly are puppets on a

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string if we’re really going to be direct about this. Um, some puppets are

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just better than others. Um, the director is the

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guy who has to have the vision and keep all of those people on the

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straight line towards the vision. And if he deviates

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even just a little bit, if he’s allowed to be distracted by the money men

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or by the actors, or by, um, the

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situations that will surround him on the set. If

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he deviates even just a little bit from that, you don’t

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get a masterpiece, you don’t get quality, you don’t get excellence.

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Um, heck, you don’t even get a mediocre product. I think of the

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movie that came out this week, Maggie— Maggie Gyllenhaal directed Bride,

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and it was a $100 million movie And I think it

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grossed $9 million.

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Brutal. It didn’t look exciting to me either. I, I, I, you

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know, we talk about— we’re both pretty good movie— we’re movie people,

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and I, I watched the trailer and I went, what are we doing?

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Like, I’m sorry, I just didn’t get it. And now, by the way,

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by the way, the original Bride of Frankenstein, great movie. That was a

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great movie, by the way. It’s not, you know, it was

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just this ver— I didn’t, I didn’t get it.

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But back to your analogy here though. So, and, and pulling— yes, back to the

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analogy, pulling this back to entrepreneur, uh, entrepreneurship.

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If you think of that, so the director in your analogy is the startup

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founder, and keeping that North Star to their

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mission and what their plan is and what they’re trying to build can get very

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easily get distracted by the developers

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that are producing the software. Let’s just say on the left-hand side, you’ve got

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a whole slew of operational things, whether they’re developers, your first

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hire, hiring the right team, etc., etc.

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On the right-hand side, you got all the money people, right? So, the VCs and

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the angels that once they give you their money, they want to have an

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opinion. So, to your analogy there,

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it’s interesting to me that you chose the movies and the director

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is basically the startup founder. The director is that person that’s supposed to have the

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North Star, that’s supposed to have the steering compass

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to steer the startup in the

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movies that is the director. So that, like, to your point, it’s the closest to

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entrepreneurship in the movie industry is that director. I agree with that.

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I didn’t really put those two and two together, but it’s a good analogy.

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So I look at directors like, you know, we’re not going to talk all about

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directors this episode, but we’re going to talk more about entrepreneurs. We’re going to sort

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of lean into that. And I want to talk about the work too. I want

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to tie it into what I said there in the opening because I think there’s

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something something valuable. Not something— there is something valuable there, 100%.

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Um, but I think of directors like, um, directors I, I

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particularly care for, and directors who are— who have been

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acknowledged as creatives who produce something of quality, right?

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They all had the ability— and I’m going to name 5 of

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them, right? Actually, I’m going to name 3 more because I already named Paul

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Thomas Anderson. And I named, uh, Christopher Nolan. I’m going to name

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3 other ones, okay? All 5 of these

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men, quite frankly— oh no, I’ll throw a woman in there actually,

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um, had strength of vision, to your point, and they had strength of singular

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vision. So

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the man at the top of that mountain was Orson Welles.

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I mean, he created Citizen Kane at what, like the age of like

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26? Yeah, that’s nuts.

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By the way, Michelangelo also created the David at like, you know, 20-some-odd

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years old. So like, you know, genius in youth is

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not just limited to like— you’re telling me that Mark

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Zuckerberg wasn’t the first, wasn’t the first child genius?

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It’s been done before, Mark. And

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by individuals who— anyway, doesn’t matter. I won’t go down that road. Don’t you

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tempt me. So you got Orson Welles, Um,

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then you have, of course, the great British master. I have two

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Britishers on this list. Alfred Hitchcock. Oh yeah, I mean,

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please. From the silent films, um, that

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he directed, um, in the, um, in the ’20s and ’30s—

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or not, sorry, not ’20s and ’30s, in the ’40s and ’50s. Um, and then

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the remakes that he did, um, in the, uh, in the ’60s and later

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on into the ’70s. The man was just— the man was just ridiculous. So you’ve

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got Orson Welles, You’ve got Alfred Hitchcock. And I said

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I was gonna throw a woman on there because, you know, I’m not gender-specific here.

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Kathryn Bigelow, you know, The Hurt Locker, Point

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Break. I mean, those are singularly visionary,

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visionary films. And then of course, Christopher Nolan, like I said, Paul

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Thomas Anderson. Those are 5 directors I can name just off the top of my

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brain. And I know that our listeners can name more where they had that

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vision. And they drove the vision. Sometimes I think of

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Stanley Kubrick, actually, a man, by the way, whose vision I could not understand

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on most of his movies. I just could not.

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Um, but I cannot deny that he had a vision. He

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absolutely did. It’s just one I didn’t understand. You know, the interesting thing too here

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00:24:06.380 –> 00:24:09.180
is, if again, pulling it, pulling it back to entrepreneurship,

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film— the film directors and entrepreneurs are very similar in this respect as

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well. If you’ve done it once and you’ve made a lot of money at

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it, you are less likely to get those

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00:24:20.900 –> 00:24:24.580
left-right side influences trying to change your vision if you’ve

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already been there, done that. So, yes. So, second, you know, second-time

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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,

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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,

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00:24:43.900 –> 00:24:47.580
right? Like, so Christopher Nolan— now don’t get me wrong, I

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wouldn’t say I’m in love with every movie he’s ever done, but the fact

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of the matter is most of them produce a lot of money. Like, let’s just

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00:24:54.580 –> 00:24:57.980
be realistic, with his name on it alone, even the

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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

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00:25:05.460 –> 00:25:09.100
entrepreneurship journey is very similar in that respect as well.

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00:25:09.680 –> 00:25:13.360
Like, a first, a first-time founder is very hard to get money. I

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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
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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

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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

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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.

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Getting money is easy.

422
00:27:02.560 –> 00:27:06.040
Getting good advice, notice I said good, not bad, good

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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

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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

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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

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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.