Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Bill Gurley - Benchmark Partner, Backed Uber, Zillow, Stitch Fix | The Conveyor Belt That Ruins Your Life

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Bill Gurley - Benchmark Partner, Backed Uber, Zillow, Stitch Fix | The Conveyor Belt That Ruins Your Life · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  I was an engineer, I had an engineering degree in undergrad.
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  In my second years, we were starting the third project I had worked on.
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  This probably isn't what I want to do.
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  After a couple years, I thought to myself, is this what I want to do?
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  My whole life I got to know.
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  What does it take to spot the next big thing before anyone else does?
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  Bill Gurley is the venture capitalist who's intuition has shaped the modern tech landscape.
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  As a general partner at benchmark, he backed companies like Uber, OpenTable, and Grubhub.
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  Long before they became household names.
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  58% of people say they're not engaged at work.
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  15 of those 58s say they're quite quitting.
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  These are horrible numbers. Founders live on the edge of a new technological shift constantly.
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  And they can't not know what's happening next.
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  It requires a level of studying that is foreign in other industries and other fields.
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  Most people, when they go home from their job, they don't study more about what's next in their job.
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  He's not driven by hype.
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  He's driven by insight, discipline, and a deep understanding of how markets evolve.
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  His career is proof that great investing isn't luck.
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  It's vision sharp and by rigor.
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  If you're in your dream job already, embrace AI.
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  You want to become the superhuman.
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  That is what's new on the edge.
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  You should be self-learning.
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  If you're not in your dream job and it's threatened by AI,
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  all the more urgency to jump out.
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  Bill, so you spent 25 years investing in the best founders in the world.
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  And then you chose to wrote a book that has nothing to do with venture capital.
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  So why?
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  You know, it's funny.
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  A lot of people ask me that question.
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  And when I decided to write a book and I went out and talked to agents and publishers,
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  I'd say 80, 90% of them ended up in a non-connection.
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  Because they would constantly steer back towards.
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  Don't you want to write a venture capital or a tell-all or how to invest book?
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  And I didn't have any motivation to do that.
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  I can't explain why, but I didn't have any motivation to do that.
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  This started about 10 years ago.
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  I was at a moment in my life where I was consuming tons of biographies,
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  which I think lots of people have that thing where they read a great biography
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  and they want more and more and more of them.
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  And I was reading a biography and noticed certain patterns about this individual's process
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  and how they went about learning and how they went about connecting and how they went
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  about executing their career.
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  And I noticed similarities between three backgrounds.
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  So they were very unique and different in the industry they were tackling.
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  But the process and points were very similar.
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  And venture capital is a game of pattern recognition.
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  So you're constantly out there trying to look at how the new worlds evolving
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  and what the key patterns are.
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  And I've been a writer since I was a cell site analyst.
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  I've had a blog post for a long time.
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  And I would constantly try and see patterns and then bring them together and write about them.
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  And so that process was something I had done a lot.
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  When this clicked for me.
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  So first of all, the three people where one was a
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  folks singer, one was a basketball coach and one was a restaurant tour.
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  So they're not even, you know, they're not like.
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  In the same domain category.
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  They're not in the same domain.
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  And they're all in domains where your parents would tell you not to pursue this job.
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  And they're all in domains where people would tell you you can't make money.
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  And yet these people went on to exceptional greatness.
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  A wealth became a part of it.
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  I don't think any of them started for wealth in those areas.
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  And it touched me in a way where I was like, wow, that's a cool unlock.
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  Like that there might be some things these people are doing that other people aren't doing
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  and that haven't been written down.
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  And so I initially thought this would be a great presentation to give to someone maybe it,
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  like an MBA class because that's a point in your life where people that go to
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  MBA school have a very unique opportunity to shift careers if they wanted to.
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  So anyway, I gave the talk to the University of Texas.
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  They put that on YouTube.
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  It got several hundred thousand views.
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  I started to hear from, you know, people that had changed their lives.
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  A few people who are in the personal development space like James Clear noticed it.
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  And you know, all the gain momentum and people said to me, you should turn into a book.
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  And one person in particular who is very outspoken about trying to encourage people to do
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  creative things when he heard I had this kind of in the can, he like pushed me.
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  Like, you know, he does this with a lot of people.
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  But like, so you started with a question, why is a venture capitalist doing this non-venture
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  capital thing? He like really kind of shoved me into back and said, no, this will be good for
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  you to go do this non-venture capital thing.
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  So it's a passion project.
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  It's something that I've now spent six years working and studying and learning and enhancing
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  from the presentation, working with a co-writer.
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  And I think I hope it's awesome, you know, I've gotten a lot of early validation.
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  You know, the goal, the sole goal of it is to unlock human potential, like to get people
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  who maybe didn't have the gumption to go do this thing, particularly if it's in a field
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  that doesn't feel like, you know, you're supposed to be doing it and see if they can go change
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  the world. And not only change the world, but I think all the stories we have in the book are
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  people who once they're successful have huge impact on others, you know. And so it's a passion
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  project with hopefully a very noble objective function.
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  Well, I think there is a hugely noble objective with this. And I think that that's also why it
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  resonates with so many people. Because the question that you asked me, like, do you enjoy what you're
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  doing for a living and the question of like, do you like your job, do you like your career?
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  You did research on this and 70% of people that you researched in this 10,000 person study that
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  you did for this book did not say that they enjoyed what they were doing, that they wanted to
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  sort of like, if they could sort of restart, right? And I think that I think I'm very fortunate
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  because I said, like, yes, I do enjoy what I'm doing, but that's obviously not the majority.
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  So this is why this idea resonates with so many people because I think a lot of people,
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  I've thought about this a lot. I feel like people start in a career and like time just flies,
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  like time really just flies. And then they look up and they're 40, 50 plus sometimes. And I
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  where did my life go? What am I actually doing with my life is a career that I'm in, even something
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  I want to do. Or is it what I was pushed into after college or universities? What my parents
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  wanted is it what just like pays the bills and I'm scared to do something else. So I think that's
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  why it hits home with so many people. I have to ask you, like, was there a point in your life
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  where you were in a career that you absolutely hated that was that like, did any of writing this
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  book like take you back to a point in your life? Yeah, I think there was an undertone. First of all,
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  my careers of entry capitalist, I adored and I've still kind of at the tail end of it, but I
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  loved every minute of it. And I would often say in interviews, you know, if we lived in a socialist
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  world where everyone got paid the same for a job, I would still want this one, you know, because I
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  had so much fun doing it. And I had two jobs before that. I wouldn't say I hated them, but I was
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  an engineer. I had an engineering degree in undergrad. And you know, in my second year as an
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  engineer, you know, we were starting the third project I had worked on and it looked like the
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  second and it looked like the first. And I was seeing a bigger broader world out there. And it was
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  like, you know, this probably isn't what I want to do. And so I went to MBA at University of Texas,
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  thought about venture a little bit while I was there, but it looked very hard to break into.
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  And I went to Wall Street. And I was a Wall Street analyst on the cell side. I had a great time
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  not a lot of amazing people. The cell site else gets connected immediately to CEOs and CFOs,
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  which is insanity. You're 27 likes it shouldn't it? But after a couple years, I walked around the
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  office and I thought to myself, is this what I want to do my whole life? And I got to know, I got to
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  know. And that, you know, eventually led to me getting into venture. So I do think one of the
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  things that's important, and I want to come back to some of the data that we stirred up. But some
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  of the things that's important is letting young adults know that it's okay to try a career and stop.
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  You know, and Dave Evans who wrote, designing your life talks about this a lot. They have data in
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  that book where like, I won't get it exactly right, but like five years post college, 40% of people
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  are no longer in the career that their major was. And then 10 years at, it's like 60%. And no one
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  tells you that when you start, and it all feels like you're on this kind of treadmill. And we call it
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  a conveyor belt. Like you don't know that you have that flexibility. And so the weight of the
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  direction you're running feels very heavy on young adult. And then I think that also there's all
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  these expectations that they feel that have to live up to. And they don't know where those, maybe
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  they do know where those repetitions are coming from. Maybe like I mentioned, it is your parents or
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  your peers or your guidance counselor or your professors or whatever, but you have all these
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  expectations and then you actually start running a race that isn't even your own. And that's what I
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  think a lot of, I think if we talk about the data, like it's like it's the data is shocking, but
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  also kind of sad. And I think that you probably felt the same way because you ran this survey twice
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  because you didn't believe the data when you first ran this survey. So. And by the way, so we
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  we started reading much academic research. There wasn't much data on career regret. We launched
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  a survey monkey survey of a thousand, but eventually to make sure it was hardened, you know, great
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  academic work we partnered with Wharton and did a much broader one ours was seven and 10.
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  There's came back six and 10. I mean, it's still majority don't like what they do for the question
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  was if you could start over, would you do something different? The Gallup poll doesn't employ
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  engagement survey every year. Those numbers are at 15 year lows right now. There's this whole
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  phrase quite quitting you may have heard about, which they say like 58% of people say they're not
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  engaged at work and 15 of those 58 say they're they're they're quite quitting. They're like
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  intentionally trying to undermine the organization, but these are these are horrible numbers. Of course,
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  you know, but but I do think part of the problem is the very well-intentioned people that want
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  the child to be as successful as they can possibly be. And in in the book calling in the American
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  mind, Luke Yanaugh and hate height call it the resume arms race. But like about six grade parents
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  take on an enormous amount of anxiety about their college application and whether it's going to
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  be full or not. And so when, you know, people I say when I was young, but like when people were
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  younger, you know, they came home and they left the house and they went and ran around the neighborhood
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  and nobody said these kids today have their life scheduled from when they wake up to when they go
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  to bed. And it's lacrosse and it's cello lessons and it's the foreign language and it's, you know,
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  volunteering and like all to build up that resume and and then it just starts compounding and going
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  faster and faster and faster. One other thing that's happened that I think is is unfortunate is the
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  many universities now require you to apply to a major as part of your application. So you used to
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  go take core classes for two years and then at the end of your sophomore year to clear a major.
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  Now you're telling a junior in high school, you know, do you know what you want to do? Do you
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  know what you love? They really don't know. And I've watched people ask these kids and they're not,
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  they're not, they really don't know. So they just want to say, I'm sorry, I don't know, but they're
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  not allowed to have that answer. You get thrown into these situations where first of all,
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  it's very expensive and there's a lot of pressure. And again, your whole circle and peer group is
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  saying, this is what you have to do. Like in my family, the expectation was just get a degree,
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  like just get a degree, right? It doesn't really matter what you do. But then that shapes,
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  it's when you just get a degree, that does shape to a to do an extent where you're going to end up
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  in your career. And there's so much pressure early on and you're trying to, you're trying to
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  navigate it. Your parents come from a different generation where there wasn't, I don't think there
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  wasn't the same kind of pressure. Like now, I feel there's so much pressure to pursue higher
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  education to, and there's not just pressure, but there's so many different choices too in career,
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  right? So there's pressure with choices. And it just makes for like a really, I think for a
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  young kid, like a very stressful environment. By the way, we, we, we, we, we, we, we talk about this
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  in the book where you up through like 10th grade, 11th grade, you don't make a lot of choices.
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  And then all of a sudden, there's 2,000 colleges to choose from in all these majors. Like it just
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  opens up like crazy. And you don't know, you don't know what to do. There's a, there's a,
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  I found this great quote from Rick Rubin's book, but he says, his children, few of us are taught
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  to understand and prioritize our feelings. For the most part, the education system doesn't ask us.
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  To access our sensitivity, but to be obedient to do what it's expected. Our natural
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  end, our independent spirit is tame, free thought is constrained. There's a set of rules and
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  expectations put upon us that are not about exploring who we are or what we're capable of.
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  I love this. And I don't think that's intentional. Like I, I'm not mad at the parents or to college
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  counselors or any of that. I just think it's a big system that has evolved to this place. And
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  I'm hopeful that we can get a few parents and, uh, and career counselors as readers of the book
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  just to open the aperture of what's possible, you know, to start thinking about the things
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  in a different way. If you look at, was it a personality trait? Was it exposure to people? Was it
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  this inflection point in your life where you had the courage to pivot careers and to make
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  different choices because you were on a path and then you pivoted and then you pivoted.
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  So I mean, why did you do this? Why did, for example, even I do this when so many people stay stuck
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  in one thing far after it sort of expired? One thing I give a lot of credit to, my, my father
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  was a grew up on a rural farm in North Carolina, fell in love with model airplanes. That took
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  him to NC State where he got Iron Otico engineering degree and he was working at Langley Air Force
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  Base and he got invited to move to Houston and helped be a part of the launch of NASA. And he,
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  he took the leap and he's still here. I was just with him last week, but it, uh, that knowing that
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  he did that and knowing the outcome from it and how it shaped his whole life and our community,
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  I mean, just so much came from that. I think it just gave me permission, you know, and one,
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  that word to word, I use a lot, talking about the book, like I want to give people permission
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  to do something that feels a little bit risky, that feels a little bit ambitious and feels,
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  like maybe it's something they shouldn't be doing, you know. Do you feel like there's,
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  there's traits that people can borrow from successful founders in their own career?
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  Um, sure. Um, one of the things we get into a book in, in the book a lot is just how you think
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  about learning, you know, and I've never, you know, founders live on the edge of a new technological
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  shift constantly and they can't not know what's happening next. And it requires a level of studying
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  that is foreign in other industries and other fields, not to the people we profile, but to most
• 17:21
  people. Like most people, when they go home from their job, they don't study more about what's next
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  in their job. Like it's just not what they do. It's not a common trait. All the people in this book
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  and all founders have to live in constant fear that there's something new on the edge that they don't
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  know. One thing that I've always, this is like a working thesis and you work with a lot more
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  founders than me. So bear with me if you, if you agree with this or not. But I've always thought
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  that the best employees could be founders in another life. For whatever reason, that's just not
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  the season of the life that they're in right now. So and you hire somebody, the people that are
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  going to kill it in their career, they are ambitious, they are curious, they are, they are self-taught
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  individuals or people that are always trying to do the next thing or even break what's working now
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  so to build something better, even in their own job or in their own life. Like they're very,
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  they adopt a lot of the same traits that a successful founder would have. But they just do it in
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  in a work environment because that's the place they want to play in right now. So I think that
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  when I think about the most successful people who have had the careers that are fulfilling that
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  they actually enjoy, they act like founders even if they don't have the title. And you touch on
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  something that I spend a lot of time on in a book which is I think that in order to be great,
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  you want to learn all the bedrock principles you possibly can. But then once you know those,
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  have the independence of thought and the confidence to innovate on top of those principles. So it's
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  not ignorance of the past. It's full understanding of the past within appreciation, the self-learning
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  and the ability to do something different. One of the things that I think would make many
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  bad choices of founders is if they get to first level wrote knowledge and then they just apply it
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  all the time and they don't have curiosity and they don't evolve. But I see a lot of people
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  execute that way in life. And you can get through, you know, but you're not very dynamic.
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  When somebody is in a career right now and they're very aware that they're not happy,
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  they're unfulfilled. They're in the 70% or the 60% depending on which study they're part of.
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  What is the new mental model they have to adopt? How do they change the way they view the world?
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  Like what's the action I step they got to take? Because like the first question, oh this is great.
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  I'm not thriving in my career. I have a mortgage, I have a spouse, I have kids, I have all these
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  payments, I have been doing only the one thing for the past 30 years. It's great to like
• 20:14
  pontificate on a podcast that I should be learning all the new skills. But how do I actually change
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  my life? And I think that that's where the theory at some point has to come in contact with reality.
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  I think that it's obviously easier for people younger in their career. And that's the same
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  for starting a company. Like the more you get locked into obligations like you described,
• 20:38
  you do start to reduce your own flexibility. Although I want to come back to that.
• 20:44
  So I do think it's better for young people. But three or four things I would say, one,
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  recognize that lots of people, lots of successful people start in one place and move to another.
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  This is the stuff that Dave Evans talks a lot about. Like it's okay to change.
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  Because permission again. Yeah, you need to permission to do it and you need to think that it's
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  possible. The hardest part, I think of all the stuff we talk about in a book with a chapter
• 21:16
  title, Chase your curiosity. People talk like flying your passion. I think it's the hardest part.
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  If you don't have a calling, it could be forced. It's like there's some entrepreneurs that
• 21:27
  I'm going to start a company. And they just kind of forced start a company, a person's like really
• 21:32
  having an aha moment. And I think you need a aha moment. But I have a test that I think is the
• 21:39
  right test for whether something is the type of passion where the tools in this book could help you
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  be successful. And that is simply, would you spend time outside of work learning about this topic?
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  Like would you pick up a new paper on this topic and not watch Breaking Bad? Like does learning
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  in this field compete with entertainment for you? And if that answers yes, I think this is your
• 22:09
  thing. Like I really think this is your thing. And I think if you're in a field where you have
• 22:16
  that level of curiosity, you're going to do extremely well. Almost whatever the field is.
• 22:21
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• 25:10
  okay, so if I'm running a podcast, like I'm up until three or four in the morning,
• 25:14
  like researching how to ask the best question, what does this setup look like? What is like,
• 25:19
  what are the clips with the hook, the first three seconds of a clip? And how does that perform
• 25:23
  on social media? So like a market, they show better, right? Like I just get obsessed with it.
• 25:27
  So I know that I'm doing my thing. I know that I hopefully am thriving in a career.
• 25:31
  I don't believe that. Well, we have a section to talk about Jimmy Donaldson who's
• 25:35
  Mr. Beast. And he was on a group Skype with these other four individuals. And they were
• 25:43
  talking about those exact things you just described, right? Because I love it. Yeah, I love it.
• 25:49
  And I think that, I mean, if I think about where I started my career, I started my career.
• 25:53
  And it's so funny that you clocked. I don't know if you looked into what I did for a living,
• 25:57
  but I was in when I first started like B2B enterprise assays sales and just sales in general. And
• 26:03
  you know, you finish work. And like, I didn't feel like researching better.
• 26:10
  Yeah, but I suspect there are some people that do. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. I'm sure
• 26:17
  they do. And it's a useful skill. You can make a lot of money doing that too. But, but, but that's
• 26:22
  why this is the test I love. And there's a, there's a clip you can go watch on YouTube of a
• 26:30
  graduation talk that Seinfeld gave it Duke. And he, he uses the word fascination where you use
• 26:36
  obsession. And I think curiosity, fascination obsession, all those things get back to this point.
• 26:41
  Would you spend your free time learning about more about it? And they're, you know, that's a high
• 26:47
  test. That's a high bar. But I certainly did that in my field. Like, well, I was going to ask you.
• 26:53
  So, so when was your pivot into venture capital? Because there was a question that Frank Quattrone
• 26:59
  asked you about your dream job. And he basically asked, like, what, what was it? And then you answered,
• 27:08
  I've always dreamed of being a venture capitalist. And then Frank said he'd make it happen. Then
• 27:12
  within 13 months, you were a VC. So what was, what was that interaction? What did that sort of
• 27:19
  trigger? Let me give you some context. Yeah. So I was, I was in my third year as a cell site
• 27:24
  analyst in New York. And Frank Quattrone, who's a very famous investment banker in high tech world,
• 27:32
  left Morgan Stanley was starting a new investment bank. I knew I didn't want to be a cell site
• 27:38
  analyst anymore. I had been approached to be a buy side investor at a really great firm called
• 27:45
  Capital Group. And was interviewing there. And I got this call out of the blue from, from Frank.
• 27:52
  And I talked to someone who knew him well. And he says, you have to take to me, this other
• 27:58
  individual said, you have to take to me. So I took the meeting. And he asked that question.
• 28:03
  He said, what's your dream job at? I said, well, I've always dreamt of being a venture capitalist.
• 28:09
  And that goes back to I worked at Compact, which was venture backed as I studied
• 28:17
  companies on Wall Street. I could see the young up and coming disruptions. Interesting to me.
• 28:22
  I like, I've always been fascinated with gambling and edge and those notions. And so I was going to go
• 28:28
  on the buy side, but that's what I wanted. And he said, come work for me because I told him I didn't
• 28:34
  want to do the job he wanted to hire me for. And he said, come work for me. And I'll introduce you
• 28:38
  to every venture capitalist I know, which is a very fortunate moment. And that word fortune comes
• 28:44
  up a lot when you study great people. But I do believe that what's the famous saying that's
• 28:51
  we're preparation meets opportunity. Yeah, I mean, like you get these chances in life, but you
• 28:56
  got to take them. Yes, you got to be you have to be you have to be able to even recognize them.
• 29:00
  That's that's huge. Some people don't even recognize when these are funny. It was funny.
• 29:03
  Someone sent me something the other day. This is so far away from everybody talking about, but
• 29:07
  that there's an up and coming country singer named Charlie Crockett, who's starting to really
• 29:13
  bubble up. And apparently he was outside a green hall and new bronzefuls and handed, handing out
• 29:19
  his own CD and handed one to Evan Falker of the Turnpike troubadour. And that led to, you know,
• 29:25
  him starting to get two or eights and stuff and people go, wow, that's super fortunate. And I'm like,
• 29:30
  you know what? Most most people aren't handing out CDs at green hall. No, you got to you got to
• 29:35
  to a degree, you got to make your own luck in life. Like you do got to make your own luck in life.
• 29:39
  And that's like this is listen, if it's career, if it's entrepreneurship, what it's like,
• 29:46
  if you take enough shots and if you take enough action, I think you do start to actually create
• 29:50
  your own luck just through like pure, pure volume of things done. Something's going to work out in
• 29:56
  your favor. I think that the people that are again in the majority of being unfulfilled in their
• 30:02
  career and saying, I would start over if I could, it's because for a period of time for like
• 30:09
  five, 10, 15 years, they haven't really taken any ambitious shots that could lead to the result
• 30:16
  they want. Listen to this. This is also from Rick Rubin's book, which if you haven't read it,
• 30:21
  it's very different, but it's, it's, it's Rubin's a, it's a really interesting guy.
• 30:25
  But he said to the best of my ability, I've followed my intuition to make career turns and been
• 30:31
  recommended against doing so every time. It's funny every time. And uh, and I, you know, I,
• 30:38
  I just think that's fascinating, right? Like this, this trusting your inner
• 30:43
  like voice and what is telling you versus what society or these well intended, once again,
• 30:50
  well intended, you know, chapter. That's the thing. It's always, it's always, it's always well intended
• 30:54
  or well intentioned or, but it's because they are speaking from their frame or their perspective.
• 31:03
  So if you had somebody in your circle, I give you, if you were speaking to Rick Rubin about career
• 31:09
  change, Rick Rubin's going to tell you, go take the career change, go do the crazy thing. He
• 31:14
  unquestionably well. And that book, yes, you know, it's, it's targeted at more creative individuals.
• 31:19
  It's, it's funny. I reread it, you know, thinking about my book, my book's more targeted at professional
• 31:25
  career, you know, type things. And he's more focused on creative individuals, but he's unquestionably
• 31:32
  urging people to, to have more permission to take more risks, to be more of themselves.
• 31:40
  But the majority again have never done that. So they're speaking to you and they're giving advice
• 31:44
  from their reference point. Fair enough. But that's the, that's the issue. So if your parents say,
• 31:49
  well, maybe don't, don't, you know, don't switch careers, you just got this new job.
• 31:54
  They mean well, they want safety and security. But
• 31:57
  there's a, there's a, there's this also famous video you can find on the internet where Jeff
• 32:04
  Bezos talks about his career regret minimization framework. Have you heard of this? Yeah.
• 32:11
  And you can go watch it. It's like five minutes. It's not long. But when he was thinking about
• 32:15
  starting Amazon, and this is exactly what we're talking about, like a hard pivot, he is working at
• 32:20
  D.E. Shaw. David Shaw does not want him to leave. Like he's young, highly successful. Like he's
• 32:27
  walking away from a career most people with dream of having, right? Walking away. And he said he
• 32:34
  went and walked around Central Park and he asked himself the question, you know, if I'm 80 and looking
• 32:41
  back, am I going to be more upset that I left D.E. Shaw or that I didn't try this thing that was
• 32:48
  tugging, you know, on my ear, telling me, you got to go do this thing. And he said that that made
• 32:53
  it simple. Like there was in his mind, it was abundantly clear. And David Pink has a book on regret.
• 33:01
  And the, he says that there's tons of academic studies that boldness regrets are the ones that weigh
• 33:08
  on people the most. And boldness regrets are the things you didn't do. Like in over your life,
• 33:15
  you get to the end and boy, I wish I had done this. I wish I had asked this girl out. I wish I had
• 33:20
  changed careers. I wish I had done this thing. And life is a user to lose a proposition. You go
• 33:25
  through once. And so having that mindset from these other great individuals, like I think that
• 33:31
  can help with that question you asked a while ago about how do you get off the snide? How do you
• 33:36
  get out of this thing if you know you don't like it? So you studied a few different success stories.
• 33:42
  So Bob Dylan, you mentioned Mr. Beast, Bobby Knight, Jen Akin. And you are, you are a master of
• 33:50
  pattern recognition. So explain to me why you were studying these people in the first place. So
• 33:57
  how do how does studying Mr. Beast sort of play into having some of some of the stories where the
• 34:04
  inspiration for the book and some of them were to fill out the book and and make it even better.
• 34:11
  And so some of them we went looking for after the fact that some of them fell upon me.
• 34:16
  The ones that you noticed when you started yes. Yeah, the ones that fell upon me were from reading
• 34:21
  biographies and the it's so funny when I was they I had a horrible verbal SAT score. I never read
• 34:31
  and then somehow when I got to graduate school to my MBA program, I just started reading.
• 34:38
  And I don't know why the bit flipped. Maybe I had free time while I was there. And I started
• 34:44
  consuming. And I have a list of books at the back of the book of all these books I consume. But
• 34:50
  like, you know, a lot of the people that I studied, you know, along the way picked up a lot of the,
• 34:56
  you know, personal value book seven habits are highly effective people, you know,
• 35:01
  the Dale Carnegie book like, you know, Warren Buffett says the Dale Carnegie book had more
• 35:06
  influence on them on than anything. And so I think right after those type books or Tony Robbins,
• 35:13
  you know, you start to fall into the biographies that and they're fun. Like you learn a lot of
• 35:20
  things reading about these other successful people and what they've done. So that's why I that's
• 35:25
  why I got into them. Then we started looking for stories of people who made an intentional choice
• 35:33
  to take a career change, you know, who who had this aha moment, I'm going to go do this and
• 35:40
  set about it intentionally. Because that's the type of framework that can be helpful to someone
• 35:48
  that wants to go do this. And what was it? What was the thing that that you noticed in these people?
• 35:53
  Like, I mean, like, that's why I was I mentioned pattern recognition because you did this for,
• 35:58
  you know, 25 plus years looking at founders. So like, one skill is easily transferable. I know
• 36:04
  this for sure. So if you notice what makes a successful founder, then you start to notice what
• 36:09
  just makes a successful person. And we sort of touched on a few different points and attributes
• 36:12
  and personality traits and whatnot. But when you study, you study the most successful people in the
• 36:17
  world, the most of the people that have made career pivots. What are some of the patterns that you
• 36:23
  start to recognize? So first of all, you have to know that you're going to have to have this
• 36:27
  intentionality. You have to know that this is something I'm excited about and determined
• 36:32
  to go do. You know, Danny Meyer, when he he walked away from a sales job, this company that sold
• 36:42
  these devices that hook into clothes so that you can't steal them from stores, he was making over
• 36:48
  200 dollars a year. And this was 40 years ago. And so that's a lot of money for a young person.
• 36:55
  And he took a job that was less than one tenth that salary in a restaurant to start the learning
• 37:02
  process. And so like the level of determination you need is ultra high. But then he he set about
• 37:11
  a learning journey. So he enrolled in a restaurant management class. He enrolled in a and a
• 37:17
  consignatory class. He he he worked at this restaurant for almost nothing to get exposure.
• 37:25
  And then he went to Europe and worked for free. He set up a series of sessions where he could
• 37:32
  learn at different restaurants. And so this learning part is something that I see over and over
• 37:38
  and over again. And I would divide it into two components. They're critical. The the first one
• 37:44
  is learning the history. And by the way, I think this is a piece of advice that could help anybody
• 37:49
  that's trying to get hired for any job. Most people, there are a few fields like like American literature
• 37:57
  where you study, it's like, you have to study the greats. But in most fields, people don't,
• 38:04
  there's no one going into an accounting job that studied the great early accounts. But if you
• 38:09
  went into an interview and there's 20 candidates and it's quite clear, you know the history,
• 38:14
  you're going to be highly differentiated. So it immediately helps with peers and mentors and all
• 38:20
  these other things if you know that history. And if it's too boring for you to go read the history,
• 38:25
  you fail to test one, you go back to see, go back to start and find something else. There's this
• 38:32
  thing we uncovered that we put in the book. There's this big chess tournament, global chess tournament
• 38:38
  and during one of the middle of it, they did something for fun. They did a trivia contest in the middle
• 38:44
  of it for the history of chess and Magnus Cross and one. Of course he did. See, but you say that,
• 38:50
  of course he did, right? And here's another like insane thing. I a friend of mine won at a charity
• 38:59
  auction dinner with John Lasseter at his house who's the creative genius behind Pixar. And
• 39:07
  the when we showed up, they put us in his screening room and served a 10 course meal to 10 of his
• 39:14
  favorite cartoons of his life. And he walked through and described why they mattered to him and how
• 39:20
  they impacted him. And most of them were from 40 years ago. And you sit there and you say, holy
• 39:27
  shit, like he, like the guy that's innovating in top of his field has this kind of understanding
• 39:33
  of the history of the field. So that's one. The other edge where you can highly differentiate yourself
• 39:39
  is what's brand new. So a lot of people go into careers like you go into, you go into going to work
• 39:48
  in a marketing organization, you go into work at a finance organization. Most of those people don't
• 39:54
  know how social media works, how podcasts work, how like, and if you're in those orbs and have
• 40:01
  that knowledge of what's on the edge, you're once again highly differentiated. So I love learning
• 40:08
  on both sides. Like, where's innovation in this area? And understanding all the about, you know,
• 40:15
  history, like of the field. Like we talk about a picture in the book
• 40:20
  that Picasso did when he was 14. If you go to the museum in Barcelona, you're shocked or I was
• 40:30
  shocked to find out that this that Picasso had nailed perfect realism by like 13 or 14. He was winning
• 40:37
  his winning awards for how amazing his pictures were. And so you can go find, we included a
• 40:45
  description of what it called the altar. But, but everyone thinks about this cubist and all this
• 40:51
  thing. You know, anyone could do that, but it came from a place of a fully understanding the art
• 40:57
  form first. It was, it was this fascination, this sign, well, sign fell calls it fascination. I
• 41:02
  was calling it obsession or curious, whatever you call it. But because I think that when you look
• 41:08
  at somebody like a Picasso, you'd say, well, he's a, he's a, a servant. He's like, naturally,
• 41:13
  he's naturally gifted or talented. I think that that's a, I think that that actually just is almost
• 41:20
  like a compass. Like that, that maybe that first little bit of talent or gift points you in a
• 41:25
  direction. But then the obsession to use what I call it, it's what actually allows you to be
• 41:31
  successful at that thing. I mean, if you look at any great, I mean, it could be Picasso could be,
• 41:36
  it could be LeBron or M.J. Or pick a great for many field, any industry. I mean, even founders that
• 41:43
  speak with it, and I'm sure that you recognize this as well. They know so much about what they do.
• 41:49
  It's like, it's, it's disgusting the amount of knowledge they know, useless knowledge that they
• 41:53
  sometimes know about what they do for a living, right? They just know to the intricate detail.
• 41:58
  And by the way, it's, it's, look at the tools we have today to get knowledgeable. It's never been
• 42:04
  easier. I mean, I started writing this before Elimps took off. Like you can just sit there and
• 42:09
  talk to open it. You want to learn about the history of a field? Yeah. Just, you could, you could
• 42:14
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• 42:21
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• 42:27
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• 42:30
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• 42:35
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• 42:40
  and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with indeed sponsor jobs.
• 42:44
  I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes when people who've edited
• 42:48
  one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've
• 42:52
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• 43:42
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• 43:46
  If you're in the B2B marketing space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team
• 43:50
  at Blent. They are a demand gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the
• 43:53
  HubSpot podcast network. What I love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you
• 43:58
  what's actually working today. So demand gen marketing content linked in at attribution. They talk
• 44:03
  about real strategies that they are using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an
• 44:08
  entrepreneur, if you're building a business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search
• 44:12
  demand decoded wherever you get your podcast. I'm curious because obviously you've been like
• 44:18
  incredibly successful at your quote unquote career, your job. When you look at, when you look at
• 44:25
  some of the sort of the things that the most successful people in the world have done with their
• 44:30
  pivot and their career, have you mirrored that in your career? Like when you first started in VC,
• 44:34
  did you like study the grades? Did you go down rabbit holes? Did you learn the history where you
• 44:40
  just like obsessed with this thing more than anybody else? I think it was a little broader than VC.
• 44:44
  I think when I got into finance and investing, you know, I did that. So I read all the Buffett
• 44:50
  letters. You know, I read Howard Marx, I mean his stuff's fascinating. I read all I possibly could.
• 44:57
  Yes. So I think if someone said, you know, compared to other venture capitalists, who knows more
• 45:02
  about investing history, I think I might be at the top of the list like among venture capitalists.
• 45:09
  Like I don't think most of them. And a lot of people that roll into it knew almost never
• 45:14
  understand investing. They don't study investing. So yeah, I do it as a nod to all the people that
• 45:21
  wanted this book to be about me. In the epilogue, I do kind of walk through my story in the lens of
• 45:27
  the book. So that's in there also. I'm curious why I'm curious why people don't find value in history.
• 45:35
  It's almost like they think that there's like an ego thing or they think they're smarter than
• 45:40
  they are. I mean, you obviously hung out with a lot of founders. I think in the tech community
• 45:45
  founders view, they've been taught that old companies are stodgy and bureaucratic and stupid.
• 45:52
  And I think they put all of history into that world, which is unfortunate. I understand why.
• 45:59
  Like I'm once again, it's not somewhere like nothing. And there is an element of
• 46:06
  rebbledness that allows a founder to be successful. And that mindset can cause you to question
• 46:13
  everything that's been done historically. Every true, which is a benefit. Like saying, saying like
• 46:22
  okay, we're not going to do things the way they've always been done. That's what allows some
• 46:26
  people to be successful. But I was listening to your interview with Tim Ferris,
• 46:31
  where you were talking about how a lot of founders could actually benefit from an MBA. And I
• 46:35
  think it's the same mindset. Like whether or not you study the history of company and organization
• 46:39
  or you study or you study sort of like, you know, a more formal business education. I think there
• 46:47
  is value and understanding history. But maybe that's not what you replicate. You just learn from it.
• 46:54
  Well, like I said earlier, like having, understanding the bedrock, I think gives you a full
• 47:02
  mental model for knowing where you now want to innovate on top of what's been done prior. And I
• 47:09
  think the Picasso examples that way, you know, that one of the things, the big unlocks on the
• 47:15
  Dylan story that like if you watch the movie, you don't see when he was in Minnesota, he probably
• 47:22
  listened to more folk albums and studied more folk artists than anyone in Minnesota. I'd have to
• 47:28
  believe that when he left to go find what he got through, like he knew more, like he just knew more.
• 47:34
  And there was, when they talked to people back then in that neighborhood, he was like, they'd
• 47:39
  be like, where'd that record go? Oh, Bob took it. Like he was just gathering. He would go back then,
• 47:45
  the record stores had these listening rooms. If you couldn't afford the record, you know, he's just
• 47:50
  sitting in there, listening to over and over and over again. And people don't think about that
• 47:56
  element of any musician, like how much did they study the past, you know.
• 48:00
  When you do make a pivot in your life, in your career, what allows you to be successful?
• 48:07
  Well, the, you brought up earlier, like this is harder if you're older. We have a chapter
• 48:13
  near the end of the book called Never Too Late, where we profile several people that made
• 48:18
  post-40 changes and drastically impacted the world, which is kind of fun to know that it's still
• 48:24
  possible. You know, I don't know that the techniques are any different. I think the
• 48:32
  amount of gumption that's required is so much, you know, higher and harder. Society, you know,
• 48:41
  doesn't, I don't think, I think for, for whatever reason, I think we've evolved to a place in
• 48:48
  society where if you're 40 and half three children, you don't leave your job and go chase the dream.
• 48:53
  Like it's just, it looks reckless, right? I think that's sad, though. I think it's sad because I
• 48:59
  think that that's actually when you have like the life experience where you actually could have a
• 49:04
  higher success rate than somebody who's just like a, you know, the Stanford drop out, the, you know,
• 49:10
  the typical entrepreneur. I think that if you are, like, I think, I think, and I mean like you work
• 49:17
  with people that are probably on average, like if you look at the companies you've invested in,
• 49:21
  they are sort of like the more typical entrepreneur, right? It's sort of like the Hollywood version
• 49:26
  of entrepreneurship. But think about somebody who's 45, who's worked in a career or a business
• 49:31
  their whole life. They recognize the gaps in that industry better than anybody else. They have
• 49:36
  like the lived experience, the business acumen, and then they can either strategically pivot their
• 49:41
  career. They can go build something in that industry at 45. Like I feel like their success rate is
• 49:46
  much higher. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just making these, I'm making these assumptions up, but I feel
• 49:51
  like you're just intuitively. This person, I would assume that they would have a higher likelihood
• 49:56
  of success because of what they've gone through in life and what they know. I am the reason I'm smiling
• 50:00
  as you say that is like I have a lot of ambitions for the book. It's obviously more targeted young
• 50:07
  adults and as we talked about the people that serve in like mentor roles for that group. But
• 50:15
  I would be thrilled. I would be tickled pink if, you know, as the book launches, if I start to get
• 50:22
  inbound stories from people just like you described who this book gives them that permission.
• 50:29
  My co-writer uses the phrase disinhibiting. Like, and we found stories like Seinfeld decided he
• 50:38
  loved stand-up and wanted to give it a try, but it wasn't until he read this book. Someone wrote a
• 50:43
  book about 20 successful stand-up comedians and here they are and here's their profile and they
• 50:49
  all make money. And like that book gave him this disinhibiting moment. Oh, you can actually,
• 50:56
  one can do this, right? One can go do this and I hope I hope I hear from a ton of the people
• 51:04
  you just described and I hope they go on to do really amazing things. When you look at all the people,
• 51:09
  like even like the the founders that you work with because outside of this study you work with
• 51:14
  founders on a day-to-day, do you find the people that are more entrepreneurial are more in love with
• 51:20
  the work they do? Even if they're not, say they're not, say they're not like founders by name.
• 51:26
  Say they're people that work within like an early stage start-up and they've built from scratch.
• 51:30
  Do you feel like they're a little bit more in love? They're thriving more often than not in their
• 51:34
  career? Like is there anything else that sort of is a good signal for? I would say this. You're
• 51:41
  making me smile once again. Like there are more smiles in a start-up than I've ever seen in a
• 51:51
  non-start-up and that you're coming up with all these theories like in an unknown world. Like
• 52:00
  you're well, what if we did this or what if we did this or what if we did this product or change
• 52:04
  this pricing and when something works when and many of those theories don't like maybe a
• 52:09
  one in five, one in ten or whatever, but they keep tilting at it. But when it does work, there's
• 52:16
  this massive smile. I mean, I can just look at I see founders in my brain. Like they want to call
• 52:22
  you and tell you, guess what? Guess what? We just like, you know, what happened? Like just came.
• 52:26
  So yeah, I do, I do think that. Like I do think they're constantly
• 52:32
  experimenting constantly learning and constantly thrilled when when something comes together.
• 52:41
  So that being said, now I'm trying to I'm trying to really unlock why people have so much regret.
• 52:47
  And it's like it's not just one thing that leads to regret, right? It could be that the job you're
• 52:51
  working in was something that you just thought you had to do. It could be and you just been doing
• 52:57
  it forever. But I think it's also because you feel like you stopped winning in your career.
• 53:04
  Like you stopped, you stopped doing anything interesting. You stopped taking chances. You stopped
• 53:08
  taking any kind of risk. You stopped growing. You stopped achieving anything as an individual or even
• 53:12
  as a team. And you're just in, you know, you're just in this routine, this comfort zone routine that
• 53:20
  you've been doing for X amount of years. And there's no newness. Like at least in a startup environment,
• 53:25
  there's super high risk, but a lot of newness all the time. And I think that that can also create a
• 53:30
  lot of career satisfaction. So how do you like I mean like the question. I think that's a great point
• 53:35
  that you're making. And look, I do want to acknowledge there are many people in this life that have
• 53:41
  decided that their careers their career and their fulfillment is outside their career. And they view
• 53:49
  as one as a means to an ends and they don't want to hear about it. And this book's not for them.
• 53:56
  Like I'm not judging in this, this book's not for them. If you are in that situation, you just
• 54:02
  talked about and feel frustrated, you know, pick up the book like this. This is who I want to
• 54:08
  speak to and talk to. Do you, do you have any career regret? No, but you know, I don't because I
• 54:16
  fell into that spot. I had I not fallen into that spot. Yeah, I might. But I don't. And by the
• 54:24
  way, one thing I harp on in the book, those two jobs that I had for three years, you know, each,
• 54:32
  I don't regret those. Like they were part of the path. They got me where I was going, you know,
• 54:38
  and I'm glad that I had both of those stops along the way. I feel like I feel like people always
• 54:45
  think they have more time than they actually do. I don't know. I've noticed since I've noticed,
• 54:49
  I actually have noticed even more since since since COVID. I don't know why, but I just feel like
• 54:54
  time flies now. I feel like I think it's because you're getting older. I think time moves slow
• 54:59
  when you're young and gets faster when you're old, but like years are flying by. Yeah, years are
• 55:04
  flying. I have this theory that it relates to your storage capacity in your brain. When you're young,
• 55:10
  when you're young, you get to store everything so everything feels slow, but your brain fills up
• 55:16
  and then you're not storing much new. No, no, it's true. Well, I think that I think that I've
• 55:22
  actually read, I can't remember where I read this, but it's, there's this idea. A few different
• 55:27
  ideas as to why like time moves faster when you're when you're older. But one of them is like,
• 55:34
  you don't experience as many new things kind of like what you're, you're speaking, you don't
• 55:37
  experience as many new things as not as much newness. So routine, like life is routine. You do
• 55:44
  the same things day in, day out, day in, day out. And if you actually took time to do something new
• 55:49
  every single day, time would feel like it's moving slowly. And by the way, that ties really nicely
• 55:55
  back to this thing. I said, where if you're chasing your dream job, you learn at night as an
• 56:02
  alternative to entertainment. Like, and so the newness kind of comes with it. You know, I was
• 56:08
  talking to Danny Meyer recently and he had just come back from a, yet another European learning trip
• 56:15
  with books full of notes. Like, like, you, yeah, like, who goes on learning trips? Like, well,
• 56:22
  how many, what percentage of people in their career go on learning trip? But this is what,
• 56:27
  this is what differentiates you. No doubt. This is what differentiates you. I think you have a
• 56:32
  second Adele quote in the book. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online
• 56:38
  courses and I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things,
• 56:42
  you stop being great. You stop doing great and useful things. I mean, whether or not it's
• 56:51
  learning through reading, learning through podcasts, learning through exposure of just
• 56:57
  trying something. It doesn't work out. It failed. You learn the lesson. You try something else.
• 57:03
  Like, there's not a single person who I know who's successful, happy and fulfilled,
• 57:10
  who is not constantly exploring new ideas. And there's no, like, I mean, up until the point,
• 57:16
  you know, when you, when you are no longer on this earth, like, there's, you are always,
• 57:22
  always learning new information. By the way, such as turnaround at Microsoft may be a unit of one.
• 57:30
  Like, it may be the most successful business turnaround ever from. I don't think many people know
• 57:36
  that story. Yeah. And he, in that, when he was talking about that, someone asked him how he
• 57:42
  led so much change there. He intentionally took that mindset and said, this is going to be the
• 57:48
  mindset of the org. And, you know, are you in or out? Like, are you going to become a self-learner
• 57:55
  and be a part of the new Microsoft? And if not, you know, this probably isn't a place for you.
• 58:01
  And that's really cool and innovative and new. First of all, hats off to him for accomplishing this.
• 58:08
  I feel like a lot of CEOs, which they could do that with their companies. Yes. It's not easy,
• 58:13
  though. No, it's not easy because it pushes people outside your comfort zone. Yes. No doubt to
• 58:18
  become a self-taught individual. Because then you start to realize, I think this is probably the
• 58:23
  scariest part for when somebody is not happy with their work. And I love the idea of agency and
• 58:34
  of internal locus of control and of taking responsibility for your own outcomes. But you start
• 58:39
  to realize it, oh, I'm not in a job I love. It is entirely my fault that I'm still in this job.
• 58:47
  And our fault or responsibility or whatever word you want to call it. And then the responsibility
• 58:53
  becomes yours to learn the skill or to do the thing or to make the move or to take the action.
• 58:59
  So then it becomes quite scary because you realize that whatever you actually want to achieve is
• 59:04
  on the other side of of your action and your agency. And I think that a lot that puts a lot of
• 59:10
  people in an uncomfortable position if they are not used to adopting that mindset and that mental
• 59:14
  model. Whereas I think a good founder or even, you know, forget founder, a successful executive
• 59:20
  that has worked his or her way up through the corporate ladder. They understand that the most
• 59:24
  of their success has been contingent on them. And they are personally responsible for all outcomes,
• 59:30
  good and bad. And then it's a very scary idea for people to adopt. Well, I think the book can
• 59:34
  be super helpful for people that have that feel that way. So the structure of the book, I think,
• 59:42
  is somewhat unique. We divide it half between what I call profiles, which are stories of success
• 59:48
  and principles, which are tools or methods of success. And, you know, in addition to giving people
• 59:55
  permission, I want them to read about other people doing this so that they feel the possibility.
• 1:00:02
  And I think the stories will really help on that front. And then give you very straightforward
• 1:00:08
  tools and processes to go about the journey. And once again, these aren't really mine. I've
• 1:00:16
  studied other people that have been wildly successful. I see some mirrors in my own success,
• 1:00:21
  but I've brought them together and synthesized them in a way that I think it could give someone
• 1:00:27
  like you just described confidence to take the leap and to have some conviction that they'll be
• 1:00:34
  successful as they go forward. One last idea that I think is really important and not to
• 1:00:40
  not to throw AI into every single conversation I have. But you mentioned that AI is about to
• 1:00:45
  eliminate some of sort of the more safe careers. So this conversation, this book, some of these ideas,
• 1:00:53
  you know, the need for somebody to take action in their own life is probably becoming a little
• 1:00:57
  bit more relevant now than it even was five years ago. Because if it's not, if it's not just,
• 1:01:03
  you know, we're looking at it from the angle of you are doing it for fulfillment and you're doing
• 1:01:07
  it so that you love your life and there's no regret. But like if you look at it from the other
• 1:01:11
  angle of maybe the job that you have right now is not around in five years or maybe it's
• 1:01:17
  downsized or the people that are doing your job are specialists in AI and they can 10XC efficiency
• 1:01:25
  of every single person in that business unit because they know how to use LLMs in different sort of
• 1:01:30
  AI tools and generative chat tools or whatever. If you don't, if you don't learn new shit,
• 1:01:38
  if you don't, if you don't find a way to move into a career you love or if you don't find a way
• 1:01:44
  to become even, you know, significantly better and more proficient and forward looking in the
• 1:01:49
  career that you're doing right now, at some point you're going to get replaced, which is just a hard
• 1:01:54
  truth whether or not you love it or not. It's just the truth. So I think that the mindset of
• 1:02:00
  learning new shit, understanding that that can either be applied to make you
• 1:02:08
  probably like secure your career and the job that you're doing right now and or set you up
• 1:02:15
  for a potential successful pivot. If you're just like again self-taught person, I think that
• 1:02:19
  idea is one of the most important. Yeah, and I would say three things that one, if you are in a
• 1:02:24
  dream, if you're in your dream job already, embrace AI. You want to become the superhuman that is
• 1:02:30
  what's new on the edge. You should be self-learning like that's what you should go do if you're in
• 1:02:36
  your dream job. If you're not in your dream job and it's threatened by AI, yes, all the more urgency
• 1:02:42
  to jump out. And then lastly, I would just say I think those well intentioned parents and coaches
• 1:02:49
  send people towards the safe jobs because they think that if you make enough money, you'll be happy
• 1:02:55
  in life. There's all kind of surveys that show that not to be true. That fulfillment matters way
• 1:03:02
  more than wealth. And so I didn't think it was right. But now that all those jobs are in question,
• 1:03:12
  and hopefully some of these people will stop cramming kids down these conveyor belts towards
• 1:03:19
  comp size or whatever because now it's not a certain. No, now nothing is certain. The only thing
• 1:03:27
  that's certain is you have to be somebody who's adaptable, who is a self-taught individual. If you
• 1:03:33
  have those skill sets in that mindset, I think then your career is... And you're much more likely to
• 1:03:38
  have that mindset if you have found something where you're highly curious about. I stumbled upon
• 1:03:46
  this podcast with Angela Duckworth, who was obviously written this famous book, grit. She took
• 1:03:52
  some time to talk with us as we were writing this. And her book said there's two things that lead
• 1:03:58
  to success, passion and perseverance. And that's what grit is all about. And she says if she were
• 1:04:04
  rewriting the book today, she'd focus way more on the passion side. Because what she discovered is
• 1:04:11
  we've taught a lot of these kids how to grind. Just like you teach a kid how to practice piano
• 1:04:18
  for four hours a day. And what ends up happening is you crush your SATs, you get into the best school
• 1:04:25
  possible, you get one degree maybe two, but you run out of steam. If you don't have this passion that
• 1:04:33
  drives this curiosity, you've been trained to run, you know, but eventually you run out of energy.
• 1:04:43
  You mentioned something interesting and I just want to touch on that. You shouldn't be raising
• 1:04:48
  towards money. You should be raising towards fulfillment. How do you measure fulfillment? How do you
• 1:04:53
  know if you are truly fulfilled? Is it a feeling? Is it like when you look at some of the people you've
• 1:04:58
  interviewed? What's the what's the metric? I have to believe that there are other academics or
• 1:05:04
  authors who have written books specifically on that topic. Probably not. I'm going to go talk to
• 1:05:10
  chat GBT after this so I can have a better answer. You know, I really have found that people that
• 1:05:19
  have this self-learning element to their job are the ones that are fulfilled. And I don't know if it's
• 1:05:26
  for the reason you said where there's just constant newness in their life. I think
• 1:05:33
  you know, all the people we, I mentioned this earlier, but all the people we profile end up
• 1:05:37
  touching a lot of other people's lives in a positive way. You know, if you become extraordinary
• 1:05:43
  in your field and at least if you're following the principles I talk about, you're you're
• 1:05:50
  co-evolving with your peers, you know, these kind of things. You're building relationships,
• 1:05:58
  you're having success, you're impacting people's lives. I think those are, you know, the elements
• 1:06:03
  of fulfillment that matter the most. So running down a dream, that that'll be available wherever you
• 1:06:08
  get your books and we'll put links in the show notes and everything like that. Where do you want to
• 1:06:12
  send people? Is there any other socials or websites that you want people to go to? There's one thing
• 1:06:17
  I'll mention and we're just putting it up right now, but I'm going to take all the the proceeds
• 1:06:24
  that I would get from the book and more in Launcher Foundation. It's called running down a dream.
• 1:06:30
  And we're going to take applications for microgrants for people that are kind of stuck
• 1:06:35
  financially that want to go chase their dreams. And you know, we'll we'll we'll take those
• 1:06:42
  applications in and I'll create a committee and make some choices. And we're going to hand out
• 1:06:47
  some grants to see if if you know, because some people came to me and say, well, what if someone
• 1:06:51
  just is too stuck financially to which is valid? Yeah, which is valid. So hopefully we can do that
• 1:06:57
  and hopefully some of those people will be successful and then we'll tell those stories.
• 1:07:01
  I love that. When someone's finished reading, what's the first thing you want them to do?
• 1:07:06
  There's two things that have already happened in the in the handful of people that read the book.
• 1:07:12
  One is they immediately want three or four copies because they have a mind in their mind someone
• 1:07:19
  they want to read this. So I think they know of a kid that's got too much pressure or hasn't really
• 1:07:26
  isn't happy or feels like maybe they started down the wrong major or you know, they know someone
• 1:07:32
  they want to hand it to that. That's I'm very optimistic about the fact that the book may have a
• 1:07:37
  viral loop built into it already from that. And then the second one I heard is like, I love how you
• 1:07:43
  can't take it away from it. Yeah, whatever. It's good. You know, I've even had like a 60 year old
• 1:07:50
  read distance that, shit, I thought I was retired. I there's something I need to go do, which is
• 1:07:55
  fun. Like fun because that's I'll finish where we started. Like unlocking human potential. Like
• 1:08:02
  if I can get I mean, if I could get a hundred people to go be extraordinary that were otherwise
• 1:08:07
  not going to be I'd feel like this was a huge success. Hopefully it can be way more than that.