Latest / The You Project / #1521 The Bloke Who Created Netflix - Marc Randolph

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#1521 The Bloke Who Created Netflix - Marc Randolph · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I'll good a team. I hope you're bloody terrific. Welcome
0:03
Speaker 1: to This is a little bit of a revisit of
0:07
Speaker 1: one of my all time probably in my top ten
0:11
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred plus episodes. This guy Mark Randolph, the man
0:16
Speaker 1: who co created Netflix. I loved him. I loved this
0:21
Speaker 1: conversation with him. It happened just over three years ago,
0:24
Speaker 1: May two, twenty twenty one. As I record, it's May twelve,
0:27
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and I'd really enjoyed my time with him.
0:33
Speaker 1: Having spoken to a lot of famous people over the years,
0:35
Speaker 1: a lot of rich people, a lot of high profile people,
0:38
Speaker 1: a lot of successful people. Some people do things like
0:43
Speaker 1: this podcast or interviews because there's some kind of commercial
0:48
Speaker 1: advantage or they're required to by their publisher, and with Mark,
0:53
Speaker 1: there was none of that. He definitely did not need
0:56
Speaker 1: to talk to me. Of all of the meat your
1:00
Speaker 1: platforms that he has been on through his journey and
1:03
Speaker 1: over time, way bigger, way better than me, he definitely
1:08
Speaker 1: didn't need to talk to me. But I love the
1:11
Speaker 1: fact that he was so engaged, so real, so interested
1:15
Speaker 1: in me, the bloody shitkicker from Latro Valley. And yeah,
1:21
Speaker 1: I look back on this as one of my fondest
1:23
Speaker 1: memories on my typ journey. Anyway, here we go, a
1:29
Speaker 1: bit of a blast from the past, Mark, Randolph and
1:32
Speaker 1: Me waxing lyrical. Enjoy your day, enjoy the chat, and
1:36
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great week. Good eight team,
1:39
Speaker 1: Welcome to another installment of the You Project. Hello, Tiffany
1:42
Speaker 1: and Cook. Good morning, harps Or. You've outdone yourself this week,
1:46
Speaker 1: haven't you haven't. I just when you said to me,
1:49
Speaker 1: I got the bloke who started Netflix, I went, no,
1:52
Speaker 1: you haven't, and you sent me his name, and I went,
1:55
Speaker 1: I actually went and googled Mark because I thought she
1:59
Speaker 1: just got She just got a bloke who knows the
2:01
Speaker 1: bloke who started Netflix. She didn't get the actual dude
2:04
Speaker 1: or one of the co founders. But you did, you did,
2:09
Speaker 1: so Hello Mark, Thank you for thanks for joining us
2:13
Speaker 1: on the humble little You Project in the land down under.
2:18
Speaker 2: Gregg, it's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm
2:20
Speaker 2: glad to if that you managed to track me down.
2:23
Speaker 1: How many uzzy podcasts have you done? Will this be
2:25
Speaker 1: number one or number twenty seven?
2:28
Speaker 2: Somewhere in between the two? I actually I say, don't
2:32
Speaker 2: take this the wrong way, but I'll say yes to
2:35
Speaker 2: almost any Australian podcast. I'm really come on, Mark, come on, Mark,
2:39
Speaker 2: make me say it's a little bit special. No, it's true.
2:41
Speaker 2: But then again I said no because I was booked
2:43
Speaker 2: for all of twenty twenty one. But Tiff talked me
2:45
Speaker 2: into it. It was hard to actually get me to
2:49
Speaker 2: say yes no. But I don't know. I have this
2:51
Speaker 2: affection for Australia and it's people, so I'm always happy.
2:56
Speaker 2: How about this disproportionate yes is for a million podcasts
3:01
Speaker 2: rather than what comes in from the rest of the world.
3:03
Speaker 1: How many, Well we appreciate that. How many podcast chats
3:08
Speaker 1: would you do? Awake give a taike.
3:11
Speaker 2: Right now? As you probably know, I'm kind of working
3:14
Speaker 2: on promoting my own podcast, and so I'm doing a
3:17
Speaker 2: lot more than I might normally do. I'd say I'm
3:20
Speaker 2: probably doing three or four a week now. It's good listening.
3:24
Speaker 2: What is it one point eight million podcasts in the world.
3:27
Speaker 2: I've got a way to go. I'm chewing away at
3:30
Speaker 2: it slowly.
3:30
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing all right. Well, we we ranked from
3:33
Speaker 1: a global pool yesterday. We ranked second with our last episode,
3:37
Speaker 1: so we were very happy with that. So but yeah,
3:40
Speaker 1: I think it's one point one point and on. I
3:43
Speaker 1: think you and I I've probably got a way to
3:45
Speaker 1: go before we give Rogan any trouble.
3:48
Speaker 2: Absolutely true. Listen, one thing, I don't know where I'm
3:52
Speaker 2: going to stack up when you actually released this, but
3:54
Speaker 2: I'm going to be somewhere in the four hundredth plus episode.
3:58
Speaker 2: I've just got to say that's pretty oppressive. I mean,
4:01
Speaker 2: I just released episode eight today, so I've got a
4:04
Speaker 2: long way to go to have your consistency. Yeah.
4:08
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not very clever, but I'm really really consistent
4:13
Speaker 1: and I'm really stubborn. But you know that's funny because
4:15
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that stuff. I heard you
4:17
Speaker 1: chatting with Tom Bill, you on what's it impact theory
4:22
Speaker 1: or I actually watched you and you know, when we're
4:27
Speaker 1: when we're creating a business or an idea, or developing
4:30
Speaker 1: a service or a brand, or taking something from a
4:32
Speaker 1: cognitive you know, construct a potential something and turning it
4:37
Speaker 1: into something. I heard you talking about. It's interesting because
4:42
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know how much Mark and I
4:44
Speaker 1: are going to have in common. Then I heard you
4:46
Speaker 1: talk and I went almost everything in common because I'm
4:50
Speaker 1: always talking about people's inability to start or lack of
4:54
Speaker 1: willingness to start, and then sometimes when we do start,
4:59
Speaker 1: depending on what the endeavor it is. Endeavor is whether
5:02
Speaker 1: it's losing weight or changing a habit or behavior, or
5:05
Speaker 1: building a brand or business. You know, invariably a lot
5:09
Speaker 1: of people stop not long after they started. But it
5:13
Speaker 1: seems that there's that being able to persevere and get
5:16
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and keep getting uncomfortable and being okay with you know,
5:21
Speaker 1: less than ideal outcomes all the time is part of
5:23
Speaker 1: success as an entrepreneur and in business in general.
5:27
Speaker 2: I completely agree. In fact, you know when one of
5:30
Speaker 2: the most common questions people ask is what are these
5:33
Speaker 2: common attributes that define successful entrepreneurs? And I go, it's
5:38
Speaker 2: not magic. It's not like you have to have computer
5:41
Speaker 2: science degree or have some master's in business. The best
5:46
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs have a predisposition to action. You know, they they do,
5:51
Speaker 2: they start, they take the idea out of their head
5:54
Speaker 2: and figure out some way to collide it with reality.
5:57
Speaker 2: But because you're doing something that no one else says
6:00
Speaker 2: done before, usually it's extremely unlikely you're going to get
6:04
Speaker 2: at rate the first try. So you have to couple
6:07
Speaker 2: that predisposition to action, with persistence, with the willingness to
6:12
Speaker 2: say I'm going to keep on trying. I'm going to
6:14
Speaker 2: try different ways. It may take me one hundred tries,
6:17
Speaker 2: but eventually I'm going to figure this out. It's absolutely
6:20
Speaker 2: you've got to start, but you also have to keep going.
6:24
Speaker 1: And I think it's in the doing and the falling
6:26
Speaker 1: down and the getting up and the stuffing up and
6:28
Speaker 1: the you know, light bulbs and the awareness. It's in
6:32
Speaker 1: the middle of the journey that the real education happens.
6:38
Speaker 1: And we talk about education and academia, you know in
6:41
Speaker 1: Australia and the States, and you know it's held in
6:44
Speaker 1: very high regard, as it should be. But you know,
6:49
Speaker 1: it's like I know, for me, where I've really developed
6:53
Speaker 1: and learned on a fundamental of this is how people work.
6:57
Speaker 1: This is how business works, this is how human in
7:00
Speaker 1: behave you guys is a wife from academia. It's been
7:04
Speaker 1: in the middle of the process, you know.
7:07
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a combination of the two. You're absolutely right.
7:11
Speaker 2: It's foolish to embark on something without getting some degree
7:16
Speaker 2: of insight into how it's been done well before. But
7:20
Speaker 2: it's equally foolish to thank that substitute for doing it. Uh,
7:25
Speaker 2: you know, I was going to use I was going
7:28
Speaker 2: to use a goll for a tennis analogy, but I'll
7:31
Speaker 2: use a footy analogy. You know, you watch the We
7:33
Speaker 2: watch these guys play and they do that thing where
7:35
Speaker 2: they're running on the field and every I don't know,
7:38
Speaker 2: ten twenty meters they have to bounce the ball and
7:40
Speaker 2: of course it's this oblong shape. And you can get
7:44
Speaker 2: someone to show you the right way to do it.
7:47
Speaker 2: You can watch a YouTube video and the right way
7:49
Speaker 2: to bounce a footy. But if you think that's going
7:52
Speaker 2: to help you bounce a footy, you're out of your mind.
7:55
Speaker 2: You have to go out and you've got to run
7:56
Speaker 2: laps around the field the hundreds and hundreds of times
7:59
Speaker 2: before you can do that consist. And that is absolutely
8:01
Speaker 2: the same thing with entrepreneurial skill. Sure read up, sure
8:07
Speaker 2: take some classes, major in it in school, whatever floats
8:10
Speaker 2: your boat, But fundamentally, the way you're going to really
8:13
Speaker 2: learn how to do these things is to actually get
8:15
Speaker 2: out and do them. And that's the trick is figure
8:17
Speaker 2: out some way to start applying these skills when you're young,
8:21
Speaker 2: or when you're in a low risk circumstance, or when
8:24
Speaker 2: you're not having your mortgage and your car payments and
8:26
Speaker 2: your kids private school tuition dependent on it.
8:32
Speaker 1: It's so like one, congratulations on giving an IFL or
8:36
Speaker 1: a footy as you call it, which is an analogy.
8:39
Speaker 1: That's bloody beautiful metaphor slid in early in the show
8:42
Speaker 1: by the American. That's great, that's very adaptable. Pay attention
8:49
Speaker 1: t if that's called IQ I was was I going
8:53
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, just that ability?
8:55
Speaker 2: I really three with that one, didn't I.
8:56
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude's just talking about that's a amazing that's amazing.
9:01
Speaker 1: But it is that that willingness to be able to
9:04
Speaker 1: you know, do do? I mean everyone starts as a
9:07
Speaker 1: white belt. I always say that my listeners are sick
9:10
Speaker 1: of it.
9:10
Speaker 3: But what if it's business or it's literally Brazilian jiu jitsu,
9:13
Speaker 3: or it's bouncing a footy, running, or it's it's you know,
9:17
Speaker 3: starting at the gym for the first time. Everyone's a
9:20
Speaker 3: white belt, and you can't become a black belt without
9:22
Speaker 3: doing the work and doing the tests and enduring and
9:25
Speaker 3: surviving and getting hurt and getting uncomfortable and falling down
9:28
Speaker 3: and getting a blood nose, and and you know this
9:31
Speaker 3: is where resilience and strength and awareness and understanding and
9:34
Speaker 3: skill develops. Like you didn't start Netflix as it is now.
9:40
Speaker 1: That was nothing like I'm sure the original idea or
9:44
Speaker 1: the genesis of from where it came.
9:48
Speaker 2: Well, that's a somewhat different thing, which we should we
9:50
Speaker 2: should explore that as well, which is a critical piece
9:52
Speaker 2: of it. But in terms of the sense of learning,
9:55
Speaker 2: this learning to bounce the footy is that Netflix was
9:57
Speaker 2: my sixth startup. I mean I was in late thirties,
10:01
Speaker 2: and in fact, I started learning these entrepreneurial skills when
10:04
Speaker 2: I was probably six or seven years old, you know,
10:07
Speaker 2: when I was selling seeds door to door. So it's
10:11
Speaker 2: these all these skills are not It isn't like you go,
10:13
Speaker 2: I want to be an entrepreneur, all right. I had
10:16
Speaker 2: to learn how to go in and pitch a VC
10:19
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or a million,
10:22
Speaker 2: which is what you see them doing on Shark Tank
10:24
Speaker 2: or what you read about in the books or seeing
10:25
Speaker 2: the movies. But if you try and have that be
10:28
Speaker 2: your very first attempt, of course you're going to fall
10:30
Speaker 2: flat in your face. You've got to start off gradually.
10:34
Speaker 2: You've got to start off with simpler things. You've got
10:36
Speaker 2: to scale your aspirations to your ability level at the beginning,
10:41
Speaker 2: and then to jump into your Other point is you've
10:45
Speaker 2: got to recognize that what I think is going to
10:48
Speaker 2: work is wrong. That the more time I try and
10:52
Speaker 2: toss this idea around my head, because I don't want
10:55
Speaker 2: to start and fail, I've got to get it right.
10:58
Speaker 2: You are never going to start going to figure it out.
11:01
Speaker 2: You're just going to have this perfectly formed, beautiful idea
11:05
Speaker 2: in your head, which the minute it collides with reality
11:08
Speaker 2: is going to instantly tell you what a waste of
11:10
Speaker 2: time it was solving these problems in a vacuum.
11:15
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I was listing earlier this morning, which
11:17
Speaker 1: was pretty early because it's only seven o'clock now, But
11:20
Speaker 1: I was at the I was at the cafe, shout
11:24
Speaker 1: out to the Hamptons, drinking my coffee as I do,
11:26
Speaker 1: and I was watching you and Tom, and I was
11:28
Speaker 1: thinking something that had never dawned on me, is that entrepreneurship,
11:33
Speaker 1: developing a business, creating something from nothing, It's actually quite
11:38
Speaker 1: a scientific process, which I'd never thought, because you come
11:41
Speaker 1: up with an idea or a hypothesis, a construct. Then
11:45
Speaker 1: you try something, you create a plan around how you're
11:49
Speaker 1: going to test that. Then you do something, then you
11:51
Speaker 1: get some data, then you evaluate the data, then you reassess,
11:55
Speaker 1: and then you go again. I mean it's really in
11:58
Speaker 1: some ways it's very analytical, scientific, methodical process.
12:03
Speaker 2: Well so says the PhD candidate over here, but.
12:09
Speaker 1: There's a bit of cree itvity as well, thank you.
12:13
Speaker 2: That's exactly the point I was going to make is
12:15
Speaker 2: that it's this combination, which is why I love it
12:18
Speaker 2: so much. It's a combination of art and science because
12:20
Speaker 2: you have this tremendous ability to know, down to the
12:25
Speaker 2: fourteenth decimal point whether the red envelope is better than
12:29
Speaker 2: the blue envelope. But it does not tell you for
12:31
Speaker 2: a second that you should be testing envelope color, and
12:34
Speaker 2: if you should be testing envelope color, it doesn't tell
12:36
Speaker 2: you why you should test red versus blue, versus green
12:39
Speaker 2: versus pink. So it requires this combination of things. But fundamentally,
12:43
Speaker 2: you're right, there is a playbook, and the playbook is
12:47
Speaker 2: this process of test repeat learn test, test learn, repeat,
12:51
Speaker 2: test learn repeat. You know, and you alluded to that
12:53
Speaker 2: very beginning, and this was you know, when we were
12:56
Speaker 2: start before we started Netflix. It certainly wasn't even Netflix.
13:01
Speaker 2: When my business partner, Read Hastings and I were trying
13:03
Speaker 2: to figure out what was the next business we were
13:05
Speaker 2: going to start, we had a million different crazy ideas
13:11
Speaker 2: and anything we came up with was going to have
13:14
Speaker 2: to pass the test of was there an element of
13:17
Speaker 2: reality to it? And the only way to figure that
13:20
Speaker 2: out was to collide it with reality. And so, for example,
13:23
Speaker 2: this is back in nineteen ninety seven, and this crazy
13:27
Speaker 2: idea that we had was not streaming video. The crazy
13:31
Speaker 2: idea was can we do video rental by mail? Can
13:35
Speaker 2: we do what Blockbuster? Which I believe they had in
13:36
Speaker 2: Australia as well, So we.
13:38
Speaker 1: Do that idea.
13:39
Speaker 2: It was a terrible idea, and it was largely a
13:43
Speaker 2: terrible idea. One of the six hundred reasons it was
13:46
Speaker 2: a terrible idea was that in nineteen ninety seven video
13:50
Speaker 2: came on the VHS cassettes. I mean, tiff for those
13:54
Speaker 2: of you of you your generation, you know, it's this big, square,
13:57
Speaker 2: plastic thing that a movie came on. I know that's
14:00
Speaker 2: hard to envision, but certainly it was not something you
14:03
Speaker 2: were going to be able to mail to somebody's house,
14:04
Speaker 2: which was part of the idea. But here's the entrepreneurial
14:08
Speaker 2: thing is that one day Reid brought up that he'd
14:12
Speaker 2: heard about this technology called the DVD, which was this thin,
14:15
Speaker 2: little flat piece of plastic that a movie could come on.
14:19
Speaker 2: And so the idea came up, this might actually now
14:22
Speaker 2: allow us to do video rental by mail, because mail
14:24
Speaker 2: and give me a plastic we could use the post office.
14:28
Speaker 2: So rather than saying, oh, what a great idea, and
14:31
Speaker 2: then begin imagining this future, we said, we've got to
14:36
Speaker 2: validate this, so quick test. Turn the car around. We're
14:40
Speaker 2: commuting to work when this idea popped into our heads
14:43
Speaker 2: and turn the car around, and immediately said, let's validate
14:46
Speaker 2: whether at least the fundamental premise and can I mail
14:51
Speaker 2: a disc to somebody and have it arrive at their
14:53
Speaker 2: house unbroken? And went to try and buy a DVD
14:56
Speaker 2: and couldn't find that, and decides to substitute a CD,
14:59
Speaker 2: a music CD, and mail the CD to Read's house
15:03
Speaker 2: and found out in less than twenty four hours that yes, indeed,
15:08
Speaker 2: you can mail a CD to someone and it gets
15:10
Speaker 2: to their house quickly and it gets to their house unbroken,
15:13
Speaker 2: and most importantly for our purposes, it got there for
15:16
Speaker 2: the price of a postage stamp. And it's that process,
15:22
Speaker 2: one time after another after another after another that ultimately
15:27
Speaker 2: is leads you on this twisting, turning route that you
15:30
Speaker 2: never anticipated, hopefully to the goal of any entrepreneur, which
15:36
Speaker 2: is the repeatable, scalable business model.
15:39
Speaker 1: And when did you get kind of close to what
15:41
Speaker 1: Netflix is today? When were you starting to approach the
15:45
Speaker 1: model that looks block Now.
15:47
Speaker 2: Well, that's a really interesting question because in some ways
15:51
Speaker 2: it requires you to find what is Netflix today? And yeah, cool,
15:58
Speaker 2: I was a cryptic answer, wasn't it. No? But it's
16:01
Speaker 2: we mentioned before about what a terrible idea this video
16:04
Speaker 2: rental my mail was, and it was, and everybody told me,
16:08
Speaker 2: was very helpfully telling me what a terrible idea it was.
16:11
Speaker 2: You know, the book is called That'll Never Work, and
16:14
Speaker 2: the podcast is called That'll Never Work. It's because that's
16:16
Speaker 2: was drilled into me over and over again, that this
16:18
Speaker 2: stupid idea will never work.
16:20
Speaker 1: Such a good name for a podcast, by the way, Oh,
16:22
Speaker 1: thank you very well promote that anyway, But that is
16:25
Speaker 1: a great name.
16:27
Speaker 2: But listen. It came from you know, listen, you hear
16:29
Speaker 2: it enough, you go, okay, I'm going to use that one.
16:32
Speaker 2: But people said it was a bad idea for two reasons,
16:35
Speaker 2: and one was the Blockbuster. Why on earth's anybody gonna
16:39
Speaker 2: rent by mail when you can throw a rock and
16:42
Speaker 2: hit a Blockbuster?
16:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:43
Speaker 2: The other one was that it's digital medium. Eventually people
16:46
Speaker 2: are going to be downloading or streaming. We weren't sure which,
16:51
Speaker 2: so they were both right. We knew that Blockbuster would
16:55
Speaker 2: be a big impediment. We also knew it was inevitable
16:57
Speaker 2: that people would be downloading or streaming. So this is
17:00
Speaker 2: the important part, which is that we knew we had
17:02
Speaker 2: to build a company which wasn't all about DBDs because
17:08
Speaker 2: eventually that would go away. But we also could not
17:12
Speaker 2: build a business all about streaming because it was impossible.
17:15
Speaker 2: There was no content, The infrastructure wasn't there, digital rights
17:18
Speaker 2: managements weren't robust enough, and so if we had come
17:21
Speaker 2: out with a streaming company, then we would have gone
17:23
Speaker 2: out of business. So we had to say, how do
17:25
Speaker 2: you position this? That it works now, but that every
17:29
Speaker 2: piece of equity we build in our customer relationship, everything
17:32
Speaker 2: we learn about what they like and don't like will
17:35
Speaker 2: be applicable when the world changes. And so way back then,
17:40
Speaker 2: we decided this was not going to be DVD company.
17:42
Speaker 2: It was not a streaming company. It was a company
17:45
Speaker 2: that was going to help you discover great stories. And
17:49
Speaker 2: this leads me full circle to your question, and how
17:51
Speaker 2: has a business model changed? It's never changed. On day one,
17:55
Speaker 2: it was how do we help you discover great stories.
17:58
Speaker 2: At the beginning, of course you discover great stories because
18:01
Speaker 2: we had every DBD available. And then eventually we help
18:04
Speaker 2: you discover great stories by creating deep content and eventually
18:08
Speaker 2: helping you find more clever ways to discover it and
18:10
Speaker 2: then taste algorithms to predict it. And then as it
18:13
Speaker 2: got more convenient to find different ways to deliver it
18:15
Speaker 2: to you, we did that. But at the core, at
18:18
Speaker 2: the heart of Netflix, what drove every decision about what
18:22
Speaker 2: should we prioritize was help you discover great stories. And
18:26
Speaker 2: so that's never gone away, and people look at what's
18:30
Speaker 2: happening now. Of course, every content company in the world
18:33
Speaker 2: recognizing that this streaming business is kind of the way
18:37
Speaker 2: to consume content, and Netflix has this huge lead. And
18:43
Speaker 2: it's not just because We've been streaming since two thousand
18:46
Speaker 2: and seven, so have you know what thirteen fourteen years
18:49
Speaker 2: had started. But because we've been establishing this direct relationship
18:53
Speaker 2: with the customer founded on discovering great stories since nineteen
18:58
Speaker 2: ninety eight. And that's a really, really hard thing for
19:04
Speaker 2: companies which have always delivered their content by sending a
19:07
Speaker 2: real to someone who just plays it in a darkened
19:10
Speaker 2: box for people they don't know.
19:12
Speaker 1: And the beauty of Netflix is, you know, there are
19:16
Speaker 1: billions of people who have a pre existing relationship with
19:19
Speaker 1: Netflix and you know, know what they're getting, and you
19:23
Speaker 1: know that makes a massive difference. Do you think that?
19:29
Speaker 1: Do you think that? I mean sometimes I think some
19:33
Speaker 1: people perceive entrepreneurship is that it needs to be big
19:37
Speaker 1: and grand. It needs to be Netflix, It needs to
19:39
Speaker 1: be nicke, it needs to be whatever. But you know,
19:43
Speaker 1: you can have a lawn mowing round and be entrepreneurial, right.
19:47
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. You know, I think one of the great
19:52
Speaker 2: disservices that we've all done in talking about entrepreneurship is
19:57
Speaker 2: glorifying it in some ways for the wrong reasons. That
20:00
Speaker 2: people think the reason to do this is to become
20:03
Speaker 2: rich and famous and wealthier, it's like acting. The odds
20:07
Speaker 2: of that happening are infinitesimal. But if you're doing it
20:11
Speaker 2: for the excitement, if you're doing it for the fact
20:13
Speaker 2: that you get to do things different every day, you
20:16
Speaker 2: get to solve really interesting problems with really smart people. Yeah,
20:20
Speaker 2: you can do that at any scale. You could do
20:22
Speaker 2: that with how do I make my long wine business
20:24
Speaker 2: more successful? How do I find new customers? How do
20:26
Speaker 2: I do this in a way that those other guys
20:29
Speaker 2: aren't doing it? Yeah, that's what That's what motivates me.
20:32
Speaker 2: That's what I think is the secret source of entrepreneurship,
20:36
Speaker 2: not the scale. And by aspiring to only think that
20:41
Speaker 2: scale counts, you'll God, that's it's like saying you don't
20:45
Speaker 2: climb it. There's a dumb analogy. You don't climb Everest.
20:48
Speaker 2: By just climbing, you start. You're starting in the foothills
20:51
Speaker 2: and it takes months. And listen, starting a big company,
20:55
Speaker 2: you can't aspire to be Nike or Netflix. And maybe
21:00
Speaker 2: if you are Apple or AT and T and you've
21:04
Speaker 2: got maybe a couple of billion dollars sitting around, then
21:06
Speaker 2: you have some incredibly talented people, one hundreds of thousands
21:09
Speaker 2: of them but no, you got to pick a niche.
21:12
Speaker 2: You got to pick something small. You got to pick
21:14
Speaker 2: something that you can handle. You got to pick something
21:16
Speaker 2: that's within your realm. But if you're clever, you pick
21:20
Speaker 2: one that if I get this right, the things I
21:23
Speaker 2: focused on will allow me to take the next step.
21:25
Speaker 2: And if I get that right, in other words, if
21:27
Speaker 2: I can mow my neighborhood's lawns correctly in this good way,
21:30
Speaker 2: there's two more neighborhoods next door. Wouldn't that be incredible?
21:33
Speaker 2: And now all of a sudden, you're doing three neighborhoods.
21:36
Speaker 2: You go, gosh, I wonder if I could do this
21:37
Speaker 2: whole half the city, if I did trucks and this,
21:41
Speaker 2: And then you go, maybe I could do a second city,
21:43
Speaker 2: and you know, and then eventually you can become the
21:45
Speaker 2: nationwide lawn care service. But if you start out when
21:48
Speaker 2: you're mowing two people's lawns, you'll be with You're going, oh,
21:53
Speaker 2: I need to invest in a fleet of trucks, and
21:55
Speaker 2: how do I move the fuel from here to there?
21:57
Speaker 2: And you know what a waste of time to solve
22:00
Speaker 2: those problems? Just more one person's line better than the
22:03
Speaker 2: guy who was doing it before and focus on that
22:05
Speaker 2: for a while.
22:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I set up my first business,
22:09
Speaker 1: which was a screenprinting business, obviously one person business, when
22:13
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, and I set up my first my
22:17
Speaker 1: first gym, in when I was twenty six, which clearly
22:20
Speaker 1: was four years ago. What are you laughing about, hey,
22:24
Speaker 1: steady steady on Netflix? Boy, don't laugh too hard. So
22:30
Speaker 1: but my main driver and I didn't even think, Oh,
22:33
Speaker 1: I'm becoming entrepreneurial or I'm you know, I'm going to
22:36
Speaker 1: develop this brand or business or service that's going to dominate.
22:40
Speaker 1: And we ended up and we didn't, certainly not Netflix.
22:42
Speaker 1: But I had four gyms and I employed five hundred
22:45
Speaker 1: trainers over twenty five years, and we went quite well,
22:48
Speaker 1: and we had a really good brand in the fitness industry.
22:52
Speaker 1: But my main driver mark was I don't want a boss.
22:55
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to work for somebody. That was
22:58
Speaker 1: my motivation was pursue it. To your earlier comment, your
23:03
Speaker 1: honor was I just want to work when I want
23:06
Speaker 1: to work and do what I want to do. I'm
23:08
Speaker 1: not lazy, I'm actually quite driven, but I don't want
23:11
Speaker 1: to spend half my day doing things that I hate
23:13
Speaker 1: or things that people want me to do that I
23:15
Speaker 1: actually think are inefficient. And so from when I was,
23:19
Speaker 1: you know, really twenty early twenties, I spent my life
23:24
Speaker 1: trying to strategize around how I could not have a
23:28
Speaker 1: job for most of my life and the last time
23:30
Speaker 1: I had a job was thirty one years ago. So
23:33
Speaker 1: and of course I wanted to make a few bucks
23:35
Speaker 1: and have a good lifestyle and all of that, but
23:37
Speaker 1: for me, it was very much about just being able
23:40
Speaker 1: to develop the things I wanted the way that I wanted.
23:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I call that the need to do want to
23:48
Speaker 2: do ratio, and you're never in my opinion, it's really
23:52
Speaker 2: really impossible to build a life where you can only
23:55
Speaker 2: do what you want unless what you want to do
23:58
Speaker 2: is live in a van behind the seven to eleven.
24:01
Speaker 1: But shout out to our listeners who.
24:07
Speaker 2: But for most people, everything is some combination of what
24:11
Speaker 2: I need to do and what I want to do.
24:12
Speaker 2: And if you can construct the life for most of
24:14
Speaker 2: it is what I want to do, then that you're
24:16
Speaker 2: doing pretty well. But you know, it is for me
24:19
Speaker 2: that my motivations were not necessarily that. For me, it
24:23
Speaker 2: was more this compulsive thing that I couldn't help myself.
24:27
Speaker 2: I just was always seeing the flaws in the world
24:33
Speaker 2: that I would intuitively go, there's got to be a
24:36
Speaker 2: better way to do that, and then even worse, felt
24:39
Speaker 2: I had to rush in and do them. And luckily
24:42
Speaker 2: for me, I've always found that whole process fascinating. Of
24:45
Speaker 2: trying to solve these problems that no one's really been
24:49
Speaker 2: able to solve before. That's the fun part for me,
24:52
Speaker 2: and I'm incredibly fortunate that that actually does pay a
24:56
Speaker 2: living wage. Otherwise, you know that aforementioned Van seven eleven
25:01
Speaker 2: that could be you. It would have been a big
25:02
Speaker 2: part of my future and past.
25:05
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about how you think? Do you
25:07
Speaker 1: have an awareness of the way that you perceive life
25:12
Speaker 1: in the world and the way that internal you, your
25:14
Speaker 1: internal that internal world of Mark intersects and interacts with
25:18
Speaker 1: your external world. Obviously, I'm fascinated with the way that
25:22
Speaker 1: people process life and situations. And you know, there's an
25:27
Speaker 1: area of research called metacognition, which is essentially thinking about thinking.
25:33
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about how you think?
25:38
Speaker 2: I do now, but only because I was forced to
25:47
Speaker 2: think about it. In other words, what happens is the
25:53
Speaker 2: lesson is, for example, when you want to teach somebody something,
25:57
Speaker 2: you sometimes have to go, how do I I know
26:00
Speaker 2: I'm good at this, but how do I communicate what
26:03
Speaker 2: it is I'm actually good at? And it requires you
26:07
Speaker 2: to go back and really think, how do I break
26:09
Speaker 2: this down? What am I doing? And how am I
26:12
Speaker 2: a is what I'm doing different than what other people
26:13
Speaker 2: are doing? We're maybe not successful at this, and so
26:16
Speaker 2: I have to And so now, of course I do
26:18
Speaker 2: recognize when I'm doing these things, but it took me
26:21
Speaker 2: a long time to begin going what does disting? What
26:24
Speaker 2: are the common denominators that allow people to have crazy
26:28
Speaker 2: ideas eventually turn those into reality? What are those steps
26:35
Speaker 2: when I you know, I wrote the book I wrote
26:37
Speaker 2: That Will Never Work about those early years of Netflix.
26:41
Speaker 2: I wrote it sixteen years after I left Netflix, and
26:46
Speaker 2: it took me that long because you sometimes need that
26:49
Speaker 2: distance to really recognize how much of this was what
26:53
Speaker 2: I did, how much of this was just lucky, how
26:57
Speaker 2: much of it was my contribution, and how much of
26:59
Speaker 2: what did I do wrong? What can I And that's
27:02
Speaker 2: a combination of being able to look back honestly but
27:06
Speaker 2: also being able to think about it more clearly. So
27:11
Speaker 2: there's some things I do think about as I'm doing
27:13
Speaker 2: them to discipline myself, but quite frankly, less on the
27:17
Speaker 2: entrepreneurial side and more on the balance side, more on
27:21
Speaker 2: how do I keep my life in balance that I
27:26
Speaker 2: think about all the time, and I think about how
27:28
Speaker 2: I think about it, and the actual entrepreneurial stuff is
27:32
Speaker 2: less analytically driven.
27:35
Speaker 1: So two things out of that for me, thank you
27:37
Speaker 1: that that was great. I love that. See the thing
27:42
Speaker 1: with you, listen to me telling you about you, Mark, Listen,
27:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you. I hope you're paying attention, but
27:51
Speaker 1: you do. You probably do a lot of things organically, naturally, intuitively,
27:55
Speaker 1: instinctively because you have this is you, this is your
27:58
Speaker 1: natural or this is you know, you do a lot
28:00
Speaker 1: of stuff and have done a lot of stuff that way.
28:04
Speaker 1: And it's not that there's no strategy or thinking or planning.
28:08
Speaker 1: But as you said, then you arrive down the track
28:10
Speaker 1: and one day you're fifty or whatever, you're sixty, and
28:13
Speaker 1: you're thinking about, oh, how do I actually how do
28:17
Speaker 1: I break that down so I can teach someone? So
28:21
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the things that I do
28:23
Speaker 1: is I teach I train speakers to speak because I
28:27
Speaker 1: corporate speaking. I do a lot of it, and then
28:30
Speaker 1: when I first started teaching them how to speak, I go,
28:33
Speaker 1: I don't even know how I do it because there's
28:36
Speaker 1: no strategy. Like I invariably get up with no notes
28:39
Speaker 1: and talk for an hour or two hours and I'm
28:42
Speaker 1: in flow and I love it and it's fun and
28:44
Speaker 1: there's no nerves. It's just joy and I create an experience.
28:48
Speaker 1: But I've never I never planned that, So then when
28:51
Speaker 1: I had to teach someone how to replicate a version
28:54
Speaker 1: of that, it took me forever to figure out what
28:57
Speaker 1: I actually do. And maybe that's the chill is teaching
29:00
Speaker 1: others to, I guess, strategically do what you naturally do.
29:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that interesting? I think that the parallels are
29:11
Speaker 2: exactly the same as that I The entrepreneurial thing is
29:14
Speaker 2: that the just starting, the persistence, the continuing to try
29:19
Speaker 2: things and not falling in love with my ideas, the focus,
29:22
Speaker 2: the triage, those are all things that kind of came
29:26
Speaker 2: just naturally to me based on who I was. A
29:28
Speaker 2: lot of the cultural things that are going into every
29:30
Speaker 2: company I've started that have kind of driven the Netflix
29:32
Speaker 2: culture came from not me designing them but from just
29:35
Speaker 2: being who I am. And it is only after the
29:38
Speaker 2: fact when you look back, when you're trying to say,
29:40
Speaker 2: how do you begin to be helpful to pay it forward?
29:44
Speaker 2: How do you help give real advice which is not
29:46
Speaker 2: just bs to other entrepreneurs. Do you say, I've got
29:50
Speaker 2: to go figure this, really think through what am I doing?
29:54
Speaker 2: How am I approaching this? And then the hard part
29:56
Speaker 2: is then how do I coax someone into being able
30:00
Speaker 2: to do that? And sometimes that's tricky. The whole the
30:04
Speaker 2: thing we've talked about multiple times today, which is that
30:08
Speaker 2: just starting that taking that risk. You can say it
30:12
Speaker 2: all you want, you know, you can put it up
30:14
Speaker 2: on the Instagram, quote panels all you want, but fundamentally,
30:19
Speaker 2: it's against people's human nature to want to do something
30:22
Speaker 2: which has the risk of them looking stupid and think
30:26
Speaker 2: that's a hard thing.
30:27
Speaker 1: And we're enamored, especially in Australia and I'm pretty sure
30:30
Speaker 1: it's in the States. I've been there for a few times.
30:33
Speaker 1: We're enamored with the idea of personal growth and personal development,
30:38
Speaker 1: and we love quotes, and we love mantras, and we
30:41
Speaker 1: love posting things on the bathroom mirror, and we love
30:44
Speaker 1: sunsets and puppies with nice quotes, but you know, like
30:50
Speaker 1: the reality is that life and business and relationships and
30:53
Speaker 1: developing things is just sometimes it sucks, and it's messy,
30:57
Speaker 1: and it's uncomfortable, it's unfamiliar, it's uncertain, it's hard, it's
31:01
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes it's glorious and awesome. But you know,
31:05
Speaker 1: this is getting people to step out of their holding
31:08
Speaker 1: patent or their groundhog diet and into the unknown, the unfamiliar,
31:12
Speaker 1: the uncertain, and the uncomfortable. That's the challenge. It's not
31:15
Speaker 1: that they don't have the ability. I don't think.
31:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a you're absolutely right. It's a critical piece
31:23
Speaker 2: of it. And in this more latter part of my
31:28
Speaker 2: life where I've kind of realized my purpose is more
31:31
Speaker 2: trying to pay this forward, which is trying to unlock
31:35
Speaker 2: other people to take everyone who has these great ideas
31:38
Speaker 2: or believes they're great ideas and wants to make them real.
31:42
Speaker 2: Is I've realized that you can't just deliver the platitudes.
31:46
Speaker 2: You have to then teach by example. I suppose, yeah,
31:51
Speaker 2: I mean I'll give you us a quick example, you know,
31:53
Speaker 2: for and again, I know we can talk about this
31:55
Speaker 2: a little bit later in the pod. But you know
31:56
Speaker 2: I'm on the podcast I'm doing, I'm that will ever
31:59
Speaker 2: work podcast. I'm not interviewing celebrity entrepreneurs. I'm not interviewing
32:05
Speaker 2: people do that way better than I do. What my
32:09
Speaker 2: podcast is is sessions of me mentoring unknowns, early stage
32:14
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs who are stuck, who are trying to take their idea,
32:19
Speaker 2: get it out of their head, who are trying to
32:21
Speaker 2: turn their side also into a real business, or trying
32:23
Speaker 2: to hit the real business next level. But what I'm
32:26
Speaker 2: doing really is saying I could put on Instagram the
32:30
Speaker 2: trick is, you know, to quickly, cheaply and easily clyde
32:34
Speaker 2: your idea with reality. Well, good for me. But what
32:38
Speaker 2: I'll do in the podcast is then walk someone through
32:41
Speaker 2: how how in my particular circumstance do I think that through?
32:47
Speaker 2: How do I isolate the one component which is really
32:50
Speaker 2: the puzzle and figure out a clever way to try that,
32:54
Speaker 2: And hopefully by having people listen to me doing that,
32:57
Speaker 2: to walk someone through to help them discover how to
33:00
Speaker 2: make that step, and not just with turning ead into reality,
33:03
Speaker 2: but for all the other little principles of entrepreneurship it's
33:07
Speaker 2: coaching people. Any people listen in, I hope is the
33:11
Speaker 2: valuable piece of what I'm doing.
33:13
Speaker 1: That is, as we would say in Australia. Mate, that's
33:15
Speaker 1: a bloody brilliant idea, right, So that's I mean, I
33:19
Speaker 1: love that because that is unique, and that is you
33:23
Speaker 1: knowing that you have the ability to sit you don't
33:26
Speaker 1: know what's coming, you don't know what they're going to say,
33:28
Speaker 1: there's no prep, you can't get ready. And I love
33:32
Speaker 1: the fact that you know in real time you're sitting
33:36
Speaker 1: there and coaching somebody and whoever you're coaching.
33:39
Speaker 2: You know.
33:39
Speaker 1: There's that other podcast that I like by Guy Raz
33:42
Speaker 1: called How I Built This? Have you been on there?
33:47
Speaker 2: I haven't because I haven't. I've been interviewed by Guy before.
33:50
Speaker 2: He's amazing. Yeah, you're right, it's a different thing.
33:53
Speaker 1: I love the way that he deconstructs people's lives and
33:56
Speaker 1: journeys and businesses. And for me, I could be listening
34:00
Speaker 1: to the most random story that of somebody built some
34:04
Speaker 1: online lady selling shoes to the world, and I'm like,
34:09
Speaker 1: I see myself in that online shoe business. I don't
34:13
Speaker 1: know why, but it's not about the shoes or the
34:15
Speaker 1: online or the lady or necessarily, but just the challenges
34:19
Speaker 1: and the stories and the experiences and the lessons and
34:22
Speaker 1: I think you know you doing that is an amazing Well,
34:25
Speaker 1: let's plug it now. Anyway, we'll do it anyway in
34:27
Speaker 1: our show notes. But the podcast is called that will
34:30
Speaker 1: Never work? How many episodes?
34:32
Speaker 2: You know?
34:32
Speaker 1: What's that?
34:33
Speaker 2: Tea? Is?
34:33
Speaker 1: That will never work?
34:35
Speaker 2: Not that will never work?
34:36
Speaker 1: That subscribed? That will never work? How many shows deep?
34:40
Speaker 2: Are you? We just released episode eight today, so and
34:45
Speaker 2: I'm only doing it. They only committed every two weeks
34:47
Speaker 2: for an hour to try and as I learn this
34:50
Speaker 2: new medium.
34:51
Speaker 1: Hey, listen to me, champlift your game. Do one a week?
34:53
Speaker 1: Come on, get serious like you're either in or out?
34:56
Speaker 1: Come on.
34:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're absolutely right, And so I think we are.
34:59
Speaker 2: Once we get into the next next season, which is soon,
35:02
Speaker 2: we'll accelerate a little bit. You know, I have an excuse,
35:06
Speaker 2: and this is kind of lame. Do you mind? Not really,
35:10
Speaker 2: but I'm going to tell you what it is. Anyway.
35:12
Speaker 2: It's that my whole principle is that I don't wait
35:16
Speaker 2: until I understand something before I do it. I go,
35:19
Speaker 2: I'll learn what I can. But then the way I'm
35:21
Speaker 2: going to learn is just by making my mistakes in public.
35:24
Speaker 2: And so I'm making my mistakes in public, which is
35:27
Speaker 2: that I'm basically learning not just how to how to
35:31
Speaker 2: do this, not just technically, but what's the right way
35:33
Speaker 2: to speak to people? These things actually come through and
35:35
Speaker 2: mean something to somebody, Then how do you promote them,
35:38
Speaker 2: how do you publish them? How do you engage with
35:41
Speaker 2: all these little pieces? And having a slower velocity allows
35:45
Speaker 2: me to learn from my mistakes at a reasonable pace
35:47
Speaker 2: without me having to be seven by twenty four on it.
35:50
Speaker 2: There is my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
35:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, you rationalize it however you want, Champs, I'm not
35:57
Speaker 1: boning it, but you know, a story and well outarticulated,
36:00
Speaker 1: but nah, thank you.
36:04
Speaker 2: Hey.
36:05
Speaker 1: It seems to me that for a lot of people,
36:09
Speaker 1: as we've spoken about a bit already, that the getting
36:12
Speaker 1: started part is the challenge, and it would think so
36:16
Speaker 1: I think that probably that's around fear a lot. So
36:20
Speaker 1: for people that are listening to this mark who are thinking,
36:23
Speaker 1: I've literally had an idea for one, two, five, ten years,
36:27
Speaker 1: or an intention, or I've had the same conversation about
36:31
Speaker 1: the same thing, and I know there's no magic formula,
36:35
Speaker 1: but just speak to us a bit about getting started
36:38
Speaker 1: if you're scared, and a way to you know, not
36:42
Speaker 1: overcome that. But I don't think we ever overcome fear,
36:45
Speaker 1: but we navigate fear. What are your thoughts around that?
36:50
Speaker 2: It is the single biggest impediment between people being successful
36:56
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs is not that they run out of money, or
36:58
Speaker 2: not that they make a technical mistique. It's because they
37:00
Speaker 2: never start. And I've heard every single possible excuse for
37:04
Speaker 2: why I can't start. I can't raise money, can't find
37:07
Speaker 2: a co founder, need my computer science degree, you have
37:09
Speaker 2: to graduate whatever, I've heard them all, can't quit my
37:12
Speaker 2: day job. And what makes a great entrepreneur is not
37:17
Speaker 2: how good their ideas are. It really isn't. It's how
37:20
Speaker 2: clever they can be about figuring out quick and cheap
37:23
Speaker 2: and easy ways to try them. And so, in the interest,
37:26
Speaker 2: let me give you an example of what I mean
37:29
Speaker 2: by how to break that model, because the way to
37:32
Speaker 2: do it is to figure out I do not need
37:35
Speaker 2: to do all the things I think. I don't need
37:37
Speaker 2: to raise money, I don't need to build an app,
37:38
Speaker 2: I don't need to hire people. I don't need to
37:40
Speaker 2: quit my job. All right, here's an example. This is
37:43
Speaker 2: a young woman, she was still in university university students,
37:47
Speaker 2: and she goes, Mark, have this great idea. It's going
37:51
Speaker 2: to be peer to peer clothing rental. Basically, I have
37:54
Speaker 2: a closet full of clothes I never wear. I know
37:56
Speaker 2: all my friends do. It'd be great to build a
37:58
Speaker 2: bar every one's clothes and we could do. I go, oh,
38:01
Speaker 2: great idea, maybe, and she goes, what's the problem And
38:04
Speaker 2: she goes, well, I need to raise money because I
38:06
Speaker 2: need to build an app and I need to hire
38:08
Speaker 2: someone to help me code this, and blah blah blah.
38:10
Speaker 2: And I go whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's stop right there.
38:15
Speaker 2: I go, do you have a piece of paper? And
38:17
Speaker 2: she goes, yes, of course, piece of paper. Guys, you
38:19
Speaker 2: do have a sharpie, you know, the magic marker. She
38:21
Speaker 2: goes yeah, And I go, okay, write in the paper.
38:24
Speaker 2: Want to borrow my clothes? Please knock and I want
38:28
Speaker 2: you to tape that to your dorm room door right now.
38:32
Speaker 2: And we're going to find out in the next twenty
38:34
Speaker 2: four hours. A fundamental piece of your idea, which is
38:38
Speaker 2: does anybody care and if nobody knocks, Well, you've learned
38:42
Speaker 2: something really valuable right there, and you learned it with
38:45
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and a magic marker, and you
38:47
Speaker 2: learned it right now. But let's say someone knocks. That's fantastic.
38:51
Speaker 2: Then you're going to learn about problems with Well, they're
38:54
Speaker 2: in a different size, or they didn't like anything. Well,
38:57
Speaker 2: then you've learned that. But what if they do and
38:59
Speaker 2: they take things. Now you're going to learn how you
39:01
Speaker 2: feel when your favorite blouse comes back stained or torn.
39:05
Speaker 2: Or you're gonna learn about, oh, I never factor in
39:07
Speaker 2: the cost that everything has got to go to the
39:08
Speaker 2: dry cleaner or or or you're going to begin that
39:13
Speaker 2: process of discovery about whether your idea is a good
39:17
Speaker 2: one or not. You're going to do that by having
39:19
Speaker 2: collided it with the reality. Now, this is not repeatable,
39:24
Speaker 2: this is not scalable. You can't do everything using three
39:27
Speaker 2: by five cards out of your dorm room. But you
39:30
Speaker 2: sure as hell can do that for the next few months,
39:34
Speaker 2: and then you're gonna know. And then rather than when
39:39
Speaker 2: you're trying to convince someone to join you or a
39:41
Speaker 2: loan you money, it's not going to be imagine if
39:44
Speaker 2: you will, it's gonna be Oh my gosh, I'm going
39:46
Speaker 2: out of my mind. I'm processing six hundred and thirty
39:49
Speaker 2: rentals every single weekend, and I'm doing it all with
39:52
Speaker 2: three by five cards, And I need to figure out
39:55
Speaker 2: a way to automate this, and I need to figure
39:56
Speaker 2: out a way that's powerful, that's compared. And you've learned
40:01
Speaker 2: that your idea is a good one or not. And
40:03
Speaker 2: most likely, though those things I just described, you're going
40:06
Speaker 2: to bump into something you didn't expect, you didn't discover,
40:09
Speaker 2: And then comes the persistence part. They'll go, wow, no
40:12
Speaker 2: one knocked. Well, what are you going to do about it? Wow?
40:16
Speaker 2: The stuff's coming back stained and you're torn? What am
40:19
Speaker 2: I going to do about it? How am I going
40:20
Speaker 2: to modify this that it might actually work? So when
40:24
Speaker 2: someone is stuck, I'm going if you're stuck because you
40:28
Speaker 2: can't envision, how am I going to build an app?
40:30
Speaker 2: And how am I going to leave my job to
40:33
Speaker 2: do this? When I have car payments or you're not,
40:37
Speaker 2: You're going to do things quickly and cheaply and easily
40:41
Speaker 2: on the side in your spare time, in a way
40:44
Speaker 2: that if it doesn't work figuratively, what you've lost is
40:47
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and some tape because you've put
40:51
Speaker 2: it in your dorm room and it didn't work, or
40:53
Speaker 2: whatever it takes to try this. And I can give
40:55
Speaker 2: you dozens of examples of every time someone says I
41:00
Speaker 2: had this idea, there's no way for me to validate
41:04
Speaker 2: this idea other than actually doing it, and they go,
41:07
Speaker 2: you're wrong. There's always a way to validate your idea
41:10
Speaker 2: without actually doing it.
41:13
Speaker 1: I love that. I started in the fitness industry over
41:17
Speaker 1: here in eighty two and in eighty six, so thirty
41:20
Speaker 1: five years ago, I started training my first client one
41:26
Speaker 1: on one, as in personal training, and there were no trainers,
41:30
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, oh, this is handy because this
41:33
Speaker 1: guy's is This guy's paying me one hundred bucks a
41:37
Speaker 1: week for three workouts, so thirty three dollars ish hour,
41:40
Speaker 1: which for me was like a million dollars, and I
41:43
Speaker 1: think my alley rate on the gym floor was ten
41:46
Speaker 1: or eleven dollars. And originally I thought, oh, well, this
41:49
Speaker 1: is great. This is an extra hundred dollars a week
41:51
Speaker 1: which essentially improves my wage by twenty percent or something.
41:56
Speaker 1: And then I got another guy, and I had two
41:58
Speaker 1: guys paying hard. I'm like, wow, this could this could
42:00
Speaker 1: be a thing and one of my challenge and it
42:04
Speaker 1: just kind of expanded, like it was almost an accidental business.
42:08
Speaker 1: I just happened to be not bad at training people
42:10
Speaker 1: and not bad at being cheeky and creating, developing rapport
42:14
Speaker 1: and communicating and you know, the two or three skills
42:17
Speaker 1: that I had collided and turned into this thing. But
42:21
Speaker 1: I remember initially Mark feeling almost guilty that I was
42:27
Speaker 1: making for me amazing money back then, and I almost no,
42:32
Speaker 1: I didn't almost. I probably still a bit of this
42:36
Speaker 1: to the day. I felt unworthy and I felt somewhat
42:40
Speaker 1: fraudulent because I thought, well, no, my default setting was
42:46
Speaker 1: I'm worth ten or eleven or twelve dollars an hour.
42:48
Speaker 1: That was my default, cognitive default setting for whatever reason.
42:52
Speaker 1: And then when I started to make more money, and
42:54
Speaker 1: then I got busier, and then the next twelve months
42:56
Speaker 1: it went somewhat crazy where I had a waiting list
43:00
Speaker 1: because I was actually managing a gym at the same time.
43:02
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, so I had a fifty hour week,
43:05
Speaker 1: full time management role managing a gym. Plus I had
43:09
Speaker 1: this side hustle which was becoming bigger than the main job,
43:13
Speaker 1: and it's you know, for my biggest problem was and
43:19
Speaker 1: probably still is. Might not seem like it, but my
43:22
Speaker 1: own bullshit, you know, my own confidence, like constantly fighting that.
43:28
Speaker 1: And I feel like a lot of people have this
43:30
Speaker 1: mark where they they know that they've got potential and ability,
43:35
Speaker 1: but that feeling of being a fraud or not good
43:39
Speaker 1: enough that's an ever present challenge. Has that ever existed
43:43
Speaker 1: for you?
43:45
Speaker 2: Oh? Of course, especially when you're doing things without really
43:50
Speaker 2: thinking about them. You go, why is someone asking me
43:56
Speaker 2: this question? Why are they looking to me? So absolutely?
44:03
Speaker 2: But you know, i'd argue, and I'll use your specific example.
44:08
Speaker 2: You didn't sit there at your fifty hour a week
44:12
Speaker 2: management job dreaming and going, gosh, wouldn't it be cool
44:16
Speaker 2: if I had this individual training business boy? It could
44:21
Speaker 2: make me five times the money, and I need my
44:24
Speaker 2: own gym and I'll have to get my own equipment.
44:25
Speaker 2: And then yeah, then you're going, I can't do that.
44:29
Speaker 2: That's not how you did it. You just had one
44:31
Speaker 2: guy on the side and whoa, he's going to pay
44:36
Speaker 2: me this. That gave you the confidence to go, now
44:38
Speaker 2: I can do three guys, and then five, and then
44:40
Speaker 2: pretty soon you're going, Wow, I think there's enough business
44:43
Speaker 2: here that I can quit my day job and do
44:46
Speaker 2: this full time. And that is it does not require
44:50
Speaker 2: this I'm a superman leap it requires I. Wow, it's
44:55
Speaker 2: actually working. But I agree. I still, you know, I
45:01
Speaker 2: still have those feelings of you know, even though I'll
45:04
Speaker 2: come on to a show like this and I'll go,
45:06
Speaker 2: wait talking to me, I'm like, I'm like, nobody, come on,
45:10
Speaker 2: I mean, no, I reckon. It's a cognitive dissonance thing
45:15
Speaker 2: because of course, you know, I can tell myself my
45:19
Speaker 2: own success, and I can tell myself you've won the
45:24
Speaker 2: lottery multiple times, and that's more than just odds, and
45:30
Speaker 2: so I go, I got it. I guess I know something. Still,
45:35
Speaker 2: I don't see myself that way. Just it's a very odd,
45:38
Speaker 2: odd feeling.
45:40
Speaker 1: I think those things that I've spoken about this a lot,
45:43
Speaker 1: the ability that we have to consciously or you know,
45:47
Speaker 1: intellectually understand something. Oh well, I must be quite good
45:52
Speaker 1: at what I do. I've built Netflix and a bunch
45:54
Speaker 1: of other things, and I've succeeded repeatedly, and I've fallen
45:58
Speaker 1: down and gotten back up. But you know, your track
46:00
Speaker 1: record is amazing. But that knowledge and that intellect can
46:03
Speaker 1: coexist with the feeling of I'm not that special, you know,
46:08
Speaker 1: and that's for me.
46:09
Speaker 2: I have a present, and you know it is for
46:12
Speaker 2: me too. And in fact, it's interesting that you talk
46:16
Speaker 2: about the Guy Raj Show before how I built this,
46:18
Speaker 2: because one of the things that's wonderful about that is
46:21
Speaker 2: him showing that a lot of these people who built
46:24
Speaker 2: very very reputable, huge companies had all kinds of failures
46:27
Speaker 2: and all kinds of moments where this almost never worked.
46:30
Speaker 2: And in many ways, the reason that I wanted to
46:33
Speaker 2: write that that one ever worked book was to show
46:35
Speaker 2: people that I am not a superman, that I made
46:39
Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes, there was a whole bunch of
46:41
Speaker 2: times when this almost didn't work, that there was other
46:44
Speaker 2: ingredients that went into making it successful, that it's not all.
46:47
Speaker 2: It's not one of those books where every chapter is
46:50
Speaker 2: chapter one, look how amazing I am, and number two
46:52
Speaker 2: look with the spectacular decision I did. And number three
46:54
Speaker 2: is look how clever I was not the case at all.
46:58
Speaker 2: You know, you got a warts and all ah.
47:01
Speaker 1: Deah, you must do you get you probably don't spend
47:04
Speaker 1: that do you spend any time looking at social media
47:07
Speaker 1: or do you avoid that.
47:13
Speaker 2: I avoid it, but it's weird because I participate in it,
47:17
Speaker 2: and so it's like they never get high in your
47:22
Speaker 2: own supply, I guess is the answer. So I need
47:25
Speaker 2: to constantly be really careful, and man, I can feel
47:29
Speaker 2: it happening. You know, it's engineered to be addictive, and
47:35
Speaker 2: it's whether you're a content creator or a content consumer
47:37
Speaker 2: is no different. You watch the follower counts go up,
47:40
Speaker 2: and you just want to keep hitting refreshed and you're
47:43
Speaker 2: hitting a little lever and getting a little mouse pellet
47:45
Speaker 2: and it's a it's a hard one.
47:48
Speaker 1: I'm already thinking about how many people are going to
47:50
Speaker 1: listen to this conversation because we've got you. I'm excited about.
47:54
Speaker 1: I'm all about the numbers, pro on the title life.
47:58
Speaker 2: It's okay. So my my weakness is TikTok I really?
48:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, twelve years old? What's going on?
48:07
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know what it is. It's just something
48:09
Speaker 2: about the fat. I'll sit there and just kind of
48:11
Speaker 2: hit the lever over and over again. But at least
48:15
Speaker 2: I can recognize, you know, you like.
48:19
Speaker 1: Those rats in that study with you know, they had
48:21
Speaker 1: the cocaine water up one end or whatever it was.
48:24
Speaker 1: Remember that study.
48:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well that's what I mean. It's like
48:29
Speaker 2: I tell myself, it's okay, you can handle this. You
48:34
Speaker 2: are a when to stop.
48:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, how's that working out for you? I just quickly
48:40
Speaker 1: we know you've got to go. And we really love
48:41
Speaker 1: talking to you and know that you didn't need to
48:43
Speaker 1: do this, so we appreciate it. How you spoke momentarily
48:48
Speaker 1: about life balance. You know, and you're still obviously still young,
48:54
Speaker 1: young enough to work and young enough to produce and
48:56
Speaker 1: create and keep learning and adapting and evolving and all
48:59
Speaker 1: those cool things. But what does life balance look like
49:03
Speaker 1: for you? You know, how much work, how much non work,
49:06
Speaker 1: how much socializing? I don't know what is that? What
49:09
Speaker 1: is that? How does that work for you?
49:13
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the luckiest things for me
49:17
Speaker 2: was that I figured a lot of those things out
49:19
Speaker 2: really early. I mean early enough that I could do
49:22
Speaker 2: something about it. Probably in my late twenties early thirties.
49:26
Speaker 2: I was already starting to recognize what I needed to create,
49:30
Speaker 2: what I felt was this full, full life. And it's
49:35
Speaker 2: those components haven't really changed since then. And there's there's
49:39
Speaker 2: three of them. So for me, it's it's almost equal thirds.
49:43
Speaker 2: Certainly I love the work. Obviously I in a position
49:47
Speaker 2: I don't need to do it for a living anymore.
49:50
Speaker 2: But the things that motivated me to become an entrepreneur
49:54
Speaker 2: have never gone away, regardless of the economic success I've
49:58
Speaker 2: had from some of them, which is that I love
50:00
Speaker 2: that process of solving problems. I love sitting on the
50:03
Speaker 2: table with smart people, and I still get to do that.
50:07
Speaker 2: I get to do it now more as a mentor.
50:10
Speaker 2: I get to do it now with the podcast and
50:12
Speaker 2: the other ways that I try and pay it forward.
50:14
Speaker 2: But I try and make sure I limit that to
50:16
Speaker 2: about a third of a week, and I really pay
50:21
Speaker 2: a lot of attention to the ratio between want to
50:23
Speaker 2: do and need to do. Listen, when we have team
50:26
Speaker 2: people who are helping you, you have to do a
50:28
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that you may not be want to do,
50:30
Speaker 2: but you want to make sure you don't lose sight
50:31
Speaker 2: of the things you want to do, and that's in
50:32
Speaker 2: the work environment. So that's a big piece of it.
50:34
Speaker 2: That's one part. But again I limit it, which is
50:36
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why TIF had to fight so
50:38
Speaker 2: hard to find the time to put us together. Is
50:41
Speaker 2: because I limit I only do it for two days
50:44
Speaker 2: a week, and I crunch everything into those two days,
50:47
Speaker 2: which means it's hard. Okay. Number two is I'm married.
50:52
Speaker 2: I been married for a long time. I have three kids,
50:55
Speaker 2: and I vowed a long long time ago that I
50:59
Speaker 2: did not want to be an entrepreneur who is on
51:01
Speaker 2: their sixth company but also on their sixth life, and
51:05
Speaker 2: more importantly recognized in my late twenties that that would
51:11
Speaker 2: not happen if the family and wife were the afterthoughts.
51:16
Speaker 2: That those are the things that I got to after
51:18
Speaker 2: I focused on the business, that I had to make
51:21
Speaker 2: that a big rock in my life, big enough that
51:23
Speaker 2: everything else fit around it. And that's never stopped happening.
51:28
Speaker 2: And so that whole piece of my wife, my family,
51:32
Speaker 2: my friends, having time for all of them is a
51:36
Speaker 2: big piece of it. So that's another third. But there's
51:39
Speaker 2: a third piece, which is that I'm really passionate about
51:44
Speaker 2: the outdoors about this is a very Australian thing, but
51:47
Speaker 2: just being outside, you know, I surf, I ski, I
51:52
Speaker 2: mountain bike, I climb, I kayak, anything that involves being
51:58
Speaker 2: outdoors with the potential chain of hospitalization count me in
52:05
Speaker 2: and unfortunately, though I did not pick a hobby like
52:08
Speaker 2: stamp collecting or chess. I picked something that requires frequently
52:13
Speaker 2: getting on three planes in a row to go to
52:15
Speaker 2: some place way up in northern Alaska and then spend
52:19
Speaker 2: ten days kayaking the Schoolerness River. And you cannot fit
52:23
Speaker 2: that in between your eleven o'clock conference call on your
52:26
Speaker 2: two o'clock meeting. You have to if you want those
52:29
Speaker 2: things to happen, you have to make sure you construct
52:32
Speaker 2: a life carefully to let that happen. So when I
52:35
Speaker 2: said to your earlier question, do I think about how
52:38
Speaker 2: I think? I'm always evaluating that. I evaluate it in
52:42
Speaker 2: every week. I evaluate them every month. I evaluate it
52:45
Speaker 2: in every year, which is how I do. If I
52:48
Speaker 2: feel it getting out of balance, either getting out of
52:51
Speaker 2: balance because I'm working too much and it's taking away
52:54
Speaker 2: on fine, someone goes, let's go for a mountain bike
52:56
Speaker 2: ride and I can't go. I ask myself, why, how?
53:02
Speaker 2: What am I am I prioritizing anything incorrectly? Here? Have
53:04
Speaker 2: I structured something in a way that's preventing this from happening?
53:09
Speaker 2: And I have to work that does not come as
53:12
Speaker 2: naturally to me as the entrepreneurship stuff. But the funny thing,
53:18
Speaker 2: and this is the you know, we talked, We ruminated
53:21
Speaker 2: about success and about how I feel that so many
53:23
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs are motivated by these wrong things. But I've certainly
53:27
Speaker 2: had success from this one perspective, which I have had.
53:33
Speaker 2: You know, I've started parisering seven companies, and you know,
53:36
Speaker 2: two of them are multi billion dollar companies, so unbelievably
53:40
Speaker 2: wonderful and lucky. But the thing that I'm proudest of
53:45
Speaker 2: is not that. The thing I'm proudest of is doing
53:47
Speaker 2: those things while staying married, while growing up with my
53:51
Speaker 2: kids knowing me and liking me, I hope, and having
53:55
Speaker 2: a chance to do the things that make me whole,
53:57
Speaker 2: which is you know, the backcountry skiing and all those
54:00
Speaker 2: things that that success have.
54:02
Speaker 1: There you be so successful and balanced and make all
54:05
Speaker 1: that dough and be a good human being, and stayed married.
54:09
Speaker 1: I think it was nine to eighty seven you got married.
54:11
Speaker 1: I read thirty four years, three kids, geology undergrad degrees. Here,
54:16
Speaker 1: what's that about? And he didn't even bloody do it.
54:18
Speaker 1: It didn't bloody do anything with rocks. What's that about?
54:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you find them climber. Well, it is it's
54:26
Speaker 2: basically that in school read I would see that the
54:29
Speaker 2: geology majors, and they'd all be coming back from this
54:32
Speaker 2: field trip. They're only piling out of the van and
54:35
Speaker 2: they'd spent the whole weekend or a whole couple of
54:37
Speaker 2: days up in some incredibly beautiful mountain thing. And I went,
54:41
Speaker 2: that sounds like the major for me. But it was
54:45
Speaker 2: always about that. I had had zero interest. Not there's
54:48
Speaker 2: anything wrong with it in being a petrochemical engineer, being
54:52
Speaker 2: a oil field worker or something like that.
54:55
Speaker 1: No, thank you, Ah, yeah, I'm with you. I could
54:58
Speaker 1: ask you so many, got so many all things I
55:00
Speaker 1: want to talk about, but I realize I can't, so
55:02
Speaker 1: tiffle book in for twenty twenty six for our second
55:05
Speaker 1: conversation when I think that's your next opening.
55:09
Speaker 2: Every four hundred, every four hundred of your episodes, book
55:12
Speaker 2: me on what As a matter of course, Okay, you've.
55:15
Speaker 1: Just trippled my workload. He's going to roll out twenty
55:18
Speaker 1: seven a week now, exactly right. You get on you,
55:22
Speaker 1: you bring your a game. TIF. Hey, Mark, we appreciate you.
55:26
Speaker 1: So tell people, just once again, for the people who
55:30
Speaker 1: have been slumbering through this. The name of the podcast,
55:33
Speaker 1: the name of the book and where they can connect
55:35
Speaker 1: with you, and so on.
55:36
Speaker 2: So certainly the book is that will never work, as
55:39
Speaker 2: is the podcast that will never work, and both of
55:41
Speaker 2: them are available wherever you find whatever you're looking for,
55:44
Speaker 2: and of course for all things Mark Randolph. If you
55:47
Speaker 2: don't have the time span, the pretension span for a
55:49
Speaker 2: thirty minute podcast, you can get everything sliced and diced
55:53
Speaker 2: into whatever sized nuggets you can digest at Mark Randolph
55:57
Speaker 2: dot com or all the various social media outlets that
56:00
Speaker 2: I am duty bound to keep posting content too.
56:05
Speaker 1: Of course, you are you bloody champion. Thank you so
56:09
Speaker 1: much if you can stay on the call after we
56:11
Speaker 1: saw enough. Thanks for being on the show, Mike.
56:15
Speaker 2: Creg a pleasure being with you. This was really fun.
56:17
Speaker 2: And Tiff, thank you for coordinating all this. Both of
56:20
Speaker 2: us know none of this would happen without you. Thank you.
56:23
Speaker 1: It's exactly right. Thanks Tiff, Thanks hops, love you gots everyone,
56:28
Speaker 1: See you next time.