Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Gabby Reece: Fitness, Failure, and Big-Wave Surfing | E143

Transcript

Gabby Reece: Fitness, Failure, and Big-Wave Surfing | E143 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: You've talked about the five keys to fitness.
• 0:03
  Randall Kaplan: What are they? Well, so there's buckets, right? It's
• 0:06
  Gabby Reece: like, you need to get to bed. You need to move your body. You need to eat real food. You know, we, most of us, are overeating. You need to have community. And I do believe that there's some great power in participating in your recovery.
• 0:21
  Gabby Reece: So instead of having a day off and being a guy, a day off, it's like, oh, you if you could get your body into a sauna or have a breathing practice, or take a yoga class or something that you enjoy doing, and all of these things support kind of your fitness and practice and health and well being,
• 0:42
  Randall Kaplan: you're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Gabby Reese.
• 0:44
  Randall Kaplan: She's a former professional volleyball player, sports commentator, athlete, actor, model, television host, Best Selling Author and podcast host.
• 0:54
  Randall Kaplan: If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two of my incredible interview with Gabby. You did an interview with Joe Rogan in April 2019 where you talked about, you play it safe, too much, and you wish you had taken more risks, or were going to take more risks. Have you taken more risks since then?
• 1:15
  Randall Kaplan: And what's your advice to everyone listening? Because everyone listening today is thinking about maybe doing something else, taking a risk.
• 1:21
  Randall Kaplan: Get out of their comfort zone, starting a new job. What's your advice to all of them?
• 1:27
  Gabby Reece: I think, is take as many risks as you can. But take but you don't have to crash and burn with every risk. You can take really good, calculated risks, but I don't think we're ever going to regret saying what we really think, feel and believe, if an opportunity comes in your business, that you can, you can kind of, and I don't want to say, afford it, but like, I always joke I have stuff to sell. That's how I look at it. Like, if stuff really goes bad, we could sell a house.
• 2:00
  Gabby Reece: Like, who can? You know what I mean, like at the end of the day, like, we all shove in an apartment. Sure, that's cool. So I think a risk, because it's, it's not only such a short time, but all the good stuff happens because you stuck your neck out, whether it was like telling someone you loved them, or you went for this business idea in a strategic and well thought out way, because you had to. And I think for me, my the risks I want to take still have to do with just saying it, how I really think it and feel it. And also now as a person who has children that are bigger, just moving out of the roles that I've been playing for the last 20 something years, like claiming more of my own real estate as a person, not as Laird's wife or my kid's mom.
• 2:58
  Gabby Reece: And so I think that's where i i will move. Continue to move in.
• 3:06
  Randall Kaplan: It's always getting out of our comfort zone when we start a company. So at some point you became an entrepreneur. You started a bunch of companies. I think 10 companies, two of them have sort of made it. So what it was, I've been down that road, yeah, it's, it's exhilarating, scary, terrifying, frustrating, horrifying. The first time you went out and you started your own company. What was that company? And what was the mentality when they say, Oh, my God, I'm gonna do this.
• 3:33
  Gabby Reece: You know, I had this idea, I think, Gosh, in the early 2000s where I wanted to create a training, a platform on the internet, where, if you were in the middle of Idaho, but you're a really talented baseball pitcher, I could get you best in class training information from the best in class coach, and I wanted to have that for every sport that made sense. And great
• 3:55
  Randall Kaplan: idea, by the way. Thank
• 3:56
  Gabby Reece: you. It was way too early, and I'm not it's been done well, and this was like 2002 or something. But back then, it was, like, video, it was two. And I wasn't even a techie person. I was just like, oh, this would be amazing, because I related to like, Hey, I grew up in the Caribbean. I didn't have access. How would you give access, you know, and so, you know, democratize information and for sport training and for people who are interested, we did another one.
• 4:23
  Gabby Reece: We had a truition, which was a nutritional company. It, there was nothing, there was no mode around it. There was nothing unique about it. So that didn't work. I, you know, I sort of had the thought like Wolf Laird and I are doing it, and we know the ingredients are clean and best in class. Well, that's enough, yeah, okay, that's not enough.
• 4:38
  Gabby Reece: And so, you know, we had ideas either too early or not interesting enough, or, like I said, Not no mo, nothing unique about it. And so, you know, you have a graveyard full of companies and ideas that you think were so great. I
• 4:55
  Randall Kaplan: was on the board. I've invested a lot of money. No, I'll just share with everyone a million dollar. In a company called X Drive. And X Drive, there was a dial up connection at the time, and we were just getting kind of faster speeds on the way to get online.
• 5:08
  Randall Kaplan: And this was storage online. So you create an account on X Drive, and you can put all your storage there. And I think we raised something $60 million which is a ton of money. We have investment bank raise money for us, and ultimately the company went under, and that was one of the biggest investment losses I've ever had. And obviously it's not fun when you lose $3 million the exact same company today is Dropbox and Box and the exact same company, and sometimes you're just five or 10 years too early, and that's just what it is, being an entrepreneur,
• 5:43
  Gabby Reece: it is, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
• 5:46
  Gabby Reece: I wouldn't have the failures any other way. I wouldn't listen. We took large, super food public in 20 CPG products on the public market, kind of insanity. So I wouldn't have it any other way.
• 6:01
  Gabby Reece: I just the idea of not pursuing the ideas and not taking the risks and not having the limitation. That's what I like.
• 6:12
  Gabby Reece: The idea may be, is you don't know how big it could be. It may be a total disaster, but I love the idea of you don't know you're not handcuffed, like, Okay, you're gonna earn this much every year. You're gonna work this many hours. You're gonna be nine to five. Okay, some people like that. It's safe, you know what you're dealing with. I like the idea of, we don't know. I love that failure
• 6:34
  Randall Kaplan: in the VC world is not like failure in a real estate deal where you're not getting your cash flow or you still sometimes have the land in the building. These are, these are goose eggs, right? So it's, it's like taking your money and it goes in the trash basket, dumpster fire, and you have nothing. But I do a lot of coaching. I do coaching students. I do professional coaching. One of the things that I really talk about a lot people, people want to talk about, Oh, how'd you do this investment? Or, how about this one, the ones that made money? I want to talk about as a teaching moment, that we learn more from our failures than our successes, right? I mean, everyone wants to go out, and I think I see a lot of younger people do this. They go out, it's bar talk. They brag about all their successes. No one's talking about their failures. But I really think we learn more from our failures than our wins. Do you agree
• 7:25
  Gabby Reece: beyond agree? I think about sports. I've said this so many times. We don't go to practice and go, you know, your your three pointers are perfect, so we're just going to do that. No, your free throws are looking weird. Let's get on the line over here, and we're going to practice this. So getting a relationship with, you know? And not, I don't need to make it a poster, you know, those are the other things.
• 7:48
  Gabby Reece: Like, I don't need to sit in like, oh, so I'm so grateful for this learning moment. Like, I get it, but there's no way around it. All the best stuff comes from the squeeze and when you fell on your face and it's just, I'm not looking for it, I'm not hoping for it, but when it comes, I go, all right, I dust myself off and go, this is only going to make me better for whatever is ahead and and also, people don't realize it's the thing you needed to prepare you for a much bigger thing, usually. So tell us
• 9:10
  Randall Kaplan: about the other companies that have had some success. XPT and their superfoods, talk to us about briefly what they are. I want to promote them and thanks so
• 9:19
  Gabby Reece: well. XPT is a training it's kind of the training arm of our business.
• 9:22
  Gabby Reece: They're going to be doing physical locations. The it was really, again, I will say, on these last two businesses, we did not start them on purpose.
• 9:32
  Gabby Reece: We have a very close friend, Jen. She's like, you need to share what you and learned are doing in your training. Oh, nobody wants to see this. She goes, I'm going to put together an event, and we started XBT, and now we've got, you know, apps and physical spaces and certified trainers and all of that. And that's and if I could say it's a great business, and it's also kind of the storytelling part, it's the place the human part to really connect with people also forced learning, going back to learning, if we're not learning and doing and trying and keeping new things, we can't actually feed those ideas into this business. And then Laird superfood was created out of a practice from coffees that Laird was making in our house giving to his friends. Why? Because he wanted to figure out, if I'm doing this every day, how do I use this for performance so I can go out and surf longer, and he would give to his friends, and they go, Oh, I feel so good.
• 10:16
  Gabby Reece: What's in this? And one of the people was a good friend who was an entrepreneur, startup guy, and said, You know, I really think you could do you say who it is? Yeah, Paul Hodge. Paul Hodges was the co founder and person who took the company public. We now have a different CEO who runs publicly traded companies, because that's a whole other whole nother, whole nother beast, whole other animal. I just had the board meetings at my house this last two days, and anyway, and slowly but surely, it was one of those ones where we made samples. It was kind of the first skew was really almost like our original creamer. We now have two. You know, we have coffees and creamers of all kinds. We have greens and reds and proteins and bars. We have very, very strict guard rails. So not only, of course, no artificial flavors, but no natural flavors. And if you know anything about food, creating things that give you a lot of great taste and have, you know, shelf stability and all these things without these kinds of ingredients, is really to me, when you talk about success, this has been the success of this company, the sick this is our largest company that we work with. But it is successful to me because people love it, and I feel really good about what's in it.
• 11:29
  Randall Kaplan: You met Laird in 1995 you were doing a TV show The extremists. And as I understand it, he thought you were just this, and I'm going to quote, I'm not saying this big, big, dumb blonde bimbo, yeah, sure, a gun for hire. A gun for hire. So how did that relationship develop? You got married two years later, you have three kids. So how did that blossom? And what was it like dating the most famous surfer in the world? I mean, he's an icon, yeah.
• 11:58
  Gabby Reece: I mean, Laird is very good at what he does, obviously. But when I met Laird, he was very well known in surfing. He wasn't well known in the mainstream world. I was attracted to Laird. I have a good friend who says the main it's like the mania you haven't met a person more like passionate and intense and transparent, and, you know, present than layered and in a very different way than people are used to. Laird is highly intelligent, and so I remember thinking, Oh, this is, this is a very intense guy. And, and, and it wasn't after we said goodbye, after the interview, I thought, oh, you know, what a unique person. And I had done many interviews of many athletes, very good at what they do, but Laird, I think maybe being in mother nature and just willingness, he leads with his heart everywhere. I'm very analytical, and Laird's bravery, just to put it all out there all the time about everything is it's really refreshing and impressive and exhausting, if I could say that. And then I re met up with him and his friends a couple days later to play volleyball. Big wave surfers were playing the toad the strap crew was playing volleyball when the surf was flat. And so I went back and and that the only person I knew there was Laird, and he wasn't the one who invited me. And so I needed a ride back to my hotel. One thing led to another, and the rest is, yeah, is history. And, you know, we we had to learn to dance. We were both didn't come from, maybe homes that there was that language. So we stepped on each other's toes, and we figured some things out. And and I'd say, we have a really have a I'm very we have a very good, peaceful, strong, kind of thriving relationship. It's yeah, but it's intent. It's like with Laird. It's intense every day. You don't get to show up halfway, like with him, you, you, you got to show up. And so you have to choose as his partner, like, is that what you're in for? Or do you want to, like, chill out on the couch and watch shows at seven o'clock and if you want to, kind of get into it and he's your guy?
• 14:19
  Gabby Reece: Marriage,
• 14:24
  Randall Kaplan: as you know, can require a lot of work, sometimes, even if you're madly in love and have the best spouse in the world, having the best wife in the world, but marriage, marriage takes work, and also you'll, you'll be married, I think 27 years next week, yeah.
• 14:36
  Randall Kaplan: And for all of us, we make sacrifices when we get married.
• 14:41
  Randall Kaplan: My wife was working in New York as a model. She had a good career going. She worked on Wall Street at the same time. So she was doing she actually had four jobs when I met her, and I said, After three months we got engaged, I said, I said, I'm not doing a long distance thing. So pretty got married. You got to come here. As you know, I three kids at that point, and I just wasn't going to date someone long distance. So she gave up her career to move here. And it's she hasn't restarted the career, really. I mean, she still will model a few times a year. You were training to become a professional golfer at some point, and you were working with Butch Harmon, who was Tiger Woods coach for 11 years, but you gave that up to be a mom,
• 15:24
  Gabby Reece: yeah? Well, you can imagine you've talked about my past, right? Yeah, one of the things I wasn't, first of all, I wasn't good enough in golf to not be practicing all the time and the short game, right? It was not instinctive in any way, like volleyball was more so. So I once I had my middle daughter, my first biological daughter, viola, I thought, oh yeah, there's no way. I'm not going to be good at anything. Okay, and so that's not even a question, you know, if I, if I do one thing in my life, it will as imperfectly as I do it, it will be here for my children and for them to know, to be able to rely on me. And you know, it's like this idea sometimes, you know, my youngest daughter, Brody, I'll be in the kitchen Most times when this kid comes home, and I think to myself, I've had a whole life in between when you left and when you got here. And I I'm a whole different other person than, you know, and to her, I'm this kind of person that a lot of times, is just right there and and that that luxury, right? I don't that was a real luxury to be able to do that
• 16:47
  Randall Kaplan: felt so important in our relationships, we have to trust our partner, and as we're getting to know them, we sometimes will do things getting us out of our comfort zone. So tell us about Mike Murphy and the air chair.
• 16:59
  Gabby Reece: Oh yeah, Mike Murphy, so I did a show with Mike Murphy, who actually Mike Murphy's air chair was why Laird was able to foil. So Mike Murphy, I had a very hard time on the air chair. I tried all these different things. And this is this hydrofoil that flies kind of above the water and rides the energy below. Well, Laird and them got the air chair and cut the chair off and put snowboard boots on there. And literally, I think, for maybe the last 12 years, the only surfboard that Laird rides is has a foil connected to it, because so for him, it's it's really interesting. Mike Murphy created this whole other thing.
• 17:35
  Gabby Reece: Laird wrote a wave many years ago, maybe 15 years maybe more, actually, 18 years ago, that was close to 100 foot. And he said that the water coming up the wave, on a wave that big, moving that fast, you're actually physically not able to go down the wave because the water traveling up the wave is too quick. And that's when he abandoned toe surfing altogether and dedicated all his energy and time to foiling. So it was really beginning thanks to Mike Murphy,
• 18:06
  Randall Kaplan: but at some point he took you on a 60 foot wave. Yeah,
• 18:11
  Gabby Reece: he Oh, lair did not my I'm not going on a 60 foot way with Mike Murphy. No,
• 18:14
  Randall Kaplan: no, no. But he took you on a in terms of just, you're trusting your partner.
• 18:17
  Randall Kaplan: Oh, you went on a 60 foot wave with it. That's a six story office. Oh, yeah. So that was so Laird took me. What do you say?
• 18:23
  Randall Kaplan: Hey, we're gonna do this. You said, All right, let's do it.
• 18:25
  Randall Kaplan: Or, oh, I don't know
• 18:28
  Gabby Reece: if I said, Hey, yeah, let's do it. I was like, I probably didn't say anything in my mind. I was probably, is that a good idea, because I used to ask Larry, like, what about this? It's so gorgeous, but what about this draws you towards it.
• 18:39
  Gabby Reece: It's an energy that you think, Where do I go to land or to the channel? And there took me on a jet ski to Pia, he which is known as JAWS, a wave on Maui.
• 18:45
  Gabby Reece: And he said, I'm gonna It was a beautiful day, meaning the conditions were very good, the wind, the sun, the whole the shape of the wave, the small direction, everything like a special day. And he said, Okay, we're gonna, I'm gonna get you in front. I just want you to look back at it. And the great thing about Laird, when you're in the water with Laird, you think he's not Cavalier. He's not being, you know, wild. He has a measured seriousness about him that I thought I am really scared, and I also know it's okay. I'm okay. I trust him more than you know, my own fear in this moment. But I wasn't like, I was gawking anything that's amazing. I kind of looked back a few times and I was like, Okay, that's
• 19:28
  Randall Kaplan: good. Thank you.
• 19:28
  Randall Kaplan: Were you with him on a board? Or you're right?
• 19:31
  Gabby Reece: We're on a jet ski, because it's the only we have to move at a you have to move at a pace right, to stay in front of it. But, I mean, I
• 19:37
  Randall Kaplan: just want people out there to picture this, you're on a jet ski on a six story building, and the waves coming down. Yeah, it's very, very loud, for people who don't know, right? It's, it's, you got all the power you're hearing the wave crash in front of you, and are you just, you know, holding on
• 19:54
  Gabby Reece: for dear life. It's primal, you know, like, the idea of, like, if you, if anything goes wrong, you it's too much, it's massive, yeah, you're gonna die, yeah, yeah, so and drowning and all of that, you're talking about, a really primal thing, yeah? But again, I the idea of seizing those moments when somebody's really good at what they do and they invite you to get just a peek into their world, you gotta say yes.
• 20:24
  Randall Kaplan: Gary McNamara was on my show, and so for those people who haven't watched the GARRETT MCNAMARA show, I hope you watch it. It's phenomenal.
• 20:29
  Randall Kaplan: 100 foot wave. At one point he wrote the biggest wave in the world. People have died doing it. I
• 20:36
  Gabby Reece: wouldn't go on a ski with GARRETT MCNAMARA. I would go with Larry Kelley, maybe Dave Kalama. I would go different types, all different types. You know, we joke, yeah, very different. We
• 20:51
  Randall Kaplan: tell us about, um. Um, the wiggle foot story, and how that Laird's
• 20:58
  Gabby Reece: wiggle foot story.
• 20:58
  Gabby Reece: So Laird went down a rapid, and I don't know, class five or something, and he got pinned on a rock underneath. And he said he tried in every which way, literally, to get out. And he said he had this kind of vision of like a skeleton there with his surf shorts, because it was where the where the the rapid was breaking and he was not able to get off. It was like a hydraulic that it just doesn't end. And so somehow he is he sort of wiggled his foot, and that motion kind of offset his body that he got spit out, but that, for him, was one of the heaviest things that he's ever experienced in water. So you'd think it would be the ocean, but rivers again, that that kind of unrelenting power is pretty serious.
• 21:48
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the book that you wrote. And in the book, there was a central premise that a woman being submissive in a relationship with a man is actually a good thing. And I think that a lot of people hearing this today who haven't read your book would say Gabby, that's outrageous, the ME TOO movement, that's exactly what we shouldn't be doing.
• 22:10
  Gabby Reece: Well, first of all, I want to say this one thing that is true is half the best people I know in the world are men. So this whole thing of like, I have to win and you have to lose in order for it to be fair to me, I don't actually agree with that. And the whole premise of the book, and by the time I wrote the book, I was already in my 40s, was about being a strong person, and I happened to be a female, so I thought I had established that story for a solid like 25 years, about being strong, strong, mentally, physically, you know, taking up space, whatever it was. And it was a very nuanced part of a conversation that I said in my home, in particular, I take on the female energy Laird takes on the male, and that to be submissive, to be of service to your family, really was a very good dynamic in my house. Now, one thing I will say that I've learned. I was born in 1970 so Title Nine. I went to school on an athletic scholarship, so I never had to deal with what the idea of submissive meant to a generation before me. So I had the a different understanding after because people were really pissed off about this book, and all I was saying was, is that it's we are going to be of service to our families, to our friends, to our community, and it feels really good, and it's really empowering. I didn't say, be a doormat, get taken advantage of, and be an idiot.
• 23:42
  Gabby Reece: And so I think that people just needed an opportunity to be frustrated and take one word and, you know, go nuts. But I think there's something really powerful. And by the way, if you talk to Laird, I'm sure he feels like he's submissive to the family too. I think people are of service to their family. But I'm not afraid to say it. I don't this is my choice. I'm not going to go out in the world and try to be a professional. And I do want to, you know, win and kick ass and be all these things and be strong. I don't want to be that same person in my house.
• 24:14
  Gabby Reece: I want to be there my kid's mom and and I'm not going to lean into my marriage with Laird. I'm here to love Laird and support Laird and elevate Laird and and make his life better and easier.
• 24:28
  Gabby Reece: And hopefully he he's doing the same thing. And obviously I would evaluate that if, he was doing something different. But I think we've taken the idea of being soft and kind and giving as a weakness, the same as what they say, oh, feminine. Feminine is not weak. And so for me, I never looked at it that way. And it's just a nice balance.
• 24:53
  Randall Kaplan: You've been a fitness advocate and Guru. You talk about on your podcast for a long time. You've been training your whole life. You've talked about the five keys to fitness.
• 25:05
  Randall Kaplan: Yes, what are they?
• 25:07
  Gabby Reece: Well, so there's buckets, right? It's like you need to get to bed when you need to move your body. I'm not going to tell you how. You just need to do it consistently. You need to eat real food, you know, probably less than you want. You know, we, most of us, are overeating. You need to have community. And I do believe that there's some great power in kind of participating in your recovery. So instead of having a day off and be like, I have a day off, it's like, oh, you if you could, you know, get your body into a sauna, or have a breathing practice, or take a yoga class or something that you enjoy doing, and all of these things support kind of your fitness and practice and health and well being. Everything else is hacks. You. Now what I will say that needs to get added to that list is to go outside and be in the sunlight. I think the deeper I go into learning and the impact of LED lights and blue light from our computers, sunlight, and so there are a lot of people of the thinking that that might be the number one, and then it's sort of everything else. But you can eat perfect and move great, but if you don't have meaningful relationships, that's terrible for your health.
• 26:21
  Gabby Reece: The Harvard study shows that right connection is so important and and so, you know, it's great. People measure it with their rings and their all these other things, but you cannot hack your way to health. You have to these buckets are primary and then everything else. I love it. I love like, Okay, let's do ozone, let's do red light, let's do all that.
• 26:43
  Gabby Reece: That's great, but those are hacks. So
• 26:45
  Randall Kaplan: let's talk about the sauna hack. There was a piece in The Wall Street Journal this week or last week, that Saunas are the new place in Silicon Valley, to me, network, socialize and raise money. Yeah, oh, God, you had a podcast years ago where you would host the podcast in a sauna. So how on earth do you host a podcast in a sauna? How do you get people to show up and how do you get people to breathe
• 27:12
  Gabby Reece: well? Now, you know why I have the Gabby Reece show?
• 27:14
  Gabby Reece: Because, you know, after a while, guests are like what I was with an author named Neil Strauss, good friend of mine who wrote a very well known book called the game. Neil is a funny guy. I thought we have such different perspectives, it'd be cool, but we always called the sauna our time as a group in the in the sauna, we called it the truth barrel. It's like, hey, it's hot. You're barely dressed, you're sweating. Get to the point everybody say what they need and want, and that's what it became, really this beautiful truth, truthful connecting. I need this. What do you think about that this is going on in my relationship? So we thought, Oh, why not? Let's have a let's have conversations in there, in the truth barrel. So we'd obviously have to leave the door open because our, we keep our sauna pretty hot, like 220 and so, 220 Yeah, so you're having like, a 12 to 15 minute conversation, so we would open the door up, but it was great.
• 28:00
  Gabby Reece: It was really good fun.
• 28:03
  Randall Kaplan: 220 is insane. I did a sauna the summer of 180 Yeah, it's great. That's perfect. 181 90 is great, yeah.
• 28:09
  Randall Kaplan: But if you're not used to 180 you're dying in there after seven or eight minutes. I mean, it's, it's hot sauna
• 28:16
  Gabby Reece: is, is really there, and there's a lot of data. Dr Rhonda Patrick does a lot of beautiful work around this, about all the really, seriously great health benefits of being in the sauna. All cause mortality goes down. You know, cognitive function, Alzheimer's, just an amazing amount of things. But like you said, actually, that time together, if you can be in there. I mean, listen, the Scandinavian countries have been sounding, they work out. They do business deals there. They've been doing that forever. They work out all their, you know, kind of familiar problems in the sauna.
• 28:48
  Gabby Reece: So I think it's, it's pretty, it's pretty great practice.
• 28:53
  Randall Kaplan: My son, Charlie, yeah, is all over the sauna thing, Dad, you got to get a sauna. And we're actually looking into it now. I mean, we build an outside structure because our house is already built, yeah. Oh, I can help you with that. It's a whole thing.
• 29:04
  Gabby Reece: It's a whole thing.
• 29:04
  Gabby Reece: If you want to get crazy, you could go to like, 151 60, and put a stationary bike in there and do that for 15 minutes. On days that you don't have a lot of time to train or do anything do that, and you kill like two birds with one that
• 29:16
  Randall Kaplan: I would totally do. There you go. I got ideas.
• 29:18
  Randall Kaplan: Instead of, instead of 45 on my peloton, I got ideas. Tell us about Alfred Adler's book and the advice in that book, which I think is brilliant and a lesson that everybody listening to this podcast, any podcast, who wants to improve themselves, should
• 29:32
  Gabby Reece: learn. So the the the courage to be disliked. We got the, I think I read it during COVID, and really it's this whole deep dive philosophical into, you know, is it your parents? Is it, you know, were you born with it? Is it your destiny? Is it your fate? And what he two things that he arrives at is, no, it's your lifestyle. And if you really want to be, and I'm going to use the word happy in in that Representative way, right, a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, all those things, you have to be of service. And it's as simple as that. And I think there are times in our lives that we should be striving and thinking about ourselves and kind of really figuring out, like, who am I, and defining that. And then there are times that we can be doing both. And there's another kind of great addition to that, which is strength to strength. Arthur C Brooks talks about, kind of these arcs in our lives, these curves where in our younger lives, it's like, you know, kind of being the hero and being the rock star and doing all this and then jumping off this curve and going to this curve and being someone who synthesizes information and teaches others and helps others and supports others, and how good that makes us feel.
• 30:49
  Randall Kaplan: We're at the end of our show. But I always end the. Show was a game I called film a blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Sure, the biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
• 30:59
  Gabby Reece: it's all the story that I put on it, it all is going to be whatever story I put on it. It's going to mean that.
• 31:08
  Gabby Reece: So
• 31:08
  Randall Kaplan: pick a good story. My number one professional goal is
• 31:12
  Gabby Reece: to maximize every talent that I have been given to its greatest degree, my number one personal goal is that my children, at the end of this whole story, say you did a pretty good job, and I respect the way that you tried to show up and that Laird and I still look at each other with a little bit of a twinkle in our eye.
• 31:40
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest regret in life is, I
• 31:44
  Gabby Reece: mean, I don't play that game because there's a lot, and they all have led to this place, and it's definitely to do with parenting, but there's a few.
• 31:54
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest fear in life is that somehow
• 31:58
  Gabby Reece: the push and drive that I have in any way would have negatively impacted my kids own sort of expression in their own life.
• 32:11
  Randall Kaplan: The craziest thing that has happened to me in my career is, I think
• 32:16
  Gabby Reece: meeting my husband on a shoot is pretty crazy. The
• 32:21
  Randall Kaplan: funniest thing that's happened to me in my career is,
• 32:24
  Gabby Reece: I mean, I had to interview Charles Barkley in a hot tub once with my clothes fully on. I guess that was funny. I was trying to save time for him. Where did that happen?
• 32:33
  Gabby Reece: He was, I think, they were playing the heat, and he was going from Pratt was at practice with them, and then he was going to interview with me, and then go to, like, get ready for the game. And because I understood the scheduling, like I understood that day, I was in my full clothes, and he was gonna, he goes, they go, Well, he has to go in the sauna first, or the hot tub first, before after practice. And then he'll, you know, do your inner man. I thought, let's just get in there, because I thought he'd be more generous. I knew CB, but I thought he'd be more generous because we were saving time.
• 33:01
  Randall Kaplan: So you're interviewing him, and he says, hey, I can only do it in the hot tub. No, did you have a bathing suit with
• 33:08
  Gabby Reece: no, I didn't. I That was the whole thing is, this is my sensitivity about like, Oh man, I understand this guy has a game day today. He's just come from a shoot around practice. He's going to take this 45 minutes hour to be with me, and but before that, he has to sit in the hot tub, and then he's going to go and get ready to play. So I thought, let's condense it and make his time a little better for him before game time, and so I just got, I had shorts and a T shirt, and I just got in the hot tub with him.
• 33:38
  Randall Kaplan: That's interesting. I have, I want to digress for a second on the hot tub. Oh, okay, it's amazing. Who you meet in the hot tub, you know, especially when you're going to nice places and hotels on vacation. Who'd you meet in the hot tub. I met the CEO of Restoration Hardware when it was
• 33:57
  Gabby Reece: Gary. Wait, are you gonna tell me that you invested in Restoration Hardware?
• 34:02
  Randall Kaplan: No, I didn't. I didn't. I just met him at the time. And it was a small company. Yeah, it was failing.
• 34:07
  Randall Kaplan: It had a $200 million Gary Friedman. It was a $200 million market cap. They were selling games like Monopoly, spin off games
• 34:16
  Gabby Reece: restaurant in New York. Have you been to the restaurant? Restaurant right here? It's amazing. There's one here, isn't there? I don't know, but I was at the one in New York, and it's fantastic. What he's done with the company is
• 34:26
  Randall Kaplan: just incredible.
• 34:26
  Randall Kaplan: Very sexy. We were staying at the Four Seasons in Lanai, and the people haven't been there.
• 34:31
  Randall Kaplan: It's just an incredible property. And we went to one of the hot tubs, no kids, adult, only one another guy in there.
• 34:38
  Randall Kaplan: I'm sorry I'm gonna call you nerdy, but you are nerdy.
• 34:41
  Randall Kaplan: There's a guy in there, Daniel adder, and he had created an AI company. This was seven years ago before it became a thing.
• 34:49
  Randall Kaplan: And guy's brilliant, and went to Harvard, AI degree, PhD. He was working for the Fed as well as an advisor, and he just sold a company for $500 million Coleman Sachs was an investor. I said, if you ever raise another if you ever have another company, raise another round for a company, give me a call. And he did, so we invested in that company.
• 35:08
  Randall Kaplan: Later in the trip, I was with my kids, and there was this young college woman in there, and I thought, What do you know? You from LA or whatever? Her dad was the VP of technology at snap.
• 35:21
  Randall Kaplan: And we both went to Michigan, so Michigan was really asking us both for money. And I said, Oh, I know, I don't know your dad, Steve Horowitz, but I would love to meet him. So I met Steve on that trip, and we become friends for for a long time as well. So you never and she became a summer intern the following summer, by the way. So it's weird to say that I met a summer intern in the hot tub. Well,
• 35:43
  Gabby Reece: yeah, but you had your kids around. It sounds like you meet way more interesting people than I meet in the hot tub. It's just,
• 35:49
  Randall Kaplan: it's just one of these. It's just one of these random. Yeah. A random thing, but you never know who you're going to meet in the hot tub.
• 35:54
  Randall Kaplan: You never know or the sauna, or the sauna. I haven't met anyone in the sauna. Yeah, so there's a guy named Strauss Zelnick who has done so many amazing things.
• 36:05
  Randall Kaplan: He at 30 years old, was a CEO COO of Fox. He ran BMG at age 40, and I wrote him a letter, and we got a meeting, and I got a meeting. We became friends, and he'd been a mentor to me. He was, I think, the fifth guest on my show. He's an incredible person. JD, Ma, from Harvard, extraordinarily humble. Now. He runs Take Two Interactive which is a $20 billion video game company. I think they bought it something for like, $20 million years ago, but he's just this, and he's as humble as as could be. So he's a workout fanatic.
• 36:36
  Randall Kaplan: By the way, he's been on cover of Men's Fitness for, oh, wow. I don't know he's, I think he's and Strauss, don't get pissed at me for this, but I think 63 or something like that, and he's okay. He looks like a 40 year old. Yeah. And so when I when we'll get together. He wants to work out, so I'll go to the gym or whatever. So Sports Club Los Angeles was a gym back in the day, big gym. And he says, Okay, let's meet there and we'll do workouts. So we show up, I said, and he's sitting there, and I said, Are you a member? He said, No. Are you a member? He said, No. So we're just sitting in a lobby. Of course, he's gonna make a call, yeah, and we're in, so we do this workout, we go into the locker room, and we're in this hot tub, and the hot tub, the big one, it's like eight feet by eight feet, and it, it's weird. I'm indoor basketball courts there at that place, right? Yeah, they that indoor basketball. We didn't play basketball, but it's weird.
• 37:28
  Randall Kaplan: As men, you're you're getting naked in the hot tub, and you're sitting there, and there's this guy in there bubbles too. What's that there were, by the way, I remember it correct? I remember it exactly, by the way, that's a jet. So whatever the jet setting was, you could like, they weren't huge bubbles. I mean, no one's looking, I think. But it's not like the one I have at my house. I get the bubbles cranking right? I just like that feeling. But there were very little bubbles. And Strauss is talking to this black man, yeah, in there, and he's in the music business. Strauss runs BMJ, I mean, Clive Davis, essentially one of the greatest music producers of all time, basically reported to Strauss, which is crazy, but we're in there, and they're having this conversation about music and doing this and doing that, and I'm just sitting there like, I you feel weird because you don't know what they're talking about. You don't know who the guy is. You're not participating in the conversation. Yeah, you're naked, but, but then, and by the way, then we all get out at the same time. We towel up at the same time, we're getting dressed at the same time, and his lockers right next to the Strauss is a mine or whatever.
• 38:32
  Randall Kaplan: And when we walk out, we're sure. We walk out, and he says, you know who that is, right? And I said, No. He said, Well, that's Sean Combs.
• 38:40
  Gabby Reece: Oh, by the way, God, you didn't get invited to any party, yeah?
• 38:43
  Randall Kaplan: Well, I mean back in the day, yeah. I mean, it's crazy. No, no, no. I mean, it's I mean, what I I don't know what I want to say about Sean Combs, but if anything we're hearing is even close to be true, I hope he gets what he deserves. You know, that's, that's what I'll say. Well, you know, we,
• 39:00
  Gabby Reece: you know, the universal thing of life, we get away with nothing, whatever that looks like.
• 39:05
  Randall Kaplan: My dog's name is karma, and Karma is a bitch.
• 39:07
  Randall Kaplan: That's, yeah, true.
• 39:10
  Gabby Reece: I have a question for you real quick, as somebody who is successful, very young, because that's young,
• 39:16
  Randall Kaplan: very young. 33 I came in that's pretty young, a fair amount of money.
• 39:20
  Gabby Reece: Do your kids listen to you? Do they take your sage wisdom? Or are you just like, Oh, Dad, like everyone else,
• 39:27
  Randall Kaplan: you know, I was going to ask you the same question. Funny enough, as we were talking about your kids, but it's a complicated question.
• 39:32
  Randall Kaplan: There's different tiers to that question. So the first part of it is, for me, how do you raise humble kids growing up in wealth, right? And so they see their dad going to work. I work 70 hours a week, but I'm always home for dinner, and when I got divorced, I made sure my kids were six, six and four, and they went to school down the street.
• 39:57
  Randall Kaplan: I pick them up every day at 230 and I drive them home and they do homework. I'd work either at the kitchen table with them or go into my home office. I wanted to make sure they felt safe. So one, I wanted to be a good dad, and two, they know I worked my ass off, even though we lived in this incredible house, yeah. And so that's, that's, that's number one. Number two, do the kids listen to you at various ages?
• 40:20
  Randall Kaplan: No, and it's like you could have a friend or a coach on a baseball team tell your kid Charlie, and I would tell him something, and he wouldn't listen. But when another coach told him the exact same thing, he listened. He said, Oh, now at some point, my son, who said, when I started a real estate company, why are you doing that?
• 40:42
  Randall Kaplan: You know nothing about real estate. I knew something about it. I investor in deals for 20 years, and I said, I don't want to be an investor. I want to be a general partner, and we'll.
• 40:52
  Randall Kaplan: Investors in the company. We want to, I want to create something. So at that point, you know, we started, we have a small company. We've done well on some small buildings in Long Beach, 10, unit building, 11 unit building. Investors have done well. We have 15 town homes in Nashville. We had 17. We we sold two of those. But at some point, my son recognized that number one, I do know something about real estate. Number two, as he gets interested in business, and I think I told you this, he's an entrepreneur at some point, as we talked about he didn't want to go to college, right? I wanted him go to college. His mom bar want him go to college because for the social aspect, oh, right, for the maturity of living away from home and making friends. I mean, to this day, college influenced who I am. I recommend people go to college, and I know that, you know, you said your daughter, if you don't want to go, I'll pay you to not go to college. Well, if it's
• 41:46
  Gabby Reece: the time, and give me an alternative idea, right?
• 41:50
  Gabby Reece: But different kind of kid,
• 41:52
  Randall Kaplan: right? Right? So as my kids got older, and as my son got into business now, he does listen to me, and it changed, like three years ago, really, because if you're in the business, you want to know about income statements, financial statements, how it works, raising money, how what a cap chart is. And it's really been fun for me. I never wanted to press what I did upon my kids?
• 42:12
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, my daughters are less interested in in business, but I've sent them all a book about Wall Street and what Wall Street is and what a stock is, and I've talked to them a little bit about our investments that we have, and they listen. They're interested, because at some point, too, I think it's important for you to have real life conversations with your kids about your situation in life. And obviously they, they see where we live, we have, they have, well to do friends. You know, our kids are friends.
• 42:46
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, you know, I've never been your house. I hear it's beautiful. We have a beautiful house as well. And so I think for me, the most important part of me teaching my kids is the work ethic and the value I bring and how hard I work to create this life for ourselves, for ourselves, and I want, I want to impart on them, and I want them to listen to me, which they do.
• 43:08
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, they're spoiled kids, but they're very humble kids, yeah, appreciative kids, yeah, but I want them to have the same kind of work ethic that I have and and so they they listen, they see it, and they do all have good work ethics. They work hard. So it's a longer answer, no, it's important answer. But you know, the back in the day, no, Dad had no idea what, you know, what he was doing. And it's funny, I remember driving to the airport with my assistant, and Charlie was in the car, and you know, he's making fun of me, right? He's self deprecating. And you go home, you're successful, you know. But when you're home, you're, you know, nobody. And yeah, and we were in the car, and this assistant, graduated college, interviewed a lot of people. She moved from North Carolina right at school, and Charlie's bagging on me big time and making fun of me and, and he said, and she said, hey, you know, Charlie, your dad's sort of a big deal and and by the way, I don't consider myself that, by the way, at all when you know, similar to you, I pride myself on being a humble person. And when I heard that, I just wanted to cringe right?
• 44:24
  Randall Kaplan: Because I I'm in my own mind.
• 44:24
  Randall Kaplan: I'm not right. I've done well, I'm successful. But he, he looked at her in a funny way, and I could see, like, something shifted in the mindset there, right? He knows me as dad. He sees He sees everything we have and how we live. But that was a moment where he just started to listen to me, great. You know?
• 44:44
  Randall Kaplan: It was one of those cool moments. Maybe
• 44:48
  Gabby Reece: she could come to my house, huh? I'm just kidding.
• 44:50
  Gabby Reece: Just kidding.
• 44:51
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so continuing with our fill in the blank to excellence questions, the best piece of advice I've ever learned in my life is
• 45:00
  Gabby Reece: when you're evaluating making a decision and doing something, do it to the best of your ability for the for the greatness of the situation, and don't try to make everybody happy because you can. And that was a very hard lesson, especially as a female, because, you know, is that okay? Is this okay? You know, you can't do things on consensus, so being okay with someone being unhappy about a decision that had to get made. And then, of course, you know, it's not personal. Let
• 45:35
  Randall Kaplan: me flip the question on you, by the way, before we come to the last few What about your kids? At what point did they start listening to you and say, okay, you know, my mom and dad are giving me advice that I'm going to listen to. We
• 45:50
  Gabby Reece: joke that I we joke that an ex. For somebody who lives a mile away to your point earlier, I think it's just a circling up. Once they become once they feel free, so closer to 1718, the sense of freedom, then they start to circle around to you. I I'm also glad like I know this sounds strange. Having three daughters, I don't as much as it would make my life easier.
• 46:19
  Gabby Reece: I don't want them to be compliant. I want them to question everybody and everything. And if I don't care what uniform you have on, I want them to question things. And so it is tough to parents, and I'm so grateful that they bump up against us.
• 46:36
  Randall Kaplan: One of the things that I should have mentioned, and I want to mention, is now that my son appreciates the fact that I have experience, I have wisdom, I have good advice, and I mentor a lot of people. He's actually added a lot of value to my life and business career. He suggests podcast guests from Yeah, I'll ask him, What about this guest?
• 46:56
  Randall Kaplan: What about that guest? They'll say, yes, no, that person's definitely not right for the show. And it's been, it's been very beneficial to me. They have a reciprocal relationship with my son, yeah? Who can add value to that? And he's also introduced me to some of his parents friends who are very successful in business, and I could care if they're successful or not, yeah, but he, he knows that we have the same DNA. Yeah, we'll have a lot to talk about.
• 47:18
  Randall Kaplan: I've made two or three really good friends with his parents, friends, which has been very rewarding to me. Yeah,
• 47:26
  Gabby Reece: our our children keep us into the into the world that we live in. Now, that's one of their jobs. They pull us into right? Hey, you guys did it this way? What about this way? It's like, oh, okay, all
• 47:38
  Randall Kaplan: right. So a few more questions. In 10 years from now, I'm going to be doing, I'm going
• 47:43
  Gabby Reece: to have taken a look a little bit more space in the in the when I call it self care, because I hate the idea of wellness, but from a female point of view, but still kind of because it's dominated, and it's totally fine. I understand why by men, but they all either have a partner or somebody who handles that side of it. I would like to be a person who also, there'll be others kind of have taken a little more real estate that communicate to men and women, but from just the female lens, not saying you only speak about female issues, because I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in very good information. But it's like, yeah, and how do you do it? If, like, you had a kid and you're the, you know, from the female side, or trying to juggle work and family and all that stuff,
• 48:29
  Randall Kaplan: if you could pick one trait that would lead to somebody's success, it would be, I guess, resilience, the one trait that's contributed to my success more than any other trait is self awareness. The one thing I've dreamt about doing for a long time but haven't, is
• 48:47
  Gabby Reece: I just haven't merged all of my skills into one spot. Yet, it's very difficult to be sort of pretty good at a lot of things. And the one thing I'm trying to figure out is how to bring it all together into one spot before I get too old or die. The
• 49:06
  Randall Kaplan: greatest athlete in history is it's
• 49:11
  Gabby Reece: like socially, is it? You know, is it Muhammad Ali for certain social things? Is it Willie Mays like, is it the social aspect, if it's physical, is it, you know, Hawaii, they'd say the Duke Kahanamoku for bringing surfing around the whole world. Babe Dietrich and Zaharias, female athlete opening the door. That's a hard one.
• 49:35
  Randall Kaplan: If you could go back in time and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
• 49:40
  Gabby Reece: Be bigger? Don't apologize.
• 49:44
  Randall Kaplan: The one question you wish I'd asked you but didn't, is
• 49:47
  Gabby Reece: this conversation around success and and accomplishment and pursuit. Is it? Is it in us? Is it just in us and who we are as people? Or is it something you can learn?
• 50:05
  Gabby Reece: I'm always intrigued by that idea.
• 50:07
  Randall Kaplan: When I have serial entrepreneurs on the show, I always ask them, Can you truly be a great entrepreneur, if you don't, if you were not born with the DNA of having that gene? Yeah,
• 50:20
  Gabby Reece: no, I don't think, well, yes, of course you can.
• 50:23
  Gabby Reece: You can be somebody who learns and reads, you know, the landscape of things, but you might not enjoy it as much. How would you answer your own question? I think you're born with it. I think you're it's like you have to, you can't be confined to someone else's way.
• 50:37
  Gabby Reece: This has been
• 50:41
  Randall Kaplan: awesome. I appreciate you coming today. I appreciate you taking the time.
• 50:43
  Randall Kaplan: Been a fan for a long time.
• 50:46
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you. And I think you're fantastic. I know everyone's going to enjoy thank you listening to the show, watching the show, so. So really appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks you.