Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Mad Genius, with Randy Gage (Entrepreneurship, Business, Success, Culture)

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REMASTERED: Mad Genius, with Randy Gage (Entrepreneurship, Business, Success, Culture) · The Action Catalyst

0:54
Host: So Randy Gage is in the speaker Hall of Fame. Randy is a
0:58
critical thinker. You might be offended, you will probably
1:01
laugh, but you will definitely think differently, and I know
1:05
that's what his book Mad Genius is all about. And so Randy,
1:09
welcome to the show.
1:10
Randy Gage: Great to be on with you.
1:11
Host: So let's dive into mad genius.
1:14
Randy Gage: Well, at some point in your life, I think if you're
1:18
on the right path, you want to move from success to
1:23
significance. It's not about how much money you can make or how
1:27
many cars you can have anymore. It's about, Am I really making a
1:31
difference? I wrote mad genius to make a difference. I want to
1:37
change the way people think it's a very arrogant concept, right?
1:43
I had a, I was doing an interview on a radio station, I
1:46
forget where, and they and they said, Do you really write books
1:50
to change the world? You know, isn't that a little
1:53
presumptuous? I said, Well, that's not a little
1:55
presumptuous. That's a lot of presumptuous. But that's exactly
1:59
why I write books otherwise I wouldn't write them. I write
2:02
books that I want to read. I write because I have to write
2:07
because I have things that I feel I need to say. And I look
2:10
at what's going on in the world today, all of the entitlement
2:13
mentality we have, all of the victim mentality we have, and I
2:18
say, Man, somebody's got to shake people up and grab them by
2:21
the throat and say, Stop thinking this way. We're going
2:25
to enter the most cataclysmic time in human history. And if we
2:29
want to survive the challenges we're going to face, we're going
2:32
to have to think at a higher level. This is the manifesto for
2:36
entrepreneurs, because I believe in the power of free enterprise,
2:41
I think that's what's going to save the world. I mean, people,
2:45
it's great. You know, you're having a protest, and you go
2:48
around with signs, well, save the rainforest. Okay, great.
2:52
Well, how many trees did we cut down to make those signs? If you
2:55
want to save the rainforest, you know how you save the
2:58
rainforest? You go and buy it. And I support charities that do
3:01
that, for instance, where they buy acres and acres of rain
3:04
forest and then deed them into a trust. And that's how you have
3:08
to do it you want to be successful. Like, here I'm in
3:11
Southern California, and they're like, if you wash your car,
3:15
they'll shoot you. If you water your lawn, you'll go to prison.
3:18
Because, you know, there's such a water shortage. It's not a
3:21
water shortage. We live on a planet that three quarters of it
3:24
is water. What there's a shortage of is desalinated
3:28
water. But let's not say there's a water shortage. There's really
3:31
not so how do we solve that? We solve that with free enterprise.
3:35
We need the technology that makes it and that's where I
3:38
think free enterprise comes in. The profit motive there causes
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people to invest, to innovate, to develop things. Because, of
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course, the greatest ways to create wealth are to solve
3:50
problems and add value. And that's what I'm doing with the
3:53
book. Is trying to get people to think in ways like an
3:57
entrepreneur, to say, well, how can I solve problems? How can I
4:00
add value? Because that's what's gonna save the world.
4:04
Host: When you talk about free enterprise saves the world. You
4:07
know, you talk a lot about limiting beliefs, and how a lot
4:09
of times people think that just to be rich you have to be bad or
4:12
you have to take advantage of people. And you know, obviously
4:15
that's not what you're saying here, but but your background,
4:19
you were in prison as a teenager.
4:22
Randy Gage: Well, I was in jail at 15 years old for armed
4:25
robbery and burglary, and I had a father of a girl I had gone to
4:31
school with before I got expelled, who came in to see me
4:35
in my jail cell and said, You don't belong here. You're you
4:39
know, I read your files, and you test so high and reading
4:42
comprehension, you're at college level, and you skip five weeks
4:46
in a row, and then you show up and you take a test and you pass
4:49
it, you're capable of great things. Nobody had ever told me
4:54
anything like that. I mean, the thing I heard growing up was,
4:58
how can somebody so. Smart be so stupid if I heard that once, I
5:04
heard it 100,000 times. And because this teacher, he was a
5:08
teacher, the father of this girl, he was actually a teacher.
5:10
His name was Baxter Richardson, so he came in this jail cell and
5:13
he tells me, I'm capable of great things. I so desperately
5:18
wanted to believe him that I believed him, and because I
5:22
believed him, it was true. You really own it, something like
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that, and you accept it. If you manifest it, you make it true.
5:31
And so that changed my whole thought process, and changed the
5:35
way I approached the world. And then I went out and did the hard
5:38
work and said, Okay, I'm going to start as a grill cook and
5:42
work my way up to a manager, trainee, an assistant manager,
5:46
and then restaurant manager, and get a big ring with all those
5:50
keys and wear a tie and walk around and say, Well, how's your
5:54
dinner this evening, which to me, at that point in my life,
5:57
was the ultimate level of success, right, if you could,
5:59
because I was starting as a minimum wage dishwasher, so
6:02
ultimate level of success would have been restaurant manager
6:05
with the key ring, you know. And of course, that changed as my
6:08
vision of prosperity changed my vision of the window through
6:12
which I see the world. But I can attribute it back to that Baxter
6:17
coming into my jail cell and seeing something for me before I
6:23
could see it for myself.
6:25
Host: That's inspiring. And in mad genius, you talk about the
6:28
big lie. What is the big lie for entrepreneurs?
6:32
Randy Gage: Here's the big lie for entrepreneurs. If you get
6:34
1000 of them and you say, just grab 1000 people off the street
6:37
and say, what is the opposite of success? 999 will say failure,
6:44
but that's the big lie, because the opposite of success is not
6:48
failure. The opposite of success is mediocrity, and failure is
6:53
actually part of the success process. It's inherent in the
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DNA of success that we will attempt things and fail, that we
7:04
will make mistakes, that we will modify based on those mistakes,
7:08
that we will learn from those mistakes. We use them as
7:11
stepping stones to develop character, to learn new skills,
7:15
to change our approach. And the some of the case studies I'm
7:20
looking at in the book, whether it's Steve Jobs at Apple or
7:23
Richard Branson, or look at people who have done some pretty
7:27
extraordinary things, and you see a lot of failure along the
7:30
way, a lot of risk. My last book was called risky is the new
7:34
safe? Because I really believe that the companies and the
7:38
organizations and the people that play it safe right now,
7:43
those are the ones that are going to get run over, because
7:46
that's the riskiest thing you can do. Because we're now
7:50
entering what I believe this next decade is going to be the
7:53
most tumultuous decade in in the course of human history. There
7:59
will be more well, there will be more breakthrough changes that
8:02
take place in the next decade than at any time because of the
8:06
accelerated level of growth, we will see the advent of human
8:10
cloning during this next decade, and we could argue and debate
8:14
the moral and ethical ramifications of that for
8:18
decades, And we probably will, but 150 countries could sign a
8:23
treaty tomorrow to say, Okay, we're not going to allow human
8:26
cloning. There will be some country somewhere that says we
8:30
don't have diamonds, we don't have oil, we don't have natural
8:32
gas, we'll be the cloning country. And if they can offer
8:37
North Korea of 5 million clone soldiers, North Korea might just
8:42
want to make that offer, right? So cloning, genetic engineering,
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people going to be able to order designer babies saying, I want
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the Peyton Manning quarterback gene. I want the Maya Angelou
8:57
poetry gene. I mean the with transplants, 3d printing, where
9:03
social media changes the business landscape, where mobile
9:08
app, mobile will change how we buy, how we sell, how we
9:13
communicate, how we train, how we eat, how we're entertained,
9:18
how we do everything, right? It blows up branding forever. But
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mobile will change marketing more than radio, direct mail, TV
9:31
and the Internet combined, right? So we're in this the at
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the advance of artificial intelligence, and getting closer
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and closer to the point where the acquired knowledge of AI is
9:46
greater than all acquired human knowledge. When that happens,
9:50
that'll be the single biggest event in the course of human
9:54
history, whether you go back whatever your belief system now,
9:58
if you think we start at 6000 Years ago with Adam and Eve, or
10:02
go back 13 billion years to the Big Bang. There will be no event
10:07
more important to human history than the day that the second
10:12
that artificial intelligence equals and then surpasses one
10:17
second later, all acquired human knowledge, and that could happen
10:21
in the next decade.
10:22
Host: So what do you do? Like, so some of that's terrifying.
10:26
Some of that's like, Oh my gosh. What do you do to prepare for
10:30
that?
10:31
Randy Gage: That's the thing. That's why I wrote the book.
10:33
People got to understand they're not prepared for this yet,
10:36
because there's nobody on earth who's prepared for this, and the
10:40
only way to prepare for it is to accelerate our level of thinking
10:44
and thinking at higher levels. Uber, Airbnb, here's the
10:48
fascinating thing. Uber was created by people who were not
10:52
in the taxi business. Amazon was created by people who were not
10:56
in the bookstore business. Dan Burris, futurist, he was
11:00
speaking to the national booksellers convention, whatever
11:04
that is, years ago, and he told them, somebody in this room
11:08
needs to start an online bookstore, because if you don't
11:12
do it, somebody else is going to do it. So he had 1000s of people
11:16
in the convention hall, and none of them did it. Now, why not?
11:20
Because they say what they said was, well, that's not how people
11:24
buy books. People go into bookstores and they browse the
11:28
shelves and they get recommendations from the clerks.
11:32
And now we've added a coffee bar, and so they come in and
11:35
they sit down and they relax on a Friday night. And then two
11:39
years later, Jeff Bezos started in Amazon. So you look at Uber,
11:43
do we think that nobody in the taxi business ever thought,
11:46
Well, gee, we could use GPS and track where every car is at
11:52
every second and send the ride that's closest to the fair. Do
11:57
we think somebody in the taxi business might have thought,
12:00
well, we could develop a mobile app and then they could call
12:03
when they want to get picked up, and they could rate the driver.
12:06
Or Did nobody in the taxi business think, well, we could
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allow them to pay with their smartphone, with Google Pay or
12:14
Apple Pay or, you know, whatever. Of course, they did,
12:18
but they did nothing on it, because they were in the space.
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Because when all you, you know the old cliche, when all you
12:25
have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So the guys in
12:29
Dan's audience all like, I've got the bookstores and I pay the
12:33
rent and I've got a 25 year lease and 27 employees. How do I
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their only thing is, how do I get more people to come into my
12:42
store? Whereas a guy on the outside like Bezos says, Why do
12:46
we need the store? So the people in the taxi business say, Well,
12:50
I just spent $50,000 on a new radio system, and I have all
12:54
these dispatchers who work for me. And this is the way we've
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done it for 30 years, and it's always worked this way, that's
13:01
the thing you got to protect against everybody who's
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listening right now, they're in their business said, Well, okay,
13:07
well that doesn't apply to me, because my business is
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different, and those are the people who are going to get
13:13
screwed if they don't wake up. And Steve Jobs. I mean, did
13:17
Steve Jobs have anything to do with radio stations or record
13:20
companies, yet he changed the music industry more than any
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person on earth.
13:25
Host: I don't want to leave without asking you this other
13:27
question, because there's a big movement of be an entrepreneur.
13:32
Have your own business. Be your own guy. But one of the things
13:35
you touch on imagine is on how the best companies are treating
13:39
people more like entrepreneurs and so those people don't have
13:44
to really be entrepreneurs. They can still be inside of a
13:47
company. Can you kind of just like, break that whole little
13:49
piece of the book down?
13:50
Randy Gage: Yeah, that's all...that's all about culture.
13:53
I mean, why can you go in and In and Out Burger on a Saturday
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afternoon with a line 100 people outside the door, 200 cars lined
14:02
up around the block, literally a traffic hazard. There's some
14:07
minimum wage kid cleaning the dining room, keeping the
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restroom spotless, refilling the ketchup bottle, smiling,
14:14
sweeping up, greeting everybody. How do they get him to do that?
14:19
How can you how come you can go into an Ace Hardware store and
14:23
ask for the most arcane, ridiculous thing that nobody has
14:27
asked for in seven weeks. And the clerk will say that is on
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aisle 13, right near the end, on the second shelf from the
14:35
bottom. That's culture. You create that culture in an
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organization, and the biggest thing that's an impediment to it
14:43
that I see is this protecting against failure, right? Because
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nobody wants to make mistakes, because if you make a mistake,
14:52
you get ostracized, or you get demoted, or you get passed over
14:56
for promotion, or you get fired, right? Whereas the great
15:00
companies, they not only allow their people to fail, they
15:04
expect them and encourage them to fail. I think the great
15:08
companies, they have this attitude like venture
15:11
capitalists. So if you take Jason calsenis or Chris soccer
15:15
or someone, they're gonna invest in 100 ventures, and they're
15:20
gonna know that 97 of them probably aren't gonna work out
15:24
but they're hoping for one or two unicorns in the bunch, and
15:28
there's four or five that might now work out there, but they'll
15:32
find some breakthrough that'll help them segue into a different
15:37
business and a different model that might work out there, and
15:41
they expect that a bunch of those things won't work out, but
15:45
they know that's part of the process, and companies that are
15:49
willing to do that, that allow companies to I'm not talking
15:54
about missing your third quarter stock price by 2% or What I'm
15:58
talking about allowing somebody to open up a division and have a
16:02
spectacular failure, the kind of failure Steve Jobs had when they
16:07
first ran him out of Apple the first time around, and then
16:11
realized, well, you know, maybe that wasn't, you know, maybe
16:15
which was probably the right move for Apple at that point,
16:19
But just as bringing him back was the right move, because they
16:24
needed that level of thinking again. And so how do you create
16:28
that kind of culture? You give your people space to be
16:32
brilliant, to make mistakes, you allow them to fail, you
16:35
encourage them to fail, and they know they can fail and not get
16:40
demoted, not lose their promotion, not lose their job,
16:44
and know that they're going to learn that lesson, grow from it,
16:48
modify Test Track, come back with something better, and
16:52
that's where the breakthroughs live.
16:54
Host: Wow, well Randy, where do you want people to go to connect
16:58
with you and learn more about you?
17:00
Randy Gage: Alright, so Randygage.com that's my
17:02
Starfleet Command main site, and Randygage.com and then, of
17:06
course, follow me on social media. I'm everywhere, Facebook,
17:10
Twitter, YouTube. I love to connect with people and discuss
17:14
the work.
17:15
Host: Nice. Well, the last little question I have for you,
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do you really believe that everybody has genius inside of
17:23
them, and if so, how do they like how do they access that?
17:26
Randy Gage: I really do believe everybody has genius in them,
17:30
and it's different with every person. When Ray Chen picks up a
17:34
violin, that's a certain kind of genius, when LeBron James is on
17:39
the basketball court that's a different kind of genius. When
17:44
Stephen King writes one of his novels, that's an entirely
17:48
different kind of genius, and Maya Angelou has hers, and Oprah
17:52
Winfrey has hers. And we have all got our unique kind of
17:57
genius, and that's why I wrote mad genius, because I really do
18:02
believe that everybody has that, and that's what my manifesto is
18:06
about, is to get people to answer the call and step into
18:10
their greatness. Because I re I really know they have that mad
18:15
genius inside of them.
18:16
Host: Yeah, thank you for making some time here, Randy. We wish
18:19
you all the best and keeping inspiring people to find their
18:22
genius.
18:22
Randy Gage: Alright, thanks for having me on.