Essential Lessons
episode 16
Broadcast date: December 28 , 2017
The Moonshots Podcast studies this year's essential lessons from the show. From life-long learning to being relentless and fearless. It's all there to help us become better entrepreneurs and innovators.
IDEAS
Episode 15 - Chris Sacca - Obsess on end users
Episode 03 - Jeff Bezos - The Flywheel effect.
Episode 12 - Richard Branson - Turn Frustrations into Businesses
Episode 08 - Ed Catmull - Brainstrust & Candor
Episode 02 - Travis Kalanick - We’re not selling your time, we’re giving it back.
MENTAL APPROACHES
Episode 14 - Maarten van Montfoort - Stick to the Plan
Episode 11 - Bill Gates - You get what you measure.
Episode 06 - Jack Ma - The bigger the social problem you solve, the more successful you will be.
Episode 01 - Elon Musk - Branching Probability
Chad’s favourite book
Everything Store by Brad Stone
BELIEFS
Episode 13 - Jack Dorsey - When I believe in something i fight like hell for it
Episode 10 - Tim O'Reilly - Work On Stuff That Matters
Episode 09 - Lady Gaga - Be relentless and fearless
Episode 07 - Bill Belichick - Every battle is won before it is fought. It’s all about preparation.
Episode 05 - Oprah Winfrey - When you align your personality with your purpose nobody can touch you!
LEARNING
Episode 04 - Fred Smith - if you want to play at high level you have to absorb the lessons of history
Thanks to all our listeners for a great 2017.
We'll be back with plenty more in 2018.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello? Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's Friday, December 22, 2017. We're at episode 16, I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the one and only Mr. Chad Owen. Hello from Texas. Mike, how is it down in Texas? I hope you're ready for some serious Christmas and holiday feasting.
Oh, it's great. You know, staying with the in-laws decorating the Christmas tree. It's always fun. Great. That's great. And we will not only be a feasting over the holiday break, but we are going to feast on this show. So Chad, what have we got coming up on this episode of the moonshots podcasts? Mike, and I have been having fun for the past.
What? Seven months, six months decoding the wisdom and insights of 15. Well, actually more, uh, entrepreneurs, disruptors and innovators. And we decided that as kind of a year, end recap, as people are. Art to do, take a look back and see who dropped some of the best insights. What clips were our favorite from each of the shows and give you maybe some of our newer listeners, you know, a taste of what we've covered.
Uh, since we began recording and, uh, it was a delight to, to go back over the 15 episodes. Oh my gosh. So many learning, so many goodies thoughts, ideas, so much inspiration from. Some of the world's very best entrepreneurs and innovators and we've, we've kind of put them into four buckets. Big bucket was, uh, around, uh, learning.
It was big theme of the year from many different and diverse innovators. We've also got their beliefs. So things that they believe, behaviors that they embody. We've got a ton of mental approaches. So sort of mental models, if you will, how they see the world. And then some of them just have outstanding ideas.
So Chad, I just, I, this actually collecting all the clips for this show, sort of. Rekindled my love of all the things we discovered, and I cannot wait to, to church through all these, uh, clips and ideas, they were just so inspiring. Yeah. I'm, I'm excited to get right to it too. So do you want to just jump right in the end of the clips?
Yeah, let's do it. Let's kick off with, uh, Chris Sacca. Very interesting character without doubt. One of the best. Tech venture capitalists worked at Google, did a ton of stuff. Let's have a listen to what Chris Sacca has to share with us and his big idea around thinking about end users. Oh my gosh, what didn't I learn at Google?
So I think one of the first things I learned at Google is one of the things that they teach everybody there, which is focus excessively and obsessively on end users. On their experiences and that a lot of the traditional distractions and building a product kind of get in the way of really cool innovation.
So if you think too much about cost upfront, about how many CPU cycles someone is going to use, how much bandwidth, how much storage, or even if you think about the politics, which partners you might piss off, et cetera, all those things can cloud. Building really cool products there. And so one of the things they did was actively discouraged people from thinking about a business model, instead, just focus on an end user problem and do everything that you can to solve that problem right up front.
And then later, if you've created value, we'll find a way to capture that value back. Yeah, capturing, uh, value within user. What, uh, what a key learning, not only from Chris Sacca, but a big thing. We saw Jeff Bezos. He was customer obsessed. Richard Branson lives his entrepreneurial life through that lens of being the customer.
I think this, this clip really matters because it really. Outlines the practice that Google employees to be so successful, which is an obsession around end users, fixing problems, addressing use cases that we all struggle with trying to get things done. Well, Google is, is focused on that first. How can they help us?
And that's where they, they unlock the value. I thought, Chad, that. This end-user obsession has been not only a great lesson from Chris Sacca, but I think this came back a lot in many different ways in almost all of the shows. Yeah. Especially all of the tech entrepreneurs, actually the next, the next disruptor on the list.
Jeff Bezos, I think he would wholeheartedly agree with. What Chris said about being focused on the end users, right? Sort of like in violent agreement with it? I would say he goes even a step further in, uh, being customer obsessed and this customer obsession gives them. Enormous firepower, not only in owning the world of shopping and e-commerce, but also distribution of the largest hosting company in the world.
But what's interesting about this next clip is he is starting to share with us. How their business model works and how they can afford to be in so many different businesses, which traditionally in the, in the old conglomerate sense is very, very tricky place to be. But let's have a listen to Jeff Bezos talking about the flywheel effect way to think about it from the consumer's point of view, is that because we have this unusual way to monetize the premium content.
That, um, we can charge less for the premium content than we would otherwise have to charge. If we didn't have the flywheel spinning to help sell more shoes. So the flywheel effect. So Chad, you, you read a great book on Jeff Bezos and we discussed at length, this, this flywheel effect. What are your ideas?
What are your thoughts on why this flywheel effect is not only so unique to Amazon, but what can our listeners really learn from this idea of being able to like be in the movie business and the selling shoes business at the same time? Well, I think it's really unique to Amazon's business model. They went out there and said, we're going to get into so many areas of our consumers' lives.
That every improvement and traction we get say in delivering packages to them quickly is going to get them. You know, even more interested and liable to purchase a premium content through Amazon prime and to potentially go into an Amazon retail store that they have now launched. Jeff is a really interesting founder and CEO in that.
He's not just kind of selling one solution to the customer. He's trying to meet all of the needs of the customers. You know, that's why Amazon bought whole foods. That's why, that's why he's diversifying Amazon's portfolio in such a wide in, like you said, everything from, you know, hosting most of the internet on the backbone of Amazon web services to buying.
Buying a retail, you know, organic food chain, like whole foods, making those small little inroads in all areas of the consumer's life is it has kind of like this add on effect. That he talks about it is like you get that wheel spinning of meeting the customer's needs and then developing products and services to meet other consumer needs.
Is that much easier. Right. And, and what's so powerful is that you mentioned before, um, how customer obsessed they are. They actually, their mission statement is just to be the world's most customer centric company period. And what's really interesting is through that obsession they've unlocked that flywheel effect.
That we've been mentioning. And I think what's particularly important is when you identify a second area of value creation in your product or service, what happens is when you have two of these things, Such as providing great movies through Amazon prime and their studios, and then being able to sell more shoes because of it, you get this compounding where they feed each other.
And this, this to me is the heart of their competitive advantage. The more people watch content, the more people that end up buying, the more people that end up buying. End up watching more content, and this is where they become a juggernaut. So if anyone is really fascinated in this and wants to learn how to apply it to their business, go to moonshots.io, look up the show archive, go to the Jeff Bezos episode, and you will find that we go really, really, really deep into that whole universe of the flywheel effect, the customer customer obsession that they have.
But some of the viewers may have a question and like, how do they get that process started? Right. And the next clip we have from Richard Branson, I think is a fantastic. Way to come up with new business ideas that, you know, he and others, especially like are a guest of the show. Gary Hoover from the Fred Smith episode to carry on a notebook, to write down these ideas that I get inspired in the same way that Richard does.
So I'm going to let our listeners hear from Richard and how he gets inspired with all of his new business ideas. The best businesses come from. Um, people's bad personal experiences. I mean, you know, people are listening to this program. I mean, you know, if you just keep your eyes open, you're gonna find you're gonna, uh, find something that frustrates you and then, and then you think, well, You know, I could, I can maybe do it better than, than, um, than it's being done.
And there you have a business. I mean, if you can improve people's lives, you have a business. Um, and there is still, you know, people think, well, everything's been thought of, but, uh, actually they bet all the time. That's the great thing about capitalism. There's there's uh, gaps in the market here, gaps in the market.
There are ways of improving things. Here were ways of improving things. There. Hmm, frustration to business. Yeah. I love that idea. Yeah. Did me? He does. He carries around this notebook, writing down ideas, such as simple practice, but it's sort of it really, I didn't know that. So disarming, isn't it. It's so simple.
It's like, well, what's frustrating. Um, me like crazy, uh, and well, maybe I want to solve it and, and it's, it was interesting that he just sees problems as basically business opportunities. Doesn't he? Yep. Yep. And it's such a, such a, uh, unusual, it's such a striking way just to walk around like, Ooh, that's a problem.
Do I want to create a business to address it? And I think that, um, what it shows to you is how. You don't need to be a Harvard graduate. You don't need to be one of these super sleek Silicon Valley guys. It's almost very essential behaviors such as listening, observing empathizing can lead to creating in Richard's case over 400 companies.
Yeah. He employs over 50,000 people and it all starts with such a simple practice. Yeah. I just love the idea of take everything that frustrates you and turn it into a business idea. Even if you're not acting on that. I think that. At least for me has really enriched my own experience and interaction with my clients, because then I'm also looking at my client's frustrations and seeing how I can turn that into opportunity to solve their problems better, faster, cheaper, et cetera.
So I think just that hyper attunement to. The inconsistencies of the world and the frustrations of the world, uh, is a really, really is a really, really great idea. Yeah. And, and I thought the, the other thing for our listeners, which is very useful was the amount of, uh, ideas Richard Branson has around working with people and culture, but he wasn't the only one to have a real focus on optimizing the way people work together.
And. I really enjoyed digging into ed Catmull and Pixar. And why don't we jump into his clip, talking about the brains trust, which is a way in which they create this very hyper transparent open way for people to make ideas better. So here's ed Catmull on the brains trust at Pixar. So this group is based upon four principles.
One has it. It's peers talking to peers. It is filmmakers to filmmakers. It is not boss to filmmaker or Boston employee. The second principle is that we remove the power structure from that room. Doesn't mean we aren't organized around it, but in that room we removed the power structure. The director makes the decision, not the group, not John lasted her, not the executives of the company by not allowing anybody else to override the director.
It frees him or her to listen. They come in very vulnerable for presenting a film that they know doesn't work. That's a scary place to be. And it is important to place. Um, strong focus on the safety in the room. The third principle is to give honest notes to say what you really think and to listen to them on the fourth principle is to watch the dynamics very carefully.
Does everyone contribute? Does someone dominate? Are they really trying to help each other? Are they acting as if it's safe? Hmm. What kinds of, uh, situations do you feel like this would have benefited you, Mike? Oh my gosh. Um, the, well, I can see this stock picture in my mind of times when I have, so it feedback and candor from colleagues on ideas and comparing that to when I didn't, when I just charged in.
And the reality always I can see is when I share my ideas, they get so much better than when I hold on to them. And don't share, I found this so powerful. This, this brains trust idea matters so much because I believe it's at the heart. Of Pixar's incredible performance. They outperform their industry in enormous amounts, much like we saw with Chris Saka explaining how Google wins.
What we just got, I think is how ed Catmull and Pixar win. But I want to turn it back to you. I, you are in the story. Telling business. Why does this impact you? Why does this matter to you so much? This idea of the brains? Trust? What fascinating to me, just given Ed's background, you know, really as like a mathematician and a scientist, first is you hear this person like him, that's running a company like Pixar.
Talk about things like vulnerability, honesty, transparency. Equality. And I just found that extremely refreshing because I think all of these things are not only just vitally important in running a company, but specifically, like you said, a storytelling company, I think for me personally, it's authenticity that really.
Helps a story get wings. And I don't think you can have that authenticity if you don't have that kind of radical candor at that protected, radical candor, you know, it's, it's also important to protect the fragile egos of us filmmakers, but, um, I think. It at least the honesty, transparency, and vulnerability, that those just really resonated with me.
And I think can be taken into any industry in any company or even any, any team within a large company. Oh yeah. So true, Chad. Uh, I would say that. What makes this clip and this idea really helpful to anyone who's an entrepreneur or innovator at the early stage of the late stage is this is a very practical example of how you can build culture in an organization that has a direct effect on the quality, the output and the province, because trust me, Pixar makes a lot of profit and you can actually track it back to this practice.
Which I feel is, uh, what makes this such a fascinating idea of the brain's trunks? Well, Mike, this is kind of crazy that the, the speed in which we're going through these clips, but, uh, the, the next one, um, was one from one of our very early shows that had a, kind of a giant wrench thrown into it because the morning we recorded the show.
On Travis Kalanick and Uber, uh, was the morning that his board actually asked him to resign. And so that kind of the timeliness of that was just really effecting to me. But, you know, despite all the reasons that Uber has been, you know, in the limelight, uh, and gotten some negative press, I still think that Travis has some very interesting insights as a founder, you know, as someone that ran a company.
Well, it wasn't really a company is more than a rocket ship and his kind of core idea at the heart of what Uber was doing for its customers. Then we're not selling your time. We're actually, um, we're giving time back or making your time more valuable. Um, and we believe that sort of, you know, we, we have these like four sort of dimensions of magic at Uber and, um, one of them is about time.
And giving people that time back. So, so because of what we do, I think it, it makes a lot of sense. I, I don't say, Oh, we're not a Silicon Valley. You know, we're not a Silicon Valley, the company, because we think of a different, we're just not a media company. Um, and so while meeting companies might take a little slice, we will give more than, and that back, uh, through efficiency.
And that's kind of what we do. Hmm. I, I think this clip is really important because one of the themes that we really got into on the Travis calender show was Uber's business model. It's a supply and demand two sided marketplace. Okay. That's pretty straightforward. However, what's particularly interesting is they have a direct.
Company to end customer paying relationship. We use our credit cards to pay for the Uber services. Now what's really interesting about that is that when you compare it to Facebook and Twitter, Facebook and Twitter need to occupy more of your time. They might call this engagement. Uber is actually interested in maybe.
Increasing your frequency of usage of the service, but they want to compress time. They want to give time back to you. Now, this is why I love the strength of their business model. And that is that they are not, there are no opposing forces here. You might argue that Facebook needs you to tell more and more of your personal information so they can go monetize that.
And they monetize that with a third party who they essentially give access to that private information to it. So there's a certain tension in that business model that doesn't exist because you are the customer at, at Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. Yes, you are the media. You're the asset that they're selling.
So, so this creates a tension that Uber doesn't have. And it's a straightforward transaction directly to the customer for the service. And the ability to give you back time is so true because one of the things that is so true is that I love Uber because I don't have to spend time parking the car. I can actually tee up my departure.
I can do other things while I'm in the Yuba. The, the benefits just on time are. Enormous with Uber. And I would think any entrepreneur creating a service that customers are going to pay for it should be a question of how much time are you saving for your customers. And I think that's what Travis is teaching us in this clip.
Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I didn't want us or our listeners to overlook our show about Travis, just because he got ousted as the CEO of Uber. You know, there's a reason that it's, it's what a 13 million, $14 billion company at this point. Um, yes. It's yeah, it's enormous. And it's because of the value or invaluable ness of time.
Um, and he, you know, I also love it because it's a dig at. Facebook and Twitter and other, you know, media, Silicon Valley giants, because my own personal thinking is right along side, his, you know, like I don't want to participate in those ecosystems because I'm, I'm the ass I am. You're the product product.
Yeah. And I think, you know, to this day that still just feels a little icky to me. Exactly. It re it really isn't an underlying, uh, tension there. So that's. So that's five clips we've just done. We've raced through, um, thinking about customer obsession, the flywheel effect, you know, Branson's neat little tactic of turning frustrations into businesses and, well, I mean, there's a lot just there.
So if you're hearing any of these ideas and you want to know more. Just go to moonshots.io, you'll find all of the full episodes there. You'll find some of our thoughts around them links, all sorts of goodies. So that's moonshots.io. Yeah. We spend an hour or longer with each of these individuals, um, getting between six or sometimes even eight or nine clips from each of them.
So yeah, I ha as we've gotten to the end of the year, I've been going back and listening to our shows too, and I've really enjoyed. Hearing from all of them again. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Why don't you, uh, why don't you take us into the next block of all these thoughts and ideas from innovators and entrepreneurs chat.
We had a really interesting live show, uh, from Amsterdam, shout out to, uh, all of my Amsterdamers. It was, it was great because we got to actually speak to several Dutch entrepreneurs. And one of them was Martin van forte, who works with a lot of, uh, founders and executive teams at startups, really helping them achieve, you know, scale overwork.
Or, you know, get over some of their obstacles and had some really great advice for us. So I actually pose a question to him, to the live audience, and here's what he had to say then. And what's one of the biggest thing that is holding a company and an entrepreneur back from going, like you said, from 1 million, say to 10 million, and now how do they get that 10 X.
Uh, company, you know, grow, grow to 10 million and then hopefully grow to a hundred million. What what's, what's one thing that you've, you've seen that's that's been holding them back. I think first you really need to have a clear plan, right? You need, need to have the big goal and you need to live it every day.
Right? You need to have a good plan, write it down, visualize it, and then live the plan and make sure that every day when you're in the office, when you work with the people live, the plan, stick to the plan. Um, again, it's one of these truths, borderline like folksy transcendent truth. I mean, you could apply this to a business at any of the last few decades, live the plan, stick to the plan.
And whilst it's so simple to say it's so hard to do. And that's what we learned from Martin. Right? Chad. Well, not only him, but everyone else we spoke to focus was a very big theme that emerged from, from speaking with all of them. And so what I was really taking away from Martin is the importance of.
Yeah, get every, you know, get your shit together and figure out what you're doing. And then do that. Don't get distracted. I wanted to just quickly draw a parallel and ask you isn't that such a powerful idea that connects to how Chris sucker the investor we heard from at the top of the show, how he, when we did his show, he talked about, he missed out on Airbnb and a number of investments, but he was very focused on only investing.
In companies where he could help and that companies that, where he understood the business and if he didn't understand it, he didn't invest. And it's very similar to what Martin was teaching us in abs. Yeah, exactly. It's in our DNA and personalities as entrepreneurs, Mike, to be distracted by. The new shiny things.
I think that's just, that's part of being an entrepreneur is, you know, we get excited when we see those frustrations and we're like, Oh, you know, there's a new idea. There's a new idea, a new thing that I can do. And it's very easy for us to move our attention onto something else. And, you know, I think 2015 for me, it was kind of the year of being distracted and not being focused.
And I think, I think all of us can, can learn, uh, from, from that sentiment. And this actually leads into the next clip where bill Gates from Microsoft is talking about, you know, measuring, I guess, that focus, you know, how do you know if you're making progress along your stated goals? And so here is actually just talking about the numbers.
I think the quality that, uh, has helped me in lots of things, uh, is a kind of measurement scientific framework where I go in and say, did anybody handle this well? W what are the very best practices? Uh, do we have numbers on that? And let's get everybody measuring what they're doing. And so they can strive to.
Match what that the best achievement is, uh, for us often, that's something like getting the vaccines out to all the children, some very poor countries, uh, do that extremely well because they get down to that local level and measure the activity. They make sure the inventory's there. They make sure the workers are showing up.
So for me, I always, uh, look at how can we do better, better measurement, and use that to drive the very best practices. Yeah, measure, measure, measure. Cause you, you know, you only get what you measure and what was so great about, uh, this idea, this mental approach from bill Gates is we know that this is a very validated way.
To do great things. This is a very tried and tested way because in the show we did on bill Gates, we'd not only uncovered that the measuring is really at the heart of his success, but he is applied at not only at Microsoft, but also at his own foundation, both succeeded gravy. I mean, he talks about massive reductions in disease and sickness.
That are directly attributable to his foundation and what they've been doing with vaccines. So we know this idea it's ready to go. So I think what this really prompts is what are you measuring in your business? What are you measuring? And this is why this clip matters. Cause I think if we all spend some time on that, we can all find better ways to measure new things to measure.
And this is why for me, this is a powerful concept. Get what you measure. Yeah. And I think that's the only way that I could achieve focus is choosing that one thing to measure and then keeping myself accountable to that. So that's what I'm going to be spending the next couple of weeks doing is figuring out what that one thing is that I can really hone in and focus on, and then be sure that I have a system in place to measure and also be accountable to that.
And one of the interesting things that we learned from Jack ma is that. His focus and his measurement is not just on next month or even next year, he thinks way beyond it. So this is the third mental model mental approach that we have. So let's have a listen to Alibaba's CEO and founder, Jack ma. Every strategic decisions we make.
We have to ask a question that this decision we make solve. Society proper because we believe the biggest social problem you solve, the more successful you are. So if we do this, cannot solve any social problems. We don't do it. Second is this project is going to be succeed successful in 10 years. If it's going to be successful in 10 years, let's do it.
If it's going to be successful in one year or one month now more, I would say, forget about it. Because why you can be successful in one year or one mouth. So we all have to put panel. And five years ago, we had a big debate about 10 years later, 20 years, what are the things the China society, the world leave want?
So we say happiness and health to H
okay. There it is. That's his focus, happiness and health. And if you're selling happiness and health to a billion people, I think that's a pretty good business. Yeah. And, um, I thought one of the things we explored in this show with Jack ma from Alibaba was you can see very much the philosophical, Chinese color and flavor to his thinking that you just don't see in Western CEOs.
Yeah. Yeah. I think Jack the show at Jack's been actually one of our more popular shows, I think, because of that complete difference in perspective, uh, from most of our other, actually I think everyone else actually is a westerner. But it's also echoed by things that people like Chris and Jeff Bezos say about that customer obsession.
They looked as a company at what the Chinese people actually needed and they saw health and happiness. And so then they made that their mission and. You know, you might hear health and happiness as, as a vision sounds pretty broad, but one of the important things is having big vision ideas like this. And this is a theme that we've covered a lot.
Having a big, bold vision gives you plenty of room to change, grow and adapt, uh, the types of products and services you create. This is what mobilizes people. You cannot argue with the idea that any human being doesn't, you can't argue with this proposition of being happy and healthy. That's what we all want.
So this is sort of a, a very powerful North star to guide Alibaba and gives me. Uh, normous confidence in, in the future, uh, in front of them. But we, I think I should let you take us into our grand master of innovation and his mental model, which is probably not so much folksy, but we'd have to say it's probably one of the most sophisticated Saifai.
So come on, hit us with a chat. Yeah. I think one of my favorite things about Elon Musk is how he could be a character in a science fiction book or a story. And a lot of it is just how he thinks of the world. He's not really a scientist, but I think he thinks about the world in a very scientific way. And so here's a mental model of his that I think is immensely practical and just really fascinating.
I think I look at the future from a standpoint of, of the probabilities. It's like, it's like a branching stream of probabilities and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing, or make, you know, introduce something new to the probability stream.
Sustainable energy will happen no matter what, if there was no Tesla teller there, it never existed. It would have to happen. Out of necessity. It's total logical, the fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it, it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.
So when I think of like, what is the fundamental good of, kind of like tells it, I would say hopefully it does. If it, if it accelerated that by a decade, potentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental sort of aspirational goal of Tesla.
I can't help. But think about the, the like multiple branching universes theory. They're like infinite universes where every little action splits off into two directions where you did that thing, or you didn't do that thing. And I just love how, again, kind of far into their future. Elon is thinking in, in much the same way that Jack and Alibaba is.
Yeah. And, and I almost sort of go into matrix mode as he listening to that clip that you just imagine all these permutations and possibilities. And I think one of the interesting things he talks about is you, you, you can establish a companies. Value and impact from how much it speeds up the inevitable likely possibilities.
So bringing those to bear faster, um, seems to be a big measure of years. And I, I think, you know, For anyone listening, please go back and listen to the Ilan show because I mean, he gave so many ideas in that show. I really encourage you to go check it out@moonshots.io it's it's it's, uh, worth, uh, relisten.
And, and I think we're not far off Chad from doing a whole new show on Ilan. Um, because he's done so much since we actually did the first show on him. Yeah. I think space X just celebrated the 17th rocket launch. And this one was special because it was the first one that was done with an, with a used, uh, launch via like a launch rocket and launch vehicle.
So they had already been to space and back, and then now. Now they're going back up into space. It was really a really, really interesting, so yeah, I would definitely look forward to doing another show with, with you. We'll definitely revisit any on, so there you go. We've got four mental models, um, uh, from the U S to Europe, all sorts of goodies there, and we've got plenty more to come.
We've got a lot to come from Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. But we've also got some, uh, less tech, but no less inspiring people, such as lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, and so forth. But Chad, you know, we always Mark the halfway point in the show with one of your favorite books, um, that you've been reading on an entrepreneur, but this time, I guess my question to you is you've read.
A ton of bios and books on all of these innovators. What are your fondest reads? And is there one that perhaps in 2017 Rose to the very top that inspired you or gave you lots of ideas? Yeah. So it's actually pretty easy for me. The everything store by Brad stone about Amazon and Jeff Bezos was, was definitely my favorite of all the books that I read.
I think Jeff's personal story is just really, really interesting. And there's a lot that we can learn and apply to ourselves, but also just gives you a lot of insight into him and. I, I feel like a lot of people may be miss understand or misread him. I, in the same way that I think people do the same, you know, for Elon Musk and other tech founders, um, Brad stone did a really great job of painting a holistic picture.
You know, he. His journalistic style was not to like, just embed with, with Jeff and only hear from Jeff. You know, he talked to all of the early people at the company, you know, people that he knew in his childhood, his parents, you know, everyone, I think you get a really great rounded picture of, of him and kind of how Amazon was inevitable.
For Jeff, you know, like he couldn't have done anything else really, you know, and Ben, um, Ben fulfilled. And so, yeah, I can't can't recommend the everything store highly enough. It's it's an extremely well-written book. Uh, Brad Stone's, I've read some of his other books. They're also very good. And then just the story of, of Amazon I think is really, really fascinating.
You know, I don't know if I should be like inspired or afraid of Amazon because, you know, I think that they, they really are going to take over the world in many ways. And I certainly think that Jeff Bezos has. Very good intentions, but can a corporation have good intentions? You know, that's something that I'm still not quite sure of.
I know. I think where you're going there, I would put it to you this way. You know, I look at guys like Ilan and Jeff and, uh, I think they, they are very, very smart. Enormously passionate, committed. I would even say courageous entrepreneurs and innovators, but what they don't have for this infamy that they have, what they don't have as much in this world of personalities and media is what brands and Oprah have.
And, and both Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey are. Outgoing high emotional intelligence people, and they're incredibly charismatic storytellers and let's be honest Ilan and, and, uh, Jeff. And neither of those. And so what they, what they kind of find themselves fighting against is I wouldn't, they're not exactly perceived as, as Darth Vader, but they're certainly not as seen as Jedi Knights either they fall somewhere in the middle, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it kind of just remains to be seen too. Like, I would love to see both of them continue to run their companies, but. They may not be able to, um, or they may spin off and do other things. And so, you know, they may have to leave. There are companies in the hands of other people. And can those companies, you know, share the same vision and mission if they're not there.
That's right. Well, there's, there's plenty to learn. Not only from Jeff and from Elon, but a ton of the entrepreneurs we've got coming up in the show. So we've got another six clips from six fabulous. Fabulous people. Um, and, and the, the funny thing for me is that whether they're somebody, you know, very well say a Jeff Bezos or someone who's a little bit more off the grid, such as, uh, Chris soccer or for those who don't follow the sports world, uh, bill Bellacheck, who's the coach of the new England Patriots.
He's coming up in this second half of the show and he. Is full of lessons, full of learnings for us as entrepreneurs and innovators, not just for the sports world, but for anyone in business as well. So we've got an action packed. Second half of the show. Now this next two categories that we're kind of shifting towards is now more about, uh, how you can learn and what are the sort of beliefs.
But you can take into everyday. What are the beliefs you can have when you wake up in the morning? How can you go about getting the job done? And we've got some absolute, absolute knock, your dead ideas here. And someone who has always struck me as being super smart, almost Ilan Musk, light. Is Jack Dorsey, but Jack Dorsey has a lot of courage, um, wisdom and internal beliefs that are as equally as good as he's product thinking.
So Jack Dorsey is the CEO and founder of not only square. But also Twitter, two publicly listed companies and square doing very well. Indeed. It's a payments company, Twitter, it's sort of in a turnaround process. And since doing the show, we're seeing obvious signs of Jack's Midas touch. And he's got a lot to tell us a lot to share with us, but let's dig into the beliefs, behaviors side of things.
And here's Jack Dorsey. Of fighting for what he believes in, even something I find like California, that's when I believe in something, I fight like hell for it. And that has been my life. I've had a picture of what I wanted to see in the world and I did whatever it took to make sure. That it succeeded to make sure that it thrived, uh, in both company, in, in, in the case of both companies, there's a whole industry around this.
That's called dispatch. Uh, so I should find the biggest dispatch firm in the world and I should go work there because then I can see the entire city at night. Found one, it was called dispatch management services in New York city. They'd just gone public and I could not figure out how to contact them.
So I was by this time, pretty good with computers, very curious, a curious kid. And I figured out that they had a hole in their system. And I got into their system and I found their email address list for the entire corporation. And I got the email for the CEO and I got the email for the chairman and I sent them an email and said, I'm, uh, I'm Jack, you have a hole in your system.
Here's how to fix it. And by the way, I write dispatch software. And a week later I was hired and that was my resume. So I moved out to New York city. I dropped out of school for the first time I went to NYU. Uh, I started working on the system. I was loving it because I could see the entire city. Now we had taxi cabs, we had black cars, we had couriers, we had emergency, I could see swarms of taxi cabs going to the mat for an event.
It was just an amazing, amazing thing. And somewhere along the line, after that, I then dropped out of NYU. So I had, I'm a double dropout, which I don't think anyone else can claim, uh, in the, in the dropout league. Um, I dropped out at NYU. I went to San Francisco and we started a web based dispatch firm. Uh, the company was a complete and utter failure, but the one thing that I did realize during my time there was, I had all these verticals, I could actually see the city in a very, very interesting way, but I was missing one key element.
And those were the people. Where were the people, what were they doing? And where were they? What are they thinking? And that's where the idea for Twitter came from. So what I'm. Taking away from this and why? I think it's so important is it kind of shows the Securitas route to success. Like you could look at someone like Jack Dorsey and think that he was an overnight success and like, Oh my gosh, he started two publicly traded companies.
But if you dig deeper into it, actually it was kind of his relentless. Uh, pursuit his, you know, never, never giving up fighting like hell that made it happen. You know, he wanted the job. So he hacked in and got their emails, you know, to get hired at the dispatch company. And even then he didn't rest on his laurels.
He figured out that, you know, it was actually the people that were most important in that system. And then I gave him the idea of, you know, for sharing information and what you were doing, which was kind of the start of Twitter. Right. And what helped him. Yes, sir. I tried like, and what helped him overcome two dropouts of college?
What helped him overcome the fear whose own dispatch company was the belief and just fighting for it and never giving up. And, you know, the, the Paul Graham of famous investor and founder of Y Y Combinator says. Survival is success. And what he's getting at there is that so many people give up the good fight.
You know, they try for some months, maybe a year, but you can see the Jack was fighting and believing in this for years. So you can't begrudge him all the success and good fortune he has now because. He earned it undeniably. And so as entrepreneurs, this matters to us because you have to embark on a journey that truly matters to you that you believe in and you have to fight like hell for, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And this goes really nicely with our next clip from Tim O'Reilly and I'll just actually let him speak for himself. You know, when we, uh, started working on the open source movement, it was because we said, Hey, this is really important thing that nobody's paying attention to it. But we sold a lot of books because we told a big story that mattered to all those communities that we made them proud of who they were, that we made the world know who they were.
And it was great marketing for us. It was great because we were helping others and we helped our own business web 2.0, a lot of people don't realize this. But the reason why we started that marketing campaign was because after the.com bust, a lot of our customers were out of work. And we actually had our strategic goal in 2003 to reignite enthusiasm in the computer business.
We basically, we went out there and we told a big story that was designed to help other people. And it sure it helped us build our business as well. Uh, you know, clearly I've been doing that in areas like open government. I'm looking at healthcare I'm really interested in Hmm. Work on stuff. That matters.
So simple, easy to say, but boy, sometimes no matter what your intentions, you can find yourself going, what am I doing on this thing? Why am I doing this? What a truth? Huh? Yeah. And I think combining Jack's thoughts about fighting, like how, and combining that on things with real purpose that Tim shares, I think that's really inspiring.
Right. And, and I think if you think about how do you, how do you make Jack, uh, Jack's thoughts and Tim's thoughts come together? Like, how do you, how do you. You know, you, you find something you believe in and you fight for it. And you've got to work on stuff that matters. I mean, there are no one says it better in putting those two ideas into practice.
Nobody says it better than lady Gaga. So let's, let's now just catapult into the world of music and creativity in here. What underlies her success and independence that is truly remarkable. So his lady go. I just have such a love and affinity for show business
I just always felt thymus. That's what my first album was really about is that fame comes from within inside of you. And it's not something that you obtain. And I still feel that way in a lot of ways. I like to know that I can define my fame and define my beauty for myself, which is why I'm so. Vigilant and relentless about my image and my music is I will not allow no matter how successful I become for the public to define or indicate what it is I create or what it is that I believe is beautiful or what I believe is a hit pop record.
That's who I am. And I will, I will always be that way, but Lenten listen, fearless and vicious. God. I love her now. My gosh, relentless, fearless. And even she drops that one at the end. They're vicious. I think what is so important about this clip is there is no world full of distractions, more so than the music and entertainment industry.
And you can see her success, her independence, her creativity. Her perpetual success lies in the fact she's pursuing her dream and she is taking no prisoners. I think what's so refreshing about digging into lady Gaga and her story. And just in hearing from her was all of the parallels to kind of like the journey of an artist and the journey of an entrepreneur.
They're not different. They're really the same journey. It's very different approaches. And I think that's why it was so refreshing to be like, Oh yeah, like, and I think that's why everyone's gravitated. Towards her anyways, it's like she has a very inspiring and kind of just magnetic personality. And I think that inspiration is very helpful and useful to entrepreneurs because we can get beaten down.
We can feel like we're on the wrong track. Um, but that relentlessness and that fearlessness I think is very encouraging. Right. And where I think, uh, her popularity and her relentlessness come together is when people are on a mission when people are pursuing the dream. I believe it creates a magnetism.
It's just a contagious nature. You want to be around people like that, right. People who succeed time after time are relentless and fearless, they're pursuing their dream. They're working on stuff that matters and they're fighting like, hell, there's no doubt that these, you know, Jack, Tim, and Gaga, they all come together.
I mean, there is a playbook. If you want to know how to believe and behave as an entrepreneur and innovator it's right there. But I think we can go beyond the world of music. Don't you? Chet? Oh yeah. So you had actually brought up the idea of picking a sports icon. And at first I was thinking of players, but when you said bill Belichick, I was like, yeah, we've got to learn from him because you don't win.
Multiple Superbowls in without having some nuggets of wisdom to share. Let's go, let's go one step further for those who are not NFL fans, winning more Superbowls than any other and doing it with an enormous focus on taking perhaps not the showcase. Players of the world, but creating good players and then inspiring them to become great.
So let's have a listen to how bill Bellacheck starts, the journey of victory. There's a sign over there that says every battle is won before it is fought. He said, that's one of the few signs you have in the Patriots headquarters, sun Tzu, art of war. Um, it's all about preparation. You know what you're doing?
And you have an idea what the opponents can do, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Um, then once you get into the game, then those adjustments will be, um, I won't say easy, but relatively easier, more manageable. How do you know when you're well, enough prepared when everybody knows what to do, because our game is so fast, things happen so quickly.
So you review the situations, review the communication. You try to make sure that everybody's on the same page. If it's too complicated, it's probably not going to work. If it's too simple, that might not work either because it's too obvious. So you try to find that, that, that fine line in the middle where it's challenging enough for your opponents, but, uh, something you can execute again, it comes down to execution.
Sun zoo. Yeah. So good. I mean, there is so much to take from sports into business from, from bill Belicheck, where do, why does this, why does this clip matter to you as an entrepreneur? Well, in doing the research on bill, I read a great book called the education of a coach. And bill had been studying film since he was a little kid.
His father was a coach. And so he's probably watched. I would say like millions of hours of football film. So he just knows the game so well that everything becomes kind of automatic for him. And that's what he's, he kind of flippantly says, Oh, well, when we, you know, when you're ready, when you, when you know what to do.
But it's really what you know, what to do without thinking about it. And so he's kind of creating those automatic responses to different inputs. And I think that's what we can take away as entrepreneurs is knowing your customers, your employees, and the work that you're doing so well that in this fast changing environment, you know how to react and what to do without having to think about it without having to have meetings and strategize about it, you just know how to execute.
Yeah. And, uh, this idea of getting prepared and organized, everybody knows what to do. The communication is clear right there. If we ask ourselves and reflect on our teams in our companies and businesses, do they know what to do? Is the communication clear enough? You will often find there's plenty of work to do just there in getting prepared, having a plan and communicating it.
And I think that, um, to show the span of the philosophies that we're really getting into to show their applicability, we can go from tech. We can go to flying jet planes, we can go to Pixar, but I thought our last clip of this beliefs section just shows you. Again, how much we can learn, uh, from many different areas and fields of success, different types of entrepreneurs and innovators.
And so let's have a listen now to Oprah Winfrey going deep into our souls. When you align your personality with what your soul came to and everybody has it align your personality with your purpose. And nobody can touch you and you wake up every day and you are fired up. You just like, Oh my God, another day.
It's so great because everybody has a purpose. So your whole thing is to figure out what that is. Your real job is to figure out why you're really here and then get about the business of doing that. Okay. That's it. That's it simple figuring out why you're here like that. That we couldn't do in one podcast, let alone probably a hundred podcasts, but that idea of striving towards that, I really love and.
Honestly, I think that's why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. Like we don't want to, I'm trying to use some tame language. We don't want to chain ourselves to someone else's purpose or mission. You know, we want to find our thing and then make that thing happen in the world. And so that's why I think this encouragement from Oprah is so important.
Yeah. And if you're really, I mean, at this time of the year, people are perhaps doing a little bit of reflection and resetting, I think start with Oprah, start with our Oprah show because, Oh my gosh, she talks and inspires us mostly around, find out why you're on the planet, what your, what, the things that delight you that bring you to life and just go out and do more of those.
And I can't tell you how much. I have and do, try to do things that I love with people that I love. And this is like, you know, it's a forever check-in for me, I'm forever realigning to, to, to this. And I found this. Such an important thought to have professionally and personally. Yeah. And I don't think if we're not checking in on those things, that's when you know, it starts to become a grind.
We do poor work. Yeah. I just, yeah. When those things are out of alignment, it can cause some real problems. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that when you, when you have the right beliefs and behaviors, You know, it really sets you up mentally to listen, to hear, to understand what's happening in the world and to go on and be a success.
Right. So, you know, that brings me to. Our final entrepreneur, a little bit of a, a dark horse. So this takes us to a world of learning. So Chad, why don't you introduce to us the last but not least, uh, clip that we're going to share for our 2017 wrap up? So. Um, because this show is kind of our co-creation and small child.
Mike, I don't want to pick favorites, but I really enjoyed recording this episode, uh, because we had a guest with us, Gary Hoover, uh, founder of Hoovers, um, and a mentor of mine from the university of Chicago. I also wanted to give out a shout out to our other guests that we've had this year, Simon and Lauren, thank you so much for appearing, uh, with us, but it was great.
Two, this was our first departure away from tech and away from Silicon Valley and Fred Smith, the founder, and still CEO of FedEx started and run this company for over 44, 45 years. I mean, that's practically unheard of. Yes. And Chad, let me tell you one thing they, I believe a day or two ago released their latest earnings report.
One of the best ever in the history of the company. Yeah. And Fred really, I think, is running the company in the same way that he began it. And I think he's only able to remain in control of this company because of what he's going to share with us in this, in this clip. So you have, I have to, if you want to play at a high level, whether it's politics or medicine or, uh, sports, uh, Uh, or business, you have to absorb the lessons of history or you're going to make a terrible mistake that has already been made before, because there'd been a lot of things done in human history that, that are there for the, for the asking in terms of, of reading about learning.
I mean, Was there a theme, uh, that was more popular and more shared between all these wildly different people chat over the course of the, I don't think so. I think a commitment to lifelong learning is a shared trait amongst every single person that we profile. Yeah. And you can expand it to perhaps curiosity, uh, thirst for knowledge, but every single person touched on this theme of not standing still in terms of how they see the world and understand the world.
And, uh, whether it's bill Gates as, uh, doctors, physicians on-call. So when he's learning about a disease, if he doesn't understand something. He emails them and gets these instant answers. I mean, he's learning more now probably than he ever did, but he also takes his think week where he goes away and reads 10 or so books.
Absolutely. And comes back to try and apply them to his foundation or whether it's bill Belicheck quoting ancient Chinese philosophers, or whether it's, you know, Chris soccer. Uh, going well beyond that of technology and thinking about what you can learn from famous authors. It really Elon Musk becoming experts in renewable energy and rocket science and, uh, and V vehicle manufacturing.
Yes. It just goes on and on and on. I really do like this theme because it really speaks to the path for all of us to, to be better at how we work to how we live, how we. Share and participate in experiences with our friends and family. In fact, I would say that's probably the central motivation that, that both of you and I, that we started this podcast together, right?
Exactly. Yeah. Not to get too meta, but I think this desire for lifelong learning is precisely why, you know, you and I have decided to remain in touch. You know, after kind of our first collaboration a few years ago, and then eventually want to get together and start this podcast because we wanted to learn from all of these amazing individuals.
Absolutely. And I would have to tell you that sometimes, like when we would do you know, I didn't know, Jack ma. Or lady Gaga. You're like Fred Smith, her, I don't know what can I learn from these guys? And then the magic for me is you're listening to an interview or a keynote, and you're like, Whoa, or Jack Dorsey who I know is a product guy.
Talking about finding for the things he believes in and this opening up of my neurons in my brain, just going crazy like wow. Or even Chris Sacca, who's a bit collegia casual cheeky then drops huge wisdom, like sleep well at night. Nothing else matters more do the right thing in your life. Woho reframe this.
Guy's got some serious stuff to talk about. That to me is the magic of us learning together is when we discover these ideas and then we bring them together. Chad, and then you just drop wisdom on it that I didn't see, or you bring clips that I didn't see to me. There's w what better way to spend an hour together with someone.
Then just learning together. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to just thank you and the listeners for going on this journey with us. I know that Mike and I aren't alone in this. Yeah. The, the, the questions, the feedback, whether you're a 13 year old, uh, on the bus in Sydney or whether you're an entrepreneur in Amsterdam each and every one of you, we can't say thank you enough for your support and your encouragement.
And it was certainly great to meet so many listeners in, in Amsterdam. It was just, uh, you know, so beyond my expectations, what I feel like I got out of, uh, doing the show together with you this year, Chad. Yeah. And I want to just make a personal ask for the listeners to send us an email at.
Hello@moonshots.io, uh, with your favorite clips and your favorite shows, and also, you know, who you want us to learn from together next year. You know, Mike and I have kind of our own thoughts on this, but we'd love to hear from you. Um, especially if you have someone that's maybe a little off the beaten path, uh, from the kind of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurship bubble.
Yeah. And we've got so many areas of investigation, uh, finished here. We're going to keep going with our investor, uh, and venture capitalists to, uh, spotlight. We'll do a spotlight on design. Uh, we'll have a look at, um, Great partnerships and founders. We're going to have a look at all sorts of different innovators and entrepreneurs.
I think we've got some special edition ideas, maybe, uh, tools of innovation, innovation gone wrong. What can we learn? And I think we want it. We want to do more events. Don't reach out. Yeah, I will. I'll come to Sydney. You just give me a date. Well, that's, that'll be no problem at all. So I'm sure we want to get back to Amsterdam and there's lots in the pipe there.
And I'd love to, I'd love to get back to San Francisco and do a show there. So I'm, I'm, I'm busy tickling up a few friends to see if we can organize something around an event. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Plenty, plenty of possibilities next year. But, um, tell, tell me Chad, like what's, what's the plan for the following?
A week. I am. I'm assuming, uh, there's gonna be some, some cooking down there in, in, in Texas, some good time with family and friends. What are you looking forward to the most? Oh yeah, I think, yeah, just time with family is the most important for me just to get all cheesy, but, uh, I'm a huge. Board gamer evangelist and have gotten my entire extended family obsessed with board games.
So this evening we actually are having an Epic, uh, board game session. I'm trying out some new games and, uh, looking forward to quite a few more, uh, over the holidays here before. Going back to New York and you know, battened down the hatches for, for 2018. Uh that's. That is so awesome. I think, uh, there's no better way than, um, being around a board game.
I have such memories of my family when I was growing up playing trivial pursuit together and, um, Oh my gosh, to be a fly on the wall as Owen, uh, the larger Owen family are. Battling it out, um, with your, with your board game adventures. That sounds, that sounds really awesome. I, on the other hand will probably be, uh, trying to survive, um, Epic heat, which, uh, could be forecast for Christmas day here in Sydney, Australia.
So I'll be close to the pool, uh, with family, with friends and I'm just reflecting, I think, uh, in the, in the late part of December on. What I want to achieve in 2018, and I can't wait to make you and moonshots and the audience part of that. So a big thank you to you and everyone. Uh, Chad, it's been a fantastic year.
Yeah. And again, thank you listeners. You know, Mike and I have no intention of stopping this any time soon. Uh, so we love that you're here along side us, uh, for the ride, as we learn from hopefully dozens, more entrepreneurs, innovators. And disruptors. Uh, I just want to say again, thanks to everyone, Mike, and I hope that everyone has an amazing 2018.
Absolutely. So thanks again. Uh, from us in Brooklyn and Sydney, we send our best wishes to everybody and we can't wait to learn more ideas and get more inspiration on how to be great entrepreneurs and innovators with the moonshots podcast in 2018.