#741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau

0:00 This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. I have been using ASleep podcover for years now. Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet. You can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I'm excited to test it out. Pod for Ultra.

0:20 It cools, it heats. And now it elevates automatically. More on that in a second. First, Pod Four Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as twenty degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature. Keeping you and your partner cool. Even in a heat wave. Or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down.

0:43 This solves all of that. Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience. And for those snore heavy nights, The pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop you or your partner from snoring. Plus with the Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand. You won't need them because these types of metrics are integrated into the Pod4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible sensors, which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV. Their heart rate tracking is just one example is at ninety-nine percent accuracy. So

1:19 Get your best night's sleep. Head to eightsleep.com slash Tim and use code Tim to get three hundred and fifty dollars off of the Pod 4 Ultra. That's eight sleep all spelled out. Eight sleep.com slash Tim and code Tim T I M to get three hundred and fifty dollars off. the Pod four Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom Europe and Australia. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M N T.

1:48 What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike. And I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone. With their electrolyte needs and perfectly suit to folks following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water and you might not have the right balance, That's often when I drink it, or if you're doing any type of endurance exercise, mountain biking, et cetera, another application. If you've ever struggled to feel good on keto, low carb or paleo, it's most likely because even if you're consciously consuming electrolytes, you're just not getting enough. And it relates to a bunch of stuff like a hormone called aldosterone, blah, blah, blah, when insulin is low, but suffice to say, this is where element, again spelled LMNT, can help. My favorite flavor by far is citrus salt.

2:41 Which as a side note you can also use to make a kick ass no sugar margarita, but For special occasions, obviously, you're probably already familiar with one of the names behind it, Rob Wolf, R-O-B, Rob Wolf, who is a former research biochemist and two time New York Times bestselling author of the paleo solution and wired to eat. Rob. created element by scratching his own itch. That's how it got started. His Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coaches turned him on to electrolytes as a performance enhancer. Things clicked and bam. So if you're on a low carb diet.

3:14 Or fasting, electrolyt a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring. All that's garbage, unneeded. There's none of that in Element. And a lot of names you might recognize are already using Element. It was recommended to be by one of my favorite. Athlete friends, three Navy SEAL teams as prescribed by their Master Chief, Marine Units, FBI sniper teams, at least five NFL teams who have subscriptions. They are the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and on and on. You can try it risk free. If you don't like it, Element will give you your money back. No questions asked. They have extremely low return rates. Get your free Element sample pack with any drink mix purchase at drink.

3:56 dot com slash Tim. That's drink L M N T dot com slash Tim And if you're an element insider, one of their most loyal customers, You have first access to Alement Sparkling, a bold sixteen ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Again.

4:13 Check it all out. drinkelement.com slash Tim Drink L M N T. Dot com slash Tim. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also you post some questions.

4:29 No se iba. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to sit down with world class performers.

4:53 From every field imaginable to tease out the habits. routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply. and test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads.

5:11 I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites. From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. To give you these super combo episodes, and internally we've been calling these.

5:25 The Super Combo episodes. Because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks. But to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you.

5:42 Perhaps They got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash.

5:58 combo. And now, without further ado Please enjoy. And thank you. For listening.

6:04 First up. Jim Collins Author of iconic business books that include Good to great. How the Mighty Fall

6:12 And great by choice. As well as built to last. And Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 Which he co authored with his mentor.

6:22 Bill Lazier. You can find Jim at JimCollins.com In the course of doing some of the homework for this conversation. I have

6:33 come across different ways that you seem to measure your time and your days. And I'd love to explore that for just a little bit. The first was I read that you had And this may have been a little bit more. evolved or changed by this point, but a stopwatch with three timers in your pocket. And that it was sort of indicative of creative teaching and other but could you explain That habit, please, for people who are not familiar.

6:58 Well so actually let me tell you the story of how it began. Yes. What the three were about. And then how it's evolved into something a little simpler and a little more powerful and what I do with it every single day. So I don't want to pretend that I'm normal. Okay. So what I would have described is It's not normal behavior, but this is it. So when I was thirty six years old I made the decision and we can come back to this later if you want to talk about big bets and doing scary things such as Betting our career, betting our lives, Joanne and I on uh entrepreneurial path.

7:28 Let me just kind of step back and sort of share the origins of this. So I was teaching at Stanford and I it was a marvelour and of course had great mentors and learned how to do my research there. That's where Jerry and I did built to last. But I had a another mentor who encouraged me to think about

7:47 Whether I wanted to do a self-directed path or not. I used to say to my students, because I taught entrepreneurship and small business, I always say to my students, Why don't you go do something on your own? Why give over all your creative energies for somebody else's thing? Or at least challenge them to think about that. And I would say if you're really interested in business, you don't have to go to work for IBM to be in business. You can do your own. So my students

8:11 This is the wonderful thing about great students. They hold you to account, right? They said, Well Right. What are you doing that's entrepreneurial? This doesn't look like a very entrepreneurial thing. Teaching these classes and being here and and so I started thinking about it and I realized something about myself.

8:27 I like betting on myself, so I have this idea. You don't have to be at IBM to be in business. Why do I have to be at a university to be A professor. So I said to Joanne, I said, you know, I think I have this idea of I'd like to be a self employed professor.

8:43 To endow my own chair. So Joanne who we've done these things together through life. She Went along with this idea. And the idea was to try to pursue really big questions that wouldn't be constrained by thing you could do it only a year.

9:00 And the first big bet on that was the research in Built to Last and it was coming out and I said let's just That everything, let's go. And so we launched this huge bet, bet everything on that book. Didn't know if it would work. We were down to uh less than ten thousand dollars. We were actually really scared. We call it our Thelma and Louise moment. We were like launching off the cliff together, except we wanted to get to the other side.

9:22 It was a huge bet and we didn't know if it would work. But I was very clear about one thing. I did not want to have a half life of quality. Yeah. The work. One of the wonderful things about working on built to last with Jerry back at Stanford.

9:37 No one knew who I was. No one called. No one paid any attention. So for six years of working on that research project I could just

9:47 Go into the cave. And work. And work. And work. And that kind of deep work, I mean you have to go deep into the data, deep into the research, deep into the thinking, the long cycles of reflection.

10:01 That's how you get the ideas and that's how you do good stuff. And I was worried that what would happen is if I went from being invisible to being visible. And then if I was fortunate enough to have Сус.

10:16 That I might wake up in five or six or seven years. And have not gone back to the wellspring Quiet solitude of work.

10:27 And then your second book is half as good. Right, and then the next book after that is only half as good again. I wanted the quality to always get. Better. And so I thought well, you know, what's interesting is

10:38 A university is a place that really encourages that because it's sort of designed to allow you to Spend your life in that tranquility. So I went to some faculty members that I greatly respect. And I said How do the people

10:51 In the academy that you most respect in yourself. spend their time. And I got a consistent answer. Fifty, thirty, twenty. Fifty percent of your time

11:01 in new intellectual creative work. Thirty percent of your time. In teaching. And twenty percent of your time And other stuff that just has to get done. Serving on committees, you know, whatever it happens to be that you have to do.

11:16 And so I thought That sounds good. I'm just gonna start doing that. So I started As I was heading out on the Thelman Louise Leap. Counting my hours every day.

11:26 And I would count How many hours in the day were creative new intellectual The goal was that it had to be above fifty percent. Then how many hours would be in teaching? And how many hours would be in other.

11:39 Stuff like I mean, I got somebody gotta balance the quick books, right? And so I started counting and that's where the triple stop watch came. I found this wonderful triple stop watch where I could constantly go back and forth, and at the end of the day I would have the total. Later I came to the realize that what really mattered.

11:58 was the first bucket, the creative work. And so I eventually simplified it. There's a concept in Great by Choice called the twenty mile march, and so I Kinda

12:07 Had a twenty mile march, I just didn't know that concept yet. And the idea being something you just do really consistently over time that imposes A very high level of discipline that accumulates to results. And so I simplified it, and I just simply said can I just

12:24 simply count the number of creative hours I get every day. And then hold myself to an account. So at the end of every single day. I open a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet has

12:36 Three cells on a line. And that's for the day. The first thing is just a simple accounting of what happened that day. Where did my time go? What did I do? What et cetera. look like. Is it three sentences, four sentences? What might it be sort of sort of depends on I mean actually the very best days don't have much in it at all. They are Got up early.

13:02 Two hours of really great creative work. Breakfast with Joanne. Five hours creative work. Work out, nap. Three hours of creative work.

13:12 Enjoy dinner with Joanne Bad. I mean that's like a great day. So But other days are full of lots of other choppy things. And so what I tend to do is to try to capture a bit Of what happened with sleep. What happened with the main tasks of the day.

13:28 If there were some really interesting conversations that happened or something that hid in those, I'll note those. They're markers so that I can always go back and I'll t show with you how I use those in a minute because I actually Do these correlations with all of that. And then the second cell Is the number of creative hours I got that day. Now there's no rule about how many.

13:48 you get in a day. Sometimes they're zero and sometimes they can be nine or ten, which would be huge number. But then it calculates back over the last three and a sixty five days. And the march. Which I don't think I've missed for well over thirty years and

14:04 I hope to hit for a lot longer now. Is Every single three hundred and sixty five day cycle. Every single one. Every single day.

14:15 If you calculate back the last three hundred and sixty five days The total number of creative hours must exceed One thousand. No Matter

14:26 What? It doesn't matter if you're sick. It doesn't matter if there's other stuff you'd like, a thousand creative hours a year as a minimum baseline. Now you can be above that, that's fine, but never once. There can't be a single day. In any three hundred and sixty five day cycle. January two to January two, July twenty two to july twenty two, September nine to September ninth. Doesn't matter.

14:48 Always has to be above a thousand creative hours. And you watch it, and I put it on the whiteboard here at the lab. The three month pace so you take the last three months multiplied times four the six month pace And then the current three sixty five.

15:03 And that is a way to kind of monitor if I start seeing that. those numbers start to go down. I'll change my behavior and sometimes I have a big buffer and sometimes I don't. And the idea is if you stay with that. Eventually you're going to have work.

15:19 Ne there's a third cell. that I put in there that most people Don't know. As much about'cause people know about the hours thing somewhat. All of us have

15:28 Dark times, difficult times. All of us have good times, right? But here's an interesting thing I noticed, which is that if you're kind of going through a funk. It colors your whole life. And you tend to think your whole life is a funk,'cause you're looking through that lens. And so I thought well

15:46 Yeah, but actually I feel like my life is really pretty good. But when you're in that other place it doesn't feel that way. And so what I started to do is I started creating a code. Which is plus two plus one zero minus one minus two. And the key on all this, by the way, is you have to do it every day in real time.

16:04 You can't like five days later look back and say, How did I feel that day? And the what this is a totally subjective How? quality was the day. What was it a w a plus two was a super positive day. This is emotionally speaking. Exactly. Just just like was it a great day.

16:21 A plus two is a just a great day. Doesn't mean it wasn't that it might not have been a really difficult day. Might have been a day of a really hard rock climb. It might have been a day Of really hard writing. But it felt really good, right? It might have been a day of an intense conversation, but really meaningful with a friend, or something. But it adds up to plus two.

16:41 Plus one is another positive day. Zero is yeah, you know. Minus one's kind of a net tone negative. And minus two is those are bad days. And you put it in before you go to bed. If I were to ask you, Tim, right now

16:53 Seventeen days ago or even five days ago to give the score, you're gonna be distorted by how you're feeling today. Oh, for sure. I mean the Yeah, I mean memory if you ask people what they ate two days ago, they're gonna be off by forty percent, fifty percent calories for sure. Yeah. So I wrote it down. And now I start to have I got the creative hours march, which is it's kind of discipline in service of creativity.

17:15 And it's relentless, right? It just stays with me constantly and you never get a break from it. But that other has proved to be incredibly useful for me. Because now what you can do is sort the spreadsheet. And you can say over the last five years, what's going on in all the plus two days?

17:31 Oh, and over the last five years that's where the descriptions come in. Yeah, exactly. And over the last five years, what's going on in the minus two days. And now as I navigate, it's kind of like the simplex method in operations research, where you find optimal by never really knowing what optimal is ahead of time. You do it by a series of iterative steps of the next best step. Hold on, can you explain that I'm from Long Island, so sometimes it takes me a minute. Could you can you explain what that was one more time? Yeah, sure. So my undergraduate was a thing called mathematical sciences with a heavy dose of philosophy. And

18:06 Мас сієн звоз пір математик, комп'ютер санстатистик. And operations research. And in operations research there's a method developed by a guy named George Danzig. Called the simplex method. And essentially the idea is that if you're really trying to find the optimal answer to a multivariate problem where there's lots and lots of variables. Even the biggest computers couldn't basically do a giant spreadsheet and sort. There's just too many permutations. And what he showed was under certain conditions. All you have to do is find the local optimum, like what's the best next step.

18:40 Right. And then you t reset, and then what's the next best step? And that he showed that under certain conditions That is mathematically guaranteed. to navigate you to the optimal end point. And that was the simplex method, as I understand them, is it was thirty, forty years ago when I was in the class, but so I've always had that idea in mind.

19:00 So you kinda navigate step by step. And so I think about it as in navigating life. I want more of the things that create the plus twos. And less of the things that create the minus twos.

19:14 But the difference that's helped me is I know what they are. It's not that life is never perfect, but you can do a simple More of this. Less of that. Then more of this.

19:24 Less of that. If that makes any sense. It makes perfect sense. What are some of the patterns that you found? For either the do more column or the do less column. For yourself. So when I look at those patterns, I would say А на пласту.

19:39 There are Almost two contradictory components. Not contradictory, but they're just really different flavors. One is The solitude of

19:51 Really hard work. And sometimes one of my favorite days will be I get up. I never leave the house. And

20:01 I basically get to just lose myself. In the research. Or in the writing. Or in the making sense of things. It's a very incredible simplicity of the day.

20:12 I'm sixty one now, and I think about What comes next? And I intend To keep creating. I wanna stay in some version of that march for a really long time. My role models have all done that. But I think about life

20:25 As having three Three things at least I think are really important. One of them is s increasing simplicity, just sheer simplicity. Two is time and flow state. And flow state's not easy. And the third is time with people I love. And so when I look at those plus twos, a lot of the days would be days of high simplicity. Not much happened. There were very few moving parts. But a lot of deep hard work and flow state I might have been writing or doing a concept or or creating something or I mean just you're lost in the work.

20:57 Or rock climbing probably. Or rock climbing. Exactly. Exactly. It's arduous, but you're lost in it. Those are great. The other though for me is the time with people I love and The other dimension While I wouldn't describe myself as a highly social type person, I love the solitude of the hard work.

21:15 The other side is The people in my life, and there are many, I have great friends. Really great friends that many decades. Friends, friends back to third grade, seventh grade, all my college roommates. I mean My personal band of brothers. I mean I have friends.

21:29 And my wife We've married thirty eight years. Got engaged four days after our first date. But four days after your first date. Yes, that's true. Wow. Okay. We might come back to that. We might. But uh but the but the thing is When you have those days where you're

21:47 Really present. And engaged with people you really love. Those are plus two days. You may not have accomplished anything, or in the case of climbing, it might be that I When out climbing with one of my best friends and

22:00 I don't even necessarily remember the climb. It was with a friend. And so my plus two days. are either very solitude. Or very connected.

22:09 But connected to people that have these long enduring really, really wonderful relationships in life. And those make plus twos. I love it. What is the bug book? Could you please elaborate on the bug book? I think a lot of us, I certainly was one of them.

22:25 We struggle in our twentys. To Get clarity about how to deploy ourselves in the world. 'Cause everything up until you've kind of finished you know, high school or college or graduate school or whatever. It's kinda structured. You don't really have to think about it. It's like

22:39 Oh, I I gotta figure out how to do these math problems or whatever. But life isn't really like that. And then all of a sudden you hit life and life is much more ambiguous. And so you're trying to navigate through it. I I like a lot of people was trying to you know figure out how best to deploy myself in my twenties and I had multiple things that Help me do that.

22:58 One of them let me just introduce a concept, okay, and then I'll tie it into the bug book because this is how I challenge young people to think about it. There's a concept in good to great called the hedgehog concept. And the idea of the hedgehog concept is to sort of simplify down we found it by studying companies. We found that

23:17 When they really focus on one or a few really big things and made very disciplined decisions over time, those would accumulate and begin to build some real results and eventually what would become the flywheel effect, which We'll chat about a little bit later. And the hedgehog concept is the intersection of three circles. For a company it's doing what you're deeply passionate about, because if you're not passionate about it, you can't endure long enough to really, really do something exceptional. The second circle is what you can be the best in the world at. And if you can't be the best in the world at it, leave it to others. So for example, It doesn't mean being big, right? You could have a truly great local restaurant.

23:57 It's never going to be big. But it's the absolute best in the world. at a particular thing that it does in its specific community. And no large company could come in and be better than them at that. That's very hedgehog, even though it's not big. And then the third is that you have an economic engine and you know how it works. And so if you have the intersection of those three. Hard.

24:20 energy it's going to go into things that we're passionate about and We can be the best in the world at and a driver economic engine, you're in your hedgehog. Now There's a personal analogy to the hedgehog.

24:33 And this gets back to bug book. I'm not a big believer in sort of thinking of traditional careers. I'm a big believer in thinking of finding your hedgehog. And then really building flywheel momentum with that over time. And so as a the personal version of the hedgehog Is again.

24:49 Doing circle one, what you're passionate about and love to do. The second circle isn't best in the world because If you said, Well, if I can't be the best orthopedic surgeon, I won't do it, well, then we'd only have one, right? That's not good. It's what you are encoded for. And what you are encoded for. І диффер

25:08 Than what you're good at. So when I went to college. I thought I was gonna be a mathematician. Because I was one of those kids that was good at math. That's why I majored in math sciences.

25:18 But then I met At Stamford. The people who are genetically encoded. For math.

25:26 There were not me. I was good at math. They were encoded for math. It's like being an athlete where you thought you were a good athlete till you met the incredible natural gift athlete, and you realize I could never see to spin to the basket like he did. Or I could never C to put the ball there running down the field playing soccer the way she did. I just wouldn't have seen it.

25:49 There's a gift. That's the encoding. And so you have to find what you're encoded for as distinct from Just what you're good at. And then the third is

25:58 You have an economic engine. And you can fund your goals, your objectives, the things you're trying to get done. When you have all three of those, I'm passionate about it, I'm encoded for it, and I have an economic engine in it. now you're in your hedgehog now when you're in your twenties There's all these sort of Paint by numbers kids approach to life.

26:14 Right, you can be a professor, you can be a businessman, you can be a lawyer, you can be whatever, right? And the nice thing about a paint by numbers kit is you actually don't Have to think about it that much. Because as long as you stay in the lines and you paint, you're gonna end up with a nice picture at the end. But the only way to paint a masterpiece is to start with a blank canvas.

26:34 And that is sort of figuring out those three circles and then making your own unique series of decisions consistent with the hedgehog of those three circles. And they may or may not fall into a traditional Bucket. And so I was trying to find my way. And I started this little book, and it was inspired by a mentor named Marchelle Myers. Who um

26:54 Suggested that what I do as I study myself like a bug. And imagine with dispassionate objectivity as you're going through life. You're making notes. Where you're observing The bug called Jim.

27:09 But very scientifically, clinically. And so I remember. I was working at H P for a couple of years out of graduate school. Great company at the time for sure. But I wasn't really constructed to be in a large company, but I was trying to navigate my way

27:23 And one day I had to give a presentation on how Network computers work. And this was back in the nineteen eighties, when it was early on in that. And I had to figure out how to communicate to everyone. really the essence in R and our team of how network computing was gonna work and how it fit together. And I had to sort of conceptualize it and then I had to teach it and show that all of a sudden I had this day where it's like wow That was really fun to figure it out.

27:49 To figure out how to conceptualize it, to figure out how to put it in concepts everybody can understand, to share it with everyone, to teaching it. My Bubbook. When I'm then writing the bug gym. really loves making sense of something difficult. Breaking it down into understandable pieces.

28:06 And teaching it to others. It was an observation in the journal. The other thing is might be something like the bug gym. You're really Language.

28:19 If He had to spend a lot of time in senseless meetings. This is not good. And so and constantly observing and then eventually that allowed me to that was that sort of Обсервче Clinical.

28:32 That allowed me to eventually sort of head back to teaching at Stanford when I was thirty. Which then became really the start of The real journey. Of what happened. With the bug book, did you

28:44 Write things in the bug book each evening? Did you do it, keep it in your back pocket and when there was An outline impactful or emotionally notable event you'd write in it. What was the structure to how you used it if there was any. At that time I'm more now just kind of in the coding we described earlier,'cause I'm one of those really lucky people that I

29:06 found this stuff early and I remember The moment I hit The classroom at Stanford first teaching the small business and entrepreneurship class. I just knew. I'm home. I'm in the three circles. Like This is I know was going to guide in some version.

29:22 Some permutation of this. probably for the rest of my life and I just knew it. But until then I had to kinda get to where I could see that. And so for those years, I would say if I bet if I went back and looked at them and I haven't done that, they're in my basement. I'll bet you that probably five out of seven days there's reasonably thorough entries. in there. And those entries would also be things like noting

29:46 sort of projecting out, and a lot of it was often what I would describe as pattern recognition where You'd no be noting things, but I would also always be scanning for People. That I could see them. People much older than me.

29:59 And the question is I could somehow picture that some version of what they do somehow Resonated. I would note that. What was it about it that resonated? Why did I look up to that person? I've spent a lot of it not just on my own experiences but also

30:16 very much on people that I admired, not people from afar, people I knew and observed. Not for their achievements, but something about The quality of What they were. And that was of also a big part of that observation process.

30:31 Can you give us a One of the things, whatever comes to mind that you learned from Peter Drucker. One is Don't Make a hundred decisions.

30:41 When one will do. And the idea of that is that Peter believes that You tend to think that you're making a lot of different decisions. But then actually if you kinda strip it away, you can begin to realize A whole lot of decisions that look like different decisions are really part of the same category.

30:59 Of a decision. And that what you want to do is to then be able to say, No, I'm gonna make one big decision. That will be replicated many, many times. Because it kind of conceptually captures so for example One uh version might be

31:14 in my own case, right? I'm sure you encounter this too. You get lots of wonderful, interesting invitations. Things to go do this or to go do that or to speak at this or whatever. They're wonderful. I mean never being grateful for those opportunities, but you have to Be very selective about what you do. And so as I was struggling with how do you decide which to do? When you're gonna say no to most of them, they all can look like a series of individual decisions, but then actually no, there's actually a couple of really big decisions.

31:43 Is it a great teaching moment potentially, and will you learn something? That's like a meta decision. And now you can sort of strip away. Actually The question is, is it a great teaching moment possibility?

31:55 Or is it not is very different than should I go to Austin and do this event? Or should I meet with this person? They look individual, but they're really part of a whole. That's one. And you can think of that as you know the simple thing like But you wear.

32:10 You could make a thousand different decisions, or you could make one big decision and we're the same thing all the time, I suppose. The second is And I've shared with some others, but it's so powerful. At the end of that day with Peter, I asked him How I could pay him back. And he said

32:27 First. I had already paid him back'cause he had learned. And you gotta remember this was when we were doing the Thelman Louise thing. We were really scared, right? We didn't know if this was gonna work, and I was launching out to try to do this self directed path and And genuinely scared.

32:45 And Peter said to me, he said But I do have a request. That you change your question a little bit. It seems to me you spend a lot of time Worrying about if you're going to survive.

32:56 Well, you'll probably survive. And you spend too much time thinking about If you'll be successful. It's the wrong question. The question is

33:09 How to be useful. And that was the last thing you said that day. He just got out of the car and closed the door and walked away. That was the the Peter Drucker mic drop. Yeah, it was. It was. And and but you know I find that I go back to that. Over

33:29 And over And over again. Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me.

33:58 On the road. So what is AG1? AG one is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drinkage one dot com slash Tim. That's drinkage one, the number one. Drink AG One dot com slash Tim. Last time, drinkAG1.com. Slash Tim. Check it out.

34:36 I And now Ed Shao The polymath professor who changed Tim's life. Find out how this seventeen year veteran of the tech industry

34:50 Former member of the US House of Representatives. and Ivy League Educator became one of Tim's most important mentors. Ed, welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to be here with you, Tim. I think back to

35:06 The spring. Semester. Of two thousand. When you contacted me after all of the other students had registered for my course and Made such a an impressive

35:21 Plea. to be able to enroll in the course. Committing if You were enrolled, but You would clean the blackboards.

35:32 clean the erasers, do whatever it took to make my life Easier. And I almost cried when I Heard.

35:42 Those words and you took the course and I'm so proud of what you've done. Over the past nineteen years. I don't Blame the course for your success, but I do blame your enrolling in the course.

35:58 For our friendship. And you've taught me so much from the very beginning. I wanted to take the course for many, many reasons. This was ELE four ninety one, high tech entrepreneurship, which was in the electrical engineering department and the ORF department, which I can never remember the actual full name for operations and research operations, research and financial engineering. There we go. Now I have no business whatsoever being in any engineering school. But

36:26 At the time. The Princeton courses, undergraduate courses were only very recently being voted on by students. This was a very new thing. This is before Yelp and so on.

36:40 And one of the standouts. was this new course high tech entrepreneurship. Taught by Professor Shao. And I really wanted like many people to be part of this course. And when I finally

36:53 was accepted to the course and began learning. I remember at one point I was cleaning the Blackboard and cleaning the erasers and you said to me, I don't know if you remember this, you said, Tim, don't get too good at cleaning the erasers And uh there's a lot of direct Teaching and a lot of indirect teaching, just observing you as you interact with your students and the world. And there're certain things

37:18 that when I describe you to my friends and I do that very often and a lot of your students, I mean, you're just telling me before we Began recording. Stay in touch with you. And these are people from forty, fifty years ago. It's remarkable. One of the things I throw in. That was not in the bio I read.

37:37 was figure skating. Could you please tell us about Your background with figure skating. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and We were fortunate to have an indoor

37:49 Skating rank. Where professional ice hockey team played. The Omaha Knights they were of probably a farm team for one of the N H L Hockey teams.

38:02 And my mother took me to that ice rank when I was about seven years old. And I really enjoyed the challenge. And I remember coming back from one session when I was just beginning to skate and I said, Mom, I really had a good day today and she said, W what was So special about it. And I said I only fell forty times this this time. From

38:30 What you might call small beginnings, uh Began to get More proficient and more interested. And in those days figure skating was really f figure skating where there were precise patterns on clean ice with turns and loops that you had to perform in order to pass certain tests.

38:52 And I passed the pre test and then I passed the first test and the second test. And At that point I was kind of on my way. But Ice was only available during the winter.

39:06 So when I was thirteen I began spending summers away from Omaha where there were ice rinks and continued to train and continued to Test test. And when I was sixteen years old I had passed the sixth test and I qualified for the national championships in men's singles in a a lower group, not the the world class group, but a lower group. And I was also ice dancing with a partner

39:39 And in nineteen fifty six we won the Silver dance championship in the Midwestern sections. There were three sections in the country, went to the national championships. And then the f my senior year in high school, nineteen fifty seven, again I skated in the national championships in Berkeley, California. I never was a winner. But it was a special experience to meet a lot of people throughout the country going to these championships. And I still stay in touch with my dance partner. And

40:16 A gentleman who I competed against In the singles championships. It was a big part of my life, Tim, and And as I think about it. The hours that I spent Training.

40:32 Getting up at six AM or actually five thirty AM Being on the ice in Omaha at six AM in a cold winter, Nebraska winter. And then skating in the evening too, fitting in homework. School To prepare for one competition where if you did well enough you could go to the national championships

40:57 It taught me the power, the value. Oh Practice. Of dedication. Of persistence.

41:08 And Determination. Those are valuable. Life lessons and character building lessons. So When people ask me, Well, how do I prepare to be a leader or to

41:20 Change the world. It's Through learning those values. You don't get a quick return. Creating value for the world. You get a quick return doing something that doesn't matter.

41:35 But If you're going to make a difference in the society, changing the world for the better You better be prepared for the a long journey. You To me.

41:47 Is one of your stand out characteristics. Have Preparation. Your very meticulous preparation. I remember this because Keep in mind people listening, as we said, I was showing up to

42:01 Potentially do my Shockboard duty and my eraser duty and so on. So I would arrive to ELE four ninety one early. And you'd be arranging the name cards. So you had placards for the students, which is not common at Princeton. You'd have the name cards, you'd be arranging chairs.

42:17 And reviewing potentially the case study materials. And I don't remember Any TAs, any teaching assistants for that class. So could you talk about How you've thought about preparation outside of, say, figure skating and did that come from your parents? Where did that attention to detail

42:39 before the competition, whether that's a competition in business sports or otherwise, or just getting up in front of a class of students. Can you talk to where that comes from and how you think about preparation? Well, I was a uh strong believer in Murphy's law. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Yeah. And so

43:01 I would come to the classroom typically forty five minutes early. Make sure that the projector was working and sometimes it wasn't. Yeah. And so I w had time then to call the audio visual people and they'd come over and Get it fixed. Rather than showing up.

43:22 Right at the time the class starts and then finding that there are problems that disrupted the flow of the class. I think it was Benjamin Franklin. Who wrote Failing to prepare

43:36 It's very important to me. Not uh Be surprised by things that go wrong. And the way that you prevent that is through preparation. And making sure everything is the way that it needs to be for success.

43:52 As far as the class is concerned. Even though I had Tot. The lessons, the sessions, many, many times. I usually spent Two to three hours.

44:04 Prior to each class. Preparing again. I viewed My classes. Which were

44:12 Taught by the K Smith that Of teaching and learning where Students would read about an actual company situation and put themselves in The position of the CEO or the founder or the technical.

44:26 person and describe what to do. I would ask questions and they would I felt that That that approach To

44:37 Teaching and learning, putting someone in the position of the found or the person who had to achieve the results. Rather than just listening and learning and reading from a book. would not only help to Learn but also build the confidence that they could do that.

44:57 Kind of job. Well, in order to make that Experience that Classroom experience. Yeah.

45:07 The best. It was like a performance. Yeah. I would come in and I didn't know exactly how the discussion would evolve. But I knew the lessons that would come out of it and I'd find a way regardless of what the students would say

45:26 Two convey those lessons through their Words. The case method. This is something I'd love to talk a little bit more about because my

45:36 First exposure to the case method. was in your class. And it's a method that As I understand it, is used at Harvard Business School. also at Stanford Graduate School Business.

45:49 What I also found so appealing about the case method is Yeah, As a student have these short modules these case studies and They would often be a part one with a cliffhanger.

46:02 So the module one would end with some type of dilemma or disaster or big decision. And you didn't have The conclusion. You didn't have the answer meaning what actually happened in that particular case. And it allowed you to Think for yourself, but it also gave you an opportunity to speak to the class, to speak to you and to be assertive also.

46:26 Right, because you would have to be able to do that. I remember at least in my class. many differing opinions, some of which were polar. Opposites. And it really struck me as a

46:36 to Allow people to be active. in the way that they're gonna have to be active if they're Ultimately.

46:44 Going to be entrepreneurs. When Yeah. Teaching and learning. About

46:52 Starting enterprises or creating something new. You learn by doing. The case method helps in that. Projects that are real. Do that.

47:03 One of the Princeton graduates. No, it's now four years ago. wrote her senior thesis on Can entrepreneurship be taught? Or is it something you're born with?

47:18 And there are articles that have been written that College courses and entrepreneurship were a waste of time. They don't Matter. So in twenty fifteen when she was working on this, I

47:33 Create a an online survey instrument. Which I sent out to all sixteen hundred Princeton students that I had had in my classes over thirty one semesters. We had to cut off the responses in order for her to m meet her thesis deadline after four hundred responses of the sixteen hundred.

47:57 But of those first sixteen hundred responses. A hundred and sixty had been founders of companies. Among the survey questions was the question What

48:11 Princeton experiences have helped you in choosing your life path and succeeding. And what you Pursued. And of the Hundred and sixty founders.

48:25 Ninety five percent. Said it was the course. That made the difference. I think what It was.

48:36 They learned in detail, but rather Pointing out to the students that this is a possible life path. That you can create something from scratch and create value. And what great satisfaction you get from that. It also

48:54 And I attribute this to the case method. Yeah. Students the confidence they could do it. They'd read the case and say, I'm as smart as that person. I know I could do that too. And I tried to choose the cases with

49:09 Youthful Founders rather than old People like me. Then there were some tools. The techniques that they learn from it.

49:21 But I believe that everyone is born with the desire to do something beyond. And as an entrepreneur Starting something from scratch, making it real. Impacting the world in that way.

49:39 It fulfills that. Desire to do something. Meaningful beyond themselves. Is that what an entrepreneur is to you? I mean, if you were to define entrepreneurs, is that someone who

49:51 build something from scratch, whatever that might be. How do you think about the term entrepreneur? Well, y you probably remember this, Tim, from the course, but I assert that entrepreneurship isn't About starting companies. Entrepreneurship. Is an approach to life.

50:09 And you can be an entrepreneur in anything. It's about starting something from scratch. It's about making good things happen that hadn't been done before. It's a combination of innovation. A lot of people get ideas. And implementation.

50:28 And that's second. Part. Implementation is the most important. A lot of people So

50:37 Wouldn't it be neat? If we could do this. And that's as far as it goes. But entrepreneurs say Wouldn't it be neat?

50:46 If We could do this And then they do it. I wanna Say a few things.

50:52 And underscore a couple of things. The first is that there are only two courses I still have all the notes from. meaning Courses. Classes I took as an undergrad that I still have three ring binders.

51:06 Which contain all the notes. From one was the literature effect with John McFee. And the other was E L E four ninety one. So I still have all of those notes. And It strikes me that

51:19 Well first from a tool perspective, if people want to find case studies that are used at places like Harvard Business School or Stanford Business School, you can actually find quite a few online and order them. So I would encourage people to Look into that. The reason that I have notes from those two classes is I think in large part because

51:40 I had and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, a very, very difficult and dark period in my life. Junior year. and took some time off of school. It was very, very hard time for me. And what I found in The literature fact and also uh particularly in high tech entrepreneurship.

51:59 Was A teaching and reinforcing of optimism. Right, which is very different from giving all of your students rose colored glasses. You're showing that I found this.

52:10 It's really personally very helpful. In these case studies, a lot of things go wrong. But you were able to show how people figured it out. And how they learn to navigate around those things. How do you think about, if you do, the role of optimism

52:26 In any of this. Well I'm a chronic optimist. I believe that that Is important.

52:35 To doing things that haven't been done before? You can imagine All of the things that can go wrong. And I guess there's some value in Being a realist.

52:49 But I don't think you do things that Haven't been done before. And succeed in that By being negative.

52:59 And focusing on the all of the things that need to be done. Rather it's Having a vision. And then committing to making it real. I was blessed that way.

53:11 Uh just look at the world. I don't think through rose colored glasses. No but I when when people say that's gonna be hard I say that It's gonna be more fun. Then'cause doing something that's hard

53:26 Is a lot more fun than doing something that's easy. How did you I'll ask two questions. I'll so I'll start with the I should probably ask first, which is when you were say

53:40 twenty years old, fifteen or twenty, somewhere in that range. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up? Oh, I knew exactly what I was gonna be. I was gonna be a physicist. I came to Princeton in nineteen fifty seven. With a plan to Major in physics.

53:57 And then in my sophomore year I discovered philosophy. And I thought. This is way cool stuff.

54:08 And I decided that I would major in philosophy with w in those days what was called a bridge program with physics. So I took all of the required courses in physics. But my department was the philosophy department. My independent work both as a junior and senior were on subjects that combined philosophy And physics.

54:35 My senior thesis Was Describing what the German philosopher Manuel Kant's theory of space and time would have been Had he been born fifty years later. And had known Einstein's general theory of relativity.

54:53 And I described in my thesis This is what Kant's theory of space and time would have been. Unfortunately he didn't know general relativity based it on Newtonian physics, but As a Presumptuous twenty one year old I figured

55:10 I knew what was inside Kant's head. And if he just known about Einstein and and his theories He would have had a different Philosophy of space and time.

55:22 That and Two dollars and forty cents will get you a cup of coffee. At your favorite coffee shop. And you mentioned Einstein. I mean th Princeton certainly has a storied history in in some respects with physics. I mean Einstein spent time Not too far away from where we're sitting right now and Richard Feynman and others

55:45 Certainly. Is that how you Ended up. Focusing on Princeton and physics was the The history

55:53 I guess at that point, I'm not sure what specifically would have drawn you here, but is that what drew you to to Princeton? Well w uh starting from the time that I was about twelve. I was an Einstein Lover, I guess you'd say. I began reading about his theories and biographies and

56:11 So forth and So I applied to various colleges In the physics department, engineering physics in one case, and physic in all the others. And I was accepted to all of those schools. And all of them provided me with a rather

56:32 Attractive Scholarship. Except Princeton. Princeton.

56:41 You can work in the dining hall as a busboy. And I think I could make with twelve to fifteen hours a week, four hundred dollars a semester. And I chose Princeton because I concluded that must be the toughest school.

57:01 They're not making a big deal out of me. And I wanna go where it's most challenging. I've never looked back. Did you end up finding Princeton challenging? Oh, way too challenging. That ended my figure skating career.

57:17 I did not have the time to continue to practice I tried to compete In my freshman year in the Eastern Championships and Didn't do that well and I began to realize that I wasn't gonna make it and

57:32 Looking back, I don't know whether I would have ever made the world team. But in nineteen sixty one Many of the Skaters that I had either competed with, trained with My skating coach

57:48 All perished in a plane crash. The world team on their way to the world championships in Brussels, Belgium. In nineteen sixty one. And we lost the whole generation of world class figure skaters.

58:05 And I don't know whether I would have ever gotten to that point, but I'm glad I made the choice that I did to go to Princeton To give up figure skating. And a focus on What's

58:19 Loved me to be here talking to you. When did teaching enter the picture? What happened after if you could just paint a picture for us after your undergraduate? experience. Well, I knew what I was gonna do after I graduated from Princeton. I had applied for and was accepted to the U S Navy Officers Canada School in Newport, Rhode Island. to begin my training in September of nineteen sixty one.

58:46 I went Back home to Omaha, Nebraska, worked in manual labor on the night shift in a can factory. And in late August was called to Fort Omaha to be inducted into the U S Navy. During that pre induction interview I was asked if anything had happened to me health wise since I'd applied In February and had it physical then.

59:13 I so well I broke my leg in a rugby game at Princeton in April, but it's fine now. They didn't take my word for it. They ordered an X ray and concluded it wasn't up to Navy standards, so I Was unable to enter OCS in September of nineteen sixty one. Very disappointed.

59:36 I Did have an alternative. I had applied to Stanford Business School for the MBA program. I only applied to Stanford'cause uh Only had one essay in the application and all the others had three. So um I focused on Stanford for that reason. I had been accepted

59:59 And I never sent in the postcard. That Indicated that I was not coming. So I retrieved the postcard, sent it in and within Oh, I'd say six days.

1:00:14 My whole Life change from going into the Navy to going to California and entering the MBA program. I did not know. In that split second in April when I heard a crack When I fell in the rugby game.

1:00:33 That that would change my life so dramatically. That's why I tell people who ask me about career planning. Yeah. Career planning is overrated. You asked me the question though, how did you get into teaching?

1:00:50 Well, I was in the MBA program at Stanford University and there just like Philosophy at Princeton I discovered operations research, applying mathematics to real operating business problems, but operating problems in general. And I said, This is way cool.

1:01:12 And so rather than looking for a job as I was approaching my MBA degree I applied for the PHD program to pursue operations research. And after my first year in the PhD program The

1:01:32 Professor who had taught the most popular Second year MBA course. Electronic data processing. It was the only course at Stanford Business School at that time that had anything to do with computers. He left.

1:01:48 Unexpectedly. I went to the dean of the business school and I said, Mr Dean, you have a problem. You've got a hundred Second year MBA student signed up to take business three sixty six electronic data processing this September. And you don't have anybody to teach it.

1:02:10 I am the solution to your problem. I can teach that course. And they said something like Don't call us. We'll call you. And

1:02:22 In late August about Three weeks before the course was to begin, I get a call. Yeah. Can you teach that course? I said you bet. And that's how I began my teaching career.

1:02:38 Again, there's a life lesson here. Opportunities unexpectedly happen. And many people say Gee, that's an interesting opportunity. But it only matters in life.

1:02:53 If you seize the moment. If you Take advantage of that opportunity. And Commit yourself to do something that

1:03:04 You've never done before. I find that I learn the most the fastest When I don't know what I'm doing. So I'd never taught. Oh.

1:03:13 university course and all of a sudden I'm in front of a a hundred Second year MBA students. twenty four years old teaching a course, but I did okay. And then Stanford Graduate School of Business said, Would you teach another course? I taught different courses and that's how my

1:03:35 Teaching career began. How did you become good at teaching or Study teaching. refine your teaching. How did you work on that?

1:03:47 Because you're an excellent teacher. There are plenty of bad teachers out there. passable teachers, even at incredible institutions, but I would consider you a Very, very

1:03:57 Adept teacher. How did you How did you learn to teach? I think I became a better teacher by not being smart. And here's what I mean by it.

1:04:09 People who are really super smart Learning comes too easy. I believe you can be a better teacher. When it's more difficult for you to learn so that you can explain To

1:04:25 Somebody else How So Some lesson.

1:04:32 I also had the chance as a high school senior to take a course in debate. It was a full year course in debating. And that helped me with public speaking, but More importantly.

1:04:47 The High school teacher who taught debate. also taught the various individual events like oratory And extemporaneous speaking. And I

1:05:01 Wanted to compete. In extemporaneous speaking. Could you just define what that means in this context? So well, this is the way it was uh when I was in high school. Yeah, next temporary speaking contest. Each

1:05:16 Participant. Individually. Would be given a topic On which to Speak for ten minutes.

1:05:25 And Each contestant would have one hour to prepare the ten minute speech. So my high school teacher said well Come in after school's over every afternoon. And I'll give you a topic. I'll give you an hour.

1:05:43 And then you come back and give Your ten minute speech on that topic. So the first time I did that, he gave me a topic, I spent the hour preparing, I Gave my talk and when I ran out of words. I said, is the ten minutes up yet?

1:06:00 And he says it's only been three minutes. But every afternoon he would do that. And By the And of the

1:06:13 Public speaking Events. That year, the contest that year. I'd become a a state champion. In extemporaneous speaking.

1:06:24 You asked earlier, Tim. About preparation. This is just another example. I wasn't born to be a speaker. I wasn't born to be a teacher. But I learned

1:06:37 To do both. And there are tools also, as you mentioned in your own teaching, there are tools. that you can give people and strategies, which is certainly part was part of ELE four ninety one In my case. And in the cases of of your students.

1:06:53 With the extemporaneous speaking, what were some of the keys to getting better. Were there any techniques or strategies or ways of thinking about The topics you were given. That were particularly helpful. In that

1:07:08 Final A Van I remember the topic. It was what was the significance Of the conflict.

1:07:19 Between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. And I had a An hour to prepare that one. Before Google. Before Google. And and so The style of presentation it wasn't a sort of matter of fact. It was to

1:07:40 Prepare What might be called a ten minute oration. With drama. With stories Worth.

1:07:50 Life lessons. And sort of end on a crescendo. And Let's go back to teaching. I view

1:07:59 Teaching More about nurturing About personal values, about inspiration. About recognizing that You can have fun.

1:08:12 Doing great things. And It's not so much The lessons or the facts. But rather it's

1:08:21 Building uh maybe even contagion. This optimistic attitude. And understanding that If you can change the world for the better. That's as good as it gets.

1:08:34 Yeah. I do think You know, in retrospect it's maybe easier well, of course it's easier to see in retrospect, but How these various Chance opportunities and encounters with philosophy.

1:08:46 With the teaching. with the extemporaneous speaking, not necessarily in that order, but how they've combined into this alchemy that has enabled you to Transmit and infuse. these beliefs to your students in a way that is very, very memorable, right? It's not just the text in the book. Do you remember I mean you remember the topic, Aaron Burr?

1:09:08 And so on. Do you remember any of the choices that you made? In how you competed. With that. Competition. In speaking. Yeah.

1:09:17 No, I remember My debate partner. In high school And then at Princeton. He was one year behind me. We had started kindergarten together and then I skip.

1:09:30 first grade so I was one year ahead of him. But when he was a junior and I was a senior We were debate partners in a debate team. There were two on each side and one You were g assigned whether you were the affirmative speakers Supporting the resolution or the negative speakers against the resolution. And I remember

1:09:55 He was the first affirmative Speaker. And I was sitting near while he was standing. And

1:10:05 He got confused and he gave the negative case. Yeah. I'm sort of making hand signals to him as he's giving the negative case against the resolution he's supposed to be speak for. And I was gonna have to follow up. on this. And he finally f realized what was happening.

1:10:29 And He was so smooth. He said And that Ladies and gentlemen.

1:10:36 Is what Our opponents would lead you to believe however and then he quickly That's incredible. But there's also a lesson in this that

1:10:53 Things sometimes don't work out exactly the way you plan. But you've gotta adapt. And figure out how to segue into what will work. You strike me as very very adaptable in so many ways. I mean you've spent time in so many different worlds.

1:11:12 And you're very good at seizing opportunities. But you've also done certain things for periods of time. You've you've run companies for extended periods of time. You were in politics for an extended period of time. How do you this is actually some phrasing that I heard from Rabbi Jonathan Sachs in the UK. He said how do you differentiate between opportunities to be seized and temptations to be resisted.

1:11:37 You focused for extended periods of time on single things when no doubt there were other opportunities being thrown at you. How do you think about Focusing for extended periods. Or opening yourself. to opportunities.

1:11:50 This is really a simple Question. And it's answered with one word. I had situations where I had opportunities to leave

1:12:02 Companies that I was running. I would not leave. Until It was appropriate to leave. Where there was a successor, there was success. When y you're an entrepreneur and people are investing in you.

1:12:18 When you're an entrepreneur and a CEO and employees And customers and suppliers are counting on you. You've gotta have a commitment to Do the job until You're no longer necessary.

1:12:35 When I took the company public. My first company public and it was about a Ten year period. And there were times during the that ten years where We almost went under.

1:12:50 But when we had gone public and then did a secondary financing so there was sufficient capital And then did a search for a successor. I felt that then I could leave to run for the Congress. Perfect segue. Why did you decide to run for Congress? I thought I could be good at it.

1:13:11 And here's why it wasn't just Gee, that's Way cool, like philosophy and operations research. In nineteen seventy seven I was on the board of directors of the American Electronics Association.

1:13:27 Electronics companies during the seventies were Unable to raise sufficient amounts of risk capital. The amount of Capital committed to Professionally managed venture capital funds during the nineteen seventies.

1:13:44 Funds that would be investing in tech companies. Was only fifty million a year. Wow. Fifty million a year. I was asked to chair a task force for the American Electronics Association on capital formation to figure out what to do.

1:14:02 And I assembled a group of entrepreneurs and investors and We concluded the single inhibitor to sufficient quantities of risk capital investment was the high rate of the capital gains tax at the federal level at that time, which was Fifty percent.

1:14:21 And looking at it, if an investor invested And Lost money. So lost all the money. If they invested and made money, they gave half of it to the federal government.

1:14:34 Forgetting about what they'd have to give to the state government. So We felt that lowering the tax on capital gains was essential to stimulating the environment for risk capital investment, not just for Electronics companies, but all kinds of job creating Ventures. The task force

1:14:54 Put together a white paper And usually that's the end of The story. Well we've um proposed the lowering the capital gains tax, but keep in mind, Tim, that This was a group of entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurs don't just talk about it, they make stuff happen.

1:15:15 So The first thing we did is we did a survey of the electronics industry and documenting the importance of more risk capital investment for job creation and for The ability of these companies to get started and grow. Then I went to

1:15:34 Washington and Testified before Congress and There was a young congressman from Wisconsin, Bill Steiger, who was on the w House Ways and Means Committee He became intrigued with this idea of lowering the tax on capital gains and so he introduced a bill to do so And I worked with him and my

1:15:58 The whole uh electronics association worked in lobbying the Ma Ways and Means Committee, worked with the Senate. And by November of Nineteen seventy eight, about a year after we'd started this process with our survey.

1:16:17 The federal tax on capital gains was lowered from fifty percent to Twenty eight percent. And within about eighteen months. One billion dollars of capital flowed into professionally managed venture capital funds compared to the

1:16:36 fifty million a year that had been happening during the seventies. And Anybody who studies the nineteen eighties. That number on an annual basis, uh, four or five billion a year flowing into Funds that were Supporting new enterprises and job creating enterprises.

1:16:58 So That experience particularly because Bill Steiger died of a heart attack. Within a month after this bill was passed. He passed away in early December of nineteen.

1:17:12 Seventy eight. The bill was passed in November of seventy eight. His example inspired me to For public service. He had changed the nature of the debate in Washington on tax policy from

1:17:29 Who pays and who doesn't? Two What will be the economic impact? And I felt

1:17:39 Gosh, somebody who has built a company Somebody's had the experience that I had with working with Bill Steiger to get the Tax. Rate on capital gains reduced. Perhaps I had uh

1:17:53 contribution to make in public service. It also strikes me, and I think you may have even said this in an interview that I read in preparing for This conversation. That in uh in a very real sense you had An advantage in the sense that

1:18:12 you could always go back to building companies. Which means You weren't necessarily dedicated to being a politician as a career indefinitely from that point forward. You had some attractive plan Bs or plan Cs if it didn't work out. So it

1:18:28 Did that enable you to think more aggressively or differently? I had a personal Principle. The I was only going to stay in the House of Representatives at most

1:18:42 Three terms. Six years. And that gave me Two advantages. One, a sense of urgency. I couldn't just kinda wait around and

1:18:53 Learn the ropes. I had to start making a difference as Quickly as I Was able? And secondly, it gave me the freedom to do what I thought was right. The worst could happen is I get

1:19:07 Retired. Or maybe it's the best that could happen. I get retired after one term or two terms. Certainly. I wasn't gonna serve more than three. As it turned out I only serve two terms in the house because

1:19:22 As a Congressman from California. Uh I think there were at that time forty eight or fifty California members of the House of Representatives. And

1:19:34 We were a dime a dozen. Yeah. congressman or congresswoman to Get the message out.

1:19:48 Have ideas. I o not only need a message, I need a megaphone. And I decided that I could get a megaphone if I became a US Senator from California. I

1:20:01 Ran for the US Senate. In nineteen Uh started in eighty five for the nineteen eighty six campaign. I won the Republican nomination.

1:20:13 But I was defeated in a very close election. Better. Percentage point. Percentage point and a half by the Three term incumbent.

1:20:23 Alan Cranston. Looking back I was disappointed at the time because I felt I Wasn't a good enough Canada. I had lots of support and I'd let people down. But

1:20:37 Looking back I dodged a bullet. With that very close loss because Since then I feel through leading companies and through

1:20:50 At least my view. Changing lives for the better my students over many, many years. That I may have Through Not

1:21:00 Just their lives, but how they've changed in a positive way the lives of others. That I may have made more of a contribution to a better future than I would have as a US Senator. I believe that. I definitely believe that.

1:21:17 And I shouldn't say and But at the time you were disappointed. And I would be very Interested to hear because we've been talking about a lot of

1:21:26 Your successes and you've had a lot of successes, but At that time. When You got the news. That you had lost

1:21:34 What did the next few days or weeks look like for you? What do you say to yourself when you experience a loss like that? What do I do next to make a difference? And I'd never been out of a job.

1:21:47 I mean when you think about it, it it was from Teaching to starting a company to running for Congress and now I didn't have a next What am I gonna do next? I had the opportunity to join the venture capital firm

1:22:04 That was the lead investor in my first company. And I uh accepted that assignment as a general partner of the firm. It was Brentwood Associates at that time was a Los Angeles based venture capital firm and I established the Silicon Valley Office of that firm. I think they my partners would agree that I wasn't really very good at being a venture capital investor.

1:22:32 I'm too much of an optimist. Every deal I looked at oh gee, that it that's really interesting. I can see how to make that happen. And as a venture capitalist, you really have to Be more realistic and maybe even super critical. But also at that time in my life I viewed being an investor as Kinda like a football coach.

1:22:57 You walk the sidelines, you send in plays, you make substitutions, you rant and rave at half time. But you never put any points on the board. And I was still in At that time in my life wanting to put points on the board, meaning Running a company, not being the better in the stands, but the jockey on the horse.

1:23:23 And so when I had an opportunity to become CEO of one of the companies Brentwood had helped to start I took that opportunity in a company In the magnetic recording components business called Senstore. What is your decision process like for something like that? Because you you mentioned with the venture capital general partner position.

1:23:47 Perhaps you are too optimistic. Everything sounded interesting. But When you make a decision to say become the CEO of a startup in the portfolio You're saying no to

1:23:59 Other things. Presumably. So h what was the decision process like in evaluating That And saying yes to it. It's again. Come up.

1:24:10 I mean I was part of a firm General partner of a firm. That had made a a significant investment In this company. And they felt that there was a need for

1:24:23 A new CEO. And so When they talk to me about it. It started out as well, can you go in there and help out? And be on the board and

1:24:38 Yeah. Evolved into can you go in there and run it? And I wasn't gonna say no to my partners. Did you in your mind or explicitly with them set expectations in the way that you did for yourself.

1:24:54 with the three term limit. As a congressman, did you go in to it saying I'm committing to this for X period of time and then we'll reevaluate or was it left totally open ended? Well, it was left open ended.

1:25:08 The goal of success Rather than how how long? And I think you're getting to a An issue that we're

1:25:17 I may not Be like a lot of other people. I don't do things for me. I do things for others. So

1:25:26 If you want to get down to what motivates you Finding something that I think is meaningful, that needs to be done, and recognizing I Couldn't help. Do it. And it's not about the money.

1:25:43 That's why I do things pro bono. My wife is not particularly thrilled with that. Approach. But on the other hand I focus on

1:25:54 Where can I make a difference for the benefit of others? Rather than what's in it for me. And I don't know whether that's unusual. But

1:26:04 It served me well. How do you Differentiate. Between The things that will

1:26:12 Have the greatest impact for others. And Feeling peer pressured. To commit to something, if that question makes any sense.

1:26:22 Because it seems like people pleasing and Committing to things that will help. the greatest number of other people or deeply help other people are two different things. And I guess I'm I'm just wondering if If there are times when you commit to, say doing certain things because the general partners to whom you've made a commitment

1:26:42 Ask you to do it. may not always be the same thing that will have The greatest impact. Maybe it's not a good question. I'm just wondering if you've ever run into a position where people want you to do one thing and you could be very good at it. But you feel like your

1:26:58 abilities are better put in a different place. Usually the decisions that I make About how I'm gonna spend my time and my life. Are made by me. Rather than responding to requests.

1:27:14 When I Him To offer my course here at Princeton. I hadn't gotten a phone call saying Hey Ed, would you please come and teach a high tech entrepreneurship course at Princeton?

1:27:28 Rather in uh June of nineteen ninety seven I asked for a meeting with the then Dean of the Engineering School, James Way. And in that meeting I proposed that the engineering school would benefit from having a rather comprehensive program in entrepreneurship. It just made perfect sense to me that

1:27:53 Engineers innovate. But in order to make a difference in the world that innovation has to then become real and commercialized and often in a Startup Venture. So exposing engineering students to that process and that opportunity

1:28:12 Seem to make sense. And That was the origin of the first offering of VLA four ninety one in the fall semester of nineteen ninety seven. Again an instance where I decided that there might be some value that I could create and

1:28:31 Now Entrepreneurship the Princeton way is pervasive across this campus. With many courses, with many Co curricular and extracurricular. programs for the benefit of

1:28:46 Student entrepreneurs. And The survey that I mentioned before out of four hundred of the students that took my course forgetting about including the courses, the many other courses that are now offered.

1:29:02 To have uh a hundred and sixty founders. of companies from that cadre. It would suggest to me that out of the total of sixteen hundred That there may be three, four hundred founders. And I still I'm touched.

1:29:19 When I got emails from students I may have had a dozen years ago. Saying Ed. You planted the seed. twelve years ago and it's finally sprouting. I've just founded my first company.

1:29:35 It took me this long, but You gave me the confidence to do it. How have you thought about Parenting. And your own kids because you're so deliberate in how you teach and you've

1:29:50 prepared so extensively n not just for the courses, but for each individual class. How have you thought about Parenting. Or how would you describe your Parenting style.

1:30:02 It's almost the same. Yeah. It's just that the students start A lot younger. Ha ha.

1:30:09 I believe that The best way to help people Find their way. Nurture them. Is through encouragement.

1:30:21 Rather than direction. When our children were young We have Three children. I coached

1:30:30 Thirteen soccer teams. All three of them played soccer at one time or another. I was a Cub Scout. Leader and a boy scout. Later.

1:30:42 We're really proud of the way our kids turned up. We were lucky. They were growing up in a good place at a good time. Probably not. A lot of the challenges that

1:30:54 All parents face today. With uh the world more complicated. With communications technology more advanced. But Loving'em.

1:31:05 Curing. And Letting'em know. They you love'em. And you care.

1:31:12 Yeah. It's kinda the secret, apparently. Could you speak to the encouragement instead of rather than direction? a bit more. Does that mean that you're Exposing them to a lot and whatever they gravitate.

1:31:27 towards naturally is what you then try to foster. Wha what does that mean? When you say encouragement instead of direction. They've gotta live their lives. You can't live their lives. I think I benefited a lot from

1:31:42 My own parents. They were proud of me. Whether I did well or not. I learn When I was maybe five, six, seven years old had a

1:31:53 Build radios and build Motors and A basement workshop from my father who Had a degree in electrical engineering, but Sadly, during the depression he lost his engineering job and got into a

1:32:08 An assignment that really Didn't have anything to do with engineering, but he c stayed in it in order to provide for his family. One thing that I remember from my Parents. I was

1:32:22 As we talked about earlier, a competitive figure skater. And sometimes I didn't do well. In a competition, I may have fallen, I may have not done a School figure, uh very well, not up to my ability. They never criticize me.

1:32:41 In those situations. They never put pressure on me. They were always supportive. And proud. Regardless of

1:32:51 how well I did relative to what I could have done. What might they say, let's just say on the car ride back after you've had for you a disappointing performance, what are the types of things they might say to you? Great job. Uh having been a soccer coach I know.

1:33:10 That not all parents act that way. Yeah. Sometimes parents are the problem. The players are just fine. Parents are a problem. Both of my parents

1:33:23 Weren't raised by their parents. My uh Mother was raised by her grandmother. My father was raised by his Mother sister

1:33:35 His mother died when he was about twelve years old. His father was in the German newspaper business in Montana, but he and his sister grew up in Omaha raised by His deceased mother's sister. And I think as a result

1:33:55 Of their not having parents? They wanted to be the best parents. And so my sister we n never had a whole lot of money. But my sister had ballet lessons and she was an exquisite Ballerina.

1:34:11 I had Piano lessons and Figure skating lessons and They just Wanted to be the best parents ever.

1:34:20 And I think they Felt blessed. To have Two children who

1:34:30 Wanted to succeed. We both studied hard. We're both good students. We b Went to college. We did other things besides that. And we wanna Both wanted our parents to be proud.

1:34:45 Where do you think that desire came from? Was it watching their example and the Perhaps the diligence with which your father showed you how to disassemble and reassemble these radios. Where did the desire to please them come from if what you most received was continuous positive feedback. The focus of my life was

1:35:10 To please them. Right. Or for them to be proud. I was in grade school, maybe even in kindergarten or or first grade. An overarching goal.

1:35:23 And that is to live a life that matters. To make a lasting positive difference in the world, I call it leaving footprints. That's what drives me. So Some

1:35:38 Say well my overarching goal is to be the richest person around. Or my overarching goal is To have a whole lot of adulation and Be a celebrity.

1:35:53 My goal. Maybe even in a quiet way. Is to Leave footprints on the world. Have there ever been times in your life where you felt like you've wandered

1:36:05 Or been pushed away from that and then have corrected course. I don't recall. I don't recall. I I've always Sort of march to my own drum. Yeah. Yeah, one of th that's another

1:36:19 Thanks. Maybe this is important. Yeah. Your audience. I

1:36:25 Always wanted to be different. There are People particularly with social media these days. That wanna be accepted that Wanna be like

1:36:37 If someone has a new kind of shoe or Sure. You know, others want to have the same thing. And so I've always had a desire to be different.

1:36:49 And maybe that Enables me not only to Venture where others may not venture, but Also to be Satisfied.

1:37:02 Doing something that Nobody else is doing. Are there any Books. That have had a particularly large impact on your life or that you've given the most to other people?

1:37:14 Or recommended. Well the four hour work we're Or the four hour body. Those are very fine books and everyone should read them. Besides those, of course.

1:37:31 On the top shelf. Are there any any books that come to mind that have impacted you strongly or that you've recommended to students or other people? When I was little. When I'm talking about little like Six, eight.

1:37:46 Ten years old. There was a whole series of Biographies. Written for Children my age.

1:37:57 Thomas Edison. Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin. And I would read those books over and over Because Their lives and what they accomplished.

1:38:13 We're What I hope to do. So it was that set of experiences. There was a book On the Wright brothers. And these were written for somebody my age. Now

1:38:27 You can read Walter Isaacson's book on Benjamin Franklin or on Steve Jobs or Walter Isaacson's book on Einstein. But it's the same thing. Yeah, or David McCullough's on the Wright Brothers. Yes. É fabulous, boa. Do you still read biographies? Is that kinda

1:38:48 All I care about. And it's the stories. The story is that Are inspirational. And it gets back to what we were talking about before with the case method. Where

1:39:04 When I'm reading a biography just like I'm hoping the students when they read a case that they think of themselves In that situation, and what would I do? And Reading Biographies Well is the wonderful McCullough book on the Wright brothers.

1:39:22 Amazing Lessons Oh. They didn't just go out, build a plane, and fly it. Ha ha ha.

1:39:30 A lot of setbacks. And uh disappointments. And struggles. In order to do what they did. The same with

1:39:41 All of those. It gets to what we were talking about before the Preparation, the commitment to Excellent. It doesn't happen overnight. People who achieve great things even though it may look like it happened.

1:39:58 quickly and uh easily and Everybody can do it. Most of those stories have a lot of sacrifice and difficulty and disappointments and Setbacks and them. For entrepreneurs

1:40:14 Whether it's Students in your classes or people listening, are there any particular biographies or books that you would Recommend. In particular.

1:40:24 Any stand outs or just particular Figures. Well Again. Don't buy the books because they have lessons in them.

1:40:34 Buy the books because they have stories in them. And There are a bunch of'em. My colleague at Princeton, Derek Liddow. has written a couple of

1:40:45 Books and the his most recent Is built on bedrock. And it's a lot of the book is about Walmart. And Sam Walton.

1:40:56 And how it started. And he went to the Walmart Archives. And based His stories about Walmart on those facts. But it's filled with

1:41:09 Stories about Companies that were built by people On Solid. Foundation.

1:41:17 Built on bedrock. I had a chance. The stories are so important, I think also for many reasons, of course, but also because it's really the glue That's We as humans are programmed to use to remember any of the lessons that might come out of those stories and

1:41:37 That's something that struck me when a few months ago I I was invited to go to Bentonville. Arkansas. and interview Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart. Uhhuh. For this podcast. But it was my first time in Northwest Arkansas, my first time in Bentville and I went to the

1:41:54 I was able to see Sam Walton's pickup truck. And the keys and the stories are what stick. And uh was it was a fascinating, fascinating experience. What are you most excited about? These days. You seem to be moving as quickly

1:42:11 Doing as many things as ever. You certainly don't strike me as someone who's ever idle. What are you personally most excited about? These days. I'm focusing Now on

1:42:23 Education. And My years of teaching of are just Part of it. But you look at higher education today, very expensive.

1:42:34 Lot of students would yeah. May not be prepared for first jobs. May not be prepared for a lifetime of contributions. And so just in the last couple of weeks I volunteered to be the interim president of

1:42:55 A wonderful Small college, Sierra Nevada College. Located in Incline Village, Nevada, right on the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Midst of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This is a college that has

1:43:12 A dedicated faculty with real life experience In the areas they teach. They're not just teachers. They've done What they teach. Yeah.

1:43:25 is a college in which entrepreneurship Is pervasive. It has some real Focus capabilities in

1:43:36 Environmental science. Well, right there on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Keep Taho blue. Environmental science is critical. In that area. What a wonderful place to Learn about that.

1:43:51 It has a strong Entrepreneurial based business. program. At the undergraduate level. And then it has a marvelous

1:44:02 Fine arts and creative writing. Program. You don't go there to major in neuroscience. You don't go there to major in philosophy. But if you wanna go to a

1:44:16 Small college with small classes with dedicated teachers. To be an entrepreneurial leader. Both in your first job and for a lifetime of contributions in Establishing and and building enterprises or uh being a leading uh environmental scientist with entrepreneurial approaches to that

1:44:42 Scientific work. Or You if you want to be like a writer You know Tim, better than anybody.

1:44:51 Writers aren't just Writers. They're entrepreneurs. Yeah. to creating content but then getting their content Right. And

1:45:03 Podcasting. That's a way of communicating with people. I have friends who are photographers. They became photographers. They didn't born photographers, but they became photographers, but they're entrepreneurs. So here's a a small college that

1:45:24 I've volunteered to lead until a successor with entrepreneurial leadership capabilities is identified and Takes office. And continue to promote this higher education approach. One of the challenges these days, as I just mentioned, was

1:45:44 How do we do this? Less expensively. And I believe That There are ways in which education can use technology.

1:45:55 To reduce the cost. I'm not advocating well there will never be any more classrooms. But a combination of that classroom experience with Online. Learning.

1:46:10 can reduce the cost of providing a top rated educational Institution. I'm also Attracted to Income sharing agreements. Perhaps

1:46:23 Your audience is not familiar with them, but Rather than taking out student loans. There are sources of financing where the student Signs an agreement.

1:46:36 to repay based on their income. above certain levels. And if they Never make That much they don't repay, but if they make more than that threshold level Then they

1:46:50 Pay and maybe Pay more than the amount of the debt. But having Students graduating With huge amounts of debt. reduces their choices.

1:47:02 And you asked me earlier, well How do you choose what you wanna do? Well I wanna change the world, I wanna Do Things that will benefit others. You have a lot of debt.

1:47:14 You may not be able to make those choices in that direction. You have to focus first on well how do I make m enough money to pay off my debt? So I don't know whether any of the people who are listening to this podcast Or thinking about enrolling in a a unique educational institution. But we do have a few

1:47:36 Openings left. for f entering freshman this even this fall in late August. So if there are people who are interested in coming to a get a uniquely valuable educational experience In a beautiful setting.

1:47:55 Look up. Sierra Nevada dot EDU Mm-hmm. And I'll link to that in the show notes for everyone as well. So You'll be able to find those links really easily.

1:48:06 The income sharing is very, very interesting to me. I don't have much exposure to it, but there are some programming schools, for instance. I believe one is called Lambda School. Which has this exact model and has proven very, very successful. It also puts a very uh productive onus on the Educators.

1:48:28 to really think through the practicalities of what they're teaching and how effective they are. how effectively they're imparting these skills to their students. Ed, do you have any particular quotes or mantras, anything that you Live your life by or remind yourself of Often are there any particular

1:48:50 You mentioned say one earlier, if you're Failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail. Do you have any other quotes that have really stuck with you? Do what you enjoy doing. Do it the best you know how, good things will happen.

1:49:04 I love it. I may be unusual Well, I don't know whether I'm this unusual. I like Two

1:49:13 Get out of my comfort zone. Do things I haven't done before. I believe that doing so Enables me to learn But the more I learn, the more I'm able to contribute.

1:49:26 To others. So doing the same thing. And being able to be the best at that. That's laudable. But

1:49:36 My mother had a problem with me when she was alive. I started out with this teaching. I mentioned how I got into it, the Sanford Graduate School of Business. And after I'd done that for a while. I said Mom I'm gonna start a company.

1:49:52 And she said, Buzzy That was my nickname. And my sister still calls me Buzzy and my high school friends call me Buzzy. Buzzy, you were just getting good at teaching. And now you're gonna start a company. You don't know anything about that. And then the company did okay and we took it public and I said

1:50:15 Mother, I'm gonna run for Congress. Buzz it. You were just getting good at running a company. You don't know anything about politics. And She lived long enough.

1:50:30 So that she saw me sworn in to the US House of Representatives in January of nineteen eighty three. And then she passed away that April. How did she respond to seeing you sworn in? She didn't express her emotions. And our feelings a lot.

1:50:50 But I believe she was proud. I'm sure she was. How could she not be? Yeah.

1:50:57 You have a uh an incredible Tradition. That's I think is so suiting. to you and it's so memorable for so many of your students.

1:51:09 And it has to do with Singing. And uh it seems like there have been a few different versions of this. But Where did the singing

1:51:19 Enter the picture. With your Teach it. Well it started way before the Started way before that.

1:51:25 Oh yeah. When I was Probably in grade school I would write. Poems about Thanks.

1:51:34 Like The busy bee is lively. All he does is buzz. But yesterday he stung me. And now he is a was.

1:51:47 Exactly. That's that's something you wrote? Going way back. And then uh I started Composing using music that already existed. Then When I was in first teaching

1:52:06 At the Stanford Graduate School of Business. There was a tradition there where in the spring in May They held a joint faculty student Event Called the spring fling.

1:52:22 And The faculty would prepare a skit. It had perhaps Acting it had perhaps some Songs.

1:52:33 And I became the writer. For the faculty skits. And then there were student skits as well. My most famous song I wrote many for those skits about various courses and

1:52:50 Well, primarily about courses. But then I'd also write the words and we had uh Takeoff on Batman and Robin and we had uh Mission impossible ski Where I'd write the songs and the m music.

1:53:05 And even after I left The faculty. As a teacher. And I'd started my company, they kept me on the Stanford business school faculty from The time I left, which was nineteen seventy.

1:53:20 To nineteen eighty one. So I could continue to be the writer of the faculty skit. Well the most famous song I wrote was About The linear programming algorithm.

1:53:36 It was called the simplex method. Where poor students in nineteen sixty six uh when I was teaching the quantitative methods course had to learn how to do this. And linear programming was Abbreviated L P linear programming. And so I wrote a song about the algorithm that was mathematically correct.

1:54:00 That if you listen to the words. You could do the simplex algorithm to achieve an optimal solution to a linear programming problem. But I wrote it in the form of a dance. And it went something like this Come on gang now gather round, see what your math profin down. Get in close and listen to me, I'm gonna show you how to do the LP. It's a new dance, but it's easily done. In fact You learned it in two hundred sixty one, just to make sure that you can do it. Listen close while I review it. Do the LP Come on baby do the LP with me. We're going to pivot step two.

1:54:44 Day and night and optimized it out of sight. And then it went through a series of verses. With the details of the Simplex algorithm. First of all, form a big strong line ah that's it you're looking fine find behind that line for

1:55:03 Form one more come on everybody get out on the floor. Keep forming lines one after one when you're out of cats, then you're done. Now you see how I get my kicks I've got all. Y'all in a big matrix do the LP Come on baby do the LP. We're going to pivot step. Day and night and optimized out of sight.

1:55:27 Ha ha ha. Incredible. So you You use stories, you use music.

1:55:39 I feel like these are communication skills that sort of transcend the era in which you were born. I mean these you could have gone back a thousand years and used these. And your students remember these things. They really remember these things. And I'd love for you to Talk about Another song.

1:56:02 that I certainly was exposed to and that is my way. And why you chose that song? I was teaching a Harvard Business School in uh nineteen ninety six a course called Entrepreneurial Finance. And

1:56:18 For the last class. Of the course I wanted to end with a number of stories. And s share with students my Philosophies and

1:56:31 It was a captive audience. Attendance was mandatory. And I thought What would be an appropriate Message to convey.

1:56:44 And That message we've talked about Did earlier parenting Teaching. The message is just do it your way.

1:56:56 And so then I thought of the song My Way and I Put some words to that. Song This course's end is here.

1:57:09 But I have in this final session. Uh thought. For your career. It is a most important lesson as you go down life's path. Whether slow in a hurry.

1:57:27 We call the Nike and Just do it your way. Uh It brings back the memories. It not only brings back the memories, but it just refreshes The

1:57:43 Mark that you had on me and continue to have. And I really Just want to

1:57:53 Thank you, Ed, for Doing things your way. It's really had such an incredible impact on so many people, and I'm not gonna mention him by name, but he's a mutual friend of ours. You introduced us because we were both students of yours, but He's a very, very, very successful entrepreneur. And uh we were going back and forth.

1:58:13 Emailing. Yeah. And He in closing Says.

1:58:20 Please give my best to Ed. Any success I've had in business was due to him. That is an incredible sentence. And It's incredible. Also because

1:58:31 He is not the only student who would write that. I've met students of yours From China I've met students of yours. From countries around the world who have some version Of that sentiment. And it's so incredible and it's been such a

1:58:50 Privilege and such a great stroke of luck. But I ended up in your class. And I just want to say that to you because it's had such a significant

1:59:01 impact on the trajectory of my life. And certainly for me, that's a big deal. That's a really, really big deal. So I just wanted to thank you. Thank you, Tim. And Now you know why I do what I do. I concluded a long time ago that

1:59:17 I'm not gonna be able to change the world. Alone? I said My goal in life is to live a life that matters, I call leaving footprints. But

1:59:28 I can Better achieve my goal. Leaving footprints with your feet. Ha. Yeah.

1:59:36 And so That's why I do what I do. Well Ed I hope this is certainly I mean, I can't wait to have dinner. We're gonna have dinner after this and continue to catch up. I can't wait to see what you do next.

1:59:51 And I'm So, so happy to have a chance to Spend time together today. And

1:59:59 This has been a real pleasure for me. To do this. Well, I'm proud of you, Tim. And I'm Proud of so many people who

2:00:09 You refer to Who have Taken my course, they've taken many other courses, they've had other experiences. But They go out and

2:00:19 Do great stuff. And deep down I Say to myself, Well I'm really glad I lost that Senate race.

2:00:28 Ha ha ha. Because otherwise I I may not have been able to do what I've been doing. Yeah. Sounds strange to say, but I I'm also glad

2:00:39 I'm really glad for my sake and for the sake of many people that you lost that sentence. And uh you've just done so much. So much good. And uh you're gonna continue to do so much good. It's really inspiring. And I think this is a great place to to wrap up. Is there anything else you would like to say or

2:00:59 close with anything you'd like to recommend to people, anything at all that you'd like to Well, I've told you my story. And with You know, some detail.

2:01:11 Based on Tim's question. But Most important thing for you to do Use. Speaking to the audience.

2:01:20 Is To do it your way. Don't Just Follow what

2:01:27 It's recommended. Don't just Pursue What others are pursuing. But Do what

2:01:36 You enjoy doing Do it the best you know how. Good things though. Happen. And

2:01:44 If you're Thinking more about doing something different than you're currently doing. It's time for a change. Ha ha I could not imagine a better place.

2:01:55 To close. We're gonna go grab some food and continue the conversation, but thank you so much for Taking the time to do this. Oh, this is a a real treat, too.

2:02:07 And uh Oh I noticed that There's a blackboard that's dirty and and erasers that need cleaning. So um Good to it. Yeah, there is literally A whiteboard right behind me. So I'm gonna get back to my my my other tasks cleaning up for Ed and to be continued and to everybody listening.

2:02:29 I will include everything we've talked about in the show notes. which you can find as always at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And I hope you enjoyed this even half as much as I did. And thank you so much for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. Albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then

2:03:30 I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled LMNT. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike, and I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suit to folks following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water and you might not have the right balance.

2:04:22 That's often when I drink it, or if you're doing any type of endurance exercise, mountain biking, et cetera, another application. If you've ever struggled to feel good on keto, low carb, or paleo, it's most likely because even if you're consciously consuming electrolytes, you're just not getting enough. and it relates to a bunch of stuff like a hormone called aldosterone, blah blah blah, when insulin is low, but suffice to say, this is where element, again spelled LMNT, can help. My favorite flavor by far is citrus salt, which, as a side note, you can also use to make a kick-ass no-sugar margarita. But for special occasions, obviously, you're probably already familiar with one of the names behind it, Rob Wolf, R-O-B-B, Rob Wolf. who is a former research biochemist and two time New York Times bestselling author of the Paleo Solution and Wire to Eat. Rob created Element by scratching his own itch. That's how it got started. His Brazilian jujitsu coaches turned him on to electrolytes as a performance enhancer, things clicked, and bam, company was born. So if you're on a low carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness.

2:05:29 Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, all that's garbage, unneeded, there's none of that in Element. And a lot of names you might recognize are already using Element. It was recommended to be by one of my favorite athlete friends, three Navy SEAL teams as prescribed by their Master Chief, Marine Units, FBI sniper teams, at least five NFL teams who have subscriptions. They are the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA weightlifting and on and on. You can try it risk free. If you don't like it, Element will give you your money back, no questions asked. They have extremely low return rates. Get your free Element sample pack with any drink mix purchase at Drink. Element.com slash Tim. That's drinklmnt.com slash Tim. And if you're an Element Insider, one of their most loyal customers, you have first access to Element Sparkling, a bold 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Again, Check it all out. Drinkelement.com slash Tim Drink L M N T. dot com slash tip

2:06:29 This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. I have been using 8Sleep Pod cover for years now. Why? Well by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like Fitted Sheet, you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed. 8Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I'm excited to test it out. Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically. More on that in a second. First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20 degrees below room temperature, keeping you and your partner cool, even in a heat wave. Or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down. This solves all of that. Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience. And for those snore heavy nights, The pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop you or your partner from snoring. Plus with the pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the night. stand. You won't need them because these types of metrics are integrated into the Pod4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible sensors which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV. Their heart rate tracking as just one example is at 99% accuracy. So

2:07:48 Get your best night's sleep. Head to 8sleep.com slash Tim and use code Tim to get$350 off of the Pod4 Ultra. That's$8Sleep all spelled out 8Sleep.com slash Tim and code Tim T I M to get$350 off. the Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.