# Billion-dollar Acquisitions, Private Jets, and the Art + Science of Persuasion

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDYz-Jwgkw8
Duration: 1 hr 4 min
Language: English
Words: 12329
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/ZDYz-Jwgkw8

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[0:00] my framework is to own what you can control in the process being able to know what you're opening with and know what you're moving towards next it's very simple but it's a lot of people have missed I think sales there's the art and there's the science people don't close if they think you need it more than they do you're going to drive value to the person who is saying yes and they can't get that value without what you're offering getting the job selling private jet store Warren Buffett was one of the hardest sales processing I ever went through I still believe that pressing flesh as we used to say shaking hands it

[0:37] matters Andy welcome to the show thanks for having me so I met you 12 or so years ago and you were my first introduction to like people in this world who have crazy stories before then I had just read about people like you and then you told me I think I said tell me a bit about yourself Andy and you said first I sold private jets I sold a company to Facebook and then what was after that after that was we sold ways to Google all right then I was like then I sold to come into Google and I was like who is this guy you're like in your

[1:12] early 30s yeah yeah yeah it was uh you know I learned early on in my career and well early on in my life that I was I really enjoyed convincing people of things and later on in life I learned that that's called sales uh and I think that there's two types of people in this world people who know their own sales and people that are in denial at their own selves and I think you know soon we all kind of just understand that we're all selling something even if it's an idea a restaurant recommendation whatever it is we're also in something if we're just gonna get comfortable with

[1:49] that and we understand that that's a skill we might be able to have a little bit more of what we want and bring do people along with us so how do you get good at sales like if if sales is important and we all could use it as a secret weapon is there a framework for being a pro at sales yeah there are a lot of Frameworks um my Tick Tock algorithm shows me a lot of different people telling me their framework for sales uh my framework is to own what you can control in the in the process that there's so much in a process of

[2:26] convincing somebody of something or committing them to join your team or buy your product or take your ideas is worth another piece of the conversation to just own the part of it that you can control so my first job out of college was selling life insurance and I have to tell you that life insurance is one of the least sexy things you can possibly sell because the opening part of the conversation begins have you recently thought about your death and then you'd have to recover from that and I ended up being the number one life insurance salesman in America in in the rookie class when I was 23 years old because I

[2:58] learned how to own what I could control and the only thing that I can control in the process was it wasn't who said yes because one out of three people would say yes so there's two people that I had no control over their nose and to get to three pitches I had to start with 10 leads there were seven people who were leads that were not gonna ever let me pitch and so I said I want X number of sales so I multiplied the number of pitches I needed to do by three and I multiplied that number by 10 to get how many leads I needed to get and every week I just

[3:32] went out and made sure I got that many new pens that would turn into threes which would turn into ones because I didn't control who who would say yes I didn't control who would let me Pitch I just controlled making that the reach out to the people in there and for different parts of our Lives we're going to go through different amounts of 10 threes and ones um in dating you know you gotta kiss a lot of frogs sometimes to find the person who you want to spend a little bit more time with to in your case find the person you want to spend the rest of

[4:01] your life with Congratulations by the way and and it's a process right but there were it's not everything's a funnel it doesn't have to be unsexy but it does break down to you know number of people we spoke to a number of people we spent time with so remember the one person that we wanted to actually send a life not everything's a funnel but everything's a funnel yes and so I think that that getting good at fails getting good at being persuasive getting good at bringing people along with you on a journey is figuring out which part of that process you're in control of and then knowing what the

[4:37] next step is after that after the part that you're in control of right so in sales it's you make a pitch or you make a presentation in recruiting it's you can put together an offer in dating it's the ask for the next date be able to know what you're oh like what you're opening with and know what you're moving towards next is what a lot of people it's very simple but it's what a lot of people have missed I've been on sales calls uh you know a lot of sales calls where I've had people say so what do you think and I said sounds like an amazing

[5:07] opportunity and they said okay great well uh thanks so much for your time I was like you haven't I haven't said yes yet I just paid you a compliment like you have to ask for the business and that's what separates you have to ask for the next step and that's what separates people who have dabbled with the skill of sales from people who haven't really perfected it when I was a teenager I I realized the importance of sales you know I don't know I was a weird teenager I guess and I was selling agency services at the time my top of the funnel was I'd add people on

[5:41] LinkedIn I'd get their email address and then I'd basically say hey like I looked at your website kind of sucks I can make it better here's how I would do it I basically this is like pre-calibly and stuff like that I'd say here's my phone number call me anytime like the access like just here's my phone number call me anytime I realized I was closing no one basically on these phone calls um maybe it was my pre-pubescent voice um or maybe it just I just I couldn't get my story tied enough so I found this guy who he was 31 32 at the time he had

[6:16] built a big agency and I I basically said hey would you be willing to sit on 5 or 10 or 15 of my calls yep write notes and tell me all the things I'm doing poorly and he did that for eight nine ten calls gave me notes paid him for his time okay those sets of notes like for me like changed the whole uh course of my life right um what do you think about that what do you think about people giving you notes on sales calls like is it you know yeah what do you think yeah I think sales there's the art and there's the science right the

[6:55] science is you know the law of large numbers you know ten three to one right the art is making it you know five three to one right so instead of having 10 leads I get to three pensions to get you one right being able to reduce the spread of the the reduced of the the magnitude of the funnel is the the arch that happens and that's where a mentor can be just years ahead of what uh you'd be able to figure out on your own you will figure it out on your own like everybody he didn't figure it out I don't know anything good enough at that but if you

[7:28] can you know wisely get somebody to give you that give you notes and say hey here's what I heard you say and here's what you could have said hey you get really excited when they start to agree with you and you you're almost like that guy at the bar that needs to get laid and like they're like oh my gosh he really needs the sale like people don't close if they think you need it more than they do right if it's your agenda versus theirs they're like oh this is this is not going to be good for me you know what but if if you look like you've

[7:59] done this a million times just a part of the process this is what we do next you kind of guide them through those steps those are the types of notes that uh somebody who's done this a lot can give you and maybe speed up your clothes your clothes ratio and and the art side of your your sales is there a difference between selling a ten thousand dollar website or a one billion dollar app to Google for example what what use when you sold ways to Google the fundamentals are almost the same you're going to drive value to the person who is saying yes and they can't get that value without

[8:40] what you're offering if that's the way that you frame it right that you know what I you know raised over 100 million dollars of venture funding for companies I've been a part of companies I've raised over 100 million and then now the coach you know getting close to a billion of funding that's come into companies that I have been a part of in some way shape or form all of that when positioned as an opportunity for somebody to participate in the upside to go on the journey to be on the rocket ship is the same as me starting off my career selling lawn mowing services in Dallas Texas there's

[9:14] something that I was offering to do that this person either did it want to or couldn't do themselves and I had built the infrastructure of the company the the offering that they were excited about and they said you know what for the time that I'm going to get back you'll own my lawn versus me really well like that's worth 20 bucks sure and if you can kind of break it down on the value exchange and you kind of come at people as I have something and you have something I have the thing you want you okay I want you have money I have Services should we bring those two two together

[9:48] do we both feel good about this fantastic let's move on um that is what most of the negotiations that I've ever been a part of that moved forward that was the the spirit or the feeling that was in the room was everybody was getting what they wanted and they were willing to part with what they had do you remember a particular time where it was like one of the hardest negotiations of your life or one of the hardest sales of your life and it just sticks in your brain as like uh a marquee Marquee moment getting the job selling private jets for Warren Buffett was one of the

[10:25] hardest sales processing I ever went through because the guys that ran the company were literally the 40 best sales guys in America and so to convince a sales guy to let you be a sales guy with them is a really arduous process because they like you're the guy who gave you notes was that was very nice of him these guys are not giving me notes after retention interview right uh they're not being kind until once I got on the team awesome best people in the world right A lot of people uh know Jesse itzler right Jesse was my boss yeah you know when I was selling private jets and like

[11:02] watching him operate up close and in person was like incredible and the whole team at Marcy jet back 2006 to 2009 was like Jesse and baby Jesse's right and and like you get to be a part of that crew for a few years and like run the Texas sales region for Warren Buffett's private jet company was absolutely what I wanted to do but I think it took me three three tries uh to get in there and to like show them how hard I was willing to work which other than you know they said we only hire people almost 15 years in sales experience and I said well I

[11:36] started my lawnmower company once well 26 now so like I'm just one year shy they're like no that doesn't count but they ended up hiring me when I was 28. but you know being able to be one of the youngest guys on the team was totally worth all the effort that I put into it and all the you know I'm going to be in New York for meetings and I just flew and hung out had their office and waited until like I could get through the phone be like hey I'm actually nearby can I swing by to continue the conversation that we were having I set my business

[12:03] plan to five different hotels in San Francisco knowing that the CEO is going to be in San Francisco I knew we'd only stay at one in five hotels and he called me he goes how did you get this into my room those were the types of things that I was trying to do to show them like like I'll do this to get the job imagine what I will do the way I one of the ways I got I got to know you actually was you were throwing a dinner called the good people dinner good good people great dinner I was living in Montreal at the time and you like sent an email uh

[12:36] you're like yeah I'm having a dinner tomorrow or something you should come by and I remember looking you know I was in college at the time and I remember looking at flights and it was like for whatever reason it was like I don't know two thousand dollars or super expensive and I was like ah you know a part of me is like I shouldn't do this but I take out my credit card I swipe it I show up to the dinner and I end up like from that dinner I met you which has been super fruitful but also met like a bunch of like lifelong friends yeah

[13:10] um from that dinner so I feel like one of the biggest hacks to when I look back at my career one of the biggest hacks is just being like yeah I'm in town totally like get on the plane like that's one of the biggest sales hacks it's just just being okay to get on a plane and and acknowledging that it's a funnel like not every dinner is going to be amazing and not every meeting is going to work but you have to be willing to to get on a plane yeah I I am in London right now I got here this morning I knew that this you know this call was

[13:45] still scheduled I mentioned my flights were around us to have this conversation and there was a meeting that last week I found out about and they're like do you want to zoom or or are you guys based in London or where I was like oh I'm actually gonna be a little next week because you don't get the opportunity that I had this morning to meet with the person I met with in person and I still believe that pressing flesh as we used to say shaking hands like it matters there's certain there's certain times when it matters and there are certain things that will will happen in

[14:21] a room that you just can't pick up on a zoom and it's not everything I'm I'm very grateful to not be challenged 200 days a year like I used to but there there is a threshold that I will hop on a plane and I'll be back in New York you know in a couple days but totally worth it to help across the pond for the meeting I had this morning and another one tomorrow I think they're I think there's a story with you and I want to say someone at Coca-Cola or Delta and you missed a flight do you know what I'm talking about I do I do yeah I I was uh

[14:58] speaking at MIT I had been invited to join this panel and it was in a panel of academics and I'm you know a homeschool kid from Texas that got a finance degree from Texas A M and these are like double IVs right everybody's intellectually like they're they're the ones who should be speaking at MIT and I did a lot of prep work for this panel I knew everything about all their businesses and I but I wanted you know I wanted it to be friendly and cordial but I love panels where you can disagree just just enough to to spark a conversation and so I did that on a couple points that I

[15:29] thought you know this is this for the audience would be great I mean you know I'm rushing back to New York and I hear behind me hey brilliant really enjoyed what you shared today and you know a gentleman who I had not seen before the auditorium and so as we're like literally repacking our bags after having weapon GSA I was like hey by the way my name is uh I was I was like you know what were we up before he goes oh I just got hired as the new head of digital for Coca-Cola and I'm trying to learn as fast as I can I'm working for a startup that would

[15:59] very much like to be involved with Coca-Cola at the time and I said I said oh you know what what stood out to you from today so he starts to talk and we're kind of walking together towards the gate and I'm not late for my flight but I'm pretty close to late like boarding is happening pretty soon and I say would you like to get a beer and he goes oh yeah you know I'm here actually early so you know sure and so we're sitting at the Pug or you know uh Boston bar the Boston airport bar and I can hear them paging my name passenger

[16:28] Elwood last fall pass and I say you want another round and I know that I'm missing my flight but I'm keeping my poker face as polymer collected as I can and so we have a couple beers we call them two ideas and I said hey when I get back to New York tomorrow I'm going to follow up with you on both those ideas you know does that sound like a a great next step for us you know this is really productive conversation he said absolutely thanks so much for for the beers when he walks through his game catches this fight makes it home to The Stairway to Atlanta

[16:58] and I end up booking like the 11 p.m puddle jump you know that and sit middle seat which I'm not a middle seed type guy and but that got that connection and was able to do one of those ideas that with Coca-Cola and my favorite part is that I later hired him to be the CMO of my last startup and it was his way five years later six years later to leave Coca-Cola he served his time he done what he wants to do at Coca-Cola and he you know he came in and you know was CMO for a little bit and then said hey you know startup life

[17:32] really isn't for me but he lost his own agency and now it's one of the most successful digital agencies uh between digital agency in Atlanta and all because I just was willing to miss a flight and buy buy a couple beers and you never know who you're gonna sit next to in life right yeah and so let me tell you a story like that so I'm flying home from Vegas CES um when I was living in San Francisco to Las Vegas to San Francisco back row middle seat and I have this guy next to me who is like keeps like basically sleeping on me you know he's just like

[18:14] going on my chair and I'm kind of like light lighting lightly moving him to my right coming on my chair you know it's Vegas right he's he's he was probably up for 32 hours let's say yeah yeah I you know I didn't know who I was sitting next to right so I I and I'm a positive guy and I anyways I started talking to him I was like Hey like are you okay like you've been kind of like coming in my seat so oh I'm so tired I had such a bit busy CES we start talking turns out he's a co-founder of Lyft wow and yeah

[18:46] he's a co-founder of Lyft and we get talking and he's like you know telling me he's just oh I'm so tired but I'm excited to play tennis when I get back I was like oh we should play tennis sometime and all of a sudden I have this relationship with the co-founder of a multi-billion dollar company who like to this day like I have that relationship with yes and the lesson really for me was always lead with kindness and positivity and you never know who's sitting next to you 100 in situations like that what's you know when you lead with kindness and positivity how do you know to continue it right like how how

[19:24] long did it take for you to get to he's the co-founder of Lyft because he didn't probably lead with that only at the end of the flight did he tell me he was the co-founder of Lyft so only after we had talked about tennis like I was playing tennis with him even before I knew he was the co-pounder of left wow right yeah sure yeah um because we had we were talking about tennis and but there was something inside me that was like there's something interesting about this guy yeah um and there's something that I was just following my curiosity like I I really I'm sure you feel you feel this a lot of

[20:02] the time when you meet someone and you kind of just sense that like oh there's something to this person and you you can't put your finger on it I had that same feeling with him and as we're getting up as we're getting up uh off the plane he's like oh by the way you're in Tech right I was like yeah he goes I think you might know him with a company that I started wow uh and he's like it's left wow I have always admired your curiosity and you're willing to test things um you know I followed you into the you know the one million follower yeah

[20:37] Challenge on Tick Tock um and I I just crossed over 500 followers last week so yeah didn't quite make it either um you know but what what where did where does curiosity show up the most for you I think curious people are curious everywhere like it isn't something that is siled into relationships or you know just when you go out to you know I just got I just grabbed the coffee right before this at the coffee shop and like started talking to the Barista about real estate in this particular town that I'm in like I just feel like Curious people are curious people I've learned that when you're curious it increases

[21:22] your you know what people call the luck surface area like you become more lucky if if you're curious that being said you also get burned and rejected 100 times more when you're when you're curious right so like you have to be okay with being burnt and I have plenty of examples of like yeah I was curious and I got rejected or burnt and it sucked right it sounds like curiosity came first but then a an ability to deal with rejection came second yeah I think I don't know I was always taught like to go out and in the you know for my parents and grandparents to go to go out

[22:00] in the world and be okay with rejection so as a as a child I was just like okay rejection is a part of life right like it just it it is and if you're not getting rejected then you're not doing life properly just like if you're not breathing you know something is wrong if you believe that rejection is a part of life then the next step is okay well I want to be curious about the world around me and I'm gonna go try a bunch of different things and then I just learned that like the coolest people on this planet are the most curious people on this planet

[22:32] and have collected the most interesting experiences like you and that's what drew me to you what drew me to you is you told me about stories and and experiences that at that point I had only read about in in books and I don't believe you can be an interesting person if you're not curious I completely agree with that and and I think that dealing with rejection and curiosity I I find are just they just go hand in hand with my favorite people and I think that I I actually if I you know if I were to drill back you know because I don't know about you but

[23:06] I I've recently moved on from some friendships and relationships that you know not because they're a bad person but they just they just stop that like actually the way I broke it down was they just stopped being curious and they just kind of said no I understand the world now right and like and and that like that was it like they're like this is as far as I go and I'm like well I'm still I'm still going and they're like but dude why are we hanging out anywhere else I was like because we're talking about the exact same thing that we're talking about like six months ago like like what what's new

[23:40] in your world I'm still still just frustrated about that thing that happened like I'm frustrated about anything to happen yesterday but not that thing um and I'm curious if if because you're you're kind of at the spot you know in in your professional world where people who come along and people who have said I'm good and I'm curious if that's true for you the way it has one for me so I've actually had a lot of epiphanies around friendships since covid um and even a little bit before kovid and I'll give you them so one of them and I actually have a note in my iPhone

[24:19] I'm gonna pull it up 2019 I felt like I can walk around San Francisco and I knew everyone people would like wave to me and I knew all the cool restaurants and the bars they let me in and I just like I really felt that I I'd come here years before and I gotten to know what you know people there yeah and I almost like I had the key to the city and one day I realized and it's when I wrote this note I said SF the city where everyone knows you everyone knows you but it's the loneliest City on the planet wow and the reason I had that Epiphany

[25:00] is you know I think it's I think Eric Clapton covered this song called nobody knows you when you're down and out and I don't know the original songwriter but the basic idea is that like as soon as you're not cool in San Francisco for whatever reason your quote unquote friends all of a sudden disappear your company runs out of cash and you have to close down you're you know something something happens you're you're doing crypto and it's no longer cool you're doing AI when it's no longer cool right like for whatever reason you're out of favor watch how these people that you met in a place like San Francisco

[25:41] um like how often they're gonna text you so that was one big Epiphany that was that the people that I considered professional friends a lot of them were were merely there just because they're climbing their own ladders um and the second thing I I I heard somebody say people don't want to be a part of the process they want to be a part of the outcome right totally totally and then the second thing is at Cove during covid I actually reconnected with my old like high school and grade school friends and I started this like group chat with like a bunch of them they haven't sold companies for a billion

[26:16] dollars to Google they are just regular people um with no audiences never started a company never sold a company you know read about Venture Capital maybe but don't know really what it is and just out of our world and I realize that those people like salted the Earth people like that they don't care like if I sell a company or I have a million followers or don't they just like they just like me for whatever reason um so that was a big Epiphany around friendship that was number two has that continued post-tandemic yeah yeah awesome I would say like I have like two groups of friends now I basically like

[27:00] have a smaller group of professional friends that are the people that might have been in SF but were actually my friends so I've trimmed that down from I don't know a big number to to five and I trimmed like and then I have this new like well new slash old group of friends that I've rekindled you've built so many communities quickly what part of those two truths right about the the San Francisco friends and the old friends informs the way that you think about the new communities that you're building there well I think uh some of the communities that we build the quickest end up following the quickest with

[27:42] respect to communities when you build a community really quickly you should actually be really cautious like great communities are aren't built quickly they're built over slowly over time and compounded yeah so that's that's the biggest lesson there is that like I'd rather Community grow 10 to 20 a month not 200 or 2 000 a month right and I just think that that's just a more sustainable way to grow a community and that's why I think I'm not a huge fan of venture capital and like Venture funding communities because I think what Venture is is I want to grow this as quick as possible but the greatest communities you know it's oil

[28:22] and water with that there's a a psychologist from the 70s and 80s a comedian psychologists named Scott Peck and he's written a handful of books but in one of his books um The Road Less Traveled he talks about the four stages of community and he breaks them down into Studio Community chaos anger and true community the pseudo Community is we both have this thing that we like in common we both like AI we're in a community together hey like awesome Community for people they're like yeah and then you start to get to know people in the community and you're like wait a second you disagree with me about like

[29:09] all like a lot of other stuff and then you go into chaos there's like a chaos moment in the community like slaughtering a big Community we're like we don't actually agree on everything like but like like this happens with like sports fans or people that you went to class with like the thing that brought you together is no longer the only reason that you spend time together and they're like man I totally voted differently than these people but we bought like AI what am I supposed to do and then you go through like anger and like despair like I don't I don't wasn't even real like

[29:42] did any of it matter but if you can go through that and be like yeah but you know what I still pick them I still want them to be in my world like yeah we disagree with about 70 of things but the 30 of things that we agree on super great like that's where our friendship is built that's where our relationship is built that's where our community is built and that's the that's what we're going to focus on that's the true Community not where everybody agrees about everything but there's a guiding set of principles that say Hey the core Basics we're all in on that piece

[30:14] it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be the original thing that brought you together but like the way that we're operating is we're operating as you know a curious Community that's the community we're operating we just want to keep learning Collective knowledge what does that look like you know the topic we all showed up for originally was crypto we moved on to AI whatever but we're still learning together and we're making each other better as a true Community but most people quit somewhere in between chaos and despair you said something you asked a really interesting question when I was talking about the Lyft co-founder you

[30:47] said when did you know that he was the Lyft co-founder yeah which is a really astute question and a lot it relates to this because when you're meeting people within the professional context and you and you know what they're doing right away it's very hard to build long-lasting community because you might be you know being friends with someone because they're the CMO of Nike or something like that I want to tell you a story about last week I'm not a particularly a religious person but I went to a religious event and the leader of this uh Community was like Hey like I've never seen you here

[31:28] um would you like to have dinner with my wife and myself and a few other friends who are in from out of town I said I'm a curious guy right I'm like sure so I show up it's a four-hour dinner not once did anyone at the table ask me what I do it was just not at all there wasn't even it didn't even pop into it and by the end of this meal like I felt like these were my brothers and sisters so I think there's a lot that we can learn about Community Building from from religion I grew up a very religious person and have had a a Wandering Journey somebody

[32:10] called a prodigal son journey of my own where I was like I was like okay yeah I I understand all that now like I I know how to win at church I'll see you later and I kind of peace out for for a while well I'm saying I peace out for a while because that's just like every single person I knew growing up believed the exact same things that I believed and totally and they truthfully a lot of them still do um and and so when I go home you know they similarly you know to your your friends at home don't really know what I do

[32:43] um don't really understand a lot of those conversations but they do ask a lot like which church are you going to in New York right like it's the thing that they know to act and I'm not really that great great of friends with a lot of those people anymore but in thinking about communities that are not built around what can I get out of this but what can I give to this right which is what I think at its at its Pinnacle at its best is what religious communities that I've had the opportunity to observe exhibit I think there's a there's a chance for religion 3.0 if I'm if I go through my Rolodex

[33:22] and Founders the number of Founders that I know who grew up with some amount of religion in their life pretty high like it's it's north of 70 like they grew up believing in something that they couldn't see and so they're pretty comfortable being the startup founder because they're believing in something they can't see I did this this idea of state is not weird to them they're like hey I spent my entire high school going to the youth group on Sunday nights talking about things that I've never seen and but maybe like it made me feel something so cool and they pursued other things in their life that take some

[33:59] faith but I think that so there were so many Bad actors and so many I don't say scandals but so many reasons to like walk away from organized religion that people just like baby with the bathwater throw the whole thing out good bad and definitely the ugly and we just all went internal to work on ourselves in the past 20 years 25 years has just been you know the spirituality of you what are what like what are you you are the god inside of yourself and what I'm seeing in a lot of conversations I'm having is people looking to be part of something bigger than themselves that will Outlast them

[34:39] and they're realizing it's not it's not their startup and it's at their newsletter and they thought you know whatever thing that they're working on right now they know it probably won't Outlast them and it's definitely is not a global worldwide thing right the chances of doing that you know we all believe Silicon Valley or uh we all believed to The Social Network and we're like oh my God it was not gonna do it I can definitely do it like I'm much more well smoking than Mega list give us joy and communities that are more about giving I think you're going to have a really big rise in popularity I mean I think

[35:15] that's why burning men took off like look at the popularity of Burning Man like 20 like 20 years ago versus today and it's just gotten bigger and bigger have you been to burning man I've been one time and like describe what your Burning Man experience was and why it's a great example of community yeah but I'll just describe it and explain why I'm going back this year yeah okay yeah exactly so I had I had been invited to go quite a few times and the idea of truthfully taking that much time to be literally Off the Grid right because cell phones don't work there and there's

[35:58] no money there and everything's a barber system and there's not really like hours in a day there's what do you feel like doing like do I sleep you should sleep if you want to stay up all night you can sleep all night you know I watched the sunrise eight days in a row the last two times I had not gone to sleep in between like I just I just watched yeah they call it the double sunrise and like sober like I wasn't you know I was not enhancing myself to you know make sure that I stayed up again I just was like I finally clicked and so I I was you know

[36:29] I I had two friends that were my sponsors they said hey yeah we're gonna help you with all you know it takes a little bit to figure out how to get there and what you need to packing and then they just kind of like got me there and we're we're friendly for the first day and they're like all right go experience it and I and to talk about place where you can be curious because everybody there is just faciled by everybody else there um and you know a city of 80 000 people pops up in less than two weeks and disappears in less than two weeks and in

[36:59] the process you have everything that you need if you fully Trend and fully there and no one knew what my name was my my fire name they call it the Playa my Playa name was boots they had no idea what I did outside of Burning Man they didn't know my real name didn't know what my couple was anywhere truly where I lived I was just a guy named gootz who was there for some music there to play some games need some food post a happy hour whatever it was ride our bikes the third day that I was there I went to one of my friends and and this guy had been

[37:31] like 10 times 12 times after three days I was like okay so I've had enough um what do we do for like the next five days like I get it I get it but like I don't want to do this for another five days and he said he said Andy do you have a handful of friends here I was like yeah he was do you have more than a handful of friends here I was like yeah he goes do they come multiple times I was like yeah he goes is it possible that in three days you have not yet discovered what Dave discovered that makes them want to come back every year

[38:00] and I was like so three days is not is it enough to understand Burning Man what and and that that motor was just a pivotal don't look for me though I was like be more curious what am I not seeing and so I started going off by myself more often I started introducing myself to people who I didn't know and had no idea you know I had just sort of been Uber curious and day four and a half like if I could have I just would have stayed for another three weeks because I started to unlock the spirit of curiosity of and it's just you're like it's like you're on another planet

[38:35] and everything else just kind of Fades away and there are people who definitely cancer experience and people who you know that's what they're there for um but I think I think that overall Burning Man in my experience gets a bad rap for that um that there's it you know you're high but it's not on a Supply right you're high on just this experience and like you know they call you know when you leave bring them in they call going back to the default world right because like you kind of you you logged in you found this place and then you disappear you know back into the

[39:06] default world and for for a lot of people it is a version of a religion that that neither once a year they need that fixed yeah I wonder what I don't like about it is it's once a year it's a pilgrimage to Mecca but it's you go back to your life and then you get back into your routines like I wonder how you can incorporate like that same lessons in in your you know in your everyday life it sounds like you are doing a bit of it but it feels like a lot of people I know who go to Burning Man are just like they go they have a

[39:37] great time and then they leave yeah on on my final day when we were cleaning up camp I said to you know a new friend of mine I said to her I said I have so many things I want to do when I get back what am I supposed to do with this feeling of like I got Clarity on me a decent amount of things because I was out around those things I was completely detached from any interaction with with those things with those projects with those people and I said and she she said write it all down as explicitly as you possibly can and then wait 30 days and if you still

[40:11] want to do any of those things do it on the 31st day and it was such a it was such great advice because it just it allowed the the experiences I had to metastasize into wisdom into ideas into action but it wasn't like oh my gosh I just heard this quote I'm gonna go tell the whole world oh my gosh I just had this experience of like I'm moving I'm moving to Switzerland like no it was oh yes I know it like what my urge is I was able to kind of sit with it and say like what it what actually is that and in that next 30 days I

[40:51] ended a 14-year friendship uh logged out of a company that I was considering spending more time investigating myself I said you know that's not I like it but I don't love it I decided to marry my girlfriend um which I did you know four years later uh like like I made a lot of decisions coming off of that like being logged out state and and it wasn't because of Burning Man and I told you know you or your audience or anybody to like you have to go but for me it was what you said it was a version of you know love as a service right a

[41:28] version of community at its best um that you know I just and I saw I saw a different side of people in those moments I'm wondering if that's something that you should be doing monthly weekly quarterly how do you think about that so I have I have a pretty active journaling practice and for me the act of slowing down long enough to the right well I'm thinking forces my brain out of its normal routines and it's not the full burning experience obviously right yeah but but it but it it for it for me forces me to think differently because I'm slowing down long enough to actually choose the words and put them

[42:12] on a page I I don't you know a lot of people oh there's so many cool journaling apps and there are there's you know if if that's your thing like just Journal like that's the most important thing but like for me it's slowing down to actually pen to paper you know seeing each letter as it comes out I take yeah as long as it takes you know to fill the page and that for me is a little bit of logging out because I'm choosing what is worthy of making a paper and I don't write for a certain duration I don't care how many pages I write you know yesterday morning I wrote

[42:43] two sentences that was it that's all I needed but I had a place for the thought at a place for like hey let that sit there outside of my head and let it be something that might turn into something it might not and you know I haven't kind of a graveyard of projects and a graveyard of blog posts a graveyard of newsletter headline that like I wrote them down okay I know why I thought that was good now that's outside of my head it's not as good as a hell of us but sometimes it takes externalizing those thoughts and for me to paper um for me to really get clarity on like

[43:17] all right it sounded clever to me when it was around my head but that's not actually the thing but but maybe it's by you know by getting out of my head I open up a little space for the thing to to slot in right there's a little more space you know I I thank you for your advice and you know it's been super fun for me watching my YouTube channel four months ago and you know I'm I think one of my videos is about to cross 100 views so you know cool but like the process of making these videos every week the process of having that content out there has I've

[43:51] never written more I've never had more ideas than I do right now because of just taking things that had been sitting and I externalize them and now they exist in the world and if somebody wants to know what I think about things there's a lot of stuff out there in the newsletter and on the YouTube channel and I'm doing it and it's just it's it's as close to therapy as I've experienced by just creating and I'm getting to know myself better in the process so I don't do any journaling although I do have like a note folder ideas folder and stuff like that if I wanted to get into

[44:26] journaling tomorrow let's say every morning to me staring at a blank page is a bit overwhelming like what advice do you have to someone who is afraid of the blank page I think it's the number one reason people don't Journal is is a friend of the white page or they don't value they've not strugged to dial you to their own thoughts the second one is like a bigger problem it's like yeah no like every your thoughts are valuable period like yeah no and and and and I've seen people unlock that belief in themselves through journaling but but it was the reason that they didn't to start and so to

[45:07] start one of the things that I I've done and still from time to time do is you know my full name is Andrew Thomas right and I have Andrew Thomas Elwood write Andy a note as if she was in these executive coach dear Andy here's what I observed this week here's the things that it seems like you're spending a lot of time on here's the question that I'd love to see how you would answer and just and you it doesn't have to be you know writing the letters to yourself like you could think about dear future biographer this week was really interesting for me well here's why

[45:46] um the book titanium uh is is I think you know one of the best buyers business buyer pays out there uh it's still the latch attends of John D Rockefeller well the Rockefeller Foundation gave the author two years full access to John D rocker colors journals and so this book is unreal because it's it's literally pulled from the journals and it doesn't have to be that she takes anything around a biography about you but you're capturing those moments and it's like how would I explain that critical thing that happened recently like I've here's the story I told my friends but what's the story that I would tell my future

[46:22] self that was going back and saying like what was going on in 2023 wait that's what I thought happened interesting um you know and and so I have I'm on Journal number 20 uh in the series that I'm on and you know I everything that's happened since my first startup to now is in those 20 journals my last company Islands one of our investors was the co-founder of 24 Hour Fitness they basically invented actually not basically they invented gems like membership gyms uh in their early 80s I went to go visit the co-founder I just give him an update about you know we had this acquisition

[47:02] offer from Facebook and I was so excited and I asked him and I said what's your biggest regret in your career and he goes my biggest regret is just not writing it all down daily and I was like I said the same thing I was like yeah but like I just don't know I just I hate staring at a blank page I don't know what I'd write down and he starts laughing and he goes this story about going to Facebook and like getting an offer is insane this is obviously not gonna happen every day but even in your you know that's a big moment even in your

[47:36] little moments of you're going to the coffee shop and you have a conversation with the Barista that itself is an interesting potential story journaling to me sounds like I I just personally like have to get past I just have to do it I just have to like I feel like for me buy a buy a journal that I look for buy a pen and buy a journal uh that I'm excited to open and use I talked I talked about this I actually tweeted about this the other day where I want to double down on my YouTube so I went and bought like the dopest YouTube camera equipment Studio that

[48:11] sort of thing and now I'm on the hook to record so I think the question is how do you put yourself to be on the hook for journaling because it's it's it's it's your accountability is to yourself because it's a personal thing I forget whose quote it is but uh something along the lines of you wait until you're motivated how cute action begets action real winners just do it and then they they start to feel motivated as they go and and I think that if you just started and you said you know similar to you know the thought of 24 Hour Fitness so much of what you know like the reason

[48:50] the reason I show up every Tuesday and Friday for my boxing workout is not because I actually enjoy working out I really don't but I pay my trainer one to train me but more basically just to make sure I'm there it's like a babysitter inside a little bit yeah and I think that if you if you said I want to get into journaling and you reach out to you know your inner circle or some of your high school friends and said hey for the next 30 days would you be willing to to text me you know if you journal and I'll text you if I journal and just you know

[49:25] you just start there and say I'm as long as I write one sentence that's it one sentence every day that counts right yeah like for some some there's a personal trainer tells the story that when he's working with people who it's really their first time in the gym you just asked some of the first day to show up they have a conversation and then they go stand on the treadmill I'm gonna turn it on he goes okay that's enough for today see you tomorrow and they're like well wait where's the world no no that was it I want you to show up tomorrow we'll do we'll do more tomorrow right and they

[49:55] get they they have the conversation standing on the treadmill when they walk for one minute right and I mean you can use yourself if you said hey over there 30 days I'm gonna do one more sentence per day so okay well I'm gonna write one sentence they tell me right two sentences day three I'm gonna write give me someone said you would start to realize oh but wait I had more to say than just two sentences and it happens pretty quickly right the kind of flexing that muscle um you know not not to not to plug but I put your other 30 days of journaling prompts which are free on the website um

[50:26] maybe we can go there and download them and say what um and you know I've had a lot of fun you know with the responses that people have come up with um to you know they've told me hey you know day 17 that was my favorite yeah thanks so much for sending that to me um but because I really it is for me I feel like it's a superpower so it's a hack for my life you know I don't go anywhere without my journal in my backpack um and and it's you know something that I've always had you know close by because I'm you know and you know and I

[50:53] doodle at it I take meaning media notes in it I write full Journal journal entries in it like it's all in one place but it's just kind of the evolution of my brain as I go and I you know I use a bunch of the notes apps and notion and the notes app on my phone and like all that too but those are like for specific things that I want to be thinking about you know my journal is just a flow of Consciousness most of the time two business ideas one is an an online journaling you know product that is kind of like social by nature in the sense that like

[51:28] every day once you press publish it tells like your friend so Andy or whoever you've published so you stay accountable as a group and then the other business idea is just like I you know would I pay 99 a month or whatever a couple hundred bucks a month just for the text from you know Andy or someone like Andy being like did you write in your Journal today um yeah I love that but I think that what you're tapping into and this is something that I have I have journaled about this I have written this down on more than one occasion in a journaling truthfully is is a good jump off point

[52:09] but look you know I think it expands to learning in general right is a accountability as a student so I was homeschooled um from sixth grade all the way through uh High School graduation and so my mom would give me my assignments on the first of the month and then it was up to me to just get myself done like that and and I did not and you know I was the eldest child I've never you know I didn't have friends who you know I had a lot of homeschool friends and when I got to college people were like oh my gosh like she did he didn't check to see if we did

[52:43] our homework I was just like what do you need to check like what are you talking about like you just like hit with the sign you just do it but like you did it how'd you do it I was like is it like he said and I realized that like time management and just taking like personal responsibility to get the thing done was unique to the way that I started learning in high school and so college that part of college was not challenging for me well I realized in The more I've thought about like our traditional education system and when I was seeing every single go online right like right

[53:11] now there's no reason to go if you know what you want to be winning graduate because all of it is online for free and you can just start being the thing like quickly but the accountability to actually do it is the reason people don't accountability and social aspect right yeah like yep yeah but but I think but I think that actually like you can get the social aspect by doing the thing yeah right and talking about it publicly right that's why I think that like if you're doing anything talk about it publicly because you're going to attract other people that are gonna be into it yeah but I

[53:46] really think that there's um you know I you know in one of my ideas that I played around with is you is is one something that I've done um I I don't respond so well to rewards but I do respond really well to to downside um to to consequences so for example um what I was becoming the number one

[54:04] life insurance salesman when I was 23. this is in Texas I'm wearing a full suit carry the hard side hard sided briefcase and I said until I make my 20th bill I have to park on the top floor of the parking garage and take the stairs in Texas in the summer so literally every single day as I'm walking up six flights of stairs in a suit carrying a briefcase to my truck which has been sitting in the hot sun I'm like I had better freaking make a sale today I'm so sick of this and so I thought about that another time I set a goal and my bet was

[54:37] if I lose I have to donate a thousand dollars to my rival uh my rivalry universities endowment fund they don't they don't care at all about a thousand dollar right but it was that was meaningful to me at the time right there there are things that I was doing that I said these are the consequences so I was thinking about this accountability app was if I put 50 bucks on deposit in in this service I said if I'm not if I don't journal every day for the next 30 days that 50 disappears you could decide you could decide where it goes or you know however it sets up but like you

[55:13] tell everyone if I don't draw 30 days like this 50 bucks is going to be donated to a campaign for you know a politician that I don't like people would be like dude are you journaling me make sure you do that like don't don't expect that person right but like almost as I did and it's just like you get the money back it's your money if you do the thing you can lie and say that you did you that you did it but the whole point is like you're putting something at risk you're you're putting some price on establishing that habit and I think that's worse that's worth you know

[55:44] something I I think it's totally worth exploring yeah so setting up what is that negative incentives to motivate you to to do the thing yeah um I think yeah I think it's powerful and I like that also just as like a framework for thinking about so first of all I think accountability massively underrated and underpriced yeah underpriced underrated and I think negative incentives in our own lives just thinking about what we can do to uh to to keep keep us responsible is important yeah and I said I think that as you know as there's even more and more people that are opting out of the traditional system whether it be

[56:22] education or professionally and they say hey I'm going to do this differently um I'm gonna do it on my own a lot of the people that end up going back to the system go back because they did they didn't have their the perseverance or they or maybe sometimes the accountability right like being a solo preorder like is pretty lonely right like like your team meetings are just every time you look in the mirror and if you don't do it you're the only person who knows unless you like you do say hey this is the thing I'm gonna try I'm gonna put it out there and see if it works right experiment

[56:57] Belfast you know cool I didn't get to a million followers on Tick Tock using AI whatever right I'm really excited to see what you do with your YouTube channel I I you know I've been thinking a lot about the uh you know that that treat um you know but but you put a price tag right it cost you something to even be able to say old man helpless and that could be a financial cost it could be a social cost it could be a time cost like it doesn't necessarily need to be money but there has to be a cost associated with it to you greatness costs and that's why most

[57:33] people aren't great frankly because they're not willing to to risk it and I think it's a it's it's they're not they're not willing and this goes back to like curiosity but they're not willing to be curious and fail and get rejected and put themselves out there and do it day after day after day because that's really what it takes well and I think that they're you know I have friends that are sitting on incredible ideas but they didn't think that they would they would do it and so they kind of limited their options as to their ability to pursue it and they have a big boy budget I mean like they have

[58:09] expenses and they have you know private school tuition and they have a house and cars and they're like but I really want to pursue this thing and I'm like you really should they're like yeah but I need to be making half a million in like the pre-seed stage of the company in order for me this to work and I'm like well that's just never gonna happen like zero people zero people will invest in that and if you can't sell Finance like like this idea is going to sit on your shelf until somebody else does it and you know and I still think about it you know the you know my wife and I are

[58:40] both small business owners and we do our best to keep a pretty lean you know budget we have we have we live an amazing life don't get me wrong but the fixed cost part of what we do like we want to be as Nimble as we possibly can so that if that next opportunity arises and we have to go lean for a period of time okay okay and you know that won't always be the case but it's kind of it's you know it's Lifestyle by Design like you are somebody who wants to be able to take risks like keep your budget as little as low as possible if you're just getting out

[59:13] of school do not get a nice car do not get a nice apartment you are not in competition with your parents like don't try don't try to move into you know that neighborhood and impress people like it's time like it limits your options it limits your options so quickly you know why it's tough because you start making a little bit of money you start going out to restaurants so you like going to restaurants and then all of a sudden you're at you know you're ordering a glass of wine with dinner and then all of a sudden like you're used to a glass of wine at dinner now if you have to go

[59:46] start a startup and all of a sudden you say to yourself well now I can't have a glass of wine at dinner you might not be able to enjoy that meal and that's a bit of the problem so I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense which is sometimes like don't get that glass of wine in the first place um you know if you're if you're serious about building a startup and if you're serious about putting something out there if you're serious about being a solopreneur or a multi-preneur or whatever keeping your costs down is one another one of the greatest drinks that you can have yeah it gives you options

[1:00:21] and and just talk though because oh I know absolutely great absolutely great which by the way thank you for the recommendation at Tilly's um oh yeah yeah in in the great Caymans Greg gave me a great recommendation that I took my life there uh for her birthday and it was fantastic and we ordered a really great bottle of wine and one of these there basically every night uh so but but to your point right we can't order or we shouldn't order that bottle of wine on Tuesday yeah exactly like it's it's there and it will taste just as good on Tuesday as you did for her birthday

[1:00:58] but it is really hard to shed those habits if you get accustomed to them and I think going back back to our conversation about friends that's where in some ways my experience people stop being curious people stop trying new things people stop being rejected because they're accustomed to life being a certain way and trying a new thing like downsizing to you know for the chance to you know supersize I'm not too comfortable with that and I think that if you have the chance to to stay Nimble longer you have the chance to go a lot further could not agree more someone who listens to the Pod actually

[1:01:38] he's uh he's a Fortune 500 client executive Fortune 100 maybe and uh Paisley check out seven figures a year um and he he came to visit me in Miami and I picked him up in my Volvo which is like six or seven years old and he just starts laughing and he's like honestly I did not expect you to be driving like a seven-year-old Volvo and I was like oh I love this car you know it's perfectly fine like it's safe it like it works like you know I I love it and he goes oh I just figured you know you would have like a I don't know a big Mercedes or a Bentley

[1:02:22] or a Lambo or whatever and it I do it because I do want to keep my costs down and when there's opportunities that I'd rather take that money and and grow my business versus like grow my burn rate exactly yeah grow your business not your bird right yeah literally uh Andy I could talk to you for hours I want to thank you for coming on the show I think you're a criminally underfollowed literally it's a crime um so where where could people get those uh journaling prompts and follow you on the internet yeah so andyelwood.com um and just the the journal the journaling tab is on the homepage and uh

[1:03:07] I am at Andy L wood with two L's on all social platforms uh and pretty easy to track down if you if you type it out it looks like and yell would okay so what I walk into my boxing gym people go what and when you walk on the Playa people go boots exactly exactly but no it's uh you know I I try I try to be as generous as I can with the experiences that I've had and post them on on uh on adriela.com and then and then my newsletters make room.fm maker instrument so love to see people there all right enjoy it everyone later Andy thank you

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