Speaker 1: I'll good a team. I hope you're bloody terrific. Welcome
Speaker 1: to This is a little bit of a revisit of
Speaker 1: one of my all time probably in my top ten
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred plus episodes. This guy Mark Randolph, the man
Speaker 1: who co created Netflix. I loved him. I loved this
Speaker 1: conversation with him. It happened just over three years ago,
Speaker 1: May two, twenty twenty one. As I record, it's May twelve,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and I'd really enjoyed my time with him.
Speaker 1: Having spoken to a lot of famous people over the years,
Speaker 1: a lot of rich people, a lot of high profile people,
Speaker 1: a lot of successful people. Some people do things like
Speaker 1: this podcast or interviews because there's some kind of commercial
Speaker 1: advantage or they're required to by their publisher, and with Mark,
Speaker 1: there was none of that. He definitely did not need
Speaker 1: to talk to me. Of all of the meat your
Speaker 1: platforms that he has been on through his journey and
Speaker 1: over time, way bigger, way better than me, he definitely
Speaker 1: didn't need to talk to me. But I love the
Speaker 1: fact that he was so engaged, so real, so interested
Speaker 1: in me, the bloody shitkicker from Latro Valley. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I look back on this as one of my fondest
Speaker 1: memories on my typ journey. Anyway, here we go, a
Speaker 1: bit of a blast from the past, Mark, Randolph and
Speaker 1: Me waxing lyrical. Enjoy your day, enjoy the chat, and
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great week. Good eight team,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another installment of the You Project. Hello, Tiffany
Speaker 1: and Cook.
Speaker 2: Good morning, harps Or.
Speaker 1: You've outdone yourself this week, haven't you haven't. I just
Speaker 1: when you said to me, I got the bloke who
Speaker 1: started Netflix, I went, no, you haven't, and you sent
Speaker 1: me his name, and I went, I actually went and
Speaker 1: googled Mark because I thought she just got She just
Speaker 1: got a bloke who knows the bloke who started Netflix.
Speaker 1: She didn't get the actual dude or one of the
Speaker 1: co founders. But you did, you did, so Hello Mark,
Speaker 1: Thank you for thanks for joining us on the humble
Speaker 1: little You Project in the land down under.
Speaker 2: Gregg, it's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm
Speaker 2: glad to if that you managed to track me down.
Speaker 1: How many uzzy podcasts have you done? Will this be
Speaker 1: number one or number twenty seven?
Speaker 2: Somewhere in between the two? I actually I say, don't
Speaker 2: take this the wrong way, but I'll say yes to
Speaker 2: almost any Australian podcast. I'm really come on, Mark, come on, Mark,
Speaker 2: make me say it's a little bit special. No, it's true.
Speaker 2: But then again I said no because I was booked
Speaker 2: for all of twenty twenty one. But Tiff talked me
Speaker 2: into it. It was hard to actually get me to
Speaker 2: say yes no. But I don't know. I have this
Speaker 2: affection for Australia and it's people, so I'm always happy.
Speaker 2: How about this disproportionate yes is for a million podcasts
Speaker 2: rather than what comes in from the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: How many, Well we appreciate that. How many podcast chats
Speaker 1: would you do? Awake give a taike.
Speaker 2: Right now? As you probably know, I'm kind of working
Speaker 2: on promoting my own podcast, and so I'm doing a
Speaker 2: lot more than I might normally do. I'd say I'm
Speaker 2: probably doing three or four a week now. It's good listening.
Speaker 2: What is it one point eight million podcasts in the world.
Speaker 2: I've got a way to go. I'm chewing away at
Speaker 2: it slowly.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing all right. Well, we we ranked from
Speaker 1: a global pool yesterday. We ranked second with our last episode,
Speaker 1: so we were very happy with that. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's one point one point and on. I
Speaker 1: think you and I I've probably got a way to
Speaker 1: go before we give Rogan any trouble.
Speaker 2: Absolutely true. Listen, one thing, I don't know where I'm
Speaker 2: going to stack up when you actually released this, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to be somewhere in the four hundredth plus episode.
Speaker 2: I've just got to say that's pretty oppressive. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just released episode eight today, so I've got a
Speaker 2: long way to go to have your consistency. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not very clever, but I'm really really consistent
Speaker 1: and I'm really stubborn. But you know that's funny because
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that stuff. I heard you
Speaker 1: chatting with Tom Bill, you on what's it impact theory
Speaker 1: or I actually watched you and you know, when we're
Speaker 1: when we're creating a business or an idea, or developing
Speaker 1: a service or a brand, or taking something from a
Speaker 1: cognitive you know, construct a potential something and turning it
Speaker 1: into something. I heard you talking about. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know how much Mark and I
Speaker 1: are going to have in common. Then I heard you
Speaker 1: talk and I went almost everything in common because I'm
Speaker 1: always talking about people's inability to start or lack of
Speaker 1: willingness to start, and then sometimes when we do start,
Speaker 1: depending on what the endeavor it is. Endeavor is whether
Speaker 1: it's losing weight or changing a habit or behavior, or
Speaker 1: building a brand or business. You know, invariably a lot
Speaker 1: of people stop not long after they started. But it
Speaker 1: seems that there's that being able to persevere and get
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and keep getting uncomfortable and being okay with you know,
Speaker 1: less than ideal outcomes all the time is part of
Speaker 1: success as an entrepreneur and in business in general.
Speaker 2: I completely agree. In fact, you know when one of
Speaker 2: the most common questions people ask is what are these
Speaker 2: common attributes that define successful entrepreneurs? And I go, it's
Speaker 2: not magic. It's not like you have to have computer
Speaker 2: science degree or have some master's in business. The best
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs have a predisposition to action. You know, they they do,
Speaker 2: they start, they take the idea out of their head
Speaker 2: and figure out some way to collide it with reality.
Speaker 2: But because you're doing something that no one else says
Speaker 2: done before, usually it's extremely unlikely you're going to get
Speaker 2: at rate the first try. So you have to couple
Speaker 2: that predisposition to action, with persistence, with the willingness to
Speaker 2: say I'm going to keep on trying. I'm going to
Speaker 2: try different ways. It may take me one hundred tries,
Speaker 2: but eventually I'm going to figure this out. It's absolutely
Speaker 2: you've got to start, but you also have to keep going.
Speaker 1: And I think it's in the doing and the falling
Speaker 1: down and the getting up and the stuffing up and
Speaker 1: the you know, light bulbs and the awareness. It's in
Speaker 1: the middle of the journey that the real education happens.
Speaker 1: And we talk about education and academia, you know in
Speaker 1: Australia and the States, and you know it's held in
Speaker 1: very high regard, as it should be. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I know, for me, where I've really developed
Speaker 1: and learned on a fundamental of this is how people work.
Speaker 1: This is how business works, this is how human in
Speaker 1: behave you guys is a wife from academia. It's been
Speaker 1: in the middle of the process, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a combination of the two. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: It's foolish to embark on something without getting some degree
Speaker 2: of insight into how it's been done well before. But
Speaker 2: it's equally foolish to thank that substitute for doing it. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I was going to use I was going
Speaker 2: to use a goll for a tennis analogy, but I'll
Speaker 2: use a footy analogy. You know, you watch the We
Speaker 2: watch these guys play and they do that thing where
Speaker 2: they're running on the field and every I don't know,
Speaker 2: ten twenty meters they have to bounce the ball and
Speaker 2: of course it's this oblong shape. And you can get
Speaker 2: someone to show you the right way to do it.
Speaker 2: You can watch a YouTube video and the right way
Speaker 2: to bounce a footy. But if you think that's going
Speaker 2: to help you bounce a footy, you're out of your mind.
Speaker 2: You have to go out and you've got to run
Speaker 2: laps around the field the hundreds and hundreds of times
Speaker 2: before you can do that consist. And that is absolutely
Speaker 2: the same thing with entrepreneurial skill. Sure read up, sure
Speaker 2: take some classes, major in it in school, whatever floats
Speaker 2: your boat, But fundamentally, the way you're going to really
Speaker 2: learn how to do these things is to actually get
Speaker 2: out and do them. And that's the trick is figure
Speaker 2: out some way to start applying these skills when you're young,
Speaker 2: or when you're in a low risk circumstance, or when
Speaker 2: you're not having your mortgage and your car payments and
Speaker 2: your kids private school tuition dependent on it.
Speaker 1: It's so like one, congratulations on giving an IFL or
Speaker 1: a footy as you call it, which is an analogy.
Speaker 1: That's bloody beautiful metaphor slid in early in the show
Speaker 1: by the American. That's great, that's very adaptable. Pay attention
Speaker 1: t if that's called IQ I was was I going
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, just that ability?
Speaker 2: I really three with that one, didn't I.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude's just talking about that's a amazing that's amazing.
Speaker 1: But it is that that willingness to be able to
Speaker 1: you know, do do? I mean everyone starts as a
Speaker 1: white belt. I always say that my listeners are sick
Speaker 1: of it. But what if it's business or it's literally
Speaker 1: Brazilian jiu jitsu, or it's bouncing a footy, running, or
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, starting at the gym for the
Speaker 1: first time. Everyone's a white belt, and you can't become
Speaker 1: a black belt without doing the work and doing the
Speaker 1: tests and enduring and surviving and getting hurt and getting
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and falling down and getting a blood nose, and
Speaker 1: and you know this is where resilience and strength and
Speaker 1: awareness and understanding and skill develops. Like you didn't start
Speaker 1: Netflix as it is now. That was nothing like I'm
Speaker 1: sure the original idea or the genesis of from where
Speaker 1: it came.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a somewhat different thing, which we should we
Speaker 2: should explore that as well, which is a critical piece
Speaker 2: of it. But in terms of the sense of learning,
Speaker 2: this learning to bounce the footy is that Netflix was
Speaker 2: my sixth startup. I mean I was in late thirties,
Speaker 2: and in fact, I started learning these entrepreneurial skills when
Speaker 2: I was probably six or seven years old, you know,
Speaker 2: when I was selling seeds door to door. So it's
Speaker 2: these all these skills are not It isn't like you go,
Speaker 2: I want to be an entrepreneur, all right. I had
Speaker 2: to learn how to go in and pitch a VC
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or a million,
Speaker 2: which is what you see them doing on Shark Tank
Speaker 2: or what you read about in the books or seeing
Speaker 2: the movies. But if you try and have that be
Speaker 2: your very first attempt, of course you're going to fall
Speaker 2: flat in your face. You've got to start off gradually.
Speaker 2: You've got to start off with simpler things. You've got
Speaker 2: to scale your aspirations to your ability level at the beginning,
Speaker 2: and then to jump into your Other point is you've
Speaker 2: got to recognize that what I think is going to
Speaker 2: work is wrong. That the more time I try and
Speaker 2: toss this idea around my head, because I don't want
Speaker 2: to start and fail, I've got to get it right.
Speaker 2: You are never going to start going to figure it out.
Speaker 2: You're just going to have this perfectly formed, beautiful idea
Speaker 2: in your head, which the minute it collides with reality
Speaker 2: is going to instantly tell you what a waste of
Speaker 2: time it was solving these problems in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I was listing earlier this morning, which
Speaker 1: was pretty early because it's only seven o'clock now, But
Speaker 1: I was at the I was at the cafe, shout
Speaker 1: out to the Hamptons, drinking my coffee as I do,
Speaker 1: and I was watching you and Tom, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking something that had never dawned on me, is that entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: developing a business, creating something from nothing, It's actually quite
Speaker 1: a scientific process, which I'd never thought, because you come
Speaker 1: up with an idea or a hypothesis, a construct. Then
Speaker 1: you try something, you create a plan around how you're
Speaker 1: going to test that. Then you do something, then you
Speaker 1: get some data, then you evaluate the data, then you reassess,
Speaker 1: and then you go again. I mean it's really in
Speaker 1: some ways it's very analytical, scientific, methodical process.
Speaker 2: Well so says the PhD candidate over here, but.
Speaker 1: There's a bit of cree itvity as well, thank you.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the point I was going to make is
Speaker 2: that it's this combination, which is why I love it
Speaker 2: so much. It's a combination of art and science because
Speaker 2: you have this tremendous ability to know, down to the
Speaker 2: fourteenth decimal point whether the red envelope is better than
Speaker 2: the blue envelope. But it does not tell you for
Speaker 2: a second that you should be testing envelope color, and
Speaker 2: if you should be testing envelope color, it doesn't tell
Speaker 2: you why you should test red versus blue, versus green
Speaker 2: versus pink. So it requires this combination of things. But fundamentally,
Speaker 2: you're right, there is a playbook, and the playbook is
Speaker 2: this process of test repeat learn test, test learn, repeat,
Speaker 2: test learn repeat. You know, and you alluded to that
Speaker 2: very beginning, and this was you know, when we were
Speaker 2: start before we started Netflix. It certainly wasn't even Netflix.
Speaker 2: When my business partner, Read Hastings and I were trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what was the next business we were
Speaker 2: going to start, we had a million different crazy ideas
Speaker 2: and anything we came up with was going to have
Speaker 2: to pass the test of was there an element of
Speaker 2: reality to it? And the only way to figure that
Speaker 2: out was to collide it with reality. And so, for example,
Speaker 2: this is back in nineteen ninety seven, and this crazy
Speaker 2: idea that we had was not streaming video. The crazy
Speaker 2: idea was can we do video rental by mail? Can
Speaker 2: we do what Blockbuster? Which I believe they had in
Speaker 2: Australia as well, So we do that idea. It was
Speaker 2: a terrible idea, and it was largely a terrible idea.
Speaker 2: One of the six hundred reasons it was a terrible
Speaker 2: idea was that in nineteen ninety seven video came on
Speaker 2: the VHS cassettes. I mean, tiff for those of you
Speaker 2: of you your generation, you know, it's this big, square,
Speaker 2: plastic thing that a movie came on. I know that's
Speaker 2: hard to envision, but certainly it was not something you
Speaker 2: were going to be able to mail to somebody's house,
Speaker 2: which was part of the idea. But here's the entrepreneurial
Speaker 2: thing is that one day Reid brought up that he'd
Speaker 2: heard about this technology called the DVD, which was this thin,
Speaker 2: little flat piece of plastic that a movie could come on.
Speaker 2: And so the idea came up, this might actually now
Speaker 2: allow us to do video rental by mail, because mail
Speaker 2: and give me a plastic we could use the post office.
Speaker 2: So rather than saying, oh, what a great idea, and
Speaker 2: then begin imagining this future, we said, we've got to
Speaker 2: validate this, so quick test. Turn the car around. We're
Speaker 2: commuting to work when this idea popped into our heads
Speaker 2: and turn the car around, and immediately said, let's validate
Speaker 2: whether at least the fundamental premise and can I mail
Speaker 2: a disc to somebody and have it arrive at their
Speaker 2: house unbroken? And went to try and buy a DVD
Speaker 2: and couldn't find that, and decides to substitute a CD,
Speaker 2: a music CD, and mail the CD to Read's house
Speaker 2: and found out in less than twenty four hours that yes, indeed,
Speaker 2: you can mail a CD to someone and it gets
Speaker 2: to their house quickly and it gets to their house unbroken,
Speaker 2: and most importantly for our purposes, it got there for
Speaker 2: the price of a postage stamp. And it's that process,
Speaker 2: one time after another after another after another that ultimately
Speaker 2: is leads you on this twisting, turning route that you
Speaker 2: never anticipated, hopefully to the goal of any entrepreneur, which
Speaker 2: is the repeatable, scalable business model.
Speaker 1: And when did you get kind of close to what
Speaker 1: Netflix is today? When were you starting to approach the
Speaker 1: model that looks block Now.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a really interesting question because in some ways
Speaker 2: it requires you to find what is Netflix today? And yeah, cool,
Speaker 2: I was a cryptic answer, wasn't it. No? But it's
Speaker 2: we mentioned before about what a terrible idea this video
Speaker 2: rental my mail was, and it was, and everybody told me,
Speaker 2: was very helpfully telling me what a terrible idea it was.
Speaker 2: You know, the book is called That'll Never Work, and
Speaker 2: the podcast is called That'll Never Work. It's because that's
Speaker 2: was drilled into me over and over again, that this
Speaker 2: stupid idea will never work.
Speaker 1: Such a good name for a podcast, by the way, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you very well promote that anyway, But that is
Speaker 1: a great name.
Speaker 2: But listen. It came from you know, listen, you hear
Speaker 2: it enough, you go, okay, I'm going to use that one.
Speaker 2: But people said it was a bad idea for two reasons,
Speaker 2: and one was the Blockbuster. Why on earth's anybody gonna
Speaker 2: rent by mail when you can throw a rock and
Speaker 2: hit a Blockbuster?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other one was that it's digital medium. Eventually people
Speaker 2: are going to be downloading or streaming. We weren't sure which,
Speaker 2: so they were both right. We knew that Blockbuster would
Speaker 2: be a big impediment. We also knew it was inevitable
Speaker 2: that people would be downloading or streaming. So this is
Speaker 2: the important part, which is that we knew we had
Speaker 2: to build a company which wasn't all about DBDs because
Speaker 2: eventually that would go away. But we also could not
Speaker 2: build a business all about streaming because it was impossible.
Speaker 2: There was no content, The infrastructure wasn't there, digital rights
Speaker 2: managements weren't robust enough, and so if we had come
Speaker 2: out with a streaming company, then we would have gone
Speaker 2: out of business. So we had to say, how do
Speaker 2: you position this? That it works now, but that every
Speaker 2: piece of equity we build in our customer relationship, everything
Speaker 2: we learn about what they like and don't like will
Speaker 2: be applicable when the world changes. And so way back then,
Speaker 2: we decided this was not going to be DVD company.
Speaker 2: It was not a streaming company. It was a company
Speaker 2: that was going to help you discover great stories. And
Speaker 2: this leads me full circle to your question, and how
Speaker 2: has a business model changed? It's never changed. On day one,
Speaker 2: it was how do we help you discover great stories.
Speaker 2: At the beginning, of course you discover great stories because
Speaker 2: we had every DBD available. And then eventually we help
Speaker 2: you discover great stories by creating deep content and eventually
Speaker 2: helping you find more clever ways to discover it and
Speaker 2: then taste algorithms to predict it. And then as it
Speaker 2: got more convenient to find different ways to deliver it
Speaker 2: to you, we did that. But at the core, at
Speaker 2: the heart of Netflix, what drove every decision about what
Speaker 2: should we prioritize was help you discover great stories. And
Speaker 2: so that's never gone away, and people look at what's
Speaker 2: happening now. Of course, every content company in the world
Speaker 2: recognizing that this streaming business is kind of the way
Speaker 2: to consume content, and Netflix has this huge lead. And
Speaker 2: it's not just because We've been streaming since two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, so have you know what thirteen fourteen years
Speaker 2: had started. But because we've been establishing this direct relationship
Speaker 2: with the customer founded on discovering great stories since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight. And that's a really, really hard thing for
Speaker 2: companies which have always delivered their content by sending a
Speaker 2: real to someone who just plays it in a darkened
Speaker 2: box for people they don't know.
Speaker 1: And the beauty of Netflix is, you know, there are
Speaker 1: billions of people who have a pre existing relationship with
Speaker 1: Netflix and you know, know what they're getting, and you
Speaker 1: know that makes a massive difference. Do you think that?
Speaker 2: Do you think that?
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes I think some people perceive entrepreneurship is
Speaker 1: that it needs to be big and grand. It needs
Speaker 1: to be Netflix, It needs to be nicke, it needs
Speaker 1: to be whatever. But you know, you can have a
Speaker 1: lawn mowing round and be entrepreneurial, right.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. You know, I think one of the great
Speaker 2: disservices that we've all done in talking about entrepreneurship is
Speaker 2: glorifying it in some ways for the wrong reasons. That
Speaker 2: people think the reason to do this is to become
Speaker 2: rich and famous and wealthier, it's like acting. The odds
Speaker 2: of that happening are infinitesimal. But if you're doing it
Speaker 2: for the excitement, if you're doing it for the fact
Speaker 2: that you get to do things different every day, you
Speaker 2: get to solve really interesting problems with really smart people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can do that at any scale. You could do
Speaker 2: that with how do I make my long wine business
Speaker 2: more successful? How do I find new customers? How do
Speaker 2: I do this in a way that those other guys
Speaker 2: aren't doing it? Yeah, that's what That's what motivates me.
Speaker 2: That's what I think is the secret source of entrepreneurship,
Speaker 2: not the scale. And by aspiring to only think that
Speaker 2: scale counts, you'll God, that's it's like saying you don't
Speaker 2: climb it. There's a dumb analogy. You don't climb Everest.
Speaker 2: By just climbing, you start. You're starting in the foothills
Speaker 2: and it takes months. And listen, starting a big company,
Speaker 2: you can't aspire to be Nike or Netflix. And maybe
Speaker 2: if you are Apple or AT and T and you've
Speaker 2: got maybe a couple of billion dollars sitting around, then
Speaker 2: you have some incredibly talented people, one hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of them but no, you got to pick a niche.
Speaker 2: You got to pick something small. You got to pick
Speaker 2: something that you can handle. You got to pick something
Speaker 2: that's within your realm. But if you're clever, you pick
Speaker 2: one that if I get this right, the things I
Speaker 2: focused on will allow me to take the next step.
Speaker 2: And if I get that right, in other words, if
Speaker 2: I can mow my neighborhood's lawns correctly in this good way,
Speaker 2: there's two more neighborhoods next door. Wouldn't that be incredible?
Speaker 2: And now all of a sudden, you're doing three neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: You go, gosh, I wonder if I could do this
Speaker 2: whole half the city, if I did trucks and this,
Speaker 2: And then you go, maybe I could do a second city,
Speaker 2: and you know, and then eventually you can become the
Speaker 2: nationwide lawn care service. But if you start out when
Speaker 2: you're mowing two people's lawns, you'll be with You're going, oh,
Speaker 2: I need to invest in a fleet of trucks, and
Speaker 2: how do I move the fuel from here to there?
Speaker 2: And you know what a waste of time to solve
Speaker 2: those problems? Just more one person's line better than the
Speaker 2: guy who was doing it before and focus on that
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I set up my first business,
Speaker 1: which was a screenprinting business, obviously one person business, when
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, and I set up my first my
Speaker 1: first gym, in when I was twenty six, which clearly
Speaker 1: was four years ago. What are you laughing about, hey,
Speaker 1: steady steady on Netflix? Boy, don't laugh too hard. So
Speaker 1: but my main driver and I didn't even think, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm becoming entrepreneurial or I'm you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: develop this brand or business or service that's going to dominate.
Speaker 1: And we ended up and we didn't, certainly not Netflix.
Speaker 1: But I had four gyms and I employed five hundred
Speaker 1: trainers over twenty five years, and we went quite well,
Speaker 1: and we had a really good brand in the fitness industry.
Speaker 1: But my main driver mark was I don't want a boss.
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to work for somebody. That was
Speaker 1: my motivation was pursue it. To your earlier comment, your
Speaker 1: honor was I just want to work when I want
Speaker 1: to work and do what I want to do. I'm
Speaker 1: not lazy, I'm actually quite driven, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend half my day doing things that I hate
Speaker 1: or things that people want me to do that I
Speaker 1: actually think are inefficient. And so from when I was,
Speaker 1: you know, really twenty early twenties, I spent my life
Speaker 1: trying to strategize around how I could not have a
Speaker 1: job for most of my life and the last time
Speaker 1: I had a job was thirty one years ago. So
Speaker 1: and of course I wanted to make a few bucks
Speaker 1: and have a good lifestyle and all of that, but
Speaker 1: for me, it was very much about just being able
Speaker 1: to develop the things I wanted the way that I wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I call that the need to do want to
Speaker 2: do ratio, and you're never in my opinion, it's really
Speaker 2: really impossible to build a life where you can only
Speaker 2: do what you want unless what you want to do
Speaker 2: is live in a van behind the seven to eleven.
Speaker 1: But shout out to our listeners who.
Speaker 2: But for most people, everything is some combination of what
Speaker 2: I need to do and what I want to do.
Speaker 2: And if you can construct the life for most of
Speaker 2: it is what I want to do, then that you're
Speaker 2: doing pretty well. But you know, it is for me
Speaker 2: that my motivations were not necessarily that. For me, it
Speaker 2: was more this compulsive thing that I couldn't help myself.
Speaker 2: I just was always seeing the flaws in the world
Speaker 2: that I would intuitively go, there's got to be a
Speaker 2: better way to do that, and then even worse, felt
Speaker 2: I had to rush in and do them. And luckily
Speaker 2: for me, I've always found that whole process fascinating. Of
Speaker 2: trying to solve these problems that no one's really been
Speaker 2: able to solve before. That's the fun part for me,
Speaker 2: and I'm incredibly fortunate that that actually does pay a
Speaker 2: living wage. Otherwise, you know that aforementioned Van seven eleven
Speaker 2: that could be you. It would have been a big
Speaker 2: part of my future and past.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about how you think? Do you
Speaker 1: have an awareness of the way that you perceive life
Speaker 1: in the world and the way that internal you, your
Speaker 1: internal that internal world of Mark intersects and interacts with
Speaker 1: your external world. Obviously, I'm fascinated with the way that
Speaker 1: people process life and situations. And you know, there's an
Speaker 1: area of research called metacognition, which is essentially thinking about thinking.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about how you think?
Speaker 2: I do now, but only because I was forced to
Speaker 2: think about it. In other words, what happens is the
Speaker 2: lesson is, for example, when you want to teach somebody something,
Speaker 2: you sometimes have to go, how do I I know
Speaker 2: I'm good at this, but how do I communicate what
Speaker 2: it is I'm actually good at? And it requires you
Speaker 2: to go back and really think, how do I break
Speaker 2: this down? What am I doing? And how am I
Speaker 2: a is what I'm doing different than what other people
Speaker 2: are doing. We're maybe not successful at this, and so
Speaker 2: I have to And so now, of course I do
Speaker 2: recognize when I'm doing these things, but it took me
Speaker 2: a long time to begin going what does disting? What
Speaker 2: are the common denominators that allow people to have crazy
Speaker 2: ideas eventually turn those into reality? What are those steps
Speaker 2: when I you know, I wrote the book I wrote
Speaker 2: That Will Never Work about those early years of Netflix.
Speaker 2: I wrote it sixteen years after I left Netflix, and
Speaker 2: it took me that long because you sometimes need that
Speaker 2: distance to really recognize how much of this was what
Speaker 2: I did, how much of this was just lucky, how
Speaker 2: much of it was my contribution, and how much of
Speaker 2: what did I do wrong? What could I And that's
Speaker 2: a combination of being able to look back honestly but
Speaker 2: also being able to think about it more clearly. So
Speaker 2: there's some things I do think about as I'm doing
Speaker 2: them to discipline myself, but quite frankly, less on the
Speaker 2: entrepreneurial side and more on the balance side, more on
Speaker 2: how do I keep my life in balance that I
Speaker 2: think about all the time, and I think about how
Speaker 2: I think about it, and the actual entrepreneurial stuff is
Speaker 2: less analytically driven.
Speaker 1: So two things out of that for me, thank you
Speaker 1: that that was great. I love that. See the thing
Speaker 1: with you, listen to me telling you about you, Mark, Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you. I hope you're paying attention, but
Speaker 1: you do. You probably do a lot of things organically, naturally, intuitively,
Speaker 1: instinctively because you have this is you, this is your
Speaker 1: nature or this is you know, you do a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff and have done a lot of stuff that way.
Speaker 1: And it's not that there's no strategy or thinking or planning.
Speaker 1: But as you said, then you arrive down the track
Speaker 1: and one day you're fifty or whatever, you're sixty, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking about, oh, how do I actually how do
Speaker 1: I break that down so I can teach someone? So
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the things that I do
Speaker 1: is I teach I train speakers to speak because I
Speaker 1: corporate speaking. I do a lot of it, and then
Speaker 1: when I first started teaching them how to speak, I go,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how I do it because there's
Speaker 1: no strategy. Like I invariably get up with no notes
Speaker 1: and talk for an hour or two hours and I'm
Speaker 1: in flow and I love it and it's fun and
Speaker 1: there's no nerves. It's just joy and I create an experience.
Speaker 1: But I've never I never planned that, So then when
Speaker 1: I had to teach someone how to replicate a version
Speaker 1: of that, it took me forever to figure out what
Speaker 1: I actually do. And maybe that's the chill is teaching
Speaker 1: others to, I guess, strategically do what you naturally do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that interesting? I think that the parallels are
Speaker 2: exactly the same as that I The entrepreneurial thing is
Speaker 2: that the just starting, the persistence, the continuing to try
Speaker 2: things and not falling in love with my ideas, the focus,
Speaker 2: the triage, those are all things that kind of came
Speaker 2: just naturally to me based on who I was. A
Speaker 2: lot of the cultural things that are going into every
Speaker 2: company I've started that have kind of driven the Netflix
Speaker 2: culture came from not me designing them but from just
Speaker 2: being who I am. And it is only after the
Speaker 2: fact when you look back, when you're trying to say,
Speaker 2: how do you begin to be helpful to pay it forward?
Speaker 2: How do you help give real advice which is not
Speaker 2: just bs to other entrepreneurs. Do you say, I've got
Speaker 2: to go figure this, really think through what am I doing?
Speaker 2: How am I approaching this? And then the hard part
Speaker 2: is then how do I coax someone into being able
Speaker 2: to do that? And sometimes that's tricky. The whole the
Speaker 2: thing we've talked about multiple times today, which is that
Speaker 2: just starting that taking that risk. You can say it
Speaker 2: all you want, you know, you can put it up
Speaker 2: on the Instagram, quote panels all you want, but fundamentally,
Speaker 2: it's against people's human nature to want to do something
Speaker 2: which has the risk of them looking stupid and think
Speaker 2: that's a hard thing.
Speaker 1: And we're enamored, especially in Australia and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it's in the States. I've been there for a few times.
Speaker 1: We're enamored with the idea of personal growth and personal development,
Speaker 1: and we love quotes, and we love mantras, and we
Speaker 1: love posting things on the bathroom mirror, and we love
Speaker 1: sunsets and puppies with nice quotes, but you know, like
Speaker 1: the reality is that life and business and relationships and
Speaker 1: developing things is just sometimes it sucks, and it's messy,
Speaker 1: and it's uncomfortable, it's unfamiliar, it's uncertain, it's hard, it's
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes it's glorious and awesome. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is getting people to step out of their holding
Speaker 1: patent or their groundhog diet and into the unknown, the unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: the uncertain, and the uncomfortable. That's the challenge. It's not
Speaker 1: that they don't have the ability. I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a you're absolutely right. It's a critical piece
Speaker 2: of it. And in this more latter part of my
Speaker 2: life where I've kind of realized my purpose is more
Speaker 2: trying to pay this forward, which is trying to unlock
Speaker 2: other people to take everyone who has these great ideas
Speaker 2: or believes they're great ideas and wants to make them real.
Speaker 2: Is I've realized that you can't just deliver the platitudes.
Speaker 2: You have to then teach by example. I suppose, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I'll give you us a quick example, you know,
Speaker 2: for and again, I know we can talk about this
Speaker 2: a little bit later in the pod. But you know
Speaker 2: I'm on the podcast I'm doing, I'm that will never
Speaker 2: work podcast. I'm not interviewing celebrity entrepreneurs. I'm not interviewing
Speaker 2: people do that way better than I do. What my
Speaker 2: podcast is is sessions of me mentoring unknowns, early stage
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs who are stuck, who are trying to take their idea,
Speaker 2: get it out of their head, who are trying to
Speaker 2: turn their side also into a real business, or trying
Speaker 2: to hit the real business next level. But what I'm
Speaker 2: doing really is saying I could put on Instagram the
Speaker 2: trick is, you know, to quickly, cheaply and easily clyde
Speaker 2: your idea with reality. Well, good for me. But what
Speaker 2: I'll do in the podcast is then walk someone through
Speaker 2: how how in my particular circumstance do I think that through?
Speaker 2: How do I isolate the one component which is really
Speaker 2: the puzzle and figure out a clever way to try that,
Speaker 2: And hopefully by having people listen to me doing that,
Speaker 2: to walk someone through to help them discover how to
Speaker 2: make that step, and not just with turning ead into reality,
Speaker 2: but for all the other little principles of entrepreneurship it's
Speaker 2: coaching people and any people listen in, I hope is
Speaker 2: the valuable piece of what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: That is, as we would say in Australia, Mate, that's
Speaker 1: a bloody brilliant idea, right, So that's I mean, I
Speaker 1: love that because that is unique, and that is you
Speaker 1: knowing that you have the ability to sit you don't
Speaker 1: know what's coming, you don't know what they're going to say,
Speaker 1: there's no prep, you can't get ready. And I love
Speaker 1: the fact that you know in real time you're sitting
Speaker 1: there and coaching somebody and whoever you're coaching. You know.
Speaker 1: There's that other podcast that I like by Guy Raz
Speaker 1: called How I Built This? Have you been on there?
Speaker 2: I haven't because I haven't. I've been interviewed by Guy before.
Speaker 2: He's amazing. Yeah, you're right, it's a different thing.
Speaker 1: I love the way that he deconstructs people's lives and
Speaker 1: journeys and businesses. And for me, I could be listening
Speaker 1: to the most random story that of somebody built some
Speaker 1: online lady selling shoes to the world, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I see myself in that online shoe business. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but it's not about the shoes. Or the
Speaker 1: online or the lady or necessarily, but just the challenges
Speaker 1: and the stories and the experiences and the lessons and
Speaker 1: I think you know you doing that is an amazing Well,
Speaker 1: let's plug it now. Anyway, we'll do it anyway. In
Speaker 1: our show notes. But the podcast is called that will
Speaker 1: Never Work? How many episodes?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: Tea? Is?
Speaker 1: That will never work?
Speaker 2: Not that will never work? That subscribed?
Speaker 1: That will never work? How many shows deep are you?
Speaker 2: We just released episode eight today, so and I'm only
Speaker 2: doing it. They only committed every two weeks for an
Speaker 2: hour to try and as I learn this new medium.
Speaker 1: Hey, listen to me, champlift your game. Do one a week?
Speaker 1: Come on, get serious like you're either in or out?
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're absolutely right, And so I think we are.
Speaker 2: Once we get into the next next season, which is soon,
Speaker 2: we'll accelerate a little bit. You know, I have an excuse,
Speaker 2: and this is kind of lame, do you mind? Not really,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to tell you what it is. Anyway.
Speaker 2: It's that my whole principle is that I don't wait
Speaker 2: until I understand something before I do it. I go,
Speaker 2: I'll learn what I can, but then the way I'm
Speaker 2: going to learn is just by making my mistakes in public.
Speaker 2: And so I'm making my mistakes in public, which is
Speaker 2: that I'm basically learning not just how to how to
Speaker 2: do this, not just technically, but what's the right way
Speaker 2: to speak to people? These things actually come through and
Speaker 2: mean something to somebody, Then how do you promote them,
Speaker 2: how do you publish them? How do you engage with
Speaker 2: all these little pieces? And having a slower velocity allows
Speaker 2: me to learn from my mistakes at a reasonable pace
Speaker 2: without me having to be seven by twenty four on it.
Speaker 2: There is my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you rationalize it however you want, Champs, I'm not
Speaker 1: boning it, but you know, a story and well outarticulated,
Speaker 1: but nah, thank you.
Speaker 2: Hey.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: as we've spoken about a bit already, that the getting
Speaker 1: started part is the challenge, and it would think so
Speaker 1: I think that probably that's around fear a lot. So
Speaker 1: for people that are listening to this mark who are thinking,
Speaker 1: I've literally had an idea for one, two, five, ten years,
Speaker 1: or an intention, or I've had the same conversation about
Speaker 1: the same thing and I know there's no magic formula,
Speaker 1: but just speak to us a bit about getting started
Speaker 1: if you're scared, and a way to you know, not
Speaker 1: overcome that. But I don't think we ever overcome fear,
Speaker 1: but we navigate fear. What are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 2: It is the single biggest impediment between people being successful
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs is not that they run out of money, or
Speaker 2: not that they make a technical mistique. It's because they
Speaker 2: never start. And I've heard every single possible excuse for
Speaker 2: why I can't start. I can't raise money, can't find
Speaker 2: a co founder, need my computer science degree, you have
Speaker 2: to graduate whatever, I've heard them all, can't quit my
Speaker 2: day job. And what makes a great entrepreneur is not
Speaker 2: how good their ideas are. It really isn't. It's how
Speaker 2: clever they can be about figuring out quick and cheap
Speaker 2: and easy ways to try them. And so, in the interest,
Speaker 2: let me give you an example of what I mean
Speaker 2: by how to break that model, because the way to
Speaker 2: do it is to figure out I do not need
Speaker 2: to do all the things I think. I don't need
Speaker 2: to raise money, I don't need to build an app,
Speaker 2: I don't need to hire people. I don't need to
Speaker 2: quit my job. All right, here's an example. This is
Speaker 2: a young woman, she was still in university university students,
Speaker 2: and she goes, Mark, have this great idea. It's going
Speaker 2: to be peer to peer clothing rental. Basically, I have
Speaker 2: a closet full of clothes I never wear. I know
Speaker 2: all my friends do. It'd be great to build a
Speaker 2: bar every one's clothes and we could do. I go, oh,
Speaker 2: great idea, maybe, and she goes, what's the problem And
Speaker 2: she goes, well, I need to raise money because I
Speaker 2: need to build an app and I need to hire
Speaker 2: someone to help me code this, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And I go whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's stop right there.
Speaker 2: I go, do you have a piece of paper? And
Speaker 2: she goes, yes, of course, piece of paper. Guys, you
Speaker 2: do have a sharpie, you know, the magic marker. She
Speaker 2: goes yeah, And I go, okay, write in the paper.
Speaker 2: Want to borrow my clothes? Please knock and I want
Speaker 2: you to tape that to your dorm room door right now.
Speaker 2: And we're going to find out in the next twenty
Speaker 2: four hours. A fundamental piece of your idea, which is
Speaker 2: does anybody care and if nobody knocks, Well, you've learned
Speaker 2: something really valuable right there, and you learned it with
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and a magic marker, and you
Speaker 2: learned it right now. But let's say someone knocks. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Then you're going to learn about problems with Well, they're
Speaker 2: in a different size, or they didn't like anything. Well,
Speaker 2: then you've learned that. But what if they do and
Speaker 2: they take things. Now you're going to learn how you
Speaker 2: feel when your favorite blouse comes back stained or torn.
Speaker 2: Or you're gonna learn about, oh, I never factor in
Speaker 2: the cost that everything has got to go to the
Speaker 2: dry cleaner or or or you're going to begin that
Speaker 2: process of discovery about whether your idea is a good
Speaker 2: one or not. You're going to do that by having
Speaker 2: collided it with the reality. Now, this is not repeatable,
Speaker 2: this is not scalable. You can't do everything using three
Speaker 2: by five cards out of your dorm room. But you
Speaker 2: sure as hell can do that for the next few months,
Speaker 2: and then you're gonna know. And then rather than when
Speaker 2: you're trying to convince someone to join you or a
Speaker 2: loan you money, it's not going to be imagine if
Speaker 2: you will, it's gonna be Oh my gosh, I'm going
Speaker 2: out of my mind. I'm processing six hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: rentals every single weekend, and I'm doing it all with
Speaker 2: three by five cards, And I need to figure out
Speaker 2: a way to automate this, and I need to figure
Speaker 2: out a way that's powerful, that's comp And you've learned
Speaker 2: that your idea is a good one or not. And
Speaker 2: most likely, though those things I just described, you're going
Speaker 2: to bump into something you didn't expect, you didn't discover,
Speaker 2: and then comes the persistence part. You'll go, wow, no
Speaker 2: one knocked. Well, what are you going to do about it? Wow?
Speaker 2: The stuff's coming back stained and you're torn? What am
Speaker 2: I going to do about it? How am I going
Speaker 2: to modify this that it might actually work? So when
Speaker 2: someone is stuck, I'm going if you're stuck because you
Speaker 2: can't envision, how am I going to build an app?
Speaker 2: And how am I going to leave my job to
Speaker 2: do this? When I have car payments or you're not,
Speaker 2: You're going to do things quickly and cheaply and easily
Speaker 2: on the side in your spare time, in a way
Speaker 2: that if it doesn't work figuratively, what you've lost is
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and some tape because you've put
Speaker 2: it in your dorm room and it didn't work, or
Speaker 2: whatever it takes to try this. And I can give
Speaker 2: you dozens of examples of every time someone says I
Speaker 2: had this idea, there's no way for me to validate
Speaker 2: this idea other than actually doing it, and they go,
Speaker 2: you're wrong. There's always a way to validate your idea
Speaker 2: without actually doing it.
Speaker 1: I love that. I started in the fitness industry over
Speaker 1: here in eighty two and in eighty six, so thirty
Speaker 1: five years ago, I started training my first client one
Speaker 1: on one, as in personal training, and there were no trainers,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, oh, this is handy because this
Speaker 1: guy's is This guy's paying me one hundred bucks a
Speaker 1: week for three workouts, so thirty three dollars ish hour,
Speaker 1: which for me was like a million dollars, and I
Speaker 1: think my alley rate on the gym floor was ten
Speaker 1: or eleven dollars. And originally I thought, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: is great. This is an extra hundred dollars a week
Speaker 1: which essentially improves my wage by twenty percent or something.
Speaker 1: And then I got another guy, and I had two
Speaker 1: guys paying hard I'm like, wow, this could this could
Speaker 1: be a thing and one of my challenge and it
Speaker 1: just kind of expanded, like it was almost an accidental business.
Speaker 1: I just happened to be not bad at training people
Speaker 1: and not bad at being cheeky and creating, developing rapport
Speaker 1: and communicating and you know, the two or three skills
Speaker 1: that I had collided and turned into this thing. But
Speaker 1: I remember initially mark feeling almost guilty that I was
Speaker 1: making for me amazing money back then, and I almost no,
Speaker 1: I didn't almost. I probably still a bit of this
Speaker 1: to the day. I felt unworthy and I felt somewhat
Speaker 1: fraudulent because I thought, well, no, my default setting was
Speaker 1: I'm worth ten or eleven or twelve dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: That was my default cognitive default setting for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And then when I started to make more money, and
Speaker 1: then I got busier, and then the next twelve months
Speaker 1: it went somewhat crazy where I had a waiting list
Speaker 1: because I was actually managing a gym at the same time.
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, so I had a fifty hour week,
Speaker 1: full time management role managing a gym. Plus I had
Speaker 1: this side hustle which was becoming bigger than the main job,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, for my biggest problem was and
Speaker 1: probably still is. Might not seem like it, but my
Speaker 1: own bullshit, you know, my own confidence, like constantly fighting that.
Speaker 1: And I feel like a lot of people have this
Speaker 1: mark where they they know that they've got potential and ability,
Speaker 1: but that feeling of being a fraud or not good
Speaker 1: enough that's an ever present challenge. Has that ever existed
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Of course, especially when you're doing things without really
Speaker 2: thinking about them. You go, why is someone asking me
Speaker 2: this question? Why are they looking to me? So absolutely?
Speaker 2: But you know, i'd argue, and I'll use your specific example.
Speaker 2: You didn't sit there at your fifty hour a week
Speaker 2: management job dreaming and going, gosh, wouldn't it be cool
Speaker 2: if I had this individual training business boy? It could
Speaker 2: make me five times the money, and I need my
Speaker 2: own gym and I'll have to get my own equipment.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, then you're going, I can't do that.
Speaker 2: That's not how you did it. You just had one
Speaker 2: guy on the side and whoa, he's going to pay
Speaker 2: me this. That gave you the confidence to go, now
Speaker 2: I can do three guys, and then five, and then
Speaker 2: pretty soon you're going, Wow, I think there's enough business
Speaker 2: here that I can quit my day job and do
Speaker 2: this full time. And that is it does not require
Speaker 2: this I'm a superman leap it requires I. Wow, it's
Speaker 2: actually working. But I agree. I still, you know, I
Speaker 2: still have those feelings of you know, even though I'll
Speaker 2: come on to a show like this and I'll go
Speaker 2: are talking to me, I'm like, I'm like, nobody, come on,
Speaker 2: I mean, no, I reckon. It's a cognitive dissonance thing,
Speaker 2: because of course, you know, I can tell myself my
Speaker 2: own success, and I can tell myself you've won the
Speaker 2: lottery multiple times, and that's more than just odds, and
Speaker 2: so I go, I got it. I guess I know something.
Speaker 2: Still I don't see myself that way. Just it's a
Speaker 2: very odd, odd feeling.
Speaker 1: I think those things that I've spoken about this a lot,
Speaker 1: the ability that we have to consciously or you know,
Speaker 1: intellectually understand something. Oh well, I must be quite good
Speaker 1: at what I do. I've built Netflix and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things, and I've succeeded repeatedly, and I've fallen
Speaker 1: down and gotten back up. But you know, your track
Speaker 1: record is amazing. But that knowledge and that intellect can
Speaker 1: coexist with the feeling of I'm not that special, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's for me.
Speaker 2: I have a present, and you know it is for
Speaker 2: me too. And in fact, it's interesting that you talk
Speaker 2: about the Guy Raj Show before how I built this,
Speaker 2: because one of the things that's wonderful about that is
Speaker 2: him showing that a lot of these people who built very,
Speaker 2: very reputable, huge companies had all kinds of failures and
Speaker 2: all kinds of moments where this almost never worked. And
Speaker 2: in many ways, the reason that I wanted to write
Speaker 2: that that one ever worked book was to show people
Speaker 2: that I am not a superman, that I made a
Speaker 2: lot of mistakes, there was a whole bunch of times
Speaker 2: when this almost didn't work, that there was other ingredients
Speaker 2: that went into making it successful, that it's not all.
Speaker 2: It's not one of those books where every chapter is
Speaker 2: chapter one, look how amazing I am, and number two
Speaker 2: look with the spectacular decision I did, And number three
Speaker 2: is look how clever I was? Not the case at all.
Speaker 2: You know, you got a warts.
Speaker 1: And all, aheah, you must do you get You probably
Speaker 1: don't spend that do you spend any time looking at
Speaker 1: social media or do you avoid that.
Speaker 2: I avoid it, but it's weird because I participate in it,
Speaker 2: and so it's like they never get high in your
Speaker 2: own supply, I guess is the answer. So I need
Speaker 2: to constantly be really careful, and man, I can feel
Speaker 2: it happening. You know, it's engineered to be addictive, and
Speaker 2: it's whether you're a content creator or a content consumer
Speaker 2: is no different. You watch the follower counts go up,
Speaker 2: and you just want to keep hitting refreshed and you're
Speaker 2: hitting a little lever and getting a little mouse pellet
Speaker 2: and it's a it's a hard one.
Speaker 1: I'm already thinking about how many people are going to
Speaker 1: listen to this conversation because we've got you. I'm excited
Speaker 1: about I'm all about the numbers prob on the title life.
Speaker 2: It's okay, So my my weakness is TikTok I really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But are you twelve years old? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know what it is. It's just something
Speaker 2: about the fact I'll sit there and just kind of
Speaker 2: hit the lever over and over again. But at least
Speaker 2: I can recognize, you know, you like.
Speaker 1: Those rats in that study with you know, they had
Speaker 1: the cocaine water up one end or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: remember that study.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well that's what I mean. It's like
Speaker 2: I tell myself, it's okay, you can handle this. You
Speaker 2: are a when to stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how's that working out for you? I just quickly,
Speaker 1: we know you've got to go. And we really love
Speaker 1: talking to you and know that you didn't need to
Speaker 1: do this, so we appreciate it. How you spoke momentarily
Speaker 1: about life balance. You know, and you're still obviously still young,
Speaker 1: young enough to work and young enough to produce and
Speaker 1: create and keep learning and adapting and evolving and all
Speaker 1: those cool things. But what does life balance look like
Speaker 1: for you? You know, how much work, how much non work,
Speaker 1: how much socializing? I don't know what is that? What
Speaker 1: is that? How does that work for you?
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the luckiest things for me
Speaker 2: was that I figured a lot of those things out
Speaker 2: really early. I mean early enough that I could do
Speaker 2: something about it. Probably in my late twenties early thirties.
Speaker 2: I was already starting to recognize what I needed to create,
Speaker 2: what I felt was this full, full life. And it's
Speaker 2: those components haven't really changed since then. And there's there's
Speaker 2: three of them. So for me, it's it's almost equal thirds.
Speaker 2: Certainly I love the work. Obviously I in a position
Speaker 2: I don't need to do it for a living anymore.
Speaker 2: But the things that motivated me to become an entrepreneur
Speaker 2: have never gone away, regardless of the economic success I've
Speaker 2: had from some of them, which is that I love
Speaker 2: that process of solving problems. I love sitting on the
Speaker 2: table with smart people, and I still get to do that.
Speaker 2: I get to do it now more as a mentor.
Speaker 2: I get to do it now with the podcast and
Speaker 2: the other ways that I try and pay it forward.
Speaker 2: But I try and make sure I limit that to
Speaker 2: about a third of a week, and I really pay
Speaker 2: a lot of attention to the ratio between want to
Speaker 2: do and need to do. Listen, when we have team
Speaker 2: people who are helping you, you have to do a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that you may not be want to do,
Speaker 2: but you want to make sure you don't lose sight
Speaker 2: of the things you want to do, and that's in
Speaker 2: the work environment. So that's a big piece of it.
Speaker 2: That's one part. But again I limit it, which is
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why TIF had to fight so
Speaker 2: hard to find the time to put us together is
Speaker 2: because I limit I only do it for two days
Speaker 2: a week, and I crunch everything into those two days,
Speaker 2: which means it's hard. Okay. Number two is I'm married.
Speaker 2: I been married for a long time. I have three kids,
Speaker 2: and I vowed a long long time ago that I
Speaker 2: did not want to be an entrepreneur who is on
Speaker 2: their sixth company but also on their sixth life, and
Speaker 2: more importantly recognized in my late twenties that that would
Speaker 2: not happen if the family and wife were the afterthoughts.
Speaker 2: That those are the things that I got to after
Speaker 2: I focused on the business, that I had to make
Speaker 2: that a big rock in my life, big enough that
Speaker 2: everything else fit around it. And that's never stopped happening.
Speaker 2: And so that whole piece of my wife, my family,
Speaker 2: my friends, having time for all of them is a
Speaker 2: big piece of it. So that's another third. But there's
Speaker 2: a third piece, which is that I'm really passionate about
Speaker 2: the outdoors about this is a very Australian thing, but
Speaker 2: just being outside, you know, I surf, I ski, I
Speaker 2: mountain bike, I climb, I kayak. Anything that involves being
Speaker 2: outdoors with the potential chain of hospitalization count me in
Speaker 2: and Unfortunately, though, I did not pick a hobby like
Speaker 2: stamp collecting or chess. I picked something that requires frequently
Speaker 2: getting on three planes in a row to go to
Speaker 2: some place way up in northern Alaska and then spend
Speaker 2: ten days kayaking the Schoolerness River. And you cannot fit
Speaker 2: that in between your eleven o'clock conference call on your
Speaker 2: two o'clock meeting. You have to if you want those
Speaker 2: things to happen, you have to make sure you construct
Speaker 2: a life carefully to let that happen. So, when I
Speaker 2: said your earlier question, do I think about how I think?
Speaker 2: I'm always evaluating that. I evaluate it in every week.
Speaker 2: I evaluate them every month, I evaluate it in every year,
Speaker 2: Which is, how do I do if I feel it
Speaker 2: getting out of balance? Either getting out of balance because
Speaker 2: I'm working too much and it's taking away on fine,
Speaker 2: someone goes, let's go for a mountain bike ride and
Speaker 2: I can't go. I ask myself, why, how? What am
Speaker 2: I am? I prioritizing anything incorrectly? Here? Have I structured
Speaker 2: something in a way that's preventing this from happening? And
Speaker 2: I have to work that does not come as naturally
Speaker 2: to me as the entrepreneurship stuff. But the funny thing,
Speaker 2: and this is the you know, we talked, We ruminated
Speaker 2: about success and about how I feel that so many
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs are motivated by these wrong things. But I've certainly
Speaker 2: had success from this one perspective which I have had.
Speaker 2: You know, I've started pariering seven companies, and you know,
Speaker 2: two of them are multi billion dollar companies, so unbelievably
Speaker 2: wonderful and lucky. But the thing that I'm proudest of
Speaker 2: is not that. The thing I'm proudest of is doing
Speaker 2: those things while staying married, while growing up with my
Speaker 2: kids knowing me and liking me, I hope, and having
Speaker 2: a chance to do the things that make me whole,
Speaker 2: which is you know, the backcountry skiing and all those
Speaker 2: things that that success have.
Speaker 1: There you be so successful and balanced and make all
Speaker 1: that dough and be a good human being, and stayed married.
Speaker 1: I think it was nine to eighty seven you got married.
Speaker 1: I read thirty four years, three kids, geology undergrad degrees. Here,
Speaker 1: what's that about? And he didn't even bloody do it.
Speaker 1: It didn't bloody do anything with rocks. What's that about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you find them climber. Well, it is it's
Speaker 2: basically that in school read I would see that the
Speaker 2: geology majors, and they'd all be coming back from this
Speaker 2: field trip. They're only piling out of the van and
Speaker 2: they'd spent the whole weekend or a whole couple of
Speaker 2: days up in some incredibly beautiful mountain thing. And I went,
Speaker 2: that sounds like the major for me. But it was
Speaker 2: always about that I had had zero interest. Not there's
Speaker 2: anything wrong with it in being a petrochemical engineer, being
Speaker 2: a oil field worker or something like that.
Speaker 1: No, thank you, Ah, yeah, I'm with you. I could
Speaker 1: ask you so many, got so many all things I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, but I realize I can't, so
Speaker 1: tiffle book in for twenty twenty six for our second
Speaker 1: conversation when I think that's your next opening.
Speaker 2: Every four hundred, every four hundred of your episodes, book
Speaker 2: me on what As a matter of course, Okay, you've.
Speaker 1: Just trippled my workload.
Speaker 2: He's going to roll out twenty seven a week now.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. You get on you, you bring your a game. Tif. Hey, Mark,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you so tell people just once again, for
Speaker 1: the people who have been slumbering through this the name
Speaker 1: of the podcast the name of the book and where
Speaker 1: they can connect with you, and so on.
Speaker 2: So certainly the book is that will never work, as
Speaker 2: is the podcast that will never work, and both of
Speaker 2: them are available wherever you find whatever you're looking for,
Speaker 2: and of course for all things Mark Randolph. If you
Speaker 2: don't have the time span, the pretension span for a
Speaker 2: thirty minute podcast, you can get everything sliced and diced
Speaker 2: into whatever sized nuggets you can digest at Mark Randolph
Speaker 2: dot com or all the various social media outlets that
Speaker 2: I am duty bound to keep posting content too.
Speaker 1: Of course, you are you, bloody champion. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much if you can stay on the cool after we
Speaker 1: saw enough. Thanks for being on the show, Mike.
Speaker 2: Creg a pleasure being with you. This was really fun.
Speaker 2: And Tiff, thank you for coordinating all this. Both of
Speaker 2: us know none of this would happen without you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's exactly right. Thanks Tiff, Thanks hops, love you gots everyone,
Speaker 1: See you next time.