Best Business Advice on the Planet with Guests Marc Randolph, Alex Morton, Richard “RB” Botto, Will Ahmed, and Brad Lea

 You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 You know, we have a lot of CEO types who are aspiring entrepreneurs and things like that
 for the podcast.
 Can you talk a little bit about building the company, some of the nuts and bolts of the
 realities of being an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur, and having an idea, bringing it
 to life?
 Because I think a lot of people think that stuff happens overnight, but whoops, what,
 eight, nine years into making now, and now you're seeing the fruits of this and that's
 been building.
 Starting a company and building a business is much harder than you think it'll end
 up being, but it's not nearly as hard as probably most people in your life will tell
 you, which is that it's impossible.
 I think that the hardest thing for me in building wood was less so the actual business side
 of it, but more so me being comfortable growing into running today, what is now a business
 value over a billion dollars, right, like, how do you grow into that?
 How are you making sure that you personally are advancing as a leader, and how do you
 deal with criticism along the way, self-doubt along the way?
 Everybody was looking to me to come out to LA to say, can you help me get a job?
 Can you help me help me?
 And you realize that while all businesses are tribal and all businesses run on relationships,
 the entertainment business is the legitimately the most tribal business in the world, and
 that got me thinking about what was the embryonic idea of stage 32.
 When things catch on a broad level, there will only be so many companies that can compete
 in that space, and we've seen that born out over the last 12, 15 years where you have
 your Facebook's and your Twitter's and your TikTok's now, and everyone's in the wild
 want to pop up Instagram and so on and so forth.
 But I figured that what would happen was these things would filter down to niche levels.
 And so what I wanted to have was the first platform for film, television, and digital
 content creators and professionals worldwide dedicated to the business.
 The lesson is epiphanies aren't real, that company formation is sloppy.
 It involves lots of people, lots of dead ends and false starts, and Netflix was certainly
 no different.
 In fact, before we even got anywhere close to an idea for video, I pitched my co-founder
 Reed Hastings dozens if not hundreds of ideas that were generations removed from what Netflix
 was.
 My book is called That Will Never Work.
 My podcast is called That Will Never Work.
 And that's because that is what everyone told me when I pitched the idea for Netflix.
 It's what employees told me, it's what investors told me, my wife told me that.
 And I persevered anyway, but lo and behold, we launched this crazy idea and you know what?
 Well, they were all right.
 It didn't work.
 It was a terrible idea.
 And it took us 18 months before we finally stumbled on the crazy business model twist
 that unexpectedly it did work.
 So yes, there was a long period where we were struggling, running out of money in a tiny
 office sitting at card tables on beach chairs we had bought from home.
 That's the story that people don't hear in the entrepreneur world of what's not sexy.
 You know, it's all sexy now like the beauty and the pageantry of entrepreneurship.
 There's been a lot of moments.
 There's also been some major downfalls, right?
 I went from almost 2 million bucks to down to less than 90K in my savings account, 30
 pounds overweight, pretty much depressed and anxiety, crying myself to sleep, freaking
 now.
 So there's been a lot of moments of pinnacles of success and there's been a lot of moments
 of, dude, this is like, if this isn't rock bottom, I don't know what the hell it is.
 But I feel like all of those moments make me and make us who we are.
 At the end of that, it builds our character and it builds our, you know, it builds our passion
 for what we're doing 100% 100% right.
 The journey is everything, but anyone that tells you the journey is one straight line is
 both full of it and never really had a true journey.
 You know, it's interesting when you enter a space and you're successful, but the space
 doesn't support the success in a way.
 Like, you know, we add to it, we add two masters, right?
 The readership and the ad, the business, the ad dollars.
 The readership at the end was the highest it ever was.
 Every issue was outselling the last and, but the advertising, you know, was challenged
 because, again, hers could go out and sell seven titles at once and discount against
 my one.
 So that was the challenge there.
 Interesting.
 Is, let's, I want to explain for people because if you're not in the entertainment industry,
 I think it can be overwhelming and, and also some ignorance just because there's not,
 you're not in it.
 There, there are no overnight successes.
 Everybody believes that this is a very much, very much a brick, brick, brick business
 and a marathon business and a written like I said earlier, relationship and tribal business.
 But the way that you can shorten your path is if you can get your material or your talents
 in front of those decision makers.
 And really, before this platform existed, the only way to do that was, you know, sometimes
 through a contest or sometimes through, but really it was through your champions.
 It was through people that, you know, if I come up to you and, you know, you're a manager
 and I say, man, my, you know, my writings fantastic, that manager is getting in, you know,
 just inundated with material day up to day.
 You're like, yeah, sure, you and everybody else, but one of their clients or one of their
 peers or somebody comes and says, no, no, no, you got to read RV stuff.
 It's really good.
 It goes to the top.
 That used to be the way, the only way it really worked.
 When you look back, who's, who are those influencers in your life?
 You know, I don't really say that I have a mentor or I have one.
 I think I was a mentor by everyone, right?
 You know, things not to do, things to do, you know, my dad, my grandpa, my freaking friends,
 their dads, you know, their moms, TV shows, you know, Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, Damon
 John, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, like I've learned a lot from everybody and I believe in learning
 something new every day because a lot of times we get in these ruts where, you know, we're
 just kind of feeling stuck and mainly it's because we're doing the same things.
 And in order to do something different, you have to think something different.
 So if you're not getting any new information, you kind of just get stuck.
 So I seek new information on a daily basis and I realize everybody I meet knows something
 I don't.
 So I believe relationships are the new currency.
 I believe the more hands you shake, the more money you make and I'm not concerned if someone
 doesn't necessarily like who I am because I like who I am.
 So I think that's a combination that just comes across, you know, confident to some and
 airing it to some others.
 You never know.
 But at the end of the day, I think I think that's the key is just learning from everyone,
 learning everyone, be your mentor, your children, your employers, your employees, your friends,
 your relatives, you know, everyone.
 I learn from everyone.
 You can always tell someone that maybe made a hundred grand one time in a month or even
 a year and everything's got to be super formulated and organized, all this kind of stuff and
 one of my good friends and mentors, you know, Grant Cardone, which a lot of people know,
 I love the guy so much.
 Not just because he's a good dude, but he's so raw and real.
 And he's like, I'm going to tell you the way it is because I've done it.
 And I feel at my age, other people that are made more money than me, absolutely, but
 being able to earn, you know, dozens of millions of dollars in your low 30s, you've heard
 a lot of stuff.
 And I feel like I know how to just give people the truth.
 So why mess around with all the marshmallows and rainbows, just tell people how it is.
 And if some people like you, love you or hate you, that's not even my business.
 I'm my business is to give people the formula to go out there and win and that's that.
 There's this thing that happens, at least it happened to me, where you start a company
 and you start immediately comparing yourself to like the best entrepreneurs, you know,
 Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, whatever, right?
 Like these people wouldn't be struggling with this thing.
 And you know, here I am, I've got, you know, four people on my team and two of them are
 co-founders and I'm struggling to get the fifth person, like gosh, like they would just
 never would have had to deal with this.
 And I think that's a really unhealthy mindset and one that I overcame as well, where you're
 trying to compare yourself to other executives, other leaders, other entrepreneurs.
 And really you just have to focus on how can you become a better version of yourself in
 this role.
 And I'll bet you that when those heroes that we think of today as entrepreneurs were
 first starting a company, they didn't know that much more than you did.
 I mean, I really believe that.
 I think the key thing though that they did much faster than everyone else is how they
 got better themselves.
 And it's why if you look at what they've been able to accomplish later in their careers,
 it's so powerful.
 And it's why many of the best entrepreneurs also have these sort of like failed early
 startups in their careers too, or things that weren't nearly as successful as what they
 did later.
 So again, I come back to this idea that you have to keep comparing yourself to yourself
 on that growth journey.
 I like that.
 And you know, you didn't say it, but again, I've read enough about your process and that
 notion of a lot of those you just named the ambition in the idea and making sure that's
 grand enough so that you know, you're kind of beating your competition ahead of the game,
 which I really like because I think a lot of people box themselves into the limits of
 the idea because it may seem easier.
 But while you're at it, what you're going to all these links be ambitious.
 And in fact, I'll just say broadly, I think that the more ambitious your idea is, the
 more potential it is, that's obvious, but it has all these lists, it has all these other
 benefits that you sort of don't fully appreciate in the moment.
 The first is, for example, that you end up being able to recruit in scene like good talent.
 Like the best, best talent by far, you know, today who has a 96% job offer acceptance
 rate, which in like the world of engineering is kind of unheard of.
 And the reason we have such a high job acceptance rate is that what we're doing is so hard
 that it attracts these like insanely competent people because they want to work on the hardest
 problems.
 You know, it's why SpaceX and Tesla, for example, also have, I'm sure, amazing engineers
 because they're doing stuff that's on the cutting edge.
 Right.
 So if you're doing stuff on the cutting edge, I think you inherently have these advantages
 of being able to attract really great talent.
 You also have the opportunity to work with other very cool brands, because those brands
 want to associate themselves with the next thing.
 You know, I know you're doing stuff with personal development and mentoring and all those things.
 We hear it a lot, the ideas are 1% and the execution is everything.
 And I think it's becoming such common vernacular that it's kind of like glossed over a little
 bit.
 I'd love for to know your perspective of like how you, how people like yourself or others,
 are they just wired like to get it done like because all execution is just, it is everything.
 I mean, I think probably the single biggest personal trait for a successful entrepreneur is
 simply this predisposition to action.
 You know, they do more and they think less.
 They immediately, when they have an idea, they're not all of a sudden spinning off into
 this fantasy land.
 Oh, how amazing this idea will be.
 Just imagine what will happen when they immediately go, how can I figure out a way to quickly
 and cheaply and easily try something.
 The other reason for this whole, you know, ideas 1% and executions 99% is that your idea
 is almost inevitably wrong.
 In fact, it's always wrong.
 Yeah, I don't know whether you, yeah, absolutely.
 In fact, you come from a industry where brainstorming sessions are like, you know, that's your daily
 meals.
 And for those of you who don't, if you've earned these brainstorming sessions and there's
 always the moderator up there and goes, okay, some ground rules, folks, number one, there's
 no such thing as a bad idea.
 And I call bullshit on that.
 There are tons of bad ideas.
 In fact, the rules of a brainstorming session, these are all bad ideas because they are.
 And your job is not to come up with a good idea.
 Your idea is to figure out why your idea is bad because that's the process.
 That's what entrepreneurs do.
 They start with an idea and don't say, this is what's going to be again, there's no
 epiphany moment, but they start and they realize by colliding it with real people, with
 a real market, with real problems, what the flaw was.
 I've heard every single possible reason there is for people having an idea and then not
 wanting to start.
 And one of the most tragic ones that I hear is, I don't want to tell anyone my idea because
 I don't want someone to steal my idea.
 And the reason that is so tragic, besides the obvious, which is no one's going to steal
 your idea, but by the very act of you not being willing to make your idea public, you're
 protecting the 1%, and you're then not enabling yourself to do the 99%, which is figure
 out why your idea is a bad one.
 You're protecting something which is a bad idea.
 You've got to get out and figure it out.
 It's the execution, it's the doing, it's the doing, it's the doing.
 I love that notion that all ideas are bad because the notion, because all ideas are bad
 because of how hard it will be to execute them and how much you have to overcome to make
 them happen.
 Well, that's not what I mean.
 What I mean is that idea that you have in your mind is not going to work.
 It's a creation.
 Evolution.
 It's a fiction.
 The evolution is the really hard part.
 I tell people, the most successful people in this business are in general are naturally
 curious, because I think if you don't have a natural curiosity, either you're both uninteresting
 number one, I think, and then number two, I don't think you can have, it's something that
 comes with driven people.
 This is a good insight for any entrepreneur's listening to this.
 I would encourage you to ask your customers what their problems are, not necessarily ask
 them what solutions they think you should build.
 Because your responsibility as an entrepreneur as a business leader to figure out what the
 solution should be to their problems.
 And often customers are phenomenal at describing problems and less capable at describing solutions.
 And so that's what I've realized, you know, I've realized this years later, but in that
 moment in time, I was just recognizing a better way to solve their problems.
 You have more control than you realize you have, and you can control the process, but
 you can't control the process without champions and without an audience, you know what I mean?
 So this teaches you how to build that audience, how to make sure you're not wasting time trying
 to just make everyone your audience, because that's not the way the world works.
 You got to identify your audiences, engage them in the proper way by bringing them value
 like you said earlier, being selfless.
 You know, I have a rule of three, which is I give three times before I ever ask for anything.
 Right?
 So you're building that trust and you're building, you know, that community.
 And then once you built that trust, you get them to go, then you go for your ask.
 Then you ask them to go move on your behalf.
 And you know, we've seen this throughout history that this is how businesses are built.
 And especially in this day and age, we've seen how brands all across the world are
 asking their communities to move on their behalf and to grow and to help them grow.
 If you have more opportunities today, especially given the fact that you, you know, you're
 basically carrying around a connector all day long, right?
 And you have so many opportunities in a given day to be able to give and to be selfless
 and to be empathetic in a manner that allows you to build your brand and build your audience.
 Right?
 And to get you to really where you want to be.
 And I'm not saying that in a manipulative sense, like would be a Machiavellian, like let's
 make these connections and then all my God, I'm going to come back behind you and I'm going
 to like be like, okay, now, now you're going to give me what I'm asking for.
 No, it's not that.
 It's building relationships in a community that lasts over time so that you're able to
 accomplish your goals, but you're able to help other people on that path and on their
 journey as well, which of course is the priority really or it should be the priority in audience
 building.
 But when you're ignorant about something, it doesn't mean you're stupid.
 It means you just don't understand it, right?
 So I kind of dove into it and I had these different conversations and these different,
 I was shaking hands with people that were really doing this and I'm like, you know what?
 This truly is the future.
 So knowing what you want, your vision, finding your vehicle and opportunity, finding the right
 people to listen and listen to, and then I think there's a beautiful balance of working
 on yourself spiritually and they're working hard in the physical.
 I'm not one of these guys, these gurus that say, oh, just think about money and a million
 dollars going to hit you in the side of your head.
 I don't think that's real.
 But I think you need the law of attraction and to learn what that actually is and how
 to manifest.
 But you also, you got to also move your ass and get to work.
 You know, I was doing 17 hours a day for probably six years straight.
 So it's hard work, it's persistence, it's consistency, it's the ability to block out
 negative people.
 Some of them may have your same last name.
 They may love you very, very much and they may say, you know what, I don't think you
 should start that business.
 You shouldn't go start an ad agency because it's going to cost too much money.
 It's not going to work, right?
 So it's the ability to grow yourself personally, learn leadership, sales, marketing, all those
 skills.
 But also, learn how to use your imagination, learn how to build a really positive, self-image,
 learn how to go out there and build solid relationships.
 But at the end of it, for like momentum, I truly believe it's desire, vision and it's
 work ethic, man.
 I talk all over the world, I tell people, you can't find me one athlete musician, actor,
 business owner that didn't have to work their butt off to get where they are.
 You know, people can look you up and we'll get to the book and other things that, you know,
 like some core principles.
 Is there like a number one skill set that maybe people overlook or is often or two or
 three?
 You know, there's a specific number here, but like things that really make people great
 at sales.
 Well, when it comes to just sales, you know, there's quite a few.
 I think people overlook empathy.
 They overlook the, you know, empathy being number one.
 I mean, a lot of times if you just put yourself and your customer shoes, say to them what
 you would want to be told, you know, treat them like you'd want to be treated.
 You know, you're going to go a lot farther in sales.
 I think if you really want to learn to sell, learn to stop selling, right?
 And we're learned to sell incorrectly.
 We're being taught to close deals and sell people so we can get a commission or we can
 make a sale.
 When if you just stop doing that, man, instead of being a salesperson, try to be a
 help person, you know, stop selling and just start asking some questions and being interested
 in your customer.
 And then lo and behold, you'll find information that totally correlates with your product
 or service and all of a sudden now that enthusiasm and that passion kind of gets transferred
 to the other person and they buy your product and service.
 So the way to sell is to not sell, look to help people, man, took me 30 years to learn
 three valuable life lessons, number one, be real.
 Number two, be ethical.
 And number three, help other people, man.
 You never know there's a scripture, Hebrews 13 to look it up.
 That's why I say, man, you just more hands of shake, the more money you make.
 Go out there and introduce yourself.
 Just because you're having a hard time raising that first 250 grand or that first million
 dollars or whatever it is, it doesn't mean you can't go on to raise an enormous amount
 of capital.
 It's just learning, it's learning the fundraising process.
 The other thing I'll say that I feel fortunate about is I have, I've raised capital from investors
 that I've built great relationships with over time.
 And I will say that, you know, when you take capital from someone, it's like a marriage
 except that you can't get divorced.
 I mean, it's, I mean, it's, there's a real bond.
 That happens there.
 You're now both on the cap table.
 And so, you know, you need to just be pretty thoughtful about that.
 And I would also say that you don't want to, you don't want to take any capital.
 You want to make sure that there's some real alignment around what your, what the vision
 is for that capital.
 And that's, that's been another thing that I think has boated well for who've been being
 very ambitious.
 You know, they're, it's self-selected out investors who were maybe at the early stage scared
 of losing their money.
 They knew that there were some real technology risks.
 And so they said, like, let's take it on.
 Whereas now at a later stage, you know, it's more of a, it's more of a business model
 story.
 You have to think about these things relative to the stage as well.
 People just started inviting, you know, the community and their communities in droves.
 And they were becoming champions of the platform.
 So to be quite honest, we went quite quite honest.
 We went from that 100 to 800,000 mostly through crowd sourcing, mostly through word of
 mouth.
 Now over the last couple of years, have we done some Facebook advertising stuff like that?
 Of course.
 We have partnerships with Netflix.
 We did a gigantic global, how to, how to pitch the Netflix, how to do a TV pitch deck
 for Netflix.
 That, of course, poured in a ton of people as well.
 But most of our community has been built through word of mouth and through crowd sourcing.
 I think it has a lot to do.
 It's just telling the truth in 2022.
 I feel like there's so much over hyped nonsense.
 And when you just tell a prospect, whether it's car sales, insurance, network marketing,
 ad agency, we need to just tell people the deal.
 This is what it is.
 This is what it costs.
 I feel like you're going to close more deals instead of running around the, the bush
 all the time and over hyping under delivering.
 So I think telling the truth, being transparent, but I think it has a lot to do with confidence
 and how the salesperson sees themselves, literally their self image of who they are.
 I think that's a, that's, that's a big factor when it comes to closing small deals or,
 you know, multi-million dollar deals.
 Is there two, three, four ingredients?
 All of them that are common in that, in any kind of company's growth.
 I mean, like, are there things that are like, you absolutely have to have these two or
 three things that are this, that you see as you've watched either businesses you've grown
 or others you've been invested in or help.
 You know, I'm glad I did what I did, but, you know, if anybody wants to build a personal
 brand in my opinion, you got to think about just content flow.
 So you just figure out what your sources are.
 And the sources lead to the creative, someone has to chop up, drop, edit, you know,
 hashtag, et cetera, that's your creative, then you got to figure out what your outlets
 are.
 And then you have frequency, right, how often are you doing that?
 And then you have what I call boost, which means how much money are you investing into
 it?
 A lot of times people just post, but they're not, they're not investing any money to be
 seen.
 Folks, that's the key is if you literally paid whatever it took to get everybody that
 logged into Facebook every day to see your face for a month, you'd be famous.
 You may not be liked by everybody, but you'd be famous and you'd have a ton of opportunity
 coming your way.
 I think people overstate the risks to starting a company or overstate the risks associated
 with being an entrepreneur because the process for becoming an entrepreneur for starting
 something reveals so much about who you are as a business leader, what your strengths
 are, your character, where your holds are, what you need to improve.
 I mean, it reveals that so rapidly and so effectively that regardless of whether the business
 ends up being a success, you as an individual have learned so much about yourself and what
 it actually takes, that you will go on most likely to do incredibly great things afterwards.
 It's known exactly what people want and it sounds so cliche and it sounds so kindergarten
 level, but if you speak to most 38-year-old men and women in America or the United Kingdom
 or where I've been in Poland and Russia, whatever, most people don't even know what they
 want.
 I think getting super clear on what you want, the vision you have for you in your life
 and then number two, very, very fast there, you've got to find your vehicle.
 So I think knowing what you want, finding the vehicle an opportunity, knowing who your
 quote mentors or mentors going to be, that's going to guide you.
 I get 21, I had a guy making 40 grand a month at 25 and I said, do tell me what to do, I'm
 going to go do it.
 He told me what to do, I went and did it and then I got to 40 grand a month.
 If you could just take steps every day, you know what I mean?
 If you could just put out good stuff, put out good vibes, you know, like I always
 sit in introverts, like here's three ways that you could step out today, but there's a
 lot of people like I'm afraid that, you know, to pause the syndrome, I don't know what
 I'm doing, I'm new, how do I thank people for posting great content, you know, just
 thank them, that's value.
 Share things, if you read something this morning, you know, that is intriguing or something
 that you found really interesting, just share it, you know, and never be afraid to ask
 people questions, never be afraid to say, why did you try that, why did you say, people
 are going to respond to you, maybe not everybody, but just dip your toe in and before you know
 it, you'll be swimming and really it's so vital that you can, that you do that today in
 this world.
 It's so vital that if you're looking to accomplish something that you're using, utilizing
 those tools and that you're making a part of your action plan on a daily basis, it just
 I think the media has pumped up the wrong aspects of entrepreneurship, they've pumped it
 up as this path to becoming wealthy or six famous, they've pumped it up that it's all about
 pitching, that it's all about raising money, that it's all about the parties, and in reality
 that's a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of what an entrepreneur actually does.
 And in terms of the wealth part, it's a tiny, tiny fraction of entrepreneurs for whom
 that actually happens to, but listen, if you love creating characters, if you love performing,
 if you love influencing, if you love the emotion of it, all power to you should be an actor
 and the same thing with entrepreneurship.
 If you love the challenge of starting something, of figuring things out, of, as I said before,
 sitting around the table with super smart people solving really interesting problems, it
 is the best career in the world.
 To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social
 media at our Instagram account v.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford, stay radical.