Marc Randolph - Netflix Co-Founder

 We're good. I'm just gonna go ahead tell you. We've had some heavy hitters lately, but nothing is heavy as a co-founder of Netflix my friend
 Number one, there's no such thing as a bad idea and I call it on that thing is that I tell people is
 Stop falling in love with your idea your ideas
 Flood stop
 Nurturing this little thing like a baby and protecting it at all costs and envisioning in your mind
 It's gonna grow up to be the highest-controlled winter is gonna grow up to be that your your babies gonna grow up
 Probably grow up to crack behind the 7-Eleven
 Being a great product is a tiny piece of the
 Solution you have to have a great product, but if you can't explain to people why they want this why this solves their problem
 You're not gonna get anywhere
 We're listening to the radcast if it's radical we cover it
 Here's your host Ryan all-ferdt
 What's up welcome to the latest edition of the radcast
 Ryan offered your host and where you are radical today
 Founding co-founders founding co-founders mark. I'm making up titles for you already
 Before we even get started entrepreneur mentor investor author mark Randolph. What's up Mark?
 Ryan great to be with you. Thanks for having me. Hey, man. It's great to have you
 You are definitely we're good. I'm just gonna go ahead tell you we've got some heavy hitters lately
 But nothing is heavy as a co-founder of Netflix my friend. So congrats on that
 I hope I can live up to the hope up up to the hype. Oh, you can and
 We really appreciate your time coming on and
 Mark, let's get right to it. I know you've done these a lot. I know your stories out there
 But let's set the table at least I like to you know, at least start with intro background
 Of course the the gorilla in the room that is netflix
 Of course and everything you had involved there, but let's just start with your background man
 Well my background. I I don't even sure I have a background
 No, it's a it's a pretty much an atypical background
 Certainly for somebody who ended up in Silicon Valley
 Being an entrepreneur. I mean, I was a geology major of all things in
 In college, but I think I tell you that not to say look at this how incredible a preparation geology
 As is a preparation for entrepreneurship
 But more to say that that really is the most important thing you have to understand about my background
 Which is that I chose geology with zero thought of what it would do for me in the future
 Zero thought about would this be a career and can I pay bills with it? I chose
 Geology because it was interesting and more importantly because people got to go on field trips
 So that has been this pattern where I
 Guide myself by what I think is interesting. I spend almost no time
 Trying to guess how a certain thing will set me up to do to do something else
 And that's that's probably the best background, but it's led to all kinds of crazy places
 You know netflix was not my first company. That was my sixth company. I found it
 Two magazines a mail order company and a bunch of geeky software stuff
 So it's been a career that kind of goes goes all over the place
 Well, I uh, you know, I think there's a bit of a story there
 It's funny. I had a conversation with someone the other day that talked about that very thing of
 Chasing the interesting and the thing that their own curiosity
 Instead of necessarily having it all mapped out and I think
 There's some fascination with that and I think there's some bravery in that that few
 Have you know, we get so kind of mired in thinking there's a process system like we have to do it this way versus changing the interesting and what you're curious about
 Is is probably a rare quality these days, isn't it?
 Well, and I think it's a necessary one at least for the career that I've chosen for myself
 Because what entrepreneurship is
 Is doing things for which there is no predictable future
 You're doing something that hasn't been done before you're trying to build something where you don't know what the past
 Gonna look like and you've got to leave yourself open to
 Falling it wherever it happens to go
 And so in some ways it that can get writ large into your life. That's a fun thing too
 And I'm listening don't I'm not just saying that it's all carefree do whatever you want
 Um, certainly there's huge amounts of hard work
 That I've gone into all this it's more that it's an Ida friend when I was growing up
 Right after college and he ended up working for I guess IBM or Xerox and one of those huge huge multinational companies
 And he'd be able to have these career conversations with me where he'd say okay
 I'm gonna do a year and a half here and headquarters and then I go out to a field for two years
 Then I'm gonna come back and have a step job here
 Then you could like see the whole thing for like 10 15 20 years in the future
 And not only was that this alien it was a terrifying thought to me
 I mean, I can see there'd be some comfort in that but oh boy, that's not a fun way to
 Live your life at least not in my opinion. I know and I know that you know the that the Netflix story and you've told it
 I mean, I don't want to speak for you. I'm sure hundreds of times at this point
 And so people can find that so I don't want you know to spend this entire interview
 rehashing what can be found out there
 But I do want you if you don't mind, you know
 Caught the condensed version caught whatever and maybe built in with some of the lessons from that because it is such a
 Behemoth in today's modern culture and everything like that
 And I do want us to pause there because it's had an impact on your life no doubt
 Ha ha indelible. So can we start there a little bit?
 Yes, certainly and you're right. There's a lot of lessons there and
 Probably the first one is that when people ask about where the idea for Netflix came from where did Netflix come from how to just start Netflix
 What they're looking for is the epiphany story
 Uh, they are looking for that moment where it all becomes clear
 Where you wake up and you can see this dream about I can see the streaming video and around the world
 And it doesn't work like that and then these myths endure, you know, you'll have like was uber or you got you know
 Travis can't get a cab on New Year's Eve and boom. There's the idea for uber or two guys
 Can't make the rent and boom. There's Airbnb
 Or some guys a late peanut movie and boom this Netflix, but the reality is the lesson is
 Epiphany's aren't real that company formation is sloppy
 It involves lots of people lots of fall dead ends and fall starts
 And Netflix was certainly no different
 And in fact
 Before we even got anywhere close to an idea for video
 Uh, I pitched my co-founder Reed Hastings
 Dozens if not hundreds of ideas that were
 You know generations removed from what Netflix was and if you have a second. I'll actually give you an example
 I would love it. I think this is perfect. All right, Ryan. You're ready. Here comes the bitch
 All right, imagine if you will Ryan
 personalize shampoo
 Here so this is gonna work. You're gonna cut off a lock of your hair
 You're gonna mail it to me and I'm gonna have my team of ace hair scientists whatever those are
 Formulate this custom blend just for you and then here's the best part
 You're gonna subscribe to it and so once a month you'll get your custom blend
 And that was a real idea that I pitched to Reed Hastings while we were commuting to work
 And the same thing would happen which is nothing
 He'd be driving and he'd be just looking at the window and a minute would go by
 Two minutes and I'd wait patiently. I could see the wheels spinning
 And then of course all of a sudden need turn and say
 That will never work and here's why and then he would lay into me with this dissertation
 About all the flaws was FDA approval on the expenses and no one uses that much ampoule whatever the reasoning was
 And then I'm no, you know, I'm no strength violet
 So I would lay right back into him with all the research I'd done
 And we beat these guys these ideas up and we did this for hundreds of ideas
 And then yes, one of the ideas we ultimately pitched him was
 Video rental by mail picture this Ryan 8 billion dollar category and rather than having to go to the video store
 You'll order online and we'll mail it to you
 Now that I have flaw too. This was back in 1997
 And the V8 the radio rental if you were looking at you if I remember this
 I was one of your first subscribers on that. I thought this is brilliant. Yes
 I got them in the mail
 VHS cassette back then in 97 and it wasn't work
 So that idea got discarded and then I went to that went to pitching custom dog food or something
 and until about maybe six weeks later
 Read picked me up in the way to work and said hey, I read about this new technology called the DVD
 It's in test market now. It's a plastic disc like a music CD
 But it holds movies
 And we're kind of batting that idea around then we realized that might allow us to dust off that old video rental my mail idea
 And then here's the next business insight
 Which is that
 At that moment with this great idea of how this could transform video rental
 We did not drive to the office and begin working on a business plan
 We did not
 Go and begin working on a pitch deck
 We did not try and book ourselves on shark tank or something stupid like that
 We turn the car around then and there and said let's
 See if we can validate this idea and we drove back to the town we lived in tried to buy a DVD and
 Weren't any if it's a test market so settled for buying a music CD
 Uh put it in a little envelope like you put a greeting card in and then mailed it
 To read's house
 And the very next morning when he picked me up he had a little envelope with an unbroken CD in it that had gotten to his house
 Uh overnight for the price for first-class stamp
 And if there was a
 Uh epiphany moment or if there was as they say in screenwriter speak an inciting event
 That was probably it
 Yeah, exactly you uh you figured out that you could mail it like without it breaking and out that this would work and that you could make them the money work because
 Didn't didn't need did need dhl or ups or federal express
 We could use the us post office and back then our first class stamp was 29 cents
 Yeah, no cardboard either
 I could send a movie from
 San Jose, California where the first warehouses were
 Anyplace in the country and that
 That at least made it feasible
 Yeah, it made it work
 Now how messy like we all gloss over these things and go
 They had just like you just did you did it perfectly like you thought it was one idea in it's like
 Zero to a hundred million miles an hour overnight
 But we know that's not i mean those it like myself that start businesses. No, that's not reality like
 what was the
 How hard was it to go from testing the cd to
 mass mailing out dvds? I mean how long of a process was that?
 Well, there's two pieces both of them were brutally difficult and both of them are totally different
 You know back then this is again 1997
 We wanted to do an e-commerce website
 But it was not like you could just go online and pay
 1995 a month and have a Shopify store and boom you're done
 You wanted a e-commerce website you had to write it every line of code yourself
 You wanted to take payments. There wasn't paypal. There wasn't stripe
 You had to write the payment portals to the banks. You wanted to serve the web pages. You couldn't go up under
 Amazon web services in the cloud
 You had to buy the servers you had to wire them up you had to put them in a closet you had a air condition it
 Wanted security you wanted testing
 Everything had to be done from scratch
 So the first brutally difficult thing was getting this website off the ground
 We also had to find a copy of every single dvd available which at the time was all of 970 of them
 And that was brutal. So there was the hard part just getting this thing to start
 And then we had the big moment on April 14th 1998
 And there was some interesting learning at that moment and
 You know that you know that 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 was that investors told me me my wife told me that and
 I persevered anyway, but low 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 no one rented from us and if they rented from us once they wouldn't come back again
 It was one thing after another and we struggled for a year and a half
 I mean 18 months of almost no success in figuring out how to get video rental by mail to work
 Uh, 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 at card tables on beach chairs. We had bought from home
 Yeah, the tough one that the
 The non that's the story that people don't hear in the entrepreneur world of of what's not the not sexy
 You know, it's all sexy now like the
 The the beauty and the pageantry of entrepreneurship, but the I mean
 Curiosity in those early days. It was obviously not working. I guess you had cut
 You know, maybe business coming in the front door and going out the back door with subscribers and things like that or getting people to
 Stick with the model, but
 What marketing channels did you use like out of curiosity? I'm trying to remember because I actually was a subscriber
 I did get DVDs by mail when you were doing it
 I'm trying to remember what got me and I don't know if it was a direct mail piece. I'm trying to remember what what marketing channels you guys are using
 So that the the the subscription business the the net which really kind of defined Netflix
 That was the innovation that we tried 18 months in okay prior to that it was all a cart. Okay
 That was a very many rented and you went away and the way that we got you is we had a solve this problem
 That there was very very few DVD players out there
 And the DVD player manufacturers were having a brutal time selling DVD players
 Because no one was stalking DVDs
 So it was a chicken and egg thing you couldn't sell DVD players because there was no DVDs
 No one wanted to stalk DVDs because there's no DVD players and so we realized we could kind of
 Perhaps fill this hole and so I spent personally months and months traipsing
 The wilds of New Jersey office parks
 Convincing these huge conservative
 Consumer electronics companies that they should partner with us that they should let us put a coupon in their box
 That said buy this DVD player and we'll give you 10 free three free five free DVD rentals
 And eventually I convinced every single one of them to do it
 And then that
 Again our business model didn't work until we had the subscriptions
 But that is what kept us alive because that kept a flow of customers coming in the front door
 It kept it from getting overly depressing it actually gave us a flow of customers to experiment on and you started building the brand name
 So that's what some people lose sight of is you may not have been successful and who knows how you did have to make some money at some point
 But you did start building and seeding the Netflix brand and that's where I remember it circuit city
 I bought a DVD player and it came with the 10 free CDs. I think that's why I bought the CD the DVD player
 I can't believe that you asked to remember that because you're correct after we did the deals with the DVD manufacturers
 You did a big deal with circuit city
 We did a big deal with all the other other retailers. I mean that was
 You couldn't do television advertising because you would have wasted 99.5% of your money because there was
 So few people with DVD players out there you couldn't do any kind of advertising
 We had to be creative and say how do we actually catch people at the moment of peak excitement and you fished where the fish were
 Because exactly yes exactly
 The transitioning to subscriptions. I mean when did I mean we could jump ahead we talked it. It's out there, but like
 How long was it DVD subscription until streaming is that how people might lose track of the how much time was
 In that that that sequence that was nine long years. Yeah, I knew it was long Netflix didn't launch streaming until
 2007 and the site launched in 1998
 And the subscription service began in the fall of 99 so we were
 Going for a long time and it was not because we didn't
 Realize it was coming
 Because you know what I mentioned before that that will never work
 People said that for two reasons one of course they go well. There's blockbuster
 There's a blockbuster in every corner. Why isn't him? I'm gonna want to mail when wait two days for a DVD
 Okay, okay, I get it the other one though was
 They go this is a digital medium
 Just a matter of days or weeks before people are downloading this or streaming this and who's gonna need DVDs anymore
 And they were right that it was inevitable
 But what we thought they were gonna be wrong about was the timeline
 I mean, I was pretty sure I didn't know how long it would be
 But I was pretty sure it was gonna be a while because you know, there wasn't the bandwidth
 There was a bandwidth to the home if it was there
 It was connected to your desk in your office. It wasn't connected to your living room television
 I knew Hollywood was gonna be resonant about releasing these things digitally
 So we really had to build the company which
 Could survive and thrive while we're in a DVD world
 But be ready for the transition when it eventually came
 Um, and I think the smart thing we did was position the company not as a DVD company. It was not about
 This is the world's fastest shipper of plastic. I wherever we could have said it was
 But more did we say this is all about streaming because we couldn't have delivered on that
 So you know, instead we positioned the company as the best place to find great stories
 And said that that's delivery agnostic that'll work now that'll work in
 2007 that'll work in 2021 it'll work in 2050
 When we're beaming them, you know telepathically into your fillings that are wherever you're getting movies
 Not future now and then proliferation of these guys
 Smart phones a whole nother channel, but I have a really random question
 Do you ever get hate mail from anyone at blockbook executive leadership from blockbuster like old school like anything
 any uh any stuff like that ever go down any getting your DMs on instagram like hey
 I'm getting a little bit, but
 No, in fact, it's it's so much. It's almost the opposite. I mean, I don't know that you've seen you
 Everybody's so often you'll see these new stories about or human interest stories about
 Some American soldiers go back to Vietnam and they're sitting around with the people who are on the other side of the trenches from them
 And they're kind of talking about reliving the shared experience
 So I have had recently a bunch of conversations with blockbuster execs
 And it's very friendly and very fascinating actually to hear that story from their perspective and actually to realize in my opinion
 How close they were to actually taking Netflix out
 So it's a there's no hate. There's no hate me. I mean listen. I feel badly
 In some ways
 Because you know blockbuster was huge blockbuster had a 60,000 employees at one point you know now that under one store
 and and so
 I don't want to be happier proud about having done that to accompany
 Um, I do feel proud that we were able to not only withstand
 The blockbuster's onslaught, but actually
 You know be resilient and creative enough to actually overcome it
 Well, they were perfectly positioned to do what you guys did
 I mean as far as capital resource and everything else
 But you know, it's innovation and it's the American way. I mean like I'm not saying kill or be killed
 I'm just saying like you know, they had every opportunity you guys just got ahead of them and then
 It snowballs from there. There were some you know bad decisions and or I don't even
 Yeah, bad decisions sounds like oh, I understand like the size of them. They were behemoth, you know
 But it's like they had the opportunity did they not? I mean, they
 starting
 starting
 Something new is really really hard
 You know the idea is one percent of it you can know what to do
 But the execution is really really really hard
 and
 You know blockbusters probably single biggest flaw is they were
 They were struggling with the innovators dilemma
 You know, which is they may have seen very clearly
 What they had to do to enter into video rental by mail
 They could probably see very clearly that this was going to get bigger and bigger and bigger
 But it was very very hard for them to say let's take our very best engineers
 And let's take them off the part of the business that makes us
 Five five point nine billion dollars a year and let's have our best engineers working on something which may make us 10 or 20 million
 It's let's take our best executives and put them on that. Let's piss off our franchisee
 It's really really hard not just to
 Execute but to have the courage to execute when doing what the future requires means you have to cut into your
 Existing business. Yeah, if they could write a book called too big to pivot like it's like I mean, you know
 It's like it's like it is it's hard. I worked in New York
 I mean in the I've been the ad agency business my tire career worked in Manhattan on some of the largest counts in the world
 and it is I've
 It's they move slow
 That's hard for them to pivot and it's not for the wrong reasons
 It's not because they don't want to but it's exactly what you described
 It's just that machine and to take your eye off the ball
 But in this case the ball was not just taking it off. It was moving
 Completely, but they just couldn't pivot and you know you guys were smart enough nimble enough and you know made it happen
 Also want to know mark because you know you said something really interesting and you hear it a lot
 You know, I know you're doing stuff with personal development and mentoring and all those things we hear it a lot the
 Ideas or 1% in the execution is everything and I think it's becoming such common vernacular that it's kind of like glossed over a little bit
 But 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 you all execution is just it is everything
 Yeah, I mean, I think probably the single biggest
 uh
 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 well how can I figure out a way to quickly and cheaply and easily try something
 Uh
 That's the big piece and it's a it's really tragic and the other reason for this whole you know
 Ideas 1% and
 Executions 99% is that the idea your idea is almost inevitably wrong. In fact
 It's always wrong. You know, 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 it for those of you 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
 So these are all bad ideas because they are all ideas are bad 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 piphany moment
 But they start and they realize by colliding it with real people with a real market with real problems
 What the floor was and they go oh that gives me right to try this and try this
 And so the reason
 Listen one of the
 You got me you got me got me going here. I like it. I love it. Yeah, so
 I've heard every single possible reason there is for people having an idea and I'm 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 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
 It's a fiction you know the evolution is the really hard part but
 You know when you the idea we had was oh what a great idea we will do video rental by mail
 People will come in the order DVDs. We will mail up to them and then seven days later they'll have to mail them back
 To do dates and late fees
 That was a terrible idea
 It didn't work
 But it's fine by doing that by experimenting we little by little begin to learn a lot about what were the problems people had
 The thing is that I tell people is stop falling in love with your idea
 Your ideas flood stop nurturing this little thing like a baby and protecting it at all costs
 And envisioning in your mind that it's going to grow up to be the heisman trophy winner is going to grow up to be the
 Your your baby is going to grow up probably grow up do crack behind the seven eleven
 What you so ignore it
 What you want to fall in love with is the problem
 Because the problem will not abandon you the problem will get more and more nuanced and richer as you understand it better
 And you take that first idea and you use that to learn the problem and then abandon that first idea when it doesn't work
 And now you know bit more about the problem try something else then try something else and that
 That process that repetitive that grueling that ability to walk away from stuff two days after you were so excited and now you're disappointed
 That's what entrepreneurship is
 that's the process and
 Luckily for me. I love that and for most entrepreneurs. I know
 Love that
 there's nothing better than
 Sitting around the table with super smart people solving really hard problems
 Especially ones that no one has really tried to solve before
 What's your perspective on marketing like
 Like I'm fascinated by your take and like you know your perspective and
 You know
 Even though you say you're not making an idea guy you are an idea guy
 You just have figured out like how to make it how to you know the secret sauce of
 Of making it work, but like where to where to what was your perspective of marketing as it related to the growth of netflix
 I love marketing. Yeah, I mean uh, I
 I that's that's where I came from I mean I spent
 The dozen years doing direct marketing
 Uh, that was my first love
 You know, I really fell in love with that blend of art and science of creativity matched with numeric
 And analytics understanding how you did
 uh
 My
 One of my great on my
 Was he grand uncle grand uncle was uh Edward Bernays
 Who was the you know put it that father of public relations. Yes, so
 I
 My first job my first job offer out of college was to be an account executive advertising agency
 So I love I love marketing and at netflix. It was it was critical. You have to
 Uh, I'll see you a different story about it. So I worked for software company for a long time and um
 We have a product coming out and it won some you know PC magazine best in class award
 And we all got excited. We go. Oh my gosh our product is won this award. We are we we got it made
 And we go we better go look up. Who else is won this award?
 And you look back at the tracker of other companies of won this best in class award and they're all total losers in the marketplace
 uh
 Being a great product is a tiny piece of the uh the solution you have to have a great product
 But if you can't explain to people why they want this why this solves their problem
 um
 You're not going to get anywhere. Yep. I love it the um
 As a modern marketer to another it sounds like you know
 Anybody more than my little ding on the uh my soundboard. I would have given one right there
 Um, let's talk about and we've mentioned it already um that will never work a little more in depth
 Um, you know maybe for someone out there that's you know fascinated by your story. I don't know who wouldn't be um, but
 Talk I mean obviously it's about the story of Netflix and everything a lot of what you've already described
 But is there anything else that you would tell people the you know
 That would be great takeaways from the book
 Yeah, that you know the book
 The one thing is I wrote the book 16 years after I left Netflix. So
 It
 There was there and there was a reason for that is because I really wanted
 This to be a record of what it was really like doing a startup. I wanted to fight against
 the
 Myth-making of the CEO who knows everything and this chapter one look how amazing this decision was in chapter two is look how great
 I have solved this problem in chapter three is etc
 Goes no that there is really hard moments is really sad moments is really lonely moments
 I mean, there's certainly a humor and excitement and
 But and that's what I wanted this to be I wanted it to be the true
 Behind the scenes what goes into starting and growing a company
 But you know, I also wanted it to be this chance to share
 Uh, I don't know what to call them all the tips and tricks that I learned over four decades as an entrepreneur
 Because I really believe that
 As you mentioned earlier, lots of people right now are finding entrepreneurship is an interesting thing
 Uh, and I wanted them know that these are it's not magic
 It's not superhuman people. It's taking some fairly basic skills and
 Applying them to your at your starting point and I wanted the book to be about that
 And I think I think I think I came up great and I wanted to be a good story
 You know, it had to be entertaining. It had to be listen if you if if book about Netflix isn't bingeable
 I don't know what book what book should be well
 I enjoyed it. I listened to it actually
 I'll listen to most of my books now
 I think black books on tape audio books rather is isn't awesome. I mean recording that
 Was so fun. Yeah, because you realize I mean you I'm isn't I'm a I'm a decent writer
 I'm not a professional writer
 But you realize how limited written like types languages
 You know, you're limited to things like italics and exclamation points and all bold to try and convey what you're saying or feeling
 And then all of a sudden you're sitting there reading it and you can use the full range
 And I was like having you know PTSD in the recording booth when I was going through a certain of the really intense
 A stressful moment. I'm sorry living it because when you talk it you think it and when you think it
 You relive it and it came through your your your wrecks. You're a really good storyteller
 I know it's a real story and it was your life, but yeah, it's really good
 You know, I do want to go down that path
 You know as we start to close out a little bit, but the
 The entrepreneurship thing you know with our youth especially
 It's cool, you know folks like Gary Vee who I certainly admire and others
 And I don't think they're over intentionally glamorizing it and they try to be transparent about the ups and downs
 But what's your thought about you know, I don't know if everybody wants to be an entrepreneur
 But it's certainly at the forefront more than it used to be
 Good bad perspective on all that
 You know, there's some really great things and some really terrible things about it
 I mean just to be optimistic the great thing about it is that
 Lots of people have this urge to do something
 They have an idea and they'd like to see it real. It doesn't need to be started company. It could be any dream you have
 and
 Certainly when I was growing up when I was in college even the early years of my career
 There was this
 Unrelenting pressure to you had to be a banker or you had to be a lawyer or you had to be a doctor or you had to have some
 Predictable chart your path profession and so I think a lot of people who actually had this feeling that this might be a hugely fulfilling career for me
 Uh didn't go down that path
 Uh and because there was no one they are saying no this is an acceptable thing. This is a fun thing. This is a uh a rewarding thing
 And so I think the fact that you now can take
 Classes and entrepreneurship you now you can watch television shows and movies about entrepreneurship
 I think that piece of it in that it's normalized. This is a career choice
 Um has paved the way for thousands of thousands of kids going to their parents and saying hey
 I'm moving to San Francisco to live for to an apartment and eat ramen and not have the parents freak out
 So that's a good thing
 the bad thing
 Is that 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
 Uh, 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
 I mean, it's akin to the person in canvas in Kansas who
 Was the lead in their high school play and wants to move to Hollywood to become rich and famous
 Well, I hate to break it to you
 You're doing it for the wrong reasons. You're not going to be rich or famous
 Very very very very very small fraction of actors and actresses become rich and famous
 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 the 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 uh in the world
 So I love the fact that it's encouraging more people to take that step
 I don't like the fact that it's
 Having some people drawn to it for the wrong reasons because they're bound to be disappointed
 But fundamentally I've kind of made up my life's mission
 To try and let people know that if they do want to do this here's how
 Or if they do want to do this here's where to start
 I mean, it's what there is that in the book. It's really the focus of the podcast
 It's not me
 Interviewing a very successful famous entrepreneur's other people do that way, but way better than I do
 Uh, I my podcast is listening in as I'm actually mentoring
 Other early stage entrepreneurs likely audience
 Who can hear someone struggling with the exact same thing they as our how do I raise money?
 How do I get along with the co-founder? How do I take this idea and start
 Um, and that's what I'm trying to I'm trying to do too. I mean a little bit less hysterical way than Gary V
 But we're we're motivated. I think by the same thing. I think so as well
 I have one final question and you know, you can answer this in any way that you want um
 You know and you talk about some of these things with with the book and everything, but if you are computing
 The growth formula for a startup or companies to truly grow
 Is there like and I know this could be a podcast on its own? So I know I mean, I'm sure but like is there two three four ingredients
 Call them
 That are common in that in any kind of companies 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
 Is there any any commonalities in the ingredients?
 Yeah, there are a number of things and you know that
 I used to think it was simple and then that's what I began doing the podcast and speaking to one person after another realizing
 There's actually a lot of things that go into it
 But listen, there's a couple of things that are critical
 I mean the first one is as I said you have to start and that's what syncs most companies that people have the idea
 And I can't start because I need to raise money. No, you don't. I need a technical co-founder. No, you don't need to quit school
 I quit my day job. No, you don't I need can't tell them when my idea they'll steal it. Yes, you can
 So number one is if you don't start you'll never get any place and what separates with all the people
 They read about the famous entrepreneurs is they're the ones who had the idea and did something about it
 They didn't sit around thinking about it
 But after that the rest of the common denominator is all state two of them one of the biggest ones is that
 people realize
 You can't do everything that you have to focus
 And there's always this sense that I have to get everything right before I start
 And in fact even once you're running after you're everything right and the answer is you don't
 There's usually two things
 Maybe one maybe three
 But if you get them right all the rest don't matter and the best entrepreneurs
 A have this intuitive sense about what those important things are
 But then have this ability to put the blinders on and focus on getting those done at the expense of everything else
 Even when the other things are screaming the loudest or burning the hottest
 Uh, it's a really really hard
 Thing to do and the last one is you have to make sure that you
 Are always willing to walk away from the present in order to get the future right
 Which goes back to what blockbuster didn't do it goes back to what so many companies can't do
 And in a startup you're constantly learning new things and there's this temptation to say we can't do that
 Just think of all the time dollars
 Uh
 Sweat we've invested in this idea
 No, you've got to say oh well sunk sunk cost we're on this direction now
 I love it. Don't fall in love with the idea fall in love with the problem
 Exactly. That's a good one. I think uh it sums it up
 Man awesome mark. I really appreciate your time. Do you have like one minute? We do a section
 We do a little thing called rad or fat. I give you like four keywords and you tell me rad or fat
 To the best. All right. Tick-tock rad or fat
 Uh, oh god a good one
 Fat all right. I like it. I don't think it's okay. It's creating anything any meaningful value and
 Social media evils case change pretty quickly
 Online coaching
 You
 Jesus are good ones. I know
 You think I'll say rad. I'll say rad. Yeah, I'm a I think that's one of the silver linings of uh our pandemic here is realizing just how much you can get done
 Uh, and since I do a lot of online coaching myself, I certainly I'm not gonna think that's a fat
 Tom Brady
 Ha, rad or fat
 That's for sure. Uh, you're a New Yorker. Are you a giant giant your jets? Yeah, oh, I was uh, I was always a Jets. Okay
 JTS all right. Got a new quarterback in there. See how he does the matrix four
 Remember the matrix movies they got matrix four guys you're just reading about that. Yes, Jay
 Oh, that's got it. That's rad. I think that's that's gonna have the legs uh
 That's gonna have legs. I'm like we're moving more and more towards the metaverse anyway. It's like I think we're moving more towards the matrix every day, right?
 It's becoming more and more real the uh my kids feel like it's real, you know they're in roadblocks all day
 There's some stock you should buy
 Exactly mark man. You've been awesome working everybody keep up with you today uh and obviously I know the books online
 But tell everybody where we can find you keep up their thing uh that you have going on
 So, you know, I do the podcast which is available put that'll overwork available all get where you get podcasts
 But if you don't have the attention span for 30 minutes of this you'll find all the shorter form stuff my writings my social media stuff
 All at markrandolph.com and from which is a mark with a C Randolph for the pH
 And if there you can jump off to the whole world of all the crazy shit that I'm doing and thinking about
 I love it man. I really appreciate your time. You are very insightful
 I've at love the book and I'm gonna keep falling along to see everything that you're sharing. Thank you so much mark
 Thanks Ryan really appreciate you have me on good. Yeah, man. Thanks so much
 Hey guys, you know where to find us worth the radcast.com search netflix search markrandolph
 You can find all the highlight clips from this episode
 Everything online. You know where to find me. I'm at Ryan offer it on tiktok
 It's a fad and Instagram. You know where to get us. We'll see you next time on the radcast
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