The Exchanges

Q things that go into creating that outcome. So what stays the same between all these different decades where he's done this, right? So he's done it from buying net net Ben Graham stocks, all the way to buying great businesses, all the way to the patience to do nothing. And then once every 10 years, deploy a whole bunch of cash. What is consistent across that period in your mind?

A Two of the big ones, we could come up with dozens of things that are consistent with someone like Buffett, but the two big ones are endurance, and maybe tied to that, capping a downside risk that allows him to stick around for longer than anyone else. There's also a psychological trait of wanting to keep going longer than anyone else. Um, I, I use this stat in, in my book that 99% of Buffett's net worth was accumulated after his sixtieth birthday. Like, the vast majority of people, including me and maybe you, If we became a billionaire at age 60 would be done. She'd move to Florida and buy a private island and like live happily ever after. For him to be that successful and to keep going full blast for what's now another 33 years and still going stronger than ever is a very unique characteristic that plays a massive role in his success. If Buffett had retired at age 60 or 50, like a normal person would have in that situation, you would have never heard of him. The whole reason he's so successful is just the endurance. And there's a, again, there's a psychological and a financial component to that. Never getting wiped out financially, and the psychology that will allow him to keep going full blast for nearly a century on end now.

AI assessment note: “the two big ones are endurance, and maybe tied to that, capping a downside risk”

Q And who does that really well in your opinion?

A I have a bunch of clients that I've worked with, but one that I think is doing an amazing job of this for a really technical, complicated product Is a company I worked with in San Francisco called Postman. Postman does essentially a platform for developing APIs. This is a new concept. Nobody had this idea of a platform for APIs before Postman came up with it. They do an amazing job, I think, of talking about why APIs are important So important that you actually don't want a set of disjointed tools across your organization to work on them. Why that's important. They've coined a concept called an API first world, and then they've done an amazing job of storytelling around that. So if you go on their website on their homepage and you scroll down about halfway, they have a graphic novel called the API first world. And it's a graphic novel designed for technical people to understand this story of what's an API? Why is it important? Why do we really want to have high quality APIs? Why is that important for your business? And why do we need a platform to enable that? So I think they do an incredible job of that. And they do it in a thousand different ways. Like if you see the CEO do a conference talk, he's actually not talking about the product. As much as he is talking about the market and this concept and why we need to think about APIs differently. But if you are aligned with his p…

AI assessment note: “one that I think is doing an amazing job of this... is a company... called Postman.”

Q And finally, the guy who is beating death, Brian Johnson. If you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of Blueprint, and what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A So the, the premise on this is I, I was posing the question in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every One year of chronological time that passes. Can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30. But it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning. And I will I'll weigh myself, do body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et ce…

AI assessment note: “So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30”

Q And when things are going well, everybody is a winner and everybody's responsible for success. But the minute you have a problem, everybody starts pointing the finger at everybody else. How do you determine when that's a positioning problem versus a larger problem?

A It's interesting because, you know, I do this as work as a consultant, and sometimes companies will call me, and they think they have a positioning problem, and then I have a conversation with them, and I'm like, I don't actually think that's a positioning problem, because there's lots of reasons businesses aren't successful, and positioning is just one of them. So typically, so sometimes companies will come to me, and they'll say, you know what, every company we talk to loves us. If we can get them in a meeting, We close all that business. That tells me the positioning's good. You're just not getting enough meetings. You're just doing a terrible job at lead generation. You should go fix that. You just need to get more at bats. Uh, sometimes what you have is a sales execution problem. Like there's something in the way you're executing in sales that isn't working. So my test is often like, so first of all, do you have good, happy customers that stick with you and love you and are referenceable and whatever? Most of the companies that come to me and say, yes, yes, we have that. Okay. Do you have confusion at the beginning of your sales process where they come in and they just don't get it? That gap between what a customer knows and what a prospect knows, we can close that gap with good positioning.

AI assessment note: “So my test is often like... That gap between what a customer knows and what a prospect knows”

Q And finally, the guy who is beating death, Brian Johnson. If you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of Blueprint, and what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A So the, the premise on this is I, I was posing the question in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every One year of chronological time that passes. Can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30. But it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning. And I will I'll weigh myself, do body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et ce…

AI assessment note: “So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30”

Q How does an author do that without writing the whole book, right? So, like, you can't write the book, publish it, then get feedback, and sort of like, okay, now what do I do with this?

A Um, well, you can, but I'll, I'll circle back to that. Uh, the, my, the, the method I encourage is teach it in real time first. And ideally, you're somebody who's already transformed numerous people, at least three, with the transformation that you're trying to codify into a book. So, um, generally speaking, you ought to have coached, consulted, helped At least three people achieve the transformation you're, you're trying to make into a book. You can, in theory, publish a book, and then see where people are getting stuck, see their reviews, and then adjust the book afterward. I don't recommend it. It's not as, it's not a strategy that most authors will stick to, but like Hal Elrod, who's based here in Austin, he did that with The Miracle Morning. And so in the first year, he promoted that book, sold like, 13,000 copies or something like that, uh, which is quite good for its first year. With every negative review that he got, he went back into the manuscript and made revisions so that that feedback couldn't be given again. So that review couldn't be given again. And he just kept doing that until the negative reviews stopped. And to date, it's sold millions of copies. Uh, I think in, he said in year six, it sold its millionth copy. But he, he stuck with that book, and he was like, I really believe in this. I'm gonna keep modifying this as though it is software. I'm going to relea…

AI assessment note: “the method I encourage is teach it in real time first.”

Q So where do people go wrong in self-publishing? You said, like,

A Where to begin? Uh, I think there's, there's a lot of places they go wrong. From the reader's perspective, I would say that they typically don't have a good cover, and so they immediately kind of shoot themselves in the foot. Public, traditional publishers will typically put out solid covers. When you're self-publishing and you've invested a bunch of time and money and you haven't made any money on the work, And it comes time to putting a face on the thing. A lot of self-published authors are like, I'll go to Upwork, or I'll, I'll hit up my designer friend who puts together PowerPoints, and I'll pay them 500 bucks. And it always results in something unremarkable. You have to pay an artist, a book-covered designer specialist, to create the boldest thing that you possibly can.

AI assessment note: “I would say that they typically don't have a good cover”

Q And then you can sit down, and it's really easy at that point to sort of write it out. Well, not easy, but You know what I mean?

A Right. It's easier. And so it's, I'd imagine it's pretty similar in, like, songwriting, right? If you don't know the concept of a bridge and a chorus and, like, all the, like, these beats, you have, and you're just told, write a song. You're probably going to write a terrible song. But if you have the structure that you can lean into, it will at least be more representative of what humans process. Similar with stories, right? You talked to a storytelling expert recently. Story structure is always the same, pretty much. It's once upon a time, and every day, until one day, and because of that, and because of that, and because of that, until finally, and ever since that day, right? Or it's the three-act structure, you know, climax, resolution, all that stuff. I think the best structures, quite simply, are what the reader wants. What the reader wants and needs. And so you can't get that if you're guessing. You said it yourself. You have the curse of knowledge, of expertise, and so you're so close to your topic. What is remarkable to you is confusing to who you're trying to reach, and what's boring and trite to you is fascinating to who you're trying to reach. And so if you're not having this be an interactive topic, Communal process of producing a book, you're shortchanging yourself. And so this is another, like, common assumption that people have. We all have, like, the, the idea …

AI assessment note: “Right. It's easier. And so it's, I'd imagine it's pretty similar in, like, songwriting”

Q But it doesn't guarantee you anything either, right? Like, 20,000.

A You can do as much as you possibly can, um, but yeah, I mean, you're right. Things, things go wrong, too. Not everybody's publishers, like, keen on you working with these service providers who, who do these services. It's so much, and I think it's just kind of not worth it. And so, that's one of the, one of the reasons, frankly, I like the self-published route. Is you don't have to play that game at all. Like it is a political logistical nightmare. And I will say to people who hit the list, like congrats, it's hard to do. And, uh, you're probably going to make whatever investment you made into hitting that list back, but it won't be because of the list. It will not be because of the New York, it will be correlative. In other words, all the marketing that you had to do to get it on there marketed You, in your business, and you will reap the benefits of that. There's a great video by Anna David, uh, about the, called The Truth, about hitting the New York Times bestseller list. She's hit it, and she's like, it was the brokest I ever was. You know, I, I think she wrote a, she wrote a memoir, I think, and she was basically like, look, it didn't change my life. I eat out on the title, and whenever I can, you know, and I'll, I'll say it for the rest of my life. It's a legit credential.

AI assessment note: “yeah, I mean, you're right. Things, things go wrong, too.”

Q are sort of like working through the subject that they're talking about, and that's the writing? Mark Manson, like, he cares, right? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck is sort of like him trying not to care as much. James Clear was really working on his habits when he was writing about habits, and sort of like, so you're writing the book you almost want to consume?

A Yes and no. So it's, you have to become the embodiment of the book First. So you can't really write it as though you're that person that you haven't become yet, or the person that you're becoming. You kind of have to write it from a place of, I've already become this. I've already grown into this, and I'm the embodiment of this. Naval Ravikant had a great quote where he said, in order to write a great book, you must first become the book. I work on prescriptive non-fiction Exclusively. I don't help with memoirs, I don't help with fiction, just, like, business books, self-help, personal development, that type of stuff. If you think of the author, their expertise is a ladder, right? And so they've climbed so many rungs to where they are. If they're trying to write for people on their rung or above, it will not be a good book. They need to write for the people below them And address those people. Because they can pull those people effectively up to their rung. They can't push somebody who's on their rung up further. You know what I mean? Because they're not there themselves.

AI assessment note: “you have to become the embodiment of the book First.”

Q What's your take on the pros and cons of sort of self-publishing versus publishing? What are the considerations that you look at? When does it make sense? When doesn't it make sense? How do you think about that?

A I agree with my buddy Nat Eliason's, um, take on traditional publishing. He, and it's a very Simple lens to look through. Uh, overly simplistic, I guess, but if you can get a publisher to give you a 100,000 dollar advance or more, you should probably do it. I mean, if you have millions of followers, a hundred thousand's not enough, but, like, you get the general concept. You want them to have enough skin in the game to take you seriously. You want to get as substantive of an advance as you can to actually, you know, Put some money into doing the book as well as you can and launching it as well as you can. For 95 plus percent of authors I talk to, I tell them, it doesn't really make sense for you to do that. There's a number of reasons. Most authors care about financial ROI. We can start there. Granted, the worst way to make money with a book is by selling lots of copies. Um, uh, With a, but with a traditional publisher, they're going to be taking, you know, I think it's upwards of 90% of your royalties. It may not be quite that high, but I remember talking to James Clear, uh, and, and we were talking about how much he would have made had he gone the self-publishing route with Atomic Habits, and I did the math, and it was like, ah, it's about three X more per copy.

AI assessment note: “if you can get a publisher to give you a 100,000 dollar advance”

Q released this once. It's like they read 15% of a book, maybe 16% of a book, and they get all the stats from Kindle. They know exactly where people drop off. Just like YouTube gives you, like, here's the drop-off points. Spotify does the same thing. Amazon doesn't give that to authors, but there's drop-off And so should you allocate your editing time equally across the book or up front?

A Up front. A hundred percent. You are correct. It's, it's the YouTube hook. It's, it's the retention graph. It's the exact same with books. And so with a book, if you assume that maybe 60% of readers are going to read the introduction, a hundred percent Of, of people who open the book are going to read the first page of this book. Can I get them to read past this first page and sear the message in the story, the, the best possible story that's the embodiment of what I'm trying to communicate with this book? Can I sear that into their brain so that they can recall it five years later? James Clear says, With Atomic Habits, which is a great example because sold 15 plus million copies over the last few years, been number one on Amazon overall for five years.

AI assessment note: “Up front. A hundred percent. You are correct.”

Q Are there other examples that come to mind? I really like this thread of the bear case is the bull case.

A You've had Brad Jacobs on your podcast. We first invested with Brad in 2013. There've been more than a few occasions through that journey where the kind of being able to get into that last five to understand in a way that wasn't commonly appreciated, I think allowed us to be a holder and an owner in a way that Would have been difficult for a lot of folks that were only approaching that on the surface. So the, the first one, 2015, you made a big acquisition. It was a big pivot. Probably one of the best capital allocation decisions I've seen in my investment career. We bought a company called Conway. It was a complete pivot from the stated strategy at the time. His frame was, you know, we're asset light, brokerage, truck brokerage business. He pivoted to go into the LTL industry, Which was capital intensive. And even when the deal was announced, even, you know, even I was taken back like, but when we made the initial investment, we spent a lot of time on, on Brad as a, as a CEO, as a capital allocator. He's a serial entrepreneur. And one of the things that's very clear in his track record is he's, he's a capital allocator and he's opportunistic. When we pushed on this and the strategic logic of it, he framed it from the perspective of, An opportunistic situation to create something special that wasn't in the original plan, but was uniquely attractive. And if you understood him an…

AI assessment note: “You've had Brad Jacobs on your podcast. We first invested with Brad in 2013.”

Q Is there a difference between, or actually I'll rephrase this. Um, what's the difference between professional management and a founder led company?

A It's a huge difference. Um, nobody ever loves their business as much as a founder does. Uh, and I mean, I led Whole Foods for 44 years. I will always, it's like, it's like if you're a parent, your child grows up, I raised that child as best I can. It's on its own now. I can't tell Whole Foods what to do anymore. And you just hope you put inculcated good values and that they have a happy life. I will always love Whole Foods. I will always wish the very best for Whole Foods. Even though I'm not in it any longer. And in fact, I deliberately try to stay out of the loop, because it bothers me when I hear things. So I just try to, I just try to leave it alone and do other things. But professional managers, They're not, I'm not saying they couldn't be, but in my experience, they're very, they're not usually mission driven. They've gotten their, their MBA from Harvard or Wharton or Stanford. They're very intelligent. They work hard, but working at Whole Foods or Amazon, it's just a, it's just part of their career path. They want to put it on their resume, and then they want to use that to leverage to get the next promotion. Maybe at another company.

AI assessment note: “nobody ever loves their business as much as a founder does”

Q One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was, uh, your, your first date with Deborah and how it didn't go well. And then you, you sort of mentioned this letter you wrote to her after. What did you say in that letter? Because you totally changed her mind about it.

A Yeah. Well, in that letter, uh, I just kind of, kind of like I've done in this podcast, I just opened myself up and I just said, here's, I don't know exactly what I did wrong, but I knew I did something wrong. But here's who I am. I got, I really like you. Here's who I think you are. Uh, I, I realized that I kind of blew this date, but it's okay. Even having one date with you is very special. And I, I think you're a very special person. I think you're gonna, I wish you the very best. I hope you have a wonderful life. This was before email. I, I stayed up all night writing this letter, and polishing it, and then rewriting it, and, and then I stuck it under her door about five a.m. I mean, I had that very faint hope that I was, it was a Hail Mary pass. You know, I was, I didn't think I was gonna get a second date, but maybe if she really liked this letter, maybe she'd give me a chance. So I was motivated. I was looking for a win-win there. And, uh, it worked because she did like the letter. She called me up and said, I wasn't going out with you again, but anybody that could write that good of a letter is worth a second date. So second date went better, and she likes to say by the third date she knew we were getting married. So.

AI assessment note: “I just opened myself up and I just said, here's, I don't know exactly”

Q Where does that drive come from? Are we born with drive or is it something we develop by following our passion?

A For me, my drive started kind of in Childhood, going into adolescent, early teens, and it was really, you know, my personal journey was I wanted to show the world that I could do something. My childhood was kind of marked by not quite succeeding at anything, um, that I set my mind to. I was an overweight child, and I loved sport, but I never was able to find what I was good at, so I would try out for all the All of the school sports, your basketball team, your volleyball team, and I wouldn't just not make it. I was always the first person not to make it. So I was always on the cusp and that almost made it a little bit worse because I could like taste what it would be like to be there. And so that started over time to build this drive of like, you know, when I find something I'm good at, I'm going to go all in and I want to win because when I looked around me, the feeling I felt at that time was, you know, I'm not succeeding in these areas and everyone that is seems to be getting some level of acceptance. And, you know, for me as kind of a child and growing up as like, maybe that's, that's love. That's, you know, what I should strive for. Um, and I just wasn't able to do that. And, and so like that started to build and build. And so when I found early on, it was cycling, I was like, oh, I'm pretty good at this. And I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to go all in. And the drive …

AI assessment note: “For me, my drive started kind of in Childhood, going into adolescent”

Q What are the input costs to blueberries? I think one of the big ones is bees.

A The biggest single cost are the rental of honeybees for pollination. You know, these berries, they're 1500 blueberries a pound. Every blossom has to be visited by a bee to get a blueberry, so we require a lot of hives, and I was reading an article this morning on, on the Canadian economy, and where Scotiabank had put out a report that said if we would eliminate the borders within our provinces, that it was something like two to seven billion dollars, Of efficiency, so it would come to Canadian. So in our bee business, we're stuck with, with restrictions. We can bring bees from the Okanagan Valley all the way to New Brunswick, and we have to get permission through each province, and we get the permits, and we bring, but when it comes to the Nova Scotia border, no. So Nova Scotia and PEI are the only jurisdictions in North America that have restrictions. It's historically It was about protectionism. Some local beekeepers got together and lobbied the government and said, we don't want others coming in here. This is our market, but that's a small business compared to the blueberry business, so we're held hostage by, by, uh, a lack of pollinators in Nova Scotia.

AI assessment note: “The biggest single cost are the rental of honeybees for pollination.”

Q Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every transcript, finds just the best parts and serves them up based on whatever topic you're interested in. I use overlap every day to research guests, explore and learn. Give it a try and start discovering the best moments from the best podcasts. Go to joinoverlap.com. That's joinoverlap.com. I want to start with your childhood. Take me back. What was that like?

A Well, I grew up in a village of 300 or 350 people. As I remember it, we had a sports event of some kind going all the time. From the time I was five or six years old, we'd have a Spongebob game, and so a lot of sports activity, and skating on swamps, and hockey games on swamps. In grade eight, we had a new regional school in Oxford, brand new school, with a gymnasium, which was just a wonder for us, because we'd been playing baseball in hayfields, and to get a gymnasium and, and the gymnasium teacher was just fantastic for us, so that became a big part of our life. I was a member of four-h, and had a winning calf, And all those little things that, you know, I guess you build on them through the years.

AI assessment note: “I grew up in a village of 300 or 350 people.”

Q And what difference does the bee make in yield, like the pollination process?

A Four or five times. I think if you had no honeybees imported and relied on, on, uh, local pollinators, you might get a thousand to 1500 pounds. If we use four to five hives, which is considered high, but we can grow 8000 or 9000 pounds. So it's tremendous difference. And with our research, we've been sponsoring research with Dr. Percival at the Agricultural College, and he's really taught us how to, to grow plants that are more productive, and with fungicides and fertilizers, and we do have the basic crop there, but then you have to get it pollinated. It's a real problem, and this year was particularly bad, The farmers lost, in many cases, 50% of their bees over winter. See, we should be taking those bees to Florida, maybe, in the wintertime.

AI assessment note: “Four or five times. I think if you had no honeybees imported”

Q What would you say to a small business owner right now who's listening to this thinking about, oh, what would it mean for me to open my books? And, you know, I'm scared to do that. And I don't know what the next step is.

A Small. You know, you don't necessarily have to start by opening up everything all at once. Maybe you just pick something that you really want people to work on. I would say pick a number that you care about improving that is dynamic and is that employees can make a difference on. Start measuring it and then set a benchmark, you know, like that you'd like to reach and share the success. I mean, that is part of it is if you're going to do this, if you think that improving that number could make a difference to the tune of I don't know, 10,000 dollars that year. Share a thousand dollars of that with the folks who helped make it happen. You'll still be 9000 dollars richer at the end of the day. So you do have to teach it, involve people, but also, you know, share in the success.

AI assessment note: “you don't necessarily have to start by opening up everything all at once.”

Q Is there a particular decision that comes to mind when you think of that, that you're like, oh, this really helped me see or solve this problem in a different light looking through this collective success model?

A One of the huge benefits of running a company that's very employee centric and really empowers its people is that you have all these empowered people, and one of the downsides is like, you have all these empowered people, you know, so you have, um, A lot of folks who have a lot of opinions and, um, are very vocal. One example is we used to have a language on our menus. We had a service charge and they could leave an additional tip. And a number of servers came in and wanted to speak at one of the open book meetings because they wanted to propose a change to that language because they felt if there was different language on the menu, people would leave far bigger tips for them. Good suggestion. But the problem is this group of people, servers within most restaurants are actually the people already making the most amount of money. And so having this language is actually really helpful because we didn't have to say like, oh, no, we don't want to, you know, no one had to be like, no, I don't want to do that. It didn't become a battle. We actually just walked through the analysis. We were like, okay, if we're going to make this change, what is the impact on, uh, the employees? And they were like, well, it'll be great for, you know, servers, uh, Because, um, we'll make more money. And then we're like, okay, well, great. How about the folks in the kitchen who are not going to see a pa…

AI assessment note: “One example is we used to have a language on our menus.”

Q Your employees, you've done well for the community. You've done well for your employees. You've created this system that's now used all over the world for harassment. You've had a huge impact. Why sell?

A Part of it was I had already been thinking to myself. So I guess for one, I had received offers many, many, many times over the years to sell home room, and I never even took a meeting with anyone. Like I was just disinterested. I had been a CEO running it for a decade at that point, and I didn't personally aspire to like turn it into a gigantic chain. I wanted to create this beautiful place for people to work. Where we loved coming there, where it felt special, where it was having an impact on the world, and I think that original vision had, had been achieved, and I was actually itching a little bit to be able to do, like, new, new projects. Like, I had wanted to write this book for a while. I wanted to start getting our ideas into the broader world, um, because my dream wasn't just to keep growing Homeroom into oblivion. It was, I, I, I liked having this sort of single Restaurant. So I think I had been already thinking, you know, what is this next chapter of my life going to look like? Because this company already has leaders that can really run it every day, and systems that I'm proud of that I really want to spread into the world. That was sort of the broader vision and goal. Grow the impact of all the great ideas that we've done. But, you know, there was also really, like, personal parts of it that had nothing to do with all that. You know, I just, I was also getting divor…

AI assessment note: “that original vision had, had been achieved, and I was actually itching a little bit”

Q Is there a difference between telling our own stories and telling other people's stories?

A Yeah, there is. Unfortunately, when you tell other people's stories, they're never nearly as good. If I had told you that my brother went through customs and got the X, On his form, it had to get through that second layer. That story doesn't mean very much to you. My brother, in your mind, is a fictional character. You don't even know. Maybe I don't actually have a brother. It doesn't mean they can't be told. There is a way to tell them. It's tricky and it's not as effective. People want to hear the story of the person sitting across from them. They want to know that you're the one speaking because that requires vulnerability. If I tell you a story and it's not about me, the only vulnerability required is public speaking. And I've overcome that, and presumably anyone who's standing in front of other people can at least publicly speak in an effective, somewhat unnervous way. So, me telling you stories about other people is just me reporting on events for people that you may or may not know. The vulnerability comes from, I'm having difficulties with my wife, and we can't figure out how to solve it, and then one day I decide to start kissing my wife in the morning, and everything changes. That vulnerability It's so powerful. Other people's stories , you just don't have that.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, there is. Unfortunately, when you tell other people's stories, they're never nearly as good.”

Q What's the difference between a story and an anecdote then?

A So an anecdote doesn't have to have change over time. It's essentially one of those, hey, this funny thing happened to me. Isn't this crazy? But it tends not to linger. You know, a story ideally is the kind of thing that when I tell it to you, you're thinking about it for days, weeks, months, or maybe for the rest of your life. Whereas an anecdote is you sit down and you have beers with your buddies and something crazy happened on the golf course. You know, something happened in the airport and you tell them it and they all laugh. But it's not the kind of thing they want to go and repeat to someone. They're not going to remember it. I often think of anecdotes as cotton candy. It's like delicious in the moment and lovely, but you don't really remember your cotton candies, but you remember the best meals of your life. Stories are the best meals of your life. The ones you reflect back and go, I remember the restaurant. I remember who I was with. I remember what I ordered. That's the story.

AI assessment note: “an anecdote doesn't have to have change over time”

Q And then how does the end inform the beginning?

A Well, they're almost always in perfect contrast to each other. They, they have to be opposite of some way. If you want change over time, for the end of my story, you know, I've learned a thing. At the beginning of the story, I must not have that thing learned. If at the end of the story, I say this is a spoon of power, and it's really going to become the most powerful teaching tool I'll ever have, the beginning of the story is, it's just a spoon, and those are words I actually use in that story, just an ordinary kitchen spoon. I tell you in the beginning, this is a meaningless kitchen spoon that, because Lord of the Rings was on the, you know, popular, I declared it the spoon of power for reasons that make no sense except That's who I am, right? But essentially it was a nothing, and I made it a something. So we ask ourselves at the end, what's the change? What's the meaning? And then the beginning is always going to be the opposite of that. And now we have change over time. Now we create what I call an arc, right? It's going to go from one place to another. The customs agent story, you can feel, it's flat. Like, there's no opening where Matt is nervous about going through customs. I've done it a million times. Even when I saw the red X, I'm, I'm in Canada. What's What are they going to do? You know, I guess I, if I was in another country, if I had just entered North Korea and I…

AI assessment note: “they're almost always in perfect contrast to each other. They, they have to be opposite”

Q How do we make a good trailer then for a podcast or for a movie? Like what goes into that in your mind that pulls people in and like, I have to watch this. I have to listen to this.

A We want to make sure that people understand sort of what the problem the character is facing, what that problem is. And Make sure that it's something that we all can go, yeah, I get that. But not solve the problem, or even let us know if the problem will be solved. John McClain desperately wants to get back to his wife, and unfortunately, terrorists now stand between him and his wife. What do you do when there are terrorists standing between you and your wife? Multiple terrorists, and you have nothing except your wits. What do you do? And we go, I wanted to get back to the love of my life. You know, how, how is he going to do that? And suddenly you want it to happen. If they present it as something we want, then absolutely we're going to watch it, because we want to see how to do it. You know, I think there is a part of our brain that says, I need to see how John McClane gets back to his wife, because I want to get back to, maybe it's the love of my life, or maybe it's like, I used to love playing poker, and I haven't been playing it for a long time, and I want to get back to that love of my life. But we want to present sort of the stakes, In the story without revealing too much of the story. So we want to see the yearning, the want, the desire. If it's a podcast, it's essentially, you're going to present a question at the top. You know, something like, you've probably been tel…

AI assessment note: “We want to make sure that people understand sort of what the problem the character”

Q But that's a good, that's a good, um, sort of segue into my next question, which is, How has the digital transformation over the last 25, 30 years changed positioning?

A I think the fundamentals of positioning haven't changed at all, is, is my opinion. If you read the original book on positioning, it was called Positioning the Battle for Your Mind by these guys Ries and Trout. They came up with the concept. They published a book in 1982, and if you read that book, the first chapter talks about why do we have to worry about positioning? Why is positioning important? And they talked about how it's important because Previous to that, in any given market category, there were only a handful of products. So consumers just made a choice between the two or three choices that they had, but it wasn't all that important for companies to really differentiate between those choices. But in 1982, oh my gosh, we have so many choices now. Positioning is really important because the customer has thousands of choices, hundreds of choices. Now, if we look at the difference between 1982 to now? That has just exploded. Like, I think it's much more important now to really establish that position. It's much harder now to stand out in a world where We're exposed to millions of advertising messages a day. Like, think about digital stuff. I am constantly bombarded with messages from companies. I cannot avoid it. It's millions a day compared to 1982. So in order for customers to really stick out, sorry, in order for companies to really stand out in a market that is so cro…

AI assessment note: “I think the fundamentals of positioning haven't changed at all, is, is my opinion.”

Q What's the difference between B to B positioning and B to C, like business to business positioning versus business to consumer positioning?

A There's a lot of things that are different. Kind of, if we think about the core of good positioning, the core of good positioning is thinking about what your differentiated value is, meaning the value you can deliver for a customer that no one else can, and then great positioning puts that in a context that a customer can understand it. If we think about value in B to B, it's very different than value in consumer products. Value can be all kinds of things in consumer products. I, you know, I might buy shoes because I just like the color green, man, or I'm buying consumer things because I think it makes me look rich, or it's going to get me a date, or there's a lot of different things that are valuable in consumer. In business to business, it's very different. In business to business, typically, there isn't one person buying. Typically, there's a A group of people. The average B to B deal, there's five to 11 stakeholders in the deal. So if I'm buying accounting software, my boss comes to me and says, hey, I don't like the accounting software we have right now. You go buy us some. That's terrifying. My neck is on the line. If I make a bad choice here, I look bad in front of my boss, the end users don't like it, maybe the software screws up, I get passed over from a Promotion. I might actually get fired. So there's stakes in a B to B purchase decision. The way we think about value…

AI assessment note: “If we think about value in B to B, it's very different than value”

Q Why? No, I'm curious. I'm not a Grateful Dead. I've never, I don't think I've ever really sat down and listened to the Grateful Dead. So you're going to have to walk me through this one.

A Okay. Um, Jerry Garcia was the CEO cut in the cloth of Colin Engel and Toby Lutke. Really disliked conventional wisdom and kind of rethought everything from first principles, starting with the music. So they started that band in the mid sixties. And at the time there was all kinds of rock and roll music and there was jazz music, country music and bluegrass music. And they didn't do any of that. They created a new genre of music. People are referred to as jam bands now, but Garcia himself was a bluegrass player and the bass player was a jazz musician and the Keyboard player was a blues guy and Bob Weir, the singer was kind of a country rock and roll guy. And they blended them all together and they infused this jam band mentality into it. And they really stretched the songs out with improvisation. So they sort of rethought the genre and made a new type of music. The product was unique and the go to market was exceptionally unique. If you think of like when I was in high school, if I wanted to go to a Rolling Stones concert, I would call Ticketmaster and I would wait till whatever it is, one 30 on a Tuesday and the Rolling Stones tickets were on sale and I would, you know, dial away, it'd be five minutes late with a dial away and it may or may not come through. The people who ended up buying most of the tickets were the scalpers. The scalpers had a whole bunch of people buying the…

AI assessment note: “Jerry Garcia was the CEO cut in the cloth of Colin Engel and Toby Lutke.”

Q We started talking about inbound marketing there. I'm curious as to, you guys pioneered inbound marketing to, to a big extent. And definitely got the momentum rolling there. How has that changed in the past few years? And where is that going in the next few years?

A Ironically, I think it kind of went out of favor a bit over the last few years, and I think it's about to come back in favor. The things that changed about it aren't that different. Instead of like cold calling people and spamming people and advertising of people, In renting space on YouTube or renting space on your podcast or your blog or renting space on the New York Times, create your own New York Times, your own podcast and become your own publisher and then pull people in through Google and search and other social outlets. It works very, very, very well. You're, you're living proof of how well it works. The things that have changed are the social media networks have changed. When we first wrote about this before we started HubSpot, we started writing about in that marketing. Dig and Reddit were the two big social media sites. I don't think Dig's around and Reddit's gone through all these iterations, but obviously with Facebook and now it's TikTok, it's Instagram. Um, it's all these new social media sites. It's YouTube. You know, people live in YouTube. It's podcasts. And so the medium isn't necessarily a long form blog like it was back when we started HubSpot. It's videos, a lot of short form videos. And so that's changed quite a bit. I think what's interesting about What's going on now is today you go to Google and you get your 10 blue links. If you look across our custom…

AI assessment note: “The things that have changed are the social media networks have changed.”