The Spirit Of Adventurousness: Signing Up For The Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster With Bill Nussey

Early on in my life, when I thought maybe I would do well professionally, a mentor sat me down and said, Bill, and to my wife, he said, I know both of you and every dime you make should not go towards buying anything or any place. He said it should go towards going places and doing things. And that was one of the best pieces of advice. And we've always been modest in our things we own. We're very fortunate, but we have spent our marginal money on going places. And our kids who are now young adults have traveled all over the world with us on multiple adventures. And that has been the funnest, most bridge-building or bond-building experiences I could have had as a member of this family.

Wow. And you got 2 kids, right?

We do. 2 adult kids, 22 and 26.

Wow. That's some really sage advice right there. Folks that know a little bit of my background, married my college sweetheart 30-plus years— I won't say the exact number, but it's more than 30 years ago.

And me too, my friend. Me too.

And one of the things we said when we first got together, as in like, we're both aware that we were in love, at a certain point, Randy, my wife, she looked at me and she said, you know what, let's never get boring. And this is that kind of out of character for her, wasn't the kind of thing she would say. It's not like a line out of her book or playbook, but she said that. And so I really paid attention and I thought, well, yeah, let's never get boring. I love it.

Yeah. I

feel like it's in line with that advice that your mentor gave you to invest in experiences, invest in— what was the word you used earlier to describe it?

Yeah. I mean, to me it's always been adventures. It's the bonds between our family, but how do we Live our life so that we have adventures. We go new places, we think new things. Occasionally we're scared. We all climbed, the 4 of us, none of us are athletes remotely, and we all climbed to the top of the mountain next to Machu Picchu a few months ago. And for the 4 of us, this was terrifying, exhausting, and what a great experience to have done it with our family. Of course, there were other people there just going right up the, like mountain goats, just climbing right up of it and we're just looking at 'em. But for us it was quite a climb. And those kind of things you never forget. Never, ever forget.

My goodness, Bill. Yeah, exactly. I mean, with our 4 kids, I think in part we went through a period where for budgetary reasons, with 4 kids, like, oh my God, 4

kids,

a lot of food. It's a lot of clothing. Even with hand-me-downs and stuff, it's a lot, a lot of tuition. You and I have something in common because your youngest is about to graduate and you're going to be, theoretically speaking, an empty nester, right? I mean—

Yes. Well, he moved out years ago, but he comes home for Christmas breaks and summers. But theoretically, he'll be launched on the launchpad in May towards a career living somewhere that isn't our house. And I'm kind of saying to myself, boy, it wouldn't be all too bad if you end up living with us. But then again, he's got to get out on his own. So we love having him around. We're very lucky that we all get along.

Yeah. So I mean, this is maybe more for the parents out there or want to be parents or whatever. And so if you're not a parent at the moment, you don't have any clue about a wanting, desire to be a parent, just bear with us. Don't fast forward just yet. Okay, I promise we're gonna get past this. But tell me about how adventurous your kids are, because I want to tie this. So I'll give this for the people that are maybe a little impatient. I want to tie this to business. I want to tie this entrepreneurship. I want to tie this to the things that are really relevant most of our lives these days. So are your kids the adventurous type or kind because you've taken them on these wild experiences from early on?

They've had to face their fears. And we push them within reason and safety. But we have pushed them to do things, to get jobs before their other friends had jobs. We pushed them to travel and to hike places and to try things. We put them on dirt bikes when they were probably too young to do dirt bikes. And we taught them to build computers from scratch before they were too young to build computers from scratch. So it was a whole range of things, but we got them out of their comfort zone over and over again. And I think it's really affected their outlook on life. And hopefully they'll end up becoming happy adults, which is all you could possibly hope for.

Okay. So here's the tie-in, everybody. So Bill, as a tech founder, startup founder, spent a lot of years in tech. How important is it, do you think, this spirit of adventurousness to that arena that you've spent pretty much your whole career in?

Adam, it's everything. It isn't just a nice to have. If you want to do the kind of startups that most people read about, that I even far less famous ones that I've been a part of. But I've been in the startup world my whole life. And if you think it's going— if you're not signing up for an adventure, the slogs and the fears and the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing moments and the glorious ecstasies of success and winning. If you don't want to get on that roller coaster, it's not for everybody. For people that do want to do that, that want to leave a trail behind them, that want to have an experience that with friends that are going to last their lifetimes. And I think startups are the way to go. I ran a company many years ago and took it public and we got to as large as about 3,000 people. And I was CEO and there's about 15 of us 20 years later remained great friends. And every single year we get back together. And normally that would be your high school friends or something, or your college friends, but it's the business executive team of this company that we built and we remain great friends to this day. And so I think that it was the incredible adventure of that particular company that bonded us for life.

Yeah. I mean, the bond I think is the word you said earlier with regard to your family. And now we're back to that word bond again, which is really What is it, do you think, about being on an adventure in business in particular that creates that kind of a bond? And is it something that can be replaced? It's kind of a 2-part question here, and I think this is the harder part. Can it be replicated somehow without the painful moments of uncertainty?

I think that going on a journey with another group of people, your family, colleagues, one that's got highs and lows, is defining because it forces you to be human. If you have a veneer, polished veneer, which we all have. Most startups I'm familiar with will tear it down and you get to see the actual person that's there. And sometimes that's not the person you want it to be seen as. Sometimes it's different than what you thought of your colleague before the adventure. But that raw humanity is what causes people to bond, in my opinion. When we were near the middle of that mountain I was telling you about, one of my family members, not me, could have easily been me, just lost it and said, this is too hard. I don't want to do it. This is terrifying and we could die. It's no safety nets. It was just a sheer 1,000-foot drop a foot away from where we were standing. And we just sort of sat there. With talking about it, and eventually my family member was very upset, and we just sat there until they weren't upset anymore, and we continued on our way up. And when getting to the top was even more amazing because of the we had to stop in the middle and be just absolutely authentic with each other. I don't like that word authentic because it's actually an inauthentic term, but just the rawness.

Thank you for saying that, by the

way. The rawness of who you are. You

know, don't you think it's sort of like transparent? I mean, I've been yeah kind of calling so much BS on that word authentic, but it's been used a lot.

Well, it's used in the context of how you're supposed to present yourself, which automatically. Which automatically means it's not authentic.

Right, exactly. Here's me not selling you.

This is what my PR agent wants to tell you about me.

Right. This is authentically. Yeah. It's a level of transparency that there's some interesting stuff. I was reading an article about some politics. Actually, this is freaking funny as heck, I think, to me. I'm reading an article about this young woman who's, I think, 22 years old. But basically she came on board with the Raphael Warnock campaign some months ago, and he had a good following already and some of his social was pretty powerful. but was— had no presence on TikTok. And so she comes in and she starts doing some things and sprinkling TikTok dust or whatever. And then he grows to like 250,000 followers on TikTok, but mostly because she was sharing these moments of transparency, what she calls these cringeworthy— like embrace the cringe is her thing at 22 or something. And she was just featured in a very major publication. For sure, her star is rising, to be sure. But this idea of sort of Embracing the cringe. Like, when we're looking at what does authenticity mean, transparency even, it's like in today's world, there's a lot of cringe, right? I mean, everywhere. Can you embrace that? I think it's this book I had come out earlier in the year called Change Proof. The original title was the word embrace, and it was to be a follow-up from a book I'd written a few years ago called Pivot. And so this was more of a starting around how do we embrace The pivots in life, embrace the changes in our lives, which is kind of along those lines of embracing the cringe because the changes in our lives are often super messy in there, ugly in there because we're also scared. Like, I can imagine being on that mountain and somebody's literally just like having an OSM. My buddy likes to call that the oh shit moment. And that's what's happening. And when you're having that moment, wherever that moment is happening, it doesn't have to be in a mountain, right? It's like you're kind of an ugly mess. I mean, a beautiful ugly mess. Exactly. Right?

Exactly. And that's when the people, when you're feeling this fear and this uncertainty, and when the people around you, whether your colleagues or your family, sort of rally around you and say, we'll get through this, fail or succeed, we're going to do it together. And that shows the commitment people have to each other. And that's what forms the bonds in my experience is if I'm willing to help you here, of course I'm going to help you for the rest of your life in other ways. And I think that raw humanity, that transparency, you are shed of the version of yourself you'd want to tell TikTok about and replaced with who you actually are. And I think a lot of people suffer from— I know I do— from, I think the term is imposter syndrome. And so in the world of social media, we are getting ever skilled at presenting who we would like the world to see us as and further from who we really are. Maybe sounds a little deep for me, but I do think that's reality. So when you're in a situation that forces you to get beyond that veneer and there's people around you and they're still there for you, man, that's what makes those relationships So powerful and special. And that's what I've loved about being an entrepreneur my entire life is that every company that I've built and run with a team, every single one, it's the greatest adventure and the friendships and the bond, occasionally the burned relationships and people you never talk to again. But the vast majority, at least in my experience, have been people that even if they don't end up working out for the company, in many cases they end up being lifelong friends because you've just been through the trenches together.

Yeah. Would you be willing to share like where the imposter syndrome has shown up for you, either recent or in the past?

Sure. So really famous podcasters reaching out to me saying, hey, would you like to be on our podcast? And like you, and it's like, well, what could I possibly, especially talking about my life, I mean, what could I possibly share with anybody they would find interesting and relevant? And I'm still quite in doubt that anything I say today will be of value to anyone that listens to this. But I trust your judgment and sufficiently flattered to be invited that I'm willing to give it a shot. But anytime you're pitching a startup or pitching yourself particularly, you're like, well, what if people find out all these faults I actually have and all these mistakes I've actually made? And what if they find out about it? And I think that's a fine line we walk in business. One of my great moments in life was an ex-Israeli military, top-level person. And there was a night before I resigned, before my resignation from this large public company I was mentioning earlier, it wasn't announced, but I was with him and I told him and confided in him. When we announced that I'm leaving, I'm going to go to a startup, but I feel like my career is going to be over. And it was just 2 months ago, I won this massive award as the most innovative consultant in the world or something like that. And I said, I'm just struggling with this. And he said, listen, Listen, Bill, I've been called a savior of a country and I've been called a criminal by the same group of people from the country I'm from. And he said, the one thing I've learned is that I'm not nearly as good as everyone says, and I'm not nearly as bad as they say. And maybe that doesn't resonate, but with everybody, but boy, did it hit me at the time that I am not the things that people say about me. I'm not nearly as good and I'm certainly not as bad. In the end, I'm just me. It was the beginning of a real process for me. It was in my early 40s when I started to realize that I was just going to lean into who I was and accept some of the things I was never going to be good at that I idolized in other people. I was never going to be the charismatic, go charge the hill kind of person. I'm more of a, we call it more of a Spock brain than a Kirk brain, if anyone's old enough to remember that reference. But I owned it. I've been a much happier person and maybe more successful. I don't know.

Man, that couldn't be more on point for me just at this moment because was sitting in a hot tub just a couple of days ago. It was our son's birthday, his 24th birthday. We went out and played golf and came home and just as dinner was being prepared, we decided to just go sit in the tub and, and continue to catch up. We'd been fortunate to spend a whole day playing golf together. So we did some of that. But our conversation went deeper than it would typically go on, like in between shots and stuff. And we were sharing some stories, both he and I, from our high school days. Obviously, my high school days a little further. But I was sharing some things he didn't know about me that I was concerned about back then, like things I worried about, things that were bothering me, things that I didn't like about myself, to be like really on point. And he was sharing some of those same things with me that I actually didn't know. Wow. That he was worrying and really obsessing about back then that just, like, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, really? You worried about that? You were upset about that? You know, wanting to change that? Couldn't believe it. And I shared one, like, I, I wasn't gonna be 6 feet tall. My dad's 6'2. He was a basketball player. And for, I don't know, some good period of my early life, I was upset that I wasn't gonna be 6 feet tall, that I wasn't gonna, like, get to do some of that, or somehow that number of just even what my physical height was would somehow equate to a certain level of acceptance or Love or approval or worthiness. Like bizarre. Like I look back then and it's laughable, but it was hardly laughable at that time. So I had said to Max, it's really about objective truth. Don't you think, Max? Like if you look back, if I look back at that time in my life and think about the stories I was telling myself, or even the things other people might've said to me that I accepted as the objective truth, either one of those 2 scenarios were both false. My story about myself. As well as the story that others might have been telling about me, which objectively false, but didn't know that then. I'm not sure I could have known that then, but I look back on it and it's obvious, just like if he looks back on his thing. And I was saying to him, so is that objectively true? Because he's only 24, so it's not that far from the point where those things were really concerning to him. And I think some level still a little concerning. So this imposter syndrome, I think, is something that one of those terms we now sort of go, oh, get it, know what that is. And yet. It's so prevalent, especially in people regardless of how successful they are on either spectrum. Question for you that I wrote down, I want to ask you now is, do you think more people talk themselves into things or out of things relative to that whole imposter syndrome?

Good question. I think many more people talk themselves out of it. It's— there's 1,000 reasons to say no and usually very few, if any, logical objective reasons to say yes. Whether I asked my wife to marry me, there was the logic, the spreadsheet didn't have an answer, so I just knew I had to do it. Thankfully she said yes. But I think the greatest decisions, the most consequential decisions are rarely objectively clear answers. So I think depending on whether you have a taste for adventure, taking the leap, so to speak, I think it's one of the reasons a lot of people sort of wake up 10 years later and say, gosh, I didn't really do a lot in the last 10 years because they kept finding the reasons to say no to whatever crazy crap that came up in their lives. And what is it? There's a saying, I forget who said it, but something like, never has anyone at their deathbed said, I wish I'd traveled less. And so I think there's an adventure.

It's the things we don't do or the things that, again, if you look back, you go, geez, what's the worst case scenario? Are you a music guy? Music fan?

Not much. No.

Okay. So then this is completely irrelevant to you. But that said, Bill, I know you've been involved in the tech space and, but you heard of a guy, Bruce Springsteen? That ring a bell?

That is a name I've heard. Yeah. I think I've seen him in concert actually.

Yeah. That name you've heard. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So that's right. Everybody has, right? Regardless if they were music or not. Yes. So I'm watching Howard Stern interviewing Bruce Springsteen, and it's on HBO Max because I don't actually have— I think he's on Sirius or something, or XM. Those two have merged or whatever. But so I don't listen typically, but I watch this. And so it's Bruce Springsteen. I mean, this guy's prolific and has won every award and all that kind of stuff. And he's talking about just this level of discomfort in what he does in, in his craft. And I was just thinking to myself, to what extent is being okay in the space of the unknown, embracing the suck, I think is the term that Navy SEALs use. How much do you have to embrace the suck as someone who's involved not just in the tech space, but in any area of the startup arena? Like, I have a son-in-law who's got a tech company that's doing quite well and they're on a pretty good trajectory. And I think ultimately they would love to IPO and all that kind of stuff. I mean, to what extent do you really have to have the belly Well, what is it if it's not that cast iron stomach? What is it? With Bruce Springsteen talking about it, there was just a level of his willingness to make this— set up this equation for himself that was something like, regardless of what happens in this moment, let's say he was signing for his very first record deal with Capitol. And his feeling was, look, I will still be the same person regardless of the outcome. If this thing was to fail, if I was crash and burn, if I never get a record deal ever in my life, I know who I am and I'm pretty okay with who I am. And that was his mindset. And I'd love to get a sense from you as to what is the mindset of a person that can take something from nothing, meaning you create something out of thin air and go through nearly dying, I don't know, 400 or 500 times, right? Absolutely. To the place where it— you have that moment where you're ringing the bell on some exchange and even the moment when you exit. I know it's a Very broad question, but I want to understand the gut, head, any of the connections that you can make for us in connection with that.

Well, question I've been asked a few times in my career, like, you've had some success, Bill. What have you done differently? How have you embraced all the opportunities and challenges? And the answer I usually give, which is funny but true, which is I'm too stupid to give up. And I think that there's really 3 kinds of people that can survive the journey of an entrepreneur. The first was somebody who's just so successful that when there are bad things happening, they deflect right off, right? The second kind is the kind that's so courageous and visionary that whenever they see they're running into a ditch or hitting a wall, that they persevere through fear. They just persevere. They understand the bigger picture and move forward. And the third kind genuinely, and I think most entrepreneurs are, is that you can take a punch, right? You can deal with a level of discomfort that's excruciating for everybody, But you are able to just push through it where others might say it's not worth the trouble. I'm going to get off this crazy pain train as soon as I can because this is harder than I expected it to be. This is not worth the trouble. And I certainly don't think I'm any more courageous than anybody, but I think my experiences growing up and just the way I'm wired randomly is that I don't have a problem, the same problem with climbing through barbed wire as others do. And plus, once I'm vested in something and I'm committed to it, particularly if the— I'm working with a team, I'm incredibly motivated to get through whatever the downside And I do know some people who've just been so successful at everything they do, but I am not one of those. Any success I've had has been a long, hard journey to get there. Stuff that I think a lot of people would've chosen not to push all the way through. And for a variety of reasons, some of them are out of weakness, but just didn't give up. And it was my, the most defining story was back in, I think 2011, if I remember correctly, back before there was any large companies anywhere in the world that had been hacked or compromised. Yeah. My startup got hacked and we were the second company in the world ever that we knew of ever get hacked. Google had been hacked by, I think, a foreign country and everyone was up in arms about that. Had never happened, right? It happens 3 times a week now, but back then it had never happened. And we called the FBI and they accidentally leaked it. And so my whole world came tumbling apart and I had thousands of customers, big brands, and there was potential that customer data might have been stolen. We were still assessing And they all wanted to fire us and the company was over. And it was easily the most difficult part of my professional career. One of my executives just up and quit because he thought we were going to spend the rest of our time in jail. Again, there was no precedent, right? Today, if your credit card company calls you and says retailer was hacked, here's what you need to do, change your password or whatever. But back then, no one had any idea whether or not executives would go to jail. And the FBI was not being particularly helpful in a lot of ways. In some ways they were, but that was a crucible for me. And everybody from the board to the employees to the customers were looking at me as if I had the magic answers. And what I Decided to do was the next right thing, right? I had no idea how we'd get through it, and I think odds were that we would fail. We would go under in a pile of lawsuits.

Yeah.

And all we could do was the next right thing. So what is the next right thing? Well, let's tell our customers. Well, if we tell our customers, it's going to be this and this. And I said, well, it's the right thing to do. And so we just did that. How do we get this fixed? Well, let's hire the smartest people in the world. Well, we don't have the money to do it. We'll hire them anyway, and to help us fix it. And we did all that. And I think the punchline was that we came out of it not just surviving it, but we came out of it incredibly strong. And that actually gave my leadership team and my board like one of those near-death. moments you hear about, like someone almost gets in a car crash and they just rethink their whole life. They caused us to stop and think, well, what if we, rather than just thinking about how to get to next year, what if we think incredibly broadly about what we could be? Because we almost died and we literally almost died. So we reinvented ourselves and the company took off and we ended up selling it for hundreds of millions of dollars to IBM. And it was a great exit for everybody. And I think that had that really bad thing not happened and had we not had the courage as a management team, the perseverance, not courage, the perseverance just to push through it, I don't think that great outcome would've And everyone was a winner for it except for the hackers. And they were later caught by the FBI about 6 years later and made quite a court case. But at that point they'd hacked a lot more people than us. So we were just a small mention in a list of companies that they had done damage to. But we were the first, we were the first to catch it. We had an excellent team. We caught it when no one else was looking for that kind of thing.

Wow. Do the next right thing. That is—

It's all you can do.

Yeah. And yet how hard is that, right? I mean, right, with no plan to get through it, cuz it's completely unknown territory.

And most everyone agrees you're gonna die. I mean, 90% consensus is you're not gonna survive. Right. And your career's over and people's resumes are on the street. Your competitors are pouncing. Hey, you shouldn't work with this company because they got hacked. I mean, some of the most unsavory behavior I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah.

And I called the CEO of one of my competitors. I said, they're coming after our industry. Here's what you need to do. Here's what we learned. Here's how they're gonna do it. And a week later, his salespeople were out pitching to our customers because we had been hacked. It was really bad. And we just pushed through it. All of us did. And I think every one of us was a far better business person. We created a ton of value for our investors and for IBM. And, but boy, Boy, walking that line for those 2 or 3 months was excruciating. And I think a lot of people would've just said, listen, let's just wind it down or whatever. But you know what? We only had one tiny lawsuit and almost every one of the customers we had at the time, thousands, almost every one of them stayed with us. So it was really an amazing lesson to do the right thing.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience Leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Story of resilience. What a—

Yes.

Resilience journey, really.

Yeah. I wish I didn't have so many of those, but I've got a couple. That may be the key. I mean, how do you get through it? How do you do it?

And your brand is really in so many ways about resilience. Like, you really are saying to the powers that be, the universe, hey, let me have more fodder for this conversation.

No, I would have preferred to have far fewer soul-crushing experiences in my career.

Just a couple few less.

That one particularly, but I had a couple. Yeah.

You answered the question before I asked it. So do you think it's hardest to deal with yourself or with those others that you were referring to, by the way?

I had never thought about it that way. Hard to deal with myself doesn't compute with me. And so I've doubted myself. So maybe that's what you're asking. If I doubted myself, could I get through it? But in every case where I've really faced a crushing situation, there was no one else stupid enough to come in and take the job. I mean, everyone's running for the hills, so getting somebody in would've been nearly impossible. And the only person that would've come in would be a wrecking ball, a control-alt-delete person who shuts it down and starts it over again. And that was never really an option because of all the commitments that I and we had made to our stakeholders. So we had to see it through. And die trying if we needed to.

Exactly. Yeah. That's so interesting, the die trying thing. I start a lot of my keynotes, among other things that I do, podcasting and—

So I've heard.

Authorship stuff. I love to do the keynote work. And I always start with the same story. I mean, it doesn't matter what my topic happens to be. I start with a story from my days as a lifeguard at the beach at 19 years old. And one of those particular stories has not got a happy ending, and it won't ever have a happy ending. But at a certain point, when we were debriefing this search rescue that wasn't successful. And our captain, our CEO at the time for the beach, said to us, no one's ever going to go down in our water again, or on our watch again. And you're— the command at this point is that you make the save or you die trying stuff. I take really to heart because that became a mantra.

That's literal for you. Yeah, that's really a powerful angle. I hadn't heard anything like that before, except the military.

Yeah, it has that flavor to it. But you know what, there's so many life and death— I mean, obviously, that was literally life and death But you know what, when you're managing, and I've been a CEO too, of a company that was not as large as the one you were. But when people's livelihoods are in your hands, whether it's 300 people or 3,000 people or whatever it might be, or it's 30 people, there's a responsibility that feels like that. Because for a person who can pay their bills, pay their mortgage, pay their medical insurance, any number of other things that are related to that, as well as the people who invest, put their money in, maybe it's their retirement funds, 401, I mean, who knows what, right? Just a big ripple effect for sure.

The weight of that's always been very visceral for me. It's other people's money, which I bear more responsibility for than my own. And I think it's, if I've had some successes, part of the reason is I take a great responsibility when people entrust their careers and their money with us. And particularly when it's customers, right? These people go out on their line. If you run a startup, any customer that bets on you is often taking a career risk to put you inside their enterprise. And if you blow up on them, and this happened in the hacking thing, that people that had really bet on us, their heads twisted around by their bosses. Like, why did you pick this company?

Sure.

But while we focus on all the downsides, I think the upside is that the wins are that much more glorious. They're that much more memorable, that much more powerful and transformative. I was just thinking, I hadn't thought about this in 30 years, Adam, but I remember how you had the senior yearbook and you got this. I don't know about your high school, but I had a senior quote, which I just realized is relevant to this. I said, I want my life to be like a roller coaster. The fun isn't being high or low, but I want to ride the hills. And I just said when I was like, however old, 17.

So anyway, self-fulfilling prophecy is what that is called.

Seriously. Right. And it's not—

that's why when my wife said, when Randy said to me, let's never get boring, I was like, our lives have never been anything but this beautiful roller coaster.

And it looks great when you get on a podcast and you're doing a keynote speech or you're inviting me to talk to your community today and it all sounds really great. And I guess the point is that the reason you do this and people love to listen to you is that I'm sure some people are in pain and they're struggling and they're trying to figure out if it's worth it and to know that they're not the only ones that have ever had to go through barbed wire to get where they're going to go through and that there is hope. It doesn't mean it will work out, but it's probably survivable other than your lifeguard story. But other than that, stories like that, it's the career stuff. You're, as my friend from the military said, you're not as good or as bad as everybody says. As Bruce Springsteen said, you're just end of the day, you're you.

Yeah.

It took me about till my mid-40s to figure that out. But a lot of things I didn't love about my skillset, the way I was wired, a lot of things I did like, but in my mid-40s, I, for a variety of reasons, the world told me just to fiercely be who I was. Exactly. And I was a much happier person after that.

A little thick. I'm like, I'm not the fastest to pick stuff up. It's like at some point you go, I'm stuck with myself. Like,

yeah,

I'm not going to be 6 feet tall. I'm stuck at 5'9.5. That's it. Or 5'9. I've probably shrunk by now. So it's like there's an element of that as being good objective truth is the point I was making.

I like that. Yeah. I work at a venture firm that's tied to some of the largest corporations in the world, in the US, and we held an event at Topgolf the other day. And so, yeah,

I love that place.

I've swung a golf club maybe 7 times in my life, and I'm the host and we have some of the top executives from these enormous Fortune 100 companies. And so I'm quite nervous about it and complaining to my wife and, honey, I'm going to look like an idiot in front of these titans of business. And she just looks at me in her wisdom of 30-plus years and she says, just own it, man. You suck at golf. Just own it. And I did. And I was a little embarrassed. I mean, I was like, many people golf to say, where does the ball go? To me, it's more like batting average. How many times did I actually hit Right. I was batting about a .500 on that Topgolf and they were laughing their butts off at me. But it was all in fun and it was— I don't think any of them are going to invite me to their country clubs. And I would have preferred to do something I might be better at, like chess. Chess, I can hold my own, right? Or building a computer network or something that's really nerdy. But we were playing golf and I owned it and I had fun. You know what? They're still returning my phone calls.

So— Buddy, I love that. I so love that, Bill. I love that came out. And what you said earlier, I think you're spot on that the people who are listening to this, there's a lot of very successful people and success is a very subjective thing anyway. Again, what's the objective? I could say, if you're listening right now, if you're watching, listening, whatever it is, there's the objective truth is that you are very blessed. And there's a lot of ways to look at life and go, well, this is what's missing. That's what's missing. Or that's what I have anxiety about. I mean, there's tremendous amounts of anxiety right now. People are exhausted. Wow. Right? And so just the fact that you can take a moment even just to think of things in a little bit of a different light is something of a privilege. It genuinely is because there are many alternatives that are less of a blessing. And we can find gratitude at any moment. Any second. I mean, that sounds like almost like, I don't know, motivational or whatever.

Yeah.

But the truth is we can actually find gratitude in any moment, in any second, which literally dissolves anxiety in the moment. It dissolves anger, which is— we are like literally angeraholics in so many respects in this country.

Powerful phrase. And I agree.

Yeah. So I wanted to come back to that thing you said for those people wherever they are in the moment. Like, pain is funny topic because is pain required Do you think— I asked this question of a brain scientist researcher a couple of weeks ago. So I want to ask you, and I know it's not your area, but from the standpoint of an entrepreneur, of a CEO executive, is pain required or is it optional? What do you think?

I think that if you avoid pain in any pursuit in life, and particularly in your career, I think you'll fall short of where you want to be. I don't know that it necessarily means that you'll experience pain, but if you go out of your way to avoid it, as we all do sometimes, that you're almost certainly not going to end up where you want. I think it's a necessary Being open to it, accepting it, and surviving it is a necessary attitude towards being successful in life and work.

And I think this is what you said earlier, like when you said, do the next right thing, Bill, and other people were questioning the wisdom of doing that next right thing, they were looking to avoid pain or more pain.

Yeah. It's so difficult. It's funny, you and I had connected to talk about this energy book that I wrote, but I actually wrote a book. So before I wrote that energy book, I was practicing my writing because I'm a very slow writer. I wanted to get up to speed. So I took all the notes I'd written for my 2 boys over their their lifetimes and before they were born. And I assembled them into a book I gave them and a couple friends saw it and they liked it so much that I ended up publishing it. And this is all the stuff we're talking about is the, like the story of my friend in the military that's in that book and it's called Your Mountain Is Waiting. Anyway, it's wonderful to connect with you, Adam, because the way that you think about life mirrors a lot of the way I do. And I've never had the courage to sort of share it. I'm much more of a nerd and I'm a business model person. Those are the things that I'll share with the world. But I did write that book for them and was convinced by them and others to make it available outside of just our family. But it's, I think that there's big things like great adventures with great friends and do the next right thing. These are really core principles that I distilled in writing that book. And I think it's so helpful for people to realize that in these tough situations, not the only ones there and others have been there. And once in a while you'll come across someone whose point of view, your podcast and others that'll say, this is what I need to hear right now and I'll push through it. And that's where I think great joy comes and great sense of reward. It sounds like you and I are both at a very good point in our lives, but it's not always been that And it's such an honor to be able to discuss the highs and the lows and to meet you, to know that you've gone through your own stories is such a— I don't know. It's the only thing that I think about. One of the things I said in that book, and I say, I always look back, I look forward and say, what are they going to put on my gravestone? Right? And then that simplifies so many of the decisions I make in life because no one's gravestone I've ever seen has their net worth when they died. I can't recall ever seeing a gravestone that had the net worth. And so my wife and I have given away the bulk of our money because what the heck are we going to do with the money? So we've given the bulk of it away and it's never had the companies that took the public, right? It doesn't have that on there. They reached a senior vice president of 100 Fortune 100. That's not on their gravestone, right? But what is captured there is the people that love them and the person that they were. And so that exercise of looking forward has always been one of those powerful ways that I ask myself, is this really what I want to spend my energy on? And I think I've always— life's crazy busy and you get caught up in the moment and you're chasing your career and the next big deal and your kids trying to get into this school or just got in trouble in that way. And my wife and I are just disagreeing on thing, or my neighbor just said something insulting or whatever. And sort of getting through those moments can just engulf your entire life. And I love those exercises where you step back and you say, well, let me think just for a moment about everything. And one of the points I make to all the people I've worked with, I do it myself, is if you're in a position in your career to allow for this, and we're going to start doing this venture firm I've joined, is take 1 or 2 days every quarter or twice a year and shut off your email. Go someplace where there's no distractions, no kids, no spouse, no cell phone calls, and go just think about the big questions. And once I got the hang of that, the way I survived all the stress of my job was I'd write down the things that were driving me nuts. If I don't solve this, it's going to be anxiety. I'd write them all down and I knew then sometime in the next 3 months I would have time to go focus on the questions. And psychologically, those things didn't just add up. They became stuff that I could solve in the future. And I did. I did.

Yeah. So, this is so fascinating, right? That like questions and answers have a cause and effect relationship. And I think when people don't ask enough questions, like what you're talking about is a process to ask, especially the questions you don't know the answers to. Those are the best questions of all. But just to ask the question, to me, I don't know the timing of it, but I have faith. I truly do that you can never ask a question, not receive an answer. We don't know when that answer's coming.

I like that. I like that. Should have put that on my book.

Feel free on the next edition. You just stick that in there. Yes. Speaking of books, you've got a new book out called Freeing Energy, and I think this is a great segue into the last piece of our talk today. Would you tell us a little bit about this book, Freeing Yeah,

I think there are 2 parts that are interesting. And to be brief about each is that when I sold my company IBM, I was sitting there doing all the interviews with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times as they're saying, oh, it became IBM's marketing cloud. And I wanted to remember the moment. So I stepped out of the room and went into a conference room by myself and was just thinking for a very brief moment, wow, I've got all this money now and reached this high level in my career. And I was overwhelmed unexpectedly with the sense that I needed to do something that mattered with it. It wasn't because I was called to do something. I just was overwhelmed with the recognition of so many people. I'd met that didn't have the financial comfort, didn't have the resume and the network, and were devoting their lives to something much more important than themselves or their career. And so I began a quest to find something that I could do that mattered a lot more than me. And we gave away the bulk of the money. And my wife had this thesis that if I had enough money not to have a job, that I would lose the fire under my ass. And she says almost exactly what you said, Adam, is that you're going to be boring if you have enough money to worry about managing your money. She says, you got to be worried about And so I went in search to find something that really mattered that I could get my business head around. So I was looking for something that had 3 things. I was looking for something that would make the world better for my children. I was somewhat aware of climate change, but pollution and all that. Second of all, I had become aware through some travels of the billion people in the world that have no electricity, have no water. And the third is I wanted to do something to make a ton of money. And so I looked across those 3 and I came across this idea of small-scale electricity systems, microgrids, solar plus battery, whether it's a teeny solar battery system in a hut in Africa that you can buy for $5, or it's one powering a whole campus of factory. But this is a single, I call it a Lego brick. I call it local energy. And the more I looked at it, the more despondent I got because this is such a regulated industry that I thought you couldn't pull it off. And I almost gave up, but I kept pressing on it and finally figured out how you could take this idea and turn it into an incredibly exciting industry. And that's really what the book's about. And it's written for entrepreneurs and innovators and to some degree who want to have cleaner, cheaper, more electricity systems. And the timing, I didn't know, but The timing has turned out to be fantastic. Since I finished writing the book, the whole Texas grid went down for a week. California shutting off their grid all over the place. Louisiana went down. New Orleans went down. We're going to have some problems this winter for sure across the world. We're watching Ukraine get their power shut off. So this idea of resiliency is moving beyond an existential question into something that's very real for a lot of people. And so plus the solar and batteries have become so daggone cheap that it's now affordable for people to do. This is actually cheaper than buying electricity from the grid. So this whole book was born and it had been such a journey and such an enjoyable time. I interviewed 400 people all over the world. I climbed to the top of a wind turbine. I sat in the headquarters of the largest solar company in the world in China. I sat in mud huts in Africa, went to European solar manufacturers. I mean, I was having a great time actually, but the book that came out of it, I'd like to think some pretty big ideas that have been fascinating. I finished it about a year ago and I'm still getting more and more calls now than when the book came out. Yeah. And I think the idea is starting to resonate. The US government for the first time, and since I think it was President Bush back then, energy wasn't political like it is now. And President Bush passed a bunch of laws to make renewable energy affordable and they were re-upped by both parties, presidents. But this time around, the US government's leaning into it in a way that no other world government has. This inflation— funny name— Inflation Reduction Act doesn't do a lot of inflation reduction, but it's fantastic for clean energy. It's going to create millions of US jobs, good-paying jobs. It's going to put the US dependence on China and Saudi Arabia substantially smaller. And while it is still politicized to some degree, you notice it doesn't get the same political acrimony that some of the other things we see up in DC. So I'm excited. This is a great time to be thinking about clean energy, and it's a great time to think about small clean energy. And that's really what the book was, a manifesto on how to do that and do it well. And I've been very flattered at the attention and the recognition the ideas have gotten.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, environmental sustainability is such an important topic. I think you're right. There's some policy—

Well, you know, I don't want to cut you off, but that's actually exactly why I wrote the book, because everyone leans into the, it's an environmental thing. It's not. This is the whole point of the book. It doesn't use the term climate change anywhere in the book. The entire point is this is a fantastic business. So yes, the industry was born out of environmentalism, but leave that aside. You could hate the environment. You could want to shoot all the baby seals that you're going to see. But if you want to get rich, this is the hottest industry in the history of humanity to make a lot of money.

Well, it's interesting. I don't know when there was the two things got conflated to begin with, because how is it that something that's environmental or that you would use the word environment gets the rap somehow that It's not profitable or that it wasn't not for profit even.

20 years ago it wasn't. The only reason you would build a large wind farm 20 years ago was the government was putting pretty huge subsidies in, even more subsidies than the government gets for fossil fuels. And the renewable subsidies have gotten smaller and smaller. But what they did in this big law they passed a couple months ago was they broadened the number of things. It's not just solar and wind, it's all kinds of energy production and energy distribution. So it's a great time to be in energy. And that's hopefully the book will be interesting and inspiring to some folks that, who I wrote it for. Actually, the opening of the book says it's written for the 10,000 entrepreneurs and innovators that have not yet entered the industry, but who will join the industry and change the world.

So my last question is gonna be play on that, which is because for the most part, I would say our company is committed to wellness in the workplace. That's why we speak about resilience. But resilience is just one aspect of what it means to create workplaces of well-being. And I wanna know how it is that you renew your energy. So we're talking about renewables, we're talking about clean energy. We have to constantly be refreshing, recharging, and resetting and restoring ourselves, regenerating ourselves. And I speak to renewable companies. I get called in for that conversation quite frequently, which is fun. It, that's a total blast, right? So my question to you is, what's something that you do that is a way that you create your own renewable energy? Maybe it's a practice, ritual, or something like that, but I want to get your philosophy on that.

Someone told me a couple years ago brilliantly that the definition of an extrovert versus an introvert is that an extrovert recharges their battery with people and an introvert recharges their battery by themselves. And I am a hardcore introvert. I've spent my life acting like I'm not, but I am. And so these times I mentioned earlier, when I get by myself isn't just for ideation and big thinking, but it recharges my batteries. It takes energy to talk to people for me. And if I get away from all human beings for a couple of days, that's probably the biggest thing that I do. But when I'm not quite as busy, which has been most of my life, but on those rare occasions in my life, I'm not quite as busy as I am, I love to build things with wood and metal and just sort of hammer, nail, saw. That brings me to spend a few hours in a woodshop and come out with something that didn't exist before as a source of great reward and battery I

love it, buddy. And you said it earlier. There's a lot you and I have in common, interestingly enough. And despite appearances, that I regain my energy in solitary practice or in small—

You too.

Settings. So, yeah. I think, I think you put it really well there. The objective truth is that I prefer to be alone, and it's not because I don't love people or wanna be around people.

Exactly.

It's just that I know that when I am depleted, when I'm tired, that I can go to a source of power for me that will restore me well beyond whatever capacity is needed. And I think people don't often, because again, through youth or through inexperience or just having not suffered, maybe not had those moments of pain, they don't know themselves well enough to know how to recharge. And that's why anxiety and exhaustion and things like the great resignation or quietly quitting, these are just terms that are used when people are suffering. Yeah. And it's great.

I like that.

A lot of suffering, which is optional. I know that might sound a bit harshy, Even, but to a great degree. That's why I asked you that question. Whose heart is it hardest to deal with yourself or to deal with others? To me, my philosophy on this is that it's hardest to deal with ourselves. But when we learn how to deal with those challenges we're experiencing, like emotions that feel funky or that we don't want to experience, so we repress them or suppress them, or we learn that from our parents. You should never show your anger. You should never show your sadness. Right.

Right.

Right. So that's a problem that can be resolved by going inside. We don't go inside best when we're in a crowd of 10,000 people. We do that on our own.

Wise words. Yeah. I agree.

Well, Bill, again, couldn't have enjoyed this conversation anymore.

Thank you. Really.

Same. So thank you for—

I gotcha.

Giving me a great morning. I love this. So would love, as we always do, to make a request. This is to the audience here. So if you really enjoyed listening to what Bill had to say today, and I can't imagine not, first of all, go out and get Freeing Energy and go to freeingenergy.com. MeaningEnergy.com. We don't typically say it's in the show notes, but I rarely do it that way. But I do think this is a book you should go check out, and there will be show notes about more of what Bill is up to, et cetera. We would love to hear from you. So if you've got a comment for us or even a question, I can get that question to Bill. It's easy. You can get it to him too, usual social channels and whatnot. But you can go to adammarkel.com/podcast, leave a comment, let us know what you thought of this conversation, leave a review because, hey, I don't know algorithmically how it works. I just know that when you all give this this thing, like a great rating, 5 stars is terrific, then somehow or another more people get to listen. And so if you think more people should be listening and you'd willing to aid us in that endeavor, we'd appreciate that great review as well. And lastly, I would say this, wherever you are in this moment, if things are feel great or they feel not so great, that thing that you've decided in your head, like this sucks or that's great or whatever, that may not be the objective truth. And you may not know what the objective truth is for 10 years 20 years. So right now, do what you can to just take care of yourself, restore your energy, however it is you do that around a lot of other people or in some other solitary way, but renew your energy. And that way you get to keep showing up each day. And maybe someday, just like Bill said, you go through the crucible just by doing the right thing, the next right thing, and something great comes of it. So thank you, Bill. Thanks for that really sage Well, Adam,

it's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you for having me today. It's been a wonderful conversation, and thanks for all the work that you do.

A pleasure. Well, I suspect you love that episode, and I did too. He is an executive's executive, a manager's manager, and founder's mentor. He has done some pretty remarkable things. I mean, to create an organization, to create a company that ultimately becomes an organization that survives long enough to do that, to come through some of the most harrowing experiences in any business where you're facing a cyberattack or cyberattacks even, and not only live to tell about it, but come out the other side of that stronger, more resilient, more able than you were beforehand. Despite the fact that people were ready to fold up the tent, were maybe Maybe telling you if that has ever been a situation you've dealt with that you needed to hide, duck and cover, et cetera. What we got today from Bill was sort of an insider's look at what that kind of situation involves and not only how he came through it, how he came through the crucible as an entrepreneur with a tech startup, but ultimately came out the other end of it as an IPO, as a company that was able to thrive and not just survive. And ultimately, that enterprise was sold to IBM, and the rest, as they say, is history. But Bill led us in detail through sort of the belly of the beast. He let us feel it. He let us experience it through his memory. We went through the eye of the needle together, talked about what it takes to be able to move through something so disruptive as that. and more. And something that every entrepreneur, whether you've been on the other end of a cyberattack, on the receiving end of it, or ransomware or anything like that, or you've not, you understand what it's like to deal with disruption. You understand what it's like to worry and sometimes worry about cash flow, sometimes worry about making payroll, sometimes worry about being taken out by your competition or taken out by new technology or taken out by the government or changes in rules and regulations. There's so many things that literally are just sort of lurking below the surface that can take out a company, even a mature company, let alone a, a company that's in a startup phase. So to hear from this seasoned operator and entrepreneur, I think was just tremendous today. Some of the things that I took away that I'm going to remember were his statement to his team at the time that they were being attacked and people were in fear. And back in the day that this occurred, many executives then would've wondered whether they could have gone to jail or could have been brought up on charges because their organization was under attack or had been attacked and sensitive information was being compromised. So this was a very harrowing period of time. And the thing that Bill told his team to do, shared with his team that must do was to just do the right thing. Do the next right thing. Those were his exact words. Do the next right thing and then do the next right thing after that. And ultimately, they were able to pivot their way through that very harrowing experience, avoiding the landmines and not just surviving, but again, coming out the other end stronger. And that is my own personal research on resilience. That's what it's led us to understand that resilience individually and organizationally is not about bouncing back. It's not about how you just simply endure things. It's about how you restore. It's about how you bounce forward stronger than you were before. And clearly, that's exactly what Bill Nussi, in his own words, was describing. We talked about authenticity, this particular word that's thrown around a lot, and really we turned it on its side, talked about raw humanity, And about transparency, radical transparency. I love that part of our conversation about getting out of our comfort zones, about the objective truths in life and in business, certainly, and what those objective truths look like. We asked the question, what is the hardest thing to deal with? Is it, is it you? Is the hardest thing to deal with yourself in situations where you're being challenged, or is it the outside forces, the forces beyond our control, the uncertainty and unknowns themselves. We talked about our ability to tolerate a certain kind of excruciating pain in the space of the unknown and how curiosity is so important in that process. We talked about being too stupid to give up and how we survive the journey of the entrepreneur, how we come through that crucible. In other words, about adventure. We talked about signing up for an adventure and what that Looks like. We talked about focusing on the question and the relationship between questions and answers. We talked about whether people— and asked the question, do more people talk themselves out of things or talk themselves into things? Do you talk yourself out of more things or talk yourself into things? We also discussed the imposter syndrome. And again, since that term gets thrown around quite a bit, I think we got below the surface and used some more novel language or more language that seems to be closer to the heart of the matter. But with Bill, he was vulnerable and shared some things about that imposter syndrome from his standpoint. We talked about embracing the suck and so much more on this episode. So if you have loved it, if you've enjoyed it, listen to it again. I love to replay podcasts 1.5 times speed or whatever it might be. Yeah. Share Share this with a friend. Leave us a comment at adamarkel.com/podcast so we can find out more about what you did love, what questions you may still have, and where we might even bring Bill back for a second bite of the apple here, part 2 to this particular conversation. And of course, if you've not yet assessed your own level of resilience, it's as simple as taking 3 minutes out of your day by going to rankmyresilience.com. Rankmyresilience.com. Again, your free 3-minute assessment. Find out how resilient you are mentally, emotionally, physically, of course, and even spiritually. If you wanna find out more about the Change Proof body of work, the book, as well as the digital product to support you and support your teams, simple enough. Just go to changeproof.com, and you can get all the information there. I again wanna thank you for your support of the show. Thank you for the reviews that you leave. Those 5-star reviews really help the algorithm to help us to help more people, and that's what we're in it for. So, thank you for lending your support to that endeavor. And again, have a blessed and beautiful rest of your day.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including Including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.