#296 Andreas Widmer on the Mindset of Entrepreneurship

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Just Get Started podcast. I'm your host, Brian Andrejko, and thanks again for being a part of this journey. On this week's episode, I welcome in Andreas Widmer, who is a seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for helping business professionals find deeper meaning in their work and sustainable success through principled entrepreneurship. In 2015, Andreas was appointed clinical professor in entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business and also serves as an advisor to both the Zermatt Summit and Transforming Business. He is the director and founder of the Art and Carlisle Siocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, where he teaches and mentors students with the kind of entrepreneurship that combines personal virtue and best business practices to grow enterprises that create value for others profitably. Andreas is a dual citizen of Switzerland and America and speaks 4 languages: English, German, Italian, and French. Currently, he resides in Washington, D.C. with his wife and teenage son. For more information on Andreas, please visit his website, Andreas-Widmer.com, and that's A-N-D-R-E-A-S-W-I-D-M-E-R.com. Well, without further ado, let's welcome in Andreas Widmer. Andreas, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you.

Thank you, Brian. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, this will, this will be a lot of fun with your background. I'm really excited to pull it down some deeper layers here. I wanted to start though, as I always like to do, because gosh, I mean, everyone's story is different. No one has the same story of what they've gone through and how they've gone through it. So I'm curious if you could share with everyone listening in maybe a getting started moment or two. It doesn't have to be a physical thing. It could be a mindset change you had and maybe when that shifted and how it shifted, any details of kind of what got you on this path you are today, maybe than you were when you were younger?

Well, the first one is my first involvement in a startup, which was so long ago. It was in 1989. And I was— I came to America to study, meaning, no, truth be told, I met a girl in Europe, and I pursued her all the way over here. And the only way to get in here was to go to school. And I'm like, well, whatever, I'll go to school. And so, um, I went to school in Massachusetts, in Boston, Massachusetts, and I met these other kids who were— who said that they had this great company, a startup, and I didn't know anything about it. And it had something to do with the computers and the internet and something. And, and I'm like, yeah, whatever, uh, I've never used a computer in 1989. And they said, but you speak all these languages, so why don't you help us? We have all these people who start to talk to us from abroad and so on. And so, and they said, oh, there's one problem, we can't pay you because we, you know, we didn't make enough money yet and we're trying to put the money in the company. We'll give you some shares. That doesn't mean— it didn't mean any— I was 23 years old. I didn't— it didn't mean anything to me. Okay. And this was, of course, long before the tradition of IPOs and all this kind of stuff. And lo and behold, that company at the time, I didn't know anything about it. It was called FTP Software. It was the one of the 3 companies who ported the internet protocol to the PC. I mean, you can imagine how this went up afterwards. And so I ended up joining them as a non-paid intern because I thought, this is just— what you're doing is so cool. I just so want to be a part of this team. I'll do it for free. You know, I'll just come and hang out. And it, in retrospect, what I'm seeing is I actually led with the excitement and my totally being totally in rather than in trying to make a living or make money, which had some downsides because I had to struggle a bit in the beginning. But I actually went into my first company to help with this startup totally based on my excitement, both of the team that I want to be a part of and to understand a little bit this vision of what this product could do, even though I didn't fully understand it. And boy, did it ever change my life. I mean, that was the beginning of my career in startups.

What— I mean, because that was the first time you heard about the internet or what it could be, right?

Never heard of it before. Never used— never used a computer.

So what was it like? I'm curious, how was it pitched to you? You remember, like, how was the internet pitched to you back then?

Too technically. And this is one of the reasons why they liked me, because they started to talk about the Ethernet.

Yeah.

And I said like, Ethernet, you mean ether, like something to smell? And they're like, no, no, you're totally wrong. So then I said, look, in order for them— for me to sell this, you know, I went into sales and I built up all the international stuff. I need to understand this or else nobody will understand it. I'll be as dumb as the next guy. And if you can't explain it to me, it won't make sense to anybody else. Every— in the company, everybody was a techie. And so what they started to appreciate about me was that I started to learn from them what this was and then turn around and be able to explain it in my language to the market, to the actual customers. I tell you that, that became my shtick in software companies. I did many more companies like this afterwards. And my shtick was always, if you can't explain it to me, nobody's gonna buy it.

Yeah.

And to this day, I wouldn't consider myself an expert in software or anything. I can get the concept, but I always put it in layman's terms on the other side. And that's where you find the value proposition, how you sell something. And they were, of course, talking about, you know, Unix protocol and ARPANET and Ethernet and all this stuff. It didn't mean anything to me. And, but I translated that in a sense to sell it.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing too. I look at it from a sales standpoint of if you can't explain it to a young child, you're probably overcomplicating it. Because most people don't really— and even when people use technology, whether it's software, maybe it's even a service from someone, they only use 10 to 20% of it anyways. Like they're not using the full gamut of the features. You know what I'm saying? So they don't need to know everything.

In the software, like in those days, we call it nobody wants a monkey that has 32 tricks. I want a monkey with one trick because if it has 32 tricks, I feel like I paid too much. Because I want the monkey to do one thing, right? And so it's important to know that. And the most difficult thing about— look, entrepreneurship at the end of the day is a little bit less about innovation and a little bit more about other-directedness. You know, the core of business is one question and only one question. And that is, how may I help you? People forget this.

Yeah.

How may I help you? I look at you in sincerity and say, How can I use my talents to add value for you? And the value is of course measured in, you pay me more than it costs me to make it. We can call it profit, but I like to say, how may I help you? How can I create value for you? And when we think of it this way, we have to practice empathy, other-directedness. People, I don't know, people always think of business people as selfish bastards. Sorry, I'm not—

You could say whatever you want here.

Yeah, they think of them as selfish bastards. That's not true. A true business person, somebody who really is gonna have a home run kind of business is completely other directed because they understand what the customer wants. It doesn't care. Nobody cares what I want. What you care about is how may I help you? And then if you like it this way, then that's what we're gonna do.

Yeah.

That's a fundamental change. You know, I teach now, I teach entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America. And the most difficult thing I have in teaching is to teach this getting out from yourself and do the other-directedness.

Yeah.

It's like what I had with my techie friends in a sense is that they just, they were so enamored with the technology that they were like this with it. Like saying, this is why this is good for me. Nobody cares why this is good for you.

Right.

We need to find out why this is good for the person who buys it.

And I think on top of that too, and this is a slight tangent, but, you know, it may not be the best fit as well. So like someone may be like, I really need help with X and your product does Y. It's close, but it's not exact. But I've seen this too many times, a story play out where folks will go build that for them. Oh, let me just— we'll add this onto our product or we'll do that. And it's like—

Oh, don't do that.

Yeah. Now you're going on a totally— it's like you can say no as well. And hey, this is not— I would encourage you to do, you know, go do this or that. Or look at this approach, but we're not the best fit.

It's important with a company, and I'm not talking— look, I'm not talking about huge companies. When we started this, we were all very small, and we were, you know, some of the companies I started, helped start, literally were a few people, 2 at the slow— at the lowest, and others were maybe 20 or 30 people. So what's important is to say, what value do we want to add for others? Right? And then what you're really looking for in my classes, I talk, I call it super fans. You know, Kevin Kelly has this 1,000 true fans kind of thing. I sort of play it off that to say, look, find only super fans. If you, especially early on in a company, if you're selling products to not super fans and super fans are those who are happy, they're so happy to get your product. They don't care if it's made with duct tape because they're so into it. They're like, geeks on your product, right? They're so happy to get it that they are fault tolerant. If you sell it to somebody other than that early on, these customers will come to haunt you because they will give you bad reviews. They will make you focus, move you away from your sweet spot and stuff that you really have to have discipline in the beginning to only sell to super fans. Because if you don't do it, you're gonna slide off and you become actually mediocre. You know, the definition of mediocre, of being lukewarm, where you want to be hot or cold, right?

Well, yeah, and I think it's too like you don't want to be everything to everybody because then you just kind of get lost in the shuffle. It's like, no, this company does this so well that, you know, that's where I'm going to them for, you know.

That's good to point out because when I say being other-directed and how may I help you, I don't mean it in the general sense of just anything. Compare it to a restaurant to say, look, if I'm making a diner, a breakfast diner, and I say, how may I help you? I'm not gonna serve you sushi. Okay. So then I would say, sorry, I can't help with that. And you go somewhere else.

Yeah.

That how may I help you starts with me and my talents and what I want to do. And then how can I add value for you with that? But it comes from this understanding of who am I and what are my talents.

Yeah, you make a great point there. Why did you decide— so you've started a lot of companies. Why did you decide after that first kind of taste, I guess we'll say, at that FTP company to go out and do some other things? Like, what was the intention? Some people would stay there for 30 years, maybe, you know, what was the—

Oh, but you see, I don't have that I'm a startup guy. Okay, I'm a total startup guy. As soon as I don't know everybody in the company and it's not— I'm also not very, you know, I used to be in the military, which people are always surprised at because I'm not hierarchical whatsoever. I lose patience with bureaucracies and hierarchies and all stuff like that. And so once we went public and what we would call the suits show up, I'm out. Like we went public in '93 with FTP. I went to Europe to start up to bring the— to start up 3 divisions over there. And then I'm like, okay, this is getting too— they're focusing on the wrong thing. Like, I gotta get out. And I'm not— I don't mean it's just not for me. Like, other people, this is fine, but just again, it's not my talent.

Right.

And I left. And of course, I found other friends in Boston. I moved back to Boston and I found a couple, a husband and wife team that invented speech recognition. It was back then, it was called Dragon Systems. And they said, look, do help us do what you did with FTP, help us do that here. And so I helped there. And we did came up with this famous product, NaturallySpeaking, which is now Siri, basically. I mean, all speech recognition pretty much focused on or comes from that, from Dragon Systems. But again, I do this over and over again, that once you have the liquidity event, I guess, or you sell the company or something, then I leave because I become— it's not my strength anymore. I always tell people, I say, look, you don't want me to stay. You wouldn't like me here. I'm too— I will criticize everything and I'll become negative if it becomes a bureaucracy. It makes me a little angry.

Yeah. Well, you like to be a part of the— it seems like you like to be a part of that early stage where you could really impact your kind of thoughts and advice and insights and really take it. Because I think, you know, I've been a part of a couple startups. And I think part of it is always being able to say, hey, I'm unique my own way. I think we're all unique, right? But here's my unique perspective on this. And you can actually inject change versus a larger company. A lot of those ideas don't get taken.

You know, and, and to me, it's so important that literally everybody in the company, whether it's the, the person who ships out stuff or the person who picks up the phone, everybody should have a say. Everybody should say, hey, I have an idea, because it's— there's so many— there's so much power in this, in a team like this thinking together, that you can't ignore anything. And when, when you're starting to run a company like this, and this only works— granted, it only works on a team where you get to know everybody and where you can even talk with everybody. then this becomes to me, you know, that's like when 1 and 1 becomes 5, like the team performs better than the sum of its parts. And to me, that's like the high, that's the startup high where you suddenly start to scale. And that's, I guess that's the hit that I'm getting from it. And I'm very team-focused in that sense. And then when that goes away, I'm not gonna be the big process guy. Yeah.

Well, I wanted to get into a couple different things, and you kind of mentioned about the, you know, the students you're teaching and some of the different projects and businesses and stuff. Maybe this is a good time to chat about that a little bit. What do you— I'm actually curious because obviously being the Just Get Started podcast, what do you see from those students when they're walking in day one, and how do they— what are some of the things that go through in terms of them shifting their mindset and believing that they could start a business or overcoming a lot of hurdles that, you know, a very timid, you know, kind of this negative mindset to maybe actually feeling they could do something?

So first of all, the greatest joy I had to, you know, I was asked to help start this business school here. And so they didn't have a business school 10 years ago. And now I've been, and I'm a clinical professor, so I'm not a PhD or anything like that. I'm just an entrepreneur, but they said, look, we want our entrepreneurship center to be person-focused like this, so do that. And I actually decided, I argued with them and they agreed with me that we should make the first class for any business student at our university an entrepreneurship class. And so now I'm looking forward when they come in August, I'll have, per semester, like 200 students. And I'll show up on the first day and say, look, this is a business school. And just like in swimming, we're not gonna lie on the floor and make swimming motions. Like, we're gonna go in the water. Like, the only business is the only domain where you practice without ever doing it. Like, would you go to a doctor that wasn't practicing on a patient before? I mean, and so I say, well, today's your first day in business school. So today's your start day of your new business. And so every one of the 200 students starts a business on that day. And of course, the first thing is they say, well, I don't have an idea. I don't know how. I say, okay, that's the first lesson, right? Let's go through ideation together. I've never had a student who didn't have an idea because I start with this process of actually saying that the— how may I help you? The I— let's define I more. Then there's 2 aspects to this. The first thing is every one of us, you said it earlier, we're unique. You know, each one of us is unrepeatable. Everybody who's watching or listening to this, you are unrepeatable. If you don't live out the opportunity you have in your life, then there was never anybody in human history, nor will there ever be anybody in human history who has the same opportunity. So then the question becomes, okay, who are you? What do you bring that is unique? And forget all about the things that they made you self-conscious about, that you're a geek about, or you have this interest or that interest that other people aren't interested. I don't care about that. I only care about who you are and what is special and different about you. The second thing is I bring the permission. Do you know that most of the things that we don't do, and I think it has to do with schooling, that we need permission, you know, from, from like kindergarten on, we're saying, okay, now you be quiet. Now you can say something. We, we drive the creativity out of people.

Yeah.

And so I say, today I give you permission. You are a startup founder today. The decision has been, I made the decision and you wouldn't believe the freedom this creates. You say, now you're telling me that that's what I am. I'm gonna start behaving like it. And then we go through the ideation process of saying, and, you know, Kevin Kelly has this 1,000 true fans idea. To say, if you go and he uses the music industry and let's not be a stickler about the exact number, but it's somewhere in the 1,000 people arena. We're trying to start a business usually and try to be Walmart, be everything to everybody. Nobody starts like Walmart. Let's be something specific for somebody specific. I'm asking you to find 1,000 superfans, 1,000 people who are into whatever you're into. And I'm telling you, that's totally— you probably know 1,000 people who would be into what you're into. That's all we're asking. And then create that value proposition to those 1,000 people to say, how may I help you? Once you have 1,000, you're done. That is the critical mass to create a business is if you end up finding 1,000 people who follow you or buy from you or do what you're asking in the sense of purchasing behavior. And that to me is this first business experience that we're teaching in my course.

Now, do they— when they come up with the idea, are you— is the whole idea point for them to actually like sell a physical good or service? Or like, do they— is that part of the exercise during the course at some point where they have to get out there and do this? Or is it more just—

Maybe. Now you have to understand, I teach at a university and the parents would get really angry if suddenly they owe taxes. They owe income taxes when their kid goes, right? So I had to come up with something that you don't pay taxes on it right away. And a part of that can be if you become an Amazon affiliate, then up to a certain degree, you can actually, if you get credit from them for referring customers to them, then you don't owe taxes on that right away. And there's sort of a threshold. And I give the students sort of that idea. And we monitor things. so that this doesn't become a liability, but, you know, that you don't incur the taxes for it. But usually what I recommend is if they have an idea and they say, finally, I have this idea all my life, now I'm gonna do it, all the power to you and we're gonna help you do it.

Mm-hmm.

But most people are like, well, I don't even know where to start. And to them, I do basic ideation. And remember, I compare it, you know, so I'm from Switzerland, European. I keep making baseball analogies, but I don't play baseball. So I totally make wrong, but it's like practice. Practicing to hit the ball. I'm not trying to teach you to hit a home run right away. What I'm trying to teach you is the muscle memory to hit it right. And that's what this exercise is for. I asked them to come up with 99 ways that they could add value for others. So for example, I fly fish, I can sing, I hike, I've been in the military. I, you know, I'm from Europe, I speak several languages. You see what I'm saying? I'm describing myself, 99 things about myself. And then we go through and say, how much would this appeal to somebody else, especially in a value-add way that— and what I'm sort of inserting there is which one of these is involved in you recommending products and things like that, which would lead to the marketing affiliation kind of implementation. But there's other people who want to do a podcast or YouTube videos and stuff. Like I had a kid who wanted— who was into Marvel movies and he started a a Marvel review site for like Marvel movies and what comes out and everything. He had like 250 million views.

Wow.

And I mean, he basically paid for college too with this thing and then some. What I'm trying to do is to show you how you have 50 different things that you can offer. And then I ask you to do the first one and start to implement it right away. I'm not a huge fan of business plans. I'm a fan of business dos. Because the plans, you can lie to yourself too long or just, I'm saying the wrong assumptions. I right away want to push you right away to start and go create something and start to get feedback from the market, sort of the lean startup idea.

Well, it goes back to what you mentioned earlier, right? About like the whole swimming analogy. Like if you're just on the side, you can come up with it. I'm actually reading The War of Art again. Are you familiar with that book by Steven Pressfield? Yeah, just about the resistance and like, we'll figure out ways to, you know, like using your swimming analogy, like, all right, I know my toes have to be in the right position before, you know, it's like, just jump in the pool and we're gonna kind of figure it out and we're gonna fail a lot, but we're also gonna have some successes.

The thing is actually in all of my business, I could never tell you why I succeeded. but I can always tell you why I failed. This is why I force you to get into the pool, because you learn through failure. It's funny, but you don't learn through success, because with success it can be so many things, and one of it is luck.

Yeah.

Right? And so, and so therefore, I, in a sense, it's going to sound wrong, but I want you to fail because I need to teach you. And so I push, push, push my students throughout the semester so that they will hit the wall and that something will break because I can only teach you when that happens because then you can do, you know, the review of it and learn. What I like to say is that we fail into success, right?

Mm-hmm.

And to learn to take that failure and use it as the material for the next. And because I developed, you know, this idea of 99 ideas, I make them choose like 4 or 5 And to go, 1, yes or no, 2, yes or no, sort of put it in the water right away and see if it sinks. Because a good idea that resonates will pretty quickly float. And the only way to find out if it floats is to put it in the water. And what I teach, we call principled entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

That's this book that I just released called The Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. And on the one hand, it's the art because of exactly this, that you're not This isn't, this isn't a 1, 2, 3 step and then it works.

Right.

It deals with humanity and humanity is in a sense not predictable and B, not 2 people are the same. Therefore, it's a dance, it's an art to make this work. And the only way to achieve it is to actually get in there and do it.

Yeah. So yeah, define principled entrepreneurship for everyone.

Look, it's, I believe that that entrepreneurship is much more a mindset than a practice. There, I get annoyed with all the 1, 2, 3 color-by-numbers business books. I think that I always start my classes of saying, why do you want to do this? Because if you don't have it, it's like Simon Sinek, and I showed him his little video. If you don't know why you're doing this, then you should— then you shouldn't start because then you might walk off into a direction that is gonna bring you misery, right? We should first start in our life and say, why am I here? What am I doing here? What am I trying to achieve? Because then of course, once you say, what am I trying to achieve? You realize then what you're planning, if this fits the achievement or not, because believe it or not, the business is not the end-all be-all of life.

Right.

There is a lot more to it. And if you look, and with these 18 to 24-year-old students, I actually talk about, you know, what is the end goal in life? What are you trying to get out of life? And what kind of a lifestyle would you like to have? And so on. So that when you're— I use the analogy of, you know, life being this medieval city with all the roads and everything in it, and you get to choose what car, or if you want to walk or get a motorcycle or a scooter or something. And it just, depending on what your expectation is to do in that city, you might want to choose a different vehicle. And that's, you don't just take the first best thing that comes along. And so that contemplation first, it has to do with setting down these principles to say, what are, what is the framework I'm working in? And so I, in the book, I write down 5 basic principles, even though I make the students create for themselves many more principles. It comes out of Greek philosophy, a basic principle, something that I consider to be true, and I don't have to reevaluate it every day. I can just say this, I'm a person who doesn't X, or I'm a person who does X. Then you don't have to reevaluate it all the time. You save a lot of time doing that. And so I provide 5 basic pillars, I call them, uh, like the, the first one is, is the economy exists for people, not people for the economy. And it's a very basic principle. It's true. And we often forget it. So I hate it when people say, well, the firm, it's nothing personal, it's just business. There is nothing just business.

Yeah.

Like all of this always comes together. We're integral human beings. Like we fire on all cylinders at the same time. And so that recognition of what we're doing here with business, when you start a business, that this, that a business is at some point, if it doesn't work, it has to go. A business is not like a human person. When you give up a business, you're not killing somebody. A business doesn't have that right. A business is only good as long as it creates value. And when it doesn't, it may have been a learning experience and you move on. We need to understand that.

Yeah, well, most folks, well, I say most folks, I've gone through this as well, is the sunk cost fallacy is like, you have to keep it going. Right? Right.

Boy, I've done a lot of that.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, because you feel like you— oh, I put so much time. And you know, the funny thing is, you know, you can relate anything back. It's like, you know, relationships or anything else. It's like, oh well, we've been together for X amount of period, we got to stay. Well, no. Again, is there still value there? It's the same thing.

I think the basic principles— yeah, I say when this happens, I'm out. So I'm saying if my company If I have to start to do X, Y, and Z, and different people have different pain levels or whatever, if I have to mortgage or dip into my kids' college fund, is the sign to me that I went too far and I need to let the company go, right? Then I get another job. Or to say when, you know, when this business starts to break friendships or marriages or whatever apart in that sense, then that's what I have to say, I go. principles. Like, I set these principles, and you don't adjust the principle on an ad hoc basis. I usually say that you can sit down every year or so to reevaluate the principles with a distance and plan and say, these are the ones going forward. But you shouldn't fix them on, you know, in the moment of temptation where you say, I'm just gonna— Those are usually not good Not good decisions. Yeah.

What was the, uh, the writing process you took to get this book out? So, um, how did you get started writing this? I guess that's where I'm going.

So I was in the beginning of COVID actually. I was teaching in Italy for a semester, which was— I thought was going to be great, but then we got caught in COVID over there. And so I actually spent the whole shutdown in Italy with my family, which was— I mean, hey, the stores and the wineries were open, so I, I can't complain. I mean, being shut down in Italy is not or lockdown in Italy isn't the worst of things. But no, so I had this idea that I wanted to write, and I called my friend Art, who helped me build the center that I run here at Catholic. And he's older, he's retired. He's one of these CEOs that I think everybody should know. Nobody knows him because he's a person-focused CEO. And he has created all these products and companies that— or products, I would say, that you all know. Like he's the— he created the second largest wine company in the world. It's called the Wine Group. You don't know that name, but he invented boxed wine. He invented the wine spritzers, the wine coolers. Oh, he made America a thing in the United States. He made wine a thing in America. Table wine. Not the fufu wine, but Italian vino da tavola. Like, and so I call my buddy Art and I say, hey Art, I have this idea. I want to write this book, but if I do it as a theory, then it sounds boring and everything. So I guess what I decided, you're going to be my, my example.

Yeah.

And I, so I asked him to do this. And he says, well, I have good news and bad news. I said, well, give me the bad news first. And he says, I, I have my cancer is back. I have 2 months.

Wow.

And yeah, that's what I said. I said, well, what's the good news? And he says, I have all the time in the world until then. So this is how Art thinks, of course. He says, I have no appointments between now and then. And I'm like, well, I don't know what to say. And he says, look, if you're in, I'm in. I want to do this. What else am I going to do? He would say, I want to go out with a bang and this is good. I want to hand on what I learned. He was 87 years, 88 years, 86 years old at the time, or no, he was 85. He was at the time. And I'm like, well, Art, I feel bad doing this, but if you, if you're into it, I'll do it. And so I started to record everything he said because I said, when you die, I can go back and just, you know, take the stories from there. But then we went through this shutdown in Italy and I kept calling him and he actually ended up living for 2 years, 2 more years.

Wow.

And he died last December after we finished the book and he saw the COVID He didn't see the printed book. He, that was, it went to print 3 days after he died. But he saw the sort of the galley copy and the whole thing, and he was very, very happy with it. And I feel like this privilege, Brian, that I was sitting at the feet of one of the great entrepreneurs of the last century and say, what do you have to say? Like, tell— and to basically drill down. And this was a man— this— see, the beauty— the sad thing is that he, of course, knew that he was going to die. But the beauty of it is this man had nothing to lose. He wasn't— he gave me the advice in the face of him saying, I'm going to die now, but I will let you all know, here's what I learned. And so the privilege to convey this, this is why I care so much about this book. Yes, it has my ideas in it as well and everything, but the essence of it— and I didn't write anything that he didn't think we should say— that the essence of this is to convey to you what an entrepreneur like this in the last 2 years of his life, what he has to say for us. And that has just been an emotional— in a sense, an emotional roller coaster. But I'm so gratified and elated to share this now with everybody.

Is there a— you know, I mean, obviously you can't share every single story in the book, and that's where people can go out and buy it. Yeah. Um, but is there a story or 2 that really stood out when, when he shared it with you? that was like, just eye-opening that anyone listening maybe that are around getting started or anything like that would be of value?

It's this, of course, with him, you have to see, I'm more the small startup guy. He was a bit bigger startup guy, because he actually was hired by Coca-Cola to buy, to run this wine company that they already had. And so in that sense, he didn't start that wine company, but it was fledgling and small and failing in the '70s. And, but 2 things that show his approach to it, where Coca-Cola eventually said like, ah, this wine business sucks and everything. People are against, you know, having alcohol, selling alcohol, this and that. So, and so he was at this board meeting where these people from Coke said, Coke New York, it was, said, look, we should just ditch this company and just lay everybody off. This is like— And then Art gets angry, stands up and says, this is a darn good company and these people are absolutely great. I stand 100%. If you don't like the company, I'll buy it. The man didn't have a dollar to his name. So, and they like grabbed him right away and says, okay, we'll sell it to you. And so he had to go back and create a way to buy this company. And so he did a leveraged buyout, 26 to 1. I mean, he had no money. And so he had all the management participate and they bought out this company on this huge leveraged buyout. I mean, huge in terms of that the bank owned most of it, and I mean 26 to 1, right? And then he started to work. He, of course, worked in the company before. And here's the other thing of how he cared about people. Then 2 guys made a mistake and they boiled this vermouth, and you have to add some herbs to it, and they have to go exactly to a point, and then it mixes in. And they did 250,000 gallons of this vermouth and they spoiled it. So they— something happened, it became dark. And then you can't— I mean, it doesn't look like vermouth anymore.

Yeah.

Even though it wouldn't be unhealthy to sell it, to drink it or so. And nothing in the health changes, it just— it's optics. But, you know, vermouth is used for martinis and so on. And they basically said, look, Art, let's just darken the glass a bit and then sell it anyway, because Our company's life is on the line here, right?

Yeah.

And Art wouldn't have any of it. He says, we didn't buy this company to behave like large companies. Like, we are artisans. We're gonna do only the best. We give great product at a great price, and this is not a great product. And he told them, destroy it. 250,000 gallons of, of our move pieces destroyed. This is not— I'm not even gonna private label sell it. And then everybody was standing there going, okay, now it's 3, 2, 1, and then those 2 guys are gonna be fired. He brings the whole team to— it's a small team— he brings the whole team together, gets the 2 in the middle and says, what happened? And they tell— and they're like telling him. And he says— and they're like, I'm so sorry, you know, I understand, uh, if— you know, basically the guy said, I understand if you want to fire me. And then Art says, no, no, why would I do that? At this point, you're the only person Who can make sure this never happens again? And he says, can you go and find out a way that this— that makes this not happen anymore? And they're like, well, we'll do anything in our power to do it. And he says, that's what I want you to do. By making a mistake, you turn into an asset. And I'm not going to get some new guys who are going to make the same mistake.

See how he— That's a great point. Yeah.

He has your back. He always felt that everybody shows up with a good intention. And then, you know, things happen, especially in a situation like this, but they just made a mistake, right? And he's like, now I'm gonna invest in you. And what he always talked about is when people create a company, they often think that the focus is the product.

Yeah.

That's not directly true. The focus should be the culture of people that create good products because you want more than one good product. We neglect creating a culture that creates a good product and just drive everybody to create this one good product out. And then afterwards, we're tired and we start to misbehave. Whereas if you focus on the culture from the beginning to say, we're a learning company here, we make mistakes, we're accountable, right? We don't blame, we don't assign blame, we actually take responsibility rather than assigning blame. And that becomes a culture. I tell you, that's a company that can go far and it'll come up with product after product after product, which is exactly what he was able to do. And that's sort of, to me, the quintessential aspect of principled entrepreneurship, this person-centered, putting the employee and the customer at the center of the circle of what you're concerned with.

Did he ever share with the box wine? I'm curious, like how that idea came about.

Yeah. In that sense, he's a little bit like, and, you know, when I give short interviews, I say that he invented the box wine. Theoretically, it's like with Thomas Edison. Theoretically, he didn't invent the box wine because some guy in Australia did, but he couldn't make it work. You see, it's one thing to— it's like with Edison and the light bulb. It's one thing to come up with the idea, the other thing to make it work. The part of the make it work is where the grit comes in. These boxes, they were like these PVC box bags, and they kept bursting. Right? And the tab kept leaking because there's pressure on it. And so when Art went to Australia and found this guy and said— because he lost his glass discount when they left Coca-Cola, he lost the glass discount. And just as an aside, whenever you buy something in a glass, usually the glass is the most expensive part of the product. So when you lose your glass discount, you're dead. And so he's like, well, what are we going to do? And then instead of arguing with the glass company, he looked for an alternative. And then that's how he found the PVC bags. And then it was him who did— I think he did like 200 iterations of it until it started to work, where it wouldn't crush, it wouldn't leak. And of course, nobody really had it on the market before he did. The same is true with the spritzer and the coolers. Art was never— Art was not the tinkerer in the terms of the eureka moment saying, hey, I have an idea. Art usually found something that somebody else kind of did and gave up on. And then he's like, oh no, this is much better than that. And then he would go and not give up and find a way to do it mostly. And he did this with me and with the book in a sense. I had this privilege to experience how when Art gave you feedback, he'd always— so he'd read this, the first manuscript was a monster, I'm telling you. He would come in and he would say, hey, I'm really starting to like you. I tell you what. And then it comes. But that little thing of saying, I'm really starting to like it, was soothing my soul. You can tell me anything after that, any criticism after that is okay with me because he had— you see, he has your back.

Yeah.

And so that's how he did with all of these innovations that he had people He knew how to get other people to feel valued, worthy, and to, to, to help them flourish, to excel. He was a master at that.

Yeah, sounds like an unbelievable individual. So I'm sure there's some cool stories in there, obviously, about his journey and some others as well. What I'm curious, one more thing on the book. Just the whole process in general of the writing and getting it out there? Because, you know, there's a lot— I mean, myself obviously with writing books, but there's a lot of folks that listen in that maybe have thought about writing a book.

Yeah.

Is— and I know you can't give everything in a short interview here, but is there anything you would tell people to watch out for, whether it's in the publishing process or the writing process or anything like that, that was the most—

The first thing I would want to— it's like ideation in the first place.

Yeah.

There's this little person on your shoulder that keeps telling you you're an idiot and what you're saying is worthless. You got to shut that up. Like when you write, write. I commit to writing whatever, 3,000, 5,000 words in the morning session. I get up at 4 o'clock. I do my writing then. And I just sit down and do this and there's no criticism. This person, this little devil here has a gag, has duct tape around the head. Because if you start to criticize yourself, you will never be creative. And so just get it down. It's like putting clay on, and then afterwards when you turn it, you can always shape it and form it and get opinions in and editors and stuff like that. So for me, the beginning is always to go into the no judgment zone and just start to be creative. And that feeds on itself the more you go, and good stuff comes of that. And as far as finding— I also looked at very early on, Art and I immediately agreed that it would be my book and I would write it. much too difficult to come to terms with somebody else. It's hard enough to write it yourself. But Art was an advisor to the book, and he was the subject in a sense. But we agreed right away that it would be my book, also because he said, look, you'll have to go and do what we're doing right now, because he won't be here anymore.

Yeah.

But it helps to be the author yourself and have that control. Then if you want to have a publisher, you can find— the benefit of finding an agent, which I did for this book, is that they know everybody. I didn't have the bandwidth for— with my teaching and my coaching and speaking career and everything, I didn't have the bandwidth to go after publishers. So I ended up getting an agent, which is of course going to cost you something. It's based on how much we're going to sell. And the agent, it looks easy what they're doing, but they have years and years of honing the relationships that they make one call to somebody that you couldn't reach in 10 years. And so that— so I did that and I was very glad I did. And I can really recommend my agent there. And then with the publisher, I— you can go with very large publishers and of course that's prestigious and so on. I like— I'm a startup guy. I like to go with somebody who's trying to disrupt, who's disruptive. So my publisher is called Ben Bella. Matt Holt is the imprint. And they're trying to take the approach that normally book publishing is owned by the— is focused on the distribution of books. So they're all going to go to the large retailers and stuff. And Ben Bella says, no, no, no, this is the age of the internet. Like, let's go, let's be very social media focused and very heavy on the consumer and create pull rather than push. Book sales still today go by push. I don't like that. And so my publisher is actually a pull publisher. They focus on the end user right away. And I'm very comfortable with that.

What was the name of that again? Ben Bella?

Ben Bella. Yeah. And the, the business imprint that Ben Bella has different imprints for different topics. The business imprint there is called Matt Holt.

Okay.

H-O-L-T. Great guy. It's the guy who actually runs the imprint and he's the guy who agreed to publish my book. Interesting.

Well, so let's end that on this note. So obviously you have all your students coming in and we talked about ideation, we talked about some other things, but if someone comes to you, let's say on the first day of class and they're like, give me a quote, give me some inspiration, I want to get started, I'm excited about this. What advice are you going to give them? Is there, is there a quote, an insight that you always go with, something you learned along that's maybe the most impactful? What would you share with them? Maybe they can put on their notebook that they look at each and every day in class.

You are made for something. You are made to be happy. It's the one thing everybody agrees on. Now, happy looks different for different people, but the essence of happiness is to fully flourish. You need to become fully who you could be, if there is a part of you that's suppressed or depressed, you're not going to be happy. No amount of money in the world can fix that. We see it all the time with very, very wealthy people being very, very depressed. So this is why I start by saying, what do you, what do you want? And I think you who are watching this, what you want is to be happy. And in order to be happy, figure first out who you are. What are your talents? and your quirks, like what we talked about with the ideation. Who are you? And then how do you live that out to the point where you pursue mastery? See, what we're doing is if you just say, well, I just want to make a lot of money, that's— A, that doesn't make happy. There's a million examples of that. And B, what I'd rather have you be after, I want to hone my talent in this. And what I mean with that is to pursue mastery. One of the things that brings you enduring happiness is to become really good at something. And really good at something means that you are actually, you know, a guy— I presume a Michael Phelps, who's so fast in swimming, doesn't like every exercise he does every day. And it sucks probably to be in the pool once in a while. But you know what? He goes with his talent, and by achieving mastery, achieves this happiness that he's after, this fulfillment, right? And this is true for us. So we need to understand who we are, what we're after, and then invest in mastery. You're not going to be an overnight success. There is no such thing as an overnight success. Find out what you're good at and then commit to becoming a master at it, which is a longer-term thing. That is the path to happiness. And as long as you can write down on your notebook or on your mirror in the morning That ultimate goal, it gives you the wherewithal to go every day, the will and the drive to pursue this even at times when the— when you're on— when your mastery goes a bit like that, right? You keep having to learn when it's a downturn, then you can still pursue that happiness.

Oh, you make a good point too, because like, if you're just going after money, there's millions of ways you can make money too. So now you start that shiny object syndrome, kind of start like getting distracted and like, oh, I gotta go this way, that way. But if you at least have an idea of this is the path I'm going down, now you can actually do it.

Entrepreneurship is a very bad way to make money. It's a very good way to become happy. And I want to say flourish happy. You know, my happy comment has many connotations to it. Maybe human flourishing is what I'm looking for, that you actually pursue your excellence in a masterful way. That's the path of principled entrepreneurship.

Andreas, this has been a great conversation. Where can everyone say hello to you online? Where can they pick up the book? I'm assuming Amazon, but is there other places?

Yeah, I have a website called andreas-widmer.com, and that's for The Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. There's a cool little quiz on that that you can— it's not scientific, but I come up with this idea that there's a startup entrepreneur is not the only entrepreneur. Art was very key on saying he was an entrepreneur long before I owned the company. And so he wanted me to make this point that there's such a thing as an employee entrepreneur and you should start early. And in the end, he says, start today, you know, and you can take a little quiz on there and I'll point you of where you're at in your career, what kind of entrepreneur you're right now. It's of course fluid. And so that's at andreas-widmer.com. And then you can find, of course, if you Google my name, W-I-D-M-E-R, And Catholic University of America, we have a Bush School of Business there, and that's, that's where I reside and that's where I teach.

I just appreciate you being on. Thanks so much, and, uh, this was a lot of fun.

Thank you, Brian. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Hey everyone, and just one more quick thing before you head off on your day. If you're enjoying this podcast and are looking for other resources and tools to help you get started and move forward toward a happier and more fulfilling life, then I'd encourage you to head over to my website, BrianAndraco.com, and hit the subscribe button in the upper right corner. There you can find my newsletter and blog subscriptions where I share insights and information around getting unstuck, perspective, mindset, relationships, habits, and much more. If you get a chance to sign up, I hope you enjoy. Thanks again for listening in and have a phenomenal day.