Nancy Duarte Talks Silicon Valley, Leadership, and the Future

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and I'm here today with Nancy Duarte. Hello, Nancy. Welcome on the show.

Thanks for having me.

From sunny Santa Clara, California, down here in San Diego, we're just doing the California thing. I'm loving it. Thank you so much for being here. Nancy, for the people at home that might not be familiar with your work and what you're doing in the world, can you kind of catch us up a little bit? Talk about your heroine's journey, if you will?

Yeah, yeah. So I have a firm here that we write and produce and help you deliver a great talk. We'll either do it for you or we'll train you how to do it for yourself. So next year is our 30 year anniversary and we entered into this niche in 2000 when Jim Collins book Good to Great came out. We had been already in business for almost a decade. And in that book he said, if there's one thing you can do, you can be profitable at, be passionate about, do just that one thing. And so we shuttered the doors on all of our services and decided to niche ourselves in presentations. So, so that was a real defining moment for us. And we'd been doing presentations for quite some time, but we decided to have that be the only thing we do. Then I wrote my first book in 2008 which was amazing and it's been a fun ride. We love what we do. And the dirty little secret is that I actually got a C minus in speech communication and a D in English. And I write books in English about speech communications. And I think I just put put in me first. It felt like, I don't know, the Scarlet Letter, right? Running around with this big mark on me that I was a failure at public speaking. But I think based on kind of my childhood and how resilient I had to be, I just made it a goal to obliterate that perception and create a great presentation company. So that's the story.

I love it, Nancy, and I really appreciate that you kind of peppered it with some failures too, because I think everybody can relate to failure, but not everybody can relate to success. And it's definitely more endearing when people have a sense of what you come from. And what you've kind of gone through.

Yeah. I could take the whole time talking about failure if you want.

Yeah, we just pick out a few fun ones. As long as they're educational, informative, why not?

Right.

I don't really believe in failure. Kind of reframed. It's either you win or you learn. What did you win? What did you learn? Right.

That's fair. That's fair. Unless you die in the process, then it's too late.

Well, that's gonna happen regardless. So I guess that's kind of across the board. Can we talk a little bit about growing your organization from a leadership perspective? What you had to learn and fail at along the way, that's where you're at.

Yeah. I think as an entrepreneur, you tend to be a generalist. Like, you could be good at a lot of things. So I would say when we were at about 30 people, I was the hub, and everyone was a spoke off of me. And I would come in, I mean, literally to the point where I would sketch, I would resketch the decks of the customers that came in, and people would come in with a little pile of paper, and they knew what to do that day. I mean, that's how, like, I made myself kind of the central figure. And I remember my best. Best friend in the world, he worked at a big corporation. He's watching this happen and watching me kind of implode. I just couldn't take any more on. And I hired him, and he came in, and first thing he did for the first few months was just observe me. And then he started to write these job descriptions. Each job description he would write, and I would go home with it. And I remember just kind of mourning the loss of that role, because I knew if I clung to that role, I would want to control or influence the person doing it. And so I had to kind of like, this role is dead to me. And just completely realized that we were going to hire someone better at this role than I could ever be, like, a specialist in that role. And that was the first step in setting myself free. And then I brought in a president, too, because to be kind of a creative force, an innovative force, and also be an operational force just wasn't. And so brought in a leader. And I think part of the promise of working for Duarte is we create a place where you can find meaning because you belong. So we have a strong sense of community and belonging and creativity and kind of playing like a championship team. And it's been important as I've grown and as the company's grown, to try to help facilitate and manage that culture and create an owner's mindset in everyone. And it ebbs and flows. Like I could say, some years, sometimes I feel I'm killing it as a leader. And some years it feels like, you know, it's eating me alive. And I think it comes in waves. And like you said, you win and you lose and you pick yourself up and you make yourself stronger. And I think that's a key point of being a leader. I think, too, I have this almost, maybe for lack of a better word, almost the supernatural ability to see the future. So I feel like I can see really, really clearly about 18 months ahead, both the industry, the market, my team. So I could see pretty clearly the unknown and the direction we need to go. And sometimes I've been good at rallying my team to get us there. Sometimes we've kind of missed the mark. But I do feel like we're in general, always headed at least into the right hemisphere. I can't promise we're always going to hit the letter X, but I do feel like we're always kind of headed in the right direction.

Yeah, you don't always have to hit it right the first time, but you do have to hit it right eventually. And if that's the intention, you keep changing your approach, you'll eventually get there. I really like a few of the things you just said, and I want to dig into them. I'll start pulling on the threads until the sweater unravels and reveals the naked truth. But when you said setting yourself free and excommunicating yourself from the role, can you expand on how that looks from a practical and tactical standpoint? Because that's something that I know, I've struggled with. I know people listening at home, like, when you're entrepreneur and a generalist and you're like a three out of four or five or something, and you go to delegate it, do you really ever. Can you ever really let it go? And then, like, there's always that battle between, do we have the revenue for this? And how do we create more sales that we can actually do it? And growing a profitable company is more important than just growing a company. It doesn't matter if you make a million and lose 999,000 to expenses. So, you know, what are some of the things that you've had to do to really get clear on that?

It is weird. I think as an entrepreneur, many of us are systems thinkers and we can see the dependencies, like, oh, if I pull this thread, it's going to unravel this or all of those kinds of things. And I feel like what has happened for me was that, hello, I mean, there's a lot of people who could storyboard a presentation better than I could. And so there was low hanging fruit that were easier to let go for me. But as I've built now what I would call a truly professional executive team, what happens is there'll be a problem on the table. And instead of giving them a chance to fail, I will scoop up and jump in and matrix out this big fat problem that they're trying to do. And they're like, okay, we know you're capable, but let go. And so I'm having to let go now at a more strategic level, which is harder for me then Nancy, stop storyboarding everybody's presentation. Different level. And I'm totally energized by strategic problem solving. So now it feels like it's starting to cut into my meaty core. And so now I am having to find kind of the place for myself and I'm having to take an inventory of what really, truly energizes me and then get to the point where I don't care about, you know, a misstep here or there, you know, so I'm still, I'm still learning because now the stuff I'm having to let go of some of my favorite things. And that's different. That's different.

That's where I really get excited, is like, you know, you can own 50 businesses with the same amount of energy and time and attention it takes to run one effectively. So you get to that level where it's like, I love this thing. It's my baby. I built it from the ground up, but it's time to let it fly. And then from that place, what do you do next? And what's. What does that look like for you?

You know, it's fun. Because I do tend to make up business models for fun. The space we're in, you know, has varying degrees of quality, varying degrees of insights. You need to be able to be an effective presenter. So it's been really fun. So what I do is I invent other little businesses and ideas. I think I definitely obsess about the future and how do we meet our clients there at the right place. So we actually built it. We had an agency, a creative services firm for years. And so then we built a training company which is a product based business, which was kind of fun. So I went from a service based to a Product based. At one time we even had a T shirt company. And now we're looking at some other models to service kind of the lower end of the market. We are in the Valley. It's expensive to employ people here. I do think I have the smartest thinkers in the world, but it's pricey. And so now I'm having to come up with super interesting. As much as I hate the Valley sometimes, it's forcing me to stay strategically smart. It's forcing me to do very counterintuitive things, forcing me to take big, big risks that I'm only having to take because I live here. So when I travel around the world, I'll tell people like, oh, this is on my mind. And this is on my mind. And this like, yeah, y' all in California, y' all are cray cray. And nobody else is having to think that way. And the only reason you have to think that way is because you're in the Valley. So it's like, it's true. But I also don't think I would be anywhere else. Like, it's making me stay really sharp strategically. So we're having to. Having to do some really clever things. And that part energizes me. It's just empowering other people to do the execution of it. That's hard for me.

Yeah. And that's always the leadership dilemma. I mean, I spent a lot of time in ni Silicon Valley. I used to live in San Francisco about six years ago now.

Wow.

And what I've always noticed is that's like the bleeding edge. It's kind of the meat grinder a little bit. It's like everybody fighting for the, for the opportunities that are the future. And you mentioned this two or three times. We're going to dig into that as well. You know, what do you see coming that's going to change your industry? What are you really excited about? Just across industries that's going to change the way that we live. Because I'm, you know, focused on building better systems that serve more people.

Right.

There's an old Winston Churchill saying, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Well, the same could be said for capitalism and a lot of other systems that while they're the best we have now, I think we can do better in the future. And what does that look like? So I'm excited to hear your thoughts on the future and what we're looking forward to.

Yeah, it's funny, right now, kind of the norm in the Silicon Valley is you just throw billions of dollars at ideas and somebody will get filthy rich. And there's not a lot of meaning in that. There's not a lot of. It's only a handful of people that get astronomically rich.

Yeah, it's not efficient for sure.

No. And that bothers me. Right. I don't have a billion dollars to throw around and just kind of, you know, throw it like seeds into the wind and see if anything germinates from it. So I think, I think there's some imbalance here. I think that a small firm like mine can bring more meaning and familial spirit to it. But a lot of companies like mine are getting squished out. They're leaving. I think the trends that I see that are going to impact my business we're actually trying to set. We did a series of labs where we spent two different summers where I had 11 labs each summer. And we all dreamed about in 40 years, how are we going to present what's the presentations of the future look like? Almost every single lab came up with a software idea. And I was like, oh my God, I don't know how to be a software CEO of a software company. And it scared me. And so I befriended a bunch of women that ran billion dollar software companies as you do. As you do when you live in the valley. And what was interesting to me is it takes a. It takes a different temperament. Like I love creating beautiful content that changes lives. Soft words, that's not that, you know. And as I got to know them and they got to know me, where now we're investing and inventing. But I don't feel like I'm the one that will run it. The things that I think are going to impact my business is, I believe right now, presentations are still one of the last hierarchical things. It's one person presenting one directionally to the masses. Right. And I think that there's opportunity for there to be a solution where the audience can be participant. Not like polling and all this stuff, but really helping drive the narrative. I think AR more than VR will affect us. I met with a guy at Fidelity and he's like, oh yeah, we just filed a patent. And it made me so mad because we didn't file it first. But he's like, yeah, you could be sitting in a presentation with your VR glasses on and looking, going through a 401k presentation and what you'll see in your glasses when a slide comes up, you'll see your own data privately in your own glasses. I'm like, crap, how come I Didn't patent that, you know. Yeah, it's just smart. There's just smart thinking. So we came up with a bunch of ideas and we, we do have a patent in the mix. And it's weird, right? We're a services firm having to file patents, you know, but that's kind of the nature of being here and being in the Valley, I think. So there's things coming up and things that we want to drive that will, I think, shape the future of how people present.

And Nancy, is Duarte Venture backed or is it bootstrapped or how does it work?

Bootstrapped, 100% owned.

Congratulations.

That's beautiful.

It's rare, especially in the Valley, to have a bootstrapped.

What's funny is it's not sexy here. Like, everyone's like, what do you mean? You own, you shouldn't own that.

Because raising money is a business model to them. It's crazy. They don't have a product.

So my husband, my husband worked all summer long, 1988, to buy a little Mac Plus. And I mean, we had terrible yellow shag carpet and we lived in a one room apartment. We were probably the only people in a two mile radius that owned a personal computer. Right. And we've just poured every, every spare bit of cash back into our own business. Yeah.

That's beautiful.

I think so. I'm glad you think so because, you know, it's nothing.

But it's hard to compete when people have so much money that, you know, may or may not be wasted. But, you know, and there's this excess. Like you talked about throwing seeds into the wind. Some of those seeds are going to land on land. Yeah, not so much. What do you think every single entrepreneur should know? Like, if you had a microphone just that went straight into the ears of every entrepreneur in the world, what would you be telling them?

Well, if you're an entrepreneur, your high probability of already being resilient. Resilience, resilience, resilience. I mean, I take less than two hours to get over something. I mean, you just have to be like, okay, that was really stupid, you know, but learn from it. And I think you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to be a lifelong learner. You have to, you have to constantly know what's going on, constantly invest in yourself. I read probably 50 books. Read and listen to about 50 books a year. So I think you have to be really, well read, really resilient. I think one of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs are missing is empathy and storytelling. Just to Kind of wrap my own view around it. It's taken me a long time to understand empathy because when you start as an entrepreneur, you have complete control. You can just shove things down people's throats or control them along the way. But when you're in a startup mode or you're in a quick growth mode, like we have a department now that is practically like a startup, it's easier to go to command and control instead of actually really using empathy as a leadership device, even in a high growth, high impact part of the business. So, yeah, it's not easy. And then I think what we started with was letting go. I think that we are our own limiters of growth because we think we have it all in control. And I think control is our biggest enemy and we need to learn to empower others that are smarter than ourselves. I feel I've actually hired people smarter than myself. I just have a control problem, that's all.

That's a really important thing to understand is that if you're the bottleneck through which everything needs to pass, you know, what are you going to do when you run out of time, energy, intention, or get, you know, jacked up on cortisol so much you can't even breathe? Taking my own advice. Taking my own advice.

I'm not a control freak. I don't think my exec team would say I am. But that's, that's my big development area.

I think at least you're aware of it and that's the first step. You mentioned that missing empathy and storytelling was a big part of what's plaguing a lot of entrepreneurs. And I heard a quote somewhere, it was something the effect of the best and most effective influencers, leaders, persuaders, marketers, are the most empathetic people in the world. And you know, I don't know if you believe what I believe, which is, you know, these are all tools and just like a hammer can build a house and, you know, feed a family and do all that kind of stuff or cave somebody's skull and it's the wielder of the hammer that is the most important thing. How do you feel like people get it wrong, like when they use some of these leadership skills in the wrong way or to influence. I mean, there's tons of news. I don't want to get political about it, but especially in Silicon Valley, we're seeing so many companies with leadership that, you know, through their own ability or skill or talent or luck, right place at the right time, they've gotten so much power and then they're wielding it ineffectively. And what do you see as the path to create that balance again? And leadership, you know, I think fair enough to do it. I guess. That's the other.

Yeah, I think the old adage winds up ringing true, that pride cometh before a fall. And I do think that eventually the bad leaders or the ones that were only there at the right time, like, there's some people I know who like, miss the right time by 2 seconds, 25 different times, you know, and they deserve and have earned, you know, some of the privileges that some of wee pups, you know. It's funny, I'm an old lady, you know, I've been around for 30 years. And some of these young guys. Sorry, but I'm saying guys, because those tend to be the ones show up like they know they know better than I do, which maybe they do, you know, treat you like crap, ask you to lie. That's my favorite. You know, I just can't even believe, you know, what's expected or what's requested from this new type of leader that's pervasive here. And I do think that what goes around comes around. I think kindness and empathy. Thirty years, I mean, I don't even know, like Google, it's not even been around. Apple's barely been around that long. Right. And I think it takes resilience. I think it takes truthfulness, transparency. Empathy has been my lifelong journey on a personal level, because I was raised by a. By a bipolar, alcoholic narcissist, which was hard. My mom didn't even know I existed, let alone knew what I was doing any time of day or believed in me or anything. I think that my own quest for understanding, empathy. There's research done that, daughters of narcissistic mothers, you have to really make it a lifelong discipline to learn empathy. And I feel like all of my body of work were models that I needed for myself as a leader and as a communicator to empathetically understand who I'm trying to lead. And the cycle. I hope the cycle is broken. I've worked hard on it. My children aren't narcissists. You know, you could tell that they're turning out. Oh, my God, my children, they're turning out. They're adults and they've turned out. But we'll see, you know, the spawn of these leaders, we'll see how they turn out, you know, and it's a weird place. It's a weird place. And I think some of the downfalls are kind of deserved it sounds terrible.

Yeah. It's kind of interesting to think this has happened a lot of times if you study human history, like for example, just to pick one anytime there's like a huge leverage increase on one side or a huge technological increase that tends to be used in a very effectively to subjugate another people. Like, for example, you know, the Europeans coming to North America and taking land from Native Americans, you know, and I think that's kind of happening on a smaller scale. Not so much with the wars and everything that are going on, though it certainly does. It's more of a Cold war nowadays and more of a global economy. But in the Silicon Valley, in the tech space especially, it's like, you know, we have these people that are rising up because they found that niche first and they dominated it.

Right.

And then they abuse their power and things get out of whack for a while and then it kind of comes back to a balance. And I think that just hasn't quite happened yet. Right. We've seen some cycles of it and up and down, and I just think that's a human thing. I don't know if that's ever going to really change, but I do feel like the cycles will get shorter because the leverage and like there's so many more people talking to each other. You know, just the way that people are evolving through communication and being connected, it just, in the last five years has been insane to me. Like, I'm having conversations with people I've never met before from an entirely different culture. We have the same memes with the same kind of, you know, we've seen the same videos, we've, we've talked about the same problems with the same people we're having. Like, it's actually really encouraging. And you may not see it in the meat grinder every day.

I got too much sausage in the meat grinder all around me. I can't see it. I don't want to be, you know, because I might deal with this for.

30 years and I understand.

Yeah.

But starting. And you can see these little 1% increments. And now we're starting to really globally take off.

And it's, it's kind of cool, know that I would have had the success we've seen if I wasn't planted here, you know, So I want to honor that too. You know, before this was called the Silicon Valley, it was called the Valley of the Heart's Delight. And that's because it was so plentiful with fruit and orchards. And my father in Law, who is of Mexican descent, who used to live very close to the border. They used to drive their cars up here and pick the fruit in Santa Clara Valley. And it was Valley of the Heart's delight. And now it still is. It's just the fruit that we pick as ideas instead of actual fruit. And I just kind of want to remember that, that this has been a place of plentiful for a long time. And to your point, when something new emerges, something else obsolesces. And so I just want to always make sure I harness what's new and then kind of let go of whatever it is that gets obsolesced in the. In the making of new things.

Nancy, you mentioned you read a lot of books, and I do, too. What are some of the books that are really just, you know, the best ones you've read this year? And who are the thought leaders that you really look up to and respect?

Yeah, so I'm reading one. I just started it. I'm halfway through in one night. I think it's called Ownership. Thinking that one is just rocking me. I'll have to look at my phone. I read the. I just ordered a whole new handful, too. I loved. I finally, this year, finally read Geography of Thought, which was super, super interesting. Just my third time through the Power of habit. Yeah, I'm reading a lot of books on scaling right now. Monetizing Innovation was super interesting to me. These are the top, the top firm that just determines pricing strategies. They have 900 employees and they kind of codified it in a book because we're releasing a digital version of a lot of our, our training and learning. And it gave me a methodology for how to know how to price things. And then my leadership team is going through different versions of emotional intelligence and Patrick Lencioni's work. And then one of my other favorite books was called Never Split the Difference. It's the FBI Hostage Negotiator. That book was on empathy, which was so fun. I loved reading that. And then, you know, Hillbilly elegy, you know, just all those classic ones. Payoff by Dan Ariely didn't get as much visibility that I thought it should. I thought Third Wave by Steve Case was super interesting, too, where the first couple waves, there was the technology wave and then the Internet wave, like that, Facebook and all these and LinkedIn could be opportunistic about. But that this next wave of innovation is so heavily regulated that it's going to be much more difficult. It's going to take years instead of months. Now And I thought that was super.

Much more entrenched systems, too, you know? Yeah. And now there's a lot of power that needs to be. You can't just innovate around the power structures that exist. Right. Because ultimately people control them, and those people really like controlling them, and they have for a long time. So they're not going to go quietly into that good night, as they will say.

Right.

But, yeah, that's. That's actually really fascinating. And thank you for the having that Just Ready to rock.

Because I just wrote Hoffman's. Have you. Have you listened to Reid Hoffman's new podcast, too?

No, I'd love to.

Scaling up. Oh, my God, it is so good. It's so well produced. The gal who used to run all of media for Ted, June Cohen produces his podcast, and he's interviewing all the top people in the Valley. It's very, very good. Very well created, written and produced.

You know, I've been interviewing more and more tech CEOs. I had Lynn Perkins from Urban center on the show. You know, Lynn.

Don't know her personally, but definitely know.

I'd love to connect you. I think you guys are really hit it off. Anyway, so I've been interviewing more of these wonderful tech CEOs and Silicon Valley CEOs, and just the level of thinking is just so much different than the average entrepreneur. And I have to say, it's. It's refreshing and at the same time, a little intimidating. If I'm being honest, I don't ever think I'll be a tech CEO, or do I necessarily want to be. Although I've been. I've had offers. And one of the things that I think really sets you guys apart. You guys, I mean, you know, I'm from Long island, so I don't mean you guys.

I say you guys. You guys.

Over here, y'.

All.

Exactly, exactly. You seem to have this, like, you're just trying to get to the right answer as quickly as possible, feelings be damned. Right. Just get to the right answer as quickly as possible, you know? And the less I can feel about it and just get there, the better I'll feel overall. And that's like the feeling I get whenever I talk to somebody. It's just like, I'm totally cool. You're not gonna hurt my feelings. Just help me get to the right answers.

Just tell me the truth. Stayed up to my face. Yeah.

And where's the best coffee shop in the next three blocks?

You know, it's funny. I avoided. You know, there's these little tiny Little female networks, you know, where females can get together. And I always was like, I don't, I don't want to get to the top because I'm a chick. I want to get to the top, you know, because I work and, and finally I conceded, I met this little vein of these women that have become my tribe. And you get a bunch of us in a room, it's like a friggin head hat head house. You know, we're all like, and you shouldn't do that. You should do that. The best coffee' here in the best. You know, like, it's just crazy. And the value I've gotten from these chickadees in the hen house has been unparalleled like it. And I can see now why, you know, a lot of men have these informal networks and they golf together and they do all these things together now. It's like, dang, we get the same amount of insights, but it only takes us like an hour. Yeah, it's hysterical. It's just, it is hysterical. We have a ton of fun.

I had a, I had the pleasure meeting Sarah Blakely.

Aw, yeah, she's amazing.

Back in February, I want to say, down in Atlanta. And her and her husband Jesse just. I love them both. Anyway, so Sarah said something that hit me right between the eyes. She says female entrepreneurs are the most underutilized resource on the planet right now. I was like, all right, you know, and I've really since then taken more effort and put a lot of people to work trying to find, you know, the best top people such as yourself, who, who happen to be female and are just crushing it and doing their thing and drawing those kind of conclusions. And what's disappointing is that as hard as I try, it's still only about one out of five that I meet, that I interview.

A lot of them are hidden. It's weird. There's a lot of demands. Right. Because we also tend to run the household and do all these things. And so a lot of women that you'll meet now are kind of on the other side of childbearing. They're empty nesters. And then now they're just finally have the bandwidth in their schedule to talk about, you know, what got them to where they are.

But you are always an entrepreneur throughout your entire raising your children. How old are your kids now?

31 and 27.

Okay, so I'm the same age as your 31 year old, 32. And so the whole time you were a CEO, you know, during the 80s, 90s and you know, the 2000s in the late 80s. I guess now you're. You're also a mom. Like, could you talk to that experience? Because that just seemed pulling in a lot of directions. I didn't have kids or a family or anything, and I'm still all pulled in a bunch of different directions, so I can't even imagine.

Yeah, I was pretty fortunate. So my husband started the business and he kind of let me take it over and turn it into what I wanted. So that was kind of wise on his part. But I would say you could probably hear it in my dialogue. I'm very future focused. My husband is very present, past focused. Right. So he is in the face of the kids. He's very today. He's, you know, and that really helped. And so he's always had a role where he had the flexibility. He could pick them up, he could do these things. So I didn't travel and speak until I was an empty nester. And there's these moments where you feel guilty, where you go, like on a deadline. And I go two days without seeing my kids. And sometimes I would just come home and I remember I would, like, go into the living room and just kind of cry in the carpet so it muffles so that I wouldn't wake up the kids. Because I. I'm such a bad mom. I didn't see my kids for 48 hours. I'm a failure. And I was just on the tail of a big event. And it had been Mother's Day and all these. And I didn't get to see my own kids on Mother's Day. It was this big. Anyway, and when it was all done, I was in the kitchen having breakfast with my daughter. And I'm. Like, I said, I'm sorry. I feel like I'm letting you down. I'm just not here enough. And she's like, you have to know my daughter's mom. I can learn how to cook from the Food Network stars. I don't need to learn how to bake from you. You have taught me how to lead and how to communicate, and that's more important. Like, I was just like, wow, that was kind of mature. I got over my guilt like that, and I never felt guilty again because both my kids have watched us. They're both entrepreneurial. They're both following their dreams. They're both following their passion. They both know how to love deeply, you know, and. And, yeah, I mean, I was there most of the time, but there were times where my job came first. And I feel like we made resilient children who see the value of hard work. Like, both my kids, they're like, yep, we don't want your company. We want to go through the same hard work you went through so we get the same character that you built while you had to build your own thing. Like, I'm like, okay, I guess.

God bless. That's beautiful.

Yeah, it's awesome. They're like, oh, I guess. Well, you know, we don't know what to do now, so we have to figure that out. Yeah.

So what are they getting into? What are they excited about?

My daughter is a high school science teacher. She wins all these awards. She's so out of the box, and she just procreated. I had my first grandson.

Congratulations.

Yeah. So they were married 11 years, had a baby, and my son is quite a bit of a genius. He is a classical composer. He won an ASCAP award when he was only 16 years old. Finished at the conservatory and then got way into mechanical engineering. And so now he is a designer of heart valves at Boston Scientific. Loves it.

Typical slacker. Basically.

Yeah. He. He's a. He's crazy. He has this weird hobby, actually. Walt Disney. I hate to say weird, but it's cute as can be. Unless. Unless he's looking for a girlfriend that's not so cute. But he builds these replicas of live steam engines. So, like, Walt Disney had these big tracks in their backyard. Like, he literally orders prints of actual trains from the museum, and then he scales them down and builds them. So he has his own shop, too. So he builds heart valves and builds toy trains. That's what he does.

That's.

I love it. He's happy. He's super happy. He's attractive. Until you see him sitting on a train. Then you're like, poor girls, they didn't.

Know what they're missing. But he'll find the one that loves him for that.

So that's what I'm telling.

So let's kind of switch gears a little bit. So besides crying into the carpet, what are some of the other ways you practice self care, Manage anxiety and cortisol, adrenaline, all these wonderful chemicals that just turn our prefrontal cortex off and make us go, ah.

You know, I hike, and there's this moment when you're hiking, it takes about an hour for me, where my brain finally turns off. So on a hike, I'll solve. I'll create world peace in my head, right? I'll solve. Yeah, exactly. Like, I solve every problem at the company, every problem at home. You know, you just solve it All. And then all of a sudden it gets quiet and that's what I hike until it's like quiet and there's no noise and there's just white space. That's my favorite thing. My husband and I definitely are disciplined in prayer, which is super helpful. And one of the best things that has happened to me is getting an assistant. Man, she is in my inbox. She saves me so much time. So a lot of people are like, oh, wow, you're busy. It's like, I'm not busy. I'm protected. Like today I had six hours to write, tomorrow I have four hours to write, next day I have two hours to write. You know what I mean? So she blocks out my day. And yeah, it might take six months to get on my calendar, but that's because I have an enormous amount of time for me to sit and think. So getting. Getting an assistant who manages me and protects me from myself was probably one of the best things that I ever done. I mean, and I think she and I should write a book because how. How she works and makes time for me is. Is really impressive how we. I utilize her. Yeah.

And just thinking about it, it's like you can't go after a fire and you can't be like squirrel if you don't see fires. If she sees them first and she's not emotionally attached to them because I know I'm like a dog with a bone. That's actually really good. So if I was to put together the story arc from what I've gleaned over the last few minutes we've been talking, it kind of started as alright. You got really clear on the one thing that you're gonna do. You went good to great. Right. And then you sort of nailed that. I'm sure you sold the crap out of it because your bootstrapped. Right. That's the best way to raise money is to use other people's lines of credit and pocketbooks.

We've never gone into debt either. Exactly.

And just went and you raised the money to have the people you needed. And with that space that you created, now you can, you know, hire people that are better at you, better than you at jobs, and then also have the protection that you need to really focus and be a leader. Am I getting the arc kind of right there. That's very good feel are appropriate or necessary. Because I want to bootstrap a company too, man. I want to do it right.

I know. I always wonder, like, if you've created something of incredible value, why would you Give that much of it away or give control away. I was super admirable of Zuckerberg to retain enough control to stop development.

And he's definitely not the norm. He's definitely the exception.

Yeah, it was smart. So, yeah, that was pretty much doesn't.

Have to be equity either. Like, he doesn't necessarily own all that equity. He just owns the control and the voting rights.

Exactly. It's the only way to be adamant.

Machiavellian, the way he did it. If you believe, you know, Aaron Sorkin's rendition, but at the same time, you know, the results, that's history is written by the winners, as they say.

Yeah, it's true.

So, okay, Nancy, what I just want to say, first and foremost, I'm mega grateful that you're here. What would you really love to leave the audience? And we're talking to people who are entrepreneurs, we're talking to people who are investors and philanthropists because we really believe that you need a way to generate money, grow money, and give it away. Because if you think money can't buy happiness, we probably haven't given enough away yet. What are some of the ways that you are doing that in your life? And then also, what is some of the advice that you have, not just from the entrepreneurial perspective, but now, okay, I got a pile of money, or I want to give some away. And what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's funny. We're working through that. My husband and I, we met when we were really young. I was 16, he was 18. I got married when I was 18. And ever since we met, we've given away 10% of all of our increase. And so we still do that to this day. And 1% of the company's profit, which at Google is hundreds of millions for us, it's not hundreds of millions, but a lot of the employees find a lot of meaning there. And we're trying to figure out what. What does it look like? What does, you know, Duarte 2.0 look like? This next year, we're going to start duarte.org we're starting a foundation where we can actually go into kind of the outermost parts of the earth where these struggling nonprofits are, teach them how to be better communicators, teach them how to get, just if you think about it, you can have this brilliant idea, and if you communicate it poorly, it'll get no traction. And some dork with a dorky idea gets traction just because how they communicated it. So we want to send my team out to some of the biggest causes that aren't getting traction and really teach them to be stronger communicators. And so, I don't know, this is 30 years, and it just feels like such a milestone to us. We built a big video studio, training space, and it's called the Story Place. And we want to be the broadcasters of some of the greatest stories. I don't know what that means yet, but I think there's stories here to tell in the Valley that don't get any attention. I mean, think some of the greatest stories don't make the headlines here. And I think there's a lot to be said here by the people who are not that much like the Valley, you know, and I haven't quite figured that out yet, but we have decided that we're in a season that we're calling generous experts. We are experts that we want to do, but we're trying to democratize it as much as we can and make it accessible to as many people as we can. And that's the goal right now.

I love it. And the way you communicate is fascinating. And that's really the keystone to everything, especially in the modern age where the average person could, you know, get in touch with pretty much anybody they want. Case in point, here we are on.

A podcast, chatting it up.

Chatting it up. You talked about this. Was it the story place? Is that what you hold?

Yeah, it's called the Story Place. It's totally.

I want to come and play in the Story Place.

That's a very beautiful room. And it even says this big sign. It's about 10 foot sign, says the Story Place. And story is the best way to bond. It's the best way to connect. It's the best way to persuade, because when we observe a story or are part of a story, we're transformed, we're changed. And that's just such a part of what we do. All of the presentations we make, we overlay a story filter and story structure to them. And it's really gripped me in how much it can transform my life and transform content. So, yeah, it's gonna be kind of cool. We have, like, a lot of announcements coming next year in our 30th year. It'll be fun.

I can't wait to hear about it. Yeah, absolutely. Nancy, I just want to say how grateful I am for you being here and for sharing wisdom and over many, many years that you've. You've accumulated it. I'm just. I'm grateful because, you know, I really feel like people need more access to the ones that have come before and really set the stage for the world is today, so they can pick up that mantle and take it to the next level, wherever that's going to go. So one of the ways we help to do that, make more marvels, right? We're all about helping people to connect to resources, opportunities, people, systems to help them move their mission forward faster. So I'm going to kind of put you on the spot here and ask you how we can do that for you. If myself or anybody listening has an idea for you.

Wow. I love to hear ideas. I do connect to everyone that connects me on LinkedIn. I actually do get to the bottom of my inbox every week. So I don't know, I think if anyone has ideas about what kinds of stories they'd like to hear out of the Valley or what kinds of stories the world needs to hear right now, I'm kind of really working on that. I have another beautiful body of work I'm writing right now on storytelling through data, finding narrative in the data. So if anyone has interesting data points that they've struggled to communicate, I want to find some struggles people have had and suss out the stories and frame it in a story through storytelling. So that's interesting to me too. I just like to connect to people. Like I said, I connect to anyone who connects me on LinkedIn, which is.

Fun, wonderful, and is LinkedIn the best way to reach out just to send.

You or duarte.com I'm on Twitter, Facebook, you know, all the channels.

That'S-U-A-R-T e.com for people listening home.

Duarte.com Wonderful.

And Nancy, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Any parting words to the audience?

Not well, except they probably all know I could be your mother because I, you know, have a 31 year old daughter. And I'm telling everyone that's listening, the 50s are my favorite decade. So 50s, 30. No, I just, I just think. I think so many people don't live life to their fullest. And I know that. I know that if you can shed yourself of any sort of victim mindsets or. The world is happening to me, this is happening to me. This happened to me. And overcome any mental and emotional obstacles. I still think this is America. We also have access to the American dream. You're talking about a Mexican and a female with only a high school degree. And we've accomplished so much. So it's really easy for me anyway for you to believe me when I say really really, really. You can be and do anything that you dream. It just takes a lot of persistence and resilience.

Thank you, Nancy. Thank you so much for being here. On behalf of everybody at Make More Marbles, we're grateful for you.

Ah, thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life in your health, wealth, relationships, whatever that means to you, head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or or Google Play, wherever you're listening to your podcast. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.