S2 #40 - Josh Linkner, VC, tech entrepreneur, NYT bestselling author, keynote speaker

What is the roadmap to defeat self sabotage, negative thinking and learned helplessness in these unprecedented times, you must get connected, Get Growing, Get Certain and Get Attitude. The Get Attitude Podcast. And welcome to the Get Attitude Podcast. I am your host, Glenn Bill, national speaker, international best selling author and your host of the Get Attitude Podcast. And we are in season two. We are winding up season two about innovators and influencers and gappers. I'm telling you, I have the number one most booked innovative speaker in America coming to talk to you today. If you guys are business owners, if you're a parent, if you're a friend, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't innovation have to happen? At every part of our life? We have the one and only Josh Linker. And Jason, you're going to cue up Josh's little intro here. Let's see what we got.

What if you had a superpower, A force that you could channel to drive better results in all areas of your business and life? What if that superpower was inside you right now, just waiting to be untapped? That edge is your own creativity. And if you're like most people, you have an enormous supply that's lying dormant and.

And there he is. Guys, I am so excited to bring this guy. He is an inspiring keynote speaker. He is a five time tech entrepreneur of the year, New York Times best selling author, venture capital investor. He is a change agent, a proven thought leader, a professional jazz guitarist and somebody that is considered the voice of creativity. Speaking especially with his new book, the Big Little Breakthroughs. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Mr. Josh Linker. Josh, welcome to the Get Attitude podcast.

Thanks Len. Great to be with you.

It's so great to have you. Now you're up in Detroit. We were just talking about the big Lions win. You are a die hard Detroit, Michigan man. Talk to me a little. You gotta be happy with Ann Arbor. What's going on down there? Tell me why you love Detroit so much and what is the attitude of Detroit as a city? And I feel like it was one thing, then it changed and it changed again. Give us a little Detroit scoop for all of our gappers out there.

Yeah. So I was born in the city of Detroit, not the suburbs, as were my parents and grandparents. And I'm deeply passionate about our hometown, which is really a city with a soul. There's such deep roots here of making things of innovation, of creativity that Motown and the auto industry and all these other exciting things. And frankly, it's a city that lost our way. You know, we had a Lot of self inflicted wounds and city really suffered. But right now this incredible energy is happening, this reserve resurgence, which is just the coolest thing ever. And I'm excited to play even a small role in it. So besides our sports activities, this one sort of broken city is rising from the ashes and it's just an exciting time to be here. There's all kinds of mobility stuff popping up. There's all kinds of different economic diversity, obviously a lot of, a lot of diversity of all types here in Detroit. And I'm a proud Detroiter. I'm not going anywhere. I just wanted to stay and be part of the solution.

I, I love it. Josh. Well, welcome so much to the Get Attitude podcast. We appreciate the award winning Get Attitude podcast. You can see our little communicator awards over there. We're so proud of what we've been able to accomplish and you're just going to be the perfect fit as we're winding down season two. Let's real quick, I'd love to know what is your definition of attitude and what is or who was possibly the greatest influence on your attitude? Your attitude coach or teacher, I guess, in your early life?

Yeah, you know, and I'm sure there's lots of different definitions, mine might be counterintuitive. Sometimes you see someone with an attitude that implies that they're arrogant or they're condescending or mean spirited, like, oh, what a tude this person has. But I look at it differently. I look at it as a sense of even quiet confidence. But one of you're showing up in your best possible way. You're ready to shine in the world, you're ready to lift other people up and you have an attitude quote unquote, or a mindset of abundance, of generosity, of contribution and certainly of creativity. And so I think what it says is that doesn't mean pursuits are going to be easy, doesn't mean it's not going to require sacrifice. But you have again, sort of quiet confidence to do whatever it's necessary in order to ultimately carry the day.

I love it. And so when we look at all the different things that you've accomplished as you've walked through your life, who would you say played the biggest part in helping you develop an attitude? Or who would be your attitude coach?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think my wife to a degree. My wife Tia, who I just adore. We've been married eight years and I'm her biggest fan. But she also is very much focused on kind of like being the best person that you could be without being showy and arrogant. Thing I love about her too is she's very, she's very. Not only detail oriented, but she's also very genuine. So she's authentic. She's not like projecting to be someone that she's not. She's just who she is. So I wasn't saying it to earn brawdy points, but she would probably be my, my biggest attitude coach. Well, one thing, I've been inspired by other great leaders, you know, thought leaders. I mean, I study all the best and I didn't mean to sound too self centered here, but she is my biggest. I'm her biggest fan.

Well, that's cool.

I.

One thing that you had mentioned was that your. I believe you said your grandparents and your parents were both from Detroit. I'd love to know how your grandparents especially we get a lot of grandparent talk on this because it's amazing the impact and the lessons that are never even taught that our guests get from their grandparents. I'd love to know and I'd love you for you to share about the. Whether you knew all four of them or just two of them, what was the attitude message that they gave you? Who were they? What were they about? And as you stood back and grew up, what did you admire about them?

It's so funny that you say that. So my new book, big Little Breakthroughs, which you have in your hand, I actually dedicate.

Dedicated to your two grandmas. I know, I saw that. That was cool.

And so it's a nice comment. So my grandmother, my parents were divorced and they were both very busy and I got a little bit lost in the shuffle. My grandmother on my father's side, her name was Ronnie. Grandma Ronnie was one of the biggest influential people in my whole life. And she told me a couple things. One was really cool. She's like, listen, any room that you're in, whether it's school or work or whatever, she's like, someone has to be the best in that situation, might as well be you. And it wasn't to be arrogant. It was the opposite. It was like, hey, you have to earn your spot, but someone's gonna outperform others, why not you? And it was just this cool attitude that was sort of like her expectation for me. Not that I should be given anything, but I had to work for it certainly, but that the top of the pyramid was possible. And the other thing though, that I learned from her is she was super kind. Like she could meet someone on the street or a head of State and treat them identically. And she just had this real sense of grace and caring, this nurturing sen. Very deeply present and especially in our scattered world, that's a hard thing to do. So if I can even live up to a fraction of what she was, I'd be very proud.

That's great. Now tell us about the other grandma, who I think said, you said, one taught me the love of language. The other taught me there's nothing I can't do.

Yeah. So the can do was Ronnie, but the other one was. Her name was Madeline, although at an early age she was nicknamed Mickey, as in Mickey Mouse. So she was Grandma Mickey technically. And she had an incredible love of language. She wasn't fortunate enough to go to college in those days, but mainly due to economic reasons, but she could out language the best of us. In fact, we always joked around that whenever we're with her, we needed a dictionary and a thesaurus on hand because she just loved language. And she learned that beautiful language through reading. She was an avid reader. She would consume a book a week. The notion of the written word and the love of language was a deep gift from Mickey.

Now, I know part of what you do as a venture capital person, and it sounds like maybe you were doing a lot more of that before than you are now. But for those folks who have an idea, who have a business, who believe that they have something that could turn into something fantastic, when people come to pitch a venture capital partner, what do you look for in an inventor or in a business owner to say, you know what? This is somebody that I think I should invest in. What's the message?

What.

What do people do wrong? What are the biggest mistakes? One or two. And then, boy, what are the. What are the people that come in that blow you away? What's the advice to our gappers on that, on that front?

Yeah, we could do like five shows on this. Of course, that's a very deep question, but couple headlines. One is people often come in and they think they're supposed to give like this monologue. And most venture capital investors want to have a dialogue. They want to interact with you. So if you just go on there and like turn, play on and just go for 45 minutes, you sort of lose people's attention. The other thing is that if you are not passionate about your project, there's no way that your investor is going to be. So I've heard people say, oh, I've got four ideas, and whichever one you want to invest in is the one that I'll do to me, you want to be as an investor, I want to see you saying this, I have to do this, I can't not do this. I'm ready to sacrifice everything for this one thing because I care that much about it, not that, hey, I'll just do whichever one you want to give me money for.

Wow.

In terms of what we look for, to me, so I invest in early stage software companies. So the answer that I'm going to give you is not true for if you ran a big real estate fund or something like that. But for me, if you're an early stage software entrepreneur and I've done all kinds of experiments with this, I've been involved in the launch of over 100 startups. So I've seen what works, what doesn't. I've tried different things, but the primary characteristics that I look for, open mindedness, humility, ability to be coachable, someone who has a proven track record of being able to not only deliver results, but having the discipline to fight through difficult times and overcome adversity. So those are the opposite of what most people think of when they think of a tech entrepreneur. We sort of have this prototypical Steve Jobs in our mind who's sort of arrogant and boorish and is very charismatic. Fill the room up. I think he was successful despite those things, not because of them. And so when I've seen entrepreneurs that are successful, they put the company ahead of their own personal view about them capturing every drop of sunlight. It's about them being there to serve others, to be uplifting again. People who are humble and coachable, those turn out to be the best people that you want to be in the trenches with, especially in the messy and difficult world of startups, I love it.

And so when we think about open minded, coachable, service oriented, the ability to overcome, certainly that fits into the category of attitude, right? And we believe that attitude is very simply this. It's the way you dedicate yourself to the way you think, which means there's an awareness, there's an understanding and there's a passion to deliver it. Let's just, if we can just go into each of those just very quickly. Open mindedness, what's the easiest way to spot that? Or have you ever met somebody that you go, now there's a person that might be the most open minded person that I've ever encountered. What did you learn from an open minded person?

Yeah, you could, you could see it pretty quickly because if someone is completely fixated on their way, like if you're like, hey, have you considered this? No, it's not that, you know, it's my way. And if they sort of have tunnel vision on and they're unwilling to accept alternatives, that's that would demonstrate close mindedness or someone who's open minded cares much less about being right as opposed to having the solution work. And so they're like, oh, that's a great idea, I never thought of that. They don't have the lack of self confidence that they have to make protective of their ideas. They're willing to be open to other considerations and so I think that that's a good way to spot it.

And have you ever experienced yourself being closed minded and said damn, that cost me or were you ever open minded enough? And you said oh my gosh, I was open minded and this was a success. Was there an example of that for you?

Oh, I mean dozens of ones where I screwed it up and it was, you know, because we can as entrepreneurs get convention around something. And so, you know, we had this software idea back years ago and I was really passionate about it and I thought that was just right. And every time I met objections I was like, you're just a bunch of haters. Like my idea is right and turned out not to be right. I really did a bad job of listening to the input of others. Had I done so, it would have turned out in a better situation. So I always find that it doesn't mean that you should be wishy washy or eventually not, you know, have conviction on something, but I think the willingness to consider alternatives as opposed to be sort of doggedly persistent on a single minded view is the hallmark of a good entrepreneur.

And so like what was the bad idea? Can you tell us or are you just too embarrassed to even say it?

No, I'm not embarrassed of my failures at all. And I've got dozens and dozens of them. It's funny, you know, I've been, I've interviewed CEOs, billionaires, Grammy Award winning musicians and those people win more but they also fail more.

Yes.

So they don't look at failure as a scarlet letter, it's more of a, more of like a badge of honor. And they say, you know, I'm not going to let that define me, I'm going to learn from it. And now I learned one more way not to do it and it's going to get me closer to the right way. So it's too bad because so often in our society we think of failing as a four letter word and it's so terrible and we're ashamed and all that. But I think it's a learning opportunity more than anything. The one I was referring to was we had an idea. I ran a digital promotion company called E Prize and we designed and ran digital promotions for large companies like Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble. And so we had this idea to create a self service version of it for small companies to sort of democratize this and provide this powerful tool to the little companies out there. And it sounded really good, by the way. It was like a smart idea and all that. But I didn't field tested. I wasn't thoughtful enough in terms of our distribution strategy and I kept ignoring the naysayers and we launched it kind of to a fizzle. Like it didn't take off the way that we had hoped. We ended up saving code and we recovered from and such. But it was sort of a setback in the moment and it didn't have to be. It would have been better had I been more open minded.

Yeah, interesting. Now you mentioned this attitude of humility, and I still don't think humility as talked about, recognized and certainly not practiced enough in today's world. Give me your general thoughts on who's the most humble person you've ever met that really changed it for you. And what are your. Do you have one or two steps that you say, hey guys, here's a couple things you could do to help yourself with humility or to become more humble?

Yeah, it's hard to choose one because it's a value that I really admire and I really dislike the opposite, which is arrogance. And so I tend to be drawn to people that demonstrate humility. And I'm proud of my successes. I hope I do the same. Certainly I can't stand that sort of boastful nature that some people exhibit. One that comes to mind that I interviewed for the book was a guy named Matt Ishbia who runs a company called United Wholesale Mortgage, which is now a public company. This guy Matt, who's only about 40 years old, is worth like $12 billion and he built the whole company himself. Like, you know, amazing success story. But here's this guy, like on top of the world and he just oozes humility. He wants to know how he can help you. He's open minded to new ideas. When I interviewed him for the book, it was in the middle of COVID and I was like in my house, barely wearing pants and he shows up in a suit. I'm like, why are you wearing a suit and tie? He's Like, I always wear a suit and tie. I want to be respectful to the people I'm with. Here's a guy who's worth, like, billions of dollars. He could be a raging jerk, but he's not. And so that, to me, is just, what a beautiful guy. And when you look at people's likability, humility is high up there. No one, like, wants to. No one's attracted to arrogance. My other quick observation about that is that the people who exhibit arrogance, and we call it, oh, they have a big quote, unquote ego. And really what it's communicating is that you lack confidence. Now, the people who have achieved tremendous success and are confident don't need to run around and tell you how great they are. It's the people that run around and tell you how great they are are the ones that are less confident in who they are and they feel this need to tell everybody else about it.

Man, that's good.

Truly a lack of ego more than having a big ego, frankly.

Yeah. Wow, that's really, really good. And so gappers, that's a great point to check before you wreck yourself and look around you and say. And understand that, you know, boy, the people that are tooting their horns. And some people say, well, you got to market, you got to post, you got to do all this. You got to be out there. You got to be. The haters are going to hate, whatever. But I do think there's two different types. I think when you look at it, you can kind of see. Let's talk about the book which you had mentioned. Tell me the reason that our gappers, everyone, should buy this book, and what was the thrust? Why did you want to put out big little breakthroughs?

So, Glenn, as you know, I'm really passionate about human creativity. And from the time I started playing jazz guitar 40 years ago, and for me, it's been a wonderful asset, and I've been able to enjoy some pretty good success. And the cool thing is that it's not just that I'm a creative person. It's that we're all creative people. And the research is crystal clear that all human beings, all are hardwired to be creative. Like, that's our natural state, even though many of us don't feel that way. So I wrote the book as an effort to demystify the creative process and help normal people, not Elon Musk. Normal people like you and me become everyday innovators. In other words, we think of innovation sometimes as this outer reach thing. Like, it's only for the elite. But, but the truth is that we can all use creativity in meaningful ways. Not just for the fun of it, but to drive better outcomes in all the things we care about. From business to family to community and health and everywhere in between. So the book, Big Little Breakthroughs, it's the opposite of what we normally think of innovation. Most often we think of it as like the swing for the fence, high risk, moonshots. This is the opposite. It's cultivating small daily acts of creativity. Think of them as micro innovations which are way less risky, way more accessible. You're building skill and they up to great things. And so what I did, Glenn, is I studied the mindsets, habits and tactics of the most innovative people in the world, many people you wouldn't have heard of. And I tried to distill it down into like how do they think and act on a day to day basis. And tried to go from the squishy out of reach topic of creativity to something that's really pragmatic that you and me and your listeners can use in a really systematic way to unlock this power that we all have in order to drive better results.

And so can you, can we just maybe talk about two or three of them? What, what are the one, two or three that we can at least give them? And then guys, you got to buy the book if you want the whole, the whole salad here.

Yeah. So it's, it's actually to me when, when you write about, look how innovative Netflix is. I find that rather lazy because we already know that. So I research all around the globe and found these really cool stories. People that are doing things in philanthropy in a special way. Like for example, fighting recidivism, going back in the prison system to people launching their own sports league. I interviewed the CEO and founder of the drone racing league who's competing. It's got like a major sport now and sponsors and all of this stuff. But the one that comes to mind just because I like it is really accessible. There's a guy who I interviewed named Trowan Restore W I N and you've never heard of Trout. And he's not like a super entrepreneur billionaire, he's a normal dude. But it turns out he's from London. And in central London the biggest environmental challenge is cigarette butt litter, people toss their cigarettes on the street, etc. It turns out it's a bigger problem than you might think. Millions of dollars are spent every year, no success. So Trowin sees this problem and decides to become an everyday innovator. He Invents something called the ballot bin, which is a bright yellow metal box attached, like on a post with a glass front. On the front there a little thing at the top and asks like a two part question, for example, which is your favorite food? Pizza or hamburgers. And there's a little receptacle underneath each answer and there's a div. So as you toss your cigarette butt in the receptacle, it falls on the other cigarette butts and you basically have a head to head bar chart showing you with cigarette butts, who's in the lead?

So cool.

And it's fun and it's playful and it didn't require regulatory approval or yours, you know, millions of dollars of capital, but it worked.

Yeah.

Ballot bins reduce cigarette litter by 80%. Wow. And now Trout is in 27 countries. He's got this booming business. He's this incredible dude. And the thing I love about it is, is when I see Elon Musk launch a rocket, I say, good for Elon Musk, but it's hard to see ourselves in that.

Yes.

But when I see Trevin and his ballot bid, I think any one of us could have come up with that idea. So that's what this book is about. It's showing stories of people that can actually do stuff with the resources they have. You don't need a billion dollars to be an innovator. We all can be everyday innovators.

And do you have a definition of innovation like the Josh Linker definition or is there a dictionary definition of innovation?

I do. We actually go really deep in the book. So I define creativity and innovation in all kinds of fun ways. So I basically think of creativity as imagining any idea that doesn't exist right now. So if I went outside in the parking lot and painted your car purple, that would be creative because your car probably isn't purple, although it probably isn't useful. Like, you probably would not be happy with me if I did that. So creativity is just bringing to life an idea that doesn't exist today. Innovation. The difference there is that innovation adds the concept of utility. In other words, it's useful. So if instead of painting your car a color you didn't want, I came up with a technology where you could push a button each day and change the outside color of your car to whatever your preference was, that would be innovative because it's a useful application. So innovation is creativity. That's useful. But I'll just go one step further since I got your attention. So think of the word innovation and think about it in all caps. That's what we normally think of as innovation. And these are like the big things, like inventing the printing press or penicillin or the Internet. And of course those are innovative things, but those are rare and outside the reach of most of us. But for some reason, that's where we often draw the line. We're like, oh, unless it changes the world, it's not innovative. That's nonsense. There are other flavors of innovation. So now think about the word innovation, just with a capital I and lowercase rest of the work. These are the innovations that happen maybe for each of us two or three times a year. And these can be meaningful. Like we come up with some idea that drives revenue 20% or helps us land a new job or something. And so these are meaningful personally. They may not make history, but they're still really important. But now think of the word innovation in all lowercase. Those are big little breakthroughs. Those are those micro innovations that could happen four or five times a day. Wow. And yeah, they're not going to make the COVID of a magazine like no one's doing a documentary about you. But. But they're widely acceptable, accessible for us all. And sometimes when you get one, like troutwin did with that ballot, then it can, it can become something really meaningful. And so I don't think that we should only focus on one flavor of innovation situation. Let's look at all three and probably let's emphasize the lowercase one, the big little breakthroughs. Because again, we can do those without taking irresponsible risk. We're not putting our family or mortgage in jeopardy when we try little acts of creativity.

Yeah, Jason, we should have had him on at the beginning of the season. This is great. Josh, thanks so much. Love this. Talk to me a little bit about Discipline Dreaming, the one that I think that was a New York Times best selling book. What was going on with Discipline Dreaming? Why did you write that and what's the thrust of that book?

So that was the first book I wrote on creativity. I've written four books, by the way, all of which are centered around the same topic. It's my body of work. That's what I live for. I'm not going to go write a finance book, even though finance is a cool thing. That is my body of work. Discipline Dreaming was my first book. It's called Discipline Dreaming. A proven system to drive breakthrough creativity. The whole notion is helping us all unlock this notion of creativity that we all have in our own ways. By the way, I play jazz guitar Pretty well. That's my avenue. I can't draw a stick figure if I try. So my point is that we can all be creative in our own ways. You don't need to be creative in a classical sense of music or art or dance. Like, you could be creative in the way you make a sales call or the way you interact with your kid. So creativity, the idea is how can you add more creativity into your lives to have better results? And in that book, I actually tied a lot, I brought a lot in for my music background. So there's a lot of examples of not only business entrepreneurship, but music and how to think about music as a mechanism to inspire creativity.

That's so cool. And you know, the goal of our show is to help people bridge the gap from who they want to be, who they are to who they want to become, and from where they are to where they want to go. And then in your follow up book, which was called the Road to Reinvention, reinvention is a reason people come to this podcast on how do I reinvent myself? How do I get more juice, how do I get more vitality? How do I change myself, my head, my life, my business? Talk to us a little bit about your thoughts on reinvention and maybe the one or two most important things it takes for somebody to bridge that gap.

Well, I'm a big fan of systems and processes, and you think about something as bold as reinvention, it feels like squishy and difficult and out of reach and risky and all that. So the book I wrote, the Road to Reinvention, tried to take a really much more methodical approach to reinvention. You know, what are the different ways one can reinvent their career or their product offering or even themselves personally? So a lot of it, the best thing, I would say two key highlights. One is instead of reinvention being a once a decade thing, reinvention should be an ongoing process. So it's not like, oh, I'm going to reinvent and I'll be done. It's more like having an ongoing, consistent process of reinvention. It's way less scary and risky and all that kind of stuff. So it's more of a way of life, a way of being, than a single initiative.

It cool.

The other piece of advice I would give is that instead of reinventing everything at once, you're better to isolate. So if I wanted to reinvent, for example, my health, okay, like, let's say, oh, I want to reinvent myself, it's the new year, the Reason most New Year's resolutions fail is that we tend to try to do everything all at once and we can't and it backfires. So I might say, if I'm just going to isolate my health, leave everything else alone, Just focus on one thing at a time. Get that over the goal line to the point where you're enjoying some results and then only then move on to the next element. And if you finish that, then move on to the next. So one of the problems people make is they try to like, even in a company, I'm going to reinvent my processes and business model and team and culture and product offering and customer base. They try to do all at once and you're better off. Again, isolate one, focus your energies there, enjoy the results, and then systematically move on to the next element.

Yeah, I love it. So that's a great way, guys. 14 days, 14, 15 days. Maybe it's 10 days. I guess now 10 days before reinvention, January 1st comes. Let's just maybe pick one, one thing gappers. One thing that we can reinvent and follow Josh's lead. Josh, you speak for some of the largest corporations in America. You are belly to belly with some of the biggest, most influential and innovative CEOs when they hire you to speak on the big stage. One thing I wanted to ask you about and get your thoughts on was this thing called leadership. Not only corporate leadership and maybe even personal leadership, you take it wherever you want to go. But like, is leadership changing now that the pandemic has hit? Are you seeing that? What are your overall thoughts on what makes a great leader as opposed to what makes a leader that just is not functioning or working correctly?

Well, yeah. So I do think it's changing because work is changing. So I think one thing we learned in the pandemic is that we can no longer just rely on the past models and expect the same results. We need to embrace a new and fresh approach. And that's really where creativity and innovation, innovation come in. I think what makes a good leader, in my opinion, is the role of leader is to serve others. It's not to serve yourself. So it's not like, hey, I'm in the corner office, I made it and everyone works for me, you work for them. And so the best leaders are service oriented leaders. And they recognize their job is to lift up others and in turn they will enjoy 10 times the reward than if they were selfish and just trying to help their own take all the credit for themselves. Great leaders are great learners. So rather than being fixated on a particular way of doing something. They're always upgrading, they're always rethinking, reinventing the reimagining. I think great leaders certainly are creative again. They can show up in different ways. They don't need to be an artist with paint, but they sort of like creative problem solving and inventive thinking to both elevate their team members and also take care of their customers. Great leaders focus on, again, who they serve. It could be their internal customers, their employees, and also their outside customers who write, write checks. It's about delivering extraordinary value rather than trying to, you know, cut every corner just, just to juice the bottom line now. So the thing, the great leaders tend to be more longer term focused than short term. It's not just like, what can I get in the near term? For me, it's more like, what can I give? And in turn, how can I make something really special happen over time? And when you do all those things, the results that we crave, the money, what recognition, those come as a byproduct. Instead of focusing on them, you focus on doing great things for your team members and your customers and all that. And like, the money follows, it doesn't lead, it comes as a byproduct of greatness.

Yeah, that's cool. John Atkinson had the saying that leadership is not position, it's a disposition. And I always thought that was so brilliant and certainly a good thing. Well, thank you for your thoughts on leadership, that's for sure. So one thing I want to do that we always do with our guests is this thing called knowledge through the decades. And so knowledge through the decades is I'm going to walk you through your life and I want to know, I want you to think back and I want to know the attitude lesson that you learned maybe as each decade hit. And you know, obviously we always like to start with childbirth. I know you have four wonderful children who you love. So if you don't remember your own childbirth, when you think about childbirth, what do you think the attitude lesson is of a newborn baby?

Well, as a parent, I would say it's around service. Back to that leadership question where, you know, let's say it's you and your, your partner and everything's great, and then now you got a kid. Well, now you can't just do what's right for you and your partner. You got to prioritize your child, even for their safety, let alone their development. And so I think it's really one of serving others and putting others in front of your own individual Personal needs. The other thing I would say is that it's also a time of sort of. It sort of brings out who you are. I feel like the two things that magnify who you are the most most is if you either have get a lot of money or lose a lot of money, or if you have a kid, it brings sort of magnified yourself. So. So the guy I mentioned earlier, Matt hd, who runs United Wholesale Mortgage, he's a wonderful, beautiful, benevolent, great guy. And so he became a multibillionaire and he's like that magnified. He's even more of a great guy. Whereas people who are horrible, evil, you know, selfish jerks, they get a lot of money or lose a lot of money, they become more of that. I think child childbirth does the same thing. It brings out the best and the worst in you. Dep your disposition. What you mentioned earlier, that's an awesome.

Awesome angle and an awesome thought. Have you ever lost a lot of money?

Oh, yeah.

You have. So, you know, without getting too personal or get as personal as you want, look at people come to this podcast because they're dead broke. People come to this podcast because they had a great idea, they put all their money into it, and they lost. And there's nothing that will affect your attitude more than becoming broke. Share with us your thoughts on being broke. Share us what your attitude was when you lost a lot of money. And how can we help the people who are listening right now that man their backs up against it? What are your thoughts there?

Well, the first thing I would say is I would just take issue with the word broke. So if you have a business loss or you lose money, you're not broke as a person. In fact, you probably gained a lot of knowledge and insight, even if it's what not to do do. And so I don't think people are fixed or broke or anything like that. I don't like the word. I know you don't mean it that way. I say this with respect to you, but like, let's. If someone stumbles and they have a setback, you know, also setbacks. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett. And when they lose a bunch of money on something, they're not broke, and neither should you be. I understand there are real economic constraints that, that's a different issue. But let's say, let's just acknowledge that we're still human beings or whole people. We can, we have more to contribute. You know, that that's, that's a, that sometimes is a reset, but it doesn't have to Be an endpoint.

Yes, that's correct.

Anyway, off of my soapbox. Yeah, no one likes that. Like, it's not a pleasant feeling when you lose. It's not fun. I'm not one of those, like, hug your failures guys or anything like that. It stinks in the moment, but there's a real opportunity to learn. And the point is, if you lost the money, make sure that you at least get that much money back in education from the experience. So I'll give you a real example. I sold a company, company in 1999, and it was a tech business. It was good timing. I sold it to a public company. It was. I got some cash, but mostly stock. The stock was, Was. Was called locked up. It was a restricted stock. I couldn't sell it for 18 months. But there were ways that I didn't know. So this is my own fault that I could have still locked in a value. It's a complicated system, but basically I could have locked in a value at any point. Yes. Even if I couldn't sell it, I didn't know that didn't do the work. So I watched the stock go up, and it went up a lot. Like, at one point, that stock was worth $40 million. I remember once getting a haircut. I'm a pretty modest guy. Like, I went into like a fantastic Sam's and got like a $6 haircut. And I checked my stock before and after, and I made a million dollars quote, unquote, during that haircut.

Wow.

Now, luckily, I didn't do anything stupid. I did become a raging jerk. I was, you know, I was thoughtful about it. But as quickly as that went up, you might remember the stock market crash. You know, bang. Went way, way, way down and went down to almost zero.

Wow.

And so, you know, back to, you know, a setback, you know, that was very unpleasant. You know, I was not happy about that, you know, but. But the point is, like, what can you learn from it? And was I broke? Like, I had less money than I thought I did, but I. Hopefully I wasn't broke as a person. Hopefully I learned as much as I lost. That's a key. Can you learn as much as you lose? And by the way, Glenn, like, I'm have failures this year. I'll probably have three failures this week. And so what we don't want to do is think that smart, talented people never have failures. The smartest, most talented people have failures, period. So if you have one, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. Doesn't mean that you're the outlier. It means you're like a normal person, really. And the question is, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to lay there on the canvas? Are you going to get back up and are you going to get back up with more wisdom and insight and hopefully more creativity so that you don't just keep doing the same thing again and again, but you're able to try something different?

Yeah. That's so awesome. Holly, mark the tape on that one. Can you learn as much as you lose? We'll have that in one of your schools squares that we send you. That's awesome. It reminds me of Zig Ziglar's famous quote that failure is not a person, it's just an event. Right. And so if you guys are out there, if you Gappers are out there and you're feeling like you're failing, just understand that you're not failing. Maybe it's just your experience. It might be your business, but it's not you. It certainly is what it is. So let's go to 10 years old. Josh, real quick. Do you remember where you were at 10? Do you remember your teacher at 10? And was there an event or a circumstance that happened when you were in fourth grade that you said this is something that might have changed me?

Funny enough, there was. I actually started my first business, which I don't talk about too much. I was selling illegal fireworks. So I managed to get the delinquent who lived around the block from me, like I go in his basement, he had like all these fireworks. So I put him in my school backpack and took him to school and sold fireworks to my friends. And this actually turned out to be a very good business. Like, I had a very strong healthy margin. I established a product market fit and I had distribution. The only problem I ran into is actually was a treasury issue or maybe a regulatory problem. My mom found all my crinkled up profits in my underwear drawer and shut the operation down altogether.

Oh, my gosh.

She was less amused than I was about it. But my punishment, by the way, I had to literally call my friends on the phone, parents on the phone, and say, hello, Mrs. Smith, this is Josh Linkner. I sold your son illegal fireworks. So not only did I lose my business, but I lost all my friends for a good couple of years also. But nonetheless, it was a good entrepreneurial learning experience.

All right, well, we'll put the attitude lesson was entrepreneurialship when Josh turned 10. Now let's go to 20. Curious. Did you go to College. What college did you go to? And when you think about being 20, 21, what was the attitude lesson and what event maybe happened there that might have shaped you or what was going on?

Yeah, well, so I did a few things. I played music. I put myself through college playing music. I first went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then I transferred and ended up at University of Florida. And so one thing you learn playing music is this willingness to, especially jazz. You build creative confidence. Not because you think you're going to play everything right, quite the opposite. It's more like, you know, you're going to screw something up, but you have enough skills to course correct. And so that was very helpful. And so when I started my first company, I was 20 and I'd never taken a business class, but just like doing jazz, where you just sort of figure stuff out in real time, I was like, yeah, I'll figure it out. I make a bunch of mistakes and figure it out. So that was, that was pretty. That was my first real company. Not illegal fireworks.

Right.

Also, I'll just say real quickly because I know you mentioned some of the people listening, you know, maybe had setbacks of one kind or the other. So when I started that company, I had a mentor who is a successful business guy. And like I went to him with this idea, I want to start a company. I asked for a thousand dollar loan. He said, yeah, go make a business plan. I didn't even know what a business plan was. So I went to the library and I figured it out. And I went to Kinko's and printed out like this 100 page document and sent it off this guy. And I'm like waiting for praise and admiration. And eventually I get on the phone with him and he says, that's a terrible idea. What the hell do you know about running a company? You're going to fail. And the thing about that is those words stung, but they stung worse because that man was my dad and he just gutted me. Like, he made me feel like an idiot for even coming up with the idea. And so in that moment, I could have made the. I had a choice, like I could follow along with him. And by the way, I'm not trying to characterize him as a bad person in his own way, I'm sure he was trying to look out for his son. And he passed in 2007 and I miss him every day. So I'm not dad bashing, sure. But I had a choice to make, like, what do I do with that? And Instead of just rolling over, I said, I'm going to do it anyway. So I didn't take the money from him. I saved up money playing jazz gigs, started the business and never looked back. Had I not done that, I wouldn't be with you on this program. I wouldn't have the honor of being with you today. So I would just say that, you know, when we have those dark moments, it's more like how you show up in those dark moments that matters far more than when you show up, how you show up during a successful one.

Man, that is so powerful. What was the business, I'm curious, what was it called? Or what was it?

I basically, you know, Michael Dell, where he would like, buy individual components and make a computer system. It was like that same business I did out of my college apartment because at the time you couldn't just go buy a discount computer at Best Buy. So I mail ordered individual computer components, assembled them, and sold them on campus. I ended up taking a year off of school, built the company up, sold it. Not for a lot of money, but I learned a ton. And that allowed me to go on to the next one and the next one after that.

That's so cool. And as a father of four myself, kids, if you're listening, I love you to death. But if there's any father that naysays his kids and maybe you find yourself, I don't know how old your kids are, but sometimes, yeah, I can be a bit too truthful and a bit too blunt when they come to me with these ideas that light them up. And maybe there's gappers out there, you know, that are the same way that you address, you engage with your kids and you go, you know what? I probably wasn't the best motivational speaker for my kid at this time. So I think it's beautiful that you brought that up because I think it's very common. And how old are your kids? And have you ever felt that way? Have you ever. Or because of that tough experience, maybe you never would do that.

Well, just here, like, I'm not the greatest dad. I've got tons to learn. So I don't say this in any books way. I have not done that to my kids because I know what it was like to have a father that cut you down. And I just try to do the opposite. You know, I don't try to coddle them too much. I try to let them reach their own decisions and respect their opinions. I try to push them to think as opposed to just, you know, memorize Things. And so I've made many failures, but that's one I try not to do is be harsh. The answer question I have no is 24. He works at the Florida Panthers. He's big into hockey.

Wow.

My daughter is 22, Chloe. She works at Amazon in San Francisco. She graduated from the University of Michigan last year and is rocking it out. And So I have 24, 22, and I have five year old twins, boy, girl twins, Avi and Talia. So I got two older kiddos and two young ones.

Oh, I love it. Well, you're a blessed man. That is so cool. And here's to your children and hopefully the linker kids are listening to this. And you know, if you guys ever need an attorney attitude boost, just tune in here. We'll take good care of you. Let's move on to 30. 30 years old. What was going on in your life? What was your attitude lesson at 30?

Yeah, well, I was building my company E Prize and we really had some good momentum. At one point we got up to over 500 people, $100 million revenue. But I learned a lot of stuff. Like there were some real setbacks too. I was 31 planes at our buildings and September 11th happened and we had to deal with that in 2008 when I was, you know, economy crash and had to deal with that. So it was marked by, by very high highs and low lows, I would say. I actually went through a divorce, which was, you know, obviously painful and certainly painful for my older kids.

Sure.

It turned out to be the right thing and I'm happily remarried to the love of my life and all that. But again, another thing you mentioned, folks on the show are sometimes having a setback. You know, that was a low point for sure. But it was also a new beginning and it turned out, you know, as a real blessing and a gift at the end of it. So I think some of it is like you just got to fight through those difficult moments in ultimately rides on the other side of it.

And we've had many influencers, innovators, successful people, I mean, very, very successful. And one thing in common that a lot of them have is, you know, a broken relationship that's gone along the way. What is your message of hope or, you know, how did you get through that? I mean, obviously there's guilt, there's feelings of failure. Did you employ a certain attitude or a strategy or was it time heals all wounds or what could you maybe offer that somebody that maybe is like hitting it right now? What could you do? To maybe help them or share your experience with them through that.

So I come from Jewish descent, I'm a Jewish guy and there's a Yiddish term called being a mensch. Being a mensch just basically means like doing above and beyond what's required just to be like all around like an extra good person. And so when I was going through the divorce and there's lawyers and you know, money and stuff, I just said to my lawyers, I said, I want to be a match. I said, I'd rather overpay by 30% than damage my kids. And so that was the attitude that I had. Back to your point about attitude going in instead of like, I'm going to take everything that's mine and fight, fight, fight. I was like, what matters most right now is my kids love it and their well being and happiness and success. And I don't mind money comes and goes. I'll go earn more of it. I believe in abundance and I didn't want to sacrifice my kids well being to get it to extract more money. And so that was my attitude. I tried to be a bench. Doesn't mean it was easy. There were tough times with it also. But I hope in the long run that will pay off.

You'll want to listen to Dan Jourdan who was on our podcast Fabulous Jewish Guy and boy, he just flooded us with all this Jewish wisdom. So if you ever get to check out Dan, you're going to enjoy that. And hopefully if we have gappers who are in the middle of a divorce, man, that advice, put the kids first is certainly good. Now you mentioned we talked about we're up to 40. 38. 08 happened. What was your attitude lesson right from I guess 38 to 40 market goes to hell, everything's crazy. What was the attitude that came out when you hit 40?

Well, as I said, I think that the good times excess and bad time excess brings out more of who you are. I just tried to be a good person through it. I mean, I know it sounds cheesy like a postcard, but I did. I just like, listen, I'm going to do the right thing thing instead of the easy thing. And sometimes the easy thing was way easier. Like it was not easy to do the right thing, but I did. And I just felt like, you know, that somehow I wasn't being all spiritual, but like somehow in the universe like it's going to come back. And so I think, you know, in those moments of darkness when we are feeling, you know, scarce and threatened, it's easy to you know, cheat, steal, whatever it is, you know, and like, that's just always going to come back to hurt you in the end. So I just tried to maintain my integrity. I know it sounds again like I'm just like trying to be a politician and say the right thing, but that's what I did. I just tried to have high integrity.

Now, when you were 40, though, was that kind of the launching of your keynote? I mean, Josh guys is a very successful keynote speaker. Is that when you started to launch your speaking business and start writing your books at 40?

So I've always been in a state of reinvention, which is why I like writing that book, the Road to Reinvention. You know, I started as a, as a kid from Detroit, became a jazz musician and a tech entrepreneur. And like, I was always reinventing. And so, yeah, right around that time, 2008, 2009, is when I really got serious about writing books and speaking. And again, by the way, I started that with nothing. Like, I had some tech background, but I wasn't an author or a speaker. And I don't say this in any boastful way, just factually, but since then, I've done a thousand paid keynotes and earned over $20 million in keynote speaking fees. And the point I'm making is I was 38 and new to that industry, and now I'm 51. And there wasn't that much duration at time and had a really good outcome. So once again, if you're feeling like you're in a tough spot, doesn't mean there's not something really cool around the corner. But, yeah, I started doing that. The other thing when I turned 40 is I started a venture capital fund. So here in downtown Detroit, we started investing in tech entrepreneurs partly to make money, but more importantly to make a difference. Being a passionate Detroiter, my partners and I thought, you know, maybe we could help re establish the city as a beacon of innovation and opportunity. And so we started investing in entrepreneurs and giving them not just money, but support and counsel and guidance and coaching. And we really wanted to help our community through tech entrepreneurship. By the way, we ended up getting about 100 startups off the ground. There's tens of thousands of people that have been affected. And I'm not singly responsible for Detroit's turnaround. I play a teeny role. There's way more important people than me. But it was kind of cool to not only do well economically, but feel like we're really impacting our community. So that was both not just financially rewarding but intrinsically rewarding as well.

I love it. So we're up to your final decade, my friend, and then we'll get you off of this because I know you're a busy guy. 50, right? What's the attitude? Less than at 50? The speaking business is off the chain. Different. Are you speaking as much now as you had been? And what's the vision for? What's the reinvention? I know you love it and you're passionate and you're a mentor to me as a speaker and you help other speakers. Speakers. So thank you for all you've taught me. But are you going to continue to propel yourself into the speaking world or are there other things going on for you? What's the attitude lesson at 50?

Well, the attitude lesson, and I'll get into the professional stuff, is I'm trying to be more patient. I've always been horribly impatient. I'm trying to be more grounded and patient. Easier said than done, by the way. I struggle with that. I'm trying to just be more deliberate, less like, you know, impulsive with business and life in general, and just be more grounded and be. And it's not an easy thing to do. But that's. That's the attitude I'm trying to take. I'm certainly trying to take the attitude, building on what I've done in the past, of just being a good human being. And I'd rather make less money and be a kind than make more and be a jerk. I just would like, you know, and I'm grateful enough to be okay financially, but I'm just trying to be who I want to be and let the economics take care of the themselves. But these days, I have three business essentially focuses in my life. One is thought leadership. So I write books, I write articles, I speak all over the world. I still do a lot of that. I'm passionate about it. And so that's. That's a big area. I have this consulting firm called Platypus Labs where we help other companies build a culture of innovation, and we do innovation training and workshops and all kinds of stuff. So that. That's very. Gone very well. And I. I love that. The second big area is I started a new venture fund called Mudita Venture Partners. M U D I T A Mudita is a Sanskrit term which means taking joy in other people's success. So funny enough, it's an attitude and it's the opposite. There's a German word called schadenfreude, which basically means taking pleasure in other People's misery. This is the opposite. So it's like again, being like, how can you be uplifting to others? How can we do great things and enjoy other people's lives instead of being jealous and resentful and all those things? So it's like, I try to say it's like a venture fund with a soul.

That's great.

We're investing in early stage software companies and that's been a lot of fun. And then the third area is a company that I have called Impact 11, trying to make an impact in the world, but on a scale from 1 to 10, taking it to 11. And this is a partnership recent with three other keynote speakers, Seth Madison, Ryan Estes and Peter Sheehan. And the four of us are trying to create impact, we're hoping, helping people that want to be professional speakers, people that want to make a bigger difference on the stage, whether they're getting paid to do it or they have economic benefit by being there in the first place. So we train and help people launch and scale their speaking business. And that's been a lot of fun. And it was previously called Three Ring Circus. We're renaming it. That's how. That's the connection. But I'm excited about that, too. And so my cup is overflowing and I'm deeply grateful. Man, it's like we've had a tough year, of course, in the speaking business, but got to keep forging ahead.

Yeah. Well, I tell you what, we are so grateful for your knowledge, your caring, your heart, your mind and your time. Right. For you to give us an hour. We're so appreciative. One thing we always like to do is just let you monologue or riff about your hope for everybody that's sitting here listening. There are people in their cars. There are people on the beach. There are people walking in a park. They're listening to you, Jack, Josh. And maybe they're struggling. What's your just message of hope to those people that are tuning into this today?

Well, first of all, Glenn, thanks for doing this program. It's an amazing show and I really want to honor the impact that you're making in the lives of so many people. So this is really a testament to your vision here. So thank you.

Thanks.

I would say a couple of things. One is there are 7 billion people on the planet with dormant creative capacity, me included. And so if, if we can. So we all want answers. We're all looking for an edge. We're looking for whatever. But those answers are probably inside all of us, right now, the greatest progress in life, from life saving drug therapies to art and everything else, came from human creativity. That's the DNA that we all share. So if we can just build those muscles a bit, build some skill, make that a part of our daily lives, the results that we crave so much are going to just become much more within reach. So maybe an error that you hadn't thought of as the answer, but I really think it is. And inventive thinking and creative problem solving can get us out of the most difficult jams and help us seize the biggest opportunities. The other thing I would say is that most people, they have this thing, it's like, let's see, have, do, be. In other words, once I have what I want, then I can do the things that I want. Then I can be the person I want and fill in the blank. Like once I have this type of car or this type of job or this much money or this type of partner or I have a kid or whatever, then I get to do the things I want and be the person I want. And I would say that, and I suffered from that too, but I think we should flip it around. In other words, you be the person you want to be that you can be proud of, that you can someday tell your grandkids about. And then what will happen is it will allow you, by being the person you want to be, to do the things you want to do. And then as a byproduct, you're going to end up getting the things that you want to get. Do it backwards. Be the person you want to be.

I love it. I love it. Well, we will all make a promise as this drops. We only got another week left. And if the one thing gappers we can do is focus on who do we really want to be, in Josh's words, I think the world will be a better place if everybody just wants to be first and do and have second and third. So this is Glenn Bill with Josh Linker checking you guys out. Wishing you a happy, happy New Year and a Merry Christmas and and we will see you on the latest episode of the Get Attitude podcast. Thank you, Josh.

Thanks so much, Ben. Peace talk.

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