Earning the gift of life | Ric Elias (#79 rebroadcast)

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay, here's today's episode. Welcome to a special episode of the Drive. For those of you who subscribe to our newsletter you probably saw this week we celebrated our fourth anniversary. So for those of you that don't just want to let you know, we're four years old today's podcast we figured it'd be a great time to ensure folks have had a chance to hear my initial Conversation with Rick, which was released back in November 2019. I met Rick in 2013 and I was kind of a fanboy. I had seen his TED Talk probably a year or so sooner. It immediately became probably my favorite TED Talk that I'd ever seen and a mutual friend who knew how much of a fan I was introduced us and to this day it really remains one of the most amazing talks that in such short order puts everything into perspective. Rick is a dear friend. We've become closer over the years, and he's a wonderful mentor to me. In our discussion we talk about the day that would change Rick's life forever. When on January 15, 2009, Rick was on US Airways Flight 1547, which made an emergency landing into the Hudson River. I'm sure many of you remember this. Rick dives really deep into how that day impacted his life and changed his perspective on everything, including his relationships with with his family and the broader community. The episode is really an opportunity to allow Rick to share so much of his wisdom and it's really one of those episodes that I think everyone needs to hear at least once and probably twice. So I'm going to be going back to listen to it again this week and I hope you enjoy or potentially re enjoy my conversation with my close friend Rick Elias. Rick, thank you so much for making time. I know you're super busy this week, but but when your office was able to coordinate us getting together, I was.

Delighted it is so much fun to be with you today, Peter. I'm a huge fan of your podcast and we're dear friends, so when you asked me to be on it, I was honored.

A lot of people have heard me talk about you. I wrote a blog post, I don't know, probably five years ago, about how your TED Talk was at the time and actually still remains my favorite TED Talk of all time. It's a very short talk, and I'm sure for folks who haven't heard it yet, we'll make sure we link to it. But I can't resist starting with that story. So let's just put the profundary niceties aside and just go straight to it. Thursday, January 15, 2009 you're in New York City. Why were you here?

I was here because one of our partners, DirecTV, at the time, was here and I was having lunch with the CMO the night before. I had dinner with a good friend of mine and was having a couple small meetings in the morning, and then I was flying home to coach my son's basketball team. When I landed in Charlotte, the flight was going from LaGuardia to Charlotte.

How many times did you take that shuttle? That flight, that's probably a common flight, A hundred times. Do you remember having breakfast that morning?

I went to play hoops in the Reebok Club on the Upper east side, and it was a cold morning and it was snowing big flakes, and I chose to walk because it was so beautiful.

How would you describe your life at that point in time? How big was Red Ventures, your company?

We had about 700 employees. We'd gone in this really nice growth spurt after really struggling the first four years. We started in 2000, so we were doing really well. But we were at risk of two bad things happening and not having a business. So there was this kind of constant juxtaposition of this is not going to last. I actually told our employees, enjoy the good old days. They won't last forever. And they were annoyed by me saying that, but it was a reminder that this was very fleeting.

Would you have described yourself as a happy person? Like, how would people describe Rick back then?

You know, generally I'm a very positive person. I like to think that I've lived through a lot of great things in my life, some that have actually happened. So that's like how I see world. And since I was a kid that said I was super stressed. I was trying to build a business so that we could sell it and I could go do Other things in.

Life, your kids at the time were how old?

My daughter was in first grade, My son was in second grade.

And so how were you thinking about balancing the incredible stress of running a 700 person company, the travel that comes with that, and then being the dad, being the coach, being the husband? Was that balance? Did it feel imbalance to you?

Looking back, it was completely out of balance. And it was. I kind of rationalized myself around quality over quantity. And I would literally talk myself into, well, at least I'm coaching my son. Or I was like many of us are during those stages. Just really taxed mentally. And my wife really carried the burden of raising our kids. And I look back on it and it was 95.5 when it should have been a different number. Jeez.

Yeah, 95.5. I can relate. You were staying at a hotel that morning when you got up.

I don't remember the hotel. It was in the Upper east because of basketball in the morning, which it was priority life, 5:30am run, which is great.

This is pre Uber, I'm guessing. Yeah, 2009. So you probably took a taxi to LaGuardia.

Yes.

Do you remember anything about your transit from getting through security, getting on that plane? Anything about it? It was hard that it's such a routine for you.

Yes, I do remember. Because of that impact, everything around it becomes kind of much more real. But it's a wacky story. I remember I was a little early, which I never was, and I went and got a soft serve ice cream at McDonald's. And I worked out really hard that morning and that was the only place where I did this. And, you know, I think that it'll change that whole eating area. But I'm making love to this ice cream. It just tastes so freaking good. I'm literally just enjoying my vanilla ice cream while I wait for whatever, an hour for my flight. And I started walking to the gate and it was so good that I turned around and went and had another one, which I never done.

I can relate to that as well, by the way. Although soft serve ice cream isn't a particular weakness of mine, but there are other airport weaknesses. I have. Trail mix is my airport weakness.

That's why you look the way you do and the way I look.

I don't know. I would say the ice cream is probably no worse for you than the trail mix, by the way. So they call you guys to board on the plane. You're sitting at the front of the plane.

Yeah, it was a really kind of crappy day. It was gray, it was cold, it was wet. Kind of gone out of snow and rain. So it was not the most pleasant day in New York. So I boarded. I was in first class, so we boarded first. And I remember sitting in my seat and kind of processing, okay, here's all the stuff I got to do on the plane. As soon as I land, I got to do this. And then when I come back and my brain is super busy just thinking about the non never ending list of things to accomplish.

You listening to music or anything, do you know?

I'm not. I'm just sitting there kind of vegging a little bit, just thinking about life.

So 2009, we would have been sort of third generation. IPhone and BlackBerry were probably the dominant things. Which one were you using?

I had just switched literally like two days before.

So you're on like an early iPhone.

An early iPhone. Then the first row. So you can't have a bag under your legs. They have to go up, up. And so I'm sitting there and it was a little bit of a slow departing. I think because of the weather. Things kind of back up.

What time was it this afternoon?

This afternoon it was like a 2:30 or something like that. And I remember kind of dozing, you know, the plane puts you to sleep. And so I was kind of going in and out of that as the plane took off. And I was very cognizant when we kind of took off. I was kind of in and out of consciousness right when we took off.

How long after the takeoff do you know? Something is not right.

So about three minutes. I think we're about 4,500ft up or something like that. There's a massive explosion. Bam. Like a pipe bomb. And this was 10 years after September 11th, but it's still September 11th. And for all of us who lived through that. And I had the really lucky seat because I can see the flight attendant kind of kitty corner. I looked at her, we were still flying, we were horizontal. And I looked at her and she was calm, her eyes were calm. And I was like, okay, we probably lost an engine. And for the next couple minutes, Peter, all you could hear was the engine struggling like they were trying to restart it. When you go look at the transcript, that's what they were doing. There was a really nasty smell going into the cabin. So it smelled like a really sad something burnt. Yeah, burnt, like burned and kind of not. He had turned the plane pretty quickly. We were heading back into New York. And in my mind I'm like, okay, I'm not coaching today. The flight attendant's eyes told me all I had to hear, which is, this is gonna be a long travel day.

So when you're leaving LaGuardia, you're up and circling around. So you're sort of over Queens.

Yes.

And you shouldn't be coming back over Manhattan, Correct?

Right, Correct.

So what do you see out the window?

I am in the aisle.

You're in the aisle.

So I'm not really seeing out the window necessarily. I'm just literally, for this two minutes, just going like, wow, this is really bizarre. I gotta figure out who coaches practice for my son. And that's all I was thinking about.

Was the next sign that something was wrong, the reduction in sound in the cabin.

So about 90 seconds before we hit down. So 2 minutes pass of this, of.

The engine trying to restart.

Right. And then Captain Sullenberger gets on the voice system for the first time, and he only says three words. He says, brace for impact. At the same time, they turn off the struggling engines, and he lines up the plane with the Hudson River. You and I have been here long enough, long enough that there's no Runway right at the end of the Huntsville River. So I knew in that moment, 100% with certainty that we were going to die. I looked at the flight attendant's eyes, and it was no longer annoyance. It was complete terror. I didn't know this, but in airline speak, that means we're not landing at an airport.

And all of this happened in 90 seconds from when you.

Two minutes. So there's a two minutes from hitting to when he does that. And then there's 90 seconds as he's gliding the plane down that you literally.

You're now at the very top of Manhattan when this is happening.

Right. All the way up. Yeah. And you have 90 seconds to basically say goodbye to your life. What is really unique about that experience is you are 100% certain you're going to die. If anything. I was saying to myself, please blow up. I don't want this to break in 50 pieces and drown in this cold water. So you're kind of playing all these things out, and you are just realizing that there's no suffering. So you're not burning or drowning or something. That would make it different. But you have 90 seconds to say.

You still don't know what that end is like, do you? I mean, it's. Not to get too morbid, but if I were in that situation, I wouldn't actually understand what the end is.

I just seen enough documentaries to know that planes don't land on water.

Yeah. They break into a million pieces and they spiral all around.

So I didn't know how, but I know what was gonna happen.

And at this point, it's silent in the cockpit or are people screaming?

It was more silent than screaming. I'm first road, so I can't hear a ton. And you go into. Imagine the amount of adrenaline that is going through your system as you are literally trapped to your death for 90 seconds.

Did you think, I have time to make one phone call?

I didn't have my phone.

Your phone is up top.

Yeah. It was very cleansing. I look back, and I was raised Catholic, so first thing that crosses my mind is like, okay, I'm not a practicing Catholic, but you can repent and all sorts of good things could happen. Right. And I asked myself that question, am I going to do something that I've chosen not to believe in this part of my life, and I didn't. And I said, I'm not a hypocrite.

It may be meaning I'm going to live with the choices I've made.

Yes. Which was interesting for me to. After my relationship with religion and so forth. But it was very powerful. 90 seconds. Because the most important thing I realized was, wow, this all changed in an instant. I thought I had years, and now it's all over.

How old were you on that day?

I was 42. How old are you?

46.

Yeah. I thought we tend to believe we're going to live forever and it would all change in an instant. And there was. I really had a ton of regret about the things that I did not get to. Things, experiences, people I needed to ask for forgiveness from, people I wanted to say again, I love you. People I wanted to hug one more time, and you're like, wow, it all changed. And then there's no going back and there's no turning that back. That was one emotion. The other emotion, and also around regret, was really how much I had allowed my ego to become very active in my life and how I spent so much time being wronged by people or just spending so much time trying to be right versus choosing to be happy. I realized, wow, I've lived my life in a very wasteful way because so much of my energy has been spent on things that did not matter with people that did. Think about all the fights you've had with pick your wife. You don't even remember 30 days later what you fought about, yet you were so passionate about it. It just doesn't freaking matter. And then the last Kind of regret, because that's what it felt like was this notion that I had not focused on the thing that matters most in my life. I inherently knew that my most important responsibility was to make sure my kids were the best versions of themselves. And I had completely delegated that to my wife in a very unfair way. And I had prioritized not just work, but just everything else. And so those were regrets. And I literally thought about all of that. But you know what was really interesting? Peter dying to me was not scary. I always thought it would be a scary moment. It was super sad because I didn't want to go. I really liked my life. I really wasn't done. I had lots of regrets, but it was not scary. And that in itself also has been clarifying for me.

Had you spoken or have you since spoken about this with the other people on the flight? And do you know if any of them felt that.

I have not. I have not. I had so much support when I landed on Love and all that, that I kind of stayed within my realm of comfort. And then immediately after, there were all sorts of things. Books and lawsuits and this. And it all felt so disingenuous to me. US Airways sent us a check for $10,000, and I refused to.

I've seen your check.

You've seen it?

It's sitting in Jay Walker's library.

Yes. Yeah.

You're probably the only person that didn't cash that check.

You know what? That's bad karma. I did not want to cash that check, and it's not the right thing. I don't matter how big it would have been, a million bucks, I would have not cashed it. I was given the ultimate gift. And the ultimate gift was to say goodbye to your life. To close your eyes, to touch your own arm, say I love you, to wish for it to blow up and to open your eyes and realize that you had a second chance.

As the plane is coming down, do you see the George Washington Bridge? Can you see it?

Oh, yeah. I saw it more as we were going over it. And you can see the cars at a scarily close place.

Like, literally, we you cars in a level. You never see them in an airplane.

I wonder. Or see the level of detail again. We almost took on that bridge. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but if he chooses to go to Teterboro, we take out a bunch of buildings. He literally made all these calculations that he didn't have enough thrust to get there. And he said, the only chance I have is to go in the water. And you will relate to this story because I know the struggle or your internal fight against authority when it's not well placed. And we've talked a lot about this. So when he communicates to the tower and said, I'm going in the water, and the tower goes like, please repeat, because they can understand it. And basically he was done with protocols. He's like, I'm going to do my best to try to land this thing. There's all sorts of mathematical equations here. We landed, I think, at 151 miles an hour or something like that. If we are at 1.53, we blow up. At 149, we tip. The wind was like 12 and a half miles an hour. At 14, this came like. There were so many, many things that had to be within such a small degree, all compounding into a moment that you can land a cylinder with 158 people full of gas. That's a kidding cement.

Yeah. I just know that from sort of the literature on people who jump off bridges and into water. And when you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, which is something like 220ft up, much lower than where you guys are coming from, it is like hitting cement. And the only people who survive that jump are generally people who land exactly feet first. They end up breaking most bones. They break every bone in their feet. Ankles compress the spine, but at least they don't pivot, land sideways, have a rib tear through their liver or something awful like that. So, yeah, it's like a wet cement landing. I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but about five years ago, I met a guy through a friend. We were in Houston and the three of us were having dinner, and somehow it came up that this guy was in a helicopter crash. He was the only one that survived. It was a pilot, three, maybe three or four other people in the helicopter and him. And there was a technical malfunction in the helicopter. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was one of those things where it was clear they were crashing and it was clear they were all going to die. I mean, helicopters just look like the most unstable things when they're out of control. And interestingly, it was about the same length of time he had about two minutes of crashing. And he hadn't heard of you, so he hadn't seen your TED Talk after the fact. He did, of course. I directed him to it. And what blew my mind, Rick, was the similarity in the way he described that two minutes. He said. He said, peter, you'll think this is crazy, but I just wasn't afraid to die. But, boy, was I sad. He was about your age. He was probably 40 when this happened. He was hurt in the crash. I mean, he broke both his legs. I mean, he was, again, the only survivor, but walked away with his life. I'll never forget that. How he explained something about not being afraid but just being so sad. Yeah, it makes me wonder how many other people on that plane would echo that same thought. Obviously, I can't relate, so I don't know what that means. I feel like I'd be afraid, but I'm looking at a man who's been through it and tells me that that's not what he felt.

I just bought a lucky ticket.

So when did you close your eyes? How far do you think you were above the water?

You know, when you fly a lot, you can almost sense when you're going to hit. Even if you're dozing off, you feel the ground. Right. So in about 10 seconds left, I can feel the countdown in my system. And 10, nine. And that's when I grabbed my arm and I said, I love you.

Why did you do that?

I think I had a sense of needing comfort as you exit life. I probably. There was probably a lot of acceptance in that statement.

Subconsciously, prior to that, were you someone who struggled with loving yourself? Were you hard on yourself?

No, I have many issues. That's not one of them.

That's interesting. I'm very hard on myself. I wonder if I would even have the foresight to think that. It's a beautiful sentiment. What was the sound like?

It was. He puts the tail and then kind of the nose just jams. So it was a violent accident, and then we skipped to the left. I have my eyes closed. I open my eyes and I am completely disoriented because I'm expecting to be upside down. If I left my eyes open, I think I would have been much more oriented. And it took me a split second to realize that this looked like a cruise ship. This plane sitting on the water kind of all around us.

When your eyes open, the plane is still moving?

I don't remember. I don't think so. I think I can't do a stop or close to coming to a stop.

Was there any part of you that thought, this is death, I'm dead. This is an afterlife. This is sort of a few circuits firing in what remains of my central nervous system, but I'm actually dead. Like, I mean, I.

Again, what what is it then? To me, you would think that that would be a very realistic. It just was so quick, right, that it was confusing. It was unusual. You know when you have zero probability of something and it happens, you're like, did that really happen? And immediately we went into kind of, holy cow, we got to get out of here.

Do you have a moment of realizing what has happened, or do you immediately shift into business mode of, okay, now it's an emergency excavation. Now it's like all that stuff that nobody pays attention to when the plane is taking off the slide. How does the slide work? Who takes the door off? How many doors are there? Where is the nearest door? All that stuff? You guys go right into that mode. And is it orderly? Is it chaotic? Are people screaming, clapping, crying? What's happening?

That plane was not equipped for water. That's why people were standing on the wings, not on rafts.

I don't understand.

What do you mean it wasn't equipped? If you look.

Yeah, I remember the places there's rafts.

Yeah, but in the coach section, there were no rafts because that plane was not supposed to go over water. So that's why nothing deployed. When you open those emergency doors, only you can stand on the wings.

I thought every plane had that.

No, if the plane had landed on the east side, there's not the ferries and the hustle and bustle of where we landed. That thing was taking water. They evacuated the people from the wing because we were sinking. So there were so many things. There were a bunch of ferries around us as soon as we landed. So it never felt like we were not going to be safe in that regard. But on the east side, I think it would have been different.

How cold was the water? Do you remember the feeling?

It was very cold, but adrenaline takes over, so it's only cold after. It wasn't cold in the moment. And I'll tell you a story that I have really not shared with many people. I think because I was tired from hooping and staying out late and working and all this stuff and eating so much sugar before getting on the plane. I'm kind of comatose, sitting there on my seat as people are boarding. Late in the boarding process, an elderly lady in a wheelchair and her is coming down the ramp. And my voice inside of me, and I've done this before, says, get up, give up your seat. Go sit and coach. I'm 6 5, but you know what? It's the right thing to do. And then I'm like, I'm tired. You know, it's not a long flight. I'm being completely selfish. And then her daughter's behind the person that is helping the lady. I'm out. There's two of them. We can't do it. And I'm pretty sure this guy won't give the scene right. So I rationalized myself to being completely selfish. So once we are in the rafts and I know that this elderly lady is in the back of the plane, I start freaking out because I know she can't walk. So I start screaming, where's the lady? Where's the lady? We're in the raft. And by the way, it was really interesting. In the raft in our side, some people were completely frozen. They couldn't understand anything. Some people were panicking in the raft. And then there was a handful of us that were like, okay, let's problem solve. And eventually the older lady comes to the front of the plane. They bring her in because they got to put her in a raft. And. And I grab her. And I'm sitting there and she's completely traumatized by this. And I'm just thinking about, oh, my goodness. My last act would have been one of my most selfish acts. It was an interesting emotion. And then when we got to the ferry, we had to climb about 10 steps. Everybody evacuated. I'm the bigger guy. I'm saying, I'll bring this lady up. The guys were trying to hold her. Peter, I think something crazy happened. As I'm going up this frozen ladder with no gloves, no anything, no jacket, and I'm holding her basically in my chest, My hand slips. I was within a split second of dropping an 80 year old in the water and I grabbed. And that was a very. All of this is happening in this moment. As soon as I got to the top of the boat and she was safe, we were all safe. I started crying like the river of emotion was insane.

What about others? Did they experience that? I mean, I'm guessing that different people are processing this at totally different speeds. There are probably still people who don't actually understand what has happened. It sounds like you've moved. You're in post processing on some level. Are you talking amongst each other?

No. Everybody. As soon as one of the people on the ferry, I grabbed the phone. I really wanted to call my wife. By then she was at the pediatrician with the kids. And her sister called her and goes, where's Rick? And she's like, he's coming from New York. She goes, turn the TV on. And Brenda turned the TV and she thought that we all had died. So she's crying at the pediatricians. The kids are screaming. And I call from a random number, and as she tells the story, she thinks it's the police, saying, hey, your husband died.

Right. Random New York number.

And I call and I say, honey, I'm okay. And, like, she screams, he's alive. He's alive. And the kids are completely confused. They just lost their dad, but he's alive. And so everybody. We were passing on this phone and all of that.

Where was the crew at this time?

So most people ended up on the New York side. Some people ended up in the New Jersey side. I ended up in the New York side. And I think it was Pier 42.

And my guess is the crew is the last to get off the plane. They have to make sure everybody's off. And I'm guessing Sully is the last.

Of the last 100%. And he ends up. I'll tell you a quick story on Sully. So we end up in. And by the way, New York is an amazing city in so many ways.

Yeah. If something's gonna go wrong, this is the city to have it happen. You got the best rescue.

Unbelievable. The first responders, by the time we got to the pier, they were like.

There'S hot chocolate waiting for them.

The Red Cross, and there were priests and rabbis and everybody. And they're kind. It was amazing. Like, we were sitting there, and they're interviewing everybody because they don't know foul play and whatever. Right before they release anybody, they need to interview everybody. Three hours later, they release. They start putting us in buses to take us to a hotel. And Captain Sullenberger standing there, what it looked like, fully dressed, stoic, probably contemplating what in the world just happened. And I went up to him. There's nobody around him. And I went up to him and I said, captain. I didn't know his name. I said, thank you for saving our lives. And Peter, he said something to me that day that I say to myself all the time. When someone thanks me for something, I don't say it out loud much. You know what he said to me? He said, I was just doing my job. Can you imagine if we all just kind of did our jobs at every level? That really shocked me that that was his process. So they put us on a bus, and the media's there and all of that. And we get to the hotel and there's food, and they were amazing. And they're like, okay, you want a hotel? The train is tomorrow. Many people lived here. And I looked at the lady and I said, I need to get on the next flight. At what time this next flight? And she looked at me like I got hit in the head, right?

She's calling the concussion protocol, like, this.

Guy has completely lost it. The way I said it to myself is like, listen, the probability of this happening twice is like, if this plane goes down and I die, it's me God is coming to see, right? Let's go, let's go. Get this over with. If it dies and I don't die, Oprah Winfrey and I are gonna share a stage somewhere. And if I get on this plane, I'll never be afraid of flying again.

Did you fly out that night?

I flew out that night.

What did you feel like when that plane was taking off? How did it feel? Different.

I remember the next time I took a flight, which was maybe a couple weeks later, and I had a seat again. I got upgraded first class and I gave it up. And I wanted to sit in the first seat of coach and I wanted to see me on that plane. And I sat on the left hand side of the plane and I just watched. And I needed to relive all of that, you know, that flight. I just wanted to come home. My mom and dad picked me up because my wife was at home with the kids. They were young and our home got 60 people within an hour. And they all came and like everything, but nothing had really happened. We were fine. But it's just beautiful love and beautiful expression of support and community. So my parents pick me up and there's media and everybody there and I like squirt around and I don't want any, like, people are talking to the cameras and whatever. And you can see when you look at the footage, I'm like pretending I'm a normal passenger on the plane. And my mom, it's all of five, three. At the time she was 70, so she's about to turn 80. And I remember giving a hug to my dad and giving a hug to my mom and feeling like this was the safest place in the world. A little lady hugging a six, five foot guy was the safest place. And I remember feeling like a kid again. I had asthma as a kid and that was the only place that I could breathe. It was so beautiful to embrace my mom in a way that again, it started this journey of I am not taking anything for granted. And that hug was like the switch. And there's not a day that goes by that I will not do something and remind myself I'm not taking this for granted. And I love that hug with my mom. My mom has fairly advanced Alzheimer's now, as you know, so those hugs are not there anymore the same way. But I am so glad I was able to be a kid again as it relates to hugging her.

We were together a few months ago, and you mentioned to me that you had never seen Captain Sullenberger since that day you saw him on the docks. And then you saw him for the first time. You had just seen him for the first time. Tell me about that.

So one of our companies is the points guy. And the points guy has a big award show here at Intrepid, and he was going to be the guest of honor. And Brian, who is the points guy and a good partner and a good friend, he's like, hey, would you like to introduce him? And I said, I will be honored.

Why had you not sought him out earlier?

I wasn't ready. I have a big idea that I have, I've been working on, and I'm going to do something my way. I just had said thank you to him that day, and I know he had been overburdened. And I said, the world will bring our energies again. And so we're in the red carpet, this big event, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, all sorts of things. And he knows that I'm introducing him, and he knows that I was a passenger. And I'm like, I am so curious as to how I'm gonna react. I see him, I shake his hand.

We embrace the four year introduction before.

And Peter, not a word came out of my mouth. There was nothing coming out of my mouth. And it was amazing. And it didn't have to come out of my mouth. He could see my eyes, what I wanted to say in a way that was so deep. And he understood. And I saw in his eyes a connection that two human beings can't manufacture. It was really an amazing moment to see the person that saved your life and then to have the honor of introducing him a couple hours later and give him an award.

How did you even think about and prepare for making introductory remarks in that setting? Did you wing it? Did you plan it?

I planned it, but I didn't write it. Just like the TED Talk. I'm not a great memorizer, but I need to have a framework and I need to let my heart go. I told a few stories when I introduced him up that day of a very kind guy that basically gave everything he had that day to all of us. And he was going under. And I talked about the first responders. And I told the story of him doing his job as the core of this. But what was unique to him is literally he had prepared for that moment his whole life. I went through his background as an instructor in the Navy, as a glide instructor. All the things that he had done was because he will tell other pilots, you're only a pilot when you lose an engine. And he literally had prepared his whole life to be a pilot, not for the tens of hours he'd flown, but for the moment that he lost an engine that he didn't think it would be too. So I admired him doing his job.

Do you get the sense from all you now know about the details of that, what percentage of pilots that fly commercial airlines could have done that under the same setting? I mean, we can never know the answer to that. And I'm guessing the answer isn't a lot. But I know very little about this, of course, but watching the movie, reading the book, that sort of thing. But it seemed, like, improbable that a lot of people could have acted the way he did because of the length of time they had to process. To me, it was, maybe I'm incorrect, by the way, because I'm not a pilot. Maybe I don't even understand all the nuance. But to me, the single most important thing was how quickly he could process information and make a decision about what to do. And even a pilot with more technical skill. And I'm not. I don't know how much more technical skill one could have or need. But if you took an extra 15 seconds to come to the same decision, it wouldn't have mattered. To your point earlier, if he had tried to go to Teterboro. No way you're plowing over land if not hitting the bridge on the way to New Jersey. If he tried to turn to LaGuardia, he's probably plowing through Manhattan at that point. So, I don't know.

I mean, I just. I think the answer is close to zero, if not zero, because there are a bunch of factors. I think he. Because he was a gliding instructor, I don't know how many of them are out there, but it was what allowed him to place that plane in the water, in a way, because he had taught flying for so long and he had prepared pilots for this. But more importantly, there were all those factors that all had to fit within a very narrow margin. So even him. In other words, where other factors go, and then there's a lot of luck. One of those wings tips the water, and we go through it. So the odds of that kind of situation happening, it's close to zero.

Do you remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan at the end of the movie when the character played by Tom Hanks is dying, and Private Ryan, who's been saved, basically is sort of coming to grips with the realization that in an effort to save his life, an entire group of men have died. And the character played by Tom Hanks basically says to him just two words, Earn this. Did you feel some sense of, look, I've always lived my life. I didn't know you before this, but I'm imagining you were not that different a person. I don't think, like you overnight became the great guy you are today. But did you feel a bigger sense of obligation to your community? Both your immediate community, meaning your family, but your larger community, which is your company, and then the even broader community than that, which is the world around you? Has that changed in any way?

100%. A couple days later, in my own quietness, I was trying to make sense of all of this now. And I made a commitment to myself. I made a promise to myself that when I die in six months, six years, or 60 years, if you help me live long, hopefully longer, I am going to ask myself one question. And this is how I would judge my life. And that question is, did I earn my gift? And I was given the ultimate gift because we in our evolution can't process death. Otherwise, we would have never left the cave. I left the cave. I was given the gift. And that gift is a responsibility, not a gift.

Who do you think was the first person around you to see that difference? I mean, I have to guess your wife must have, just because of her proximity to you and how close the two of you are. What do you think she noticed first once the dust settled, meaning the months that followed?

Think about the clarity of not postponing anything, not dealing with negative energy, and focusing on what matters. So my three thoughts at the plane was landing of no regrets. I try to live a life of no regrets, and by no means is perfect. But if I was to, I don't know, index the amount of negative moments I've had with my wife, I bet you they're under 10% of what they used to be. I ask for forgiveness not because I may have done something wrong, but because someone was offended by what I did. I choose to be happy, not righteous.

I want to sort of focus on that a little bit, because even just if nobody listening to this can relate to that, I still want the benefit. But I suspect I'm not alone. When I was a kid actually in high school, and I was a struggling high school student, and I showed. I wouldn't say I showed no potential, but it was certainly not clear what I was supposed to be when I grew up. All I wanted to be was a professional boxer. But they made me take this aptitude test and it was not about sort of academic aptitude, but more of emotional, like, where would you fit? And I remember the result of the test was the strongest signal they had ever seen for someone who values justice and things to be in correct order. And they were like, well, you've probably got a career in law enforcement ahead of you, son. You know, you really ought to consider joining the police force. Or maybe you end up going to law school and you'll become a judge, but you really have this strong arc of justice. You just want justice. And I think that that's sort of a detriment sometimes. I think it's because you do. You get into these arguments with your spouse, and even if you're going to be objective in some situations, they're wrong. And you're right. But you're right, this idea that, what is the upside to that? You could very easily just drop this case quote unquote, and get back to just being a happy existence with the world. So were you someone who would argue a point if you felt you were right? And because I've never known that side of you, it's so hard for me to imagine you having any of that streak in you that I have.

For example, I'm Latin and hot headed. Like literally less than that. I would be too passionate about certain things. But think about it. There's always three sides to an argument. Yours, theirs, and the truth. And if you start every argument understanding that you don't have the truth, you have your truth. It's really easy to surrender to that. And most things in life are a shade of gray and not completely black and white. And the problem is when we believe we're right, we have made something black and white.

Do you think that that is something you knew beforehand and choose to ignore? Or is that something that you somehow came to you as an epiphany as a result of this?

This is my mom's teachings, but I ignore them. You ignore them? My favorite, I plagiarized most of the things I've said in being Puerto Rican and learning English when I came to college. Here I literally am constantly collecting new thoughts from others. I had an original thought after the plane crash. Like mine, like I could literally claim this set of words may have been otter, but I've never heard them. And it is that I collect bad wines.

Do you know now I plagiarize that from you.

Oh, good, finally tell us why you.

Do that, because I love it.

I collect bite wines is the trigger thought for not postponing anything. And the thought is, if you go to my house, I have a lot of bad wine. Because if the wine is ready and the person is there, I'm opening my best one. This changes in an instant. I don't want to leave with a bunch of good wine that I never drank. And it's a way of living. It's a way of living in everything. So collecting bad wines means so much. It just means taking the trip, making the call, taking the risk, having the courage, forcing yourself to things that you know you need to do. I know you know this, but I was 45 pounds heavier at the time when this happened. And this was a commitment of me saying, I'm doing all of this. It becomes very centering, which, by the.

Way, a little counterintuitive, some would argue. Good thing you had those two ice creams. Like, wouldn't you have regretted it if that plane's crashing and you're like, man, I just wanted those two ice cream. You can take these things to two different extremes and there is a bit of a contrast, which is on the one hand, you're living for the moment, in which case we should be as hedonic as possible. But at the other hand, you've lost 45 pounds. You were healthy to begin with, but you're much healthier today. You're probably 10 years younger physiologically, which is a very forward looking point. How do you reconcile those completely at odds behaviors or. Behaviors is the wrong word, but viewpoints.

I still have the ice cream. I think, again, it's a notion of balance. I think it's defining the game.

Is your game longer or shorter today?

So there's a book that it's coming out called the Infinite Game. And I believe in the infinite game. Before the book, Simon Sinek, and he's great, he's a friend and he wrote this book. It's very much a philosophy of which I live life, which is the whole purpose of the game is to play the next game. There's no winning, there's no outcome, there's no end. So because I play the infinite game in life, I want to be healthy enough to continue to play the game. I can win the game of complete pleasure for a day. A month, a year. But then I lose my ability to keep playing the game. It's called the Infinite Game. It's phenomenal.

Yeah, I've heard him speak about it. I'm looking forward to it very much. I want to go back to sort of the winter and spring of 2009. You did mention in your TED talk that. I don't know if it was weeks later or some period later you're at a recital for your daughter. Tell me about that.

Do you ever watch a movie Ghost?

That's the Bruce Willis or.

No.

Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore. Yes, Many, many years.

Many years. And there's a scene in that movie where he's dead and he's the ghost, and he's watching. He's seeing life as it's happening. And I felt like I was sitting there, and it was probably two weeks later, something so very recent, and I felt like I was the ghost, like I was not supposed to be there. And here I'm watching my daughter and just completely bawling. And people around me, I'm like, this is supposed to be a happy play, dude. And I was bawling because I was giving that gift of seeing her on that stage. And by the way, it doesn't have to be a stage. It doesn't have to be a play. The magic of seeing your kids every day grow up, if you want to choose to see it that way, can be equally powerful. So it was a moment where I realized, wow, this is the gift, is to be able to watch my kids grow up. And it was centering around that. Of all my priorities is my most important one.

How did your travel schedule and your relationship with work change as a result of this? Was that a quick change? Was it a gradual change? I remember you sat me down six years ago and showed me your calendar, and we walked through sort of the way you ran things. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Today, time is our only currency. It's the only thing that matters. In our civilization, we solve for wealth first. But find any really rich person that is old or sick, and they'll trade it all for more time. Right?

So it's worth pausing on that for a moment because most people listening to this think, sure, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's easy to say, but I've asked the following question to probably 50 patients and more than 100 people, I'm sure. And the answer is always the same, which is, you ask someone who's at the age of 40, 50, 60, would you trade places with someone who's 90 years old in exchange for a trillion dollars. And everybody thinks about it for a second and goes, well, no, I actually do the math. I said, well, take your age now. Subtract it from the age of 90. Take that delta, divide it by the trillion. You're telling me that you value time more than this? You could actually make a calculation, and it's telling you how valuable time is to you when phrased that way. Most people don't appreciate that. I certainly at times fail to appreciate just how much of a premium I truly place on time. And yet, like, you know, even today, before we started this podcast, I was lamenting the fact that I agreed to take a call as a favor to somebody, and it like, ate into an hour of my day. And I was sort of like, sometimes I just don't say no enough. I don't protect time enough. And yet, if I did that calculation more, I would. So how did you calculate that and how did you implement it?

I'll tell you. But you reminded me of one of my favorite stories. And I tell this story to kids. I go speak in a lot of middle schools. I just. Or younger kids, and they're all caught up in all this material stuff. And I said, okay, I'm going to give you a million dollars, but you have to give me your arms. And all the kids are, no, no, no. I'm going to give you $5 million and you're going to give me your arms and your legs. No, no, no, I'll give you $10 million, but you're going to give me your arms, your legs, and your eyes. And the value of the story is you're already rich because you have your health. Money really can buy that. So value how lucky you are. The talk is around the power of luck, and most of the things that show up as unlucky things end up being lucky things in life if you choose to see them that way. So you just reminded me of that story. So, listen, I waste no time. I waste no time. I only do things that I find that are aligned to what I'm prioritizing or that I enjoy a lot or that put me on a path forward of what I want. And as a result, I. I'm really comfortable saying no all the time. I'm very thoughtful and polite. I don't join any outside boards. I have demoted friends that I outgrew so that I can make room for new friends. I travel light. I travel light through light because I need to figure out a way to increase the value of My time. I have an amazing chief of staff who solves for 40% of the stuff that I shouldn't be doing and all that stuff. So I put enough structure around me that I can be really efficient with my time, but it's really finding always more ways to do it. But saying no is everything.

How do you say no?

First of all, if someone says, hey, would you come speak at this event? My answer is pretty standard. I'm honored that you would ask. I'm humble that you would ask. Right now, my priorities are my family and growing our company. And as it is, I don't have enough time. Eventually, I hope to have time to do things like this, and if you would have me, I would love to do it.

Does it feel bad to say no?

Oh, no. Because when you're saying yes, you're saying no to something else. So everything in life has a price.

You know, it's so funny. I interviewed a good friend of mine, Jason Fried, and he said the exact same thing, which is such a beautiful way to think about it, is every time you say yes, you're actually saying no to a number of things that you can anticipate between now and then.

It's easy to say, oh, do you want A or B? It's hard to say, do you want A or door number B? And you don't know what it is. And most times we don't know. Opportunity cost is really. It's. By the way, one of the keys to business is not settling for good and waiting for great.

How many days a month do you think you Traveled prior to 2009?

I went and tracked it. I was probably on the road 15 nights.

15. And what is it today?

That's not vacation with my family.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, time away from family.

Four.

Wow.

And it's literally decreased, like, one per year. And I track it.

I track now, too, thanks to you.

Good.

This is the first year I'm going to break, but. Meaning I'll be less than 10 days a month away from family. I'll average through December 31st. I'll hit 9.9.

Wonderful.

I want 8 next year.

That's the way to go. We focus on what we measure. It's just our brains are destined. That's what they say. It's a dream until you write it down, and then it's a goal. It's the same thing, the same principle.

Do you think your kids at the time knew what happened? Yeah, they were sort of 6 and 7, right?

Yeah. They kind of understood that something really Big had happened, but it really impact him. My son just did a project of his identity in life and one of the central story was this story and I didn't know. And he's 18, right. So it tells you how hopefully it gave him context of enjoying life.

You said something earlier that I just thought was so incredible and I can't stop thinking about it. This idea that Sully basically said, you are only a pilot when you lose an engine. Like everything you've done is sort of preparation for that one defining moment of your life. Have you thought about ways that that extrapolates to what it means to be a father, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a CEO? What are the equivalents of the engine losing moment when the rubber hits the road? And all that other stuff is just there to prepare you for that moment.

The easy answer on the business side is you're only a leader in a moment of crisis, otherwise you're just in charge and you as a leader have to prepare yourself for the moment of crisis. And it's going to come. And unfortunately, because economically we've been such a benign 10 year period, there's a lot of people that don't have the temperament to deal with what's coming. Maybe in a year, maybe in three, maybe next month. It doesn't matter. It's coming, there's going to be a year. So that's the easier one is bringing your organization along to understand that when things change, we're going to have to lead and doing fire drills around it and doing scenario planning around. Okay, what happens if we have a data breach? What happens if we, if we have this issue? What happened? Like all those things we do not constantly, but we do it enough to create consciousness about it and then time will tell. When the crisis comes, are you going to be able to lead or not? I find it interesting when people call themselves leaders and they've never done anything in a time of crisis. I'm like, well, you're in charge. I'm not sure you're a leader yet. I think with kids we like many other families have had to deal with our share of experiences with teenagers that are very, very hard and our kids are in a good path and they're going to be great. But it hasn't been easy at all and has been really. And Brenda and I talk about it a lot. Not only has it united us even stronger to help our kids through their situations, but it is. I've learned more about myself through being a dad because hard driving People like you and I think we know and what you realize that your key of being a father or mother is to find their gift and then to help them get to their gift and accept them for their strengths and their weaknesses. And the last thing you want a kid to feel is shame. And when we want something different for our kids than what they seem to want, there's a high chance you end up shaming them without wanting to or guilting them. So I think for a parent to lead is to meet the kid where they are in finding their natural bent and encouraging it and making them their best version of themselves. And that was not apparent to me when I signed up for this. This has been with two teenagers that are super gifted and super kind, but they are teenagers and they have to deal with a lot of stuff you and I didn't have to deal. And it's not easy.

I'm dreading every second of it, truthfully, because I do think kids today live in a world. Maybe every parent says that. Maybe my parents felt the same way. Who knows? But I think it looks brutal to be a teenager today.

Maybe what I'm telling you is that you're going to have to grow up a lot to be able to do that. Well, that's what we've seeked a lot of help and it's been great. And we have dug in and we've done a lot of research and we tried a lot of things that haven't worked. And it's a real commitment. And by the way, we're not out of the woods yet.

Well, I mean, I'm just going to get incredibly selfish for a moment and just ask for some advice. So how do you handle things like electronics and social media? Like, what have you learned? And this doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of your own relationship with your kids, but even from other parents. Again, you have a company of thousands of employees. You have a purview into the lives of more than just your own. What advice do you give parents who are trying to think through those issues? I'll tell you an anecdote. So last week, my daughter's school had a trip to Disneyland. And my daughter is one of the few kids in her class that does not have a smartphone or a cell phone at all. So most of the kids do, and they're driving up and it's my wife and another mom that are driving up in sort of the minivan. And there's the four kids are in the back and three of them have a phone and My daughter gets my wife's phone, and they're playing with it. And at one point, my wife looks back and she says, all four of them are glued to the phones. They're not talking. They're not interacting at all. It's like a road trip. And they're all glued to these phones. And so she sort of says, hey, guys, let's put the phones away. And you guys got to do something. You got to talk, you got to play a game. You got to whatever. Okay, well, extract that moment for a second, and you realize there is a lot of stuff that they're missing. And you could argue, look, maybe they're getting things we didn't get that were better for them. Who knows? But to see the lack of basic socialization concerns me. How do you. Or what advice do you have to navigate that?

I don't have better advice than others. I think kids should be kids, meaning parents should decide what are the controls. You don't give kid a remote to the TV and say, do whatever you want. I think my mom said, which I love. Raising teenagers is a tug of war. You ultimately must lose because that's how they become adults.

So there has to be enough tension. You can't lose at 13. It's at 19. They have to.

But you have to be losing incrementally.

Yeah.

You can't be winning and then lose. So it's a tug of war that you're the resistance. So you also have to think about it kid specific. Every kid is different, age specific, but you also don't want them to be the misfit. You also don't want them to be missing out. And we kind of tend to project our reality into others. They're gonna live in a world where your kids are probably never gonna drive. Your kids are gonna live with probably not even a cell phone. They're gonna see screens in their glasses. They're gonna do all this stuff that you can't even understand. They're gonna live in a mix of a VR world and a real world. You want your kid to be able to be successful, happy, settle, whatever it is your goal in that world. Not in 1982 of the VHS. So you also got to remind yourself that this is a.

You can't hold onto the past so much.

And, you know, I find very interesting. I have this conversation with lots of friends. If you ask anybody what is your goal for your kid, they'll tell you some version of the same thing. Happy, well adjusted, contributing, growing, finding their passion, whatever. BS will talk. And we Mean it's. But then you watch the way we raise kids is over schedule. Two sports, a trainer at this, a that, another coach, pre sat. Pre Sat. Pre this. Take it six times. Did that really help? Did stressing kids out to that extent? They're like, oh, why are they so stressed? Well, we're making them super stressed. This culture is stressful enough. And I think as parents we judge so much of our own self esteem by what others think about our kids that we fail to understand what really is our goal. If you really want your kid to be happy, adjusted, whatever, you would do a lot of things differently. So back to your question of just remind yourself what is it that you're trying to do and try to align to that.

It's a great point you make about. I was telling you a story before we started about my son and that moment I had in that experience where I realized, man, how is it that I've let my ego become tied up in his behavior? How is it that how he behaves in public as a 5 year old and when he has a temper tantrum? I somehow internalize that as people are looking at me as a bad parent. I mean it feels so silly to even say that out loud, but I don't think I'm the first person that's felt that and that gets carried forward. I think that is such a big part of the over scheduling, overdoing it.

It's hard. We make so many mistakes ourselves and we look at each other and we're like, what are we doing? Like, it's a long race. I do believe, I think it was outliers or whatever, but I do believe that the more you make kids feel comfortable and successful in the race they're on, we judge ourselves against our relative set. So put kids in situations that they feel like they are progressing and they'll find whatever their ceiling is in a long enough time. So many kids quit sports because we push them too hard, too early and they're like, this doesn't feel good. This has produced no endorphins at all. In the contrary, right. So I think a lot of the issues with kids in this age is the parents, not the kids. And we want to blame electronics and all this stuff that are issues, but the issue is really that I don't think we're that honest as parents in terms of our goals and our actions.

Why do you think that has changed in a generation? I mean, you've spoken a little bit about your parents and it's kind of amazing, right? So they seem to be wise beyond their years. Your mom's comment about the tug of war that has to slowly be lost is honestly one of the most insightful things I've ever heard about parenting. Were your parents as educated as you are?

I was born in a Latin family and my dad is an amazing guy. But my mom raised us four kids in six years. And I think that the definition of one's life success is where do you come from and where did you end? Did you help advance the cause of our race, the human race? And you do that through your family first, and if you're lucky enough, through your community, if you're lucky enough in a broader way, like you, who are impacting a broader set of people. But I think the ultimately goal of life is to make it better for others, starting with your kids. And I think my mom is the most successful person I know because of what she was given versus what she gave us.

How old were you guys when you left Puerto Rico?

I came to the US to go to college, so I came to Boston College in January of 1990.

Oh, so your family stayed?

Yeah. Born and raised.

Yeah. Okay. What was that like to show up in Boston at 18 or whatever you were?

Ignorance is a wonderful bliss. If I knew what I did not know, I would have never come. I really think that ignorance is a bliss. I showed up as a second semester freshman because it was the year after Doug Flutie and there were no dorms and my parents are like, we're not paying for an apartment. So I came as a second semester freshman and they put me on a plane. They gave me 200 bucks. My dad said, go be a man. And I got on a plane. I didn't even know how to go to the gate by myself. Traveled a few times out of Puerto Rico, and what I realized as soon as I got to Boston is I didn't really understand English and I was ill equipped to go to college. But overcoming that was the greatest gift.

Why did you go so far into such a cold place? Why didn't you go to school in Florida, for example?

Or. I don't know. My uncle said, Boston is great. So I said, boston is great. Doug Flutie said, I was raised in a Catholic school, so Boston College was Catholic. So I landed. I'm like, what in the world is this? And I ended up in the fresh.

Semester because you said second semester. So it's winter when you showed up.

And I showed up five days before anybody, I had 200 bucks. And I have lots of stories of completely embarrassing Things that happened as I went through this because I was ill equipped. I was a misfit in every regard. And I never faced racism, which I did at the time. I faced all sorts of things that I'm glad I did because it made me a lot more aware of what other people go through.

What had your parents or your mom even specifically done to prepare you for.

That moment taught me independence, taught me that.

Where are you in the birth order?

Of the three out of four, did.

The two above you leave Puerto Rico for college?

My brother, one above, is in Kansas City as a doctor, and my sister went and then came back after a couple years.

Did you talk to them about it before you left?

Technically, my brother wrote my essays. I think I gave him something in Spanglish and he wrote him and I got in. Hopefully they don't take my degree away.

If so, we'll find somebody to give you an honorary one instead. Tell me about the remainder of those three and a half years, though. Obviously it set you on a good path and you decided to stay.

Yeah, I came here wanting to go back to Puerto Rico and halfway through, and I'm like, I love this country. I love what this is about. I worked at Fenway park as a security guard. I drove a limo in the summers. So I was hustling, making money. My dad said, I'll pay a third. You get loans for a third. And I had an academic scholarship for a third. But you're responsible for your own money. So it was the greatest thing yet. I don't know why I wouldn't do that to my kids, because it's very different.

Do you think about that? Do you think about your story of coming here as an immigrant? Having nothing is a story that many people can relate to. And because of your success, your kids have a privilege that you've never had. How do you think about imparting on them some of the. I don't know if lessons is the right word or internal fortitude or whatever. Call it what you want to call it. How do you think about that?

I actually think about it almost the inverse of what you said. I think it's really hard to be our kids. I think we're giving them not privilege. We're giving them a big, big crust to carry. And I feel a lot of responsibility for not bearing so much of a shadow that my kids can't find their own son. And we travel. We travel in certain ways and whatever. What are you setting our kids up for? I think it's really hard. It's A lot easier to grow up the way I did, which I can do better. I think it's harder. And you have to set up a different game. You have to set up a game that they feel they can win. And you have to get them thinking about the infinite game of there's no end here. That's why so many of them end up in drugs and end up in other things. Because they say, that's not something I can be successful at.

First of all, I actually think you're correct. I think both of the statements are correct. So it's harder and easier. And the hardness and easiness payoff are actually coexisting and creating that dynamic. So you can't dim your own light. I mean, as you said, especially someone like you who's been kind of given this gift. We haven't even got to talking about Red Ventures, which I want to in a minute. You can't not be Rick Elias, so how can they be your kids?

I think, first of all, it's not what you say, it's what you do. I work really, really hard. I want them to understand that working hard is part of the way you achieve things in life. To me, I don't have any issues with that. And as long as it's protecting our family time and what matters to us. I think secondly is how you treat other people. The best thing that you can do to teach your kids how to live is to treat strangers with kindness. They're watching your every action. They're watching. And by the way, you are a teacher all the time. And not with your words because they won't hear you, but with your actions. So every time you find yourself, which we all do, getting upset about something with a driver or a waitress because something was cold, or a manager because they made you wait and you get a little righteous, which we all do, you're doing the opposite. You're teaching them a behavior that is not going to help them. So I view our responsibility. The best thing I can do is model hard work, model giving and kindness, model good energy to other people. Respect. We're lucky to know a lot of people that others would consider super famous. And I treat them exactly the same way that a stranger that is doing whatever job and they see that. So those are the things, the only things you can do. You can't apologize for your success and you can't run away from it. But you have to talk to them about not, hey, I want you to get into an Ivy League school and I want you to do all this stuff. I want you to, to find your gift and I want you to figure out a way to give that gift to others again.

I think that's so well said.

It's hard. And this is not a perfect journey, right? We're full of flaws in it.

Were you ever a person that struggled to apologize before 2009? And if so, is it easier for you to apologize today?

It was very hard. I'm very proud. I'm very competitive in those two things and I can rationalize anything as to why I was right. You know what, Peter? I apologize for things. I don't even know what I did. Because I don't give a shit if it's creating negative energy. I can really easily say, listen, I am really sorry I offended you. It was not my intent. That's it. Move on. And I don't seek to understand and argue the counter argument. I was like, does this really matter? Am I going to remember it in six months? Is it going to change anything? Just move on. It's like a leakage of energy. And when you leak energy, it consumes time and that's your only currency. Imagine if you were like your toilet was running of hundred dollar bills nonstop. That's the visual. That's what a silly fight is.

You know, you probably have the longest list of anybody I know of things that don't matter. What is on your list of things that do matter? What is worth fighting for? What is worth being upset about?

Those are two different questions. So that's why my pause. Things that matter and things worth being upset about. I think injustice is worth being upset about.

And obviously based on everything you've said, it's not about your own injustice. When the Uber driver doesn't show up and when the waitress spills your soup, that's not injustice.

It's as you know, I'm attracted to places where this system fails. People that can't help themselves, that want to help themselves. That's kind of our sweet spot in all our social impact work.

Let's talk a little bit about that. Actually.

I think to whom much is given, much is expected. And I think the best way to do any type of social impact work is using your platform, not just using your wallet, if you can. And so here I am. I have a thriving company with a lot of young people that are exceptional. How do I put them? To do something that matters to them, which is give back thickens our culture, but also allows us to do something that gives us our real purpose, which is leaving our wood pile higher than we found it. That's what we talk about as a company. That's the only purpose of the company. We're not going to go public, we're not going to sell. This is the infinite game. Someday it'll go to zero. Hopefully someone else is running it. This is a way that we spend our energy together, the people we work with and the problems we solve and all of that. So when you put it in that context of none of this really ultimately matters other than advancing the game. I am attracted to injustices where the system is not working. I'll give you an example will be undocumented kids. They're known as DACA now and the Supreme Court is here in the case. And these are kids that were brought here without two years old, four year old, six year old, illegally. The parents brought them here illegally. But we don't check education for primary school, secondary school or high school. So many of these kids don't even know Spanish or whatever the language is. They never really remember being in their country. And by the time they get to 18, we said, sorry, you can't go to college. There's no federal financial aid because they're not citizens. And then there is no in state tuition in about 26 states. So their chances of going to college are basically zero. And I'm not talking there's like thousands of these. There was about a million of these in 2010, kids that were 0 to 18 that were investing all this money. So even if you want to take the Republican side of this, which is a valid argument, they're going to be a lot more productive if you educate them. That's the whole reason to do this. So they'll pay a lot more taxes. So that guy is Obama passes his executive order where he says, okay, if you graduate college and you are undocumented and you're within these ages, you can get a work permit. So now going to college makes sense because it used to be that you got an education, there was no way to get a job. And that's what's getting debated right now. There's like 600,000 of these kids with work permits. We have about, I don't know, probably 50 of them working at Red Ventures right now. So what I did is how many 50? But we have 300 plus going through college that we're supporting. So Golden Doors College got launched. We did our first class of 12, then 17, then 25, then 30. We're now reviewing applicants for the next class. And this is the first time we're using non doc so if you're undocumented, we're going to take a stance for you. And if you deserve to go to college, you are going to go. Our top 200 candidates. Peter 3.91. Unweighted GPA. Unweighted. Think about the waste of talent. None of those kids are going to college.

Tell me what happens to those kids if they don't go to college.

They end up working in a fast food place or just waste time, wasted time. Many times they don't even find a job.

Do they ever go back to the country that they were born in?

That's the problem.

They don't feel culturally assimilated.

They're American. A lot of them don't find out that they're undocumented until they go take a driver's license, license or something. They're like, you can't. It's very, very cruel for these kids. And they're your kids friends and they're as American as our kids are. I find those kids did not commit a crime. Those kids did not have a choice to move here at 2 years old. Those kids have done everything we've asked them with the system. What is this country all about? Isn't this the country where if you want to put in the work, we give you a chance? And so I find that to be a place that we put a lot of energy towards.18 to 24. There's about five and a half million young adults in the U.S. these are not undocumented. These are citizens out of school or out of work. Terminally underemployed. Five and a half million. And I think companies can do a lot more for them. So we set up a 501C3 called Road to Hire where we're training these kids in coding, in tech, back tech and all this stuff. And we're now opening the platform for the company. So BOV and and other companies in Charlotte are literally hiring these kids. We train them as an adulting school for six months and we pay them to adult them. We train them skills and then we put them in a two year apprenticeship program and we hold their hands for two years. We have another program called Life Sports. Eighth graders in Title 1 schools in Charlotte are two years behind on reading. Charlotte is probably no different than other places. Title 1 Schools is assisted lunch. And our belief is that hope has an expiration date. And that expiration date educationally comes about that age and sports is a universal language. So we have basketball, soccer, girls basketball where we bring these kids in out of the worst schools Every day we give them usually their last meal of the day. We give them an hour worth of reading because we think if they can catch up with reading, they'll extend their hope. And then we give them an hour and a half worth of exercise every weekend. There's activities. We have 250 kids now in the program we started two and a half years ago. We're going to grow it, we're going to build our own facility. So we're just trying to do our part. Like these are drops in the water, but they matter. And then for me, matter after Hurricane Maria that I did something for Puerto Rico. So we launched 78 forward 787. That's the area code. So we're training right now we're training about 70 young Puerto Ricans in the US that we want to reverse the brain drain. So we're going to bring them back, we're giving them real digital chops and we're going to move businesses to Puerto Rico so that we can bring people back to Puerto Rico.

I want to go back to the first of those because you're not a dogmatic guy, you're not a self righteous guy. You're a very empathetic person. Help me see my blind spot, which is like you. Well, no, no, you're one ahead of me. I'm first generation. So my parents came to the country with the $100 in the pocket sort of thing. Worked like crazy. And now we get to live this better life. And because I saw a lot of that, I never really understood the sentiment against immigration. Now part of that is because I grew up in Canada. So Canada very different from the United States on many levels. If you were to try to explain from the standpoint of empathy, what do you think is the view that sort of opposes immigration or opposes immigration reform? Because even though you're very clearly on this side, you strike me as someone who can also see the other person's viewpoint.

I think immigration is one of the hardest issues for us to contend because philosophically, this is a country of immigrants practically. This is a country that has lots of issues with its own people. This is not an easy answer that you say, okay, here's the solution to immigration. And anything that we as a country decide as a policy will have pros and cons. I don't tend to profess that we need to have immigration and we need to have immigration reform and we need to have better controls and we need to figure out what we do with 10 million immigrants. By the way, if we take all the illegal immigrants out of this country. We will not function because so many jobs that get done today that you and I rely directly and indirectly, no one wants to do. Our unemployment rate is up 4%. So it's not like we have 18% unemployment rate and a line of people who want to do these jobs and immigrants are doing them for half the money. No, there's no people that are sitting waiting to do a job. And this jobs no one wants to do. Right. So I think this we underestimate, but it's a real issue. And I think we have to deal with those 10 million people. I think kids should be dealt with separately. These are the DACA kids. And by the way, both Republicans and Democrats agree on the undocumented kids, but they don't want to give it up because then you give up all the immigration issue.

Meaning it's the thin end of the wedge.

Yes.

Towards the slippery slope of this other.

So that's. That's what the argument has been. Well, I'll give you that. But if we do this, and I don't know if the answer is a wall or no wall, I'm not educated enough. We need controls. We need smart immigration. We need the fact that we have all these PhDs that we're educating at Stanford and all these places, and then we're sending them back when they want to stay here. That doesn't make sense. Right. But it's not an easy answer. And there's a really good argument to say, listen, we can't take our resources and you open up the gate with Mexico and you have tens of millions of people from Central America and all that coming in. We don't have our house in order enough to be able to absorb that. As much of a humanitarian as you want to be, but there should be a thoughtful way that we allow different types of people to come. And some decisions could be very easy, which is any PhD out of our system. Some can be very humanitarian. We're going to bring in this amount of people. Some of them can be very thoughtful in terms of skills. But everything, again, I don't know enough, but there can be a lot around work permits. The problem here is that it's an underground, it's an underworld. If you brought it above board.

And you know, about five years ago, maybe six years ago, I visited you at Red Ventures and I got to spend a full day watching something you called a business review. I don't know why I came for that, but I knew I was really looking forward to it. We must have Been speaking about the way you manage teams, I think it just interested the heck out of me. And I was like, can I come and spend a day watching? And you were like, of course. We'd be honored to have you. I'll preface this by saying I don't have a degree in business. You went to Harvard. You have an MBA. But I was around a lot of Harvard MBAs and Stanford MBAs and stuff because I worked at McKinsey. So I know I may have been around the block. I can talk the talk a little bit and at least know enough to recognize when people know what they're talking about. I have never seen any. Anything like I saw that day. Rick, your ability to process information, to multitask, to make decisions, to sift through what was not relevant, and to always be asking the jugular question in the setting and context of more information than could be processed by any person blew my mind. And to this day, more than five years later, I still talk about that day constantly. And when I ran into Dan, your partner, your co founder, a few months ago, it was the first thing I asked him about. How are the business reviews?

Right, right, right, right.

Can you explain to people listening how this idea came about? Because I suspect that anybody who leads a team in any domain will find this to be illuminating.

Yeah. First, I am humbled by your words. I'm not really sure that I buy all of that. I think that I heard a quote that I loved. In life, there's two kinds of people. I heard it recently from a good friend of mine, the humble and those that are about to be humbled. I think our journey was such a struggle for the first four years. I don't know if you remember, we raised $2 million, and by November, we had no revenues and 100 grand left. And it took us three years to get back to zero. So when you taste your own blood for a long enough period of time, you realize that a lot of this is, you gotta fight the fight and you gotta stay with it and you have to stay hungry. And a lot of this for me is avoiding complacency and all the things that end up killing most organizations.

So really, you had two deaths, probably.

That's true. Yeah.

You basically tasted death on January 15, 2009, and you tasted death a few years earlier than that from a business perspective.

Yeah. And for me, I gave my word to my friends that I was gonna do all I could. And I wanted to go to my reunions. I decided, we're going to hustle, and we hustle and by the way, I am so glad, like that is such a rich part of who we are. The humility that you see in our building, we have this beautiful campus, but I see car payments where people see success and stuff. So the business reviews have evolved and continue to evolve. One of our basic. And you know that I don't maybe.

Tell folks for a moment what Red Ventures does, even though I don't think that's relevant to the story. I think if you were running any business would be the same way, but just give people a bit of context.

So it's changed twice since you were there. But today we are a significant network of digital assets that all have deep integrations into the different service providers. So we are trying to aggregate lots of services that consumer buys by owning assets like the points Guy or Bankrate of All Connect or Healthline. So we have about 130 million uniques every month into our network of assets. And then we do very deep integrations with all the services providers, all the card issuers, all the banks, everybody in healthcare and basically trying to change the consumer experience digitally. That's a very different business than we were when you were there kind of five years ago. I don't know if you remember, but I don't believe that business should be run with values. And I had this really interesting debate with Meg Whitman at the same event we were at.

I didn't get to watch you.

And she's a much more accomplished CEO than I will ever be and all of that. And she. We were talking about culture and she said, hey, it's all about your values. And then they asked me and I said, to me, values is a noun. And I don't know how to run a business with nouns. I know how to run them with verbs. So we have a set of belief statements, by the way, we're not right just the way that we choose to use the word, but we have a series of belief statements that anchor our culture. And in the middle of that belief statement, the core one in the middle is everything is written in pencil. It's a wonderful belief statement because it helps us recruit. If you're somebody who wants certainty, you want all this stuff, you're never going to fit in. It allows us to evolve and change our mind because the world is changing so fast that we're not anchor. And then it really gives us permission to experiment because everything is written in pencil. The last one is we believe that our leaving the wood power that we found it is our purpose.

So that's the give Us, some of the others.

The first one is we believe in running up the escalators. That means that businesses have to play with pace. This is not about speed, speed, speed. This is about pace. The more reps you get, the more you iterate through problems. Business review is an example of a place that forces reps. What that means is how do you organize your organizational design, how do you compensate people? All those things really, really matter. Running a company is really like an orchestra. There's no right way, there's no perfect song as long as the orchestra is in harmony. Where you get in trouble is where there's dissonance in the orchestra and you see instruments kind of going their own way. So for us, it's really important that we're playing at a high space. That doesn't mean we work till 7pm every night, but we work hard, we're very purposeful, we're small teams, we're decisive, we're okay. Most things in business are pass fail, yet we are trained our whole lives for grades. And I think where a lot of leaders get in trouble is this is why people have a hard time prioritizing. This is a pass fail event. I'll put in 20% of the effort, I just pass. So in the business, really understanding what's pass fail and what's great is a really important kind of skill. And you do that when it's pass fail, you just run up the escalator. So that will be another example. We're great people to work with. We believe that we want to be great people to work with. And I think diversity really matters in a company because you make better decisions. People not only feel accept that, they feel welcomed. It is a way that it is important. But I think what diversity does, it lends the opportunity to create inclusion. And if you think about a lot of our social impact work and all of this, it's about creating inclusion for people that are not getting access to certain opportunities that we were lucky to have. So being great to work with is to being very, very much attuned that we all bring something unique to the company and to the table and so forth. But since they're all written in pencil, they're all going to change.

So explain how business review works. And I know it has changed, by the way, but even the example of the one I saw, not that you could possibly remember that day five years ago or whatever, but you were basically in a room and you sat at a conference table and there were business leaders basically all presenting to you. And what was the format, how did it work?

It's 20 minute meetings. No charts are passed, nothing in color, none of that. A couple of charts on the screen are fine. But you got to be able to get to your point, right?

No big PowerPoint decks were being passed out?

No. And you had to start the meeting, okay, here's the problem we're trying to solve, or here's what we're trying to talk about. Like you have to define your problem and then you went through it, and then we conclude it with something. So there's many ways to organize meetings. Amazon does it with, you got to write something. I think it's five pages and you come prepared to the meeting. There's no right way of doing anything as long as people understand how you are going to calibrate work.

But the pace of this was like nothing I'd ever seen. Because I remember when I was getting ready to come forward and I wanted to sort of be mindful of what I was about to see so I could, if nothing, participate by asking a question that could be helpful. I remember them saying, okay, so it's, I forget the number. It's 27 meetings. And I was like, what do you mean 27 meetings? And they said, they're 20 minutes each. It's a 10 hour day. You know, there's an hour break in there and we keep it. Everybody understands the clock. There is no. You play to the clock. One person would stand up there and explain some problem about, hey, we're doing this deal with AT&T and it's got to look like this, and it's got to look like this, but boy, we can't get this deal done because blah, blah, blah, blah. And you would ask five incredibly pointed questions. And I was like, wow, I mean, that's amazing because 10 minutes earlier you were hearing about something totally unrelated. And you could pivot so quickly to this. And then you'd exit with a plan which is, okay, great, here's an idea. You're going to go back to your counterpart at, AT and T. This is going to be the idea. You're going to pitch. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll see you in a month.

Let me open a window that. I think it's an interesting thing. I learned this from a good friend of mine that anything you do in life should be a three for, meaning at least three for. Some things can be a four for.

And most people are happy to get a twofer.

And what I mean is you can do something that has many purposes. The quick Example is you're going to go play golf because you play golf. That's a one for if you go play golf at a beautiful course, that's a twofer. At a beautiful course with your best friends and with great weather. Great. So in business, the business review is a forfeit for us. It's a way to force prioritization. It's a way to train people how to present. It's a high stakes environment.

Your team was so impressive. You're absolutely right about that. I've watched people. I mean, I am a real stickler for having information presented. And it just kills me to watch people who can't get to the point. And there was not one example in 27 meetings of somebody who couldn't get to the point.

I think our strength is there's 2,025 year olds at RedVentures that have been trained at a level because of all this exercise that it's great. It's the best business school for a lot of these young adults. The third is it forces decision making. A lot of those things were tough decisions. And the worst decision is a no decision. So it forces decision. And the fourth is that it culturates. So it is a very much. There were teaching moments, there were things that happened. You showed up with certain things, some things. So I'd like to set up as an organization. If we're going to invest that kind of energy and time, something that has currency in many different directions.

How did you sharpen your sword to get to that point? Is it literally just the reps?

It's reps. Intuition is nothing else. And having seen something before and when you start getting all this pattern recognition is because you've seen so many times the movie. And the key is not to see the movie. Peter, I think is to be introspective about what happened in the movie. So a lot of times I'll finish a negotiation, I'm like, oh, I screw that up. I did not read that cue. I was too aggressive. Last night. I had a dinner and it was really great. In the last five minutes I fumbled it. As soon as I got in the car, I'm like, what did you just do?

I don't want to make you talk too much about it, but can you say a little bit more about what it is that you think you fumbled?

When you do a lot of interpersonal skills, the other person is talking to you nonstop without words. And a lot of this is knowing when you stop. In my last two statements, I lost some of the momentum. I got with the other 55 minutes, and I just knew it. In their eyes, that doesn't matter, right? That's just part of the journey. So my point being is you got to be super. Self awareness is really important in life. Self management is the key to success. Most people are like, oh, I'm self aware. Well, can you self regulate? Can you self manage? Can you think about all the things you think about and you teach around longevity and nutrition and all that? It's the self management part of that that matters.

I would take it one step further. I mean, I think the self management on the emotional level might be the single most important of them all. To manage how you eat and exercise. Exercise, I think, is much easier than to manage your thoughts and your emotions in terms of how you interact with the world.

That's not true. Yesterday morning I had a negotiation. Someone flew in before I came to New York, and he was a pro. And the moment he sat down, I'm like, oh, this is going to be a good one. He was a master chess player. So I knew every time they asked something, he wasn't asking something. So you're constantly going, okay, what's the question behind the question? What is it that you're trying to angle? What is it you're trying to find? And good negotiation is when you can find currency that they value more than you do, and then you find a way to make it work for everybody. When someone is a very good negotiator and they're trying to do that, then you can almost play the inverse game. It's like, can you create an impression of something so that you can create value for something so that you can get something else? And then you're reading what they're doing, so it's really fun.

Do you teach this deliberately to your teams? Because I got to tell you, I don't think that reps alone are sufficient. In other words, you could put me into 100 deals to negotiate. I don't think I could ever extract the insights that you seem to extract. I think you're doing something at a meta level that few of us do, which is. It's what you said. It's not just seeing the movie. It's knowing what the movie means and knowing how to recreate pieces of the movie in subsequent movies. That's a totally different skill. I don't have it. I know that for a while.

To start, by the way, I don't think I'm great at. I think there's much better people. So this is a journey that there's always someone better than you. So I'm in this constant journey and want to get better out of all these aspects. So the moment you think I finished negotiations, discussions were like, oh, there was a pro at the table, and it wasn't me. That was a masterful event. It was happening. You kind of laugh, but when you're so attuned to it, Every interaction is a game of influence. With your kids, with your spouse, with everything else. And it's not a negotiation. Negotiation means someone wins, someone loses. You're constantly trying to influence with your thoughts, and then you're allowing other people to influence you.

What type of person do you run from in business?

Negative energy. Selfish.

What are the telltale signs of that? Because when that's obvious, those people usually don't even get in the door. What are the subtle signs of that?

Like, for us, pronouns really matter.

We versus I or yes, but it's.

The subtlety on when you say it. Are you taking the credit for things? So you may use the we, but it's all about you, right? So it's the next level of all of that. So how do you internalize things? I'm looking for people that are really ambitious for something bigger than themselves. And in that journey, they want to do well, they want to provide whatever it is. But it's much bigger if someone is interested in just one thing. I think we all have a competitive drive, for example. So when I look at people, I'm trying to understand, and this is a little bit what I'm trying to explore in the current podcast we're doing with all the super athletes, is what's driving your competitive spirit. And I've kind of honed it down. And again, I plagiarize this from somebody, so. But you're either driven by competing and killing a competitor. Think of Muhammad Ali or somebody, right? Like he needed to see the other person stand over them. You're driven by fear of failure. I just interview an erotic in the first episode of this podcast, and you can tell. He's like, listen, I was driven completely by fear. But what you see is the first person is a warrior. And the warrior, unless they evolve, they know they will lose the last battle, and therefore they quit. And you see it. And sometimes in boxing, they come back for one more, and that's when they lose. And when whatever, the person that is motivated by fear eventually taps out, out of exhaustion. And the more successful that they become, the harder they fall. They're like, I gotta run. And I see a lot of friends of mine who quit at 48, 50, 52, and they have all this gas in the tank. And I realize that many of them are driven by fear of failure, and they just don't want that. The value of success is so much less than the pain of failing that they can't take the trade anymore. The success became too significant. The third in where I'm like, really focused on is the people that love to compete because they just love to get better all the time. It's a race against themselves. One is a race against somebody. The other one is a race against fear. The other one is a race against yourself. And I find people that have that energy have a better balance about it and can run the longer race. And if you see people like, I know lots of guys that are in their 60s or 70s that are still refusing to let the old man or old woman in is because they're driven by the game, by getting better professionally.

How much of your energy is into your business versus your philanthropy? Not time, but energy.

It was 0% six years ago. It's probably 15% now. Going to go to 30, eventually will be 50.

What do you want to accomplish philanthropically that you have not yet accomplished and not just necessarily at scale? Is there a problem that you have not yet gone after because, A, you haven't acquired the knowledge, B, you haven't thought of the angle at which you can have the most leverage? But there's a problem that's nagging again.

Because there's no winning. You're just advancing something forward. I am very motivated by reversing a bunch of the trends in Puerto Rico. I'm not going to sell Puerto Rico. I may barely do anything, but I think I can do something to start reversing some of the trends. I think the bigger opportunity I see is how do companies become a force of good? How do business leaders see themselves and their responsibility to be a force of good in their communities? I think these platforms or businesses are so powerful, not just monetarily, but as engines of people and problem solving and access to opportunities, that I want us to become a bit of a beacon of, like, wow, you can be successful and be good at the same time, and they don't have to come against each other.

Do you think that public companies can do that? Is that part of your decision to stay private?

I just. I don't like authority, so I hate having a stock ticker on my head. So that's why I don't want to be public. But I think public companies today, this is a Milton Friedman Kind of challenge. And Simon talks about it in that book is shareholder at the center. That's changing. Look at what the business council just announced in the last couple of months. Hey, there's a bunch of stakeholders here. These are pendulums that swing when we get a fairly far left precedent in our country. A lot of this stuff may change. These are pendulums. This is not new.

What challenges you the most in your business today? You get a great challenge. You play basketball. It's still such a huge part of your life. You are so competitive with yourself in basketball. What are you trying to sharpen your sword in business? I mean, you talked a little bit about negotiation. Obviously I can sense in you this passion to be better and better and better at that and to understand the relationship and the dynamic. Because obviously the best negotiation is one. And when both people win, what other skills are you honing?

The answer you may not like, but I feel like I'm over my head right now. This is so much fun. I'm like trying to run the Matrix. We are in seven industries, from financial services to health care to entertainment. We're building a lot of tech. And I'm not a techie. And we're a techie company. We have 800 engineers and I'm not an engineer.

How many total employees right now?

3,200. We have 200 employees in London. We have 110 in Brazil or you got to know countries, you got to know markets. And most challenging is we grew organically for a long, long time, so we were almost like a culture of settlers. So you came through our system and we've done a number of acquisitions and now we become a culture of immigrants. And when your culture is your competitive advantage, which I think 100% it is. And you have added so much newness to it, you know, leading our way through it is really challenging. And I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm like Forrest Gump. I just show up every day, I give it a really all my effort and I can't get fired, which is good. And if it goes to zero, it goes to zero. I don't care.

Somehow I wouldn't bet on that.

No, for sure. I am 100% sure that if Red Ventures went to zero.

No, no, no, no. I'm not sure.

In 30 days I'll be super happy to go to zero. I'm found purpose in something else. None of this stuff really matters.

There are a few people who, who can say that with more certainty than you. But of course that's probably exactly why it doesn't happen. I'd certainly bet against it. If you go back to the morning of Thursday, January 15, 2009 and you could run into yourself as he's leaving his hotel, rushing to the airport, and you couldn't tell him what was going to happen, but you could say anything to him, what would you say?

Don't miss that flight. That was the most remarkable, remarkable gift I ever got and I feel bad. There's people that were on that flight that will never fly again. I know there are people on that flight that still can't sleep well, and I am really sorry for that. I'm really lucky that the way it landed in my system was it gave me urgency, gave me purpose, it gave me humility. It gave me a game to play, which is a game with no regrets.

Rick, I can't thank you enough. I don't know what I did deserve two hours of your time today, but you've given a great gift to a lot of people.

An honor to be here. You are one of a kind. I learn so much from you every time and thank you for being my friend.

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Sam.