How the CEO of 7-Eleven and Blockbuster Aims to Fix Education and Society
In this extensive interview, host Jared Goetz talks with former 7‑Eleven and Blockbuster CEO James Keys about the principles that have guided his career and his vision for societal change. Keys outlines a three‑pillar framework—Change, Confidence, and Clarity—that he says is essential for navigating corporate politics, making strategic decisions, and building personal momentum. He stresses that confidence stems from preparation, using anecdotes ranging from Tom Brady’s study habits to helicopter‑training lessons. He explains how he built his career by rotating through multiple functions, cultivating a personal brand, and maintaining top‑to‑top relationships when negotiating high‑level deals. Keys describes his “antenna” metaphor, staying in a receiving mode to spot opportunistic ideas, and how keeping promises to himself fuels confidence. He shares his recent book‑tour itinerary across the Middle East, where he promotes his book Education is Freedom and advocates for a radical overhaul of the U.S. public‑education system. He proposes an “internet of ed‑tech” that gamifies learning for the 55 million public‑school students, replaces outdated textbooks with interactive platforms, and uses micro‑scholarships to motivate achievement. The conversation moves to broader societal issues: the fear‑driven victimhood cycle amplified by social and network media, the widening wealth gap, and the role of education as the primary lever to close that gap. Keys critiques the current focus on fiscal austerity, arguing that real change requires leadership that can assemble the right people, balance proactive and reactive priorities, and apply corporate‑turnaround lessons to national debt and economic policy. He defends a globalist outlook, noting how American brands have spread worldwide and how technology makes the world smaller, arguing against protectionist impulses. Throughout, Keys emphasizes discipline—morning exercise, coffee, market scanning—and the importance of meditation and quiet time for decision‑making. He warns against over‑control, using a helicopter‑piloting story to illustrate the need for trust and intuition. Finally, he calls for a “JFK‑style” mission to rebuild education, positioning knowledge as the antidote to fear and urging individuals to take radical accountability for their lives. The interview blends personal anecdotes, strategic frameworks, and a bold societal vision, offering concrete ideas for entrepreneurs, educators, and policymakers alike.
Chapters
Step 1 for someone who wants to build confidence: prepare.
The other big challenge in today's society is that there's this whole narrative that you should quit your 9-to-5, you got to start your own thing.
I think there's a lot more judgment out there today. You could be on social media and you're getting judgment about what you should think or what you should feel or what you should look like.
An American businessman who is the chairman of Wild Oats Marketing, served as chief executive officer of 7-Eleven, and was the chairman and CEO of Blockbuster. James Keys.
Look, if you want to be an entrepreneur, be an entrepreneur, but check a couple of boxes.
Have to keep promises to yourself and not have crazy chatter in your mind that's blocking out opportunities. What's up, Zen Hard listeners? This episode is sponsored by Zendrop. Zendrop has a very special place in my heart, not only because I started the company, but because dropshipping is really a life-changing business for me. You see, I tried tons of things when I first got started, and what I love about dropshipping is that there's always an opportunity to sell a new product to a new person. There's billions of people and millions of products you can sell, and you never need to touch inventory. All you need to do is pick a product, run ads to it, and if people buy it, you make a profit. So if you're interested in getting started in your e-commerce journey, check out Zendrop.com and get started today. What's up guys? Welcome to the Zen Hard Podcast. In this episode, I'm interviewing James Keys, a otherwise known as Jim. He is the author of Education is Freedom, but aside from that, he was the former CEO of 7-Eleven and Blockbuster and shares a lot of his story and the things that he went through in those experiences, which honestly was extremely insightful for me, which means I know it'll be extremely insightful for you. So if you're here, stay tuned, listen in, and I hope you enjoy. And as someone who's like going down the You know, in the beginning of life, you're trying to gather things, material things, and you get material things and you're kind of navigating what's next. Yeah, you kind of go down the spiritual path one way or another. It becomes a question of like, can you fully go down that path or do you also need the mind? You need the analytical mind. And I think there's definitely some kind of balance, but I think most— like, wouldn't you agree most people are too much in their minds and not enough in their intuition or faith? Or what do you think?
Yeah, I do think, and both sides. I have friends that are are so much in their faith, which is a good thing, but they are— they take things so literally that they put reason aside. They just park it for now, and they just go with their faith. And, you know, as I was saying, this, this, um, this document from Pope John Paul II really surprised me because what he said was that, that the human requires this balance, right? And that too much of either is not good. And he described it— was really fascinating the way he described it. He said, think of faith and reason as two wings, and they're two wings that elevate the human spirit toward the truth. Man, I mean, that's— how, how perfect is that? If you think about it.
Yeah, because we're all looking for the truth.
We're all looking for the truth. And, and, and we can seek the truth the faith alone, or we can seek the truth with reason alone. But it's that balance that helps you truly find the truth.
Yeah, but what I think is missing most in society holistically, at least from what I see, right? And I'm— I don't see everything, I only see the things that I see— is that people are living too much in their minds and their egos, and they don't have that connection, or they don't have— and they think that they can grind their way and, you know, work their way into whatever it is they want, but they They don't change who they are, and that's why they stay down these same paths.
It's true.
Like, I think more of the other side needs to be discussed in society, that at least from what I'm seeing and feeling in the world lately.
It does. In fact, it was interesting when I wrote the book Education is Freedom, it was really targeted at that reason side. Let's, let's get people to really focus on learning and knowledge and stuff like that. But I have that balance. Yeah, I really believe firmly that education was the path for me to be able to accomplish all kinds of really interesting things, right? But it was also that balance of faith, and not necessarily in a religious sense, but the spiritual side that believes, that trusts, whether it's trust in yourself, trust in the universe to make things happen, you know.
How do you find that in times of— I mean, you've been— you went through crazy challenges with Blockbuster.
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it depends on your— the sort of brand of faith, if you will. So prayer works for me.
Yeah.
But meditation works as well. Um, just that quiet time to reflect and, you know, get inside of yourself, inside of your head, and bring calm and peace to yourself. Because in the midst of chaos, it's easy— it's easy to forget all of that and just be in the moment and be in the battle and forget about stepping back and realizing that this isn't the end of the world.
But you seem to have, I mean, from what I've read, you coined a term about how, I don't remember the exact term, but it's basically how that type of challenge is an opportunity for freedom or for change.
Yeah.
What was the exact term you coined again?
Yeah, I stumbled on this while I was writing the book and I was talking about the importance to a CEO of dealing with change, 'cause I had to deal with change at 7-Eleven every single day. We went through a financial crisis, Blockbuster, same thing. Get there to try to transform it in the middle of, uh, one of the world's worst financial crises.
Yeah.
So change is something that a CEO must adapt to. And so I coined the expression CEO change equals opportunity, right? And it, and it really does, right? And it applies to your life too. You can be, uh, basically what the sort of catchline was, be CEO of your life. Recognize when something even something bad happens, seemingly bad, seemingly bad. I mean, you could have sort of soul-crushing, devastating change that happens, the death of a, of a child or a parent, or really, really bad things. But on the other side of that crisis, often you'll find there's a silver lining, and there was a reason for all of this to happen, and you can grow from it.
Yeah, it's the challenging part is the time in between when that thing happens and when the silver lining comes. Yeah, it's Seeing through that time and being able to keep your head up.
And that's where, that's where this balance between faith and reason comes in, right? Because reason, your mind will tell you this is just wrong and make you a victim, right? There, you know, there is no God, how could they let this happen, that sort of thing. But the faith part says, you know what, maybe there's a reason for this, and I can't see it now. Because I'm in the middle of this thunderstorm, and when I pop out the other side, I'll see the rainbow, right, and realize, okay, I'm safe, and I went through that for a reason. There's something I learned from that experience.
So do you set aside like time to be, you know, be still or be silent, or like, do you have something in your day that you kind of make a non-negotiable, or—
No, I'm jealous of you. You actually have the discipline to do that, and you're talking about it in The Perfect Walk, right?
Yeah.
I, in contrast, get all caught up in day-to-day. I usually, um, I try to do it, um, either in the morning shortly after waking up or at night before going to sleep. But I, I don't have that discipline that I probably should.
I don't always have it either. I know I should do that stuff more often, but it's not like, uh, yeah, not a perfect discipline.
We all probably should. It's kind of like working out, you know. I try to do it 3, 4 times a week, but you know, there are those days you go, yeah.
So You're in— you're from a whole different realm than me, like, you know, as far as like your career path, right? I've went— I've started companies and started from the ground, and you went down the corporate route. But what's fascinating to me is— and maybe I have the perception wrong— but what's fascinating to me is that these— in the corporate world, there's, there's really only, you know, there's a C-suite, but there's thousands and hundreds of thousands of people.
Yeah.
How did you become CEO of, of, you know, 7-Eleven, Blockbuster? Like, how did— how does the corporate ladder work? I'm so curious.
It is a very different world, as you, as you recognized. Um, and I think what a lot of people miss is that an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. Now, you have to be a little bit different kind of entrepreneur in a corporate world, but you still must be an entrepreneur.
Right.
Corporations live or die on the ability to change, right? And if you're not an entrepreneur, you're not going to see the change, you're not going to adapt to the change, etc. So you have to— the problem is, I, I call it an oxymoron, um, corporate entrepreneur. Think about that, two words, you look them up in the dictionary, they're the opposite, right? One is the body, the whole working together, the other is entrepreneur, individual, out you know, seeking success on his own. But the two have to come together in a, in a, in a big company, or the company long term won't be successful. Yeah, if it's full of people who won't change, who are all conforming and fighting for the middle, then no one will ever take it to that next level for sure.
But there's so much politics in an organization. It's like everyone who joins a corporation wants to transcend the corporation. They want to— I would imagine not— maybe not everyone, but most people that are ambitious have aspirations to get to the top of an organization. Like, there's so many people and so many layers and so much politics and so many people that want to keep other people down so they can stay up. Like, how do you navigate that water? Or how did you navigate that water and end up in the position that you were in with 7-Eleven originally?
Yeah, it's, it's, it's treacherous. And, you know, I— it's not just in the corporate world. I saw this— I went— I took a summer job in my dad's shop, factory— not my dad's factory, but the factory that he worked in.
Yeah.
And he never wanted me to work there, but they paid pretty well. And I thought, for summer job, maybe I'll just go see what he had to deal with.
Yeah.
And I saw the same thing. I saw an environment where people were at each other's throats. And, and you think, wow, how does that happen in a blue-collar world?
Yeah.
But when I was on a machine and I was working too hard, people would come to me and say, stop, you know.
Right.
You screwed it up for the rest.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, and that's that same thing that happens in the corporate world, is that conformity.
Yeah.
People fighting for mediocrity. Right. Um, so it's real and it happens. It, it happens in As I reflected on it, it happened in grade school, right? You raise your hand, right?
People don't want you to be too smart.
No, exactly. Yeah, people are pushing you. Yeah, the norm pushes you toward conformity, and that's why being an entrepreneur, you get to bypass all that. So recognizing that that's the nature of people, yeah, it's just gonna happen. Yeah, that means you as an individual, if you really want to be an entrepreneur in that environment, in grade school in, uh, in the factory or in the corporate world, you have to have what I call 3 things. I call them— they're my gift. Um, one is recognizing that change is going to happen. Yep. There's nothing you can do about it. So if you're in a factory, it might be— sorry, I got the frogs working today. You guys can edit this, right?
Yeah, we'll edit out the frogs.
Yep. So that change in altitude. Yeah, all good. So if you're in the, in the, um, that environment in a factory, it may be that, you know, your, your shift was changed.
Yeah.
It may be that, uh, the factory has to close or layoffs.
Machineries.
Machinery. Yeah. If you deal with that in a negative fashion, you then you're probably going to be next on the block, right? If you keep your head up, work harder, and say, we'll get through this, I want to be the outlier, I want to succeed, you'll make it. And so that same attitude, the ability to embrace change and recognize that it's not personal, it just is what it is, and keep your head up— it's your response to change that really matters. So that's the first.
Yep.
The second is, even if you say, okay, I got it. Change, change happens. I'll deal with it. How many of us have the confidence to do that?
Not especially people that haven't necessarily done it before.
Exactly. That's when that little person on your shoulder that says, yeah, not that smart, who do you think you are? And that's self-defeating. That's us. That's just fear. And it's irrational fear because it's not necessary. Most of us are good enough to be able to do it. So that's the second, having the confidence to be able to do something about that change and to keep that positive attitude. And then the third is, I call it clarity because you've got to have the ability to understand your fellow workers, to really listen to them. And that's often a shortcoming. We don't, right? We're working on our answer before we even hear the question.
Right.
And so that ability to listen— so I call it clarity, but the clarity inbound and outbound, the ability to articulate what you want and what you're trying to accomplish clearly, simply. We overcomplicate the heck out of everything, right? So those are the 3 things that I really credit all of the success I've had in my career and the ability to weather those political storms in the corporate world, to Change, confidence, and clarity. Those 3 things.
I want to double-click into the confidence part, but, but first on the clarity part, like as a leader of an organization, when someone solves a problem and they figure out a set, like we'll look at problems and most people will overcomplicate them and they'll, they'll figure out a really complex, long, hard, expensive path to get to an end result. Yeah. And the people that really make the moves in the organization figure out How do you take this whole complex thing and figure out one simple move, take it to the next, something cheap, simple, quick that can get you there? And like, I think that goes— I don't know why certain people have that and other people don't. Do you think it comes from the confidence, or do you think it comes from the quiet mind? Where does the— where does the clarity come from?
I think all three are related. Yeah, I, I think that, you know, change tends to cause us to overcomplicate things. We see it we see the change as far worse than it usually is, right? Um, the lack of confidence contributes to it because if we don't really understand something, we muddle in it and make it even worse. We overcomplicate it, right? Or we see it as way more complicated than it is. And then that clarity piece, that ability to truly listen and understand your surroundings— if you're so busy defending yourself, being the victim, having your head down, yeah, it's going to seem like it's an insurmountable problem, right? You won't— you will overcomplicate it, right? But I took a lesson from, um, actually I put a whole chapter in the book about, about complexity, and I, I started with a quote from Einstein who said, if you, if you can't understand something well enough to explain it to a 6-year-old, then you don't understand, right? And that's so true.
Yeah, that's— that is very true. So how would you explain to a 6-year-old how to build confidence?
I would tell them that—
it's a good question.
It's a great question. I'd point to them, uh, first things that are in their orbit. So I'd talk about, um, um, Mahomes and, uh, how he has confidence when he steps on the field. Um, or Tom Brady. You know, they may be too young for—
I saw Tom Brady in a video with Bryson DeChambeau on a driving contest. And Tom Brady had so much confidence he was going to win.
Yeah.
Against Bryson DeChambeau. It's like, yeah, where did that come from? But yeah, great example of someone's confidence.
So I don't know for sure if he did this, but my guess is Tom Brady was smart enough to go practice. Oh yeah.
Because when he— I watched the video, the guy was hitting the ball 340 yards. Yeah. Which, you're a golfer.
Yeah.
Tom Brady hits the ball 340 yards. Incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. But somebody taught him how to do that.
Yeah.
He didn't just stand up there at the driving range and go, you know, hey, I think I can do this. So, and that's the secret. It's, it's preparation gives you confidence. So in the case of Tom Brady, when he'd walk on the field or when, uh, any great football player walks on the field, most of the time they're, they're some of the hardest workers on the team, right? Brady was an example of that. He'd sit there watching game tapes over and over and over, even after a victory, everybody else was out partying, right? He's watching the game tapes for next week. And when he walks on the field, now he's got confidence. So step one for someone who wants to build confidence: prepare. Yeah, you know, if you're, if you're in school and you walk into a test and you didn't do your homework, you're screwed, right? Of course you're gonna have no confidence. But if you really worked at it and truly put in the time, then you'll have the confidence and you'll probably do well.
Now, do you think— so for example, like if someone's in a corporate business, right, and they have a role, and there's only so much they can prepare for in that role. Do you think that them preparing in their own life outside of work, whether it's through working out or training for a marathon or doing something that they have to control their impulses, do you think that leads to confidence in the workplace?
I do. I think it's, it's way more than just studying or preparation. I think there's a whole package, and I talk about it more or less as a roadmap in the book. That it's a combination of change, confidence, clarity, yes, but curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, the ability to really get inside of, of issues so that when you do walk into that boardroom, you understand, you have a better understanding what it is. But there's also this other balance that you and I talked about, that sort of belief in yourself or in a greater, uh, force, right? Uh, I use, I use Yoda when I talk about this, but when Yoda was teaching Luke, um, it wasn't just teaching him the lightsaber. Yes, there was knowledge. He had to learn how to use the lightsaber, right? But he also pointed to Luke that, that ignorance is the dark side, right? Because it leads to fear, right? And he, and he pointed out that it's not just your knowledge of the lightsaber, it's the Force, right? What's the Force?
That's the, the other side of the— that's the side opposite of the mind.
Exactly. It's that balance.
Something was talking about the faith, the soul, the intuition.
Exactly. Yoda said it better than I could ever say. May the Force be with you.
So wise by Yoda.
Yeah, it's true. But you gotta believe. You've just gotta believe. So, so yes, that combination of knowledge and faith, or the Force if you will, I mean, you can accomplish anything. Yeah, that was the whole theme of Star Wars. It doesn't matter how insurmountable the challenge may be.
So far, I never watched Star Wars growing up, and then I recently— I think like a few months ago, my wife and I were bored on a weekend. I was like, we should watch Star Wars. And she's like, nah, like, let's just pop it on. And I understood what he was talking about with the Force. Like, yeah, it was actually very wise.
It was very wise. But most people don't equate it to something that we can do.
Yeah, we can tap into.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I literally, um, I was learning how to fly a helicopter. You'll love this one. So I was a fixed-wing pilot from the time I was a kid. I wanted to learn how to fly. And then at one point in my life, I didn't have an airplane, and I, and, and I said, geez, you know, maybe I should learn something new. So I always wanted to fly helicopters. Man, it's so different. You'd think it'd be the same, right? But it's 3 axes. Yeah. You got your feet on the rudder. You've got one hand on the cyclic, another hand. Yeah, I mean, you're just all three hands.
You're going up, down, left, right, forward, back.
Three axes, yeah. And the hardest thing about flying a helicopter, when you're flying it, it's not too bad. You've got a stick like an airplane. You got rudders. Okay, I got this. And then the up and down thing, I can do that. And going in a straight line, not too bad. Then you try to hover.
Oh, hovering's hard.
Hovering's impossible. Yeah. First time you do it, it's like, ah, you're all over the place. And the helicopter's scaring you. Instructor to death. And then, um, and, and a lot of people really struggle for the first 2 or 3 hours trying to hover. And finally one day my, my instructor said, um, do you ever watch Star Wars? I was like, yeah. He goes, let the Force fly the airplane. I'm like, what? And he said, you're over-controlling the airplane. Just feel it, believe it, believe in yourself. You can do this.
Yeah.
And literally I mean, within 5 minutes I stopped over-controlling. Yeah, the aircraft. And I, I just kind of felt it.
Yeah.
And it was, it was that, that aha moment that allowed me to get my helicopter rating because now I could hover.
It's the same thing in, in golf when you're overthinking and you're, you're trying to be too mechanical and you can't hit the ball straight, and then you get to a state of thoughtlessness and you just become athletic and you just react and you just swing.
Yeah, the ball goes straight. Exactly.
And that happens in life.
Absolutely. I saw a, uh, there's a famous British, uh, violinist that was teaching some kids in Dallas, this program that I had called Young Strings that I helped to start. And she's teaching this, this young per— young man violin. He sounded horrible. He's like, you know, and he's, and he's playing by the notes strictly. She walked up to him, pushed his, his podium away. Yeah, I thought, oh man, this kid's toast now. He's really gonna be in trouble. She goes, no, no, no, just play. Yeah. And without the music, the kid stepped up and it— I mean, wow, unbelievable.
He got it. It's a flow state.
It's a flow state. Yeah, but I do— he had to believe in himself.
I think in— and this is a big reason why I like to have these conversations or talk about these things, like Again, I have a limited perspective, been on this earth for 34 years. Maybe everyone feels this way as they're getting older, but I look at society and it feels like it's, it's more and more challenging to tap into a flow state because there's more and more things that pull you away from it. There's more and more things that feed your impulsive mind. I think the impulsive mind is the opposite of a flow state. It's like, do it— is it just me that feel— do you feel the same way?
I think it's true, and I think there's a lot more judgment out there today, you know. So you could be on social media and you're getting judgment about what you should think or what you should feel or what you should look like. Yeah, if you're a little girl, and that judgment is, is what triggers that fear. It comes back to those same things, right? It's gonna be changed, it's gonna happen, you're gonna change, you're gonna get older, you know, taller, different looking, your voice is gonna change. And, and the question is, how do you deal with it? Do you deal with it with confidence? So like golf, like flying helicopter, painting a picture, music. You got to block out that noise.
Yeah.
And it doesn't really matter what anybody thinks.
Yeah.
Especially if you're doing it because you want to do it. Yeah. I think that—
but the noise is so addictive.
It is.
Like social media specifically. Yeah. It's accessible at any moment. It's always there. It's always exciting. It's always new. It can always feed the craving that, that, that fuels that fear. So I think it's more important than ever now to, to be aware of these things and intentionally block them out, intentionally set aside space and, you know, to be alone or go on a walk or do whatever you do. It is. I think it's more important now than it was 20 years ago because 20 years ago you can watch the TV, they can read a newspaper, but you didn't have something consistently available at your fingertips.
Yeah, it's like a fire hose of information now.
But I also think that gives people an advantage in the corporate world because everyone is, is being, you know, is being fed this inputs that give them fear, that make them not have the confidence, that make them not shine or see the clarity. So if you could be the person that, that can block that stuff out and get into that flow state, you probably have an opportunity to kind of ride the wave.
You have a huge opportunity. And it's, it's, it's back to that. You have to be an entrepreneur. And to be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to block out all that noise and say, look, I'm, I'm going to give it my best, and if my best isn't good enough, then maybe I'm in the wrong place. Yeah, and that's fine, but I'm going to give it my best, and I'm not going to worry about all that other noise that's around me.
So I, I read your, um, I read an interview where you talked about what your career and what led you to being the CEO of 7-Eleven, but were there any moments or stories that like were the game changers for you? Like, how did you get to that position out of— by the way, how many employees were there at the time? 400,000 or 400,000. And there was one CEO.
Yeah. So that was just domestic.
That didn't include, you know, international operations, licensing, hundreds of thousands, maybe close to a million people. And there's one— like, in my opinion, it's harder to do that. That's like winning the lottery, right? Or it's harder than starting a business because businesses you can start and you can fail and you could try again. You could start, you could fail. Until something works. Yeah, but you become 1 in a million or 1 in 500,000, whatever it is. How did you do that?
I learned how to learn because literally I discovered that the more I learn, the more I can do. We tend to specialize so early. We're pushing our kids. What do you want to be when they're like 10 years old?
Yeah, they—
I didn't have any idea what I wanted to be because I had no worldview at that point.
Right.
So, um, I decided I was going to learn as much about as much as I could. So when I got into the corporate world, people tend to have a specialty. So they're an accountant and that's, that's the channel they stay in, right? Uh, they're a marketing person and they get tagged as that. I constantly throughout my career rejected those, those boxes that people would try to put me in, right? And when I'd get stuck in one So let's say I was in corporate planning and now I'm a finance guy. I would at some point say, I'm ready for a move, let me take a job in operations.
Yeah.
And even if it was less pay— and this is where people, again, you have to have confidence to be able to take a lower, lesser role, but it was an opportunity to learn. And so by the time I got to be in my mid-40s, it was you know, a succession planning time. Well, I had been in every chair, right, you could have.
And you showed value to many other creative value. Yeah, like people from different angles of the organization saw you as someone that they— when they thought of a problem, they thought of you as a solution guy. Yeah, which would lead you into those rooms and those opportunities to continue moving up.
Exactly, exactly. And, and it, and it was a matter of having had experience in all of those different chairs, right? Um, that any step along the way was hard. I had people constantly, as you said, there's corporate politics, trying to take your legs out, trying to, you know, say you're an idiot, you don't know how to do the job, all that kind of stuff. But I learned from every one of those opportunities. And then it got to the point where it was almost inevitable that, what are we going to do, go to the outside, or do we take Jim? He's a little young.
Yeah.
But he's, he's got more knowledge about more elements of the company than anybody else.
So who was— who were the people that chose you? Was it the board? Yeah. And how did you get entered into the pool of candidates to be chosen?
You just make yourself indispensable, right? Ultimately, it's, you know, people forget we're like products. Yeah, right. We have a brand. It's not written on us, but our appearance is part of our brand. I recognize that. Casual Friday, people come in, you know, sometimes— now, this is back in the day— I would even still wear a tie on Casual Friday because I was working on my brand, right? I wanted to look like the guys in the front office, right? I didn't want to look like, you know, just somebody who shows up every once in a while, right? And, uh, and then internally, your brand is: can they trust you? Do you have integrity? Do you have humility? Do you have gratitude? Are you willing to learn? All of those elements of character go into your brand. So it's just like a product, it's about differentiation.
Yeah.
Now differentiate yourself.
If you were, you know, let's say it was like 30 years ago and you were starting your career in another organization, like how much of the climbing was there was luck versus— can you, could you do it again? Do you think so?
Yeah, I think I could. I, I, there, there is an element of luck. I mean, let me contrast the two situations. Let's say 7-Eleven versus Blockbuster. Now that's not a climbing the, the ladder, right? But 7-Eleven today has 80,000 stores. Blockbuster has like one or none.
Yeah, one left just for the brand.
So what happened? I'm the same guy, same opportunity. Um, you might think they're different industries, but Blockbuster was convenient access to media entertainment, right? It's convenience. Yeah, it's not, not that different. The difference was at 7-Eleven, we went through a Chapter 11 restructuring, came out on the other side, and I had the opportunity to lead the company on the other side, right? Weathered the storm, took it to a new level, and then we sold it, right? At Blockbuster, the timing was such that ran into the financial crisis of 2008, took it through a restructuring. The partners I sold it to, Dish Network, wanted to do their own thing. They had a different vision for where to take the streaming business, and I didn't get a chance to take it to that next level, right? That, you know, call it luck of the draw. I wish I could have and would have stayed, right? But it didn't work out.
But you got into the position you were in in Blockbuster because of the things you had done at 7-Eleven, and people saw, you know, you took the company through the problems it had, you saw it to the other side, you were the guy to do the job.
Exactly.
But if you were to start fresh in a new organization, you had no name, no reputation.
Yeah.
Could you work your way up to being in the top 5 people or 10 people in the organization?
I believe I could because of exactly what you said. Most people want the job, but they don't want to put in the work to do it.
Right.
And I— now that I recognize that, I think I've got the roadmap to be able to say, okay, here's what I have to do. Yeah, I have to differentiate myself. I have to work a little harder than everybody else. It's just part of the, part of the deal. But I also have to learn. And so in every role, I'm gonna have to learn that role. I make myself invaluable to the company at some point.
The other big challenge in today's society is that there's this whole narrative that you should quit your 9-to-5, you got to start your own thing, like getting a job is for losers. Like, yeah, there's that, that kind of notion in the air of social media that people are also facing. Adversity for them to stick on their path.
I'm, I'm worried about that. There's an extension of that too, that you don't even need a degree anymore, just, you know, go straight into a vocation or whatever. Just go be a social media influencer, which is, which is great, and some people are going to be super successful, right? I mean, now that I'm in the social media world, I got a lot of friends that have done extraordinarily well, and they'll be fine. Yeah, but to some extent, this is like Michael Jordan being out saying, don't worry, just go play basketball, you'll be fine.
Exactly.
Not everybody can do this.
Right?
I mean, not everybody's an entrepreneur. Not everybody has the personality to be a, right, a social media influencer, star, whatever. Uh, so the, the odds of success, I think, are, are very limited. So my advice to young people is, look, if you want to be an entrepreneur, be an entrepreneur, but check a couple of boxes.
Yeah, check the degree box necessarily.
Yeah, well, check the degree box so you have an ability to pivot.
Yeah.
If you wash out as an entrepreneur, there's always the corporate world.
Yeah.
Maybe check the corporate world box because it's easier to be an entrepreneur once you make a little money.
Yeah. And you'll learn something too and meet some people and have, you know, a network and some confidence that you can bring to whatever you're doing.
Exactly.
Or see a problem that you can solve that you wouldn't have known existed had you not went down that path.
Exactly.
That's why I was excited for this conversation too, because most people listening to this listen to other entrepreneurs and they're all, I want to do this. You know, the people in my organization and we're much smaller than the organizations you were part of that are in the C-level of the company. Like one of the guys was in sales and he was doing a great job in sales, making a lot of money, and then saw that customers weren't getting the best experience, got his hands dirty, took a huge pay cut, fixed all that, built that organization. You know, next thing you know, a few years later, he's the CEO of the company. He has a bunch of equity, made a lot of money. And it's because he got his hands dirty and he did the diligence. You know, our president was, you know, finance guy, M&A guy, then, then got his hands dirty in marketing, puts in the hours, learns, tries hard. And these are the people that when I think of a problem, I think of these are the guys to solve it. And I think that happens at large organizations as well.
Sure.
It's probably more challenging to navigate more people and more layers. But you can still shine. I think there's a good opportunity to shine in the corporate world.
Absolutely. And, and here's the way— for what it's worth, this is the path I was on. I was going to stay in the corporate world— this was my criteria— as long as I was learning and growing.
Yeah.
Because I knew I'd be able to apply those tools to being an entrepreneur at some point. Now, if I stopped learning, then it was time to leave, right, and go do my own thing. But as long as I was learning and succeeding in that environment, then I was fine, right? So that's, that's kind of the way I looked at it. As long as you're learning It— even as an entrepreneur, if you start down that entrepreneur path, as long as you're growing, keep going. Yeah, you know.
Yeah, I mean, life is about growth at the end of the day. Yeah, really nothing else to it.
Exactly.
It's experiences that make you grow, that make you understand more about life, and you, you can get that from any path you choose in your career.
Exactly. So the whole, the whole focus of the book— it sounds like it's a book about school because education is freedom.
Yeah.
Now what it really is, is the more you learn, the more you can do.
Right.
And it's kind of a roadmap to— here's all those meta skills, if you will, that they don't teach you in school that are elements of learning. You know, like for example, creativity. People, people think, well, I don't have to— I don't have to be creative, I'm a technical person. Yeah, creativity comes into the technical side too, 100%. And if you have the courage to get out there and learn how to paint or play music or something, it actually exercises that other side of your brain, and you can become better at your technical skills because of that creativity.
Yeah. Now, how many— I know you, you joined the Blockbuster organization when they were trying to kind of get into the digital age. There was a lot of debt on the balance sheet, facing lots of adversity to try to beat the ticking time of the money going out to get to that next level. How many years were you in that kind of area? I don't know what you call it, but a stressful time when you're trying to turn things around. Like, how long were you in that for?
I, I wasn't for very long. I joined the company in '07 and the whole world fell apart in '08. Yeah, so 12 months. Okay, basically my, uh, tenure. I know if you, you know, Google me, you'll find, oh, he's the guy that turned down Netflix. Now that happened in 2007. Yeah, 7 years before I got there. And, oh, he's the guy that screwed up Blockbuster. No, I didn't have time to screw it up. It was all right. They had a Pretty good start on that. But, um, the, the challenge we faced was not streaming. Streaming was ironically— Blockbuster was way ahead of its time in streaming. So my predecessors had a deal with Enron, of all companies, but Enron and Blockbuster put together one of the first streaming exercises. Now this is way before Wi-Fi bandwidth was even capable, right? Streaming. But they saw it coming, right? And they had previously made a transition from VHS to DVDs, so it wasn't that the company was unable to pivot, right? They were— Enron was a little before its time. When we got into the fray with Netflix, they were still doing DVDs by mail when I came, right? So it's not like that was streaming, right? Um, and I didn't see competing with Netflix at that time for the DVD-by-mail customer to be as critical as taking on streaming capabilities. So the first move we made was to buy a streaming company, right, called MovieLink, right? And, uh, we were well on our way to having a pretty good competitive advantage. I think if Reed was in here— Reed Hastings was in here on the, the, the podcast today— he'd be saying, yeah, we dodged the bullet several times. Yeah, because Blockbuster really did have an advantage, right? But we also had a billion dollars of debt, right?
You guys were overleveraged and then went into a financial crisis and way overleveraged.
Yeah, yeah. And it was due in '09. And it's nobody's fault. That debt was put on the company in '04.
Yeah.
When they did it on plan. Yeah, they did. Well, they did an IPO, right? Spun out of Viacom, right? Put on a billion dollars of debt. Perfectly reasonable. But in '04, that interest rate was pretty reasonable.
Yeah.
In 2008, all of a sudden we went from 5-6% to 12%.
Yeah. Which is a huge difference in payment every month that you got to make.
Huge difference. And 5— do the math— 5 years from '04 is 2009. A third of it was due in '09.
Yeah.
And the banks were shot. So yeah, we had 2 sets of handcuffs and a cinder block tied to our, to our ankles.
Were you like a last resort, though, or was before the crisis started when you came in?
I got there before the crisis. Yeah, we were high-fiving because we had now really completed the, the program called Total Access, which was stores, by mail, kiosks, and streaming.
So convenience—
we had the whole enchilada.
Yes, we brought the convenience.
Yeah, we, we, we, we owned that convenient access to media entertainment at that stage, right? And then in the third quarter of '08, Lehman Brothers melted. Rumors started about Blockbuster filing for bankruptcy, and then it became almost a run on the bank when the studios panicked and they pulled our credit terms. That created. Wow. An impossible crisis.
Yeah. You know, it's crazy because the potential value of Blockbuster with all the things you were doing had to have been in the, you know, in the many billions, tens, possibly hundreds. I don't know what Netflix market cap is now. It's probably $100 billion plus. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure it's high.
Yeah.
And didn't the company end up selling for like $380 million?
Yeah, we took it through a restructuring, sold it to Dish. Yeah. For $300 million.
Nobody wanted to finance it to get it to that next step.
People didn't have the vision for what it could be. They really didn't. They, um, they just believed that the company was handicapped because of all its stores. The stores weren't a problem. Most of them were evergreen leases, right? Year to year, right? Shut the stores down, have streaming. The unknown at the time, and this is what everybody forgets, is Wi-Fi bandwidth was terrible, right, in the year 2000. 2009. Yeah, buffering, really bad experience. What no one knew, and the reason no one would invest at that point, is how long will it take. See, Netflix had DVDs by mail, they just keep that going for as long as they needed to, right? Pivot into streaming. We had stores that people saw as a boat anchor, right? And they really weren't, but people didn't— yeah, I didn't have that imagination to stay with it.
So it's really so much timing. It's like, so in that circumstance where, where the timing was off and like getting toward the end where you guys are, hey, we're going to have to do this restructuring, we have to file Chapter 11, were there individuals that were very personally and emotionally attached to this? Or was it since it was a big company, people were kind of like, you know, we're doing our best.
I know there is, there is. You mentioned before the, the personalities that come out, the the politics, the hidden agendas, the open agendas. It was quite challenging just managing the dynamic around it. And I'm going to give you an example. This is actually a pretty funny story. You know, there are activist investors out there because when you're a public company— and by the way, my plan was to take it private in '07. Had we done that, never would have skipped a beat. We would have made it right through the financial crisis because we would have restructured all the debt in 2007. We chose not to. The board talked me into keeping a public company. But at some point, we had all these people on the outside, of course, looking in saying, well, we know what's wrong with Blockbuster. So we had an activist investor bought a whole bunch of stock, forced his way onto the board. He's sitting in the board, and in his first board meeting, we went through the financials for the first time. Now we're public company, so he's now an insider. He gets to see the real situation. Yeah, studios had just pulled our credit terms. Now, uh, we— they sucked $300 million of float right out of the business, right, almost overnight. And he learned that, and he learned the current situation, financial situation of the company, and he basically excused himself and went through, through Well, he put a lot of his money into it, put a lot of his own money in, because from the outside looking in, it was an easy fix. It was like, oh, just go streaming, right? This is easy, right? Simple. And it is a far more complex problem. You know, it's not unlike where we're facing— what we're facing with the government now. When you have trillions of dollars of debt, you don't just wave a magic wand and go, okay, it's gonna— it's gonna go away, right? You have to have a methodical plan to to, to, to work that debt down, and it takes some time. And looking in from the outside, that's what people were missing with Blockbuster. They just saw the operations of the business, said, this is simple, just go streaming, shut all the stores, right? Yeah, well, we got this.
Now, what happens to a guy like— a guy like that who buys all these shares? Well, first of all, first question, he lost a lot of money.
Yeah.
Um, can anyone go buy a certain number of shares in a public company and be Yeah, part of the board. You have to be—
well, no, yeah, you have to sort of force your way in by being an activist.
Gotcha. Okay.
And, and some people make a career out of it. The Carl Icahns of the world, who was also on my board, um, had a different— Carl had a different perspective on what to do. His vision was when the financial markets collapsed, he had been on the board for a while, he knew intimately the financial situation. So he said, just, let's kill it, put a gun to its head and file it and, um, you know, move on.
Yeah.
Um, I had not been with the company that long, and I was also engaged in conversations with Google, with, um, uh, Dish Networks, with AT&T for strategic partnerships that would have helped us solve the debt.
Yeah.
Balance. Um, but he made a choice. He said, I'm going to go left, Jim. You can go right if you want, but that's fine. We chose to go different directions, and by staying the course, we were successful. The guys who were trying to push us into bankruptcy, um, were not successful, right? We were able to find a strategic partner and restructure the company, right? Now what everybody forgets then is that Dish Network ultimately decided to shut down the stores and shelved the brand.
Right.
But that was for a completely different strategic reason. Right. On their part.
That makes sense. But going back to individuals that, that, you know, buy shares, they get into the inner knowings of the businesses. Are they then like— is there limitations on what they can do with their shares because they have inside information?
Yeah. Once you— once you become an insider, once you do buy the shares and you now are part of the formal process, then you can't trade anymore, right? You can't trade anymore, right?
That's a huge risk.
Yeah. Oh no, it's a, it's a huge—
it's pretty much an all-or-nothing bet.
Pretty much, yeah.
So that would be—
man, a lot of people are successful with it, but they, they, they also— most people have a plan B. They'll go in like Carl is a master. Um, uh, Carl Icahn, you had, uh, T. Boone Pickens. These guys were masters at it, and they would go in with a Plan A, that here's what I think this company needs to get back on its feet, and they'd aggressively pursue that. But they also had a Plan B. If that doesn't work, here's my fallback. I'm not going to lose— I'm not going to bet the farm and lose, right?
So their bet is that if I get involved with this, the share price is going to go up.
Yeah, to some extent. Yeah. And a guy like Carl can generally pull it off because he has so much knowledge, uh, and so many— so much depth of industry relationships that he can bring others to the table to help. And, and believe me, Carl was a great partner, uh, for a long time. When I, when I first joined, it was in partnership with Carl that here's what we're going to do: we're going to buy this streaming capability, we're going to grow this thing. He only gave up when he saw the financial markets collapse, right? I just thought that would be a more expedient path. Yeah, probably would have been. Yeah, more expedient path. I just felt running a public company, you also have an obligation to all shareholders, right?
Of course.
And stakeholders and 20,000 employees, etc., etc., at the time.
So the brand is still shelved by Dish.
Yeah.
Still in any conversations about what they're going to do with that stuff?
I, I don't know. I've, I've, I've had some informal conversations. Um, I, I know they've been offered a lot of money to sell it and they're not selling it. I wouldn't be surprised one day if they brought it back I still think there's a big opportunity. That was a huge opportunity. We have no aggregator. That's what Blockbuster was, and that's what we were trying to do.
Yeah.
Uh, in other words, Netflix is just— I mean, I don't say— I shouldn't say just. I give them a lot of credit for what they built, but they were primarily old movies, and then they started creating their own content, right? Because they don't have access to the new releases, right?
Um, why is— why is that? Why wouldn't new releases give them access?
Well, it's the nature of the model. This think of the subscription model as the all-you-can-eat buffet, right? Right. You're not gonna find prime rib and New York strip, right, in the all-you-can-eat buffet. You're gonna have to pay à la carte at a restaurant for that.
Yeah.
And so if a studio spends $500 million on the next Top Gun, they're not gonna just dump it into the all-you-can-eat buffet for $19.99 a month.
Why wouldn't they offer it as an upsell? I mean, you already have the credit cards on file, the users.
I— maybe Amazon won. I mean, maybe Amazon does.
Yeah, Amazon does.
Yeah, maybe Netflix will one day, but it's— so far they've, they've adhered rigidly to that, their model.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
That's what was the big strategic difference with Blockbuster. We could have been both. That was what we intended to do. MovieLink was à la carte. We had 3,000 new releases.
Yeah.
And by the way, that's— that was historically, that was 80% of Blockbuster's business was in new releases, right? It was a very valuable thing for the studios to use that rental window. Um, so we believed that that combo deal— a subscription for the older movies, kids watch all the cartoons they want, all the older movies they want, and à la carte for the new releases— we thought that that was a better model for the long term.
Yeah, seems like what Amazon's doing at this point.
Yeah. Exactly.
So how does the all-you-can-eat model work for the older movies? Are they getting paid based on when people view it and the data is being shared with them, or is it they get a piece of the whole pie?
Like, how does the studios or Netflix—
the studios—
oh, the studios. Yeah, they, they get— basically they sell blocks for one set price. So for example, uh, Blockbuster had a chance, and this is one of those things that no one will ever know because it was all confidential at the time. We had a chance, and this is one of those decisions I wish I could have back, to— when we shortly after acquiring MovieLink, we could have locked in 60% of all the old movies. And the other 40%, by the way, was Disney and HBO, right? We weren't going to get access, right? But 60% of the old movies were available. We would have had to pay $100 million a year. So today it didn't sound like that much money. Yeah, but when Blockbuster was— had EBITDA, cash flow of $250 million, yeah, say a big chunk of it, it was a big chunk of it. That was a big roll of the dice, and no one knew how long it would take for streaming to be strong enough to monetize.
Yeah, looking back, it all sounds so obvious, but in the moment it's like you can't— you can't see what the future looks like.
Exactly. So the board said Oh man, $100 million a year. It may take us 10 years before Wi-Fi— and this is 2007. By 2017, Wi-Fi was pretty much strong enough. Yeah, it could have taken us 10 years. That would have been a billion dollars that we would have burned waiting until we could actually monetize it. Yeah, now it happened a little faster, probably because Blockbuster went away. That accelerated streaming. And, um, but that was, that was an opportunity we had. So that, that would have, for example, if we paid $100 million a year, then we would have had all those movies, could have streamed them all day long. And the more subscribers we had for that, that's all we had to do is pay the studios.
Yeah. So any viewer of any of those, you could have gotten a huge market share of streaming.
Exactly.
$400 million a year.
Wow. Exactly.
It's just crazy that like when you're in something and the fears and uncertainties creep in, like, the path that can happen becomes so unclear. And it's like, I mean, from my experience, many things— like, I've been in challenges so many times, I'm like, I don't know how this is gonna be fixed. Like, I have no idea. And then you look back like a year later and you're like, wow, this worked out great.
It worked out most of the time.
It does.
Yeah, it does. But it's business. Business is all about risk and reward. You take risks. Netflix, um, was kind of at one point on the ropes. I mean, they were, they were struggling. They weren't making enough on the subscription, on the subscribers. I think they were $9.99 a month or something at that point, and they weren't making enough to be able to continue to acquire content, right? And so they had to do something. They had to pivot. So they, they raised their prices a little bit. They were really getting slammed. They were losing subscribers. And they went out and, um, Ted Sarandos, the, uh, now co-CEO, put a bet on House of Cards.
Hmm.
$100 million.
Wow. Yeah.
So here I was talking about $100 million a year for all the movies, for all the movies. They put $100 million down, one TV show. No one's— no one binge-watched anything at that point.
Wow.
No one knew if this show with Kevin Spacey was gonna do anything.
Yeah.
And it took off. It was a huge hit. It was a huge home run. So that was a good bet. Yeah. Talk about risk and reward. I'm not sure I would have made that bet.
Do you think they have a formula that they use for shows now? Because they— now they become so binge-y.
Yeah.
Like any show you watch now becomes so binge-y. Is there a formula that they use to create shows, like a structural framework? And then the creative people come in and fill in the blanks, or—
I'm, I'm sure they do, but I, I think they're just really good at understanding the viewers. Yeah, they've become very, very good at that.
Yeah.
And Reed has a terrific team over there that does this.
Yeah.
So I, like I said, I have huge respect for what they've accomplished. Now, I also worry about them. Yeah, frankly, because, um, they pivoted from— they were in the distribution business, right? That's what we were in. We're not in the distribution business anymore. They're like MGM Grand, right? They're making movies, right? And making content, right? That is an artistic process that, you know, we've seen a lot of the art side of this come and go as people get into a, you know, a drought, and they're, they're just not hitting on the, on the, on the successful hits. And the bigger you get, the harder it is to have that closeness to that Yeah, viewer, right? Really understand them.
Yeah, for sure.
Who knows? Um, so how— I think that'll be their challenge.
How is it that no one has consolidated the streaming market yet? Why are there 3, 4, 5 big players in it still?
It's shocking for me because it is not convenient access to media entertainment.
Yeah, it's inconvenient.
During the holidays, family wanted to watch, you know, a couple different movies. It was like, where is it? Uh, is it Prime? Is it Hulu? Yeah, Netflix. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's not convenient access today, and someone will make it convenient access.
Yeah, but I guess the challenge is you got like an Amazon, for example, that already has— I don't even know how many— hundreds of millions of active customers. That's easy to access them.
Yeah.
And you got HBO that already has, you know, films and movies that people love that are gonna go to. Then you have Netflix, which has a big part of the market share. And then you got Hulu that threw live TV in there. It's like they all kind of have something that they're holding on to.
Yeah.
Which is causing, you know, inefficiencies for the whole and causing, you know, higher cost per acquisitions of users because they're fighting against each other.
Yeah.
Like if they were able to consolidate to one thing, it would be better for the, the customer and for the company.
So here's the model that should have been. I had a deal with Google. Signed by my board at their board for signature. And here's what it would have looked like. The deal was Hulu had— I mean, um, uh, Google had recently bought YouTube, and they were getting all kinds of grief because people were streaming, uh, movie content via YouTube, right? And they were like— and the movie studios were all over them saying, stop that, we're going to sue you.
Yeah.
So here was the deal. Everything free, YouTube. All free content, YouTube, all day long. All paid content, subscription or à la carte, Blockbuster.
Wow.
Side by side, Google distribution, total aggregation.
Wow.
TV shows, movies, games, everything. Wow. Yeah, that would have been— that would have been the play.
That could have made Blockbuster a trillion-dollar market cap.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. We were that close.
That's crazy.
Their board, um, unfortunately, literally the week that they— that, that deal was in front of their team for signature, um, someone leaked the rumor that Blockbuster was going to file, and their board said, uh, gee, you know, a little risky just going down this path with that. Literally, they called me. Wow. Nikesh Arora, uh, very senior guy there that was working the deal. He called me up and said, Jim, I'm so sorry to say it, but we're gonna have to pull the deal.
Oh my God.
And he said, until you guys get through your bankruptcy and/or restructuring. And I said, well, you know, we're really not going to file. We don't have any plans to file. I know it's just a rumor. He said, yeah, but they want you to go down that path. When you're done, come call. But I have to— I'll never forget the words he said. I just have to warn you, we have sort of the— our deals have the lifespan of a gnat. Yeah. And while it's hot today and we'll do the deal today, you know, 6 months from now, wow, I wouldn't count on it. Wow. And he was right.
How do you navigate corporate partnerships at that level? Like, if you're at one company and you want to work with another company, like, yeah, I would think you message someone on LinkedIn or you, you gotta know a mutual contact. Like, how do people at big corporations work with each other.
Yeah, it ends up to get deals like that done, it has to be pretty much top to top. Yeah, you're reaching out to a CEO of a company, you know, who will usually pick up the phone when another CEO calls, right?
How do you even know how to get in touch with—
oh, it's just every— everybody—
there's a sort of one degree of separation. You can ask someone for a contact, pretty much.
Yeah, it's not hard.
You must have some interesting people in your Rolodex.
I do.
I know who to reach out to when I need it.
Yeah. Yeah, I've got, uh, I've got a lot of personal phone numbers right here, but I don't use them. Well, sometimes I do.
So you're in venture now, venture capital?
Uh, I do a little of, a little of everything. This last year I've spent mostly working on this book. I've been all over the world.
Yeah.
Um, I'm heading this, uh, uh, January I'm heading to— it's crazy— Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Dubai. Abu Dhabi.
Wow.
For a book tour? Yeah.
Are you speaking?
Yeah. They've asked me to come talk. Wow. So if I don't come back, I'm over there talking about freedom.
That's exciting.
So it is. It's a blast.
Do you feel a stronger fire in your belly when you wake up in the morning and you think about the message you can spread than, you know, starting another business or getting involved with another organization?
Or, you know, I have my whole career. It's, it's almost embarrassing to say because I think of myself as a planner, a strategic guy, blah blah blah. My career has been opportunistic. Yeah, I never thought I could be a CEO growing up. I didn't even know how to spell it. And yeah, um, and it— the doors opened. I stayed on a path that seemed to be working, and, and it created more opportunities. So when I wrote the book, I intended it for, uh, young people, you know, college-age here's how to succeed in life, that sort of thing. And then as I got out, I started doing speaking about the book. It was young entrepreneurs that really gravitated to it, and that's opened up all these channels. So I was in Australia, I was in London, in Europe, now Middle East. I'm going to Asia in the, in the fall. And the reason I'm still doing this is things keep happening that reinforce my belief that this is the path I'm supposed to be on, right? Yeah, it's small things. Yeah, but people coming to you and saying, hey, I heard you speak 6 months ago, it changed my life, blah blah blah. Yeah, those are the kinds of things you say, well, okay, I'm on this path, I don't know how long it's going to last, but I'm gonna stay on it, we'll see where it goes.
That is another big misconception I feel like society has when they look at And when I say they and I say society, I mean like the majority, the 99% of people that are not— that haven't achieved the things they want to achieve yet, or that they think they want to achieve yet. They look at people of success and they think that, oh, that guy had a plan and he knew what he was doing and he stuck to his plan. I don't have a plan. I don't know what I'm doing. I can't do it. But anyone I've spoken to, yeah, who's achieved anything significant, yourself included, and from my own experience, like, doesn't really know too far what's next. Like, maybe like the next move or the next couple moves, but really it never goes according to a plan. It always ends up somewhere unexpected.
Yeah, exactly.
And better than expected.
You know what I call it? It's having your antenna up. Because so many times you find people just don't have their antenna up. They're not in receive mode, right? Right? And so they're on a plan and just put on the blinders, stay on that plan. And maybe that's a better way. But for me, when I've had my antenna up— and it's like I said, I'm doing these book tour things and I have people coming to me with such interesting opportunities— come speak at my company, come speak in my country, come talk to my leaders, that sort of thing— that I'm pursuing those opportunities because I'm in receiving mode, right? And if I wasn't, I'd probably— this would have had a 3-month shelf life. I'd be done, I'd be on to another business.
And to be in the receiving mode, you have to be present.
Yeah.
You also have to keep promises to yourself and, and not have crazy chatter in your mind that's blocking out opportunities. You have to be opportunistic.
Exactly.
That's one of the things that, that I, I talk about, which is through building confidence, you become more opportunistic because there could be two versions of you. One who, you know, woke up in the morning, didn't, you know, hit the alarm, hit the snooze button, got on their phone, you know, every promise they kept to themselves, their mind jumped in and told them no. And now their subconscious is like, well, I'm not worthy of this or that. And they're walking through life just missing opportunities. The other person gets up and just keeps one promise to himself, keeps another, gets out, does the workout, does whatever they're supposed to do. And their subconscious is now We're the man or the woman, right? Like, we're— and then, you know, they're walking into all— they're seeing all the opportunities. And I think that's how you get the antenna up, is building confidence through, you know, doing the things that you know you need to do.
Exactly. Well, in my case, I did not understand the power of those 3 things I gave you earlier. Yeah, I call them a gift, but dealing with change, having confidence, and then clarity, because What derails us most of the time is something changes and we go, oh shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's not gonna work now. Yeah, but it's always gonna change. Yeah, it's all— but that's the reality. The reality is change is real. It's gonna happen, inevitable, and it's how we respond to it that makes a difference between winners and losers. Yeah, so if you've got that element, those three things are so critically important. I literally credit that for virtually everything that I've accomplished, and it's— I don't want to imply, oh, I've done so much. I wish for everyone the kind of life I have in this sense. Yeah, didn't have to be rich, you don't have to be wildly successful. I have a life of adventure. Every day I wake up and I don't know what's going to happen, but I can't wait to see. Yeah, because there's always going to be something really cool down the road. Today I get to fly into I was on my way to West Palm and the weather made me divert down to Boca. Yeah, but you know what, it's cool.
But that belief that you have is so powerful because that could easily be the opposite belief. That could easily be, today is going to be— this isn't going to work, that's not going to happen, my life's going to be boring. But I think with beliefs like that, it's easy to have them when you have them after they've been validated a number of times. Yeah, you know, you go into this, you know, I'm open to adventure, adventure happens, I'm open to this, it happens. After a number of times, that becomes who you are. Yeah, but the person trying to get off the ground hasn't had those validating experiences yet.
Exactly.
It's a lot more challenging to get kind of the ball in motion.
Exactly. And that's where that confidence comes into play. I just— I, I— it's that, you know, kind of back to where we started. It's that balance of, yes, I know this is what I can count on happening, but I also have faith that I'll figure this out.
Yeah.
Um, this morning, great example. I, I, I, I, I texted you and I said, by the way, I might be a little late. Yeah, this weather is pretty, pretty sketchy between Dallas and, uh, and West Palm Beach. And I get in the airplane, everything's great, pre-flight, ready to go, loaded up. And, um, they cleared me for West Palm and they said, oh, by the way, um, don't start your engines for 6 hours. 6 hours, 6-hour ground delay. Now, somebody could have said, oh geez, forget about it. I'm just, you know, yeah, I would have called you up and said I can't come.
Right.
But I thought, well, you know, Fort Lauderdale is not that far away. I'll just fly into Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. So I pivoted and en route got a clearance to Boca, which is even closer than Fort Lauderdale. Right. And it all worked out. And I was, what, 30 minutes late? So we were still able to do this.
About you that I get the sense is that you, you seem to have fun. Mm, like, and I don't know you too well yet, but you seem to be having fun with things you do, with the divergence into another airport, with, you know, having this conversation. A lot of people would, would be like, oh crap, and like they would just shut it down. Actually, a lot of very successful people that I've met have that quality for the most part. I got to spend some time with Richard Branson, which he was always an idol of mine. Yeah, I don't think there's anyone in the world that has more fun than him. That I've met.
It's true.
But I also think a lot of people have the misconception that to be successful you have to be very rigid, you have to be very, you know, this, that, whatever. And it's like, he's not— it's not that at all. No, it's not that at all. Yeah, I used to think that growing up, you know, when I was a kid, but that's not the case at all. Do you, um, you know, intentionally try to find fun in a lot of things, or do you do any— do you have any hobbies that, you know, you really love doing, you love talking about?
Yeah, I mean, I do all kinds of things, and I— but you're absolutely right. I just literally— the best way to describe it is when I wake up every day, I go, okay, what cool thing do I get to do today?
Yeah.
And it might be— it's such a broad range. Hey, maybe I'll go skiing. I haven't skied in a year and a half. Yeah, I'll go do that. Or because I can— I've learned how to— it comes back to learning how to do things. I've learned to play virtually every sport. So tomorrow I'll play golf with some friends here because the weather's hopefully likely going to be good tomorrow. And otherwise, I could jet off to a ski slope and go ski, or maybe I could just stay in and work on a piece of art. Yeah, the range is really, really broad. But that's what's cool about living a life where you learn how to do so many things that you can pivot. Oh, the weather's bad here, I'll just go do that, right? Doesn't matter.
Well, if you're around on Tuesday, I'm playing golf with a very interesting person. I'd like to You know, if you happen to be in the area and you want to join, that can lead you to a fun experience as well. Cool person I'll be with.
Sure.
I won't talk about him here on the show. Um, so when you get up in the morning, like, what does your morning look like? This is some things I like to dive into too, right? Like, yeah, I want to— like, when you first wake up and you go through your day, like, what does your first hour of your day look like? And what are your inner thoughts? And what's your inner world like when you first kind of get started?
I mean, after scratching my butt.
Yeah, you scratch your butt, scratch your nose, blow your nose, whatever you're doing, include it all.
Yeah, you don't want to hear that.
Yeah, let one rip.
Yeah, that's always a good thing in the morning. Um, no, I, I, I try to— I've got a gym, you know, at the house, so I, you know, not nothing fancy, but I try to get in a little exercise in the morning. The older you get, the more, um Weight training is important. I'm a terrible weight trainer. I have zero patience. Yeah, for sitting there like, I know, reps. But I forced myself to do it now because you just have to.
It's very important. Yeah, skeletal muscle mass.
Yeah, you get older. I've got a Peloton, so I do a little, you know, a little bike work.
So you work, you work out in the morning, most mornings?
Yeah, I can't do it in the afternoon. Yeah, I get too lazy.
Do you drink coffee before the workout?
Oh yeah. No, after, after the workout. Yeah.
So you discipline your water. Yeah.
Yeah. And then, and then have my coffee and then usually check the market, see what's going on, look at my agenda for the day, that kind of stuff.
Now, when you were— and I want to pivot back for a second because there's a question I wanted to ask you also. When you were in larger organizations and there's so many different things that could be done and so many different things that could be focused on, How did you choose where to put your energy? That's a very broad question.
That, that's, that's a hard, hard question because like many people who are like us, I'm guessing you have a little bit of this too, a little probably on the ADD side. If I was today's world, I'd probably be drugged. Yeah, but they didn't diagnose it when I was a kid. Yeah, but I'm, I'm all over the place. I just, especially with so much external stimulus today, yeah, I do tend to be all over the board. So the only way I can manage is to focus, and that's where a good staff really helps. I have a really good assistant who will keep me on schedule. Yeah, you know, and, and, and focused.
Yeah, but there's a balance between being reactive and being proactive. There is when you're leading an organization. Oh yeah, and there's a lot of problems you can solve. Yeah, and typically at the highest level of the organization you get the most annoying problems that other people can't solve.
Yeah.
How do you pick which ones to go down? Is it, is it a balance of reactiveness and proactiveness, or do you, do you value the proactive time more? Like, how do you navigate the balance between being reactive and being proactive?
It's gonna sound crazy, but I think you have to be proactively reactive. Okay, it's that, it's that ability to respond to change. And the reality is tomorrow is going to be different from today. So how do I proactively get in front of those changes, prioritizing them by what is the most urgent, what's going to require the most hands-on attention so something doesn't break?
Yeah, but there's, there's a lot of urgent things that aren't necessarily needle movers.
Right.
It's like, how do you get— because there's always actually, I would argue, say there's always urgent things.
Yeah.
And then there's the big things that move the needle.
Well, the other thing that's challenging is, and this is where entrepreneurs more often than not fail, it's that delegation part. Being able to let go and let people do 90% of the stuff that comes up, because as an entrepreneur and as a CEO, there's a tendency to want to do everything. Yeah, it's broken. I gotta go fix it myself.
Yeah. What I've found in my career is typically one quarter out of the year I dive into the weeds. I join all the different department calls, I join all the messages, I get in the weeds, I try to fix things. And then it— then my life gets extremely busy and hectic and overwhelming because now I'm, you know, working 10, 12 hours a day.
Yeah.
But then for three quarters of the year, I kind of let the organization go and only kind of look at things that are big problems. I've been doing that for the last few years and it's worked for me.
Yeah, now that's a good idea. I, I did a little of that when I was running big store operations. Talk about the weeds. I would actually go work a store.
Oh wow.
Yeah, do it for 2 days, 3 days.
Yeah.
And, you know, put on a smock and get behind the counter and wait on customers.
Have you been to the 7-Elevens in Japan?
Yeah, they're fabulous.
No, but I've been seeing them. I've been seeing like the crazy foods they have there.
Yeah.
Why don't they bring that stuff here? I think that'd be a huge, huge hit, especially in like, you know, New York City, Austin, like the hipster vibes. Yeah, I charge $12 for one of those coffees.
I know. I actually— there's a fabulous machine they have that does those coffees in Japan. They will eventually. Yeah, that's the idea. The Japanese bought the company in '05. Okay. And I think they will eventually. It's taken them a lot much longer than I thought.
Yeah.
Uh, here's the difference. There's a logistical factor here, right? In, uh, Tokyo as an example, they have such density of stores. You can stand on a street corner and see 5 stores.
Really?
Yeah, literally from one corner. Yeah, you see 5 7-Eleven signs. Um, they as a result have a distribution system that lets them create fresh products, fresh bakery, fresh sushi if you will, deliver it 3 or 4 times a day in every store. So it's restaurant quality stuff.
Yeah.
And here in the United States, I, I kind of copied that system, emulated their success, and created a nationwide network of commissaries to create fresh foods and distribution once a day. But once a day doesn't get you the quality that you need to get to. So what you see 7-Eleven doing is they acquired Speedway They're adding a lot of new stores. Eventually they will have the density here in the United States to have that kind of food service experience that you see in Japan.
Yeah, because there's so much potential.
It's huge potential because there's so much garbage food out everywhere you go.
It's rare to find something that's really good that you can go conveniently get.
It is. And, and candidly, Americans have been a little lazy at retail. I'm gonna poke my retail peers here, um, because in Europe they're doing it, in Asia they're doing it. They've cracked the code on the logistics and they have far higher quality fresh foods. Tesco, for example, in Europe does a wonderful job of fresh salads, sandwiches, ready-to-eat foods. Yeah, we just haven't done it here. Yes, we're so caught up in, um, fresh— in, in fast foods that our definition of quality is, you know, Burger King or—
well, we have low standards as a general population. Yeah. Now I think that's shifting a lot. I think a lot of people are becoming more health conscious. A lot of people are starting to get angry at the system. A lot of people— I think that'll probably change naturally as people demand it and the market shifts it.
Yeah, exactly.
No matter what we do about it.
So if one of your listeners happens to run a great big private equity firm and they want to partner with me to go buy Walgreens, or you would do something, you would take on something like that in a heartbeat. Yeah, because the, the density of stores exists. The chain like Walgreens has sufficient numbers of stores. Yeah, and great corners. Yeah, add the technology and the distribution angle. Yeah, and they could truly be at the corner of healthy and, and imagine Subway.
Like, I wouldn't eat at Subway if you paid me because of how processed it is.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna rat out my friends from Subway because I actually worked with them. I have a huge respect for the founders and the founding family and what they built. 26,000 stores in the United States, right?
Great business.
Well, I sat down with their distribution team and said, guys, let me share with you what we did at 7-Eleven. I've got at least daily distribution. I'll promise you, you could do it at a fraction or significant reduction in your current distribution costs. It's— they couldn't wrap their heads around that possibility. But imagine a Subway that everything, every pickle, every slice of lettuce or head of lettuce, every tomato is delivered just that day.
Yeah.
And, and it's an automatic replenishment.
Yeah.
And then supplement the menu with items that you could make off-site and deliver into— yeah, a Subway where they don't have the labor to do a complex salad and things like that. Subway could be so much more than it is today, but they have to make that evolution. And I tried, but it didn't convince anybody.
It's probably a slow— and I don't know the business work model or anything behind the scenes of Subway. As a consumer, there's probably more and more people like me that would never go to a Subway now. It's cheap and it's fast, so there's enough people that need it. Yeah, but if you want to get more of the market, you have to get better quality.
You do. And, and that's where I think they can do it. And see, I'm a big believer in, in brands. It's a lot easier to start with a brand like Subway than to start from scratch.
100%. You know, it's easier for someone to say, oh, you haven't heard about what Subway has been doing, then, oh, you haven't heard about this new place.
Exactly.
New place, like, I don't know if your opinion is really right, but if Subway is doing something new, it's like, oh, check it out.
Exactly.
They have a reputation.
Exactly.
And someone's saying something good about them.
Well, I love the example of Apple. If you think about the Mac, back in the day, many of us wouldn't have used it for a doorstop. It was just— yeah, Apple just kind of got stuck, and then all of a sudden they really doubled down on, on innovation and quality, and now look what they've done. But could you have done the iPhone with a brand new startup brand? I doubt it. Yeah, but Apple was able to pull it off because they at least had the awareness. Yeah, um, and were able to transform themselves. So that's, that's why I get excited. That's why I got excited about Blockbuster.
I see what you get excited about. You get excited about something that has the bones and the infrastructure that just needs a few little tweaks to become something amazing.
Exactly.
It's a high— low effort, high impact type model. Yeah, it's like relatively low effort compared to starting something new. Yeah, but the impact would be greater than starting something new. I am Those opportunities got to exist out there.
They do.
It's a combination of the, the business, the capital, and the operators. Yeah.
And here's the missing piece of the puzzle: the investors have to share the vision, right? And that's the hard part, right? I, I must— I'm a guy that believes in scale. In fact, right now, I'll give you a classic example: our education system, right? We are a mess right now in the United States. Our public education system, right? Our kids are Um, math and science scores are middle of the pack or lower. Yeah, versus industrialized nations. Teachers are hard to find. People are complaining about what we're teaching, how we're teaching, all this noise, right? No one stepped back and said, wait a minute, we have 55 million public school kids. Yeah, why are we still teaching with books and blackboards? Yeah, why don't we create the internet of edtech? Yeah, and light up every school in the country, take the best algebra teacher in the world and pump in every classroom.
I wrote up, funny enough, a few years ago I wrote up a whole plan. Like, I started thinking about the education system when I started thinking about having kids. Yeah, I have a little, you know, 19-month-old now.
And neat, congrats.
Thank you. And another one on the way in April.
Awesome.
Which just makes this more powerful for me. It was like, you know, I would go to like a seminar, right, where someone very smart was teaching thousands of people and they were getting a tremendous amount of value from those people. And I think about school where you have someone who— and it's not all teachers by any means, but oftentimes someone who's very underqualified, who's living a life of someone that the kid doesn't want to be like. They're not a role model. The kid doesn't want to listen to them. They're just doing it because they have to. And I'm like, what's the difference here? It's like, why wouldn't you have some of the best people in the world teaching and then have facilitators to help the kids learn it, as opposed to—
Exactly.
And that could easily be done.
It could easily be done. And, and, but someone needs to carry the torch. So what we're doing, what, what we end up as society doing, is fighting about yesterday's problems, right? So right now, the big battle in Texas, for example, is vouchers. You know, let's, let's do vouchers. Okay, but what are you gonna do with the other schools? Yeah. That the kids don't wanna go to? What are we gonna do about those? And so no one is stepping back going, oh, wait a minute. The current public education system was really inspired by the Rockefellers and others to mass produce an educated workforce for the factories. Okay, well, that worked 100 years ago. We're in the information age. And why are we still using books and blackboards in little classrooms and not lighting up these kids, if you wonder why they like to use social media and play video games, it's way more engaging. Yeah, but school can be just as way more engaging, can be way more engaging. We can have incentives, you could have micro scholarships. You pass an exam and you, and you get points, you level up.
I mean, it's ancient the way it is today.
It's ancient, but it can be done. So what it takes, um, I've just written an op-ed. I'm going to try to get it published in the New York Times. We'll see. But, um, I've— my suggestion is instead of eliminating the Department of Education, because if you push it down to the states, then technology would be 50 years before we ever invest in it, right? So instead, reinvent the Department of Education, bring technology in, create a Doge-like, right, team that can say, all right, let's light it up. How do we make classrooms as exciting as any video game that was ever built, right? Ken? Yeah, let's just do it. Create this, this internet of edtech where it's a safe environment. You could let your, your future students— they're a little young yet, one's not even born yet— but you could let them loose in this safe environment where everything in there, even their version of TikTok, is education content.
Yeah, and you could throw some personal development work in there as well.
Exactly.
I mean, if you think about, you know, you're solving yesterday's problems, we're also putting a band-aid on today's problems.
Well, that's what it is.
Like, yeah, you know, God forbid a school shooting happens, you got a bunch of people arguing about guns. Yeah, but no one's talking about why was that kid so angry or so demented, right, to be able to go do that. It's because, well, they clearly didn't know how to cope with their emotions, or they clearly didn't understand themselves.
Right.
If you taught it— like, I just imagine the cycle of a kid. He gets bullied in school, he goes home, he numbs his brain with social media, he gets bullied more, then he has to numb his brain with some substances, and he gets bullied more, then he eats food, he gets bigger, he gets bullied more. Eventually he just cracks, he does something horrible.
Yeah.
But if you taught that kid how to cope with his emotions by, all right, let's just sit and breathe for 5 minutes and think about something I love.
Yeah.
Like, you're snapping it right at the beginning. So if you teach kids that at 5, 6, 7 years old, you probably have a lot less gun problems. But instead, as a society, we're barking about gun laws, which is a discussion, but it shouldn't be the discussion.
Right, right. Well, it's, it's, it's literally why I, why I wrote the book, because if you look at every problem that society has, it's 90% of them. Pick one. Education, immigration, guns. It's all about fear.
Yeah.
Somebody's going to take something from you, do something to you. It's all fear and it's all causing us to hunker down. Yeah. And resist change, right? As opposed to using education. I describe it as a kid turning on a light in the dark. Oh, I guess I don't— I was screaming for mom, but there's no monster, right, in my room. I guess I'm okay. Well, that's what knowledge is, right? And if we can just get these kids engaged instead of ignoring the problem and giving them a Band-Aid to fix something that's You know, kids got a serious disease and we're giving them aspirins.
Yeah.
As opposed to saying, okay, let's, let's transform the way we teach and learn and engage these kids, make it fun. Yeah, it's possible.
Yeah, I have some people I can get you in front of that might be able to get you in front of some people that could do something.
That'd be great.
That I'll talk to you about after the podcast.
Yeah, that'd be great because that's something I'm very passionate about as well.
I'll share my op-ed draft with If you imagine if you could change that while you're here on this earth, you know, can you imagine?
I know.
I mean, we're here once. Yeah, for a short period of time. Everyone has this kind of, not necessarily misconception, but this— I feel like people believe that they're gonna get to live again, like they'll be able to do it again next time. I'm just gonna kind of sit this one out until next time I do it. It's like, there is no next time. Time's passing by. Yeah, you could only choose that. You could choose to do whatever you want while you're here. Imagine that was the thing you got to do. Like, that would have the biggest impact in society.
That's, that's what I'm like. Like I said, this conversation started with, I'm a scale guy. I like these big hairy challenges because I recognize the power of scale.
Yeah.
And with 55 million public school kids, there's no excuse, right? We have the scale.
That would put ripples through— completely timeless ripples.
Yeah. Wouldn't that be awesome?
Yeah, and most of these kids, they don't have teachers to look up to, and a lot of them don't have parents to look up to, so they have nothing to look up to except for the things they see online.
Well, that becomes some of the excuses. Well, the teachers are blah blah blah, and you know, and then by the way, the teachers union will never let this— all kind— oh, and by the way, if the problem is the parents, you know, we've got broken families and we don't have the household, and you know what, we're never gonna fix that stuff in our lifetime. But you can still reach the kids where they live.
Exactly.
Which is on their phones.
Yeah.
And in social media.
Yeah. And you can make it more engaging, you can make it more fun, you can make it more exciting, you can make an experience that spits them out into the world as much better people than they are today.
Exactly.
So that—
I think that's the future.
That's a powerful mission. I want to see where that one goes for you.
It's a powerful mission. That's— and it's part of why I, I said this is kind of opportunistic. I thought this book would last 3 months, and I'm still out there. I'm going to Saudi Arabia talking about this.
That's incredible.
And, and talk about a place that needs to double down on education, um, and to spread that message throughout the Middle East because kids are growing up with no hope.
Yeah.
With fear.
Yeah. I can't even imagine what it's like there.
Yeah.
I only know what it's like here.
Yeah.
And I'm just— my own limited, uh, experience here.
I can just imagine what we can accomplish, right?
Yeah. I— one more topic I did want to talk to you about.
Sure.
Um, This is fun.
I can keep going.
Yeah. So, you know, there's— in society and the government, you know, you hear about the national debt we have and the issues we have with other countries and how we're kind of printing money to keep fueling the debt that's raising inflation. As a business guy that's turned companies around and, you know, has experienced that at levels that are pretty big, not as big as the country. Like, where do you see the country heading financially, and what do you think we need to do to get us back on track?
Big— that's a big question. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm a bit of a contrarian with some of this stuff. Um, I do understand the need for dialing back the debt, and I do think there are ways we can do it. I'm a little worried about the impression that we're giving now that this is easy, we'll just slash trillions of dollars worth of expenses. Having done this in major companies, it's a lot harder than it ever looks like from the outside looking in. It's like one of those activist investors coming in saying, "Oh, I know what you have to do. You just have to slash $100 million." Okay. So I do think that there need to be efficiencies. I do think it's a little harder. And it really comes down to leadership. This is where I'm a little concerned because it, it's not just the person at the top, it's the person at the top bringing in the right people for the right jobs, right? As, as in any company, it really comes down to the ability for that leader to have the right people in the right chairs. And if they're not the right people, you can break a lot, right, by pulling a lot of levers that are the wrong levers too hard.
Right.
Um, so yeah, I'm a little bit concerned. Now, the flip side of that is I'm also really opportunist— uh, optimistic about our future, because with all of this sort of nationalism and populism and stuff that's going on politically, the reason I don't worry about some of this stuff— and by the way, I'm an unabashed globalist That's why the, the world is on the COVID of my book. Yeah, I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Yeah, we lit up the world with capitalism.
We—
I, I went to China when they were still wearing Mao suits and driving bicycles, when they first brought 7-Eleven there.
Wow.
Yeah, in the early '90s, late '80s. And we taught them a capitalist way of life. Now they're struggling with that.
Yeah.
But you don't put that genie back in the bottle. You don't let people drive a Mercedes and then have them go back to their bicycle, right? Of course, we've created what is ultimately, I think, good for America because we're the leading capitalist country in the world. And if we play this right, then we will continue to be the leading economic power of the world. So I, I just think some of this stuff is political noise. Yeah, it feels better to say Oh, we're gonna take everything back to the United States.
Yeah.
For practical purposes, do we really want more factories here?
Yeah, right.
Or do we want to re-educate our people to, to move to the next generation of commerce, which is probably more digitally oriented than manufacturing oriented?
Yeah, I mean, there's so many different countries that can manufacture things. And the— I mean, again, it's kind of like the conversation we had before. Why don't— why doesn't, um, you have all these competing forces, the, the, the Amazons, the Hulus, the Blockbusters, where they're, you know, costing more to acquire customers. The end customer has to pay more. If we could work together better as a global unit, things would be cheaper for better— for people, be easier for everyone involved.
Exactly.
But then you got to navigate the corporate ladder of the world. Which is even more treacherous than as an organization.
It's, it's a little challenging, but you think of the opportunities. As you said, um, Walmart, it's a great example. Walmart wouldn't be Walmart today but for their ability to source internationally cheaper products. That's why we all got hooked on Walmart. And now we're gonna go, oh no, no, we're gonna make everything here, and even Walmart's prices are gonna— I, I don't, I don't— again, some of these times these things sound a lot better from the outside looking in. And they make for great sound bites for winning elections, right?
Yeah.
But, um, globally, I, I have more confidence in the United States to be more successful if we retain our global role.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, China— now you go into China, you see, you know, Starbucks, you see 7-Eleven.
I go there regularly. Yeah, at the airport you get your Starbucks. Although they have different drinks at Starbucks. But yeah, but all the same brand.
You see American brands, American products, American cars, American everything. And that was not the case 20, 30, 40 years ago. So I, I tend to look at the world with a, a bit of a broader prism and think that the opportunity is there. And I know it's counter to what we're doing today.
Yeah.
But again, I don't know if you can ever put that genie back in the bottle because of technology. The world's not shrinking. It's not gonna let us, you know, pull back. It's, it's, it's, it's, the world is getting smaller and the opportunities globally, I think, are getting greater.
What happens to the people now? Again, I, I only have my limited perspective from the time I've been around, but it seems like it's becoming harder and harder for families to afford a house, for example, right? Like the cheapest house you can buy here in Palm Beach area is like a million. I mean, you might be able to go get like a really small house for like a half million dollars.
Yeah.
But in certain counties, your, your base is a million, million five. Someone making $90,000 a year can't go do that. And it seems like the gap is growing.
Yeah.
You see that ever coming back or do you see people just need to be more ambitious? Like, what does that look like in the future?
Yeah, the scary part for me in the near term is the wealth gap. Yeah, is getting bigger and bigger. And if you just look at the charts, anytime in a society where that gap gets too big, um, it's self-correcting.
Yeah, one way or another.
Yeah, yeah. Most of them not good. And, uh, so I, I do have a little bit of concern about that, but it's also why I'm putting so much focus on the education side, because the reality is we're not going to fix that wealth gap by having the wealthy give up something.
And you're not gonna fix it by the non-wealthy being victims, right?
Exactly. So we have to find a way to get the non-wealthy to have more of an income capability.
Yeah.
Now, again, I'm a contrarian. I don't think that happens by building a wall around the United States and bringing all the factories back here, right? Work in a factory, right? I think it dial up the education education, you know, have them, have them able to pivot to do other jobs, technology jobs, other things. Um, I, I think the future is bright, but we've got a lot of work to do, and, and that's why my focus is on education.
You're fighting a big battle against mainstream media that tells people that they can't do it, because you turn on the news, they say, you know, look at the price of groceries, the price of gas, the price of this and people are subconsciously saying, oh man, this I can't do, I can't, you know, they're there. And then on the other side, people are then making posts about why things are so hard for them and then getting patted on the back for being a victim, which is a self-perpetuating cycle of never getting out of it. And you're fighting against that, but it's a big thing to fight against.
It is. And that's literally why I'm out speaking and doing the things I'm doing. That's why I'm on this podcast, is the more attention I can get to The idea that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we let this victimhood fear, you know, can't do it attitude, that's not American.
Yeah.
I didn't grow up with that around me. And had I done that, Lord knows where I'd be today.
Yeah.
And so we've got to find a way. It's back to that cycle of fear. We're in this cycle now.
Yeah.
And social media is contributing to it because we have a firehose of fear.
Yeah.
Regular network media contributes to it. It's— turn on every— any TV station, any social media outlet, you're going to get it. It's fear, fear, fear, fear. Well, knowledge is that antidote to fear. So if we can reverse that knowledge and have more people with confidence and hope that, hey, I can do this, I'm not going to be the victim, yeah, I'm not going to blame others for my problems, I'm going to take responsibility for myself. That's why literally the The subtitle of the book, The Future Is in Your Hands. Yeah, it's my call to action to everybody to say stop this victimhood stuff. It's never too late. At any age you can learn.
I, I think the victimhood mentality is the biggest virus through society. I think it— the only way is to take radical accountability for your life. It— the easy way is to blame something else.
Exactly.
Will not change anything. And I think when I was growing up, there was not as much of this fear. Had I— had there been and I've been part of it, I probably never would have started a company, never would have done the things that I've done that put my family in a position it's in right now. Yeah, I probably never would have. And I think that's happening to people at scale. So I'm very supportive of the things you're teaching, the work you're doing, and would love to support in any way I can.
Well, thanks. I greatly appreciate it because I— it is— it's such a big opportunity. And as you said, Imagine what's possible if we can really turn this around.
Yeah.
And get people to realize the power of learning and, and transform, uh, for the next generation and the next generation after that. If we can transform our education system and get people to get out of this victimhood thing and believe they can accomplish anything, then we can be back to the global leaders that we have demonstrated the ability to be.
It feels like we have a window of opportunity right now. The climate of the world feels like there's a— we kind of got over a hump and we're— I think there's a window of opportunity. I think it's a combination of, of knowledge. I think it's a combination of inviting some kind of spiritual practice, discipline, understanding ourselves. I think that scaling that type of knowledge and those types of experiences is what's going to transform society. But you're up against a lot of stuff to kind of fight through.
I know. I'm looking for the— I'm looking— it comes down to leadership, and I'm looking for that leader that will embrace the JFK moment from 1964 that I got to experience, where he stood up in 1964 and said, "We're going to put a man on the moon in this decade, not because it's easy, but because it's hard." Yeah. And if someone will do that with education, we are going to this decade create the finest public education system in the world. Yeah, that will set America apart from everybody because we're no longer going to be victims, we're no longer going to be settling for mediocrity. We're gonna, we're gonna excel, and we're gonna excel by, by helping everybody learn and, and help themselves.
I love it. It's, it's the experience that you've had from scaled companies that you could bring to society. That seems like it'll, it'll be the next chapter in what you're doing. With that said, great conversation. Really appreciate all the insight and sharing everything. Really entertaining and fun and insightful. Thank you so much.
Thanks for the opportunity, and I can't wait to see your new book, The Perfect Walk.
Thanks.
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