Words Shaping the Future: Insights from Top Commencement Speeches

Yeah, I like it too, because it goes from a passive, powerless victim to an active, powerful heroine. You are the person that needs to make the change in your life. And there are things that happen to all of us, but it's how we deal with the things that happen to us that empowers us. And so if we, if we fall into the victim mentality, then we can't change it. It's just happening to us. Hey, everybody, this is business lunch with your hosts, my counterpart, Ryan Deiss, and me, Roland Frazier. Wonderful to be here with you guys again. Ryan, how you doing?

I'm doing so freaking great. What about you?

This is a graduation time of year for you, so really, really busy. Right?

Yeah, yeah. May all the. I've got a senior and so all the graduation parties, graduation itself, the family coming in town for it. Nutty, absolutely and completely insane, so would not wish it upon anybody else now. It's great, but it's also just super bittersweet, so. But yeah.

Have you given any graduation speeches?

You know, I haven't, but.

How about commencement? Like at your own graduations?

No, I was never smart enough to give a commencement at my own graduate, at my own graduation. That was for the, you know, the valedictory and the other smart kids. I thought this year though, there was a chance because they were like having a hard time finding somebody, I think the person who's going to do it. And so they were like, oh, maybe we'll have Ryan do it, because he, he talks. And so I was, I was thrilled when somebody else took, took the job because I cannot think of, of all the speeches to give. You know, maybe giving a eulogy at a funeral would be harder, but commencement, woof. That's, it's, it's a big lift.

Tough task, but some really good things. I know over the years I've, I've enjoyed the late Charlie Munger and the late Steve, Steve Jobs and several people like that have had some powerful speeches that, that are well known among the founder set. Lots of good stuff. A couple here. I thought it'd be fun to talk about that maybe people haven't heard, maybe to rethink about ones they had and just, just kind of riff on it a little bit. I like this one from Nora Ephron at Wellesley College who said, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. What do you think she's saying there?

I mean, talking to a bunch of kids, I mean, I don't know. What did it say, what year she gave that speech?

96.

1996. She needs to go back and re. Give that speech because I, I do think it has become increasingly more popular for. To be seen as that. That victim mentality. I mean, that, that seems to be how the world likes to define itself. There are victims and there are victimizers. And if you're a victimizer, and those are the only two categories, by the way, you could, you, you're. You're one of the other seems to be how kind of a lot of like the, the local hipsters are, Are liking to organize humans these days. So you're either a victimizer or you're a victim. And they're obviously choosing to be victims because, well, who wants to be a victimizer? And so that is a talk, 1996, that, that's a talk that needs to be dusted off and probably represented.

Yeah, I, I like it too, because it's, it goes from a passive, powerless victim to an active, powerful heroine. You are the person that needs to make the change in your life. And there are things that happen to all of us, but it's how we deal with the things that happen to us that empowers us. And so if we, if we fall into the victim mentality, then we can't change it. It's just happening to us. Whereas if we say, okay, this bad thing or this bad person happened to me, now what am I going to do? How am I, what power do I have to deal with it, to take charge, to turn it around and make things happen? So I thought that was.

Yeah, well, it's the plot of every great story, right? Every great story, you've got somebody who something bad happens to. I mean, that is the fundamental plot of essentially every story. And so, yeah, to spin that, to say, okay, a bad thing happened or is going to happen, are you a victim or are you going to be the protagonist? And I like it because it's not only are you not the victim, but you're also not the bit player. You're not the extra in the background.

You're the lead. Right, Yeah, I like that. So this one is Kurt Vonnegut, 1999. And I like it, particularly in today's political environment. He said we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle. Because I think we're gonna like politically for sure. There's a lot of, there's a lot of really bullying and vindictiveness and, you know, back and forth between the parties. Whatever political persuasion you might be, whoever's in power is going to get impeached by the people that aren't. They're going to be, you know, subject on both sides. Right now we've got criminal trials going against two of the, you know, the presidential candidates or their families. And it's really just that they've lapsed into focusing on the wrong thing. What are your thoughts about that?

I think one of the ultimate signs of maturity is when you're willing to just let something go that you don't have to. It's like, I was wronged by this thing and I don't have to settle the score. It doesn't have to be a tit for tat. This is not a Hatfields and McCoys kind of thing. I'm willing to just go on and live my life and accept that that happened. That is, I believe, one of the ultimate signs of maturity. And it is the way that you ultimately can have real joy and peace in life. It, you know, others would call it grace. And I do believe that we are living in a graceless world right now. We're living in a world where you mess up even once and you're canceled. You wrong.

Somebody better believe it's going to be returned perfection. Right. You're. It's. It's. If you're a leader, you must be absolutely impeccable in every area of your life. And no one is, because we are human. But there's. There seems to be no allowance for humanity. The humanity of making mistakes without crucifying people for the mistakes they made in a public forum where maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. But it's also agendized is really tough. And I mean, that's across the board.

Yeah. Again, you know me, I'm a religious guy, practicing Christian guy. That I do believe that it is because we have rejected a lot of the Judeo Christian morals and have replaced them with a secular humanism that basically places the person at the top of everything. And therefore the person must be perfect to merit being at the top. And if you're not, boy, then you're going to get knocked down as opposed to just saying, you know, we all kind of suck and we all kind of need, need grace and we all need help. And maybe it has gotten so bad that the pendulum is going to swing back. That's my hope. I think that.

I hope so. And, and I think what you said is important too, is, is we need grace and we need help, not punishment.

Yeah.

It's. We're such a punitive mentality right now. Not, you know, and it's something That I, my business personality was punitive when I was growing up. It was like, this person messed up. They're dead to me. They're fired. They're, you know, I disregard them, you know, and that was not the best way to be as a human or as a manager. And now I find myself when somebody says, yeah, we need to fire that person, say, well, did we identify all the issues that they've got and their performance and find out if we could support them first before we do that? Because. And then I'll tell the story. It's like.

Because before I would be like, yeah.

They'Re dead to me. They're gone right now. It's like, well, maybe that's a good employee and they're in the wrong role. Maybe they don't have the support they need from management. Maybe there's training that we can get them because they are valuable in it. They are a scarce resource. Good people that are loyal and maybe we can help them instead of punish them. But our whole world right now feels very punishment based.

Not.

Not ameliorative, like not, how do we make it better?

And this was 1999. I'm looking when Kurt Vonnegut gave that speech, obviously he's passed away. So not an opportunity for him to come back, but another one that I think needs to be recycled, that needs to be heard now more than ever. I love it.

Steve Jobs gave one in 2005 at Stanford. He said, remembering that you're going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. What do you think about that?

That's classic stoicism. Memento mori. Right. I think I would. I think what's more helpful than to tell a bunch of students that they're gonna die? I don't know that they actually hear that. You know, like My son, my 18 year old, he doesn't have any context to the fact that he's going to die. I think high school seniors, college seniors, they all believe that they're immortal. I think what was more impactful for me, I know is that got me to a similar result was realizing that I don't matter that much. Which you don't want to get that to be like nihilistic, where I don't matter, therefore, whatever. But I think just realizing that the world's a big place, everybody's living their own life, and so if I mess up, they're not all going to be pointing and laughing. Somebody, I think it was Gary Vaynerchuk who said, Nobody's looking at yours. It. They're all concerned about the pimple on their own face. Right. And I think if we can just remember that we don't necessarily have to imagine death.

But I like also thinking about death. My wife says frequently and it's fun because she is a more look on that side of things. And I'm, you know, I have what she calls the sunshine pump. I'm always, you know, overly optimistic and the, you know, the place to be is probably someplace in between. But, but she does say something that I like, which is, you know, hey, nobody gets out of this life alive. We all will die. So then it's just like if you know that that is for some people, helpful. Yeah, I'm not, I don't think I'm, I'm not afraid of a lot of things that I hear people say they're afraid of because to me, I cannot be humiliated except by my acceptance of humiliation. You can throw tomatoes at me and, you know, put me in jail and you know, call me names and write articles and you know, look at my YouTube videos and say I'm fat or thin or bald or, you know, too hairy or whatever all those things are. You mispronounce this, you know, is one of my favorite ones.

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