You don't really say well, I just want to get a yes, and it's like, well, you're not going to just get a yes, especially if you have something that's bold and original, different, because a bunch of people are gonna say, well, I don't get it right, Like, you know, like I don't get that people will want to buy flavored water without sugar. I don't get that. You know, there's all of these things that we go into on
master's of scale to say. Actually, in fact, sometimes when you get a bunch of people who say I don't get it, that's precisely when you have something that's gold. Hey. Everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now you know that I don't take your
ears for granted. I'm grateful that you take out so much time out of your days to listen and learn, whether you're walking your dog, or you're at the gym, or whether you're driving to and from work or wherever you are right now. Thank you for choosing on Purpose. And this is a conversation that I've been excited to have for a very long time. Today, I'm speaking to none other than Read Hoffman. Now, Read is an accomplished entrepreneur,
and that is an understatement. He's an investor. He has played an integral role in building many of today's leading consumer technology businesses. He's, of course, the co founder of LinkedIn and an investor at Gray Luck. He's the host of his own podcast, Masters of Scale, So you're going to see a master at work today, an original podcast series and the first American media program to commit to
a fifty fifty gender balance for featured guests. He's the co author of four best selling books, The Startup of You, The Alliance, Blitz Scaling, and his newest book with the same name of his podcast, Masters of Scale, Surprising Truths from the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Read. Welcome to on Purpose, and thank you for being here. It's great to be here.
I love your show. I've listened to it, you know, as much as I listened to podcast including my own right, which is every moment I have time for and if I had a little bit more commutes outside of the pandemic, I think my listening to all of these quality podcasts most centrally yours. That's so kind read, I'm humbled and
I'm touched, and the feeling is mutuo. I love your podcast too, and that's what I was just thanking you offline that I'm so grateful that you've synthesized all of this incredible wisdom from all the phenomenal people you've interviewed into a book that we can easily look at, read, skip to chapters, look at challenges, understand stories, and as we're talking about before, what I love about the book is that it's the stories, it's the psychology, it's the tips,
it's the insight, it's everything. It's this very three sixty degree approach. But read, I want to start with your life not as an entrepreneur, but as an employee and your first paying job as an editor at a gaming company, and you also wanted to become a professor, which makes me think you were gearing up to be an employee either of a school or an incredible faculty, and of
course you did as a gaming company. When did the idea of entrepreneurship first spark your intrigue and curiosity and how much were you already convinced you were going to be an entrepreneur or were you always thinking you were going to be an employee. So I don't think the category of employee or entrepreneur had actually really occurred to me. I always think in terms of projects. I always think in terms of what the work is, what the activity, what you're building, And I don't think it was until
years later. I don't think it was until years into LinkedIn that I was like, all right, entrepreneur is the word that describes the activity that I'm doing. Like it wasn't really like I'm going to be an entrepreneur, that's really It was more like what do you build? What do you fashion? And that was you know, all the
way back to you know, great research. Not that many people know that I kind of you know, talked my way into the door of a gaming company when I was twelve and then ended up doing some work for them, so, you know, good research for that. But that was because I was interested in fantasy role playing games, you know, dungeons and dragons, and I was like, this is what I want to spend my time doing. So I want to get in that door, and I want to connect
with the people who were doing this. And then you know, kind of similarly, and then I think I became an entrepreneur because when I started thinking about the company, the impact that I wanted to have in the world, the way that I wanted, the insights that I thought I
had that could be operationalized. You know, it was coming about from the very earliest days of the Internet, and with the various earliest days of the internet, was how do we live in this medium by which all of us as individuals and as groups were made better off? And what kind of products can you create there? And when I looked at kind of like what were the things I could possibly join, none of them had that kind of shape of what I wanted to create. And
so that made me an entrepreneur. And I wasn't reluctant, but I was completely focused on this is the future that I want to build, and so you know that naturally more more naturally alligned with entrepreneurship. What I love about that, reader is that not having these buckets, almost of thought of saying I have to choose actually helped
you find the right path. And I think often we put these very binary black and white choices in front of people and we say, or do you want to work for someone or do you want to be an entrepreneur, and in one sense, they're both the wrong questions. It seems like the right question, as you said, is to be project focused, is to thinking about what you actually want to do or what you want to build, and which home allows you to build that more successfully, which
I think is a brilliant insight. So I really appreciate that. I wanted to understand, though, when you started your first company, social Net, could you share with us the mistakes that you made and which mistakes you don't want our audience to avoid. I think often the question is well read like what mistakes should I avoid when I start a company?
I want to ask you the opposite question, what mistakes would just so integral that you had to make when you started your first company that you would want other
people to have. It is an absolutely great question, and one of the kind of I think one thing you learn about business and entrepreneurship as aphorisms, and I think one of the aphorisms that's apropos here is I never learned so much except for maybe between the ages of two and three when I jumped off the cliff for my first company, and people obviously, and by the way I normally advertise here's the landmine you avoid. You know, here's the tour. But your question is also a really
great one. I would tend to say the mistakes that I made that I think are still that are integral to being successful in entrepreneurship. One is jumping off the cliff, a biased action if you think about it in a clearheaded way. There's all kinds of things you don't know before you start a company. I didn't really know I
could never start a company before. Didn't know about financing, didn't know about what your initial hires would be, didn't know how to scope a project for the first product release, didn't know which things were kind of the classic mistakes now that I think I could have done a little bit more research on and probably would have been, like my advice to my younger self would be call a few people you know, and kind of avoid the obvious mistakes,
so you make the unobvious mistakes. But I think the predisposition to kind of jumping off the cliff and going was I think one of the things that was a central you know, you say, it's like embodies a whole bunch of mistakes, but you have to make those mistakes, and you have to know that you're making them. It's almost like, boy, I know, I'm going to get into a bunch of fender scrapes and I'm gonna bounce off the side of the yde way and that kind of thing.
But that's the only path forward, So here we go and hit the accelerator. Yes, I love that answer. I think that's that's such a great one because I think you're so right that if you actually think coherently and in an organized way, you wouldn't do what ppreneurs have had to do, and that becomes your biggest block because chances are your first swing is not going to be
successful anyway. But knowing that and still going away and still trying to do that allows you to get over that hurdle of being very sensible and thinking more responsibly. So I think that's a brilliant answer. I wanted to ask you because I think lots of entrepreneurs or people who want to be entrepreneurs, and we're going to go through the book through chapters that I found really powerful. But I wanted to start off by saying you called
your podcast and the book masters of Scale. And as soon as I heard that title, when I first started listening to the podcast, I loved it because I always wanted to be able to spread wisdom at scale but with intimacy and death, and that was always my fascination of how could you spread something that was for everyone but speak to one person and really feel like you're connected to one person. What is the difference between scaling and rowing a business and and how you define what
a master of scale is? I think there's it's a little bit like other important words in concepts in our
human space, like friendship and so forth. It's a little deliberately amorphous on kind of where that kind of scale and mastery goes, because we want it to be everything from you know where the classic things would would think about is building businesses like LinkedIn or Airbnb or you know, or Uber or Google or any of these things that you're that the building these things of industry, redefining society, redefining hopefully massively improving kinds of things is kind of
the scale that you're targeting for. And mastery is the mastery of running the the kind of the the slalom course with minefield and fog and all the rest, which is this is the thing that matters is getting the scale. And that's that's what we essentially targeted. It's not just the entrepreneurs, but executives and employees and people who care about what these companies are organizations are doing. But we also hope that the tools will apply in a wide
variety of other things. So you could say, well, I think the only way of solving climate change is scale technology, but also the only way of of improving human society is scale wisdom. So how would you take these tools and make them available across the entire set to think about, you know, how do we remake ourselves and our societies, you know, at the global or at the transnational scale. Yes, absolutely, And I love that differentiation because just like the word entrepreneur.
I remember I was speaking to a really good friend of mine who founded class past pile Kadakia, and I believe she's been on your show actually, and yes, and I remember speaking to her about that. She was, you know, she's also a very big fan of the show too, and she was talking about her definition and entrepreneur is someone who tries to solve a problem, right, not someone
who starts a business. And she was saying, you know, you could be selling X or Y or z on the internet and call it a business and call it yourself an entrepreneur. But she was saying that entrepreneurs are really trying to solve a problem. They're addicted and obsessed with that. And I think, just like that, as you're defining the difference between growth and scale, that differentiation is important for us as we start to build our journey
or careers. Now in chapter one, you're talking about getting Oh sorry, yes, no, let me just add one thing that piles excellent definition. And her episode was great. I recommend it to everyone. She was one of the people I have the like to meet through doing a podcast. Is that one of the awesome things about us doing these podcasts is a chance to meet other really interesting people.
An entrepreneur is a person who's solving a problem, but in particular, she or he is solving a problem where she doesn't yet have either all the resources or the knowledge or all of the tool set in order to do it. So you have to actually inject you like if you were to say, do I have everything laid out in front of me in order to solve that problem? I'm like, for example, I could say for a piece of word working like I'm gonna make you a bed frame. Lord,
Do I have everything out in front of me? The answer is, as an entrepreneur, you don't, and you may not even yet know how. And that's one of the key things about the entrepreneurial Journey. I love that edition as well. Yes, building your bedframe from an Ikea box is not does not count. It's all laid out for you.
I absolutely love that chapter one in the book. And I always like to give people a little bit of a taste when we're talking about a book, because my genuine hope for everyone who's listening and watching wherever you are, is that you go and grab a copy of this book. It's going to be my new book that I recommend to each and every single person who comes to me and says, you have an idea or I don't know what to do with it, I don't know where to start. How do I go about it? This is the book
that I'm going to give them. Or even if you say, yeah, I don't have an idea, I just I am a bit curious about all of this. All my friends are becoming entrepreneurs. I see it all over the world. How do I do that? This is the book, I'm going to be giving to people, so I love to give people a taste. Now, in chapter one you talk about getting to know and accepting rejection and hearing nos can be really draining and really difficult, especially when we've been
trained to expect and want a yes. Now, you mentioned in the book the contrarian principle, and this is also one of the principles you mentioned in your other book, blitz Scaling. So I wanted you to actually describe that principle to us and talk about how do we get used to hearing no, and what is that no really asking us to do? So the contrarian principle is in
order to achieve something bold, different of scale. Frequently, if it's an idea that lots and lots of people are had, it's much harder to get there, whether as an entrepreneur or an investor, And so you generally want to choose an idea, choose a path, who's a product or service, whatever, which is contrarian but right. It's very easy, of course, to be control and wrong because there are many there's
many foolish things to do in the world. And so you go when where a lot of people think that that might be wrong, but actually, in fact you have had some insight or you and your team and your colleagues, your friends have had some insight that you could say, Okay, this is how we're going to do it now. Part of how that gets to dealing with nose is say, for example, and by the way, generally speaking, it's a
good idea you try to convert crises and opportunities. It's a precise kind of mindset strengthening exercises and balance and poise that you go across. You know, a set of podcasts with on purpose, which is you don't really say well,
I just want to get a yes. And it's like, well, you're not going to just get a yes, especially if you have something that's bold and original and different, because a bunch of people are gonna say, well, I don't get it right, Like, you know, like I don't get that people will want to buy flavored water without sugar.
I don't get that. You know, there's all of these things that we go into on master's of scale to say, actually, in fact, sometimes when you get a bunch of people who say I don't get it, that's precisely you have something that's gold. Now so the question is, well, how do you deal with a psychology of it? And the answer is, well, approach nose not as a rejection of
you or rejection of your idea. A rejection it is obviously a form of rejection, but where you might be able to learn something from it, where you might be able to understand something about the way the world's working. So if actually, in fact, it's a certain kind of know where people say, well, everyone knows that you that's selling flavored water without sugar because everyone wants sugared water
won't work, and you're like, ha ha, maybe I have something. Well, everybody knows that no stranger is going to rent a room or an apartment to another stranger. Ah, I may
have something. And so you can bring those nose in and then part of the categorization that we do within that first chapter, because that's part of the reason why you open the book with this, is to give you a sense of, well, which which way should you responding to different kinds of nose, Because sometimes it's a no and a thoughtful one from an expert that you should dig into some understand some of why they think that.
Sometimes it's a no, that's it's a like a stereotype and just a reflection, and so then you understand that's a stereotype. Sometimes it's because the person's not engaging, in which case you should work. You should waste no more time with this person. And so that's the kind of thing of treating it as a learning journey, which of course is fundamental to life, and of course the entrepreneurship is the way to reorient the mindset in order to to to say it's not rejection, it's part of the
hero's journey you're on. Yes, yeah, I'm glad you referenced the hero's journey there as well. And for those of you that have not read it, Joseph Campbell and and other writers have spoken beautifully about the hero's journey and rejection is just such a beautiful part of it when you look back, and when you, like you said it's psychological. We think it's specific to the idea or the business. Actually it's all psychological in hearing no and being rejected
and still finding a way to continue. And I really really resonate with that insight that you just shared around how one of our biggest challenges is that we are trying to get this unanimous yes and unanimous consent, and you say that in the book, you're just like, you're actually dubious when there's unanimous consent, because you're thinking to yourself, well, there must be this can't be good. Then if everyone agrees with it, then this can't be the right idea.
And I've found that so refreshing because I think we've been trained to think the other way that if everyone agrees, you're probably onto something, especially people in power. But if people in power disagree with you, you're actually saying, well, there could be something to learn, but there could be
an opportunity here as well. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about this was is there something have you been able to in your life as an investor applied that or have you sometimes felt that, no, this is definitely not going to work and then something became really successful? Right? Has there ever been a time when you thought, I've thought about this, there's stuff to think about or have you stopped saying no, Have you started saying maybe if when? Or do you still say no? Oh?
I definitely still say no. Because the average you know, kind of a general partner of adventure firm looks at six hundred to eight hundred deals a year and says yes to zero to two of them. And now you're generally speaking almost never will you rarely say no in a way that's kind of like no, never talk to me again. That's if someone's kind of just really not the right fit, right, and it's just like, look, don't waste your time, to waste my time, this is good.
Frequently you'll say not right now when you try to partner with people and be good for entrepreneurs. The not right now may very well be here's some of the challenges that I have right now, and I hope and anticipate you're going to be really successful, and maybe a future path is a time that we will talk about now. There's a there's kind of this psychological categorization of false spot that as false negatives, otherwise known as type one
and type two errors. Very rarely when you're doing things moving at speed like investing, if you're not making both type one and type two errors, both false positives and false negatives, you're not doing the game the right way right, You're you're being too conservative one way or the other. So so if you're too too many positives, then you're not making you know you you then you're making a set of mistakes and too many negatives. You're making a
mistake and so um. And so for me, when I kind of look at this as is this kind of like I think entrepreneurship and investing has this kind of yin and yang bringing together that yes and the no, that hey, I could see this vision, but I see the risks. But I put it together and I make a decision, and I think that's part of what we find it to be, you know, kind of super interesting.
And I think that's the that's the way I try to balance it, which means that frequently I will say no, although my most often no is trying to be helpful, like like being the like you could almost look at the over the side of the chapter was yes, I know that I'm saying no, but I'm trying to be as helpful as I possibly can to this person who's on this ridiculously hard journey and this is there at
the moment their life's treasured work in so doing. And so anyway, that's a long kind of tendrild answer to your question, but I think worth it. No, No, no, great auntswer I'm really glad that you got in the weeds there. Read I appreciate it. On the flip side, read what is what's been one of the most surprising yes is that you've given or you've seen in investing of a company that we may or may not recognize. But what has been the most surprising yes you've ever seen?
Heard of? Given yourself that Maybe again, if you looked at it coherently, you would have been like, hmm, it was actually more intuitive. It was more a feeling, it was more an experience. It was more just a gut
Has that ever happened? Do you see that? Well? Definitely, because both as entrepreneurs and as investors, when you're at the earliest stages the seed the series A, it's a vision where you don't know how to get from here to there, right you You you've got a theory of the game, but you don't actually know how to get there, and so and so frequently every yes involves a leap of faith, involves a look, I think this entrepreneur, you know she or he, this team, this idea, this time,
this technology, Yeah, I think they could get there. And so every yes has a little bit of that characteristic At these very early stage kind of judgments. Perhaps the funniest one was Airbnb, which my very very first investment that I brought to Greylock. And it was at Greylock because David z who was my partner at Greylock, was my most valuable board member at LinkedIn, you know, kind
of like converts, convinced me to come join Greylock. And I was like, oh, great, and I have a great culture of partner with entrepreneurs and and feeling like you're the invited partner versus you know, the you know, big man on campus as kind of a way of collaborating
with entrepreneurs. And so I bring an Airbnb and I'm like, oh, I think this is really interesting, and and Vid looks at me across the partnership table and says, well, every venture capitalist has to have a deal that they fail on that they learn from, and Airbnb can be yours. And so here is this storied, amazing venture investor going oh, this is a complete idiotic idea, but go ahead, right
and so and I thought about it. Now it wasn't so much the intuitive part of the question, but I thought about it, and I thought really hard, and I went, you know, I still think it's worth doing. So he's given me permission to do it, so I'm gonna go do it right. And by the way, to David's credit because he's a learner as well. Six months later, no change in the data and else. He came to me and said, you were totally right to make this investment.
What did you see that I didn't see? And I said, well, you were right. Cities could react. It's a strange experience. You know, hotel lobbies are going to react all of the stuff. The question is is if they had a good plan on all this stuff, and the world they were building toward was the world we should be living in, and if they could navigate through those landlines, it would be amazing. And so he was like, oh, okay, got it right, and then you know, off to a more
contrarian but seeking to be right investments. Yes, I love that, and I love that question that he asked you, like, what did you see that I didn't see? I mean that that is such a cumulative wisdom opportunity if you're if you're always asking that question when you get something wrong or make a mistake, or someone gets something right. I mean the way that that can accelerate your learning and knowledges is absolutely huge, absolutely beautiful. I love that
Chapter two is called do things that don't scale? Do things that don't scale, which, again, you're you're just playing with us. Read you're completely playing with us. I'm like reading a book called Masters of Scale. You're now telling us things do things that don't scale? What do you think most startups do wrong in the early stages of their business? What are the biggest mistakes? That question we were going to be talking for the next three weeks,
because there are many men any ways to fail. It's one of the reasons why I mastered the scale. We try to go, here's an interesting pattern to possibly navigating the minefield. Here's an interesting pattern, here's a good sensor, you know, you know, kind of concepts for doing this.
Part of the reason why we put this in is because the natural thing and everyone goes, okay, I got it, scales religion, I'm only going to do things at scale, and you actually, in fact say, well, actually, every successful entrepreneurial venture, all of these things that have gotten a scale, have done a set of things along the path that we're essential to succeeding that we're not themselves scale activities, and so people might buy into the religion too blindly.
And you actually said, look, I know that I only succeed when I really get to the scale, whether it's the business or climate change or wisdom. But if I don't do some things that are kind of experimenting with product market fit, taking some experiment and innovation, whether it's an organization or go to market, you know, the organization
of how you run or go to market. If I'm not doing some of that, I may miss that critical path that unlocks the journey to magic at scale, the journey to how this really works in transforming the world in society we're living in. And so there's a whole set of different kinds of techniques where you go, well, that one scale, so we're never going to do It's like, well, look, if you think it's really important, experiment with it, see
what's doable, and then you go, wow, it's really important. Okay, so what version of this might I be able to scale? And that's that's that's essentially the through line through the chapter, which of course opens with you know Bryan Chusky Airbnb again, Yes, absolutely, yeah, No, I think that that again is a really significant note because it's it's so easy to just get lost in the numbers, and I really feel that it's it's even with the work I do, I found that ultimately, can
you help one person have an incredible experience? And when you can do that for one person, you get trusted to do at ten and then hot thousand, and then one hundred thousand and a million and a billion, whatever
it may be. It's the idea of like, I really feel like being able to give one person a unique experience and under you just learned so much about that, and you learned so I know that any any founders that I know, they say, you know, they spend all their time looking at customer service in the beginning to try and figure out, like what part of the journey were people not truly feeling was working or was flowing
for them. There's such an attention to detail there which is often ignored when it's like, oh, we've got this many stales already, do you know, could you give any examples, and again you don't need to name names, Read of any companies that actually started off right but maybe didn't apply some of this wisdom and you saw them fall laugh and again I'm not trying to point fingers or
name names. I'm trying to understand more that have you seen that where it looks like everything's going great, but then there's something that is an external but internal that breaks down. Well, there's a number and there some degree any of the ones that were super once upon a time and then went away web van or you know kind of all advantage or an early stearch engines excite or kind of excited home. There's there's all of these things that said, look, something broke along that path to scale.
There's also ones that and like also failed to get to scale. There are those patterns as well, and so it's a whole set of things where you know, part of the journey of scaling is the problem changes. Like we opened with a discussion of entrepreneurships or entrepreneurs or problem solvers. Too often one of the things that happens to your problem solves, Oh, I solve this version of the problem. And so I've got the tool, that's the hammer.
I'm going to keep doing it. And the scale journeys involve, you know, and that's why we have another chapter Learned to un learn is changing the tool set up and the path that got you here is not necessarily the path that we get you there, and so sometimes you have to say, well, that really helped us launch our product, but the scale model is actually in fact doing deep embedded into SEO and Google, or the scale model is moving to telesales and an enterprise model to it to
bring to my product. And for example, like one of the things that was not anticipated at LinkedIn is we thought for the first x years it would all be individuals only, and we thought individuals would expense their their recruiting or their sales or their problem solving to the company.
But we found that the company started knocking at our door almost before we'd launched our subscription product, going well, we want an enterprise product, and was like, oh and by the way, this is kind of classic entrepreneurship, as we went okay, so we listened. We said, well, that's different than our plan. How do we measure this, how do we have a bias to speed action and learning? And we said, okay, well, let's create a PowerPoint deck
that describes a product. By the way, at this moment is totally fictional, like we literally sat around for a weekend and said the product could look like this, So let's mock it up, create a PowerPoint deck, and then go out and say, well, this is a product we're working on. What do you think about it? Would you buy it? Right? And the first salespeople were very entrepreneurial.
They're not the same as the scale success salespeople that LinkedIn has now, but those where they came back and they said, well, we got some weird feedback on this one. We've changed that, but this is a product we think that a waunch of people will initially buy, and so then we went and built it. And that's kind of classic for these kind of entrepreneurial journeys. Yeah, I love that. I love that. It's always I find that an all
successful entrepreneur journeys, you see this pivot. You see this moment where you're now creating something that wasn't the plan. It wasn't the business model, it wasn't the way you thought you were going to get to success or scale or speed rarely comes from something internally as well, right, It comes from how the customers using it, playing with it. Who's who's asking the right questions? In chapter three read you talk about the big idea? What is the big idea,
and I feel like and I'm asking this questionably. I mean, you probably get this question all the time. I think it's important to ask it because I do think this is the majority of people that that I connect to, that I meet, that I hear when I'm recording the podcast is I think I have an idea, but I'm too scared to take action on it or take it seriously because the whole journey seems overwhelming. Do I have to fundraise or not? Do I have the skills or not?
Are there too many competitors that are doing the same thing? Is my idea even original? I saw ten companies like this fail last year. These are the things that go through our head. And then the most basic one, what will my friends say when this doesn't work out right? Like what will my parents think of me that I left my college education to do this or I quit law to do this. These are the kind of things we're hearing all the time. What do you say to people when they say that to you, or when you
see that, or when you hear that? And I get that that's a big broad question, but how do you try and help people narrow it down? It's a very complicated question because it comes that lot down to the individual and the individual's goals purposes, you know, strategy, risk tolerance, what kind of activity they want, and so you have to you have to always condition it based on it. Now a few general principles which again apply very differently depending on you know, kind of kind of who you
are is, I mean, what circumstances you're in. How much
risk can you take? Entrepreneurship always involves risk. Even if you think you've d risk the idea a lot, there's always a lot of unknown unknowns, and part of an entrepreneurship you have to deal with the unknowns in order to in order to do this, I think there's a question around you don't do an entrepreneurial idea unless you can think of yourself doing it for the next ten years, because part of success is like would this be worth at least ten years of my life in so doing?
And if not, then great? Not the thing that you need to do right? And then when you go and talk to your friends about it and try to get some wisdom of the crowds around how does the thing work? You don't ask them do you like the idea? You don't ask them do you think it can work, because they will think that what you want is reassurance. What you want to say what won't work about this idea? What could cause the idea to fail? Because if you get that feedback and then you begin to aggregate this.
This also gets back to the learning from nose that we were talking about. You aggregate that feedback, then you have a better chance at taking smart risks, including choosing whether or not to do it. Now. One last little kind of kind of pro entrepreneurial tip for people who are daunted, which is another thing that good entrepreneurs do is they kind of figure out how to experiment. So you say, well, I've got this idea. It's an idea for a new app. Maybe it's an idea for a
mindfulness or wisdom app or something. You say, well, all right, but I'm really nervous about doing this. What could I do? Well? I could go buy some you know kind of I could go put up a web page, describe what it is, say click on click on here if you're interested in this, and then buy some advertising against it, and then see what the clickthroughs look. Click and if the click throughs look totally fantastic, then I was like, well, maybe shoot,
that's data. Maybe I should go do this. And because I've described alls and if the clickthroughs look bad, then you can say, well, maybe I didn't do the experiment the right way, or maybe maybe I shouldn't do this right And so there's ways to experiment with things. People too often get stuck in their mind when when do and then reflect? Think, do, reflect, think right and and be in that cycle on a relatively quick basis is central to solving these unknown, unknown problems. Yeah, I'm so
glad you added that last piece. I feel like experimenting is one of the greatest assets in skill and the best thing about experiments they can be free or very cheap. They can be very quick to do. You don't have to build for a year or you know, waste time
in your life. You could literally build it this weekend if you felt like it and tested something, and you get immediate feedback and response from people that are not connected to your family or your friends, or people that you feel well, they're saying it because they're connected, or they don't like it because I'm their friend and they know me and they want me to stay safe. And so I couldn't agree with you more that I remember
when I first was starting what I was doing. I think experimenting even today has always been my favorite way of realizing whether I should do something or not. And I love it because anyone who's sitting there going it costs too much? Experimenting is free or cheap. Please remember that it takes too long. No, it doesn't. This could literally happen this weekend, and oh it's you know, well, who's going to use it anyway? You have no idea.
That's the fun of it, And so I'm so happy you you've really emphasize that point at the end, because there's no better way to see whether your idea actually has legs. And oh yes, please read go ahead. Yeah. Let me add one thing to this, which is people always think experiment is out in the world. Sometimes the experiments with yourself too. How does this make you feel? Do you feel stressed by it? Do you feel energized
by it? That experimentation is also good. We have this presumption, because we're in our own heads, that we're the best experts of ourselves and the answer, of course, we have a depth of experience and all the rest. But actually,
in fact, we have blind spots to ourselves. We have unknown unknowns about ourselves, and experimenting is useful there too, Yes, for sure, I think that's I mean that deep checking with ourselves is potentially when we ignore that it's why we're seeking approval and validation from outside because we've not
really sense checked the idea the experience with ourselves. And I've often found the other way around that I've been so sure about my decisions and pretty much everyone in the room is saying no, but I'm still going to do it because I feel so sure. And I've always felt that that internal surety and assurance and confidence has actually made me feel stronger than even when everyone else agrees. And it wasn't for the same reason as you said earlier.
For me, when I'm in a room when everyone agrees, it feels uncomfortable if I am not sure, And I think often we're trying to make other people's assurances make up for our lack of assurance, but that actually never works and it never feels right, whereas it's the other way around. Your assurance can make up for everyone's lack of assurance and push the idea through. I see you nodding and laughing so I feel like, Okay, I'm understanding,
I'm getting this right. Chapter four read was the one that I am most in love with, and it's because it's where I am at in my journey in terms of culture for my company, culture for my teams. You know, where we've been fast growing for the last few years across my different ventures and different organizations. We have probably around fifty people now, and it's not always people that I meet and see all the time. There's people working internationally.
There's there's people across working across time zones and in different areas of our company where I have chief operating officers and other individuals who manage them more on a day to day basis. And as someone who is also quote unquote using industry language, not seeing myself this way talent and CEO, it's an interesting position to be in and it's something that I realize that I spent a lot of years trying to choose and figure out which one, and I only just feel this year I've kind of
figured out how I want to balance the two. And so when you're Chapter four is dedicated to what you call the neverending, ending project, which is culture, and I believe I'm on a culture two point zero for my work and what I'm trying to create. And you talk a lot about how your first employees in the company are important, and you say if your company is dominated by one type of person, your collective blind spots will add up to tunnel vision, and which I thought was fascinating.
But the part of culture that I find most interesting is being able to sustain, continually inspire and create a culture that people also want to be a part of. Now, recruitment, retention, and reward are all part of that puzzle. Let's go through each of them. Let's start with recruitment. What has been your favorite way of knowing you've made a good hire? What has been your favorite method, approach tactic to hiring that has deeply helped all one that you've seen through
the podcast that you've been blown away by. So I think one of the really key things to do well is to not make hiring a solo journey for you as founder or CEO, or for any manager or executive, but rather make both the hiring decisioning at least moderately a group journey, not just because of buying a group and all arrests, but even if you're like, look, I'm hiring a new you know, VP of people. It's it's the beginning of an organization. But you're like, and that
will report to the CEO. But I wouldn't. Don't just do it as only the CEO. So that's one part in the hiring. But then the next part gets really critical, which is make other people, like, make a group responsible for the onboarding, so that part of how a person comes up to speed quickly on the culture begins to add to it is not just the discussions that you have during the interviewing and reference checking and other kinds of things of the process, but also during the initial
parts of the work. Because if you have that, then you have the whole or you know, a proxy of the organization reaching out and helping without onboarding. And then that gets the detail of your question, because how do you know that you've made a magnificent hire is when call it the three people or five people that you've made jointly responsible for the onboarding. I'll come back and say, Oh, this new person she's great. Oh this new person, you know,
he's really interesting and he's you know, doing well. And so because then you can say, ah, I've got a lot of different touch points. And by the way, of course, one of the things is if you get three of them or two of them saying hey, great and the other two going I don't know, you go, okay, well, what's the I don't know? Do I need to make an adjustment? That's not necessarily an adjustment the person should
meet over the organization. But you want to do all the stuff early, right, because you usually when you have this magnificent partnering between new employees and the organization they're working, it starts on a very strong foot. It's rare that
it starts on a weak foot and then converts. So you want as much of that initial strength as possible, and you need the organization to kind of collectively work at it, and then, by the way, ultimately make a decision, because like if you go, if you're sixty days in and you're like, this is a mistake, then you want to fix the mistakes as quickly but also as humanly as possible. Yes, yeah, I really appreciate that advice. I think that's the mistake I made first time around. The
whole recruitment approach was one person led. It was very, very difficult to figure it out. And you're so right that as soon as we switch to a more group based system, that in effect And it's hard in the beginning because sometimes there isn't that bigger group in the beginning, it is just you, and so you're kind of relying on yourself. But I like the idea of including people even if they're not full time, even if they're people that work with you freelance or part time, that you
trust and love. You may even have someone involved that you value in your personal life as part of the interview process. I think that we think of that as weird or awkward, but it's not at all, because there may be someone in your personal life who you believe really understands you and knows you that could help with that process. So I think that's a such a great way of thinking about it, in such a simple way of solving the problem. Let's move on to retention. Keeping
that culture, growing that culture, preserving it, expanding it. What are certain cultural principles? Every company has their own culture, and everyone has their own deck, and everyone puts their own words on the wall. What is some that you think are underlying all good company culture? Are there some key pillars, key themes that you believe are just integral to any successful company that kind of go beyond industry boundaries and backgrounds. Well, I think there's patterns that you
want in every culture. It doesn't assume mean they're instantiate the same way. So it's it's kind of the question of like what does excellence look like? Here? We always search search excellence, but what is excellence for us? Like it should a culture should always be seeking excellence, but specific not we you seek excellence, but like our excellence is this sort like we are thoughtful, we are multi stakehost older inclusive. It's like what are the top priorities
in terms of what you're doing? Another one is this is how we define our team play. This is the kind of way that we hold each other accountable. Part of defining a culture is like, for example, where should every employee be able to hold the founder or the CEO accountable? What? What what should they hold that person accountable for? Like what's the way that we are running in that? And I think that's part of like what
the pattern of that is? So like are we move fast or we are take intelligent risks or we are act like owners? You know, all of these things could be very good cultural elements, but which one particularly define us? And even though there might be a list of twenty virtues, part of culture is like, well, these are the ones we most focus on. These are the ones we most
hold each other accountable to. These are the ones that were like when we're cross checking, how we're evolving, how we're playing the game, how we're getting the scale that cross checking is still the thing that with each other, that drives us for it, and you want to set that from the very earliest days. It grows, it can change. The mistake that people frequently have a thing about culture is they think like a culture deck. They think it's like,
you know, the Ten Commandments. You know, it's like it comes written in stone, and you're like, no, no, culture evolves. And so you want to have the right organism, the right set of people who are adding to it, who when you when you when you bring in a new person, they're part of that organism too, also adding to it and also helping it, you know, adapt and change and
expand with a foundation but still organic and developing. Yes. Yes, one of one of the ones that I think work like that for me was as an entrepreneur, one of your values naturally is risk taking. It's expression, it's it's failing, it's figuring it out. And I realized that actually, for my team, one of their biggest values was the exact opposite, and it was safety. And I started to realize how
important safety was to team members. And that blows my mind because I was just I've never looked for safety in my life anywhere, And it's so easy to get caught up in building a culture that is only for you, but not everyone can work that way. And I started to recognize how certain things we did, even though we didn't do it to have this impact, it would be seen as unsafe to someone even though it was never from that mindset. The mindset was always growth and building
and doing more amazing things. But how not bringing people
on that journey made them feel unsafe. And so that one, for me was a huge one that I had to realize that this idea of being proactive and risk driven and all this actually had to be completely reverse engineered into a feeling of just safety and support, which was new to me and byther the nuance of course, which I'm certain most part of your journey is, which parts of safety, which were the fundamental it's not safety and everything safety and everywhere, it's which were the key parts
that are part of this organization, this set of team play, and that's part of organic cultural evolution. Yes, yes, no, And that's why. Yeah, I think that that nuance is is so clear that we live at a time where everyone's just like, WHOA should I make a company that's risky or that's this, And it's so much more about embracing polarities than it is about choosing one or the other blanketly, because that doesn't that doesn't work either. So no,
I love that distinction and so important. Chapter seven that I wanted to dive in and I'm mixing and skipping now is you know, watch what they do, not what they say. And in terms of looking at the customer, and I find that this is something that some people have an innate ability to spot patterns and notice how people are interacting. And you know, sometimes I feel like my mind works like an algorithm, and I feel like
my mind's like just connecting darts and stuff. But at the same time, what are some of the most practical ways you've seen companies really listen, learn and watch their customers or people before they become customers. What have been some of the most masterful ways that companies have actually
made systematize that. Well, there's a whole set and it goes from obviously consumer internet, which tends to be the software telemetry in terms of what's going on, to even physical hardware like for example, watching on like one of the things the earliest things that's taught in design school from decades ago is watched the unboxing experience. Because while people you might say what most what did you most love?
What did you most hate, the person may not realize that the thing that caused them to start on the wrong foot was like, for example, a weird unboxing experience. And so the general truth the matter is is you always want to spend a little bit of time kind of observing a kind of an unguided and unforced interaction with the product or service that you're trying to do.
And sometimes you need a lot of time, sometimes you need a lot of people doing that, but you want to get some sense of it because if you don't have that sense, and some people of course just totally natural at that intuition. This is among the you know, the brilliances of the Steve Jobs and so forth. But if you don't get that sense, then you could make some very fundamental bad assumptions, bad judgments. And too often, very very few of us should totally prioritize. You know,
I am genius, I know the product. It's always like, you know, be learning, be learning from other people, be
learning from watching. And you know, for example, one of the things that I think people are underappreciate in the kind of the Steve Jobs canon is how much that every time he kind of found an interesting new product, even one that he thought was completely bonkers, he would invite the founder by for lunch or for breakfast or for coffee and talk to them because a way of learning as a way of doing that, and I think that is a similar kind of tactile nature of that,
And so I think that's the that's the thing is to is to try to get some observation and some engagement. There is I think critical for every entrepreneur. Wow, And that's the side of Steve Jobs that's often not talked about or not often shared, and and you know, it's it's really fascinating for me. Steve Jobs has been such a inspiration in so many ways by you know, studying his life and studying decisions choices, his spiritual background. You know,
there is such a fascinating individual. And I think again, when we look at entrepreneurs and where we study entrepreneurs, it's so important to not start putting them in boxes and then trying to choose which personality type we are, because people are so much more complex and multilayered and textured. Like each interesting entrepreneurial journey is somewhat sui generous. So while there are archetypes that you should pay attention to, whether it's union or anything else, the notion of what
you're doing is you're creating something new. And by the way that you don't want to invent everything across all spectrum. You want to focus set of new things, usually the product or service, sometimes in the way you go to market, sometimes in the way you organize. But one mistake that's kind of entertaining the entrepreneur's make is they invent new on everything. And actually, in fact it is too generous. It is unique and a specific subset of inventions or
what's key. I love that that's that's that's such an interesting and new way of thinking. About it as well, that I don't think that you know, we've all fully considered read it. We've got a few more moments left with you. I've got a ton more questions for you, but I'm gonna I'm gonna be I'm gonna narrow some of them down. I wanted to ask you before we dive into what we called the final five on on Purpose, which is our fast five. I wanted to ask you.
We were speaking earlier before we came live, and we were talking about purpose, and you were talking about how Masters of Scale is like philanthropic, it's service based, it's extension, right, tell how important? At what point is purpose important? Is it important? From the big inning it does? It usually evolve later for entrepreneurs. Where does it fit into the puzzle of joy, happiness, success? And where have you seen
it been most beautifully incorporated. Frequently entrepreneurs can make a mistake here because there they go, Look, there's this market opportunity. This technology enables this. I see this competitive space opening up. I see that I could now do this with this new technology. I could offer this product that's now based on the cloud, or based on AI or based on mobile, and that's all very by the way, very important. It's
super relevant to the success of the entrepreneurial journey. But these entrepreneurial journeys, they're team sports, they're not individual sports. And as part of the team sport, and part of the reason why, like whenever you look at any team organization, sports teams, your military teams and other things, is that a spree decor that we're in this together and that it matters that we're in this and that we have
pride that we're in this. Pride with each other, Pride with our family, is pride with the society, and that is all part of having a purpose, part of having a mission, and so defining that like why what is the world that we are seeking to make it better? And by the way, it doesn't have look obviously the people trying to cure cancer, it's super important, but there's lots of aspects to making society better. This is how we are doing that. This is why the thing that
we're adding in is so important. And so I think that that's important from the very earliest seedling of the idea within all of these projects, but especially the entrepreneurial where you're trying to build these institutions that help transform society at scale, and so I think it's it's one of the things to start with on day zero. That's brilliant. I love hearing that. That's music to my ears. Of course, I'm the own purpose community because I really believe that it.
It's always there from the birth of the idea and the purposes. What keeps you going and keep you persevering. It keeps you through all those crazy late nights and early mornings and lack of sleep and the breakdown. Like the only thing that keeps you going is your purpose, whatever that may be. So I love hearing that. Now, read, I want to ask you the final five. These are the fast five where you have to answer the questions in one word or one sentence maximum, So you have
one sentence. Please feel free to play with that. Read These are your fast five? Are you ready? I hope so awesome? I love it. So the first question I have for you is, what is the best entrepreneurship advice you've ever received? Make decisions quickly and recover when you need to. Nice? Okay, great answer. What is the worst entrepreneurship advice you've ever received or given? Persevere against all odds. Oh, And the answer is because you need to learn right,
So it is only perseverance. It's also adaptation. Yes, absolutely, pivot, learning, adapting, regenerating completely if that's if that's what it takes. Okay. Third question, what is something that you once valued that you no longer value? Crazy hard work? And what I mean by that was it's kind of a youthful thing, which is when you're eighteen, you're like, ah, you should pull an all nighter, or you should show that you could do it by pulling three all nighters. And now
I'm definitely of the working smart. You have to work hard on all these journeys, but working smart is the important governor on working hard. I love that great crushing number. Four. What's a daily habit that you don't negotiate with that you always do no matter what? Adequate sleep? How many hours do you sleep? Minimum six with the occasional frequently
weekends go to eight. Try to have one or two nights usually a morning's usually weekends where you don't send an alarm and you wake up when your body is like okay, I'm ready. Part of this is because we go through life, we make decisions all the time. We make multiple decisions all the day, and if you're making bad decisions, you're gonna error, and so you have to be cognitively in the right place, which of course is
also mindfulness and purpose. But sleep is the baseline. I love that that's such a great one, such an important habit, and underestimated. As a monk, I didn't sleep very much, but today I sleep is one of my biggest values too. I couldn't agree more, all right. Fifth and final question, read, is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? Listen first, then speak very very great advice and would be an
amazing law Read at Hoffman everyone. The book is called Masters of Scale, same name as the podcast Surprising Truths from the World's most successful Entrepreneurs. You can go out and grab it right now. You will not regret it. You may want to get it for a friend and family member to read again. It has been such a joy talking to you, and even through this screen, I feel your friendliness, I feel your kindness, I feel your graciousness. It's it's truly special. It's truly special. I've had this
experience and actually the only time. The other time I had it this week was actually with someone in person, but with you, I'm feeling it through the screen, which is really special. So I want to thank you for being so present, for being so conscious for our community and our audience today. You've really served them beautifully with your experience, wisdom, insight. I really really hope everyone goes and grabs a copy. I can't wait for people to read it, and I really again hope to see you
in person very soon. So yeah, thank you so much. If any of you've been listening or watching, make sure that you tweet, Instagram, tag me and read because we'd love to see what are the nuggets wisdom that you're going to apply, what's the thing that you're practicing, experimenting with exploring. I love being able to see what you're taking away from these episodes because they helped me understand which questions to ask, what to improve, what they make better.
So please please please tag me and read and again, and thank you so much for listening to on Purpose and read it. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.