Investing rewards those who play the long game. Rule breakers know that while trading might capture short term gains, true wealth comes from thinking in years, even decades. That's how you how I beat the market. And it's not just investing, compounding returns apply in business, leadership, and life. My guest this week, Rand Stegen, knows this well. His life's work is investing in people, building enduring businesses, and developing leaders for the long haul.
Festinalente, the Latin phrase meaning make haste slowly, reminds us that steady progress beats quick fixes. So let's make haste slowly with Rand Stegen only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner. Ram Stegen is the managing director of Stegen Leadership Academy, which he founded twenty five years ago, nineteen ninety nine.
Stegen trains leaders across North America who are committed to long term personal development and using their businesses as platforms for positive impact for good. Before Stegen, Rand led Presidio Media Group, a publisher of newspapers and magazines. He's long served on the board of Conscious Capitalism. Rand lives in Dallas with his wife and two daughters. A sought after speaker, Rand brings his wisdom on conscious leadership to stages nationwide. But this week, we get him for free.
Rand Stegen is one of my favorite people in business, so it's both a pleasure and an honor to have him debuting this week on Rule Breaker Investing. Rand, welcome. It is great to be here, and thank you for the invitation. We've been we've been, threatening to do this for years, probably twelve twelve or fifteen years to do something together. So I'm finally, finally, you know, celebrating that we were making it happen.
Thank you, Rand. And and I it's because we're playing the long game, and that that feeds really well into my first question for you. I I I was thinking since I often say that this podcast is one third investing, one third business, one third life, that maybe we would arrange our conversation that way. So let's let's kick off an investing discussion with with my first question. It's a big topic. It's been on your mind recently.
Time. In investing, we talk a lot about the long term and compounding returns. Rule breaker investors, I think, outperform traders because we play the long game. Similarly, Rand, in your work at Stegen, you have a long term focus on the development of not public company stocks, but human beings. Could you help us by exploring into the parallels between long term investment in stocks and long term investment in people? Yeah. The, is as you know, this is one of my favorite topics.
This this, this the way in which we as investors or as leaders in our organizations or as parents with our children or as members of our communities, what not what's happening in the world, but rather how are we relating to what's happening in the world. And this idea of what is the way in which we relate with time itself. And so if we think about the idea of investing, if we I have two daughters, as you said in the intro.
And when I talk to them about the power of, the long game in compounding investing, And I say to them, if you look at the S and P for the last twenty five years, it's a fascinating exercise, especially when they were young. We see a, we see a clear, a clear picture when we're zoomed out. And, obviously, when we zoom in in a more of a short term, game, it becomes more volatile. It becomes more, it becomes more stressful. But if you just stay in the investing game, the outcome is is very evident.
Well, now let's take this in my world. So we run a a a leadership academy in Dallas, Texas as you mentioned, and we work with thousands of leaders in practice based programs every year. And sometimes these leaders fly to us from across North America, and sometimes we actually send our team, our faculty out to their organizations to deliver programs. And what we require in every program that we do is a commitment to a, to a minimal threshold of practice.
So when we work with a new organization, we say to the organization, not only are we gonna require your commitment to playing a practice game with your development as leaders, but also your CEO has to go first. So leaders go first. We don't work with an organization unless the CEO is gonna walk the talk and model the way. And we expect the CEO to commit to our flagship program, which is a fifty two week practice based program.
And this is really important because the the pushback we get is significant. People say, what are you talking about? What about a one day program? What about a two day program? And I'm like, okay. Let me get this straight. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Well, Rand, we wanna help drive more trust among our leadership team and throughout our organization. And I say to them, so you wanna promote a culture of trust, and you want our organization to do a two day program on that.
And they're like, yeah. And, David, they're they're they're they're sincere in their request. And so this is what what we've learned, it's gonna back to you, is the is the the way in which the average potential customer of ours, which we say no most of the time to new opportunities, they want the quick win. They want the endorphin release that they, that they got entertained for a day or two around the topic. It could be communication. It could be trust.
It could be execution. It could be teamwork. But the reality is those topics require a a a discipline and a commitment to the long game. And fifty two weeks for us just gets our clients to what we call a commencement ceremony, a, an opportunity to now after a fifty two week orientation to the principles of conscious leadership. Now we can actually begin the real work, which is a multi decade journey of development. I I love that, Rand. And I'm curious, Did you all did you start it that way?
Was that always how it was, or did you learn your way into that minimum threshold of commitment? Yeah. I like I like your frame. Did we learn our way in? Yes. We learned our way in. And when we started the business in nineteen ninety nine, we were, we were opportunistically, engaging where anyone was willing to hire us. We worked with small businesses. We worked with midsized businesses, and we worked with large Fortune one thousand businesses within the HR and training budgets.
And what would happen is over the first three, four, five years, we started to see a pattern where there was a, demand from the large companies in particular to go fast and to go quick. And the and the expectations of the opportunity to have a real compounding return weren't there because a lot of times those executives in the big companies weren't gonna actually stay at the company long term.
And so they weren't even thinking about what were gonna be the implications of this training and development two years, three years, four years, five years from now because they were not likely even gonna be there. So everybody played the short term game in the in the big companies that we worked with. Now I wanna be careful here. In the early years I wanna say this again. In the early years, in our experience, everybody in the big companies was playing the short term game.
Now it's taken twenty five years, and I have met two or three CEOs of public companies who actually are demonstrating a long game orientation, but it's taken decades to find those outliers. Wow. Yeah. And the long game, fifty two weeks, that minimum threshold of commitment, of course, for investing. And anybody who's listened to me on this podcast for the last week or last ten years knows that my view of the minimum commitment to an investment is three years.
That's Yeah. That's generally how we think about The Motley Fool. There are probably different opinions because we're Motley. But for me, anyway, I've always laid down absolute minimum. And when you buy a stock, don't even touch it for at least three years.
And to think that the long game is just fifty two weeks initially for a lot of people, that you got them there, that you helped them realize that you need if you wanna work with us, you have to work at our minimum long game of one year does suggest rampant short termism throughout our business world and our society. And I'm not here to for you and me, Rand, to stand up on the mountain top and say, what are all these people doing? Because we're human too.
We get right into short term situations and start to forget that bigger picture of lower left to upper right that the S and P five hundred you mentioned earlier, demonstrates if we just let it. Yeah. And the, and and, you know, I even find myself cringing a little bit when you are playing back what you're hearing me say about one year being long term because the reality is we, we think at Stegen, in decades.
Yeah. We we created a term for this, and and a distinction between a short termer and a decater. And a short termer evaluates success in quarters and years. A decater evaluates success in decades or lifetimes.
And so there is an existential, dimension and a, let's call it a transcendent dimension to the work that we do as it relates to time because we simply have chosen, not that it's, that it's bad for other organizations, but for us, we will not work in environments where there are artificial time horizons. And so what that basically means is and this took us many years to create the clarity on what I'm about to say.
We work with owner operator businesses, which means mostly families, founders, and ESOPs. Owner operators who have a commitment to their stakeholders, to their and to their investors, to their communities, to their employees, to their customers, to their, you know, strategic partners and vendors. And and this is the big one. Owner operators with a commitment to stakeholders and have an indefinite time horizon for the business platform that they are stewarding.
So that doesn't mean a forever time horizon. It means an indefinite. They're operating, as Jim Collins might have said back in the nineties, they're operating with an orientation of a built to last company building approach. And so will some of our clients sell their businesses? It occasionally happens. And the good news is that's not what their goal was. Their goal is not to sell the business.
Their goal is to build a great enduring profitable successful business that creates compounding returns through time. And we are afforded the opportunity to often be a partner along that journey, not just for a year or two or five, but we are now in continuous partnership with dozens and dozens of companies in the decades in our partnership. Partnerships that are now fifteen, twenty, twenty five years old continuously the same companies. Which is wonderful.
Fred Reichheld, the Harvard Business School professor who wrote, well, he's he he actually helped develop, Net Promoter among other things, but the the loyalty effect. Organizations that can count not just using Rand's Steigen parlance here, not just in years, but in decades, decaders, the the number of years that they've worked with their customers, with their employees, with their partners and suppliers, with their shareholders. Yes. Not all money is hot money out there.
But speaking of, like, landscape views of the world, Rand, when you describe your business, looking for these owner operator companies that are truly building something as as you say of indefinite but definite value, how many are out there? Is this can you just shake the trees and they just drop down and, you know, and Stake and Academy just keeps growing? Or is this the one percent of the one percent?
Like, I'm just I don't have pattern recognition across all of business to know how often or rare this is. Yeah. We would we would answer that in saying that in the United States alone, that there are several hundred thousand privately held midsize businesses. And they're because they're private, the data's a little bit elusive to all of us, but hundreds of thousands. And what is midsize? In midsize, we would say a couple hundred to a couple thousand employees.
That sort of might what might be called the lower mid market, by, by, you know, an enterprise organization. Like, a software company might call this the lower mid market. So you're talking about companies with hundreds of employees to thousands of employees. Most of the time, they are not yet professionalized. They're still, they're still run by the family or they're still run by, the founder.
And within those hundreds of thousands, we believe that there are tens of thousands that fit the profile that we're talking about. Now. They care about their communities. Now people will say, you know, so Stegen's partnered with academics and think tanks, and we've we've we we're we feel very confident in the, in the in the caliber of our curriculum design based on, based on the cutting edge theories and research around leadership and human development.
On the coast, let's call this our some of our partners like, you know, professors at Harvard and other think tanks. Now the the assumption would be if your curriculum is cutting edge, you must be working with companies on the coast. You must have a lot of clients in San Francisco and in Seattle and in New York and in Boston. And the reality is while we have clients all over North America, we have very few very we have a very small concentration on the coast. Where we thrive is in the heartland.
So our typical client is in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Illinois. We've just started to do more work in Alabama. We're moving more into Florida. And so people are always surprised. Why do you work in these sort of heartland states where there's that why?
And we say because when we show up and we talk about the values of taking care of your people, taking care of your communities, being an unapologetic capitalist, but also feeling like and this is the the my private equity friends, you know, have a double take on this. What what we say is the way to maximize profits is to focus on more than maximizing profits. I mean, this is this is the this is the magic. Right?
Is if I actually focus on the long game in taking care of my customers and creating value and taking care of my employees and retaining that talent and taking care of my vendors. And, yes, I have to negotiate with my vendors, but doing it in a way where it's sustainable for all of us, and they can continue to make money so they can reinvest back in their operation and better serve us. That dynamic tension in stakeholder management.
If we actually focus on all of that, we can actually make more money through time than just being maniacally focused on the profit. And when we show up and talk to a second generation distribution business in Louisiana, they're like, that just makes sense to me. Like, why wouldn't everyone think like that? And so there's this almost natural fit in these more traditional, environments than, you know, relative to a Seattle or San Francisco.
You get the customers you deserve, certainly a truism in this world, also the suppliers and partners you deserve. And and we're talking in and around conscious capitalism a little bit, and I wanna move our investing discussion briefly there, Rand, because conscious capitalism is central to the philosophy at stake. And you have been on the board. I was on the board for, I don't know, eight years, and you were on the board, like, five years before that, and you're still on the board.
So, Rand, you are one of the on the board. You are one of the great living conscious capitalists, and I and I mean that sincerely and in in the most beautiful way. And I've learned a lot, and so many of us have learned a lot from you. And I've never even been through the Leadership Academy. You have touched so many lives. What does it mean to you, Rand Stegen, to be a conscious investor?
A lot of long time rule breaker listeners kind of already know in some cases, but we're always reaching new people. You're always reaching new people. And when you say something like conscious investor, that just sounds like frou frou language to some people. So how do the principles of conscious capitalism shape the way you think about investing, whether it's in companies or people or society? Yeah. I'll I'll just simply swap out the word conscious, and I'll use a couple of other synonyms.
Deliberate, intentional, choiceful. And so it's sort of like, well, do we wanna do our investing in a deliberate and choiceful and disciplined way, or do we wanna do it in a more reactive scrambling way? I would say Random. Like, random. I would say that, you know, conscious that a conscious approach to investing whatever we're investing in is a form of playing offense as opposed to defense, and it's a form of playing offense continuously. And this is important.
This is this is I did not understand the difference between the word continual and continuous until just a few years ago, and I thought they were the same. And I can tell you that if someone plays golf and they play let's say they're a junior high or a high school golfer, and they play just during the golf season, And, and she plays golf, you know, golf season in freshman year and sophomore year and junior year and senior year.
So that would be an example of an athlete who only plays golf during golf season. That's a continual orientation to golf versus someone who plays golf year round, including their, their season. That's a continuous approach to the game of golf. And so continuous is like a infinity symbol, and it's just a constant commitment. So, yeah, I say a conscious investor is a deliberate investor whose whose commitment to whatever they're investing in is continuous.
Rand, you and I have talked over the years about business. We've talked a lot about culture. We haven't talked a lot about stocks. Let's do that briefly here. Many people don't invest in stocks at all. They just they index and I and certainly at The Motley Fool, we have endorsed that, from our very first book.
We totally agree and get the idea to index your investments, especially if you're paying a very low fee and you're not putting your money instead in overpriced mutual funds that underperform. So we're huge fans of indexing, and I love stocks. I love investing directly in stocks. I think that being choiceful, your words deliberate about picking good companies, not just all the companies, which by the way is what index funds do they have to buy all the companies. That's really worked well for me.
Rand, do you invest in individual stocks? Do you have a story or two here? Do you just index? Share with us. Yeah. I would say that I, I primarily orient my investing outside of the stocks and bonds world, and I do have a more of an indexing approach just with my personal, with my personal investments with a wealth manager that I just trust, and we invest there. We also do private investing in, in real estate and in other, in other private equity opportunities that are a little bit longer term.
And the and the real estate might be ten years of orientation. And, and then I, for fun, will invest in individual stocks not as a way of generating long term wealth, but as a way of just being in the game. And so thanks to you and your brother, I found Markel Corporation, and, and that would be an example of an individual stock that I own that I will not be selling. That's fantastic, Rand. And and that that's more credit to Tom who's been more the Markel fan over the years.
Lots of Motley Fool Markel fans and lots of people listening right now who own Markel. And I I totally get that, and I appreciate that. And I'm curious, Rand. You you meet so many great Heartland businesses. You just spoke to that and coasts too. Do you have a do you have a standard where you never invest in your clients? Or since you have an incredible window into your clients now I know a lot of them are private companies where you it would be a special investor.
Do you ever invest in your clients? Well, I don't have the opportunity to invest in my clients because the very nature of the, client profile that we target is private, businesses. And so You can still pick off five percent, Rand. You can still say we need a one percenter to to work with you guys. We're that big. We I would say that I feel a great sense of ownership and, and mutual commitment with our long term clients, our partners, that is, that I am investing, David, to be honest with you.
It's I might not be writing a check, but we invest our time and energy. And and this for us is an act of love, the work that we do with our clients. We are we are, and you and you would you talked a few minutes ago about the warm and fuzzy interpretations of consciousness. If if consciousness is about awareness, yes, it's about being deliberate, but it's also about being aware. And and this idea of, you know, with awareness, we have choice. Without awareness, only habit.
So so when we're when we're conscious, the way we become choiceful is because awareness creates choice. And without awareness, only habit, habituation, reactivity. And we're sort of in the those of, those listeners out there that know the movie The Matrix, that's the idea of being asleep or being awake to our lives. And so when I say love and people are like, oh, that just sounds so squishy. You're gonna go hug some trees in California. It's like, really?
So let's talk about the the actual pragmatic part of love, the way that we look at all of us with children, those of us who have children, how we create the conditions for an expression of love that's supportive, a feminine love, and a a version of love that is, a more masculine, a more challenging, a more advocacy expression.
And so we are willing to be in relationships, and we pursue relationships with our clients where there's an opportunity for that extending of ourselves to our client and for our client to extend themselves back to us. And that gets into trust, and that gets into intimacy, and that gets into vulnerability. All of these attributes, by the way, if we were to look at some of the highest performing sports teams, these are the attributes.
The the the trust drives performance and drives results and drives return within organizational life and within any kind of team dynamics. And so people are always like, oh, you know, Rand's such a tree hugger. Real really? So so so let's look at the performance. Let's look at the success of the clients that we have the opportunity to work with long term. And these are these are not stories of philanthropy. These are stories of excellence.
These are stories of, in some cases, of dominating industries. Southwest Airlines would be the cliche of the old days of, you know, wow. They were all about love when Herb Kelleher was leading it. It. That was their ticker symbol. That was their ticker symbol. Still is.
And and they and they are and they and they are one of the great examples during Herb's leadership of a commitment to, a really differentiated way, a strategic moat of how we're gonna use the quality of our relationships to actually drive return for our investors and drive results. And and and that's and we're not afraid to say that.
And because we don't work with public companies, for the most part, a few exceptions as I mentioned, we, we don't have to worry about the HR people saying you can't talk about love. You can't talk about intimacy. Yeah. We can because the people we work with own the businesses. Yeah. Full stop. Really appreciate really appreciate that point, Rand. And, you know, I mean, I I love the word love, and I take it as love. And I don't need it qualified, although we've often heard the Greeks.
The ancient Greeks had twenty nine different words for love, and, you know, there are many different forms that it takes, of course. I think of often other centeredness, which by the way is also known as customer centrism. That's right. And Jeff Bezos has done a pretty good job loving customers in that way, creating maybe the great business of our time by saying, at the very start, we're gonna become Earth's most customer centric company.
Whether we don't even need to debate whether that's true or not, that was the vision, and look what it became. So I think love recommends itself as well as the ticker symbol. Southwest Airlines, not a fantastic stock last ten years, but you mentioned the forty or so years before that and in an industry that was very hard to make profit, Southwest so admirable in so many ways. So yeah.
And I wanna I wanna I wanna jump in on, on a little different angle than just love because we can use a word care. And and that's what Southwest extend it. That's what Chick fil A extends in a much more, in a much more relational sense of care. And that's what Jeff Bezos and Amazon extends. And people are always like, Rand, what do you mean? Jeff Bezos and Amazon doesn't seem like a caring company.
And I say, well, when I am washing my dishes a couple of days ago and my, and the the brush I use in the kitchen sink breaks that I'm washing my dishes with, and I go to my laptop and I order a new brush, and that night, okay, when I'm doing the dishes, I'm actually I'm actually using a new brush. That is a form of care. It it is a the speed and the, efficiency of in the selection. I mean, I feel very cared for when that arrives in that kind of, tight window.
And I also feel a different form of care when I walk into Chick fil A, and there's a sixteen year old that's extending this kind of radiating smile. And I'm like, that's that's just like you said, love has different expressions. Care is expressed in different ways. And some people care, at a systems level, and some people care at more of a relational level. And and there's a there's a beautiful quote that, that I love that comes to mind here. It's not attributed to any one person.
It's more of a a big idea. Tell me what you care about, and I will tell you how big you are. Tell me what you care about, and I will tell you how big you are. How big can you play in this lifetime? And are you able to actually extend care to your customers and to your stakeholders and to your employees in such a way that gives you a unfair competitive advantage?
And and, like, this is it's it it continues to come back surprisingly to a lot of people to a very pragmatic reality of performance through time. But if I'm only gonna be leading a business at a public company for three years or four years, I don't think, this is easy logic for somebody to try on. And I and I I used to I used to get very frustrated until I became friends with a lot of public company CEOs, and I started to empathize with what it's like to be them.
They're they're put into the seat. The incentives are are short term in nature. Some would even say, you know, pathologically short term. And and the CEO will say to me, you know, Rand, I'm probably gonna get fired once the once the market winds turn anyway. And so there might be an activist investor that comes on and fires me. My own board may fire me. So since they're probably out to get me, I need to take care of myself. And so, yeah, I'm gonna operate in a quarterly to one year orientation.
Mhmm. Because at the end of the day, I even if I want it to stay here, I'm not even gonna have the opportunity to stay here. So why are you talking to me about ten, twenty, thirty years from now? That's not relevant for me. And so so they're playing a different game. And it's a there are we've talked about the different qualities of love. We've talked about the different qualities of care, and we can also talk about the different qualities of urgency.
So there is a pathological urgency in the in the, in our country and in the world right now that is, most, you know, it most clearly illustrated by social media. The social media, the the TikTok and the Snapchat, it's just this constant alerts of, like, you know, of, like, give me your attention right now. Now now now now now now now now. I see it with my kids, which is so so disturbing. And then there's a different kind of urgency that can be called an existential urgency.
And so when Martin Luther King took a stand in the civil rights era and said, we're not waiting. We're gonna actually act, and we're gonna make change now. That's that's urgency, but it's existential. And so what we work with our clients on is how can we tease apart the differences and the distinctions and not conflate the qualities of care, the qualities of love, the qualities of urgency. And this requires complexity.
And I I was I didn't wanna use that word initially, but if you say, you know, Rand, what's another way of talking about conscious leadership and conscious investing? I would just say a more complex approach to leading and a more complex approach to investing.
Because when I'm higher up on the mountain, I actually, this elevated approach, a conscious leader is about our our conscious capitalism nonprofit of which we're involved in together is, and so many of us around the world, our purpose statement is to elevate humanity through business. That's the purpose of conscious capitalism, to elevate humanity through business. The elevation idea of of moving up vertically, up the mountain, means when I get higher up, I can actually see more.
I have more I have more breath. I can see more to my right and left. I can actually see farther. And and and here's the coolest part people don't often think about. The higher up I go, the more life experiences I actually have to draw upon that are beneath me, so the depth is actually greater the higher up I am. So that's more wisdom.
I think, I think, you know, obviously, your listeners are fans for the most part of, of Warren Buffett, and this this is a, using this sort of idea here as a backdrop. This is an investor who I believe has an elevated view, an investor who can see what others can't see, an investor who plays big. And and that's why this isn't some, you know, some, warm and fuzzy, you know, unicorn conversation we're having. This is a conversation again about performance and results.
And you just said so many things there that could take us seventeen different directions, and we probably only have, I don't know, like, thirty more minutes. Although, you gotta come back, Rand. I I well, how could I have waited to twenty twenty four to have this conversation, which I'm enjoying so much? Let me just underline a couple things. Statistics, most of which I make up just to make a point, but they're generally true.
Statistics say things like the average public market CEO becomes CEO at the age of sixty three and will be on for three point seven years. And I again, a made up, but generally, directionally true statistic, and that's that so underlines what you're saying. And we understand how that person might be trying to hit every quarter.
And, and just think in terms of a year, ironically, even though they're well up the mountain of their own lives, that's where they're behaving, and you describe that as pathological. Let me shift because I said we're gonna do investing business and life, and that supposedly was all investing. But there was a lot of business and some life packed in already. Let me slightly more formally aim at business now in this conversation.
And our mutual friend, Heath, said, you know, here's the thing with Rand. You can have him on, and you could just say, Rand, what's been on your mind lately? And the whole podcast can go from there. Well, that's not the case because we're in the middle of our tether right now. But, Ran, what's been on your mind lately?
Well, I, I would say that there's a lot operationally in my own business of leading an organization like many of the listeners, lead, whether it's a full organization or a department or or leading even a family unit. I would consider to be an organization. So I I'm I'm I'm constantly confronted with the, the challenges of just being me. Okay? And people ask, you know, what's it like to be you? And I say it's, it's fulfilling. It's meaningful. It's rich.
Sometimes it's inspiring and fun, and sometimes it's, confronting and terrifying. And so I I used to really work hard to pursue a day when I would be, quote, happy. If there was a rubber band between my hands right now and that rubber band represented the anxiety of being alive.
And someday, when I make the right investment and I have the right return and I have the right marriage and the right kids and the right clients, someday that that that the tension in that rubber band will actually disappear because as human beings, when we experience distress and we experience anxiety, we assume that something's going wrong, so we wanna actually relieve that tension. And so in the last decade, it's a relatively new, sort of journey for me in this, domain.
I've really built remember I said earlier, it's not what happens. It's how we relate with what happens. I've started to build a new relationship to this idea of anxiety and how can I start to see the difference between a productive distress? Like, I went to the gym this morning, and I worked out. And I worked out with a trainer, and he pushed me really hard. And during the exercise, I was saying to myself, I don't think I'd be doing this if I were here without a workout partner or a trainer.
Like, this is really hard. So and so at the same time, I realized that I'm going to get that's a productive distress. I'm gonna actually my muscle's gonna grow from that.
And so I've started to, I've started to really recognize that when I when I have anxiety with my, with my team, with my clients, with my family, that that's an opportunity to actually see the only reason that I'm feeling anxious, defensive, insecure, threatened is because I have no other way of dealing with that particular moment than feeling those feelings. What a gift, David.
What a gift to actually be, like, seeing myself in a mirror when I'm around people, and I'm and I'm I'm I'm feeling I'm feeling defensive or anxious. And, like, oh, what a gift. It's like being in the ring with someone, and I'm a boxer, and it's a sparring partner, and I I keep getting smacked in the head with a left hook, and I'm like, I need to keep practicing defending myself against a left hook.
Like, so the people that are in our lives who actually we find ourselves most frustrated by actually are the greatest teachers that have been brought into our life. And so it's like, wow. How cool is that? So that's on my mind right now of, like, how can I continue to be in a place of deep appreciation for all of the experiences I'm having that I'm not actually equipped to handle besides complaining and being, and being in reactivity? So that's like that's like a meta.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's It does make sense. A past guest on this podcast, certainly a friend of this podcast, Sherzad Shamine, who wrote a wonderful book called Positive Intelligence. And there's so many books out there, Ran. I'm not gonna assume you've read it. I mean, you might have. You're very well studied. But one of the the great points that Shirzad makes is he says, okay. There's a flame in front of you. You've put your hand just above the flame. It hurts.
Is that good or is that bad? And the correct answer is that is good because your nerves are going to your brain, and they're telling you to take your hand away from the flame. But Shirzad says, it's amazing how few people understand that with their emotions or their psychology. Yeah. They keep in that bitter or dark or victimized place, and they return to it. They keep their hand over the flame. So it's really good, positive intelligence, the title of Sherzad's book.
It's really positively intelligent to as quickly as possible pull your hand back from the flame. But what that requires in life while also appreciating the flame, which I think was part of your point, Rand, What that requires in life is self awareness to recognize what's happening. That is a flame. I have a hand. I am reacting in a way I need to react in a way that preserves me and and that is healthy. And it's physically obvious to us. Psychologically, it's often not.
Emotionally, it's often not. But something that I've appreciated about you, Rand, you were the one of the people I was telling my wife, Margaret, before starting the podcast today. Rand is one of those people the ratio of, like, love the guy and have spent little time with the guy in the denominator. You're, like, about as high as anybody on earth. Like, I love you, Rand, and and we haven't spent enough time together, but the ratio is amazing.
So I I I've seen in my interactions with you a self awareness and a a willingness to confront being uncomfortable and to express anxiety in a way that we can all relate to, and I only can imagine how beneficial that is for your clients. And I'm not talking about one or two day off sites. Yep. I'm talking about decadeers. So really appreciate that. I wanna underline that.
I just wanna we're not gonna have time for all the questions I wanted to ask, Rand, but I do wanna ask a little bit of the Stegen story here. You're an entrepreneur. I deeply appreciate that. You're in your twenty fifth year. If you reverse the numbers two five, you get to five two, which is that minimum commitment weekly that you want people to be There you go. There you go. With you.
So twenty five years, I'm not asking for the full story, but how did it start, Rand, and maybe one or two inflection points or things we can all appreciate and learn from? Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing I would do is say that we're twenty five years in. We're a start up, full on. No. I don't I don't say that, I don't say that lightly. It took us two full decades to run the warm up lap of our business.
To, like, just like I was telling someone, that, you know, imagine, like, back in the seventies with, like, the red, white, and blue headband and the red, white, and blue, like, wristbands. And, like, I'm stretching. I'm in, like, that movie semi pro. And, like, I'm like, okay. I just warmed up. Twenty years warmed up, got the fundamentals of the business model, pricing, segmentation, ideal customer profile, technology.
We are doing something in this business which is, which is in in some ways incredibly exciting because it's never been done before. And in other ways, it's, it's terrifying because it's never been done before. And so there's there's a pioneering sort of spirit to what we're up to. What are you doing that's never been done before? The the stand that we've talked about of, recognizing the difference between training and development.
There's nothing there's nothing inherently good or bad about either. They're just different. Training is something that we do that is a now need. So we hire someone into our company, and we have Salesforce as our tech as our technology platform. We need to train them on Salesforce, and that needs to happen within a couple of weeks. And the ROI on building that skill is immediate and is beautiful, and we all want to actually use training. But that's very different than development.
Development is something that we do for the long term, and it's something that we do around, around true growth. And so let's let's give a a very simple way of describing this. An acorn, if everyone can just visualize an acorn, an acorn, if I were holding it up in front of you, inside of an acorn exists the entire blueprint for an oak tree. Right? So and this is a little bit of a cliche, like, oh, an acorn has everything it needs to become an oak tree. Still amazing to think about.
Now let's talk about what is not discussed. If that acorn falls out of a tree onto a piece of, onto a, you know, a a a brick road, a piece of cement, nothing happens with that latent potential.
If you plant that acorn in a courtyard that's got four feet by four feet surrounded by cement, but it has some nice soil and you water it and make sure it's in it's in light conditions, within several years, a beautiful tree will emerge in that, in that let's say it's in the back of an office, in that courtyard.
And and if we were to take the exact same acorn and we were to put it into an open field and we were to have no physical constraints and we would allow it to grow for not just decades, but for hundreds of years, we would see an enormous angel oak, which we have around the United States, these these huge trees. What's the difference between the cement, the small courtyard, and the angel oak? It is the environment. It's not the cliche of the acorn. It's the environment.
So as leaders, what kind of environment are we creating to to actually set the conditions for the latent potential to actually emerge? Now with our children, we absolutely understand development because we see what's possible in our children when they're seven years old, and we say, I could see a seventeen year old here. I have a seventeen year old. I could see a twenty seven year old here. I could see a twenty seven year old. I could see a forty seven year old.
And so we have this natural capacity to be oriented to development with our family and our children. And what Stegen is doing is bringing these same timeless principles into organizational life and saying, how do we create the conditions for something magical to emerge from the people who are ultimately under our care? And and it's like, you know, you and I know Bob Chapman, and I don't know if he has has he been on the, the podcast? Bob has not been on this podcast.
Another neglectful move on my part. And so he's, he's Barry Weimiller is his organization, and he's, you know, thousands of employees, and it's amazing, you know, family of organizations. And he talks about this idea that, we when we think about our children and we think about our children going off to work, eventually, they leave. Like, they we empty nest. We send them off, and they go to work. And we think about, like, what do we want for our own children?
We in the context of long term development. Well, the reality is that the people who work for us, and this is Bob's idea, they are someone's children, and they are someone's children who are actually under our care. They are acorns that are working for us. What are we doing to actually create the conditions and take on that responsibility?
And so when we talk to organizations and leaders, in particular, the CEO, about this, if this is dismissed as something, that has nothing to do with business performance, we just we just say no, we don't work with those people because they are not our they are not a fit for us. And this is about customer segmentation and customer fit. And this is this is this is what's new and different. And so if you were to say, let's mention another, another Conscious Capitalism board member, Greg Massey.
So I met Greg, and it was, it was many years ago. And they the bank, First United Bank Community Bank, was one point six billion in assets. They were just in Oklahoma at the time, second generation family business. And I talked with Greg, and I said, Greg we had a three hour initial meeting. We were introduced by a mutual friend. I said, Greg, when you think about the future of First United, how far out do you see? And even back then, he he knew my commitment to long termism.
And he said he paused. And he he said, you know, I actually have a sense for the next twenty five years directionally what I want for First United Bank. After twenty five years, it gets a little fuzzy, and then he paused, and he wasn't joking. And he said, is that a long enough answer for us to consider working together? Okay? And I laughed, and I said, absolutely. Well, David, that was seventeen years ago. Okay?
We have been continuously partnered with Greg and his organization, my faculty, his team, for seventeen years continuously with no interruption. And so the ability to ride shotgun, just like you ride shotgun on an investment that you make or your listeners are actually able to stay with a company for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. You betcha. We've been with First United Bank. They've gone from one point six billion in assets. They've just hit about sixteen billion.
They're on their way to twenty billion, and they are currently the fastest growing private bank in the United States. Now here's the here's the the fascinating part. I told Greg fifteen years ago, the day's gonna come when people are gonna start coming from around the United States and visiting you like they did with Southwest Airlines and HR directors and leadership teams to try to find out what is it that you're doing, what's your secret sauce, and that is now happening.
There are people visiting their corporate headquarters constantly wanting to learn from them, and and it's like the you know, it's another cliche, you know, the twenty, twenty year overnight success. Now let me let me just finish this story with Greg because it's all about Greg. You talked about, we get the customers we deserve and we get the, the stakeholders we deserve. We say that leaders get the organization they deserve. And so the organization couldn't evolve beyond Greg.
Not no organization can evolve beyond its top leader or its top leadership team. That's the that's they're the they're the they're the glass ceiling there. And so nine years into our work with Greg, I was at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit in Austin. You were probably at that event that I that I had this conversation. And a guy comes up to me and says, I just met Greg Massey. He says he's been working with your Leadership Academy, him and his team, broadly for nine straight years.
Oh my gosh. That's a long time, this guy said to me. And he said Would you do a two day offside for us, Rams? Exactly. So the guy the guy was a little bit, like, perplexed, and he goes he goes, like, nine years. How's it going with Greg from your perspective? And I took a I took a breath, and I wasn't joking, and I looked at him and I said, it's too early to tell. It's only been nine years. If you were to say to me today, Rand, seventeen years in with Greg and his team, how are you feeling?
I'm really encouraged. And we're almost at that first twenty five year, you know, milestone. When Greg talks about First United, he talks multi generationally. Greg is not trying to figure out how he's gonna sell this to a strategic buyer. Mhmm. What he's already got an ESOP component. So it's already got his business family as stakeholders, as equity stakeholders. But this is a quality of leadership. This is a commitment to the long game.
And if anyone wants to go, because it's all public, and see the performance of First United Bank relative to their peers, this is not something to take lightly. He is a high performing, and his return has been phenomenal. So it's like people people think, oh, I'm either gonna be this warm and fuzzy, philanthropic, make the world better person, or I'm gonna be this hardcore capitalist. Nope. Nope. Do both. We're gonna do both. We're gonna integrate, and that goes back to complexity.
How do we pursue an integrated life as opposed to a compartmentalized life? Because when we compartmentalize our life, we have to spend all this energy putting these walls up between our work and our family and our and our spirituality and our and our hobbies as opposed to how do we how do we pursue an integrated life. And that's so eloquent, and what a great example.
You just shared Greg Massey and First United, and, and I love the the twenty five year answer that he initially gave and that you're coming upon that. And, Rand, you're at twenty five years for your own company. And, again, this is not a deep dive on the story, but, congratulations on a a remarkable first quarter of a century for what you started Yeah. Twenty five years ago. Again, there are there are seventeen directions I'd like to go and dwindling time.
We're gonna be playing buy, sell, or hold to close, so I already know that. So probably, I only have two awesome questions left to ask you, and I have to pick from eight. So I'm gonna go with, the role of business in moving society forward. Some of this could be construed by the alert listener from what we've already talked about, but I want you to take us forward from anything we've already said, Rand Stegen. It's often said we live in a polarized world.
By the way, if we keep saying that all the time, I'm not sure how we get unpolarized. If everybody keeps saying we're hyperpolarized, I don't know how we don't how we stop saying that. I'm a little tired of saying that, but it is an election year, etcetera. Rand, you've said the businesses, particularly the leaders within them, must be the agents of change. Again, a lot of people think it's the vote they cast in November. That's gonna be the mandate for change or preservation.
Rann, how do you see private businesses playing a role in moving society forward? I I think many of your listeners already know the, the broad data on this around trust and, the Edelman Trust Index and, you know, where are the trusted, stakeholders in society. And, Americans no longer trust, our politicians. Americans do not trust the, the nonprofits and the NGOs the way that we did back, you know, thirty, forty, fifty years ago.
And so the highest trust in leadership is actually within corporate leadership and in particular within private businesses where they know they're actually being led by someone who has a commitment to, the long term of that organization. So there is a you know, we say it at Stegen. We say with awareness creates choice, and we've already talked about that, and we have a a one more build. With awareness, there is choice. And with awareness and choice, there is responsibility.
So when we get higher up on the mountain and we can see things that other people can't see, and we're business leaders who have the trust of our employees and our stakeholders, we are we are responsible. There is a a a noblesse oblige. There's a noble obligation here to actually, to actually lead, not just lead my business, but lead my my teams and lead my stakeholders in service of a, a future on the other side of this hot mess, which is our current state.
And I'll and I'll give you a very, you know, powerful, very simple, a very powerful, slightly academic way of thinking about this, sometimes called the dialectic. And there's three elements of the dialectic. There's the thesis, there's the antithesis to that thesis, and then there is a here it is, elevation, a higher order synthesis.
And so the part of America that is American exceptionalism and the the foundations of, classical liberalism that we are that this country is based on, there are people in that camp that let's call that the thesis camp, that actually are committed to protecting and preserving what's right with America. And I wanna honor those people. There are things that need to be protected and preserved about America, and that's more on the political right, the conservatives to conserve.
And then on the political left, we have the progressives with their fists up in the air saying, there are things about America that are not working that we need to fix. And it's like I I honor those people. They want to fix what's wrong with America, and other people want to preserve what's right with America. Now the shadow of that is that instead of seeing the partial benefit and truth in both of those sides, we actually see those sides only seeing the worst in each other.
They only see the shadow in the other. And then there's this third group, which is where we're trying to take our clients and which is what I'm trying to, in some small way, help conscious capitalism create, which is that higher order synthesis camp. That camp that says, we actually see the value and the beauty in both of those positions, the conservative position, the progressive position. And we actually are going to synthesize and create something. It's not a this is not a centrism move.
We need to find some common ground around our common humanity to create the to create the the the the the foundation for us to then use to go to higher ground. Okay? And so the the common ground creates the solid ground that then allows us to move up to a higher ground, to a synthesis. And this is a we have to ask ourselves, all of us who are on, who are on the podcast right now.
And I don't want to say that the higher ground is the is the right camp because if we don't have the conservatives and the progressives banging into each other like tectonic plates, we don't have the energy for transformation and change. So we need both of those spirits, and we also need the synthesizers. I am not going to surrender to the to to this deconstructing moment of our, of our country.
I do not believe that America needs to be deconstructed, destroyed, and start and we need to start over. I believe we need to reconstruct America based on the parts of our country that need to be preserved and the parts of our country that need to be changed and transformed for, for the future. And so this is, David, if you're like, what's really on my mind?
What's really on my mind is how are we gonna mobilize, I don't care if you call them conscious leaders or if you call them higher ground leaders or if you call them integral leaders. Labels are not important. What's important is that everyone listening recognize that we don't have the luxury to simply, you know, be in the stands and just watch this. We've gotta get in.
We've gotta participate, and we've got to find our common humanity in each other because that is the place that solid ground exists. And there is a future, and there is a beautiful future for, for for a generation. I don't know if it's gonna be ours or our kids or our, you know, our unborn grandkids, but this I'm I'm remaining, very, very committed to the role of business leadership in healing, transforming, and advancing our world.
Beautifully said. And Arthur Brooks who wrote has written many wonderful books, writes for the Atlantic, the happiness column, but Arthur Brooks wrote a great book a few years ago called Love Your Enemies. And we talked about it on this podcast. And in particular, he was underlining contempt. Yep. Which by definition basically means talk to the hand. I don't even think of you as human person on the other side who just disagrees with me. I'm not going to treat you with dignity or respect.
That is the fundamental problem. Sometimes being modeled by leaders in our society and often then getting the clicks by the media companies that for profit and I like for profit, but let's face it. A lot of this is being force fed to many through the media that they are choosing to consume that has them treating other people in a dehumanized fashion. We know that at its worst, humanity does that.
That's what leads to all kinds of horrific crimes against humanity over the centuries when we don't treat the other as human. So I totally appreciate that point about our common humanity. I think most of us listening get it, and yet it's not as you just said, Rand, it's not enough to get it. Get in the game, and I really appreciate that point. And maybe one other point that comes to mind, Rand, this is a perhaps a pet point, not p, point, pet perk of mine.
And that is a reminder that often in America, but many other countries besides, people tend to look at the government as if it's this massive thing. And it certainly is a larger bureaucracy in the United States today than it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. But often, I think people forget or just don't know that the private sector is so much larger than the public sector. I grew up in wash I'm born in Washington DC.
It might look like Washington DC is a big deal in the federal government and your stake over is a big deal. They are incredibly outnumbered by businesses. And indeed, businesses every day are delivering the products and services that brush that helps you wash your dishes tonight, that's being delivered by the private sector.
So we have proliferated in a beautiful way, especially in the US, but many other countries besides solutions, products, and services every day that enrich our lives and enable us to flourish. And it the vast majority of that is coming from the private sector, and most of us work for the private sector creating those products and services. So and and by the way, some of the biggest multinational corporations, Apple comes to mind, have larger cash hoards than many other sovereign governments.
And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think Apple has been well motivated to care for me as Amazon has and has built up the goodwill in the form of strong balance sheets in a way that many governments don't. And ironically, and I'm not gonna continue this rant much past this. Ironically, multinational corporations are so much more powerful than governments because they can go across borders. Yep. There is a remarkable capacity for the private sector.
I'm not talking about the future. It's already happening. It's been happening for decades. And when you see those market caps roll up to trillions of dollars these days, that's for very logical, I believe, generally good reasons. And we're invested as fools and rule breakers in those companies. So I do wanna point out in this election year, while so much of it, especially because it's it's put out there by the media for understandable reasons, it seems like it's all about a day in November.
It really isn't. The day before, your private sector is delivering you the things that you probably love and need and the day after as well. Rand, we're about to go to our final pregame section, but I wanna give you an opportunity just to react to anything I just said there, tie a bow on it. I I don't have much to add, and this is a, you know, you and I are both unapologetic card carrying capitalists.
And we recognize that capitalism has a light and a shadow, just like everything, and that when the shadow is portrayed as the totality of something, which is what is often the case when when capitalism is criticized, we're being portrayed, as the worst parts of capitalism, which by the way, there are externalities and there are there is greed and cronyism and there are always environmental destruction. These are true. And there are so many positives that outweigh those negatives.
And so I, I, like you, will continue to stand for the continued progression of capitalism, and this is the idea. How do we have capitalism not replace capitalism, not deconstruct capitalism, not destroy capitalism, but to evolve capitalism? And your idea of the you know, in recognition of the multinational, and and and let's global nature of this this one market that we live in, This you're making my point again.
The responsibility to be a leader of even a midsize or even a small business in America, it used to be your scope of concern would only be in your geographic area that you served. But now small businesses are having customers all over the world. And so what is the responsibility to lead in a global marketplace? It's back to private businesses. So I would say, hallelujah. Hallelujah indeed. We have two last parts of this of this conversation together. We're gonna close with buy, sell, or hold.
You don't know what's coming. I'm looking I'm already rubbing my hands together. You're gonna play the game. But before that, I asked you because, again, our mutual friend, Heath, said I don't know if you know this about Rand, but he loves great quotes. He's got them. He's been building up his he's a decater building up great quotes. And you probably don't know this, Rand, because I I wish you did, but I don't think you listen to my podcast every week. But Every week.
Over the course of five hundred or so podcasts every week, Cal Ripken, never taken a day off here for into ten years now. I have done nineteen separate episodes called great quotes volume x. So one through nineteen, and each of those is about a forty minute thought trotting out five quotes that I love that I wanna explain for investing, for business, and for life, for fools and rule breakers why I love this quote. And as soon as I heard from Heath, Rand has this.
I'm like, it's this is not a new great quotes episode. This is a sampler. But, Ran, I asked you, would you bring maybe up to five beautiful quotes? And we don't have time really to do much more right now than just listen to them, but I would love for you to share up to five quotes. And, yeah, sure. Add a sentence or two of steak and context if you like, but that is a chapter I've been waiting for for this conversation. It's the penultimate chapter.
If I've properly curated my quotes, I will need to add no commentary to, to my quotes. So Wow. Not to worry about this. I, I I printed out about ten, and I'm gonna pick five based on our conversation wherever I feel wherever I feel called to to go. Alright. Number one, if you're not confused, you're not paying attention. Tom Peters. Number two, reality is an acquired taste. Robert Fritz. Number three, and this one's new to my collection just last week, Only the future is certain.
The past is always changing. Douglas Schofield. Number four, cherish those who seek the truth, but beware of those who find it. Voltaire. That speaks to our righteousness in our society right now. And this last one, I'm gonna go six because I gotta I gotta smuggle in Bill Gates. You know what? This is the Rule Breaker podcast. You can do that. Okay. So this one, I've been saving the entire podcast for the end.
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. Bill Gates, how might we all be underestimating ourselves as future decaters? And last but not least, the existential philosopher, Peter Kastenbaum, one of my personal heroes, ninety seven years old, still alive. I don't know him. And he's he's if if if Aristotle were alive today, he would be reincarnated as Peter Kastenbaum. And here it is.
The only problem rests with people who do not have a commitment to greatness, who drift running on idle most of the time. They do not value the fact that they are alive, and they feel no obligation to make sense of their lives. They coast, slumber, and do not wish to be awakened. They are not the artists in business, the reformers in life, or the missionaries in organizations. They live below the line. Peter Peter Gaston Bum. Yeah. So we we are readers.
We just came off of August, which annually on this podcast I call authors in August. And, is there a a book? Is there a title that comes to mind of Casaubon's work? Again, I don't I'm not familiar with I obviously should be. He's Aristotle, and he's ninety seven. He's I've been living alongside him for fifty eight years. Or or is he is he more somebody who emerges through academia, through white papers, etcetera? Randy, do you have a reading recommendation?
He's more of an academic, and I wouldn't want people to try to tackle his work. Right. However, if everyone would go to Google and Google his name, Peter Kosenbaum, k o e s t e n b a u m, and Fast Company magazine from two thousand, a very short four page interview that he did with that magazine with Polly LaBaer, conscious capitalist. And Polly told me when I met her fifteen years ago at our conscious capitalism CEO summit, I was like, you did the interview with Peter Gastenbaum.
I've read it now over a hundred and fifty times. I still don't understand it. It's four pages. And she said she was one of the founding editors of Fast Company, and she said it was the most challenging piece I'd ever done in my career up to that point because he was he is a Harvard physicist. He's a psychologist. He's a philosopher, and he has a PhD in theology.
This is one of the world's leading thinkers that's that's still breathing, like literally on planet Earth in my opinion, and this Fast Company interview written by Pauli Lebert will blow your listeners' minds. I can't wait. Yes. I can't plus, you you I was asking for, like, you know, two hundred fifty four pages. You gave us four. You're a hero. Who doesn't love a good four page espresso shot? I'm really looking forward to that, and thank you.
I was gonna misguess the spelling of Kastenbaum, so really appreciate that as well. Rand, are you ready to play buy, sell, or hold on Rule Breaker Investing? Ready to play buy, sell, or hold. Alright. Great. Good shakes. These are not stocks. These are things. But if they were stocks, Rand Stegen, would you be buying, selling, or holding? Let's get started. The first one up, long termism in business overtaking short term thinking by twenty thirty five. Hold. Why?
It doesn't warrant an answer. It's so clear. I mean, I was having fun putting a time frame on it that was ten years. I mean, I'm not even sure how we'd measure whether long termism in business had overtaken short term thinking by twenty thirty five, but I just wanted to lead off with it. We're holding. Oh, we're holding, baby. Next one up. The rise of AI means the CEO of twenty fifty will be an AI program, not a human. Buy, sell, or hold.
Sell. AI is going to be a tool, and, obviously, there's concerns about what happens if AI, becomes sentient. And, and I believe in humanity's ability to innovate our way through those, you know, real dilemmas, but I believe, I'm long on humanity. And, I can't, I can't get behind anything or anyone who says that we're we're at the end. I'm not we're not I'm not I'm not going into, into the Terminator land. I'm not going there. Let's stick with humanity number three of five.
Ted Lasso, is it the greatest leadership show on TV with lessons that rival any business school Ted Lasso, buy, sell, or hold? I would say season one, buy. And just keep it there. Keep it there on DVD, baby. Just season one. Amazing. Watch it over and over and over again. Well said. And no spoilers for those who haven't, like me, actually finished the show. I think I mired somewhere in season three. The mustache, obviously, a distinctive thing about Ted Lasso.
Rand, I've known you as a clean-cut guy here for the twelve or thirteen years I've known you. Have you ever tried the stash? I have never tried the stash, although my, my hair stylist said to me on Saturday, maybe I should grow for Movember. I should grow out a mustache. And, and so it maybe this is synchronicity. It's the second time in forty eight hours someone's asked me about this. I'll keep my eyes peeled.
I I know I'm gonna see you in October at the Conscious Capitalism Summit beforehand so we can talk more about that. Number four, buy, sell, or hold Rand Sagan in the future that most leaders will have embraced a four day work week, but still secretly work six days, buy, sell, or hold. That's a complex one because I threw a couple of things at you in one question. You did. Am I am I gonna is that gonna be the future reality that I wanna I sell that. I don't I don't think that's gonna happen.
I I think that I think that we're gonna get to a really productive four day week in which we're gonna be so aided by AI and technology. We're gonna be so productive that I think that we're gonna maybe for the first time in the history of American kind of capitalism and and workforce, we may actually find ourselves in a much healthier version of work. Mhmm. And I'm I I see that on the horizon. So I really appreciate that.
And, again, it was almost an unfair question because I'm asking you both, is the four day work week a thing? And yet, there can be the tendency sometimes for leaders publicly to embrace something, but then they themselves are not working four days. They're working seven or at least at least six. But Well, I mean, this is the this is the this is the the the the the lamb like here for your question. I think your question has incredible flaws in its logic. Thank you.
We're suggesting that my work and my play you're welcome. My work and my play must be separated. Remember I said earlier, if we compartmentalize our lives Yep. You know, and Robert Frost has a, has a poem that has aligned something to the effect of where my two eyes make one in sight, and work is play for mortal stakes is the deed ever truly done for heaven and the future's sake.
So we I actually believe that we can have a way of being on a much more integrated life where we don't go to work, clock in, clock out, and then have three days off, where where our work and our life, our our vocation and avocation are one. And this is really my vision and hope for the future of humanity that it's not that we don't have this separation that's so artificial. So I I refuse to answer. I I rescind my answer. I do not I do not I do not agree with the question.
I truth be told, I didn't really like the question either. Although it was awfully complex, and I know earlier, anyway, we were embracing complexity on spot. That's right. Let me And the and the religious scholar at Stegen, Vid Davo, has a quote. I'm sneaking another quote in. Complexity has a PR problem. Nice. Complexity has a PR problem. Yeah. And so, so yeah. Alright. Well, let's stick with the future for our final buy, sell, or hold.
We're asking Rand's taking the cast his eye toward the year. Let's go with twenty fifty. Buy, sell, or hold Rand, the concept of retirement disappearing by twenty fifty replaced by lifelong learning and purpose driven living. Buy. Why? That's I that's that's to my earlier, you know, statement.
I, I feel like we are evolving and becoming more complex and becoming a more integrated species, and I think that the days of compartmentalization and unnecessary separation are, are are gonna be in the rearview mirror. I think we're gonna I think we're gonna we're gonna be a a pretty incredible there's gonna be an incredible future. Now I don't think we're gonna get there just like up into the right. When we zoom out and look at the S and P, oh, it's a great picture.
But when we zoom in, it's really rough. I think we're in for a rough decade. I think this is gonna be a painful decade or two, geopolitically, culturally, like, even with all my optimism, I, I feel like one of the need the reasons that we need to stay in the tension is that this is gonna require resilience in leadership that is operating not from the finite game as author James Kars would say Mhmm. But the infinite game. You know, the finite game, we wanna win the game.
The infinite game, we wanna ensure the game continues. Humanity keeps We wanna keep playing. Yeah. Well, one thing's for certain, people are certainly living longer than ever before and probably even more than that in the future. And I think it's fair to say more and more of us are craving more fulfilling lives. So that concept of retirement, you're right, kind of compartmentalizes the work portion of our time on earth.
And then the I don't work anymore, and we try to narrow, ideally, a lot of us think, the work portion, and then we try to have this great long retirement, except that a lot of people, once they hit retirement, finally get bored of golf after six months, and they're trying to figure out what they should do That's right.
Next. Anyway, Rand Stegen, you have been generous with your quotations, with your insights, with the love, and I mean that with the capital l, and the help that you gave me and our rule breaker listeners. I'm delighted this was your debut on this podcast. This will not be your only appearance. I wish you the best, my friend, and I'll see you in October. Thank you so much. And I, and I I loved that I got to break a few rules, and I would like to come back and break some more with you.
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