Building Empires and Engineering Innovation with Joel Kocher
Stop engineering your company for an exit and start engineering it for innovation.
I just sat down with Joel Kocher.
He is the former Dell executive who architected a rise from $100M to a Fortune 500 giant.
In this episode you’ll learn
How to execute a “Super Strategy” that drives growth exceeding 100 percent annually.
The reason why saying no to Walmart for seven years can save your business.
Why career “monkey bars” provide more long-term value than a traditional vertical ladder.
We dive into the details later in the conversation.
If you like the episode, please subscribe.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
0:59 The Rise of Dell and the Super Strategy
5:22 The Importance of Continuous Learning
9:23 Lessons from Intense Success
15:12 The Clash with Steve Jobs
25:13 The Future of Business and Innovation
41:02 The Challenge of Educating the Market
44:12 Understanding Cardiovascular Health
46:21 Aging with Purpose and Vitality
55:36 Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
1:08:49 Life Lessons and Legacy
Listen
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Here’s the full transcript:
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:00.142)
He’s in a t-shirt, no shoes and a pair of shorts. He said it’s over. He said it’s nothing personal. I can’t allow you to be in the marketplace. They always say that before they fuck you. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. Meet Joel Cogger. He’s widely considered one of the most intense and successful business executives in tech history. As the president of Worldwide Sales and Operations at Dow, he was the architect behind the meteoric rise from $100 million in revenue to a multi-million dollar Fortune 500 company.
He famously went to war with Steve Jobs and was even banned from Macworld and is now the co-founder of Hueman, a company that has cracked the Inc 5000 list 10 consecutive years in a row. It’s not about you, man. It’s not about you and your stupid exit strategy. If I hear exit strategy one more time, I’m just going to throw up on their shoes. You don’t engineer a company for an exit. You engineer a company for innovation, for changing the world. If you’re already thinking about exit, then you’re just absolutely unfocused. If you want to find out what it really takes to build an empire,
why he told Walmart no for seven years and the brutal truth about what happens when you prioritize speed over quality. This episode is for you. Dell was one of the fastest growing companies in history. What did that actually feel like on the inside? Was it organized chaos or complete, complete pure strategy? Well, in the seven years I was there, would say probably first two years was organized.
I mean, Michael was 21 years old and I was 29 or 30. I don’t remember. But then we got it. You know, we figured it out. We put together the most incredible strategy and then we savagely executed it. You’re not going to get, especially in those days, pre-internet, you’re not going to get to Fortune 500 with total chaos.
How did you know you were on the right strategy? And the growth went, it just went stratospheric. Okay. As soon as we launched quote unquote a super strategy, it just went, I mean, we could not even hire people fast enough. It was insanity. Well, working with Michael Dell during that explosion, what is a superpower or something special you noticed?
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (02:30.028)
that high performers like him had the normal CEOs that aren’t as successful don’t. can’t really speak to others like him. But with him, it was a relentless perpetual pursuit of the competitive edge every single minute of every single day. That’s who he was. And that’s who he, I think that’s he still is. How did you keep up with that? Well, I think it was innate.
for me as well, which is probably why I rose to the position that I did and that sustained because there were a lot of people who didn’t. As you can imagine, what got you here never gets you there. So in those early days with that stratospheric growth, there were just a lot of people that just weren’t able to scale themselves up. When you think about scaling yourself up, think about it. If you’re an ace at 300 million, at 3 billion,
you’re loser. what does that mean exactly? don’t understand. just means you’re, you have a, you don’t have the capacity to execute. You don’t have the capacity to process the complexity. You don’t have the capacity to lead. Just because you were effective at 300, 10 times that it’s an entirely different, got you here never gets you there. It’s an entirely different game.
So how do you sustain the level of energy and focus? How did you sustain it specifically? Is there any techniques? He’s 10 years younger than me. Yeah. You know, so I can’t say I necessarily was getting it from him. I just recognized what it was going to take and I supplemented my own personal. You got to realize and I would say the vast majority of your listeners probably don’t yet grasp the notion.
man, you’re the CEO of your own career. There’s nobody looking out for you, not in reality. You got to look out for yourself and you have to have both eyes wide shut, right? It’s like, what’s it going to take for me to get to the next level? I was self-prescriptive. I didn’t have a mentor. I was self-prescriptive in that regard. So I enrolled myself in a Stanford executive program while I was still doing my crazy job.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (04:56.066)
Two years later, I enrolled myself in Wharton executive program because I recognized I didn’t have the financial skills to be making decisions that a multi-billion dollar global company needed to make. you have to take it, you’ve got to take that by the throat and make it your own. You got to own it. Don’t blame it on somebody else. You got to own it yourself. So basically the core of that whole component of your life was
working relentlessly and constantly learning and forcing yourself to learn formally and informally. Did you find more value in the formal lessons or the informal lessons? I can’t say one trumped the other. Yeah. mean, it required both. Yeah. Adam, it was both, man. It was total and complete immersion. Yeah. It was life immersion. Now, to be fair, you’re not going to have the vast majority of people that are going to face the requirements of that level of scale up. But you’ve got to...
You’ve got to be very much aware that you own your own development and your development, like anything else, has to be very structured. You have to be very aggressive and you have to just take, take accountability for it. Just take accountability for it. Yeah. Did you have much of a family and like friendship left during that time period? No, not at all. That was it. I didn’t say not at all. said that. Okay. But
you know, if there was a casualty, it was an all all in or nothing proposition. mean, I don’t think you can interpolate that from the facts. Right. So I did not have young children. I had them later at the end of the Dell experience. sure. I mean, I would be gone for weeks and weeks at a time. So it’s just something you have to come to grips with. With all that in mind.
What are the big lessons you can share with our viewers from that time in the pressure cooker during that time? Stay balanced. Keep your perspective. I probably lost mine. I think a couple of us did. I think it’s intoxicating, that kind of success. You probably tend to over-rotate on how good you really are. I I acquired a lot of skills that have served me for my entire business journey.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (07:22.946)
But I think you probably get to the point after an experience like that where you think you have the magical touch and everything you’re going to ever touch turns to gold. So there’s a little bit of a lesson to be learned from that too. Yeah. Do you think from your personal experience, the intensity over that seven years was worth the work? no question. Yeah. No question. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. Hey, it was a time machine.
It would have taken me 40, 50, mean 80, 90 years to learn what I learned in seven. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. And you learn, not only do you learn about business, but you learn about yourself and who you are. What did you learn in that time period about yourself? I learned a couple of things. I learned one, I could do it. I mean, I was a baller. I was a player.
Right. I also learned that it took being a perpetual learner, being a learned at all, you know, and that’s who I was. And probably lastly, you know, I learned that I needed to be a little more sensitive to, to human beings, you know, and their feelings, right. Because you tend to get into a position where thing is so, I can’t even communicate.
the rapidity which you had to make decisions, the rapidity, you know, every day was 15, 18 meetings. You you just have to slow down a little bit and recognize that people value the human connection. Yeah, yeah. What were some examples where it backfired on you when you didn’t value the human connection? I can’t say when I was there it backfired on me, but I think my next couple of...
business opportunities where maybe things were a little slower than that. But you know, it just where I turned people over. Yeah. You know, they left on their own volition because I didn’t have the personal connection. Sure. Yeah. So when it was an unrelenting focus on growth, most people just saw that and followed along and made. they were in because of it. Yeah. Because of me. Yeah. That’s the difference. Yeah. And when that gravity was gone,
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (09:49.398)
it relied more on how you interacted with the individuals and that was lacking at the time. And developing people. Yeah. You know, I learned one of the best lessons I learned was success, sustained success of the firm through sustained success of the employee. Yeah. That’s how you build a long-term franchise. Yeah. But you know, I suppose if I was being fair though to myself,
I could never communicate to you or your audience how demanding on a minute to minute, I’m not talking about a day to day or a week to week. I’m talking about a minute to minute basis that period of time was. Dell was no one, nobody. I think we were 210th in market share in personal computers. And in that period of time, vaulted into the number one position.
in a a globe large global market. How did that happen? Well, the way that happened was relentless pursuit on a minute to minute basis. So strategically, you said you came up with the super strategy and then it just blew up. What were those meetings like to come up with strategy that was so effective? Now, first of all, I want to be clear, it wasn’t me.
that came up with a strategy solely. was a team. It was, to be fair, I think we were probably naive. We were young. We were young and experienced. The thought that we might fail never even entered the conversation other than at the very beginning. And I’ll tell you how it started was we were a $300 million business. We were public.
We just announced earnings. It was pretty good. know, shareholders were happy, you know, but the very next day we were in an executive meeting and I blurted out in the meeting, which did not make the CEO all that happy. I blurted out that we’re screwed. We’re screwed. Because it just, it just entered my brain that we’re screwed because there were already multi-billion dollar
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (12:12.718)
players, Compaq, IBM, Apple, big, super capitalized juggernauts, right? This was in the 90s, right? And if you just do the math, you know it’s going to boil down to five players when it’s all said and done at 300 million growing at 20%, which is what we were growing at the time. That’s not going to get it. To Michael’s credit, he was like, yeah, you know what?
You’re right. The very next day, we went to work on how we took the growth rate from 20 to hundreds of percent because we did the calculus backwards and figured out what the growth rate had to be. And then we figured out what were the levers we had to pull to get there. And they were hard, hard levers. But we were all in and we did it and it worked.
So was basically a paradigm shift in the way you solve the problems. It was a universe shift, friend. Yeah, it was, you know, we don’t need to regurgitate all of it now because it would probably get a little bit boring, I would tell I not for me, I’m obsessed with this stuff. it was, well, we’ll talk about it. Sure. To crack the code on that kind of growth rate, we had to be half the price of IBM and Compact. I said half. Half. In a market.
that was pretty mature. So the only way to be half the price was to take our cost structure from 20 % of sales to 12 to completely eliminate. And I mean, eliminate inventory in the equation where that’s where absolute hardcore just in time inventory came from. We went to now we’re only 300 million. We went to our suppliers and said,
Hey, love you, but guess what? We’re not taking ownership of your inventory anymore until two hours before we make the product. You’ve got to warehouse your product across the street from our manufacturing facility at your expense. You then have to get it over across the street into our manufacturing area.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (14:37.55)
Pre-stage area at your expense. So inventory carrying cost, inventory obsolescence, completely gone out of the system. Nobody had ever done that in an industry where inventory obsolescence was one of the biggest cost line items on the P &L. Did you make your manufacturers potentially go out of business then? Like how did you make them agree to that? If you’re a 300 million dollar company? here’s what I said to them. remember I said it.
I mean, we brought them all to Austin. We put them in a room. We gave a presentation and said, we’re going to be the number one player in the PC market. Here’s why. If you want to be on the train, here’s what you got to do. What do you think their initial reaction was? You’re out of your mind, right? You’re out of your mind. But here’s the punchline. Here’s the punchline. If you choose not to do this,
You’re out forever. So you decide whether you have a high conviction quotient in what we’re saying, because we laid out the strategy or not. Now, there were a couple that opted out. Where are they now? Most of them opted in. Well, they obviously regretted that decision. And the ones that opted in look like the smartest guys on the planet, right?
as they rode this gravy train and we rewarded them because they opted in when we said, trust us. You spoke about Apple for a second. Now there’s a big history between you and Steve Jobs and Apple. So I want to ask about the moment you famously told Steve Jobs to go fuck himself. What’s the story behind this? Okay. Unbeknownst to many today, in the late nineties,
And by the way, Steve Jobs was not the CEO at the time. got ousted remarkably. They decided that in order for the platform to succeed over the long term, they needed to view it as a platform as opposed to an island. So they said, well, we need to be like the Intel platform. We need to license the operating system.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (17:01.942)
and the platform to other players and make it pervasive and broad. So a company called Power Computing, of which I was the president, was given the first authorization. Motorola was the second, believe it or not, Motorola. And so we were authorized essentially to make Macintosh clones. I hate the word clones, but...
to make Macintosh clones. We used the know-how that I had from Dell to build just-in-time manufacturing. I put together a team and a business model that was very similar to the Dell model. It was direct to the consumer. So you eliminated the middleman.
And I want to say the business, don’t hold me to the exact number, but I want to say it was in the 350 to $400 million run rate in a matter of just a couple of years. Right? The day we filed the S1, do you know what an S1 is? Is that the... That’s the document. That’s a document to go public. The day, Adam, the very day Steve Jobs was named the CEO of Apple.
for the second time. that just luck that those two things coincided? I’d call it... Bad luck. I don’t know what I’d call it. Karma? Who knows? Who’s karma to who? Who knows? What did you do? So he told me later that his very first phone call was to me. Special guy. And he wanted to meet face to face. So I flew out and I’ll never forget it. You know, I’m in a...
really nice suit, showing respect. He’s in a t-shirt that in those days, people didn’t wear t-shirts in the office that he probably had on for a month, no shoes and a pair of shorts. It was the second time I met him. But he asked me to sit down and sat down and he said, it’s over. That was his opening gambit. It’s over. I said, what do you mean it’s over?
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (19:21.442)
He said, well, let me first commend you. You guys for the last couple of years have out-marketed Apple. And I can see that you’re growing at frenetic rates. You’re about to get capitalized. I can’t let that happen. So no more license. I said, well, hey, that’s all fine and good, except we have a license and it’s a legal document. And he said to me, he said, you’re done.
You’re done. I can’t allow you. Apple’s hurting. in those, Apple was hurting. Apple was on the, they were on the edge, Adam. He said, I, he said, it’s nothing personal. He said, it’s just, I can’t allow you to, be in the marketplace. You know, I need you out of the marketplace. They always say that before they fuck you. It’s nothing personal. Always. Just business.
And he was ready to do that. As a matter of fact, I mean, that’s when I told him to go happily have fun with himself. How did he take that? It really didn’t matter because I was on my way out the door. I literally, that was my last statement on the way out the door because I realized he wasn’t going to budge. Now we had Macworld in
about a month and a half. I was a keynote speaker on the first day. He was keynote speaker on the second day. So I made the decision that I had to go for it. So I basically told the whole Mac community what was going on. And I said, you know, this is wrong. It’s way wrong. We have served the Mac community. We’re a force for good.
We have lower prices because we’re more efficient and we, you know, use different, a different approach to the market. This is just flat out wrong. And you can’t let this happen. So Steve, who is known for his speeches and his Mac world unveilings, the next day was unveiling strategy. And I believe he was even unveiling a product. I had
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (21:47.086)
paid protesters out in front of, this was in Boston out on the street, CNBC was covering it. It’s a big deal, okay, paid protesters. When Steve took the stage, he was booed. That has, I doubt ever happened. I was banned from the event. I was walked out because he told the event sponsors that if I remained in the room that he would
not give the speech. So it got pretty intense. But I put a lot of pressure on him. I knew he wouldn’t relent. But my hope was that he would buy our company. And he did. just to get rid of us. Yeah, well, just to get rid of us, bought our company. I mean, it was clever. So what was his reaction internally? you think you respected you for it? Or do you think he hated you for it?
I think probably at the time, this pure conjecture, the fact that he had me removed, you know, I think he was, he had a hard time with it. But interestingly enough, and maybe it was, maybe he did it punitively. Maybe it was my fault, but after they agreed to buy the company, I sent him a letter and said, an email, and I said, Hey,
because I’d heard rumors he was just going to fire everybody. I said, hey, you’ve got a Dell machine. And by the way, at the time Dell was just like, a cash machine, right? I said, you got a built-in miniature Dell here? I said, use it. Be smart, Steve, use it. He fired every single solitary person. And I think you’d have to believe that was probably out of spite, right?
But two years later, I’m a CEO of another company and I get a phone call from Steve. And I’d like to think that it was a fairly unique moment when he said, I was wrong. Joel, I was wrong. And I shouldn’t have done that. What do you say? You come to Apple, you be my number two guy, and you
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (24:13.536)
you put it together, put it back together, what you had at power computing. Kind of an interesting moment. And what’d you say? Not only no, hell no. I said, Steve, you and I wouldn’t last five seconds. That’s number one. Number two, you made your bed, you go lie in it, buddy. Number three, respect the hell out of you. The smartest guy I’ve ever
been around in my entire life, but it’s just not in the cards for that to happen. Looking back, was that the right decision? I think it was the right decision because I meant what I said. Steve and I wouldn’t be able to work together. And I don’t think I could ever forgive him for firing every single one of my lads. How many people were in the company at the time? About 400.
50. A lot of lives. And I recruited those people, not every single one, but the vast majority of them I recruited. Gosh, I’ll never, that cut deep. Yeah. cut deep and it was nothing I could do. I mean, it was just nothing. It was an unforeseen circumstance. Now here’s the interesting thing to think about. What if they hadn’t brought them back?
What if they hadn’t brought him back? I mean, if you look at what Apple did in the next 30 years, he was right. He was right to do what he did. He was 100 % right. And I would say that I’ve always said that it’s just the way he went about it was wrong. Yeah. It was just wrong. And he could have had the most interesting toy direct to consumer to play with. Yeah.
because man, we were a machine at power. We were a machine. Fascinating, isn’t it? It is. Do you think that aggressive communication is lost in today’s business world and now we’re too soft? I don’t know that those two, you know, if this then that hold true. I mean, I think there’s aggressive communication, sometimes appropriately, sometimes inappropriate. In some ways,
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (26:39.924)
even less respectful than it might have been a couple of decades ago.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (26:46.67)
I just don’t think that people have the same center line that they used to. think society, social media, people say things that aren’t true. People say things that aren’t substantiated and it’s kind of accepted as a norm. I think if you go back a couple of decades, you had to substantiate your claims. Too many people give people passes today because that’s just the norm.
in the social sphere. Yeah, we’ve definitely lost the centers for trust in society right now. That’s right. That’s right. Between the government and media, it’s all a bit of a shit show. No question. And you don’t know what to believe. And when you don’t know what to believe, you got problems. Yeah, you have to come up with your belief internally. You have to basically process all information as false.
Yes. Until proven otherwise. Yes. Against a Psi-Op. Yes. Occurring for your attention and your influence at all times. That’s right. It’s a wild ride right now. is indeed. Yeah. So switching gears, I want to talk about the next iteration of your business career and life. So you’ve made the Inc 5000 list with your new company, Human, 10 times in a row. Yes. That is not luck.
And as an engineer, we’re talking about this. That’s got to be systems. what are the key qualities of a great leader that you see lacking in 2025 and beyond? recognition or the lack of recognition that people are the superpower, that people are the secret. It’s not about you, It’s not about you and your stupid exit strategy. If I hear exit strategy one more time,
I’m just going to throw up on their shoes. Right. It’s like, what the hell are you talking about? You started your company 90 days ago. Do the hard yards, dude. You’re focused on the wrong things. First and foremost, you got to focus on the mission, right? Mission to change the world. You change the world. The rest of that stuff’s going to take care of itself. Get the right people on the train.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (29:12.45)
because that’s all it’s about. It’s getting the right people. You are who you hire. I don’t care what your personal skills are. It doesn’t matter. You have to assemble a team and surround yourself with people that have the same conviction you do on the mission that you’ve chosen. What are your strategies to find and keep the right people? Well, first of all, it’s hard to find.
And I would be less than honest. And since I’m a super honest guy, I’ll just tell you that even though I interview every single soul that comes into my company, they slip through the cracks. You know, I’m trying to find people that have a conviction of mission. They can, they can buy in to a let’s change the world mentality. Let’s not leave it how we found it. But some people are just damn good at
They’re either in denial about who they really are or they’re just good liars. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s probably a little both. Probably a little. be honest. Yeah. So the people who consistently, with that in mind, the ones who slip through the cracks, what are the consistent behavior sets that you’ve seen between all of those people? They’re not rainmakers. But they think they are? No, they know they’re not rainmakers. OK.
And you’re in future ran makers. They’re the first ones out the door and the last ones in the door. Okay. And they don’t have what I call WIT, you know, whatever it takes. Now don’t confuse that with being a workaholic. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being a successaholic, being committed to your craft, being committed to the mission of the team, right?
And these are people that are willing to walk out the door at 4.55 and not ask the three teammates that are sitting next to them, Hey, is there anything I can help you with before I leave? That’s the difference. It’s team, man. It’s team, it’s team, it’s team. So how is, so what is the proxy that being the first out and the, sorry, the first out and the last in showing?
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (31:30.606)
You said, you mentioned that being the first out and the last in is a sign that they’re not going to be successful in the companies that you work in. what, what actually, what behavior is that a proxy? And what that is, that’s code. Yeah. Okay. The code they’re sending you, you know, Morse code is I’m not convicted. I’m not in, I’m not, I don’t care about changing the world. I don’t want to be around those people. Life is for night.
Our company is a serious company with a serious purpose. We’re a force for good. If you’re not in, great. Go somewhere else. This is not the place for you. But you know what? Most CEOs wouldn’t know who those people are because they didn’t interview them in the first place. And then secondly, they were too focused on the wrong things to recognize that the only thing that matters is people.
So what are they generally focused on incorrectly? They’re focused on stuff that at the end of the day may not matter. Right. And it’s like they spend too much time in their office. They spend too much time focused on the social aspects of what they’re doing than the mission itself. And I am constantly and when I say constantly, mean seven days a week.
I am constantly testing, pushing, probing to make sure that my team understands what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Do you think anyone can become a successful entrepreneur or are some people just not built for it? Do you think everybody, if they wanted to, could become a heart surgeon? I think so, maybe, yeah. I don’t. Why? People don’t have the mental...
don’t have the attentiveness for that, don’t have the skill set and the aptitude for that. So the answer to question is no, I don’t think everybody can become an entrepreneur. Is that not a trainable? all of that not trainable? They can become an entrepreneur. They can’t necessarily become a successful entrepreneur. Okay. So you would say that it’s more innate than trainable? The skills are more innate than trainable? No, I think it’s a combination of both. But I think if you have no aptitude for it,
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (33:55.64)
then if you’re not an innovator or you don’t think innovatively, you don’t think competitively, then, you may not drink the, want to change the world Kool-Aid, then I think it’s a pretty tall hill to climb to become a successful entrepreneur. And probably not a fun one if you don’t love it. You know, that’s probably a better answer than I gave Adam, right? I mean, I think
the number one pillar is passion. right. Passion for something, passion and change the world, which leads to innovation. So I think at the end of the day, not everybody thinks about changing the world. They don’t think about their lives in that context. That’s the only context in which I’ve ever thought about my life. Right, right, wrong or indifferent. Sure. Yeah. I mean, there’s different strokes for different folks. but
That in mind, where do you think this unrelenting desire to change the world has come from with you? No idea. It’s just been there. No idea. I mean, the way at a very young age, I felt like I had to... Now, I didn’t know how, right? At first, I thought it was athletics. then I found out... Basketball, right? Yes. I found out at five foot...
you know, nine, I was not going to change the world, right? As a, as a basketball player. But I think it’s really, it goes all the way back to my teenage years of just going, I want my life to count. And I can’t tell you why, but it was there. It was very present. So when the athletic thing was a fail in that regard, although I learned a lot from it, it was, I got to find the, I got to find the lane to legacy.
I got to find the lane to legacy somewhere, somehow. And I think anybody that knows me would tell you that’s just who the guy is. Do you think that comes from a place of fear or just a genuine desire for? I do have fears. I don’t fear things, hence the shark story, you know.
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the things that I, know, paddling out, you know, five miles into the open ocean, you’re not, I don’t fear things. I do fear failure. I’ve always- you that comes from? No idea. It’s just innate. I value winning. And I think probably the reason I’m such a horrible loser is because, and I am, in fact, I may be the worst loser you ever met or will ever meet is-
Maybe it’s that fear of failure that never goes away. But at the same time, I would tell you, I just want to leave my mark, or marks, as in plural, humbly. Life is for night. I’m on the back nine. I’m fighting to stay on the 11th hole, but I am on the back nine. I still love kicking ass.
I love kicking ass more than anything in the world, right? And knowing that it’s making a difference. But when I’m gone, man, I want there to be some stuff that I changed and I left behind. Why wouldn’t you want that? Yeah. You know, why wouldn’t you want that? But it’s TikTok. It’s TikTok. Even in Europe, Adam, I would say to you, it’s TikTok. You just don’t hear it yet. I hear it. I’ve got a, yeah, I bought a, a poster that sat on my wall that had
It’s 4,000 weeks and it’s basically represents living to 100 and how many weeks you’ve got left. Oh my God. I am finitely aware that I don’t have much time left. I’m pretty sure my phone has an app that sits right there. It says 56 years, eight months and 28 days until I turned 90. Can you text me that? I can text you that. I tell you what, I’m so impressed. I’m serious. wake up and scared the shit out of me. People your age and I know.
How old you are? you told me. They don’t think about that stuff. I did, but most people don’t think about that stuff. I wish more people would. If everyone thought that way, think what the world would be like. Think what it would be like. I’m going to leave something positive when I leave the world, right? To me, the unacceptable is just to be a perpetual taker. All you do is take, take, take, take, and you don’t give a damn thing back.
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That’s the unforgivable sin in life. With all this in mind, if somebody is trying but constantly failing, and maybe they’re not potentially up to the standard that they need to be to achieve what they want, how do they know if they should quit or keep pushing? There’s no magic answer to that. What I would say is don’t give up easily. In fact, never give up. But...
adapt, you know, learn from your failings. mean, what’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again. change your vector, man. You know, if you think you’re kind of in directionally correct, but your compass heading is not exactly right, then reorient yourself and try again and try again. But it’s a test of your conviction. I mean, we’ve all heard stories of entrepreneurs and other and athletes that have wouldn’t give up.
you know, they persevered. But I’ll bet you a dollar that whatever that compass heading was on that they failed three or four times, they made an adjustment before they actually succeed. Yeah, I think that’s the key. There’s, there’s the concept of not 1000, what is it 10,000 hours, but more so 10,000 different iterations.
It’s not the same thing for 10,000 times over, you know, 10,000 hours doing lots of different changes and building a better model of reality. engineer. That’s the engineer on you. But let’s use a metaphor, right? If you’re learning to surf, and every single time you take off, you fall, are you going to keep doing the same thing? No. No. You’re going to adjust your feet, adjust your weight, your balance. The same holds true in business. So it’s being, I think maybe the challenge there is that
People get weird when money’s involved. But if you take away that and you just look at it as a game, you can fail. You can develop. You can. In fact, sometimes failure leads to success. In fact, often it does. But let’s talk about that for a minute, OK, if you’re OK with that. The money thing, the allure, the magnet is overpowering. And you’ve got your eye on the wrong ball.
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Exit is not the way you start a business. You should never even say the word exit. Don’t even say it until you’re ready to actually do it. You don’t engineer a company for an exit. Let me tell you what you engineer a company for. You engineer a company for innovation, for changing the world. And once you’re doing, you’re succeeding doing that, then you can talk about exit. But before you’ve actually figured that out,
every single molecule in your body should be just focused on developing a winning formula. If you’re already thinking about exit, then you’re just absolutely unfocused. that’s, if you, let’s put it this way, if you innovate an amazing product and build a great company, then guess what? They come knocking on your door.
The end. seems like you’re building a great company, but there was something I found really interesting in my research. Why did you say no to Walmart for seven years? It sounds insane to most business owners. Because you have to have the mindset, I believe, in business. If you want to be what I call a sustainer, you have to have the mindset of do it right, not quick. Seven years might have been too long, right?
I’ll admit that, but I just wanted it to be the right time. I wanted to have educated the market enough on what I was doing that I was absolutely certain that the day that I went on the shelf at Walmart, that the product was going to fly off the shelves. And that’s exactly what happened. Too many people, too many entrepreneurs think that the magic ticket is to get on the retail, the major retailer shelf.
And quite often what they find is they went too early, the product doesn’t sell and guess what? You’re done. They’ll never bring you back. Never. One of my friends has a data safe brand and they’re going through this exact issue. In fact, I will tell you it’s a company killer because not only are you not ever going to go back, but all that inventory is coming back. I’ve seen many companies die as a result of the impatience. Listen, in America,
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Maybe in Australia, I don’t know. But in the Western world, capitalism, do it fast, not right, actually rules versus do it right, not quick. So if you only let me give two pieces of advice to people that have started companies or in early stage companies, one would be the people thing that I already articulated. It’s about the people, not you.
And the second is this one, do it right, not quick. Yeah. I mean, it’s very tough in the world we live in. Everything is quick. Everything is real. Everything is 30 seconds. People are moving at... But Adam, that’s not the reason. What’s the reason? It’s the exit mentality. For vanity metrics. It’s the, want to be rich. I want to cash out. Before you’ve even done the hard yards, man. Yeah. I mean, you don’t even earn the right.
to talk about Exit. Give me a break. So in fact, one, I’ll give you a quick anecdotal story. When we first started the company, we developed a product which was incredibly innovative. It was an acute nitric oxide product that, you know, would support healthy blood pressure and had a very acute effect. So, you know, just being an experienced marketer, once I had the product,
I did focus groups. did three consumer focus groups of 15 people. did two physician focus groups of 15 physicians. Not a single person in either the consumer group or the physician group had ever heard of the nitric oxide molecule, which had been awarded the Nobel prize in 1998. That was a defining moment. I almost pulled the plug on the whole project.
It’s a very tough, yeah, it’s a tough game. I stunned. Yeah. Not stunned, super stunned that the consumers didn’t know it, but I was stunned that the physicians didn’t know it. In fact, I had multiple physicians get confused, nitric oxide with nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas. Okay. So I pulled the plug on the launch, delayed the launch a year while we did two things. One, we developed
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an acute nitric oxide test strip, saliva-based, non-invasive, so that I could demonstrate to people that nitric oxide levels are actually declining in your body, and you need this supplement. That was number one. Same for physicians. And then number two, we spent a year going to medical conferences and medical trainings.
to train doctors and to try to influence doctors to understand what this was and the value of that. So delayed for a year, which cost the company its capital by the time that year was up, there was no more early phase capital, but it was the right decision, you know? And it was playing a little more long ball, doing it right versus doing it quick. Have you read the book Breakthrough Advertising? No.
So basically by Eugene Schwartz, it talks exactly about the different positions of a market where you have to educate a market. And it’s a very tough spot to start from because you’re doing two jobs at the same time. Well, we’re doing that. we’re doing it again. Yeah. So we did it with nitric oxide. We did it with Beats. Listen, when we launched Beats in 2012 in America,
People hated beets. They considered it a peasant vegetable. If you go to Europe, very different, right? But in the United States, well today, humbly, the reason you can go to a nice restaurant and get a beet salad in America is because of our company and the hundreds of millions of dollars of cumulative advertising investment that we put into the market to educate physicians.
and educate consumers. Now, fast forward to today, we’re now out to change or reframe the narrative that cardiovascular equals heart equals old people. To cardiovascular health is everybody health, whether you’re 18 or you’re 120, because those 60,000 miles of blood vessels you have in your body,
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are the most important foundational function that you have in the human body. Well, I want to take a step back because this we’re getting into the next part of the podcast. But on this point, run me through exactly what human is and what specific problems you’re solving in a succinct way so people can understand what you were just talking about in some more detail. There’s nothing more foundational in the human body than
60,000 miles of blood vessels that service your 37, 35 to 37 trillion cells. I can’t imagine that a greens drink or a liver cleanse. I just did a liver cleanse. Okay, then I’m glad I picked it. Is more important than the oxygen and nutrient delivery.
to every single cell and every single organ and function in your body. It’s craziness, right, that people, you know, unfortunately don’t understand that. In fact, think of those 60,000 miles as being the performance highway of this wonderful machine called the human body. And then you want to talk longevity. What’s more,
What’s a greater force multiplier for longevity than the health of your cardiovascular system? In fact, the number one killer of human beings in the world is cardiovascular dysfunction. It’s not a lack of vitamin A, right? So the narrative that we’ve now set out to change as in the next phase of our journey is that
cardiovascular health is everybody health, better blood flow, better everything. And that’s the narrative, you know, that we’re gonna change. Retailers have responded to this in a remarkable way. We’ve now launched a cholesterol product. We’ve launched a metabolic product. So we’re beginning to move out into the other use cases that are critical to all of cardiovascular health. That’s it. So with that in mind, your...
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70? I’ll be 70 in a couple of months. 70 in a couple of months. really, thanks a lot for saying that. I really appreciate it. But you know what? It’s kind of one of those things where, you know, there’s no point in being in denial about it. You embrace it. let me give you one of my favorite quote of the year. You want to hear it? You know, you may have heard this one before, but I have glommed onto this, you know.
which is, hey, life has its seasons to it, right? Okay. Well, if that is true, because Joel, you’re not supposed to be paddle boarding 20 miles out into the ocean. You’re supposed to be doing things. You’re in the latter part of life there. You should retire. I that’s a lie. I say, I live at the equator, I’m living at the equator.
Because I’m going, I am, I’m not going back into retirement. You can’t change the world in retirement. Can you name anybody that’s changed the world in retirement? No, you cannot. Life is finite. I’m going to make every minute count. And that’s the attitude all of us should have. I mean, it seems like you’re having fun with it. I am? I love life. I love my life. I didn’t love it when I was retired.
think it would and listen, you know what people say when I say that? They’ll say, well, if you’d have had some hobbies, you want to hear my hobbies? Sailing, scuba diving, surfing, paddle surfing. I mean, I can name eight things that I have a passion for. That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s like just purpose. Seek deeper meaning in your life and then hold yourself accountable to the deeper meaning.
You are 70, almost. Almost. But your arterial age is in its 40s. How is that possible? What’s going on? Well, it is possible. It has a lot to do with genetics and lifestyle. But for me, I’m pretty convinced, and so is my physician, that it’s been mostly because of the nitric oxide supplementation that I’ve been on consistently for 15 years.
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My cardiologist has experienced that in a few other occasions. There aren’t many, but there are others. The Nobel Prize laureate that we talked about earlier that we incepted the company out of his science, he later joined our company. He was such a believer in what we were doing and how science driven we are. He shared that with me that that was the key.
You can measure it. In fact, anybody that wants to measure it, I mean, it’s not just a theory. There are devices you can do ultrasound, go do an ultrasound with a cardiovascular specialist, and they’ll measure the stiffness and the elasticity, non-invasive, of your blood vessels. And they’ll give you a vascular age compared to your chronological age. Yeah, I did a DNA methylation test at some point. Well, there you go.
How it come out? Not good. Not good. The outside exterior, I’m like 20. Interior, I’m like three or four years older than my... Okay, well, that’s retrievable. Yeah. It’s retrievable. So whatever’s going on inside, it’s falling apart, but on the outside, I look like a child. Well, let’s get to work. You’ve said the nitric oxide is a miracle molecule. Yes. So most people probably haven’t heard this.
So why is it so important? What’s going on? And first of let me clarify that the term miracle molecule isn’t my words. Sure. So when it was awarded the Nobel Prize, the head of the American Heart Association coined that phrase and said that it was the most important discovery in the history of cardiovascular health. That’s how important the molecule was. The reason it’s so critical is because of the things that it does in those 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
starting with it signals those blood vessels to stay dilated. In fact, when you think about the source of high blood pressure or elevated blood pressure, it’s because as you age, your body’s ability to make nitric oxide declines over time. So your blood vessels begin to constrict. The elasticity.
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and flexibility of your blood vessels decline as you age as well without the presence of nitric oxide. It also regulates your heart muscle. So more presence of nitric oxide allows for a stronger pump for your cardiovascular system. You also have a massive partnership with the University of Texas Athletics, kind of replacing Gatorade. So how did that happen?
Well, we didn’t replace Gatorade. It’s an adjunct, but we’re certainly would be consider a strategic partner of the University of Texas. But you bring up the Gatorade thing. think Gatorade is a good metaphor. mean, by the way, just by total happenstance, my undergrad degree is at the University of Florida. So I’m very aware, right, of the relationship between the University of Florida and Gatorade. But we were incepted or born out of the University of Texas science.
So the University of Texas Athletic Department has used our product with their athletes for 12 years. They’ve won 20 national championships using our products. their mission statement is what changes the world starts here. They recognize that what we have that started at the University of Texas has the potential to change the world. We’re great partners. Shouldn’t all sporting teams be using this?
Well, it’s interesting you would ask because nearly 200 Division I collegiate teams and professional sports teams are using it. Wow. Cool. Pretty cool. It’s working. Something interesting I thought. So the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1997. Eight. Eight, 1998. Yet you started the company in 2009. There’s an 11 year run between the technology being understood at a high level.
at a very significant level and the business being formed. So it’s been 15 years and that business has grown year on year significantly. But it’s making me wonder, is there a rush to begin to use technology in enterprise or is it better to slow it down and do it right and potentially not be the first mover in the space or were you both?
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We were the first mover. I like to call them market makers and market takers. was a market taker. didn’t, we did not invent the personal computer. Humans are market maker. And yes, there’s, in fact, you go to Amazon, there’s a hundred thou, I said a hundred thousand knockoff products of our products on Amazon. So the keys to sustained success are very different.
when you’re a market maker versus a market taker. What are they? It depends on the situation, but just in general terms, a market maker is an innovator, right? They’re a forward thinker. And they have the propensity and ability to educate. The market takers show up once the market already exists. And they...
Typically, their core competencies are institutionalized copycatting. So if you’re looking for the best market takers in the world, Hyundai, right? Many of the Oriental car makers, they didn’t invent the car. They didn’t even invent today’s car, but they were able to copy it, institutionalize reverse engineering, and sell it at a cheaper price.
Yeah, I’ve read somewhere that Walmart, all of Walmart’s ideas have basically been copycat from other entrepreneurs, but then applied to Walmart and it’s been extremely successful. I don’t know. I’m not sure about that. Yeah. I read somewhere. You’d have to give them credit though for a lot of innovations. for example, they were really the first to innovate around
the supply chain. Really? Yeah, they were. They were really the first one to apply just-in-time inventory. They were the first one to apply a, I checked this product out at the checkout counter, and it goes that transaction actually moves all the way through the system to the supplier. They’re the first ones to do that. Okay. And that enabled because inventory is the work of the devil. Think about it. Carrying cost.
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obsolescence. I learned that in the tech business. Anything you can do to lower your inventory carrying costs benefits all parties, which then in turn allows you to lower the price. What’s Walmart about? Best price. So it’s allowed them to consistently best their competition on pricing. There was something else I wanted to jump into quickly before we wrap up on understanding how you hire because you’ve said
hiring and the right people in the lifeblood of a company. if I was to stand out to a guy like you when applying for a job, what would I need to do? You would need to convince me that you care about humanity and that you care about doing something that’s going to matter.
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Now, as I said before, there are people who are Johnny on the spots, they’re quick on their feet, and they convinced me, right? When in fact, they weren’t able to or didn’t walk their own talk. But ultimately, you know, I’m looking for conviction. How have you seen, because there’s a massive conversation right now with gender, right? And gender and executives. So
In your experience, do men and women lead differently? And can women still be ruthless CEOs? Or is there something else? Women are better leaders, than men are. What makes you say that? A, they’re multitaskers and men are not. Number two, they have a higher IQ, excuse me, EQ. And I already shared my own story about having to learn the tough lessons there. My co-founder, who also happens to be my spouse,
is a much better leader than I am. She’s an amazing leader because she has very high EQ, but she’s an ass kicker too, right? So I think at the end of the day, generalizations are, I struggle with those. It is tough. But I would say that not only are women tend to be better leaders, they’re the stronger gender. They just are.
They have more. Just think about it. They’re robustness in dealing with more diversity, the ability to, you know, deal with all of the things in life, perhaps that men would never have to deal with. So the same individual I was telling you about my wife, she broke the glass ceiling in the tech industry. She broke the glass ceiling in three tech companies, because you have to understand that, especially in the nineties, there was no such thing.
as a female vice president, right? And I just, I learned from that. I gained a lot of insights from that. I also gained insights and learnings from watching her as a parent, you know, which just leads the female gender in a different way. It’s just inherent, I think it’s a biological thing. So the women listening to this in this podcast, are they better if they want to succeed in a career?
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Are they better suited to play the man’s game or approach it in their own unique way? mean, in my view, approach it in their own unique way and let their strengths shine true. And by the way, I didn’t say that just because you’re a female, you’re going to be a great executive. didn’t say that. But I think they’re just better generally equipped, especially. know, EQ is, there’s a reason someone came up
with that concept because it matters. And I look, I have to work at it, Adam. I mean, it’s a daily, almost an hourly challenge for me to call on that and exhibit that because it matters to people. It just matters. Yeah, it’s definitely a learned skill. It’s something that I didn’t have in my early 20s that I’ve begun to build. I just didn’t.
really understand the whole empathy component. Where’d you get it from? Meditation. you develop it? Meditation. Meditation. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Honestly. Meditation. Is that an Aussie thing? Meditation? I don’t know. No, no, definitely not. It’s maybe we’re a little bit more chill, but the story was... think Aussies are headstrong, right? Yeah, we can be I just from a personality standpoint. Yeah. We’re also chill. We’re like...
We’re balanced. Well, you know what? That’s a good, that’s fair. Yeah. I think that’s good. Yeah. But meditation really helped because it allowed me to slow down. What I found was my lack of EQ came from the speed at which I was, my brain was ticking and how quickly I needed to move because I was anxious about being in one place. And the skill development that meditation allowed me to build was it allowed me to
be comfortable in the discomfort of not moving. And then it allowed me to drop into the experience and the sensations in the moment. Which then allowed me to see what was in front of me better. I’m not perfect, but that was the process. I’m going to see what was in front of me better. Which then allowed me to actually begin to understand what was going on around me better than just, I want this done right now and I need it done exactly how I need it done because I’ve got other shit to do.
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I was clueless for too long. Seemed to Well, it did, probably because brute force can be a powerful force too. Brute force is powerful. matters and I have a strong will. But it has gotten easier. It’s gotten easier in the last couple of decades for the very simple reason that I’ve learned that that matters. I think there’s a...
There’s a valuable time for just unrelenting will, but it’s not if you’re, it’s the only tool that you have, sometimes it breaks things. I think that’s very fair. At the same time, if you are in a situation where every single minute of the 24 hour cycle, your will is being tested, you better have a strong will. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, better have a strong will.
Yeah, mean, empathy is probably not the highest thing someone’s thinking about in the trenches of war. It’s survival and unrelenting. I like to say survival. Yeah. Never was much interested in survival, but I damn sure was interested in thriving. But sometimes surviving is thriving and thriving is surviving. So when you think about it through that lens, and I’ve coined that word like three decades ago.
I think others probably use it now, but I had never heard it before, but it was just like the perfect description of what being in a Dell-like scenario was. Surthrival. Well, you’re not going to starve, but the reactions and the responses your body has on from the environment are probably just the same as a battle. Fair enough. You know, your body’s still in stress. You’re like, shit.
So we spoke about briefly, you’ve operated, but I want to elaborate on it more. You’ve operated at an elite level for decades. And what’s one health protocol that you think every entrepreneur should start today? Get some alone time.
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and find something you really love outside of what you do for a living. Gotta love what you’re doing for a living. I mean, you have to, but find something that matters to you that allows you to stay in touch with yourself. Yeah. What’s yours? It’s paddling. So I paddleboard, I distance paddleboard, I paddle surf, I sail.
So I have multiples, but I do those by myself. I don’t tend to do that with other people. Which some people find strange, you know, like, man, that’s an unsocial dude, but it’s just my alone time. What do you get out of that experience? It keeps me balanced. It keeps me from, because I do have a tendency to not be balanced. I have a tendency to over-rotate on winning.
success, world changing. I just need to rebalance sometimes and I do it frequently. So it keeps me in the right zone. My operating zone is so much better and healthy now than it was 20 years ago for that reason. It’s got nothing to do with wisdom. that’s wisdom. No, it’s not. It’s just understanding that I have to have that balance. have to
to give my own self some of my time. Sounds like wisdom to me. Yeah, maybe. It sounds kind of the point, isn’t it? I think so. Yeah. So it seems like from your career, money’s not been too much of a challenge. I mean, it maybe has, but you’ve had a lot of successes in a lot of different domains. Does money actually solve problems? No.
I think it does enable you to perhaps do things that you want to do, but it doesn’t solve any problems. In fact, I would say it creates as many or more than it solves. And that has everything to do with your children and everything to do with your spouse and your relationship with your spouse. So,
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Money’s not a bad thing, but anybody that thinks it’s the only thing is in the wrong forest. So what doesn’t it fix? It doesn’t fix relationships. fact, it tends, personal relationships tend to deteriorate, I think, or rust faster. And I think from, you know, when you look at children, and it’s obvious, children with silver spoons in their mouths.
have no motivation. I see 16 year old girls getting Range Rovers from brand new Range Rovers from their dad as their first car. Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? You’re stripping that young woman of all of her reason to want to succeed in her work journey. I didn’t do that with my kids.
I think they thank me for it now. I think when they were 16 and 17, they were driving a beater. If they were driving anything, there was probably some resentment, but you just have to, you know what makes parenting hard? What makes parenting hard are the other parents. It’s really that simple. Yeah, I was driving around in 1990s Honda Accord that barely worked. Right.
And it made you a better man for it. We’ll find out. made you hungry to want to succeed in life, right? And I just can’t imagine had my parents given me everything I wanted when I was in my teens.
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Yeah, the drive is the most important part. And I think the drive leads to a lot of happiness as well and fulfillment in your life, even if the most fun I’ve had is doing the thing. And I’ve taught my kids this. And by the way, I have three of my four kids were college athletes. And they were achievers in their own right. But I believe that your life’s defined by your achievement.
the end. Now, it doesn’t mean that my achievements that I think are important are the same ones that you think are important, Adam. But if you don’t propagate that and cultivate that with your kids, you’re doing them a disservice, or in my humble opinion, yeah, you’re doing yourself, you’re doing them a disservice. Yeah. And I mean, look, at the end of the day, I think the goal with your children is to leave them better than you were. Leave them as better humans, more evolved humans than you are taking.
positives and negatives. don’t hand them the things that should be earned. Yeah. Don’t just hand it to them. So what are the things that should be earned? Well, monetary reward for one. I have a couple of my sons are entrepreneurs. I didn’t give them a nickel. Not one. And they’ve made it. Yeah. They’ve achieved it.
You just said a few minutes ago that those are the things that life’s about, right? That feeling of achievement. That feeling of achievement would have been grandly diluted had I just given them unlimited capital. Now, it put a lot more pressure on them. It made, they had some sleepless nights, but what’s wrong with that? Yeah. It’s character.
builds character, builds purpose, builds sustainability, builds toughness, know, mental toughness. Life, life’s an amazing journey, but if you don’t have those things to deal with the inevitable sharp turn, unpredictable turns that come your way, you’re ill equipped. And that, when you talk about the job of a parent, that’s the real job of a parent is to prepare their children.
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for those bad surprises, for those negatives that inevitably happen and their capacity to deal with it. Yeah. It makes me think of the book by Nassim Taleb, Anti-Fragile. Have you read it? No. Basically, the concept is there’s some things that break under pressure and there’s some things that become stronger under pressure. The things that become stronger under pressure tend to survive and thrive longer than the things that break under pressure. Yes. And it seems to me that the lesson
that you want to impart on your kids is to make them that so that the pressure helps them be better and helps them get to the next level as opposed to breaking them. You know, that’s very well articulated. And I think as a parent, you should by the time you become a parent, certainly a parent of a teenager, is that you should have a recognition that ultimately those are the skills that your children need.
to not only persevere, but to succeed in life. So with all of this, if you were to go back to a lot of my audience in their 20s to 30s, I figured go back to 25 year old Joel, just starting out. What would one of the main pieces of advice you would give him be? I think the advice that I would have given him is that life is a marathon.
It’s not a sprint and you need to live your life in a way that you’re going to be able to sustain over the long term, right? I was so hell bent on being the first to everything and I’m to be the first executive Fortune 500 executive ever that was under 30 years old.
I wanted to be the first this, I wanted to be the first that, that I wasn’t touching all the bases then. What are the bases? Learning. The best metaphor for achieving in career is a ladder. I would proffer that it’s monkey bars. What do mean? Well, think about monkey bars versus a ladder. A ladder, you go straight up. Very little horizontality and breadth.
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all verticality. Yet the higher you go in your career progression, the more skills, breadth of skills that you’re expected to have. Well, climb a monkey bars. Monkey bars, go up two rungs, you go across one, up across another one, back across two, up. So I regret if I could be so bold to say that.
I regret that I climbed the vertical too fast, that I could have learned better EQ had I taken a horizontal step and go done a rotation in another role. I wish I had had a rotation in product marketing. I wish I’d had a rotation in finance. I had to go learn those things on more a self-taught basis. So I say monkey bar trumps ladder.
No one told me that, you know, it was just, kept promoting me. going, I just kept going vertical. And listen, dude, I mean, it got to the point where I would accept nothing less than a promotion every 18 months. And that’s just the wrong perspective to have. So, so being able to learn. I hope that didn’t sound too arrogant. No, no, it’s fine. But it was just reality. I mean, that’s just the way my life played out. Yeah. You know, it’s just.
the way it played out. And I wish there’d have been some monkey bar moves in there, Adam. Yeah. So, so basically learning widely at the younger age when the opportunity to do so through a work environment would be something that you would breath. Yeah. Breath, breath, but using, I think it’s important that there’s an important distinction you made, was breath, but using the tools and resources, resources of your job as a tool to learn.
Yes. Not just doing it yourself. of course. Because it’s A, you get paid for it. B, you learn on the job so your speed of iteration is quicker. I think it’s a really, really important distinction. You know, I’ll pile on that distinction. So when I, my first CEO job.
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I struggled at first, that first year, because there were some skills gaps that I had, because I hadn’t touched those bases. I hadn’t touched them. So now, you can’t make a career out of going horizontal. You got to strike the balance between breadth and verticality, but don’t become so fixated on, have to get promoted next year.
and be more focused on skills acquisition than you are on what your title is and what value you’re contributing to the firm over the long term. If you can keep that in perspective, then you’re going to be a lot better equipped to do the vice president job or the director job or the CEO job that you aspire to be when you get there. Yeah. And those skills really do compound at a
a quicker race as time goes on. do. And remember, when you get into that dream job, you damn well better be ready to win at it. Yeah. You better be prepared for that versus being so fixated on the title that when you get there, that you haven’t really acquired all the know how that you need to win. Couple of general questions to wrap up.
What’s an important truth that you know that most people disagree with you on? That when you get closer to the end than the beginning, it’s going to be about the achievements you’ve had and the legacy you’ll leave. You know, they ought to be drilling into 22 year olds that what a legacy is. They don’t.
In fact, the only people that I know that ever talk about legacies really are people that are closer to the end than the beginning. And guess what? More often than not, it’s too late. My nightmare scenario, and I’m not exaggerating, when I was 18 years old, my nightmare scenario is that I’m on the porch in a chair. Can’t ever see myself doing that.
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And I’m thinking I’m playing my life back. I know I’m near the end and I haven’t done a goddamn thing. That’s worth anything. That was the nightmare scenario. So when you’re younger, that’s when it ought to come into focus. What ultimately your finite time on this planet really is about. What do think about the idea with that? What do you think about the idea of
everything that we build and do is basically going to turn to dust in a couple of generations. So it kind of doesn’t matter. Dust in the wind? Dust in the wind. I can’t allow myself to think that way. Because I’m a purpose guy. Okay, right. I have to believe in the purpose and I have to believe in the deeper meaning. So I’m not going to let my mind go there. I’m not going to drink your Kool-Aid.
I’m just using this as an excuse for my lack of drive. I think you have a lot of drive. We’ll find out. We’ll see if it’s going in the right direction. Don’t you think drive begets drive too? You know what’s funny? I have recently in the last couple of months had been so focused and locked in on getting things done and very clear on how to do it.
more than I’ve probably ever had in my life. And I got through a degree and built a business and traveled the world. And I’ve done a lot of things, not to know any of the scale of what you did. I wouldn’t say that. I’ve tread my own path from day one. And in the last couple of months, I’ve reached another gear and I’ve reached that gear because it turns out I had mold toxicity and my brain was not running at the capacity that it could. You’re kidding.
And I’ve been two and a half months into a detox. about a month ago, was like, wow, wait, what? Is this how I’m meant to feel? Like, I’ll go wake up. I’ll have energy. I’ll go work. I’ll go work out. I’ll come home. It’s 9, 10 o’clock. I’m like, I’ve got energy. I’m just going to keep doing stuff. I didn’t have that. I was napping. For my whole life, I’ve been running with a limiter on my brain. And I feel like for the first time in my life,
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It’s starting to like, there’s some sun poking through. That’s remarkable. Fascinating. By the way, what’s a nap? Life’s too short for that. You know, everything that I’ve touched hasn’t turned to gold. You know, that was a lesson I had to learn. I think coming out of Dell, was like, I thought I had it right. It was like, and I’ve had failures, but I would say to, you know, to anyone listening.
that don’t let failure define you. Let whatever it is you believe in define you. And that’s what I think is where the meaning and the deeper purpose comes from. And how do you go through life and not ever stop and dig deep enough to understand what satisfaction will be when you’re my age? Because remember, when you get to the end,
I’m not saying I’m at the end, but when you get closer to the end than the beginning, you do start to think about what you’ve done or haven’t done. And you want to feel satisfied. You you want to feel. So the earlier in life you understand what you’re going to be satisfied when you get older in life, the sooner your life will have deeper meaning and purpose. It’s not the same for all of us, but the sooner you’re conscious of it.
the better chance you’re gonna have to, when you get to the end to feel like it was worth it and you’re satisfied. Yeah. You know what’s funny? I think about this quite a lot. If I was to die tomorrow,
I wouldn’t have any regret, not a single regret. I mean, I’d have regrets on some decisions I made that maybe hurt people. You know, I could have done things in better ways, but you don’t know what you don’t know at the time and you do the best with what you’ve got. But on the whole, I think about this a lot. like, you know what? I’ve had a really good run and I’d be a little disappointed that it had ended tomorrow, touch wood, that it ended because...
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I’m so excited to see what else is going to happen. But if that was all I had, I would be very happy with what I did with it, which is great. I’m not a big movie buff, but I did see a movie once that impacted me like more than I ever thought it was possible. Because there was one speech that was given in the movie that hit me like a ton of bricks, and it was about regret.
And essentially, I can’t cite it word for word. But essentially, this person, can’t. It was about a lawyer and the drug trade. I’ll think of it before we’re done. But the counselor. The counselor. The counselor. There’s a speech given, and they’re essentially on the word regret. And it says regret is a worthless thought. It is a worthless.
concept, because regret means it was something done in the past and you cannot change the past. That was the core essence. What did you take from that? I said, my gosh, that’s correct. It’s right. So we’re all going to make mistakes. We’re all going to do things we wish we hadn’t done. We’re all going to miss opportunities.
Don’t over-rotate on regret. Here’s a key quote. I would urge you to see the truth in the situation you’re in, counselor. That is my advice. It is not for me to say what you should have done or not done. I only know that the world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world that the mistakes were made in. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There is only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago.
Is that about right? That’s exactly right. profound, don’t you think? Profound. It’s a good place to wrap up. So if this was your last interview ever, and had 60 seconds to leave a message to the world, what would you say?
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Change it.
change the world. That’s the only acceptable outcome. Joel, thank you. Pleasure, Adam. Appreciate you coming It was a lot of fun. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube, search that one time with Adam Atwelly, and I’ll see you next week.
