Lessons - Why Playing It Safe Will Kill Your Company | Michael Loeb - Serial Entrepreneur & Billionaire Investor

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All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhamp.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhamp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. In this lessons episode learn why embracing risk and failure can lead to greater opportunities. How to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and the importance of thinking three steps ahead. Discover practical strategies for navigating challenges and making bold decisions in your career. You know you're asking me who's listening to this podcast and I said well there's people that are building but I said there's people that are in companies trying to build something for the first time. I was talking to I was talking to somebody and the general thesis was if you don't burn the boats you aren't ready to build. That's a good one. You believe in that. Do you believe in that? Well all I can do is tell you my experience right and I followed my dad into timing. So my dad was a journalist of great renown right and he really tried and we talked about this Scott. He changed the arc of history more than once and he joined time ink as a reporter at time magazine a rose to the ranks and became a senior editor and then almost as a consolation prize they made him the managing editor of money magazine which he turned into from a failing property into a powerhouse and then fortune magazine right so he was the editor of fortune magazine for 10 years and I really wanted to work at HBO at the time and HBO was you know in its day like you know the Netflix right it was um unbelievably important and it was in the Vanguard not so much anymore but uh and all I wanted to do was work for HBO and I can never get a job at HBO and then all of a sudden timing was starting a new magazine called TV cable week officially the ill-fated TV wait cable week and they were hiring just about anybody and that's how I got a job at timing and the rose through the ranks got the opportunity of managed sports illustrated you may not know this but I am the inventor of the sneaker phone and the football phone look for him an eBay they're expensive and then created kind of the idea of a bloopers video as a premium and launched SI for kids had something to do with um turning the swimsuit issue into the franchise that it became uh which got me labeled as a misogynist I didn't know what that word meant at the time I thought it had something to do with misogyn and uh was tapped to run entertainment weekly or start launch entertainment weekly which I did and that was a job that got me fired and uh myself and the editor um the editor was um quite the intellectual and he thought that you know stories or cover stories on books and polo would sell and um but not to the masses of America for me it had to be about the big three just like SI is about big three sports this is big three entertainment and um anyhow uh got fired and decided that I was going to start the business outside of timing that I was trying to start inside of timing and so to answer your question you got to burn the boats right you got to burn the boats you got to cross the Rubikam which is a whole lot better analogy than burning the boats right cross in the Rubikam because that's what Caesar did to get in the room okay and yeah you got to do that and you got to have the courage to do that in my case I didn't right I didn't have the courage to do that but fate stepped in and said you know what you got to be an entrepreneur right so we're going to make you an entrepreneur and years that we're going to do it you're going to have to suffer the humiliation of being fired now the notice of me being fired because it was the editor and me both being fired at the same time you know that was in you know the daily news the New York Post the Wall Street Journal the New York Times wasn't about us it was is timing kind of shutter entertainment weekly but the derision related to that right because the official stats of timing was you know we were telling you that everything was copacetic and entertainment weekly we kind of fibbed on that but here was the problem and we got rid of it okay so now everything is good again and you know you got to see your name and print under that context so the likelihood of my getting a job was not high so I had kind of no choice I had to become an entrepreneur and I had to pursue that you know that idea that I was talking smack about inside the timing I you know had to try it outside the timing a huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode let me explain why I love federated computer why they are friends of success story they are changing the way businesses buy software because we all need software to run our businesses I don't care what kind of business you're building but the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month so federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now let me explain the average typical federated computer customer save 75% or more on 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story they're offering 30% off they're already low prices when you use a coupon code freelance so go to www.federated.computer to begin saving 75% or more on your monthly software costs that's www.federated.computer these folks are going to do you a big favor check them out no what was it happened to work and I think that it's interesting because every time I've seen somebody laid out and this is a harsh a harsh reality that I believe and I'm sure a lot of people are are gonna argue me on this and they're dealing with it right now they don't they don't think that I'm correct but every time that I've found that somebody gets laid off or fired or terminated or furloughed if they have the right mindset they end up in a better spot yeah that all is it if that's the key words right the right mindset and what do you have to be in that circumstance well one you can't be afraid right now I have I have an internship program at my company that we call internal Tokyo kind of cool right and I put that together because I'd run down the halls when the you know when the time was ripe you know it's a good news everybody the interns are coming and I get this i-roll and I'm saying why the i-roll and they're saying well you know I don't really have anything for them and they come in and it's a surprise and it's like I got to find a work and by the time I got them situated they're gone right so you know all they do is slow me down and I said you're an idiot because in a year's time right you're gonna be slitting your each other's throat and Goldman Sachs and McKinsey and everything else to get these guys right and what I do know is pick the fruit from the tree and not the ground so we just got to make this internship program work and so what we do um Scott is we have three days boot camp and it's in my house in the Hamptons we have 1500 applications you know for every summer we look for rising seniors in college and they come from the great colleges and universities in the United States and you know we'll get a hundred applications from like London um so in internal Tokyo and the idea is three-day boot camp right I'm gonna rearrange your thinking in three days so that you're thinking like an entrepreneur now they're not in until they can make a persuasive argument that they are an entrepreneur and one of the things they have to do is write a 300 word essay on their best idea right which I promise not to steal from them and uh it's really to do several things one if they don't have the energy to do that right and do it well then you know I'm gonna put a lot of energy into them and if they're not gonna do that then I you know I don't want to have anything to do with them so that's first thing in second I want to see the quality they're thinking they can be dead wrong but if there's logic behind it and it's well articulated because three inner words you've got to think about what your business model and your thesis is and you got to put it to pros so um we accept them and they have three days and I have three things that I add that are kind of fun things that by the way are helpful if you're an entrepreneur thing one is I get a world-class pool player and they teach them how to play pool and why is that because pool is not about and I don't play pool right but pool is about not this shot but about three shots down the road so this shot sets up the next shot which sets up the next shot which by the way that's a very important concept for an entrepreneur the consequences of what you do now are gonna affect the next decision and the next year and the next decision and the next year the following year and you should know that and you should appreciate that and you should think that through right the next night we teach poker what is poker teach you detachment if the chips in the middle right the middle of the table if that is your life savings and that is what you're thinking you will lose 1,000 percent because the pros who are used to picking up the signals will see the tells and you're done you're done and the last day okay we have a magician what is a magician teach you okay the stupidity of the crap right because what it all is is a big deception so they make you look at the left hand when all the action is on the right hand right so if you only want to follow the crowd right you're not going to decode how a magician actually gets it done because you want to be the one tenth of one percent and to behave differently you got to think differently thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one