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Brian Coe: Insights into Being a Leader
66 Plays9 years ago
Brian Coe - co-founder of LithoLink, CEO - discusses insights into the world of leadership. Being a CEO stems from really knowing yourself, and Brian suggests ways to learn how to figure out who you are so you can lead from a place of real self-empowerment. Brian is a true strategic CEO (and my brother and business partner).
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Transcript
Introduction to Emotional Workouts
00:00:17
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by my own emotional workouts for your well-being training program. If you have no idea what that is, no worries. It's basically like a personalized workout program, but instead of doing a hundred squats, you're working out your mind, your well-being, and your emotions.
00:00:36
Speaker
Think workouts, but for your well-being backed by thousands of years worth of philosophy. When I was starting out in life, I would have benefited so much by having someone like Rumi or Plato or Aristotle to just be there by my side and coach me so I could design a life that was meant for me. Unfortunately, that's not available. Emotional workouts are the closest thing to just that. As you navigate through your life, emotional workouts remove all that stuff that gets in the way when you're trying to make those tough life choices.
00:01:05
Speaker
You can check it out at emotionalworkouts.com. Again, it's emotionalworkouts.com. Okay, onto the show.
Meet Brian Coe: The Journey from Litholink to Slip Chip
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode. We have Brian Coe here today. And yes, Coe, that is my last name as well. And it's not a coincidence. Brian is my brother, my best friend. And also my brother was my partner in business for 15 years. The two of us co-founded with our father, Litholink. It was a healthcare tech company that brought
00:01:38
Speaker
standard of care medicine to doctors nationally by using the latest technologies to treat people with chronic illnesses. We sold the company to a fortune 500 where we stayed on his executives. Brian left to follow his next dream to start a company called slip chip, a venture backed business, which is I think one of the coolest healthcare technologies today.
00:02:00
Speaker
But that's not what we focused on. Brian is a true strategic CEO. He really is one of the most insightful, thoughtful people I know. And I know I'm biased, but everybody loves him. Everybody turns to him for advice.
Empowerment and Leadership: Brian's Perspective
00:02:16
Speaker
he goes through the importance of following your dreams what that means as a ceo and a leader of a business that all stems from really knowing yourself and he suggests ways to learn how to figure out who you are so you can lead from a place of real self empowerment i know you're gonna love today's episode
00:02:35
Speaker
I can't tell you what it meant to me to sit down with him and share this on the podcast. So thanks so much for listening. If you like what you hear, hop over to iTunes, hit subscribe. Thanks so much. Today is a very special day for me. It's an incredibly important podcast because I have my brother here today. Hey Brian, thanks for coming and doing the show.
00:02:58
Speaker
Hi Laura, great to be in your home doing a little a desk side chat as we often do.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, and the reason it's so special is for those of you out there that don't know, Brian is not just my brother, but he and I were business partners for 15 years where we built a healthcare company. And he's just been a very special, important part of my life. So I'm trusting you today to not say anything that's embarrassing and just withhold childhood stories.
00:03:33
Speaker
I will, if you will. Yeah, okay, deal. But in all seriousness, it's kind of weird to say about your own brother, but I did have the opportunity to work with him and he's somebody who has just a tremendous insight into entrepreneurship, business leadership, what it means to
Authenticity and Joy: A Guide to Life
00:03:54
Speaker
Think about your dreams, to follow your dreams, to build something that's meaningful and impactful. And he doesn't just think about the business side because I, of course, get the opportunity to just have amazing conversations. This is the person that I call when I'm emotionally stuck, when my emotional weight seems to gather up and I can't handle it. He's wise and wonderful. So I know you're going to get as much value as I get.
00:04:22
Speaker
And not only that, but he teaches at the Booth School and talks to entrepreneurs all day long about how to pursue dreams. So we had talked before the show about what would be the most useful, valuable information we could share today, and we both agreed, talking about the main core questions that all of our guests answered, some just for a few minutes and some focused for the whole show would really be an exciting
00:04:47
Speaker
Avenue to explore so Brian, I'm gonna kick it over to you. Tell us what what does an authentic life mean to you?
00:04:54
Speaker
Laura, I think it's a really important question and something that people should ask themselves before they embark on long journeys. And to me, an authentic self is really about finding those things that when you do them, you become happier. So through their pursuit or through the pursuit of a goal,
00:05:18
Speaker
that pursuit actually gives you joy and pleasure often somewhat regardless of the outcome and we often want to be successful ultimately and we all have hopes and dreams that we will be successful but many times the reality is we're not successful but if you're spending your time in your life pursuing something that is inherently joyful to you and inherently gives you energy
00:05:43
Speaker
and creates a passion within yourself then those pursuits in of themselves are actually worthy of your time and to me it's finding those things that helps you create an authentic life for yourself both I would say from a career perspective and from a personal perspective if you're with people who
00:06:01
Speaker
whose company maybe you're supposed to enjoy but you actually don't enjoy. That's not really an authentic pursuit but sometimes just you find people who are interesting to you and whose company you find joyful and beneficial and that's also very important and that idea of both. So both personal connections and sort of the vector of your career
00:06:27
Speaker
Giving you joy i think are critical to to long-term happiness so brian is much more the business guy than i've ever been and i'm i always love the philosophy i don't know if you know this but yes it's very aries to tell you i would have no idea
00:06:44
Speaker
So I love that answer and I believe it to be true and so did Aristotle, that sort of actualization of that deeper self and what is impactful
Aligning Career with Happiness
00:06:54
Speaker
to you. So if somebody is out there listening and saying, yeah, but sometimes I have a hard time connecting to what makes me happy because I'm justifying it or trying to convince myself into things, what do you say to that person? It's a really, Laura, a really interesting question. Sometimes actually the first thing I would tell people is,
00:07:14
Speaker
You have to know yourself and if you don't know yourself, you've got to start a journey to learn about yourself. One of the really great places to learn about yourself is from your friends and younger sisters or other family members you might have because they'll often see things in you that you don't know
00:07:35
Speaker
about yourself or they just never openly share with you because quite frankly you haven't asked the question. So a lot of times I tell people, take your best friend out for a drink and say, you know, I want to just get your feedback on what I'm doing with my life and what I should be doing and if you were to say what is it that would make me happy knowing me as you do, what do you see?
00:07:57
Speaker
The second thing I would say is that a lot of times, actions do speak louder than words. What do you spend your time doing? Yeah, that's a big one. I just feel like life leaves such incredible clues and we don't pay attention because we think, well, but the things I love to do, those aren't the things I should be doing, right?
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, and it's absolutely true and you'll find yourself engaging activities that maybe are tangential to your career, tangential to the main vectors of your life. But if you actually step back and look at what you actually spend your time doing and who you're spending your time with, you start to understand the environment that you're inherently drawn to.
00:08:41
Speaker
And understanding that I think is really critical to being successful. I'll also say, and this is a little bit of a side note, but there are some of these personality test that people take that correlate what you like to what people who are happy in their careers like.
00:08:58
Speaker
One of them is called, I think, the strong test of vocational interest, something like this. And you should find out, it doesn't necessarily mean you will or you won't be successful, but find out what things make you happy, whether it's through some tests and measures, whether it's by asking friends, or whether it's really just by sitting down and meditating and clearing your mind of other thoughts and just thinking, in what way can I visualize myself as happy?
Career Shift: From Pre-Med to Business
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really difficult pursuit, but I think those are great suggestions. And so I know you mentor students at the business school and you teach and you just are surrounded by younger people starting off in their careers.
00:09:42
Speaker
Before we dive into your advice to others, if we could just go back a little bit. Obviously, I know the story, but I think your path to an authentic life was a very interesting one. Can you take us back to college and what that process looked like, what you started off as freshman year and pre-med, and how you made the decision to become an entrepreneur?
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, sure, Laura. In fact, I could take us back to our early childhood. I don't know if you'll remember this, but if I was to cut myself or scrape myself, our father would say, it'll get better by the time you get to medical school. I know. He said that all the time. All the time. Never done to me that was his way of getting it in there. It just became part of our normal talk. Absolutely. And many families grew up with parents who expect you to go to college, et cetera. The family expectation for me was certainly to go to medical school.
00:10:34
Speaker
And when I went to college, I was pre-med, and quite frankly, as you know, miserable. Really because I was following a path that I knew I wouldn't like. I'll tell you a quick anecdote that I know you know from when we were younger, but I had a job working in a lab. It was a little bit of a different era.
00:10:55
Speaker
And the lab, I was setting up like a lab assay for blood and so the lab manager said, and my father, our father said, hey, why don't you just go down to the clinic, draw some blood and you can use it for the experiments. And I'm staring at him like, what? So I go down to this clinic and there's this woman and she's got a very large snow white arm that when I,
00:11:18
Speaker
Put the tourniquet on it. It was like snow, snow white. And then I'm working with a lab tech to get a needle into this snow white arm and out of which comes dark purple blood. And I swear to God, I almost passed out. I became completely diaphoretic. I'm sweating everywhere. The perfect med school student. Perfect medical school student. And you know, our father would take me on rounds in the hospital and you know, we go in to see these deathly ill people.
00:11:42
Speaker
you know they're breathing and they're in pain and you know he'd say look if you touch here and you'd see the like ah and he's like see that's this interesting you know da da da da and I'm thinking oh my god if the window wasn't sealed I'd jump out. Wait this is the first time I've heard this and we talk daily how did I not know you went on rounds?
00:11:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, I went on rounds and it was, you know, and he, I remember, I still remember you're listening to somebody, there's a thing called, I think it's called Striders where they have this weird breathing pattern like, and you know, this person is really deathly ill and I'm sitting here thinking, oh my God, I mean, what is the route for me to exit this environment? And so yeah, I was constitutionally not oriented towards
00:12:27
Speaker
towards medicine at all. And, you know, dad would say, Hey, do you want to come like look in the next room in the next room? And I'm thinking, Oh my God, this like, this is never going to happen. How about we go next week too. So you're in, you're in college, you're taking pre-med grades. Definitely a struggle. Right. Cause it's just, again, your life is leaving you clues. And meanwhile, I'm a freshman in college and I get a phone call that you started a business.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess, you know, Laura, I'm in college, I'm doing pre-med, definitely like it's an absolute grind to be successful. I'm just not happy. And then I'm going to, I start a, as a side project, I start a business called Easy Notes where we would pay students to take notes, really good students to take notes in classes and then sell the, type them up and then sell them to other students. $4 a week type notes delivered to your door.
00:13:24
Speaker
And it was kind of crazy. Like you just end up with more money at the end of the week than you had at the beginning of the week. Right. And like back to your point about leaving clues, right? So here you are and what you choose to do with your time is start a business and it was successful and you're ready to scale it. And you're calling me to do it in my college, but you've convinced yourself to stay in pre-med. So finally you have a break point. Yeah. How did you finally just say that's it? I can't do this.
00:13:53
Speaker
I just really got into a complete abyss in my life.
00:14:01
Speaker
a crisis of all kinds, particularly an emotional crisis is a great way to foment change in your life. And I was literally depressed. I mean, I'd get up and I'm like, this is horrible. I'd go to class and think all day, this is horrible. And I'd go to my dorm room at night and think this is horrible. And I'd look forward at my life and actually got course catalogs from medical schools. And I would just look at them and think there's not a single thing in here I want to learn about. I don't want to do this. And so I just got to a point where
00:14:30
Speaker
I had a science major in college, but I looked at my life and I said, you know, this just isn't for me. And it's kind of now or never. And I just said, you know what? I told my father, I said, I'm not going to medical school. I'm not going to apply. And I want to have a career in business.
00:14:48
Speaker
Any regrets? Yeah, no. That worked out well. So you leave, you move on, you have your first job, we build this business together and you go on to business school and I remember the opposite experience, right? Every single class you thought sounded better than the next.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, now if you don't mind, I'm gonna back up for one second and just say my first job was at a biotech company doing research, but it was in a business. And one of the things that could urge people to do is sometimes you can't just go from say pre-med to some job in which say I might be better equipped to get the job if I have an economics major or whatever and you find a vector or a path that'll take you towards where you wanna go. And even though I was doing research at a biotech company,
00:15:34
Speaker
I was really happy because I was heading towards a goal that I wanted. And so I was immersed in science. I actually found I liked the science, but I wasn't heading in a direction that was inauthentic and made me feel
00:15:49
Speaker
you know, sad about what I was doing. And that was very gratifying. And I was actually promoted twice in four years, which was very unusual in the company, had my own little group there. So I started becoming successful in a new level because, you know, I could bring to bear the passion that I had within me towards something that I wanted to pursue. And then as you said, I mean, I was leaving as I was successful at the company, I applied to business schools.
00:16:15
Speaker
got into the two, you know, business schools and that two Northwestern Chicago and University of Chicago both, both here locally and decided to go to University of Chicago for graduate school and everything in that course catalog I loved. Like I would look in the course catalog, I could have taken any major and I would have loved it. And perhaps outside of some course that required a tremendous amount of mathematical gymnastics to be successful.
00:16:42
Speaker
there's really no course in the catalog and maybe even those that I didn't think I would absolutely love. I love every subject of the business school. It's fun for me. Yeah, and your grades were phenomenal then, right? Because you're doing the thing that you love. Yeah, I did well there and I found an environment in which I was happy.
00:17:02
Speaker
And so we both met a woman who was finishing up college a year or two ago at University of Chicago and she had been admitted into Harvard Medical School. And so much familial pressure to go on to her medical school, right? And I think this just speaks to, she wanted to be an entrepreneur.
00:17:22
Speaker
But I think that just speaks to how critical it is to not just do what the family pushes you to. I mean, you get into Harvard. How do you say no to Harvard? That's so difficult. But again, it just sounds like for you, changing paths, changing careers really worked out.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it was certainly
Income vs. Passion: The Career Dilemma
00:17:40
Speaker
worked out. And for the woman you're referring to, I think, you know, one of the things that you talk about is if you're in this kind of a crisis moment, you have to slow down, take slow down and assess and think. And I think there's actually a little section in your book that talks about this.
00:17:57
Speaker
And I think there was this idea that something magical happens when she graduates and there's this ultimate crisis point when you leave a top university and then if you don't have that next step, you're going to be unhappy. And when we talked to her, I said, look, you're going to graduate and nothing's going to happen. Specifically, you can take a moment, assess your life. What do you want to do?
00:18:19
Speaker
to what end are you driving and then head in that direction and I think you'll be happier and I believe she has and she is. And then to the people out there who are older in their 30s and 40s who didn't have that turning point, who went on and continued the path and I know many of them, I know you do, making a ton of money. I mean, that was my story, doing well.
00:18:44
Speaker
What's your advice to them to, like, they're just despondently, like, dragging through the process, though, right? And their soul, so to speak, is just weighed down at a level that makes every day just a bear to face.
00:18:58
Speaker
You know, money is, so I guess if the question's really about money, money is a means to an end. So to what ends are you making the money? And why, you know, and there's different, you know, this Maslow hierarchy of needs, right? So some people are making money because quite frankly, they gotta feed the family, they gotta put shelter up. And you know, you can't think of some of these higher order problems. If we're living in the society we live in, for many of us, we have an opportunity to think of higher order problems, self-actualization.
00:19:26
Speaker
And, you know, assuming you're not, you know, more in survival mode and thriving mode, then I would say the cost of doing things that you don't want to do is almost never worth the money. People get mired in careers in which they're fundamentally unhappy and, you know, the longer you're there, you often, you know, have all this sunk cost and you start making more and more money and you start living with that money and suddenly, you know, your life just ticks by.
00:19:55
Speaker
That's not to say high paying careers aren't actually many people love them and can be very very Self-actualized and very high paying careers including you know one of my closest friends who's he works in banking and he's He loves what he does and he travels constantly and he's super happy and that's fantastic other people go into you know law firms are they going to medicine and they think you know this is the career to have all these and
00:20:19
Speaker
possessions, but then they get stuck in places they don't want to be. You can always get out, but the challenges that involve your broader life, they do weigh on you.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, because you've got the house and you've got the kids in schools and to downsize all of that feels like a failure on some level. But I think ultimately following this part of yourself that needs to get actualized is so important and your family and everything else will work out better. So I want to just though on that note, you just made comment about the funniest thing. I mean, when we were growing up, the big thing was go to medical school, law school, the safe route and all this stuff. And nowadays,
00:20:58
Speaker
at Booth, there's this whole social entrepreneurship thing. So you mentioned your friend who's in banking who's happy. There's almost like a backlash to the idea that somebody could be happy in banking that you mentioned a student you were talking to who was saying, I should be working on a social entrepreneur project, but I really was happy in consulting. Can you tell that story? I thought it was awesome.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that's, you know, it's kind of ironic and I'll say two things about it. First of all, I do think just generally speaking at the business schools for my own observations, a lot of business school students do see business today as a means to positive social change and which is wonderful and I'm totally laud as a
00:21:39
Speaker
as a way to think about life. That being said, one of these students came up to me and had a very good offer from a great firm and said that this wasn't necessarily the right path and wanted to do something in social entrepreneurship, et cetera, et cetera. And when I said, why do you want to do that? Don't you like consulting? She says, oh, no, no, I love consulting. I work there. I love it. It's fantastic. And I said, well, is it the people? And she says, no, no, I love the people. They're brilliant. I mean, I'm so happy there.
00:22:09
Speaker
And I said, well, is it money? She's like, oh my God, they pay me so much money. I think, well, if you're in, how about the environment? She says, no, no, I love the city I'm going to be based in. I said, well, you know, it's a really interesting conversation that was fairly recent. And I just looked and I said, wow, well, you know, that's a.
00:22:23
Speaker
That sounds like something you ought to do, and it's okay that you make money, a little ironic, but a lot of other people I'd say also just, there's a whole contingent of people who say, I'm just going to chase that incremental dollars in the money, the career vector, and that also can be really devastating to your life.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I just thought that story was great. And so there's no one route, right? You just have to find the route that makes sense for you. So to me, one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that you find your authentic life and when you get there, it's peaceful and tranquil and all fears, stresses and problems disappear. And obviously, you know, you and I talk all the time that
00:23:08
Speaker
You're doing the second business now and it's stressful. There's tons of stress and there's tons of fears of failure and all sorts of things, despite the fact that you're doing something that feels deeply authentic. How do you stop yourself from making really inauthentic decisions based on fear?
Risk and Failure in Pursuing Dreams
00:23:26
Speaker
In my world, I call it gaining emotional weight, but when you're doing your new business and things are looking a little bleak and you're ready to jump ship and just go get that job that would
00:23:36
Speaker
be safer, or what have you. How do you stay the course? I guess there's a few questions in there. I mean, the first thing is, most things worth doing are difficult.
00:23:46
Speaker
That's just a reality of the more ambitious you want to be, often the harder it is to be successful and to move the world. And if you actually love what you do and you care about what you do, you often want to move the world further than you would if you were just trying to get through your daily life. So ironically, sometimes the stress of your undertaking is actually higher.
00:24:11
Speaker
But that's all okay because I took this from a friend of mine, but it's what I now refer to as the price I pay to do what I love. So I work really hard, I travel all the time, life is really stressful, there's a lot of financial risk, there's a lot of emotional risk, and if you care about things, the risk of failure in certain ways goes up more because I really do want what I do to be successful. I was gonna say what emotional risk means to you.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, and you become very self-identified with what you're doing because you say, well, this is what I love, this is what I want to do, and I want it to be successful, and if it's not successful, then I have truly failed at something. But that's okay. You have to be comfortable with some risk of failure if you're going to be ambitious because life is uncertain and it's just the deal.
00:25:02
Speaker
How do you think about failure in something you love? For a lot of people out there, that's probably one of the biggest fears is I finally say what I want. I go after it and I fail. What does that say about me, right? You have to realign it to the pursuit of the right goal is the path to happiness. I really believe that to be the case. Then sometimes entrepreneurship, any entrepreneur who says there wasn't some element of good fortune in their success is
00:25:32
Speaker
Most of them are not being honest. Maybe there's some one or two, a few that are, that is true, but mostly we've all had some benefit of fortune. And sometimes that fortune goes against you and it can be all kinds of crazy things that just change the course of your life and of your endeavor.
00:25:51
Speaker
And you have to just get comfortable yourself that this is okay, that things are gonna move the way they're gonna move. You're gonna do your best to make the odds of success as high as possible, given the level of ambition you have. And so long as you go into it knowing the risks, then you just say to yourself, look, I know the risk, I know this might not work, and yet here I am and I'm gonna go put forward my best effort and we'll see where Providence takes me.
00:26:20
Speaker
I have a question that I want to ask you specifically because as a business leader and I know you so well, I think the thing you do that is extraordinary is dreaming and bringing that dream to a place of actualization. We spent years in our business and the joke in the business was,
00:26:42
Speaker
Every single day, multiple times a day, he could come up with 15, 20 new incredible ideas. I just never had the staff or resources to execute. How do you think about the idea of your dreams, bringing them to fruition, how to follow certain ones and abandon others? What is that process for you? I guess those are two very different questions in there.
00:27:08
Speaker
The first thing I would say is it is very important to spend a little bit of time dreaming or even fantasizing about what you'd like your endeavor to do for yourself and for others and for the greater world around you. Because if you don't have a goal, if you don't have a dream, it's very hard to get anywhere because you don't have a beacon towards which you sail.
00:27:33
Speaker
So I would suggest to everybody that they take a little time for that, a little bit of time for dreaming. It's a great thing to do with people you care about, to sit down and share your dreams and have them share theirs and to talk through dreams.
00:27:46
Speaker
Then you have to have an element of practicality and recognize that you're going to move towards your goal and you're going to move towards your goal in a way that is commensurate with your resources and your environment and what you have to bring to bear against the problem. And sometimes that goal will take a lot of time to achieve.
00:28:05
Speaker
I know, for example, when you and I started our business with our father and we'd hoped to change kidney stone disease, and I think we did, and then we hoped to change how other diseases are treated by doctors. I just saw recently that the business that we built together touched 5 million lives last year.
00:28:28
Speaker
And did it touch five million lives while we were there doing it? No. But we'd set a course of a structure forward that could allow the organization that bought our company to continue to evolve what we did in a way that only they could with their resources. And I feel very gratified both in the impact we've made when we sold our company and I feel gratified to see what it's become.
00:28:52
Speaker
all great information, but I wanna back up just for a minute on that first step, because I think this is the part that's easy for you, but a lot of people get hamstrung. When you start a dream, when you start to think about something, when something inspires you, how do you move from something foggy in your mind to actualization? I mean, I watch you, you know, if I'm right, you start a conversation with people you think are expert in the subject, or like, what's your process to,
00:29:22
Speaker
take this vague thing and bring it to some level of clarity. Okay, so there's the two pieces. One is the dreaming piece and the ones that's taking it forward piece. And the dreaming piece I really think is about this thing that I mentioned, bandwidth and time and interaction with people you care about, I think is a huge part of it. You just have to talk through the dream with people that you care about, because it's really just like, where is it that you want to get to and, you know, et cetera.
00:29:51
Speaker
Then when you say, you know, I want to build something, the first step is you really have to start interacting with people who in the area you're working towards know what they're talking about in or have background knowledge that's valuable to you. There was a saying one of my high school teachers used to say, which is nothing ends a conversation faster than somebody knows what they're talking about. And so, you know, if I wanted to write a book about philosophy, well, I better
00:30:18
Speaker
I've read a lot about philosophy and speak to philosophers because you don't want to spend a lot of time recreating, heading towards things that are already very well thought through by others. You want to advance beyond that. And how long would you spend on that piece of the puzzle?
00:30:35
Speaker
Oh, that never stops. But what you really want to do is, you know, it depends on your background, what you're trying to achieve. You know, are you making sandwiches at rocket ships, right? They're a little different. But I think you really want to understand as much as you can and learn from people who are very knowledgeable in elements that are important to your pursuits. If you want to become a really good writer, you should hang around really good writers and hopefully really good writers who write in genres that are relevant to what you're trying to do.
00:31:02
Speaker
Are you going to be a really good reporter or are you going to be a really good novelist? Are you going to be a really good philosopher or are you going to be a really good historian? If you're a business person, are you hanging around people in finance or are you hanging around people in marketing? Now, if you're in marketing, you want to hang around financiers, but you also really need to hang around people who market.
00:31:19
Speaker
So your social network is huge for you. Social network is huge and you know creating and you know a lot of people write down in books and texts and papers today it's everything is so accessible they give you the answer you just have to go get it. The second thing is you know look to think about what's been brought to bear against the problem and you know I'll use philosophy for a moment but you know when people think about you know a field like happiness or a field like
00:31:45
Speaker
love or emotion and what does it mean philosophically? A lot of philosophers have written about this. If you want to have a philosophy, that's fantastic. It is very helpful if you understand what other philosophers have thought so you're knowledgeable and you see what's been brought to bear against the problem already and you can then move things forward. And then in a business sense, what I recommend people do then is you actually have to go to
00:32:11
Speaker
see who are actually involved in what you're doing and understand them in the environments in which they exist and what's driving of their happiness and what's causing them to be unhappy, and how do you move that needle towards giving them more happiness and causing them less pain, if you will.
00:32:32
Speaker
those things often lead to fundamental ideas or innovations if you can think about it carefully in the environment in which they live. So I think that's at a very base level and then you move up towards how does fixing these problems move you towards some dream or vision that you have that you want to pursue.
00:32:54
Speaker
And we were talking a little bit before we jumped on the show that it's important to think about your dreams, but then you also have to think about what the day-to-day life is. I mean, you were saying if you're opening up a sandwich shop, do you love sandwiches so much that you want to be involved in thinking about sandwiches all day long?
00:33:14
Speaker
because if it's really for the financial gain or the marketplace and it's really this intellectual process for you but you're not thinking about the day-to-day and this was where I got really hamstrung after I left our company and thinking about my next step, I would think what's a good solution? What makes sense? What would be a project that goes well versus how do I want to spend my time Monday through Sunday?
00:33:39
Speaker
It's a lot of hours thinking about sandwiches if you don't really am I was gonna open up a yoga studio and I love Yoga, but I don't really want to stand in a studio and do all the things that it takes to run a studio
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Laura. And it's, you know, to your point, if you want to open up, you know, subway franchises and you think you're going to have 20 of them and make a lot of money, that may happen and you may make a lot of money, but you are going to be making sandwiches for a living. And if you like making sandwiches and you like the environment, the service environment, and you like
00:34:12
Speaker
people coming into your store and saying, hi, how are you? And you say, great, what would you like on your sandwich? And you feel happy every day that there's sandwiches and you're feeding people. That's wonderful. If you're sitting here thinking, I really don't want to make sandwiches, then you really shouldn't get in the subway franchise business. It seems self-evident, but it's often not. And people will see an opportunity to buy something or to get engaged in a business opportunity or a career opportunity that's really not for them.
00:34:40
Speaker
And then suddenly they're in that business and in entrepreneurship, you've often taken money and you have debt and you have people you've taken their money to start your business in the form of equity. And you have obligations that you've created for yourself that are real obligations. And suddenly you've got to work your way out of those obligations. And if you're doing it in an area where you're not happy, that's often difficult to do.
00:35:07
Speaker
Truly, I know this to be a fact since you're my brother and we live close to each other. I know you're very successful and I know you're one of the most authentic people I know. What are your habits, practices?
Balancing Life and Authenticity
00:35:21
Speaker
What do you do to stay the course in your life?
00:35:26
Speaker
Well, I have to say first of all, it's much easier to stay the course in your life when you like what you do. When I was at our other offices in California this past week.
00:35:35
Speaker
I would say Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I worked till close to one in the morning each night and it doesn't bother me at all. I'm pretty happy. If I didn't get tired, I could keep working because I enjoy it. It's pretty straightforward. I love being a parent and I love time with my children and so I engage in that and I can spend endless time with them.
00:36:00
Speaker
You know i love teaching a booth i think it's super fun so when you know the quarters when i'm teaching it's very easy to do those things the trick to me is when you're doing things you like it's balance and also just taking care of yourself i just that's just my personal you know challenges yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
So one of the things that I've kind of looked at is you should look at what you're spending your time on in practice and then compare it to what you think you ideally should be spending your time on and look for differentials and then, you know, sort of create a life plan and readjust yourself accordingly. So if you really, you know, like in my case, you know, parenting isn't very important part of my life and
00:36:42
Speaker
It is very easy for me to slip into behaviors in which my parenting is not taking the priority that it should. And I have to rebalance and I have to say, you know, remember, you're not doing this, you're doing that. And also cut out things in your life that are maybe entertaining, but not important to you. Because if you love what you do, you can also find other things to do that are very entertaining and you just have to limit those in order to do what you want to do.
00:37:08
Speaker
By entertaining, you mean entertaining within the area of your job that you love. It's easy to just pick up a ton of extras like join this board and that board and it's not necessary to your job. It's just amusing. Well, I think that's certainly true, but then I'd also say, you know, look, I like to play golf. It is enjoyable, but golf basically, you know, for me, I've never played golf in less than four hours and it's a 45 minutes on either side of the golf thing and you're tired and basically
00:37:36
Speaker
it smokes the better part of a day. And so am I going to really not work, not spend time with my family, not exercise to play golf? Well, sometimes I will, but I can't do it all the time. Like it's gotta be delimited because I've got other things that are, when you really think it's important to me that are, that are more important to me. So setting those priorities and then reevaluating checking in and making sure your life is on balance with them.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly right. And yes, exactly. And there are things that you just have to cut out of your life that are video games. Yes, I hope so funny, but I love video games. I do. I can play video games. I've had video games where I've played them and I found myself at four in the morning still playing the video game.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think I've got to unplug Netflix. It's ruining my life. Yeah, thank you for that. And so, but for me, the reality is, I told my wife, I said, look, I'm going to leave for work this morning. Go find the video game in the office and throw it out. It's like a drug habit. It's like a drug habit. And I said, we just can't have them in the house. Like there are certain video games. I can't have them in the house. I can't have them on my iPhone.
00:38:45
Speaker
on my computer because I will just play them. And it's not, it's unconstructive in my life even though it brings me a lot of happiness. So that's, and I also will, I like watching movies on TV shows. I have a rule with myself. I'm watching movies when I exercise and when I stop pedaling or using the elliptical, the movie goes off.
00:39:06
Speaker
So A, either motivates me to do much longer workouts, which I'm fine with, or B, to finish my workout tomorrow, which I'm also fine with. Yeah. Oh yeah. So you get your movie the next day. Yes.
00:39:18
Speaker
Well, thank you so much. I would say, you know, if people are interested in finding out more, where can they find you? But I know that your website for your new business, despite the fact that it's enormous, hasn't gone up yet. We're being stealthy. But you're on LinkedIn and you're not a social media guy, but you're at Booth and you can check them out on LinkedIn if you're interested. But more than anything, I just wanted to bring you on and I know your story will inspire others. So thank you so much.
00:39:48
Speaker
I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of your podcasts, which I'm sure will be fantastic.