Marc Randolph: ON Co-Founding Netflix & Staying Happily Married for Over 30 Years

On this episode of On Purpose, I sat down with Marc Randolph. Marc is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor and mentor. Marc was co-founder of Netflix, and CEO until his retirement from the company in 2003. Marc shares how to get started if you feel stuck, and why even the best ideas don’t really matter. You’ll also learn his best marriage advice and what to look for in a mentor. His approach to business and life will forever change your perspective on both. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:30Jay Shetty?

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• 1:39Speaker 01

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• 2:09Speaker 02

  I have to appreciate everything about how unbelievably fortunate that I've been. That I've had this idea that actually turned into a real company, that I have the chance to spend time with my wife, my family, and have all these things happen. I do not deserve anything else, especially not to be complaining about that.

• 2:35Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you. Now, I know that you're coming back every week to learn, to listen, to grow, to expand your mind, to be able to make a difference in your business, in your work, to make an impact in your personal and professional lives. And you know that I'm always focused on finding you incredible guests who I can learn from by listening to them and share their insights with you in digestible, relevant ways so that you can make the changes, so that you can take the steps in your life to overcome those fears, to put aside those excuses, and start making real progress. And today's guest is going to help us do that in an unbelievable way. Now, I'm going to introduce you to him in a second.

• 3:20Jay Shetty?

  And when you hear his resume, and you hear what he's achieved, and the work that he's doing now, it is going to blow your mind. So this is definitely one you want your notebooks out for. If you haven't got your notebooks out because you're traveling, or you're driving, or you're walking your dog, then take a screenshot right now and come back to this podcast so that you can take notes, because I promise you, the amount of mentorship you're going to receive is absolutely incredible. Today's guest is Mark Randolph, the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. He's a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. Mark was co-founder of Netflix, serving as their CEO, as the executive producer of their website, and as a member of their board of directors until his retirement from the company in 2003.

• 4:02Jay Shetty?

  Mark's career as an entrepreneur spans more than four decades. He's been a founder of half a dozen other successful startups, a mentor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and an investor to numerous tech ventures. Most recently, Mark co-founded analytics software company Looker Data Sciences. And his new book, which he'll be talking about today, is called That Will Never Work. I love the title, The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea: That Will Never Work. Mark, thank you for being here.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a pleasure, Jay. Thanks for having me.

• 4:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's awesome to have you here. And I love that title, by the way. I think it's brilliant. I can't think of the amount of times I've heard it. I can't even remember the amount of times I've heard it. And who was the first person you ever heard it from?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Well, I've been hearing it all my life for the most part because I've been one of those guys with these crazy ideas. Probably the most famous one is my wife, who you expect to be deeply supportive, but you know, but it happens to all of us. You come running down with a great idea and what did everyone say?

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  And she said, that will never work.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  That'll never.

• 5:02Jay Shetty?

  And then?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  That'll never work, you know. But and now, of course, to joke between us because I've learned that she's kind of a reverse indicator. That if she doesn't like an idea, all right, I'm onto something.

• 5:13Jay Shetty?

  Right, right. That's interesting. My wife is my mainstream test. So if I'm thinking about something and wondering whether I think it's scalable or whether a lot of people will be interested into it, that's when I go and ask my wife. So we have the opposite effect. But actually, in a conference, you said that your number one rule in life was staying married. Why was that such a priority for you?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Well, you know, people tend to get this whole business thing and let it take them over. You know, they think this is what's important, that somehow if I make so much money, I'll be happy. Or if only this, I'll be happy, or only that I'll be happy. And you've got to put these things in perspective. The goal is balance, at least my goal is balance. So, long, long time ago, I said, I know a lot of guys who are on their sixth startup and their sixth wife. And I don't want that to be me. So, I mean, we're kind of jumping almost to the punchline of my life, which is like, the thing that I'm most proud of in my life is not starting this company with 150 million subscribers or any of the other things I've accomplished.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  It's that I did all that stuff and stayed married to the same woman that my kids know me and I think like me. And I get a chance to pursue the other passions in my life at the same time.

• 6:29Jay Shetty?

  I absolutely love that. I think that's such an amazing message and I'm so glad that you're saying that that's the punchline and that's the real success. I think that's beautiful hearing for anyone who's an entrepreneur listening or anyone who's a business person listening, for them to hear that is such incredible advice. So, thank you for sharing that.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  My pleasure.

• 6:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think it's awesome. I want to dive in. This interview is going to be really phenomenal because I think what you do so beautifully with your life like you just did is you have everything from business mentorship, you have life mentorship, you're able to really think about, and we were just, I was just getting mentorship on Disney World. I'm going to Disney World this year and Mark was walking you through how to have the best experience at Disney World. So, I love the breadth of your experience. One of the things I wanted to start with, and this is because I've been fascinated by this story, I've read about it a million times on the internet, I've seen so many versions, but I get to ask you about what happened with Blockbuster. And I know you've shared it before, but I love it because I would love to hear it from you because I've only ever read and heard about it.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Well, certainly, but the first thing you've got to realize is that people kind of have this vision that Netflix has always been the Netflix they know now, that it's in every country in the world, that it's streaming video, that it makes its own TV and radio, that it's a euphemism for getting laid. I mean, that stuff all came later. There was a time when if you wanted a movie from Netflix, we mailed it to you. We were a DVD by mail business. And it's kind of weird how often I meet people, especially younger people, who have no idea where Netflix started.

• 7:59Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  And actually, this, again, you've got to stop me. I'll go on these weird segways.

• 8:03Jay Shetty?

  No, please, go for it.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  A day before yesterday, Netflix announced that it shipped its 5 billionth DVD, which blows my mind. Anyway, going way back.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Our company idea sucked. I mean, we launched this thing and the idea was to do video rental by mail and it didn't work. And it took us two and a half years to finally come up with a business model that actually made sense. And here's the, how Blockbuster gets involved is that when all of a sudden you figure something out, things take off and it gets incredibly expensive. And we didn't have the money. So I think that year we were on track to do about $5 million in sales, which is not bad. But we were also on track to spend $50 million. Wow. And you know, you, you don't need to be a accountant to know that that is not very

• 9:02Speaker 02

  sustainable. No, good math. So there's a, a term in business called pursue strategic alternatives, which is code for, we gotta sell this sucker. Right. And fast. And our strategic alternative was Blockbuster. And Blockbuster was in a totally different place. So we were on track for 5 million. They were going to do 6 billion. We had about 100 employees. They had 60,000 employees. They had 9,000 stores. So we were nothing. So we called these guys up and said, we tried to get a meeting, nothing, like crickets. So going about our business. And then, as it happens, we were on this corporate

• 9:47Speaker 02

  retreat. And we were not far from here. We're outside of, outside of Santa Barbara at this dude ranch called the Alisal Ranch. And, I mean, I'm, I'm dressed up today. I shaved for you, Jay. Oh, sorry. You didn't realize? That's my sign of sincere respect. I feel terrible now. No, no. If you, if you only knew how infrequently that happens, you'd realize that's my genuflection. But, so we're pretty casual in Silicon Valley. And so when you go on retreat, you gotta work at it. And seriously, all I had with me on this three day retreat was shorts. I had some t-shirts. I was in flip-flop sandals. That was it. And

• 10:31Speaker 02

  of course, that is when Blockbuster calls and says, we'll see you tomorrow in Dallas. We're going, fuck. How are we going to get from? Alasol Ranch to Dallas by tomorrow morning. And so we did that thing that prudent entrepreneurs do, which is when they're $50 million in debt. And we chartered a private jet.

• 11:00Jay Shetty?

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• 11:43Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe, listing items is a quick and simple process. And once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way.

• 12:25Jay Shetty?

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• 13:05Jay Shetty?

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• 13:36Speaker 02

  And here's the, here's, okay, now I'm gonna share the little bit of Netflix trivia with you, which very few people know. The jet was owned by Vanna White. I don't know if you know who Vanna White was. She's the woman who spun the letters on Wheel of Fortune.

• 13:49Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow. I did not know that.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm going, wow, spinning letters pays pretty well, I guess. So we're on Vanna White's jet. We all fly to Dallas. We go up into this building, this huge building. And we walk into this massive conference room.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And Blockbuster guys come in, John Antiocho, head of Blockbuster, Ed Stead is CFO. And they're in their, you know, they're casual, but they're like Hollywood casual with the $3,000 loafer kind of casual.

• 14:20Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  And I'm in flip flops and shorts and a T-shirt. And I remember I was kind of jealous because Reed Hastings, my business partner, was there and he had on a Hawaiian shirt. Get buttons.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Anyway, make the pitch. We're gonna, we'll combine forces. You guys will run the stores. We will run the online business. We'll find, you know, the buzzword synergies. We'll all live happily ever after. And they ask questions. And finally,

• 14:52Speaker 02

  They asked the big question, which is how much should we pay for you? What are you, what are you, what are you talking here? And Reed, we had talked about this on the plane. We go, well, we're in the hole 50 million bucks. So Reed goes 50 million dollars and nothing, nothing. In fact, I'm looking over at John Antioco and he's like struggling not to laugh. And we're going, ah. And so obviously the meeting went downhill really quickly. But it's a fun story, but the real revelation took place on the jet home. And we're all kind of sitting quietly. And I know our CFO was there, Barry McCarthy, and I know he's sitting there going,

• 15:36Speaker 02

  all right, how am I going to make the cash last longer? And Reed, he's not a dwell in the past guy. He's already off in the future of some other business problem. And I'm going like, oh, now what do we do? This was going to be our way out. And finally I go, oh, okay. So I, you know, tink the glasses and go, gentlemen, one thing left. Now we have to kick their ass. So that was the moment when you go, that my dad used to say, you know, Mark, sometimes the only way out is through.

• 16:10Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And, um, and this was that moment where we go, okay, if we're going to make this happen, we're not going to have to rely on this Deus ex machina of Blockbuster saving us. We're going to have to figure this shit out on our own.

• 16:23Jay Shetty?

  I love that. And were there other interactions with them as well for the same purpose? Or that was the only one?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  No, there was no future discussion of collaboration, but there was kind of this friendly rivalry between the two companies. And, and it's funny now, you know, you occasionally read stories in the newspaper about some grizzled veteran of the Vietnam War going back to Ho Chi Minh City and meeting up with this. And so we, I still have like email and phone conversations with the guys that we were fighting with at Blockbuster, telling war stories together.

• 16:59Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Oh, that's beautiful. That's awesome. Now tell me, like, you've obviously entitled this book, The Amazing Life of an Idea. And I think today I hear this a lot, and I'm sure you hear it even more than I do, but everyone has an amazing idea. And everyone has a cool idea. But in your work, you talk a lot about how it's not just about the idea. And the idea is actually a very small part of it. Tell us about that thought process and why it's such an important message.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, um, everyone has an idea. And a lot of ways, it's just why I wrote the book is because, you know, there's this, my daughter graduated from college, you know, four years ago. And I was sitting in the audience and I'm, I'm just going waiting, waiting. And then I hear it, which is the follow your dreams bullshit.

• 17:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Everyone hears that stupid thing. Cause then no one ever tells you how, how do you follow your dreams? Cause everyone has one. I mean, it's not just a business idea. We've all got something that we want to make happen. But no one knows where to start. And what I try and tell people is your idea is nothing. It, your idea is not going to be what happens. Your idea is your starting point. And it's called the amazing life of an idea. Cause I'm trying to show people that the original idea we had, video rental by mail, was a terrible idea. But that wasn't the point. The point is that when Reid and I had this idea of video rental by mail,

• 18:27Speaker 02

  we didn't go home and go, great, let's write up a business plan and let's do a PowerPoint slideshow. We said, but can we really mail a DVD to someone? And so we just turned the frigging car around and went down to Santa Cruz and bought a Patsy Cline music CD and mailed it to Reid's house. Because we realized thinking about it was worthless. You have to start and try something and do something. So the, well, I rambled again.

• 18:54Jay Shetty?

  No, you're allowed to do it. Ramble as much as you like. It's great.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  It's how my head works, you know? But the point is that these ideas are fleeting. The idea, your idea, it's a bad one. I don't know why it's a bad one. And you don't know why it's a bad one, but I guarantee I've never, ever seen a successful company, ever. That's successful the way their original idea was. The people that are successful are the ones who take that idea and start. And then they find out why it's a bad idea. And then if they're clever, they try something different based on what they learned. And if they're clever, they try something different. And eventually you end up with a Netflix.

• 19:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Your mileage may vary.

• 19:32Jay Shetty?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  But that process is.

• 19:35Jay Shetty?

  The ability to pivot consistently, the ability to shift direction. But I find that so often, I think the thing that I see the most, and I think what people struggle with the most is knowing when to pivot.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:46Jay Shetty?

  And, and when they're going in the right direction and how long is too long or how short is too short. And I'm sure you've seen this time and time again with all the companies you've mentored and advised.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  It's probably the, it's probably the question I get asked the most. And unfortunately, it's also probably the hardest one for me. Wish they'd asked me one that I was easy. But it's really, when do I know when to give up?

• 20:07Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  And I think what happens is people fall in love with their idea. They get this idea and it's, it's like a baby and it can be the ugliest thing in the world, but to them, it's going, oh my God, it's beautiful. And they project it forward. They're holding the baby, but they go, oh gosh, it's going to be the smartest, it's going to be the first kid to walk. He's going to walk way before his age group and they can picture it, you know, in, in high school, hitting the game winning home run or graduating from college first. But it's just a baby and it could just as easily end up, you know, doing heroin behind the 711. You can't tell, you can't fall in love with the idea.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  What you have to do is fall in love with the problem. And the reason I say that is because the problem won't get old.

• 20:58Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  And you'll never give up on the problem. Eventually you'll figure something out. And occasionally, yes, you do run out of time or out of money, or you go, I have no more ways to solve this, but it's much more evident to you. Than knowing when to keep, when to stop hammering on your idea.

• 21:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that emphasis. I think that's great. And, and I think about that so often that whenever you hear about entrepreneurs solving problems and that being the root of where everything begins. And I think so often we're like, well, what's my idea or what's my passion or where do I want to start? And it's like, but then I don't know how this links to the real world. And the only way it links to the real world is if it's solving a real problem. And I think you're so true that you can always go deeper into solving a problem and you can't get tired of it if the problem still exists. And I think it's about finding a problem that we really believe in.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:45Jay Shetty?

  Because I think that's, that's part of the challenge too, is we often find problems because they're cool or they're interesting or they're trending, but they're not necessarily a problem that we're deeply committed to.

• 21:57Jay Shetty?

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• 22:40Jay Shetty?

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• 23:24Jay Shetty?

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• 24:10Speaker 02

  So I'll play a little game with you.

• 24:12Jay Shetty?

  Please, I'd love to.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And with the people who are listening. So I'm gonna tell a quick story. And I'm gonna tell you the story because there is a way to come up with ideas that are good ideas.

• 24:25Jay Shetty?

  Oh, I like this.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  And it's a simple one. It's by training yourself to look for pain. Despite being an optimist, to train yourself to see the world as an imperfect place. And I don't mean solving these global problems, like don't try and cure malaria, or look at something that you know really well, that you bump into every single day as you're promoting your business or working with your own, with your family, okay? So the story is about this job I had 40 years ago. And I was a house painter. This is during my university years. And different world, obviously, you know, no technology whatsoever.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And back then, when you would buy paint, it came in those cans.

• 25:12Jay Shetty?

  I remember, yeah, my parents used to paint.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  With a lid on it and that kind of stuff.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  And that was fine. And now, 40 years later, I go to paint, and paint still comes in that stupid can. And it's lame, because first of all, it requires a screwdriver to open it, right? And then when you pour it, it all drips down the side of the pan, can, and it fills up that little limb, and you gotta stir it with a stick, and then you gotta paint, and... You spill paint all over you and it's just the most disastrous experience.

• 25:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  And then, of course, when you've got to close the can, you hammer it, put a hammer on it. I mean, it's ridiculous. But what happens is if you're picturing, as I'm talking this about painting and you're imagining painting and you're going, yeah, that paint can sucks. Some people go, that's stupid. What, why don't they sell paint like in a milk jug? Or even better, like the kind that you put detergent in. The detergent comes in or where it sits on a counter with a little spout that it all pours out from. Or why isn't there an aftermarket lid? Or why isn't there a magnetic stirrer? But people automatically begin filling in these blanks. And it's a story that happened to me. That it's an amazing thing when people begin looking at the frustrations in their life without even thinking about it, these ideas.

• 26:33Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Pop into their head. And it's coming back to focusing on the problem.

• 26:38Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Because the problem will never get, will never get stale. And so much of what happened at Netflix was just bumping into one problem after another. And as soon as you solve one, well, lo and behold, there's a new one.

• 26:51Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  And it's why being an entrepreneur is such an amazingly exciting business because it's perpetual.

• 27:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And I just want to point out to everyone who's listening or watching right now, what Mark said there was really powerful because not only is Mark talking about finding the problem, which you may have heard before, you may be thinking about before, but something he specifically said, it was like trying to solve a problem that you know well. And I thought that was a really powerful point because I think sometimes we can get lost in problems that we actually are very distant from and don't deeply understand and have no familiarity with. And I think we are better at coming up with solutions for things we are very familiar with.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you started off by saying that, you know, you might have an idea, but you're not sure how it fits into real life or how even the problem fits into real world. But you do, you figure those things out by actually starting to try and solve them.

• 27:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  And they take you places. It is absolutely a follow where it goes. It's a murder mystery. It's a, it's a crossword puzzle. It's a jigsaw puzzle. It's such an interesting process of seeing where this problem takes you.

• 27:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And then lo and behold, sometimes it goes into an area and you go, well, I'm solving a problem for seven people. And you go, okay, that's not viable.

• 28:04Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Fine. But sometimes, lo and behold, you stumble onto something. That everybody wants. And, uh, and that's, that's luck and that's okay, too.

• 28:15Jay Shetty?

  But that's interesting. You've just sparked a thought in my head that I don't actually think of often, or I don't hear often at least. And it's about how that, the number one thing needed to be a good entrepreneur or an idea creator, and someone who takes an idea into implementation and execution is wanting to continuously problem solve. And, and we don't actually hear about it like that often, that someone who's an entrepreneur needs to constantly be happy to move from problem solving, problem solving to the next problem.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:41Jay Shetty?

  And just keep going down that road.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  And I think that one of the things is a lot of people, I mean, it's back, back when I was a lad, Jay. You know, not, not that long ago, there wasn't this thing. There was a thing called an entrepreneur, but there certainly wasn't something that you became. And it was never something that you would go to school and get a degree in, you know, inconceivable. So in some ways it's good because now not everyone who goes to a university thinks they have to be a banker or a lawyer or a doctor. They actually think, wow, I could actually be an entrepreneur. But the problem is a lot of them want to be it for the wrong reason. And they want to do it for this glorification, which is also a shocking thing to me.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  That they think it's the way to get rich, or it's the way to be famous, or, you know, you're going to be on Shark Tank, or it's, it's, that is not what it's all about. I mean, we're here in, uh, in LA. And it's like the people who move here from all over the world to be an actor or an actress because they think they're going to get rich and famous. Well, I hate to break it to you, but not going to happen. Or at least the odds are extremely far against it. But if you're in some city and you're going, I love performing, I love taking on characters. You're doing it for the right reason. But then it doesn't make a difference whether you're rich or famous. You're still getting that enjoyment and entrepreneurship is the same. And Again, a long way back to where we started.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  It's because of that thrill of solving the problem. If that's the reason you're doing it, you will never be unhappy in that job.

• 30:19Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. And how do you see it? Like, I know a lot of people who say to me like, Jay, I'm just stuck with overthinking. I just procrastinate all day. How have you pushed so many people to take their first step? Or to overcome the fear of getting started? Because I've heard you say before that, and I love this, by the way, if you have an idea, you learn more in an hour of doing it than in a year of studying it.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 30:40Jay Shetty?

  And it's like, how do you get someone to just? How have you seen, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, how have you pushed people into action?

• 30:46Speaker 02

  So there's a, there's two things. There's one thing that you say, and you say, just fucking do it. Like, stop thinking, start doing. But that's very similar to the follow your dreams. So I'll give you a longer explanation.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  I mentioned before that people fall in love with their idea. But what happens when you fall in love with your idea is you naturally embellish. So you start with this idea, and it's simple. And it could be done pretty easily. But you don't do that. You leave it in your head, and you add something on. And all of a sudden, you've added, it's a, you know, a house, but you've added on a wing. And now you put a second story on. And then you add on the tennis courts. And you go, let's put in this beautiful driveway. And let's put in the skateboard ramp. And pretty, and you have gargoyles and turrets. And you've got this castle in your head. Now then, when you go to price it out, you go, shit, this is gonna cost a lot of money. And this is gonna be really, I'm not even sure I can build it. Like, it's too complicated and too big.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  So the trick is not to build the castle in your mind, but to take your immediate, your small idea and do it. And if your idea is, I want to build a castle, the cleverness is not, what's my idea? The cleverness is, how can I figure out a quick, simple, and easy way?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  To validate it. And I'm trying to think here whether I dare try and give you an analogy for that.

• 32:16Jay Shetty?

  Please, go for it.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  It's a little dorky.

• 32:19Jay Shetty?

  We like dorky, go on.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  And if I see your kind of eyes kind of glazing over, I'll kind of know that maybe I'm losing you. So years ago, I was working with a young entrepreneur in San Francisco. And he was at a party, late one rainy, well, that's every night. Late one rainy evening in San Francisco. And what happened to him is something that happens to everybody at that situation, which is the party ran out of beer. And then they all been arguing about whose turn it was to go out and buy the beer. Find an open liquor store, all that stuff. And he goes, idea, entrepreneur, idea, pain.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  My phone knows where I am. My phone knows my taste. My phone can have a database of all the open liquor stores that deliver.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Credit card, hit a button, beer shows up. Great idea. This is a bunch of years ago. And back in the day, to test that idea, you would have had to actually build the app, establish relationships with all kinds of liquor stores. You'd have to do a marketing campaign. He didn't want any of that crap. Didn't want to spend the money, didn't want to have to code anything. So he parsed apart the problem. And he said, am I really wondering, does my phone know where I am? No, I know that. Am I worrying about, can I build a database of liquor stores? I can do that. Will people trust me with their credit card? I know that. What don't I know? And what don't I know? What I don't know is, does anyone care?

• 33:50Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And more importantly, if they order once, will they order again? What's the average order size? So now here, that's the setup.

• 33:56Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Here's the clever, creative way of quickly, simply and easily testing it. He goes, huh? And what he did is he printed up business cards that said nothing more than, need beer? Call me.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  And then he went and stood outside these apartment buildings in San Francisco on Friday and Saturday nights. Whenever someone in the right demographic came along, he'd give them the card and say, hey, if you need beer, call me. And then he'd go back and he'd wait, and they'd call, and he'd get in his bike, and he'd go to the liquor store, and he'd buy the beer. He'd go to the apartment, and he'd put on a Viking costume. Don't ask. And then up he goes and delivers the beer. And he figured out how to test this idea.

• 34:40Jay Shetty?

  I love that.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Not by building the app, not by raising money, not by getting a co-founding engineer, but by printing out business cards.

• 34:48Jay Shetty?

  Oh, I love that.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  He collided his idea with reality. He did the equivalent of what Reid and I did. We mailed that first music, used music CD. He quickly and easily found out, is it a good idea? And it wasn't.

• 35:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Because everyone was drunk. The orders were small. They were all taking place at 1 o'clock in the morning. There was no repeat business. But he realized that with a business card. And more importantly, he had real people telling him what worked and what didn't work. And someone eventually said, you know, I, I have an office, I'm an office manager in the day, and we do these big beer parties, and I'm carrying cases up and down the stairs. And then he goes, huh, maybe I'll pivot to doing, pivot to doing this.

• 35:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  And that didn't work either. And then someone said, would you stock my fridge for me? And he pivoted to that, and it worked.

• 35:41Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  And he took this meandering path of an idea, and the idea that worked bore little resemblance to the one he had at the beginning. It was another example of the amazing life and idea. It was the amazing example of, another example looking for pain, another example of how to test something quickly, simply and easily, and in many cases, without even actually doing it.

• 36:03Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. That's such a great answer, by the way. I'm so glad you went off on that, that journey. That was brilliant. And, and again, I'm learning so much just by, this, this conversation is unbelievable so far. If you've been listening or watching right now, I really hope you're taking notes. Again, all of this conversation, you'll learn so much more by reading the book, That Will Never Work, which we're discussing right now by Mark Randolph. So, one of the things I love that you point out there, which is, which is so special, I feel, is testing that which you don't know. Right? Like it wasn't about building a database because you know you can do that. I loved all those examples. You know, you can build a network of liquor stores that that people have done that before, but it was testing the part that you don't know. And I think you're so right. That's so much we waste all our time and money and resources

• 36:46Jay Shetty?

  in building the website, building the app, building the platform, and not even testing the idea at its root core, which actually doesn't cost any money. And that's what I love about your idea the most, that people always say, "Well, I need some investment," or "I need someone to..."

• 37:01Speaker 02

  That's dead on. That is exactly it. I am now the master of collecting excuses.

• 37:07Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Everyone's got some reason I can't do it. Like, and that's a great... "I can't raise the money."

• 37:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  "Well, it's because you designed a castle, which takes too much money." Figure out a simple way to try it. "I can't do it because I don't have a business degree." "I don't have a computer science degree." "I don't have a technical co-founder." And these are all examples for people starting tech ventures.

• 37:26Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  But everyone with their idea has an excuse.

• 37:31Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  And what you have to begin recognizing is, is this a legitimate excuse or not? Am I just scared?

• 37:37Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  And it's okay to be scared.

• 37:38Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It's the nature of... Risk-taking is not doing something crazy, scary, dangerous. Risk-taking is starting down a path where you can't see around the corner.

• 37:52Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  You don't know what's next.

• 37:54Jay Shetty?

  And not being afraid to reroute along the way.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  That's the fun part of it.

• 37:59Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. It's not just jumping off a cliff. Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Here's another mask, talking about cliffs. Let's go the opposite direction.

• 38:04Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Let's go up the cliff.

• 38:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  So I do a lot of... I'm a climber. I've been an alpinist for most of my life.

• 38:09Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  And in rock climbing, and now people climb in the gyms, you maybe... People might recognize this, that when it's easy, okay, two things are in place. One is you can see all the way to the top, and the holds are big enough that you can not only climb up, but if you don't like it, you can climb back down.

• 38:27Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  All right? So the next level of difficulty is, you can still see all the way to the top, see the whole route, but it's so hard now that you can climb up, but you can't climb back down.

• 38:36Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Now, the real scary stuff is when you can't see all the way to the top, and it's so hard that if you climb halfway up, you can't climb back down.

• 38:44Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  But the other piece about rock climbing is that you can't always see all the way to the top from the bottom. So what you have to do is you go up the first four or five holds and oh, now I think I can see the next four or five and you go up those and all of a sudden the root reveals itself to you.

• 39:02Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  That is what taking an idea down a path is like. It requires that courage to start, even though I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to get there.

• 39:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I'm going to gather your, I'll go out on a limb here, you're probably a reasonably adventurous some eater, just because of the travel stuff that you do.

• 39:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  So you go into a restaurant sometime and you see something on the menu and you go, I have no idea what that is.

• 39:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  But you order it.

• 39:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, to try it out, to experiment.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  If you have that level of risk taking, you are fine.

• 39:33Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Because something comes, what the hell, if you don't like it, you don't eat it.

• 39:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, right.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  You know, but occasionally you get amazed.

• 39:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  And that's what's so wonderful about trying things.

• 39:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. So well said. And where is, where on the journey is feedback useful and what feedback is useful? Because I think, because I think, you know, you've, you, you talked about obviously a wife, you talk about this conversation with Blockbuster, and of course countless more, but just this, I think a lot of us struggle with people's opinions and how people's opinions hold us back or focus back. And I'm not talking about the excuse kind, I'm really focusing on feedback and going, what type of feedback is useful? And, and how do you decipher whether that feedback is useful or not? Whether that's from a potential investor or a customer or client or whatever it may be?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  None of it is useful. Why? Is that, that's, that's too simple a way to say it.

• 40:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  But what you're hearing is mostly right. Nothing is useful. Or a different way to say it, and especially pertinent, since I'm down here in Hollywood, is nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything. And that's the immortal worlds of William Goldman.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Famous Hollywood screenwriter and ironically wrote 20 movies and won Academy Awards, but is known for those three words from his adventures in the Screen Trade book. But he meant that no one can tell how well a movie is going to do until after it does it. It is absolutely true in any new venture. No one knows. And so, anyone who tells you, "Well, I think this," or "I think that," they don't know what they're talking about. The only feedback that's valuable is the feedback that comes from trying it and seeing how the real person you want to respond actually responds. That's the only thing that counts. Investors, no, they don't know.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  And they also don't necessarily have the same criteria in my success that you do. Your spouse, God bless them, they have the, want the best for you, but they don't know either. You just can't tell. No one can tell a good idea from a bad idea. The only way to do it is to try it. I'm sorry, I know that.

• 41:45Jay Shetty?

  No, it's great.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  I wish there was a shortcut.

• 41:48Jay Shetty?

  So I guess, I guess looking at it from a different perspective is like when a mentor is useful. You obviously mentor people and guide, and how do you know a mentor is useful?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 41:56Jay Shetty?

  What type of, yeah, what type of questions should you be asking?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  And since I'm a mentor myself, I guess I don't want to dismiss all of my advice. But most of my advice is designed around helping people get started.

• 42:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  And when they're starting, how to keep them on the right path of continually getting customer feedback.

• 42:14Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  And again, I don't want this to be too commercial, because this advice is good for anybody who's trying to solve something.

• 42:20Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Whatever you think your problem is trying to solve, even if it's a problem of your own, you want to collide that with the reality as soon as you can, and that's the feedback. But yes, having a mentor who understands what you're up against and has confidence in you and that you enjoy spending time with, that's the three, the three critical things.

• 42:40Jay Shetty?

  Interesting.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  I mean, now I can't remember at the very beginning of our conversation, but in many ways, I am, I do a lot of work with early-stage founders. So, I'm a mentor, or you can call me a founder coach. What's interesting is, most of my job is marriage counseling.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Is that because the real challenges are those? Oh, that's where this came from. We were talking about the beginning about life balance.

• 43:13Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  How do you do this at the same time, keep yourself healthy and keep yourself sane and maintain your relationships and keep your hobbies alive? And so it's funny, people can be brilliant marketers or brilliant technologists and the thing they struggle with is that.

• 43:29Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  And at least in the tech world where I spend a lot of my time, the most stable configuration is two founders, a tech and a business. But it's one from Mars and one from Venus.

• 43:40Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  And they're spending more time together than they would with their partners. And you realize that helping them keep that relationship healthy is critical and hard. They have to, it's incredibly lonely being a CEO because you can't necessarily reveal everything to your employees and you can't necessarily reveal everything to your board, who is your boss. And so there's really no one who understands that you can talk to. That's another role that a mentor plays. You're kind of gathering not just the role a mentor plays, but how much of making a company successful is emotional and psychological.

• 44:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Not technical and accounting.

• 44:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that answer. Let's dive a bit into the marriage counseling because I know that my audience is so focused on learning about relationships and I love learning about it too. And I'd love to hear from your perspectives and learn from you as well. What have you seen have been the, kind of like the building blocks of making sure that a relationship with your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever it may be, has been able to be maintained through the growth and momentum of a successful company?

• 44:50Speaker 02

  So, one thing I've learned is I can't speak for humanity. I, I know what's worked for me.

• 44:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I'd love to hear that.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  And I know what's, but again, I just want to make sure that, you know, that it's not, it's not a miracle. And I'm not a, I'm not a guru in, in this sort of thing. But what works for me is radical honesty. And what's interesting is that radical honesty is the principle that I use with my wife. It's what I use with my kids, but it's what Reed Hastings and I use with each other. It's what I use with my employees. It's, there's, life is way too short to bullshit people.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  And more than that, people are smart and they can tell when they're being spun. And there's something incredibly powerful about speaking from the heart. And honesty doesn't mean just delivering bad news. It means delivering good news. It means revealing your vulnerabilities. It means admitting I don't know something. It means saying you're right and I was wrong. I mean, but it's incredibly powerful thing. And I can't, I can't recommend it enough.

• 46:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  But again, it's not easy.

• 46:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and in terms of time and energy, do you feel that in the growth of a stages of a company, it's, is it impossible? Is it like literally impossible to spend quality time with your partner? Or is there, is there any balance? Or, you know, what is the reality of it, I guess?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it is difficult. I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Having a startup, launching Netflix was like having a second family. A family who woke up in the middle of the night and cried. A family that required you to go away and take care of an emergency. And you also have your real family. And I had young kids who were waking up in the middle of the night and crying and were requiring me to travel away in emergencies. So it pulls you in all directions. And it's almost like the big rocks model of time allocation. You've got to pick the things that are critical and make sure you carve out the space to fit those in. And at Netflix, in those first few years, even before then, my wife and I had this principle

• 47:05Speaker 02

  that every Tuesday, 5:00 PM sharp, I would leave the office. And she had a babysitter and we would have a date night. We'd just go downtown, we'd go for a walk, we'd glass of wine, go see a movie. But we'd spend time together, away from the kids, away from the business. And it was really hard at first to preserve that time. Because it's a startup and everyone's always grabbing you. So in an emergency.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Emergency meeting before five.

• 47:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Either talk to you on the way to the car.

• 47:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  But the magic of it is that once you've defended it successfully for a month or two, everyone realizes it's futile to even ask.

• 47:47Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  And more importantly, they all begin going like, well, nothing's going to happen on Tuesdays after five. I can now take some time off on Tuesday after five.

• 47:57Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  And it ends up giving them space. But perhaps the most important thing is it models for everybody what the culture really is. It models what the priorities are.

• 48:11Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  If the CEO of the company can do this, well, then I guess I can, I can too.

• 48:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  And culture is not what you say.

• 48:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  It's what you do.

• 48:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  So we can talk all we want about how we believe in family and balance, but then no one ever takes vacations and everyone is there until midnight every night.

• 48:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  That's saying one thing and doing another, which besides not modeling the behavior, also says that you are an insincere liar. So, you know, the probably the most important lesson that I've learned from 40 years of being an entrepreneur is, and this is going to sound strange, but I am not that special. I've really come to realize that so much of what I've done are things that anybody could do, that these things which I try and beat into people are not rocket science, they're not things that take a great education. You don't even need to be that smart. It's an attitude. It's being willing to start. It's being willing to take a risk.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  And those are things that anybody can do. And I've just realized almost everyone I speak to, they're smarter than I am, they're hardworking, more hardworking than I am, they're better prepared than I am, and they just need to get going. And if I can let people know They can do this, then I will really have accomplished something in my life.

• 49:38Jay Shetty?

  That's beautiful, Mark. And thank you so much for placing such a strong emphasis on life as opposed to just business and as opposed to just investments and mentorship and entrepreneurship, but really putting that emphasis on relationships and love and connection and service. So, thank you so much for doing that.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure.

• 49:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and I think I love that about setting and preserving these rituals. That's kind of what it is. It's like, it's not, I think when we leave it open like, "Oh yeah, we'll try and find some time this week to spend time together." You never do, right? It's almost like it needs to be, the structure lets you be spontaneous, I feel. Like, I feel like if you just leave it to spontaneity, then you'll never find any structure. But when you start with structure, you can find spontaneity. So, maybe one day you went for a walk, or you went for a dinner, or you went for a movie, and you could do whatever it was. But setting that structure is so helpful and useful.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  I really agree. And, you know, and having rhythm to a life.

• 50:29Jay Shetty?

  Yes, rhythm, yes.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Rhythm helps as well. I mean, I know that you have, you have this nice rhythm set up. So, you know, okay, Mondays, I'm, I'm busy.

• 50:35Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  But other days, you can tie, grab time for other things. I mean, it's a, it's just a matter of figuring out how to make your life work with your work.

• 50:44Jay Shetty?

  Yes, absolutely. No, I love that. Great advice. And, and then again, what you mentioned, the second partnership, which is usually this co-founder partnership. And you and Reed Hastings used to commute to work together.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:54Jay Shetty?

  Right? Tell us about that, because that's fascinating. Is, is that pretty common in, in the startup world of co-founders?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 51:01Jay Shetty?

  Commuting to work?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  And-

• 51:02Jay Shetty?

  It's cool. I love it. I think it's great.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  It, it is. I mean, and it, one little piece of it is that so much of a startup is luck. I mean, there's certainly a lot of things about the Netflix story, which were luck. The DVD player actually being widely adopted was luck. The fact that Blockbuster said no was luck. I mean, you can, you know, I'm here because I did a bunch of things right, but I also had a huge amount of things break my way. But one of the lucky breaks was that Reed Hastings' company bought a company that I had helped start. And that was luck. But then the real luck was that he ended up, happened to coincidence, I live in the same town as I did.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  And that we began carpoolsing back and forth. And so, we became friends in this weird way that would probably not have happened organically. And then the other lucky thing is this company that Reed was running, that what, my company, it was again acquired by someone else, and we were both being fired. So there was another lucky break. So a lot of things conspired, all of a sudden have Reid and I together on a 40 minute to 40 hour commute, knowing that in six months or so, we'd both be out of jobs. Wow. And that began the process of saying, well, Reid was saying, I'm going to go back to,

• 52:23Speaker 02

  back to school, get my higher degree in education and change the world and me saying, I'm going to go start another company. And then him saying, I kind of want to keep my hands in this whole entrepreneurial thing. So how about this, I will be your angel investor. And we decided to come up with an idea together and then I would, he'd fund it, I would run it and away we'd go. And that began these crazy car rides over the hill, as we call it, going over the mountains every day from Santa Cruz to Sunnyvale. Brainstorming ideas, brainstorming ideas about pain, we'd add about ideas we come up with.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  And going back to that amazing life of an idea, most of the ideas we came up with were terrible. Yeah. I mean, this is not like we're going, gosh, we've got to think of an idea about movies because they're both passionate about movies. We were throwing all kinds of crap at the wall. I mean, one of the things Netflix almost was, was personalized baseball bats, like made on a computer driven milling machine. Yeah, right, right. Like just to your exact specifications, Jay. Another was customized shampoo, like you send mail in a lock of your hair and we'd formulate it just for you. But I'd then go into my little office and research them all day and then the drive back,

• 53:48Speaker 02

  I would tell Reid what I learned and little by little, went through hundreds of ideas. And even one of them was, let's do video rental, let's try video rental by mail. Because video rental, big category and I had previously in my career, done a lot of mail order stuff and direct mail. Again, stuff you knew. Stuff I knew. Yeah. Then I'd seen the problems and both of us had seen the problems with video rental, who hadn't. But back then, video came on those VHS cassettes. Yes, I remember. Yeah. You know, you're your age, you'd probably watch Lion King about 6,000 times. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. On your VHS cassette. Um.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  But it didn't work, like too heavy, too expensive, too fragile. And so that idea got abandoned and then on to the next crazy idea. And that's where the DVD came in because on one of these rides, Reid mentioned that this new technology DVD, and you go, wow, what is it? Like, well, it's this little disc the size of a music CD. And we're going, huh, thin and light.

• 54:54Jay Shetty?

  Cheap, yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Cheap. This, this might change some things. But then that's where it comes down to, don't think, act. So rather than this big debate about who can we ask whether mailing a DVD is too fragile? And who can we, let's build a business plan and let's imagine how we're going to build the website. We went, screw it. Let's just take the first step and see if you can actually mail one of these things to yourself, which is when we turned the car around, then drove back to Santa Cruz and went to Logo's Record and Tape, used music store, and bought a Patsy Cline music CD. And then two doors down to the stationery shop and bought the little pink gift envelope that you put a greeting card in and CD in the envelope and addressed to Reid's house

• 55:38Speaker 02

  in Santa Cruz and pop it in the slot and go to work. And then 24 hours later, Reid shows up, doesn't even say a word, just holds up the little CD unbroken that got to his house for 29 cents. And we went, there might be some merit to this video by mail after all.

• 55:59Jay Shetty?

  Wow. So you see that in all the examples you're sharing with me, we know that the more we experiment, the more we fail, right? It's the more we experiment, the more you're going to fail because the more mistakes you're going to make, the more you're going to have to pivot, the more you're going to have to figure things out. How have you and Reid consistently gone through failure after failure after failure? And, and how, when was there a time when you were failing where you just felt like this is not going to happen? Like this is not working. And how did you get through that one?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  So.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Every failure is a learning. And people go, "Tell me your biggest failure." And I feel like a fool because I sit there, I go, "I can't, I can't think." Because you are learning. But yeah, I don't frame it that way. What's your biggest lesson? There you go. I mean, I got a million of those. Yeah, what's your biggest lesson? Because so many of my ideas were terrible. Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Biggest lesson, okay, it's the power of focus and the courage of walking away from today in exchange for tomorrow.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  And that sounds so simple, and boy, it's hard. And when we launched Netflix, it sold DVDs and it rented DVDs. And about two months in, we were crushing it. Million, a hundred thousand dollars in that first month, all selling DVDs. And that was a disaster because we knew Amazon was going to come in, and that was not sustainable. And we did this for months and months and kept, couldn't get rental to work. And then finally realized that doing the sales is not, is paying the bills, but ironically, it's making it harder to get rental to work because it's confusing for customers.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  We're spending all of our time on sales and not focusing on rental. So there you come down to the realization, if you're going to do something, pick one thing and do everything you've got on it. But then comes the courage, which is what? Do you focus on the sales, which is paying the bills, but is eventually going to go out of business? Or do you bet it all on this unproven technology, this renting DVDs by the mail, which was selling no signs? So we, in one day, pulled the plug. Wow. Walked away from selling DVDs entirely. Ninety-nine percent of our revenue turned off like a light switch. But it focused the mind on how to make rental work.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  And this scales large, that everyone has this problem where they're doing something that's working, and they know that's not the future. That's not what people want in the future. But they're scared to do it. And you can take it at a personal level. You really want to take a swing at doing this. But God, I have this job and it's paying my rent and you're trapped. And that is the most tragic thing I can imagine. People feeling trapped. And I'm not naive. I'm not saying, you know, walk away, just pull the plug, but start, start. Dreaming about it will leave you trapped even longer.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  You have to recognize it's really hard to do two things really, really well.

• 59:26Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I know. And I agree with you. I think, you know, I've had mentors who've said to me before that, you know, when you're really in pain, that's when you will find your potential and that's when you'll be able to break through. And I used to always be like, oh yeah, that makes sense, but I'm proactive, like that's not true. Like, you know, and then I realized that actually when you felt the plug was being pulled for you, or you pulled the plug for yourself, that's when you really dug deep. And you almost work harder because now you can't come back to what you had the day before in terms of your example. You're not coming back to, oh yeah, we already know we make X amount of money through this. You've now made it impossible for yourself to rely on something that doesn't have a future, and now you've got to find something. And it's in that point that you're more likely to find something, but you don't have a choice.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:09Jay Shetty?

  And I think it's almost like giving yourself no choice whenever that's right for you personally is a good way to go because I've found that when I've had no choice, that's often been the time when I've done my best work.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And it is, it's a courage thing too. I mean, you can wait till desperation, but you can also say, I'm gonna just give it a shot. You know who Ernest Shackleton is?

• 1:00:29Jay Shetty?

  No, I don't know.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Ernest Shackleton, he's, he's kind of my hero. He's a polar explorer. And this is the turn of this turn of the last century. And he wanted to be the first person to travel by land over the Antarctic continent. So I will not tell this whole story. It is the most unbelievable story though. But anyway, he has this boat. It's the unsinkable wooden boat and he's sailing to drop off him and his expedition and they get stuck in the ice. And they go, no big deal. So they all pile off the, they will wait for the spring when it melts. So they all pile off and they have camps on the ice. But of course, the ice crushes the boat and the boat sinks. So now they're all sitting on this ice floe and it's pretty cushy.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  They've got, have dog sled races and they got all kinds of food and they have wood from the boat for fires. And he's watching this ice floe as the spring comes, get smaller and smaller. And he's going, well, I can sit here in my comfortable surroundings. Until all of a sudden, we're all dropped in the ocean, or I could take advantage of the fact that it's spring. And there's open water and I can put my entire expedition in our three lifeboats. And see what happens. And it thus begins one of the most unbelievable stories of adventure and leadership you could ever, ever tell. But it's, I, I've always thought about that. This guy who looked around, everyone's comfortable.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  And said, we can't sit and be comfortable. It's what happened at Netflix, what happens all over the place.

• 1:02:07Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Thank you so much. You're amazing. You're an incredible storyteller. You're fascinating to talk to. I'm excited for everyone else to read this book. That will never work. I genuinely believe that if you've got a big idea, you've got a small idea, you've got no idea. This book's gonna help you navigate the process of getting started and then navigate the process of actually making it happen. And I think those two are so distant, it feels sometimes, they feel so far away. But this book will definitely, definitely get you closer. Mark, we end every interview with a final five. So I ask you a final five rapid fire, quick fire questions. So you have to answer each question in one word to one sentence maximum. If I allow you to go on, then you can, and I probably will because you're.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  No, you don't.

• 1:02:48Jay Shetty?

  So here are the questions, the final five. Number one, what's your favorite slice of pizza? Start easy.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Oh, uh, plain cheese, man.

• 1:02:58Jay Shetty?

  Nice.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Jay Shetty?

  Question number two, the best trail you've ever hiked or your favorite hike of all time? Cause I know you love being in the outdoors.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  It's the, uh, uh.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Oh crap, it's the, the one along the coast of, of Italy, the Chinku Tera.

• 1:03:14Jay Shetty?

  Okay, wonderful.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  It's a small.

• 1:03:16Jay Shetty?

  Why that one?

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  It's a small trail that can, these five towns which are only accessible by fishing boat.

• 1:03:21Jay Shetty?

  Oh wow.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Really old towns and they've built this network of trails that connects the five towns that run right along the ocean.

• 1:03:29Jay Shetty?

  Amazing.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Oh, spectacular.

• 1:03:30Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Okay, awesome. Question number three, one company you wish you started.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Am I allowed to hit a buzzer and pass?

• 1:03:45Jay Shetty?

  Uh, yeah, no, I, I guess another way of rephrasing it is a problem you wish you would have solved. Was there a problem that you tried to solve, but then you've seen someone else actually solve it really well? If there is, if there isn't, then you can pass and I'll do, I'll choose another one.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  What does it say about me that I can't immediately jump to a one word answer about that?

• 1:04:04Jay Shetty?

  No, that's okay.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Cause of course there's hundreds of things where I go, oh my God, that was so clever. I wish I had done that.

• 1:04:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  I can't think of one.

• 1:04:10Jay Shetty?

  That's cool. We'll, we'll substitute that for another one. So your question number three is tell us about the candidate principle.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  One word.

• 1:04:16Jay Shetty?

  In more than one sentence. Yeah, you can answer one sentence.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Sometimes it seems that you can easily get a 10% lift, for example, as we could have by expanding to Canada. But it's always harder than you think. And then if you take that same 10% of time or effort or attention and focus it on your core problem, you'll reap much bigger rewards. Another way of saying it, beware of low hanging fruit because it rarely is.

• 1:04:43Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. Nice. Wonderful. Great piece of advice. Awesome. Question number four, your favorite show to binge watch or your favorite TV show? You made everyone else have so much access to.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Almost done with sex education.

• 1:04:55Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that is hysterical and fantastic.

• 1:04:58Jay Shetty?

  Oh, awesome. Yeah, no, I was thinking, one of the, one of the problems, I'm just going off on a tangent here. I think one of the problems that I was thinking, when you were talking about the paint can, what, what, what I was thinking about was struggling to find what to watch at night.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  There's a

• 1:05:12Jay Shetty?

  That's, that is literally the problem I think of all day long. I'm literally, me and my wife could sit down and we could spend an hour trying to figure out what to watch, especially when it's two of us. I can figure out what to watch when I'm on my own. It's two of us and then you don't watch anything because it's too late.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Why is that so hard? What, someone out, one of your listeners has to like

• 1:05:29Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Go fix that.

• 1:05:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  But here's another principle, which is, is that if something seems obvious, there's something you don't know.

• 1:05:40Jay Shetty?

  Right. So go on, tell us more.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  That, it's just that if it's something, what you have to do before you have this great idea and you go, it seems like there should be an obvious solution, there's something you're missing. So what you've got to do is do the research and say, who has tried this?

• 1:05:56Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  What is the unknown barrier that I just don't see?

• 1:05:59Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Otherwise you end up just repeating the same mistakes someone else has made before.

• 1:06:04Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. So someone out there, please go and solve this.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yes, please, and tell me about it.

• 1:06:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Approach Mark about it.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  By tomorrow, hopefully.

• 1:06:12Jay Shetty?

  I love it. And the fifth and final question is, what is one habit you're most proud of breaking?

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Most proud of

• 1:06:18Jay Shetty?

  Breaking.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Of breaking?

• 1:06:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, any habits that you've broken in your life that you think were good habits, mental, physical?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Sure, a recent one is the cell phone addiction.

• 1:06:28Jay Shetty?

  Okay, tell us about that.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it's such an obvious one, but everyone is afflicted with it. Now it's almost like being a non, an ex-smoker, which I was never a smoker. But now you see people and you go, oh my God, what are you doing? The constant pulling it out this habitually.

• 1:06:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  And it's just taken me the sense of saying, leave it in your pocket, leave it. And I've finally actually gotten to the point where now I no longer have that urge to grab for the phone at every time I have a spare moment. And it's, it's partly this wonder

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  Wonderful-ness? This wonder of stopping and taking it in. I mean, it's a standing meditation when you're in line, or when the plane lands and everyone goes on their phone. No, just look around. I mean, it's a cool replacement.

• 1:07:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  I'm really, really digging it. So, you know, I was, this is unfortunately not too long ago, but I was flying someplace and I was flying first class. And something was wrong. You know, I don't know, something with the seat, or I didn't get my first choice of meal, or the little wet little towel was too dry, or something so stupid. And I remember complaining to my wife, and I had this revelation, like, "You stupid bastard, how dare you? How could you possibly be complaining about something like that?" And it was this moment where I realized,

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  I am so unbelievably lucky, I have to appreciate everything about how unbelievably fortunate that I've been. That I've had this idea that actually turned into a real company, that I have the chance to spend time with my wife and my family and have all these things happen. I do not deserve anything else, especially not to be complaining about that. So, I think I take back my stupid answer about the cellphones. That is not the most important habit. The most important habit I broke was pity and recognizing how lucky I am.

• 1:08:43Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much, Mark, for doing the final five. Thank you for being on on purpose. It's been awesome talking to you. And everyone who's been listening or watching back at home, you can get the book, "That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea" by Mark Randolph. I highly recommend going out and picking up the book and diving into the story of... The place that's giving us all the stories that we consume, I mean, to figure out the fact that there are literally, how many people in the world now? Like 150 million subscribers?

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  150 million.

• 1:09:09Jay Shetty?

  Millions of subscribers in the world, all of us consuming off this platform, to figure out how it was actually birthed, what happened behind it, and really what happened behind the scenes. Go and check it out. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you have subscribed if you haven't already. And please, please, please go and follow Mark Randolph. Mark, where can they find you if they want to follow more of your work and hear your insights?

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  They can find me at markrandolph.com or at MB Randolph.

• 1:09:31Jay Shetty?

  Perfect. Awesome. Please, please, please go check out Mark and thank you so much for watching. And make sure, what I'd love for you to do with this episode, genuinely, there were so many moments where there were so many subtle points, tips and hints, that I'd love for you to find those and share them on Instagram and Twitter as well. I love noticing what you're learning from these sessions and make sure you tag in me and Mark as well, so that we can respond and see what you've taken away. Thank you so much for listening and watching, Mark. Thank you as well.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Jay, what a pleasure. Thanks for your time.

• 1:09:58Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much.

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