#59 Following Intellectual Curiosity with Thomas Tull

Thomas Tull, founder of Tulco and former CEO of Legendary Entertainment shares valuable lessons on learning from our own mistakes, asking difficult questions, and protecting our intellectual curiosity. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's just one of those things, when you look at it and kind of unpack what happened, you know, you just have to try to stare at the facts as they are and see what you could do better.

• 0:19Shane Parrish?

  Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and this is The Knowledge Project, a podcast exploring the ideas, methods, and mental models that help you learn from the best of what other people have already figured out. You can learn more and stay up to date with the podcast at fs.blog/podcast. We have a newsletter that comes out every Sunday called Brain Food. It's free and packed with all the best content that we've come across this week that's worth reading and thinking about. It contains quotes, book recommendations, articles, and so much more. You can learn more at fs.blog/newsletter. On the show today is the normally reclusive businessman, Thomas Tull. Thomas was the chairman and CEO of Legendary Entertainment.

• 1:01Shane Parrish?

  He produced more than 30 films that together have grossed more than $13 billion worldwide at the box office. Movies like Straight Outta Compton, Godzilla, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and so much more. Today, he's living his dream as part owner of his favorite childhood sports team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. He's running Tullco and buying companies and investing. He was early money in Magic Leap, Pinterest, Oculus, which sold to Facebook. But we're not going to talk too much investing. We're going to talk about intellectual honesty, learning from mistakes, how the entertainment industry is changing, professional football, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 1:43Shane Parrish?

  You grew up as a single child. What was it like being, having a single parent?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Um, you know, it's interesting because if you don't know anything else, then it's, you know, then maybe it doesn't seem as different. But, um, you know, it was challenging circumstances. My mom had me at a young age and my father had left and had a number of issues. And, um, you know, I had two younger sisters and we were definitely challenged economically and so forth. And, you know, looking back on it, it certainly had a material impact on the rest of my life. And, you know, hopefully is something that...

• 2:29Speaker 00

  You know, who knows if that's what develops drive or doesn't, but it's what happened. So, you know, that's the way I grew up.

• 2:39Shane Parrish?

  Was there a point where you realized that your family was different from other families?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, I, I think also when I went away to college, it became a little more pronounced. Um, just in terms of, okay, this is the outside world and, um, and I think that, uh, you know, there was certainly a period that I got very frustrated and felt, you know, how unfair and all those other things that I guess when you're processing things as a teenager, your neurons aren't firing the way they should or, um, but, uh, you know, but my mom worked, uh, two jobs. She was a dental hygienist and I did a lot of, uh, shoveling snow, had that business and a lawn mowing business, running around at 13,

• 3:27Speaker 00

  doing that kind of stuff. And, you know, to try to help out and you, and you just kind of realize, uh, at a fairly young age that there are things you don't want to do. You'd rather be doing other things, but you know, the task at hand is the task at hand.

• 3:44Shane Parrish?

  What was college like?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Um, I think I went to Hamilton, which is a fantastic school in, uh, it's in what they call the Nescac with Williams and Amherst and, and, uh, and Middlebury. And I received, uh, first rate education. And I think for the first time, because of the alumni of the school and, you know, mo- many of my classmates had went to fancy prep schools and things like that. I wasn't aware of what a trust fund was prior to going there and so forth. But I, I think more importantly, it had a profound impact on how to think, how to communicate, and that you could have efficacy in the world. And I, and I think

• 4:29Speaker 00

  that if I had to really distill, uh, the education down, it's sort of looking at other people and the fact that you could have impact in the world, that it wasn't just, hey, I'm gonna get up and do whatever my job is and I'm sort of slotted in in my life and, and so forth.

• 4:46Shane Parrish?

  Is that because you were surrounded by ambitious people or?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think people that were ambitious, people whose families had had impact in the world, you know, again, notable alumni and that you get to rub elbows with and be around and suddenly, you know, your worldview opens up and you decide that, hey, maybe, you know, maybe there is something that you can do with luck and, you know, sort of applied work and so forth.

• 5:19Shane Parrish?

  After that, like, opportunities, did you go into college thinking there would be one set of opportunities in life and come out thinking another?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, the plan was always, I was definitely gonna go to law school. And then I had a family friend talk to me and say, look, it's not like it is in LA law and, you know, you're gonna come out in debt. There's no more sports scholarships and things like that for law school. And so, you know, but I'm always fascinated by people that whether they're practicing attorneys or they have a law degree as part of their educational background. I actually think it's a pretty great set of skills to have. And some of the most interesting people, people whose thought process and how they process things, you know, are attorneys.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  And so, but yeah, definitely went a different direction.

• 6:15Shane Parrish?

  So what happened after college?

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Well, I had a stint, I got a look from the Atlanta Braves, you know, playing to play baseball.

• 6:27Shane Parrish?

  Because you were on a sports scholarship in college, right?

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so, and the Braves were smart enough to figure out that I wasn't gonna be able to help them. So got sent home and then I had a, you know, a couple of small businesses in my early twenties, a laundromat chain and an auto repair center because I lived in an area that was economically challenged and those were things.

• 6:54Shane Parrish?

  I want to talk about the laundromat. I want to come back to that.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Everybody wants to talk about the laundromats. It's kind of funny. But, yeah, and then.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  You know, from, from there, I had moved down to Raleigh Durham and was a, you know, a partner at a venture fund, a tech venture fund. And, you know, kind of, and then all kinds of things started to happen.

• 7:18Shane Parrish?

  Okay, I want to come back to this point, but I want to like rewind a little bit, the laundromats. Talk to me about that. You started, you were an entrepreneur.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you want to call it that, in, in my twenties, just trying to figure things out. Um, you know, if there's any.

• 7:32Shane Parrish?

  But you innovated in this industry as well.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Did, yeah. I, so if there, if there's any sort of thematic to, to my business career, um, I'm not, I'm not good at coming up with a new thing. Like, there was no such thing as social media, and I invented social media, and now that's a thing. I, I'm not, that's not my skill set. What I've done okay at is looking at an industry or a business model and saying, okay, where, where are the points that you could either improve this, or make it more efficient, or come at it from a different angle? And that, that's been sort of a running theme throughout my business career. So at the laundromat,

• 8:15Speaker 00

  there were a couple of different things that, uh, you know, were, I guess innovative at the time. I found a company who was selling, uh, the washers and dryers that had, uh, you know, a, a built-in computer, and that you could set dynamic pricing. And the reason that that was important at the time is the laundromats would be jammed on the weekends, and, you know, more business than you could handle. And then during the week, there's nobody in there. And there are people, whether they're retirees, or whatever, their, their schedule allows them to go in. And so we, uh, put in sort of a dynamic, uh, pricing

• 8:57Speaker 00

  model, so that you would try to even those things out. And it, it, uh, it certainly helped the numbers.

• 9:03Shane Parrish?

  How many laundromats did you end up with?

• 9:05Speaker 00

  I think we, I think I had four of them, and then sold it.

• 9:10Shane Parrish?

  Was this based on frustration? Like, you were doing laundry, and it was, or you just like, oh, I have this idea, and I think I can do this better than other people?

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, uh, you know, it seemed like there, there, and, and the laundromats that were in this area that I grew up in were. A little sketchy. And I thought, you know, if you could just make it clean and safe and and then have this slightly different economic model. And also, you know, when you had the attendant at the laundromat, I mean, certainly when you're dealing with mostly cash, you want to be able to track these things. So the computer system allows you to track, you know, every nickel that came in, so to speak. And and so that was very helpful for, you know, being in a business.

• 9:53Shane Parrish?

  You knew what the register should have.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  That's exactly right.

• 9:55Shane Parrish?

  What's in the register.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, and made sure everybody knew that.

• 9:58Shane Parrish?

  So you had this taste of entrepreneurial freedom, almost. It's really, it strikes me as a little bit rare, almost, that you would go work for somebody else, even as a partner after that.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  It's me, the

• 10:14Speaker 02

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• 10:26Speaker 02

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• 10:39Speaker 02

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• 10:40Speaker 03

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• 11:03Speaker 00

  Well, it was a pretty independent shop. In other words, you would look for your your own deals. That is one thing I was fairly certain of at a young age, that I'm unemployable. And I think For whatever reason, you know, just being able to see something maybe a little bit differently and say, this is what I want to do. And at least if, if it doesn't work, I certainly have myself to, to blame. But I, you know, one of the things that I enjoy doing, I do some, you know, some university and college lectures, which is great for me. I'm not sure what they get out

• 11:45Speaker 00

  of it, but it's, you know, I find it invigorating. And one of the things when I'm asked for advice is to be as intellectually honest as you can be about not only your skill sets, but what you enjoy, what motivates you. Because if you're constantly saying like, okay, this is the ideal profile of myself or my projected self, you know, versus, no, this is actually the way I'm wired. This is what I enjoy. This what motivates me. This is thing, something that I'm really good at. You have to put yourself in a position to be successful. Otherwise, I think you're going

• 12:25Speaker 00

  to end up frustrated and not as productive as you can be. So it's, it's not easy to do, I think. But if you can really be introspective about it and brutally intellectually honest about your own makeup, I think that's very helpful.

• 12:45Shane Parrish?

  How do you do that for yourself?

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Well,

• 12:48Shane Parrish?

  Like, it's so easy to say that. And I'm wondering, like, what is your process?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  It's much, much harder in practice. I think the first thing is, for me, I always look at mistakes that I've made and try to do true postmortems. And if you're constantly giving yourself an out, like, well, yes, I probably didn't make a great decision here, but these three circumstances are these, these things happened and therefore, and what I try to look for is, okay, there are certain times, the ball just doesn't bounce your way. And, you know, and, and you can't dwell too much on that. But where are the things that I find a common thread in, hey, you know, you're, you're ending up in the same place here?

• 13:34Speaker 00

  And is it, are you philosophically wrong? Are you not taking in the right information? Are you being emotional about this? Are you surrounding yourself with, with the right people for whatever the, you know, the, the job is, so to speak? And if I find, geez, I keep finding myself back in this spot. Or, you know, that if it's, I've put myself in a position to succeed or, or, or fail. You know, do I look at it and say, it's, it's almost, you know, sports is a big part of my life.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  So, you know, if you're in the World Series and it's the bottom of the ninth inning and you're a relief pitcher and you throw 98 miles an hour. Don't get beat on your curve ball. Right. Right? And, and so I think if you, if you're constantly putting yourself in a position where you're on your back foot.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  You know, that's hard, but I think at the end of the day. You have to be willing to look at what has unfolded, what has happened. Is there any pattern recognition there?

• 14:46Speaker 00

  And then being able to have the sound judgment to say, these are things that happen just because. So I'm not going to beat myself up or read too much into that. And at the same time, if there are things that are either recurring or you, or you just say, look, I, I, we ended up in a tough spot. And here, here, here's how we got there. And I also find that a lot of times when I unpack those things, it's, it can be momentum. That you've let momentum take you to a place and, and that you didn't at certain points where you could have jumped off, said, wait a minute.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  You know, sort of the train is moving. So, you know, you're, you're letting that inertia. Take over instead of saying, hey, th- this is not the destination that we want the train going to and let's stop it.

• 15:43Shane Parrish?

  What example comes to mind when you think of that?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you, when, when I had legendary, uh, you know, and you're making movies, a hundred percent, I look back at some of my biggest mistakes were movies that you put together, for example, that you got the director you wanted, you got a release date, you got the cast, but the script isn't coming together. For whatever reason, you just kind of feel it, that it's, it's just not there. But because you've worked so hard and now there are a bunch of people that are counting on it and, and there's a momentum to it and the, you know, all the, the agencies, everybody involved in the ecosystem now is a stakeholder.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  And you just kind of, it's, it's, it's tough to put the brakes on. So I, I think about that often. That whole business is one of the more nuanced, uh, businesses I've, I've ever been around or involved in.

• 16:43Shane Parrish?

  So you left the, the VC firm as a partner, you started legendary.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was.

• 16:48Shane Parrish?

  I want to get into legendary.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so, yeah, basically what happened there is around 2003, I became fascinated with the media business, but, but in particular with movies. Uh, I think at the time it was a $30 billion industry. It was, I, I believe the, the country's second biggest export. Uh, I'm not sure what it is today. And, you know, there were a couple of trends that I thought were really interesting. At that time, there was global expansion. You had this unbelievable business called DVDs that, uh, a lot of the big box retailers were using as a loss leader, great margins.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  And I believed very deeply in the ownership of intellectual property and especially, you know, sort of premium grade A global intellectual property.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  You know, the thing that struck me is usually with an industry of that size, you will see sort of a institutional capital in and around and among it, right? Large private equity or whatever it might be. And in the movie industry, certainly if you had, if you own Disney stock or News Corp. stock, that's available, but for an industry that size, there was no adjacent capital system, and I thought that that would be an opportunity. So I looked very deeply at the data, you know, the previous 10 years of of Studio Ultimates, which was the accounting for the movies,

• 18:26Speaker 00

  and asked myself the following question, if you hit your plan and you're successful, is there any money to be made? And I had a bunch of friends that almost had sort of an intervention with me and said, look, you've never been in the media industry. You don't know anything about this. You're going to go out to Los Angeles and and just get destroyed on this thing. And, you know, I really had conviction because I had looked at the economics and felt like if you could build it in a different way, you know, and decided very early, I didn't want to have distribution. I was fortunate enough to partner with Warner Brothers, have them distribute.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  And if you could sort of have the right structure and draft off of that global infrastructure, that you could you could build a nice business. And then, like with anything else, you know, there's certainly luck involved. I mean, met a young guy at the time named Chris Nolan. And when our first movie was Batman Begins, obviously, he's an incredible generational talent and, you know, but there were a lot of things along the way, both, you know, things that worked out remarkably well and then things that just have.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  So much of a human element and emotion around a business that it's it's in retrospect really fascinating.

• 20:00Shane Parrish?

  What did you learn about producing movies that you hadn't like, I don't even know anything about producing movies like walk me through what that means.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Well, I think there's, there's a couple of things that I I found, or at least that I believed first of all, stand as close as you can to absolute talent. Right. And if if you can find people that are incredibly talented versus people that were kind of in the right place at the right time, and there is a difference, certainly Chris Nolan is an example of that. And then it's you got to make sure that you're spending an appropriate amount of money. So if you're trying to make a global tent pole, that's going to capture the world's attention, well, you can't spend $30 million on that. And on the other hand, if you're going to make something that is more contained, you have to spend the right amount of money on that.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  And and then you have to think about how you're going to get people's attention. How are you going to market the film? And it's just each, each film is like a startup company and has its own fingerprints and so forth.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  And then a number of years ago, there were some trends that that I started to that concerned me, you know, as being an independent company.

• 21:22Shane Parrish?

  What were those trends?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  There were a couple of things. It used to be if you made a good movie and you tested the movie and had pretty good test scores and you got a good trailer out there, you'd be fine. And, you know, that started to not be the case, right? Started to see some corollaries. And then I think part of it is, you know, when I was growing up and even when I started in the movie business, what else is there to do on a Friday and Saturday night? Right? You go and it's I always since I was a kid, I love movies just as a. Film goer because you know you you go in to the theater, the lights go down and you go on this adventure and and you're it's communal and all these other things.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  And I think there have been some massive fundamental changes in in our society and on entertainment experiences. I certainly don't think the movies are going away, but one of the things that I would say is that we are clearly in the golden age of television or whatever, you know, the expansion of television that this is. You know, you're seeing some incredibly compelling things being made across, you know, not just the traditional folks in TV, but certainly Amazon, Netflix and, you know, Hulu, they've really changed the game. And part of what that becomes is now you're not in the appointment business anymore.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Because if you go out to a movie in the theater, well, you have to look it up and say, if I want to experience this, I have to go to this place and at 7:40, be in my seat and that's what it is. Well, you have an entire generation of of people that that's a very foreign concept too. I have a supercomputer in my pocket and I can listen to any song I want, see any clip I want. And, you know, and I think certainly you're seeing the attention span come down. Entertainment is coming in sort of faster and faster increments. And so that makes it much more challenging to get people's attention.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And then, you know, the other thing that, again, when I was growing up, if you had your favorite movies, you might watch that movie five, six, 10 times. And I think what happens today is because there is such a glut of high quality entertainment and things to do, and it's not just stuff on Netflix. Xbox Live, watching professional gaming leagues, everything on demand all the time. And, you know, one of the things that I got fascinated with when we had Legendary Analytics, which we can talk about a little bit, but is I ask our team to sort of build

• 24:17Speaker 00

  a measurement instead of just what does tracking say we're going to open to for the weekend? Or, you know, what are the the ratings of our television division, our shows and so forth? I also wanted to understand sort of a meter against your addressable waking hours for media. How are you making those choices? And, you know, there's only so many hours in a day, right? So the problem is that if you're trying to keep up with your Netflix queue, and you're watching, you know, college or professional sports, and you're doing, you look up and it's like, I ask people this all the time, who will

• 24:57Speaker 00

  say, you saw the trailer for the movie and you thought, that's a really good trailer. That's, you know, I would like to see that. Well, how many times do you actually go to the movie versus just saying, I'll see it at some other date? So everybody's doing their job. Movie's good. The trailer is good. The marketing department did a good job, but it just boils down to time and attention. And again, I certainly, you know, the the death of the movie business has been described for decades. And I don't think that, but I do think it has changed fundamentally, and that the business has to shift and change with it.

• 25:38Shane Parrish?

  What do you think those shifts will be in? Like, who wins in the next 10, 15 years?

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, you know, I have to, the job that Disney has done.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  is unbelievable. I mean, they, I think, under Bob Iger's leadership and then Alan Horn, who was my partner at Warner Brothers before he went over to Disney. I mean, they went out and cornered the market between Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars with Lucas Films and have now, you know, you look at their calendar of releases and it's basically everybody has to move around Disney. So I think you're still going to see the big event films worldwide, you know, move the needle and be as big as they've ever been. It's just how many movies for theatrical release are going to come out? What's the appropriate number? And, you know, how can

• 26:33Speaker 00

  you market them in a way that, you know, is more efficient, which is something that we, I got fascinated with, and why we had an analytics division?

• 26:44Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about that analytics division, what sort of insights you were trying to acquire that you would put into practice with these, not only the movies you were producing perhaps, but the movies that you were trying to market?

• 26:57Speaker 00

  So, one of the things that became both frustrating to me as well as just, okay, we're going to stare at this business model and see if there's another way to do it, is our studio partner who would deploy the capital for marketing, right? So we would jointly kind of look at the poster and the trailer and all those things, but they would actually go out and decide, and they would have buying programs. So they would go out and buy X number of gross rating points. They would-

• 27:30Shane Parrish?

  What's a gross rating point?

• 27:31Speaker 00

  So they would go in and basically buy a block of television that should deliver you X eyeballs and folks. But then I would start to see some of our movies that didn't make any sense. Like, you see a Dark Knight ad on the Golden Girls, that may not be the best use of capital. And I think we got a $7 million bill on one of the Hangover movies for newspaper display ads. And I thought, that's probably not a great or efficient use of capital.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  So I was fortunate, I'm friendly with Eric Schmidt, who is a chairman of Google and was a shareholder at Legendary. I went to see Eric and kind of went through with him what I wanted to build. And we bought a boutique analytics company in Boston with this really sharp guy named Matt Maralda. And basically, what I said is, I want to deliver a much more customized message to people. And I want to be able to insert ourselves into the decision point electronically, both mobile and online. And if it's clear to me, sort

• 28:47Speaker 00

  of psychographically, that you're not interested in this movie, I don't want to bother you. Right? And conversely, if you're someone who is persuadable, and we could make interested, and so it had a pretty material impact on our business. We were able to cut out a pretty large chunk of advertising dollars, and I think be much more efficient. We used it across movies and television, then we licensed it to other media companies, and then, you know, and then other industries came in. And it was, and it taught me a lot

• 29:25Speaker 00

  about being able to apply technology and new techniques to spaces that maybe had not had a lot of innovation, or had been a little sleepier. And, you know, being able to get nonlinear results on that.

• 29:42Shane Parrish?

  That's fascinating. What else was in Legendary Holdings?

• 29:46Speaker 00

  So there were a couple of pivot points that were helpful ultimately in getting the result that we got. One was going into China early, and, you know, before it became fashionable, I guess, and establishing a presence there, trying to build a real brand in China. We were very lucky that Legendary translates this word "chuanqi" in Mandarin that means exactly legendary. And I'm Scottish, our symbol was a Celtic knot, and it kind of looked. So those things are just, you know.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Pure luck, but we spent a lot of time in the market, learning about it, hiring a local team. And, you know, we're very successful in putting movies out in that market and, you know, clearly you have a massive moviegoing audience. Movies were a new thing there and they were building screens and theaters out at a, you know, incredible pace. And, you know, needing content to kind of drive people to the theaters, we thought was compelling. Obviously, that, you know, we were acquired by a Chinese company, so all those things mattered. The analytics company I just mentioned was important to us.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  We had a television division that had quite a few shows on the air. We had a company called Nerdist that was online content, sort of aimed at that space. And, you know, it was, it was an incredible experience.

• 31:30Shane Parrish?

  Did you guys ever have a big box office flop?

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:34Shane Parrish?

  Which one?

• 31:35Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 31:37Shane Parrish?

  Which one comes to mind?

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Look, we, we had Lady in the Water, early, early days with Night Shyamalan, who had done Sixth Sense and all these big movies. And, you know, that one, that one didn't work. You know, we, we had a movie that did very well in China called Great Wall with Matt Damon that, you know, was, was trying to sort of fuse east and west and be kind of a, a story that was universal and could be told and, you know, just didn't, didn't connect with audiences. So, yeah, no, no question about it. We, we, I think we had a pretty great track record, but absolutely had misses.

• 32:20Shane Parrish?

  So when you had misses, how did you go back and extract the signal from that? Because there's so many variables going on between like how you marketed, the time that it comes out, other movies that are coming out, the way that it's produced, the script, the, like, how do you go back and pull out the, like, this is the most probable cause of this failure?

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think, so there, there's a couple of things. First is, was there a fundamental rejection of the concept?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  You know, we did another movie that did not connect was a movie called Black Hat. Michael Mann, who's one of the all time great directors, Chris Hemsworth starred in. I mean, all these elements. And people just didn't want to see a movie about hacking and that being the action step, right, is that we're watching Chris Hemsworth, you know, hack. And so I think in some cases you look at it and say, you know, the fundamental concept of the movie was rejected. And those, I think, on some continuum hurt the most because you're like, wow, that just

• 33:31Shane Parrish?

  You were way off.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  I think other times, you know, you're taking a stack of papers with words on it called a script. You're creating sort of a mini city when you do a movie and you're sending human beings in to see if they have chemistry. Whatever's going on in their own lives can can sometimes have an impact. How the cast interacts with each other, you know, how the whole thing comes together. And there's been times where you're like, look, what a great idea for a movie. It just didn't come together in execution. And then there's sort of that. And then I also think there's some things in the zeitgeist that just the mood of the country, so to speak, in the world wants to see that, that, you know, that film at

• 34:18Speaker 00

  that time. We with Universal had a big hit with Straight Outta Compton and just for whatever reason.

• 34:27Shane Parrish?

  It was a great movie.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, they did an amazing job and, you know, you know, and then I look at something like Jurassic World, which again was a huge hit. The Jurassic franchise had kind of waned and, you know, you capture the magic of Steven Spielberg, you know, Chris Pratt is suddenly this enormous star and, you know, everybody went to the movies. So I think you just have to look at it. And understand what were the things within your control where you made good or bad decisions? What are the things that, look, what are you gonna do? You know, or even, even things, because movies used to

• 35:12Speaker 00

  have an opportunity to build an audience and be out for months. And word of mouth and so forth. And because there's so many movies coming out and because there's so much pressure on that opening weekend.

• 35:24Shane Parrish?

  If you're not a success on that opening weekend.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  You're, you're gone. So what happens if there's an ice storm in the eastern United States your opening weekend? Right? I mean, it's, it's just one of those things that when, when you look at it and kind of unpack what happened. You know, you just have to try to stare at the facts as they are and, and see what you could do better.

• 35:47Shane Parrish?

  How hands on were you? Like assembling a great team is one thing, but were you in there active and like, oh no, we should do this? Or this would be more exciting? Or are you more hands off?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Um, it depended on the circumstance. Um, there were times very, very hands on, you know, throughout an entire project movie and certainly. And then, you know, you're making a movie with Steven, with Steven Spielberg, or you're making a movie with Chris Nolan. You just make sure you get their catering right. So, you know, you have to know too, when to just stay out, right? And, and let amazing people do their job. I, I think, uh, one of the things I used to spend a lot of time on at Legendary was on culture. Um, and I've always kind of felt like great culture will trump a great business plan every day of the week because

• 36:40Speaker 00

  you can have an amazing business plan and I guarantee that it'll morph and change and you're gonna have to, you know, you're gonna have to make sometimes big changes. But if you have a culture. That people are excited about working there and you know, you have the right mindset, then making those changes in that journey is going to be a lot easier. And you know, so spent a lot of time, you know, making sure that people were passionate about working there, doing everything we could, you know, to be inclusive and to try to be transparent

• 37:23Speaker 00

  about what we are up to. I would certainly get up in front of the whole company and explain, look, these are the three things that we're really focused on right now. And this is what we're trying to do and build. And, you know, it was, it was, it was an amazing experience. And, and one of the things that is just crazy about my life and how incredibly lucky I am, is all the things that I loved as a kid, Godzilla, Batman, you know, Jackie, the Jackie Robinson story, you know, and then I bled black and gold Pittsburgh Steelers since I was a little boy. I, it's, it is remarkable that I got

• 38:03Speaker 00

  to partake and be around some of the things that I loved since I was a kid. So it was, it was, it was a pretty remarkable journey.

• 38:15Shane Parrish?

  I want to talk to you about the NFL. At what point did you buy part of the Steelers? Were you still with legendary or was that?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it was. So my first year in the ownership group was 2008, in which we, we won the Super Bowl this, that year, which was amazing. And, you know, growing up right on the Pennsylvania border and upstate New York, I just, the first football game I ever saw was the Steelers and the Super Bowl. And I just, I mean, the steel curtain, the whole thing. It was just amazing. And what, what had happened is the Steelers had asked to see a print of We Are Marshall, a movie that we did with Matthew McConaughey.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  And so when they asked to see it, I was like, I'll go, I'll, I'll take it. And so I came to Pittsburgh and um had the opportunity to spend real time with, with Mr. Dan Rooney and we just hit it off right away. I think he was probably amused by how passionate I was and how much I knew about the Steelers and, you know, and, uh, you know, we, we, we lost Mr. Rooney, I think it's two years ago now. Um, but of all the people that I've gotten to meet and spend real time with, I mean, he is, was just a remarkable man. And so,

• 39:50Speaker 00

  you know, to, to be part of the ownership group and your, you know, your sort of team that you've loved and followed since you were a kid is surreal to say the least.

• 40:02Shane Parrish?

  So you had these ideas coming in 2008. What an NFL team looks like from the inside. Where were they different? How did that line up and not line up?

• 40:12Speaker 00

  Well, the, the interesting um parallel between being legendary and then in professional football is you, you are squarely in the human being business, right? So you're around incredibly talented people. You're around people that are well compensated and come from all different walks of life and maybe motivated in different ways. And I, I think, um, I think the human element sort of behind the curtain is fascinating because you, you see people, athletes that come into the NFL that are incredibly talented, right? There is no question they have the

• 40:53Speaker 00

  physical makeup. Um, and you look at success or failure and, and some people that come in and aren't as talented, but for some reason, the light comes off, their professionalism, their ability to improve themselves, understand the game, whatever it is, and, and have impact. And then there are other people that you just sit there and you're like, my goodness, you know, you, you have, you're fast, you're strong, you have all the ability in the world, but you're not connecting the dots. And when the lights come on in the game, you're, you're not your highest and best.

• 41:33Speaker 02

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• 41:39Speaker 02

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 41:42Speaker 02

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• 41:50Speaker 02

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• 42:05Speaker 03

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• 42:28Shane Parrish?

  What does it mean to be in the the human business? Like, what does that tangibly mean from like, how you organize things, from how you run things to how you think about problems, how you?

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Well, I think the first, the first thing that I think about, especially in something that's as physically demanding is the NFL is how do you check the box on everything you can in terms of comfort and performance and saying, look, want to provide an atmosphere in which you have all the tools at your disposal to be successful. And then also, one of the things, I can't speak about other teams because obviously I, you know, have only been inside the Steelers organization. But I've been told by a lot of players who left and came back or left and then you see them in

• 43:19Speaker 00

  retirement that that the Steelers really are different. It truly is a family-like atmosphere, and that certainly starts with the Rooneys, you know, and we try very hard to take care of our guys. And, you know, I've seen a lot of examples of that that certainly are never gonna, nor should they make the press and so forth. And I just think that

• 43:47Speaker 00

  When, when you have athletes that are under such tremendous pressure and under the spotlight like never before. I mean, when you talk to the guys that played back in the seventies, there was no social media, there weren't camera phones, there weren't. So the, you know, the scrutiny and, and the opportunity to make mistakes and whatever is, uh, you know, is, is more certainly than it's ever been. And, you know, and I, and I think that when I talk about being in the human being business, it's that, you know, everybody in that arena is incredibly talented. And how do you separate yourself? And how do you make sure that, uh, that your, your team is not, not just motivated professionally,

• 44:32Speaker 00

  but they feel appreciated and, and, and all those things I think, I think are, those intangibles are important.

• 44:39Shane Parrish?

  What makes the difference between somebody who comes out and say like the first round, he's got all of the physical traits that you would look for and raw talent? Like what makes the difference between success or failure in the NFL where everybody's talented? And that delta between talent probably matters a little bit. Is that the most important thing? Like what separates people?

• 45:00Speaker 00

  You know, it's, it's interesting. Um, I, I think part of it, and this is across business, across any, any walk of life, but I think particularly in the NFL, that grittiness, right? Your, you know, your, your ability to overcome things and to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Um, you know, I look at somebody like Antonio Brown, who was a fourth round pick coming out of Central Michigan. And, you know, I remember having a conversation with him at the end of his rookie year, and he just kept asking me like, how do I get, what, what else can I do? And I I just hooked him up with a nutritionist, this guy named Chris Tally,

• 45:45Speaker 00

  who's, you know, one of the best nutritionists in the country. And not only did he go and follow through, but has become, you know, like religious about what what he puts into his body in terms of food and then trains harder than everybody else and and just, you know, never takes a rep off. I watch him in practice and I'm like, well, that's why he's the best in the world because.

• 46:09Shane Parrish?

  Every rep is.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:11Shane Parrish?

  A game rep.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  You know, you you look at other guys that again came in with first round talent or just look like they ought to be able to dominate and whether they they're not willing to put the work in, whether they're not willing to do all the little things, you know, in terms of taking care of your body. I'm a huge believer in sleep hygiene, right? Certainly nutrition, training, all those different things that that go into maximizing your talent. And especially in a lot of cases, you have guys that, you know, from the time they walked onto a field were clearly better than anybody else. And whether they worked hard or

• 46:57Speaker 00

  they didn't, the results were going to be the same.

• 47:00Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  And so that's the other thing that, you know, I think either kicks in or doesn't kick in that, hey, what got you here may not be enough.

• 47:11Shane Parrish?

  Walk me through what surprised you the most about when you got to peer inside NFL organization?

• 47:19Speaker 00

  I I would say, and again, I I think, and and I I certainly have a prejudiced point of view on this, because, you know, it's not like I I grew up a fan of another team and.

• 47:32Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  You know, got involved with the Steelers and begrudgingly that, you know, I so so I know that my point of view is is going to be skewed on this, but.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  One of the things that was, that was great to see is I was a little bit worried because after I had, you know, gotten to know Mr. Rooney for a few years, that when you got a look behind the curtain, that, okay, you know, sort of the folksy.

• 48:01Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  And the, the image that I have of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the family of it, how they conduct themselves. And again, the most pleasant surprise was, doesn't matter if there's no microphones, there's nobody else around. The conduct is the same. And, and that's, you know, that's something that I think the organization takes real pride in. You know, I was a little surprised, and certainly this has come a long way in football and certainly in our own organization with using data and analytics, which, you know, it's a physical, emotional game. So I don't believe

• 48:44Speaker 00

  you can make all your decisions by slide rule or abacus. But, you know, being aware of your own tendencies, you know, self scouting, thinking about little ways that you can improve your chances, I think are very, very important. And now that the NFL has a massive pool of, of data that it's sharing with all the teams, I think if you're not prepared to take advantage of that, you're, you know.

• 49:15Shane Parrish?

  So what does analytics look like inside of an NFL team now? Do you know, like, what your offensive coordinator is prone to call in certain situations of a game? And is that information available in real time on the sidelines? Because it seems like there's like an anti-technology bent on the sidelines.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Well, I, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say there's anti-technology, just the problem in game. Things are happening so fast. I mean, you can certainly make halftime adjustments and other, and other things. But I, I think it's more in how you prepared. And, you know, one of the things to me is that if we're able to self scout and pick up your tendencies, well, then probably means that the other teams can as well. And, and it's just.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  You know, I, I think because there's much more information available now, even down to, you know how fast exactly the guys are running on field. So when you say, huh, I wonder if their, their corner, everybody's saying has lost a step or has a hamstring. Well,

• 50:25Shane Parrish?

  You can actually tell.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Can tell, right? What's the reaction time? How's everything going? And, and the teams and the athletes are so remarkable now that I think just any little, any little advantage that you can gain is, you know, is helpful.

• 50:42Shane Parrish?

  So if all, do all teams have the same information? Do they all use it in the same way? Like where's the edge in terms of analytics and who does analytics really well versus like who's still learning?

• 50:54Speaker 00

  You know, again, I, I would never opine about somebody else's organization. I think we're very fortunate in Pittsburgh. You know, we're sitting next to Carnegie Mellon University, which is one of the top in the world for analytics, machine learning, AI. And so the person who runs our analytics division is from Carnegie Mellon and, you know, we have tremendous resources there. And

• 51:21Shane Parrish?

  Is that the future of sports? And are those algorithms or sort of insights proprietary now more than they used to be?

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think so. And I think that it really is a blend of art and science though, because, you know, you, you still have to be able to think about how, again, human beings are going to function and leverage situations. And you're going to have to, you know, I, I think the highest and best outcomes are where you use the information and the technology, but you're able to interpret it and apply it instead of just saying

• 52:01Shane Parrish?

  To inform your decision.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. And, and I think, I mean, certainly you look at baseball, it has become an arms race. And for the teams a number of years ago that rejected it and say, we're not doing that. Well, you know, it's tough to be playing in October when, when you don't have the right amount of information. And certainly, baseball is easier to apply analytics because you have a lot of one-on-one matchups.

• 52:29Shane Parrish?

  Individual.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Exactly. So it's, so it's easier to apply. But football's come a long way.

• 52:33Shane Parrish?

  Do you think we'll ever see like a

• 52:37Shane Parrish?

  An AI version of an offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator?

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean.

• 52:44Shane Parrish?

  Just from calling plays, not from coaching perspective, but it's like this play, this, we know what's going on on the field. We have real time data where.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  That would not surprise me. I mean, or, or at least, you know, like Jarvis in Iron Man, right? Like, here's what you should do. I mean, that, that to me is not far fetched at all.

• 53:03Shane Parrish?

  How far away do you think we would be from that?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  That's an interesting question because I always find that technology usually, usually happens slower than you think and then suddenly. Because if, if, if somebody used it and it worked, it would be like, nobody's wearing headsets and able to communicate upstairs and then all of a sudden, one person does and that's an unfair advantage. So I would be completely guessing, but I, I think over the next five to 10 years, you're going to see remarkable advancements, you know, across the board in, in artificial intelligence. So.

• 53:44Shane Parrish?

  We had a point where we're using analytics to adjust players' practice routines in the sense of like, this player worked really hard. We need to give them more of a rest. This player can work harder. They can go like more reps. Like, how are we using that to inform like the individual players outside of games?

• 54:01Speaker 00

  I'm not sure we're quite there yet. There are tests where, you know, the guys, you spit in a cup essentially, and it says, look, you're, you're low on X, Y, and Z. You should hydrate or you should. So I know there are clubs using some things like that. I'm not aware yet of using that level of granularity at practice, but.

• 54:27Shane Parrish?

  Do you think that's where we're going then? Or will it always just be this element of?

• 54:33Speaker 00

  I think in the foreseeable future, it will be a tool in the toolbox, but not, you know.

• 54:38Shane Parrish?

  The tool.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't, but look, like anything else, but sports is a great imitator. So if somebody, you know, employed those types of things and won the Super Bowl or won the World Series, you can, you can bet that people are going to emulate it.

• 54:55Shane Parrish?

  What's the difference between, without getting into specifics, but the teams that are perennially good in a salary cap era, which is hard and teams that sort of like build up, they have one or two years of success and then they fall off the clip. Is that all salary cap management or is it?

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Man, I, my own personal opinion is it's a number of things. Again, back to that word of culture. Um, you know, do you have athletes that want to play for you and want to play in that city? So that when you're talking about second contracts and people you want to keep.

• 55:27Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  You know, can you make a compelling case? Certainly salary cap management is important. I think continuity is huge.

• 55:35Shane Parrish?

  In coaching staff and.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, look, there are times changes need to be made, but I'm, I'm often,

• 55:45Speaker 00

  find it fascinating and remarkable how quickly, you know, um, coaches and coaching staffs get, get changed out. Um, you know, the Steelers have had three coaches since I've been alive.

• 55:59Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  And, you know, that, that's, that's an extreme, obviously, but I think.

• 56:05Shane Parrish?

  How are Tomlin and who's the?

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Chuck Knoll, obviously.

• 56:07Shane Parrish?

  Chuck Knoll, yeah.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Hall of Fame Chuck Knoll. Uh, but you know, I think that, um, you look at the teams over the past 10, 20, 25 years that are constantly competing and in the conversation in the playoffs every year and, and relevant. There's, you know, you can't say that that's, that that's blind luck, not, not over that amount of time. So then you kind of look at what those organizations do differently, uh, to keep themselves in, in that equation.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  And then there's other teams that just seem to struggle, uh,

• 56:47Shane Parrish?

  Perennially.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Year in, year out. And, and, you know, those teams maybe have to ask themselves a different set of questions.

• 56:54Shane Parrish?

  So let's go back to legendary for a second. You end. Well, why did you end up selling? And what year was that 20?

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Be three years ago this March. So yeah, 2016. Well, I think, I think a couple of things, you know, I had been in the business for long enough that it was, you know, I think it was time for me personally to to, to think about something else. And look, at the end of the day, you know, my principal job was to make sure that I delivered for our shareholders. And, you know, fortunately that happened in this case. And we had, you know, the opportunity to not only be bought by a company, this is Wanda, a big company in China.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  But with some of the expansion and some of the opportunity in China as a growth business, you know, it was maybe the right, the right partner and direction to take.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  So, you know, and, and some of the lessons learned or you know, the things that got me interested, like I mentioned legendary analytics. That sort of experience led me to Talco, which is my, you know, the holding company that I have now and what we're up to.

• 58:14Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about that because you clearly see an opportunity that's not.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. The idea, the idea from Talco kind of sprang from that experience with legendary analytics. And again, taking something that was kind of a staid business model. But with large numbers and applying technology and, and getting a pretty good result. So the thesis is basically it's a holding company. It's not a fund or a, you know, a two and 20 model. It's an operating company. And in the middle of it is Tolco Labs, in which we have a bunch of incredibly talented folks in machine learning and AI and data science.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  And we'll look to buy companies that are in sort of large, but maybe sleepy spaces, and reimagine the way they do business, employing technology and hopefully getting a, you know, a pretty big result.

• 59:11Shane Parrish?

  Can you give me an example of what you're doing?

• 59:14Speaker 00

  Uh, so there's a, there's a company, one of the companies that we own is called Figs, and it was started by these two brilliant women. And they basically reinvented the medical wear, the scrub and, and other sort of clothing adjacent to that. And, you know, antimicrobial, anti-stained, did all these innovative things, made it fashionable and breathable. And, and so when I first started to get to know the company, when I would talk to doctors and nurses and people in the medical space, they were passionate about it and had a huge cult following.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  And then what we talked about is, you know, building an online and mobile platform in which you're selling directly to healthcare professionals. And they have, you know, were just named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies and most innovative. And they're just doing, you know, a remarkable job. And, you know, part of our job i- is to, you know, partner with people like this who have deep domain expertise, to provide the capital and the technical wherewithal to help them, you know, really propel themselves for, uh, forward.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  And, um, you know, so it's, it's going, it's going really well and it's a different set of challenges and I, you know, I really enjoy it because every day you're kind of looking at new businesses and new markets and saying, you know, how can we?

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Kind of employ what we've learned or technology that we have. And it's kind of cool, too, to just to have to have the, you know, not the folks in the lab always say to me like, we're not writing white papers. Right. Like, we've come up with a solution. And in two weeks, we get to see, see if it works and see the results. So that's, that's kind of exciting.

• 1:01:17Shane Parrish?

  How do you make these decisions on what companies to buy? I imagine you're saying no to yourself a lot more than you're saying yes. What are the differences between like, how, walk me through that process?

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Well, for us, I think it's, first of all, is there enough there there in terms of scale and size? Right. Because we're not, again, it's not a venture fund. So we're not placing small bets. We're doing concentrated number of companies and trying to, trying to make sure that we have the right size and scale. That's appropriate to kind of put your shoulder behind. And then the second thing is, you know, you've got to find the sweet spot with the management teams that, again, have are experts in their space, but embrace change. Because if you find experts in the space, but they say, well, you know, I would certainly love a check from you, but I don't know about this new thing that you want to do.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  That's probably not going to turn out very well. And then I think it's a big enough category and being able to see. I always try to ask myself, if you execute, does it matter? Is there enough sort of there there? And is there enough, you know, upside and all those other things? And so, you know, and then the last thing that we aspire to and that we talk about is causing outcome. So rather than just saying, look, we're going to make some choices and hopefully it works out. We really try to make sure that if we can't have a clear path to how we think we can help cause the outcome, then, you know, it's not for us either. So we try to be pretty focused.

• 1:02:57Shane Parrish?

  Like, how do you determine, I guess is a better way to phrase this? Like, you're giving somebody a check, it's enough money for them to retire. How do you align the incentives after that point?

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  Well, in a lot of cases, well, there's a couple of things. We like it when the management team still has enough skin in the game that it's not, hey, we just bought your company. You don't own any shares anymore and you're just getting a paycheck and running out the clock. That's not a great situation. So what we like to do is situations that we can partner with companies, buy them or large majority or, you know, a large stake, you know, buying out previous investors or shareholders if there are any, certainly allowing them to take some money off the table where appropriate, but then providing growth capital for the

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  company. So that's why, you know, I don't think we're going to end up with 40 companies because it's each, each case is pretty unique and you want to make sure that you can, you can check those boxes.

• 1:04:01Shane Parrish?

  Are you having fun?

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  I am. I mean, look, it's, it's, it's, as I, as I get older, one of the things I constantly ask myself is, is each day, when you go to bed every night and you're like, well, that day's over, did you spend the day the way you wanted to? You know, are you, are you still intellectually curious? Are you still, you know, excited about what you're doing every day? And unless somebody's invented something I'm not aware of, the one thing that we can't make anymore of is time. So I try to be as thoughtful as I can about, you know, how I spend my time and, you know, and trying to do everything I can do at this

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  point. I find myself thinking a lot about like the most elemental things, right? You start thinking about your health and wellbeing and okay, what am I doing? You know, if, if your workouts are part of your lifestyle versus, oh, I better jump on the tread because I've had a bad week of eating or something, you know, again, sleep hygiene, nutrition, and then certainly spending time with your family and friends and, you know, and I think, I am certainly an optimist at heart and one of the luckiest human beings walking the planet and so.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  You know, I always believe in the future. I do think we've come through and are in the middle right now of a time that seems like there's a lot of chaos and uncertainty. And one of the things that I try to think a lot about is if there's someone that is important to you, whether it's a family member, whether it's someone that's been a mentor or just somebody that you like, take the time to express that and tell them how important they are to you. And, and then I just, I think to myself a lot about, all you can ever do is if at the end of the day, you say to yourself, look, today at least, I did the best that

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  I could. And the things that I believe in, like that I really believe in, not just, you know, I wrote down on some list that people are going to see, am I living towards that or applying that? And, you know, trying to make your way through it.

• 1:06:25Shane Parrish?

  You have access to some of the best resources in the world when it comes to nutrition and sleep and health. What, what have you learned that you wish more people would know? Or what really makes a difference for you?

• 1:06:37Speaker 00

  Well, there's a couple of, you know, there's a book by Matthew Walker called Why We Sleep that had a pretty profound impact on me. And I've been fortunate enough to get to know Matthew a little bit. Brilliant guy. What I'm trying to do is again, find the difference between the easy fad thing, or if somebody tells you like, oh, if you lay down on this electrical field, you know, versus things that are tried and true and communities and so forth, where, you know, the stakes are pretty high and they've had some results with things. But, you know, I just think there are so many random things

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  that can happen to you. And, you know, I have, certainly we all do have friends and family or people that we know that something that's happened to them, that event is so impactful that their whole life is marked before that incident and after that incident. You know, last year on the Steelers, our linebacker, Ryan Shazier, who I'm very close, he's a remarkable young man. One tackle and one play and you know, he uh, he went down and you could tell right away that it was, that it was bad. And for three weeks of watching him every day at the hospital,

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  there didn't look like there was a lot of hope that he would ever walk again. And through his hard work and commitment, thankfully, he's, you know, he's, he's done that. I read, I'm, I'm not as, as good at it as I wish I was, but I read a lot of Stoicism because it, it rings true to me. I read the words and I'm like, you know, I actually think that's, that's right and true. Um, all you have are your own reasoned choices and those types of things. Try to take as much of emotion out of this I can, which I, I'm clearly not far from perfect at. But um, I just, I think in life, I've had the opportunity to experience

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  and do things that are beyond my wildest dreams. And I just think at the end of the day, a lot of it boils down to, you know, your relationships and how you, what kind of a friend are you? What kind of a, you know, a parent are you? What kind of a, and you know, you, you want to be able to answer to yourself that you've, you've done as good as you can do on those fronts.

• 1:09:09Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, that's amazing. One of the ways that we connected a couple of years ago was your intellectual sort of like curiosity and landing on Burnham Street and we've gotten to know each other a bit since then. Was it always that way? Or is that something that developed in you after school?

• 1:09:24Speaker 00

  No, I have to say that um, one of the things that I, I know made a big difference for me, and I constantly talk to my, to my little guys about this is reading. Um, you know, and ever since I was a kid, because you know, we didn't have a lot, but you could always lose yourself in a book and you know, be transported to wherever, whether it was, you know, reading Lord of the Rings for the first time or You know, reading about science or history. And so I've, I've always been a pretty voracious

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  reader across a lot of topics. And I just am so fascinated by the way the world works that, you know, I try, it's just involuntary. It's not even something that I, you know, set out to do. It's just kind of the way I'm wired.

• 1:10:21Shane Parrish?

  How do you, as a parent, like, what do you actively do to try to instill that in your kids? You have two twins, right?

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  I do. Yeah, I have twin boys. I would say a couple of things that the first is to encourage them to be intellectually curious and to wonder how things work and ask questions and to read and so forth. And then, you know, you also kind of balance that also. We talk a ton about character and the things and habits that will carry through. Like, we all do little things each day, and those little things add up to who we are. So I

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  talk to them a lot about that. And it's one of the, I've said to a couple of friends that are recently new parents, that it's the one experience I've had that was undersold. And, you know, has just been the greatest experience of my life.

• 1:11:25Shane Parrish?

  I would agree with that. I think that's probably a great place to end this conversation. It was fascinating chatting with you.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 1:11:37Shane Parrish?

  Hey, guys. This is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes at farnamstreetblog.com/podcast. That's F A R N A M S T R E E T B L O G dot com slash podcast. You can also find information there on how to get a transcript. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to farnhamstreetblog.com/newsletter. This is all the good stuff I've found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends, books I'm reading, and so much more. Thank you for listening.