#314: Cindy Eckert (formerly Whitehead) — How to Sell Your Company For One Billion Dollars

Cindy Eckert (formerly Whitehead) (@cindypinkceo https://twitter.com/cindypinkceo/) is an entrepreneur with 1.5 billion dollars in exits who currently serves as the founder and CEO of The Pink Ceiling http://www.thepinkceiling.com/, an investment firm and consulting enterprise nicknamed the Pinkubator with a mission to invest in, launch, and build other women-led or focused businesses. She believes that access to good advice alone is not enough to change the ratio of men to women in business, and that is why she personally invested more than 15 million dollars in 2017 alone to support the development of nine portfolio companies. I should mention right off the bat that if you're a guy, don't let this bio turn you off in any way — in the sense that I wanted to have Cindy on the show because she is a good CEO and entrepreneur, very much irrespective of gender. The negotiating techniques, the approaches to deal-making, everything that we talk about applies to entrepreneurs, period, full stop. Earlier in her career, Cindy was the founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, home of Addyi http://www.addyi.com/, the first and only FDA-approved treatment for low sexual desire disorder in women, which was sold for one billion dollars and then reacquired in a crazy story with incredible terms that we will discuss in this conversation. Please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Cindy Eckert! This podcast is brought to you by Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I've been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand. Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/ is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. Again, that's onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM. This episode is also brought to you by LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/. I've used this service for many of my businesses, as have quite a few of the icons on this podcast — such as Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, we're just seeing appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job each and every episode to deconstruct world-class performers from different fields, to tease out the habits, routines, life lessons, negotiating techniques, favorite books, whatever it might be, that I think is tactical, practical, that you can apply to your own life. And my guest this episode is Cindy Whitehead, at Cindy Pink CEO on Twitter, if you want to say hello. She is an entrepreneur with $1.5 billion in exits, who currently serves as the founder and CEO of The Pink Ceiling, an investment firm and consulting enterprise nicknamed a Pinkubator, with a mission to mentor, invest

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  in, launch, and build other women-led or focused businesses. She believes that access to good advice alone is not enough to change the ratio of men to women in business. And that is why she has personally invested more than $15 million in 2017 alone to support the development of nine portfolio companies. I should mention, just right off the bat, that If you're a guy, don't let that bio turn you off in any way, in the sense that I wanted to have Cindy on the show because she is a good CEO and entrepreneur, period, very much regardless or irrespective of gender. And the negotiating techniques, the approaches to deal making, everything that we talk about applies to entrepreneurs, period, full stop,

• 2:50Tim Ferriss?

  regardless of their genitalia. So, so I'll throw that out there because I really do think that good advice is good advice, end of story. Now Cindy is, before that, also the founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, home of ADDY, that's A-D-D-Y-I, the first and only FDA-approved treatment for a low sexual desire disorder in women, which was sold for one billion and then re-acquired in a crazy story with incredible terms that we will talk about in this conversation. So with all of that preamble, and without further ado, as I always say, please enjoy this very wide-ranging and what I found to be a very enjoyable conversation with Cindy Whitehead.

• 3:34Tim Ferriss?

  Cindy, welcome to the show.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 3:36Tim Ferriss?

  I am very excited to dig in, and I thought we could start in media arrests, as they say in novels, where you start right in the middle of the action. So we're gonna bounce all over the place, as I always do. GPMorgan Healthcare Conference, I've heard some sort of murmurs about stories and getting attention, or people to focus. Could you please describe for folks what happened?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Awesome. So biggest conference in all of healthcare. I get invited in, I have eight minutes do or die. So proud of this opportunity. I get in front of the room, you can imagine, here's me in hot pink, head to toe, I start to talk about women and sex, and the whole room starts to giggle. I can feel this giggle going off, you know, across the crowd, and I'm panicking, like watching the clock. Countdown, so I can remember reaching to my laptop fast, running as fast as I can to a slide that was just brain scan studies. Studies of women with this condition versus women without. Where in black and white, we could see there's a biological basis to women's lack of desire for sex. So I turned, I put the slide up, I turned and pointed, long enough for it to be uncomfortable for everybody.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I went silent. And when I did that, I said, are you looking at what I'm looking at? Because I'm here, I'm just here to talk about the biology of sex for women. It was an important lesson for me of what I was going to have to do to make people focus.

• 4:56Tim Ferriss?

  So you let the silence do the work.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was uncomfortable. I figured it was long enough for it to be uncomfortable for me, which was fair trade for them having made me really uncomfortable as they started giggling and wouldn't pay attention to me.

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  Silence, yeah. It's, uh, it's so powerful. It's so, so powerful. And I remember advice I was given at one point, well, I was given that advice first by someone named Cal Fussman, his master interviewer, when he was going over some transcripts from this podcast in the early days. And he's like, no, you're too fast. Like you don't leave gaps. Uh, and you don't have to save people. Like let the silence do the work. So I just, I love that story. And so, speaking of letting the silence do the work, I'm going to go silent for a bit because I want to ask you, uh, two questions that might take a few minutes to answer. But I'm going to start with a short one. What is your favorite business and why?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Hmm. My favorite business of all is Wegmans, which if anybody's from the Northeast, they appreciate this is a grocery store. How can you get excited about a grocery store? I'm excited because it's from my birthplace, Rochester, and I went there every Sunday as a little girl. Here's why I loved it. Because of the incredible loyalty that they instilled. How do you get folks that are cashiers, at the checkout line, with jobs that may seem relatively unexciting, to show up every day with unbridled enthusiasm for what they do? So it opened years later. I moved my whole life, uh, and it opened in the DC area. And I went the first day that Wegmans opened in DC and I walked up and all of their employees

• 6:32Speaker 01

  were standing outside, holding their hands above their head like a W. Cause they have a Wegmans pride, the Wegmans way. And I gotta tell you, that first day, anybody in the entire DC metro area who'd ever been to a Wegmans showed up and stood in line to walk through this store. I love them for being a private, family-held business that has that kind of loyalty and longevity of employees.

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  How do they instill that? I mean, is it filtering for the right employees who are prone to that to begin with? Is it something else? I mean, how do they develop?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I think it is oh so simple. I think it is their basic appreciation for the people who show up and work for them every day. And they reward them through the right incentives, they reward them through the best benefits, they help develop them, they encourage them when they lose weight. I mean, there are all of these incentives to their employees that make them truly feel that appreciation from their employer and also I think, you know, be proud to work there. They go home and have pride in saying who they work for.

• 7:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  So I started studying businesses I loved at a very young age.

• 7:37Tim Ferriss?

  I had a conversation with Frank Blake, former CEO of Home Depot, right here. He's sitting where you are. And they developed this orange apron cult, as it was sometimes referred to, and the dedication that some of these employees showed was incredible. And his point was, you know, one of the systems they instilled was positive reinforcement by sharing stories on a very regular scheduled basis of kind of standout customer service.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 8:06Tim Ferriss?

  And, yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I have to tell you, when I sold my first business, Slate, I sold it to a group that was private equity-backed, and I ran into one of those guys, one of the bankers, years later, and he said, "That group you had, they were almost cult-like." And I think he said it with sort of one eyebrow raised, like, hmm. And I said, "Why, thank you." That's the greatest compliment I've ever received. So, yeah.

• 8:32Tim Ferriss?

  You mean in the Apple way, not the David Koresh way?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:35Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. I'll take it. So the next question, which will seem odd to people listening, but will soon make more sense, is, it's not really a question, or am I? I'll be polite, make it a question.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:50Tim Ferriss?

  Could you please give me your three-minute commercial?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 8:54Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me about yourself, soup to nuts.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  All right. Moved my entire childhood, so every year from 4th to 12th grade, I was in a different school, so I was the perpetual new kid. I think what that did is perfect my ability to stand on the outside of the room and look in, and really listen, understand motivations, understand sort of the dynamic, which served me well later in life. At the time, I went kicking and screaming. I have a love that started very young in life for what makes businesses great. So as I went through college, I was fortunate to have a great business professor who really cultivated that in me. So I'd have to report to her every week what my favorite business was, why, what were they doing differently? And along that way, made a unilateral decision that I was going to go work for Merck.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  So she thought I should probably broaden my options, it wasn't such a slam dunk. I told her, no, I'm going to work for Merck. They weren't hiring when I got out of school, but eight months later, they were, and I got the job. Called her up, said, I got that job that you said I might not. And she said, great, we're going out to dinner and you're buying. So, went to work for Merck, started in pharma because it was Fortune's most admired company. That's why I went there. Wanted to learn from the best. I thought I would actually take it elsewhere and apply it. Didn't really think I was going to be so fascinated with the science, fell in love with the science and the innovation, what it could mean in people's lives. Loved what pharma had the capacity to do, hated how they got it done in the bigger companies.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So I made the leap, went smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, until I ultimately was maybe crazy enough to start it for myself. Built two businesses, both in sexual health. People say, why? I say, Irish Catholic, of course. So, built a business late with the only long-acting testosterone for men. And that made me on the path of watching this emergent science for women. When the drug, when this drug was put on the shelf by the company that invented it, I made a decision to sell that off and take it on, and got the only ever drug approved for sexual desire in women. Sold that business, and now, as a pass-through, do nothing but spend my time reaching my hand back and trying to get female founders there to my kind of outcomes faster than I got there myself.

• 11:06Tim Ferriss?

  That was really good.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  How many minutes?

• 11:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I wasn't watching the time. I wasn't watching the time, but if I had to use my spider sense.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Your listeners will know.

• 11:12Tim Ferriss?

  If I'd used my spider sense, I think that was really, really close. So I'm very impressed. And for people who are wondering, what the hell is Tim doing? This is the oddest interview I've ever heard him attempt to give. It is because. Why? What do the last two questions have in common? Why did I ask those two questions?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  You asked those two questions because I love to ask those questions of everybody I interview because I think that if you'll just be quiet and listen, which you heard a little bit from my background, people will tell you a lot about themselves and what their motivations are. So that was always probably my initial question in interviewing and figuring out from people what they would tell me about themselves.

• 11:50Tim Ferriss?

  What would you look for? Or what were, were there any particular sort of checkered flags meaning fantastic or red flags meaning hmm, maybe not a good person to pick?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  For, for me, you know, it was discomfort with change, the lack of adaptability. Because in my environments, they were not the same structure that they might have been coming from. They were going to have to be nimble, have to move quickly to keep pace. I always laid my cards on the table at the end of interviews and said, here's who we are, here's this culture. We both should lay our cards on the table because six months from now, I don't want us to be unhappy with each other. So I think I'm always listening for those cues that would indicate a fit for my environment. And, and in it, I think I was finding the people with a love of businesses. I often ask that question. What is the business that you most admire? Because they've got to have that passion.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  I think particularly in small and startup, you have to have a real love affair with what it is that makes things tick.

• 12:50Tim Ferriss?

  What did you study in undergrad?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Business.

• 12:54Tim Ferriss?

  Business.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  What did your business professor do? Besides have you report back each week on your favorite business of the week?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  You know, I think she just took a special interest. I think she saw something there and cultivated it so that she was pushing me. So not only did she push me with the assignment that was above and beyond what she was asking of everybody else, but I think she also tortured me a little bit with the doubt to see if I would push through it. You know, when I said to her, I'm gonna go work for Merck, she's like, well, I don't know. Your science grades aren't that good. I mean, she really sort of pushed back, like it wasn't such a sure thing. So she was constantly setting the bar for me.

• 13:38Tim Ferriss?

  So did she, now, I don't know if you had a chance to ask her, but was she, did she genuinely think that you would have trouble getting the job, or was it a Yoda trick to get you to stubbornly then pursue, pursue it twice as hard?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  A hundred percent a stubborn trick. And I think she knew that I have sort of a healthy chip on my shoulder of proving it. So she was definitely pushing right at that button of, you know, go out there and prove it. So yeah, very clever.

• 14:10Tim Ferriss?

  So how does one start a pharma company without a pharma background?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Well, pharma background in that I'd been in the industry for a long time. So had the right, you know, contacts.

• 14:23Tim Ferriss?

  Industry experience.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  I had the industry experience.

• 14:25Tim Ferriss?

  You're right. I didn't word that very well. Without the-

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Scientific background.

• 14:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Surround yourself with an extraordinary scientific team. I feel like I've learned at the hands of some of the best in science. And I think I've always brought a lens to it of, you know, what would work in the market. We were sort of a magical pairing, because many times in science, you can get enamored in the lab with things and not look outside to what's really gonna work in the mainstream. So it was, it was a lot about having just a great team.

• 14:52Tim Ferriss?

  How did you pick?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  And I can play a doctor on TV now.

• 14:55Tim Ferriss?

  You can?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Or I at least think I can.

• 14:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. Or via people's earbuds that they may have.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 15:06Tim Ferriss?

  How did you end up choosing the, you said, long-acting?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Testosterone.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  So, paint a picture for us.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:14Tim Ferriss?

  Because we can certainly get into testosterone and like HPTA and all this fun stuff. But I don't want to bore some segment of my population of listeners to death, although I'm fascinated by it. So we probably will get into it. But the, how did you end up choosing that, right? So you have, you want to start, did it start with finding the opportunity and then I want to start a company? Or did you decide I want to start a company now, let me try to find?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  That, that was it. Yep, I wanted to start my own company. So I felt like I had a, you know, hypothesis that.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  And if you'll let me ask, how old were you at the time? Or where were you in time?

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Shouldn't I know that? I was in my early 30s at the time. When I started it. And I had had one sort of career experience that was very informative. So I'd been at a company that was acquired and this, they had been gobbled up by somebody who'd gobbled up a lot. And then they had to integrate them and I got to be on that team. So I got this sort of put together of the perfect company. That was a great career moment for me. And then I got to go apply it and in doing my own. And the reason I did it is that, for that same reason, I love pharma for what it can do. At 3:00 AM in the morning, if you're sick, you love pharma. In the light of day, you probably don't. And it's because it is an industry that has a certain reputation. I thought there was a way to do it better.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And I had the hypothesis that here I am, driven and succeeding in these environments, but totally uninspired. There have to be other people like me. What if I got them together, gave them permission to do it on their own terms? And that was Slate. I named my company Slate on purpose, Clean Slate. We were going to do it, we were going to do it our way. And it was to go out and find a diamond in the rough, an asset that had been overlooked. I loved the category. I love sexual medicine. I'm a card-carrying member of the Sexual Medicine Society. Who knew there was that? There is. Makes me popular at cocktail parties. I'd like whip it out. No, I, it, there really is a society. And it's because like, actually, our understanding there has really come much more recently.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Like, it's a relatively new field and yet we're learning such interesting things. And it's in conditions that. You know, you might not lose your life from them, but you will lose your life as you know it when you're affected by these dysfunctions. So found this inventor who had the only FDA-approved long-acting testosterone. And interestingly-

• 17:34Tim Ferriss?

  How do you find someone like that? Because you would think that in a world of sort of pharma discovery that the bones would have been picked clean.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, so this is a great story. So a scientist that I knew from a previous company was quoted in an article. This gentleman reached out to him. He said, "I don't really, I don't know anything about this space, but I know somebody who's really interested in it."

• 17:59Tim Ferriss?

  So the inventor was looking for a way to commercialize?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Was a very fortuitous sort of introduction and couldn't believe that this had been overlooked. The reason it had been overlooked is that almost all of this product was being used off-label, meaning that not for its indication, it was being used interestingly in women. So my journey started very early in this use for libido.

• 18:21Tim Ferriss?

  What's the compound?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  It was testosterone.

• 18:23Tim Ferriss?

  What type of testosterone?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And it was a pellet. So it was put in long-acting, put under the surface of the skin, released testosterone over a sort of four to six-month window. Yeah, so here's me looking at it going, "Hmm." First of all, it should be used by urologists in men. I did this crossover analysis, only one urologist in the country was using it. So I thought this would be a great business to build. And frankly, the delivery system is better than what's available on the market today if I thought of something that was custom-made for men. They have to remember, I have big brothers, I'm used to being around guys, you know, they can be sitting on the beach burning bright red and they still won't put sunscreen on or rub something on, and the most common application for testosterone at the time were gels.

• 19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Gel, right.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  So this was like, "Hey, can you remember to show up three times a year to the doctor?"

• 19:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'm like, "Sure, I can do that."

• 19:13Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so the inventor reaches out to your friend, the scientist, who says, "I can't help you, but maybe my friend can."

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:21Tim Ferriss?

  And that's how it starts. And the, so the pellet, how do they, now I'm thinking of, for instance, like Tremblan, which is used in cattle in some cases, also popular with some powerlifters.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:31Tim Ferriss?

  And so on, who do not use it in pellet form, but how is it administered? Or how is it put into the patient?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So put in, in an in-office procedure. At the end of it, it requires a Band-Aid. So there's a device, a trocar, you go just under the surface of the skin, set it underneath the skin, put a Band-Aid on, and it was, yeah. And for urologists who are surgeons, this, you know, in-office procedure was very simple. And the great news is it was half the price of anything on the market. So everybody was winning in this equation.

• 20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Why was it half the price? Just because of the...

• 20:04Speaker 01

  On purpose, for me.

• 20:07Tim Ferriss?

  Because you set the pricing.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 20:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now, was it less costly because you're comparing it to other modes of administration, which require more visits? Hence, it's not, no.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Mm-mm.

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  It was just the market positioning?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Just the cost of drug, yeah, yeah.

• 20:22Tim Ferriss?

  Fascinating. What was the...

• 20:24Speaker 01

  I have a, I have sort of a belief system around that in pharma, about drug pricing. And so it was important to me to do that. We were making great money, building a great business, and we were doing just fine at that cost.

• 20:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. You don't need a 500 million percent markup.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, and as we may, we may or may not talk about, some people get into a lot of trouble for that.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no question. Rightfully so, yeah.

• 20:51Tim Ferriss?

  What other questions do you like to ask when you're interviewing people? Are there any other questions you find yield, or are worth the effort, that are particularly helpful, or are there approaches to hiring?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  I'm going to go back to silence. Isn't that, I'm going to go back to, I do more listening than asking. I ask the one open-ended question and try to see where they'll take me. Because I think I'm getting a lot of insights into who they are and by doing that. So I don't think there are magical questions. I think there's ways to tease out cultural fit. And that is so important. I care much less about the resume. The quality, you know, everybody wants to come in and impress you. They haven't really hit your doorstep unless they have the cred, I think, to be in there interviewing for the position. So I feel like it's my job to really tease out that cultural fit so that we're both happy with each other.

• 21:41Tim Ferriss?

  So culture can mean a lot of things to

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:44Tim Ferriss?

  to different people. In this particular case, and you mentioned the adaptability.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  Which, in a small startup especially, I mean, you're going to be wearing a lot of hats and those hats make change.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:57Tim Ferriss?

  So you need someone who's adaptable. What else were you looking for? And what did it mean to you?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Six things. So mine are pretty specific looking for. Well, let me say overarching. I'm looking for people who wake up every day and make deliberate choices. It's all choice, right? How you go through life.

• 22:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And mine were, my six were, they had to choose to be an owner. They'd be highly motivated by that ownership. They had to choose to be bold. We were going to make decisions a little differently. They had to choose to be quirky because I needed them to feel that permission to be individual in my environment. Most of them are coming out of environments in which we, we beat like, you know, sameness into people and homogenize the whole group. They had to choose to be learning. That's fundamental to me, even as I invest today. So important to watch what people do to learn every day. Choose to be family because we were going to be a small, tight-knit group. And they had to choose to be appreciative. And I think that that is how you go through life. You know, what is your attitude? Do you sort of marvel at the opportunity you have to make impact?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  So those were my six choices I was looking for.

• 23:00Tim Ferriss?

  How do you avoid false positives? In the sense that if you ask someone, or if you lay out, if you say to them, these are the six values.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Oh, I never, never. Because it doesn't, you're, you're listening to this story that shows, that I think exposes those values. But if you ask somebody that, like, do you choose to be quirky? Uh, sure. I choose, I mean, you know, that's a, you're not going to get, I think, the right response. I think you have to know to your core who you are and who fits. And then I think you have to ask the questions. I will say, there is one other question I do always ask. And I ask, how was the very first way you ever made money?

• 23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I like that. That's a really good one.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And, and if they, they never, if they can't tell me, you know, I put like flyers in the mailboxes in the neighborhood and said, odd jobs, call me. Or if they are like, well, you know, my first job out of college was, they're out.

• 23:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  They, they don't have that sort of mentality that's gonna fit.

• 23:56Tim Ferriss?

  One of, one of my friends, Brian Johnson, who has done a whole host of very impressive things. He was the founder, I don't think he had a co-founder, but let's just say, one of the founders, to be safe, of Braintree, which then sold for a whole lot of money. And when entrepreneurs come to him, because he invests quite a lot now, and they say they want to start something, he'll ask them, is that an itch, or is that, like, is it, is it an itch, or is it a burn?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Mm, that's cool.

• 24:26Tim Ferriss?

  And then he'll take them down that discussion to assess, like, do you really have the stick-to-it-iveness and the stubbornness, and just the, it can't be any other way with me, to actually make it through this, because it's not gonna be all roses and kittens and sunshine.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Wait, can I tell you a quirky story?

• 24:44Tim Ferriss?

  You can absolutely tell me a quirky story.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  This is how it went in an interview.

• 24:48Tim Ferriss?

  After you tell me one quirky story, I would like you to tell me a bold story

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:53Tim Ferriss?

  from your personal experience.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Perfect. Okay, so here's, here's my quirky. If I had asked her this, it wouldn't have come out, but I'm in an interview with a young woman who wants to come sell for me, this testosterone product. Her brother had a particular genetic condition that meant that he didn't go through puberty normally, so they have to have testosterone replacement from a very young age. Nobody was more passionate about our product. She had witnessed what it did for his life, what it did for her family, but she'd never sold. So I was taking a big chance. And look, we are in young, no-sales experience, going to be walking into urology offices, having a pretty sensitive conversation about men's sexual health. And I'm, I'm in the, you know, interview with her, and I'm going, well, you know, I'm just

• 25:38Speaker 01

  kind of worried about, and I didn't so much as get it out, as she looked at me and she said, balls.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  I said, "You're hired." So, there was no doubt, a recognition for me, that this girl was quirky, that she was not gonna have fear in the office. Maybe that's bold. I don't know if it's bold or quirky. I'm gonna call it both.

• 25:59Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's both.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  But it ultimately became her nickname in the office. We called her Duck Balls.

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  Duck Balls?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz we had a whole nother duck story, but we all have nicknames.

• 26:08Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, wait, wait. Alright. I'll take the bait. What's the duck?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Oh, we called her Ducky cuz she was always very, very calm on the surface, but like going like this a million miles an hour underneath, yeah.

• 26:17Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna come back to the bold story.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, first, I should just, as a public service announcement, say to those people out there who do not have common sense, don't just jump up and shout "Balls" in every job interview because you think that's gonna show how bold you are.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 26:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so, and if you do, and you don't get hired, shame on you. But, okay. In the course of doing some research, I believe, I don't think I'm making this up, that you give everybody nicknames, or a lot of your employees nicknames. Why is that?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  It is my quirk. I've had it my whole life. So, I know my mother by so many different names that I think people who don't know who I'm referring to half of the time, that have known us for years. You know, I did it because it, we loved to storytell. We sit around the lunch table. We have a discipline of having lunch together every single day. And that was an effort to not, you know, no death by meeting, how would we all be on the same page, and still create this sort of family spirit. And people get to telling stories, and of course, it's the one that you wish you hadn't told that ultimately arrives at your nickname. But the beauty of that is, you know, we have a whole ceremony. A caricature, you get a nickname, and it's basically handed over at the lunch table, and you will never be known by your real name again.

• 27:42Tim Ferriss?

  Just a second. So, this is like the nighting?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It is.

• 27:45Tim Ferriss?

  With, by nickname. And at what point does this happen? Is it like your first week on the job, and it's like, alright, on Friday, you're gonna be...

• 27:51Speaker 01

  No, we need a little more time than that, but probably a month in, it happens. You know, the caricature goes on the wall, your name is, is sort of never to be heard again, other than your nickname. And the reason I did it is that, you know, it was important to me that I was giving permission. In my environment, it's permission to be yourself.

• 28:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  To sort of show who that, who that was. And especially when you're building companies where a lot of your people are outside of the main office, or salespeople or other. It was a way for us to get to know one another. There felt like, oh, I get it. Like, I know who you are, I've heard your story. And, and I think it created this culture of locked arms, us against the world. We knew all each other's quirks.

• 28:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So, yeah, weird habit, but, but one that stays to today.

• 28:34Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, all right, so i- if I may, I'm gonna, all right, this is gonna lead somewhere, but, you know, I'm a little sleep deprived and on lots of caffeine, so I'm just gonna roll with it. So a friend of mine told me a joke recently. And I'm not gonna give the whole joke, it's kinda long, but this, this tourist goes to Scotland, he's sitting in a bar, he's hanging out, and there's this old guy in the corner, and he starts like yelling at this tourist every couple of minutes, and he'd be like, "Hey, laddie, you see that Pierre out there?" You know, and he'd be like, "I built it with me own hands, but they call me, you know, Scotty the Pimpled?" "No." And he keeps doing this, and this guy's like, "What the hell?" And it goes on and on and on, and then he goes, he goes, "But laddie, and then, I fuck one grot, what do they call me?"

• 29:19Tim Ferriss?

  So, the point being, do people have the ability to veto their nickname?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. Who gets to request their own nickname? That never works.

• 29:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's true, that's not gonna work. Any other, just to give us some examples, you have Duck Balls.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I do.

• 29:35Tim Ferriss?

  What are some other examples?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Oh, I have a guy named Spoon, which was born out of a story of this incredible bromance between him and another guy. They're still great friends to this day, like, they so loved each other in this, in their sales training, that we said that all that was missing was them spooning. But, look, the, the story, I'll give an example of how that story and that nickname stuck with the whole group. Actually, this, this guy got cancer, one of my reps, and a pretty dismal diagnosis. And it was one of the other reps who came forward and said, "We're gonna do a virtual Get Well Spoon card." And so, you know, every single person in the, in the company had the spoon hanging on the end of their nose and sent it out, and it was their kids, and it was their dogs, and it was their family, and I think that it didn't come from me.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Like, that came from somebody else in the organization. And I, that's how, you know, as much as we teased him about it, in that really important moment, he knew we were all looking out for him.

• 30:31Tim Ferriss?

  So this makes me think of a few things and I really would love your thoughts on, of course, everything I'm asking you, otherwise, why would I ask you in the first place? But this type of joking around, I think, is a really, from what I've seen, a really critical ingredient in almost any tight-knit group that does big things.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:57Tim Ferriss?

  And I've also spoken with a controversial guy for a bunch of reasons, but Jim Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, I mean, that story is also a little more complicated than we have time for right now. And he talked about how these like small groups, and my words, not his, but like dick and fart jokes, actually really important for like letting the air out of the tires and to facilitate the endurance that people are going to need to get through the emotional hurdles. So my question is, like duck balls, clearly not the most politically correct nickname, right?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:38Tim Ferriss?

  But it's like, that's why, it's kind of why it works. So my question is, in today's times where, yes, there are horrible things that do happen in offices and terrible misbehavior, at the same time, this type of nicknaming and so on, I think, is really helpful. So how, how do you, what would your advice be to people who are like, yeah, like, I want that, we need that, but they're afraid?

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Well, look, I think, I think you know, it's that laying my cards on the table. When you first came in and interviewed with me, here's who we are. Like, you'll hate us in six months if you don't like this, this, and this. And I think that sort of transparency for me of who we were and what the environment was like, and look, we never were offensive. There was such an underlying affection for one another, but it was this, it gave us permission to have what I'll call constructive irreverence. Irreverence with me too, like, you know, they gave me a nickname and we knew that we could have that comfortably inside our environment and all be on the same page when we walked out into the world. I think it's really important.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I think that, you know, not taking yourself too seriously, I think, being self-deprecating. When I talk to a lot of female founders who are, you know, sort of... Very frustrated by the injustices and this or that. I said, you know, the best piece of advice I could have for you is perfect your sense of humor along the way. Cause when it is something that is offensive, the best way for you to cut through that is with humor.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  It is the best way. And then actually, the person on the other side might tape it step back and think, oh, God, I'm such a, did I just do that?

• 33:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  But you've given them room to sort of ask for forgiveness and that. So I think humor is really important.

• 33:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it also gives, I mean, this is having spent a lot of time in Japan and China also where, you know, in China, like gili is like to lose face, right? So you're giving someone the chance to also kind of recover from a stumble.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:40Tim Ferriss?

  Instead of creating what could be a really longstanding kind of awkwardness and tension.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:46Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you have a nickname?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  I do. It's H B I C.

• 33:50Tim Ferriss?

  Were you allowed to come up with your own nickname?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. And they tell me that the B stands for Betty, but I'm pretty sure they're lying.

• 33:56Tim Ferriss?

  What is it? What does the whole thing stand for?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Head Betty in charge.

• 34:00Tim Ferriss?

  Who gave you that?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  That there is always a secret nicknaming committee. It's never revealed.

• 34:06Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  So, yeah. It just came to the table one day and was written on my caricature.

• 34:14Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just going all over the place, but that's what I do. Uh, what makes, you mentioned, uh, new sales rep.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Tim Ferriss?

  Balls, right?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Tim Ferriss?

  And then henceforth, you will forever be known as Duck Balls. Uh, we're not going to keep going on Duck Balls. I just like saying it. So that's six or seven, but the sales position, really important position.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Really important position. Yep.

• 34:35Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, ah, everything's a whole lot of talk until something gets sold.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:41Tim Ferriss?

  How did you train your, what were some of the techniques or approaches that worked really well for either of your products for selling?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, I think that the best approach was that I gave them permission to fire the D list. Um, that, you know, we, in sales, particularly in pharma sales, you get on this like, you know, every two weeks, this is my routing. I'm going to go out, reach and frequency, reach and frequency. And I think that it, it says to keep chasing your tail in situations in which you're never going to pull it through. So it's rare, I think, to say to a salesperson, you know what? Scope it out. If it's not, move on. Fire them. Wait till they call you back and they're looking for the product. And really focus your energy on those who are raising their hand quickly. So I think that was different, at least in my industry. I don't think that's counterintuitive at all to selling, but it certainly is in sort of the traditional pharma approach.

• 35:35Tim Ferriss?

  How is first contact made? Is it walk in the door, like brush the feet on the carpet? Hi, I'm here to see Dr. So-and-so, or is it an email? Is it, what is, what does the first contact look like with a prospect? Who is the prospect? And what's the right approach? What's the right pitch?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Prospect is the, you know, hit the front line of the office and you're, you're actually dealing right now with the receptionist that you need to talk to to get back to see the physician, the nurse, et cetera. So you're, you're going through all of those different steps to get to them. Our group was helping in an office procedure. I think they were highly valued for what they could, you know, do in the office. They walked in in scrubs. It was different. They sort of walked right to the back of the room. So I think that it was that there, it was them knowing that they're bringing something of value. I think in sales, you can feel like the one that is the pain in the ass that people are saying, you go, all right, you're just taking time in my day.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  And I think that they had enough confidence in what they were bringing that they didn't accept that.

• 36:40Tim Ferriss?

  Right, it wasn't death of a salesman.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  It wasn't. Yeah, exactly. And we had, you know, with that product, we had this incredible opportunity. So what happens today? You get a drug, you go get it filled at a pharmacy. Like you have no, you probably have no idea who the drug manufacturer is. With that product, because it was done in office, we had this incredible opportunity to own that relationship with the physician. So I looked around and I'm like, okay, who in pharma does well with customer service? Oh, nobody. Okay, so what are we going to do? And I took my entire leadership team to Zappos and we learned from them. Because we were constantly looking outside of our industry for who is doing it great. And so here's a story. Our most important guy, sort of the top researcher in the country, is from Harvard. And he did a lot of the early days testosterone research. He did that research on lizards.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  When he would buy our product, we'd, we'd put a plastic lizard in this box. Wouldn't say anything, just drop one in his box. You know, we're, we're trying to see what would happen. I went to visit him several months later. I walk in, I can't get more ivory tower. I'm in Harvard, he's got like this beautiful mahogany bookcase. Second shelf, all of our lizards. It made a difference. It was that quirky. So I think our salespeople were always, they too, just like we listened to each other for what our stories were. They really listened closely and celebrated that in the customer. Not what you think from a pharma company, huh?

• 38:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's not. I mean, what other companies did you borrow from or look at?

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Um, wow. Big and small. I mean, I think that, you know, all of the people who worked for me were students of great businesses. They became sort of, they mimicked that behavior that my business professor probably taught me. At one time, we went to Seattle, love Seattle, I used to live there, went to the Pike Place Market, spent an hour, just went out and learned from those businesses. I mean, we were learning from Beechers, you know, the cheese shop. What did they do exceptionally well? How do they invite people into the experience? So I can't say, Zappos was probably our most formal, go together, learn from them. But constantly like reading or picking those businesses that we loved. That was a constant conversation at the lunch table.

• 38:47Tim Ferriss?

  If you were, this could be, let's just say, freshman year of high school, freshman year of college, teaching an entrepreneurship class.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  But the only way you could teach it is by recommending books and exercises or practices. Are there any particular books that come to mind that you would insist they read? Or any particular practices or exercises that you would have people do?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  I, I would insist that they read Purple Cow.

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  Purple Cow?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:19Tim Ferriss?

  Mr. Godin.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. I would insist that they read it about how do you stand out in a sea of sameness? Cause that's, that's it. I think, you know, in, in terms of sales for sure, or for entrepreneurship, how do you stand out? What is going to be your defining difference? And how do you sort of attract remarkable to you? If you're doing something truly remarkable. I don't think it's one size fits all. That would be my, my ask. And I think that I would tell every entrepreneur, go sell something. If they've never sold anything, they better go, go learn from somebody else. Go be in their sales organization, then take it back to your company.

• 39:53Tim Ferriss?

  So there's a fellow Austinite here named Noah Kagan, who recommends, one of his exercises that he suggests to everybody is the, what does he call it? The Coffee Challenge. And the Coffee Challenge is just getting more comfortable with discomfort by, for the next, say, week, every day you have to go into a coffee shop, doesn't matter if it's Starbucks, doesn't matter if it's Mom and Pop, and asking for 10% off of your coffee when you get to the checkout. And he's the first one to say, like, the outcome does not matter.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:27Tim Ferriss?

  You just have to ask.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Okay, I love that.

• 40:28Tim Ferriss?

  And you can't say you're doing an experiment. You can't make them more comfortable with it. You just have to ask for a discount.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Thank you, Noah. I'm gonna be applying that now.

• 40:36Tim Ferriss?

  And it's really valuable. And I was trading texts with a friend of mine, a younger guy, who is developing his own product. And he's working on the product in startup, but it's not at a point where he's interacted with any customers yet. And I mentioned this to him, and he's like, oh, yeah. Well, it's like, I don't need that because I make myself uncomfortable in all these following ways. And I was like, well, why don't you just do it? Send me a photograph of the receipt, whether you get a discount or not. And he's young enough that we have somewhat of a mentor-mentee relationship. And he's like, that's ridiculous. I don't need to do that. And I was like, well, prove it to me. If you don't need to do it, you're gonna get coffee, or tea, or water. It doesn't matter. Buy something. Ask for it. And he's like, okay, fine. Like, I'll do it just to make you happy. And he sends me a text a few days later. He's like, oh, my God.

• 41:21Tim Ferriss?

  Like, I had to walk around the block, like, psyching myself up to do this. My palms were sweating. And I got 10% off. He's like, but it was so much harder. It brought up all of these emotions I didn't expect to come up. And it's like, that's right. That's why you think it's gonna be easy. Well, it's confirmed.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  This segues nicely to what I promised I would come back to, which is boldness. So what are some events or inflection points for you, maybe? It doesn't have to be, but any stories of you choosing boldness?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Well, I'll tell you, probably my boldest choice was when I made a decision to dispute the FDA. And I was on this course, you know, it's pretty straightforward. You have a pre-specified endpoint. You go out and do the studies. You meet them with statistical significance. You get to an approval, provided there are no showstoppers. And so I had gone out, I'd gotten this drug from the company that first, first developed it. I'd sat down with the FDA. What do I need to do? We'd agreed. I'd gone out, I'd done the work, I'd gotten the outcomes. We got rejected.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  What was the drug?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  This was Addy, which is

• 42:34Tim Ferriss?

  A-D-D-Y?

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Y-I. So at that moment, it could have, it was crippling for my business. Like, we had done the work. We had done all the right things scientifically, and yet we got to a no. And I was faced with turning back to shareholders and saying, this is going to be this many million more dollars. At that time, I was lucky. A woman reached out to me. And, you know, people knew we were on this, on this journey.

• 42:57Tim Ferriss?

  And just for context for people listening, this is your second company.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. Sprout Pharmaceuticals.

• 43:02Tim Ferriss?

  Thought of, or dubbed by the media, the product at least, as Female Viagra.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 43:07Tim Ferriss?

  Just for people who are

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:09Tim Ferriss?

  Trying to keep track. Okay, please continue.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  So, you know, people knew that we were going down this path. And I think that it was so fortuitous that she reached out to me at this moment and said, don't give up. I was on the drug in, in the research trials. I want to share my story with you. She lived outside of DC. I was in DC all the time. I went to have a coffee with her. She walked into the room and, you know, this woman was in charge. Type A, recognized it right away. You know, she walked over, she had her own business. She'd raised two beautiful boys. She had what looked like the perfect marriage by all our normal standards. She said, I have succeeded in every aspect of my life other than this. I'm waiting every day for my husband to ask me for a divorce. And I'm looking at this woman and I thought

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  Because of their sex life, or lack thereof.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. She had no interest. So she had this, she had been diagnosed with this condition.

• 43:57Tim Ferriss?

  What is the condition?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  It's called hypoactive sexual desire disorder. HSDD is the moniker. Same prevalence as ED has for men. So ED is the most common, male sexual dysfunction. HSDD is women's most common. And it's a lack of interest in having sex.

• 44:12Tim Ferriss?

  Is it now?

• 44:15Tim Ferriss?

  Physiologically, how does that manifest?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  So, in order to respond to sexual stimuli, you need the right balance of key chemicals in the brain. Your excitement factors and your inhibition factors need to come into play. For some subset of women, they go out of whack. They become imbalanced. That's how Addy works. It works on the restoration of those key chemicals. And we know it from these brain scan studies. So, a woman who has this condition versus a woman with the normal ebb and flow of desire for sex, put them in an MRI, show them sexual cues, their brains light up actually totally differently.

• 44:49Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. What are the chemicals?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Dopamine and serotonin. So, our excitatory factors, and it has a transient negative effect on serotonin, which is an inhibitor for your sexual response.

• 45:00Tim Ferriss?

  Say that one more time.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Serotonin. So, dopamine's positive, excitement for sex. Serotonin is inhibition, and the drug worked by this transient negative effect. So, a negative effect on a negative for sex equal to pro-sexual effect.

• 45:15Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:16Tim Ferriss?

  So, I'm just trying to think. Okay. So, it would be... Got it. But it was not... Now, we're not talking... So, serotonin has an inhibitory effect.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is why, what do we know of, like, the antidepressants? Their most common side effect is actually killing your sex drive. So, interestingly, as drugs are often discovered, this drug was looked at for its effect on depression. And what you do when you're testing those drugs is you actually have to administer a scale to see, "How much am I killing their sex drive?" Well, in this particular drug's case, it all went the other direction. It had a pro-sexual effect. So, at that time, all of the study changed to look at this condition specifically.

• 45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Curiously, quite similar with... I don't know if this is due to the tracking. I mean, there's some, maybe folklore in this Genesis story. Viagra.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:07Tim Ferriss?

  Same story.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Same. Yeah, absolutely. Blood pressure medication, lo and behold, a really very interesting side effect.

• 46:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I mean, so the folklore goes, I don't know if it's true, but that the male subject would not give the medication back. Right? They're like, "Hey, this doesn't work for blood pressure. Hey, give us our supplies back." And they're like, "No, we want to keep them." It's like, "Wait, what?"

• 46:24Speaker 01

  So, very interestingly, when I got to Addy, I had built this great company for men. I was in this community, and the company that innovated this drug originally was going to put it on the shelf. They were going to walk away from it and one of the great researchers in the field went out to women who were in the trials and said, like, I need you to come in and bring your medication with you. We're going to have just a normal meeting. And he was actually delivering the news that they were killing it, that they were killing the development trial. And he filmed it. And the women were like this, giving their drug back, handshaking, crying. And he said, you need to do something about this.

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  Why were they, two questions. So why were they going to shelf it?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:03Tim Ferriss?

  And when you say got the drug, right? So there's a good deal, a good amount of discussion and deal making, I imagine, that goes into that.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:12Tim Ferriss?

  How does one get a drug? Like, what is the, if you don't mind discussing, what does a typical deal structure look like?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:19Tim Ferriss?

  For something like that?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Oh, mine was very atypical. So.

• 47:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, well, then let's talk about both typical and atypical.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Okay, happy. So first, let me tell you just about, well, how did we get the drug? Lucky for me, I think I built a reputation in this field that the key researchers in it knew that I cared deeply about women having access to medicine. At the time, there were 26 FDA-approved drugs for some form of male sexual dysfunction and not a single one for women.

• 47:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  And you asked why that company would put it on the shelf. It was very clear to me that it wasn't on the basis of science. Actually, the scientific understanding is spectacular. We've come a long way recently in terms of this understanding. It was on the basis of the societal narrative. Boy, if you say women and sex, people have an opinion. You know, it's not like developing a diabetes medication. Unless you're diabetic, you probably don't care. Develop something for sex, we all have a point of view. And I think that it was a conservative company. They said, we're not getting into this. We're not going to get into this entire discussion.

• 48:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so was it a larger company?

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:23Tim Ferriss?

  Developing multiple drugs?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Large German. I like to tease. I said, it's sex for German. We're out.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  That helps actually promote the understanding, but you have to appreciate like cultures inside of companies, certain, you know, categories that they're in. This would have been paving a new frontier for them.

• 48:40Tim Ferriss?

  How did you find this?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  So it was, I was watching all of this research being presented at the scientific meetings I went to, at the Sexual Medicine Society meetings, and really just sharing it on from the sidelines as a woman, like, finally, we're gonna have one for women. And then they walked away. And I watched a clinical community go from all of this excitement to this true sadness in delivering this message to women. So I spent a year just listening to women. After I did that, I sold off my company for men and took this on. But when I did that, I went to this company, and I think it was with thanks to the fact that the clinical community, the experts in the field, were so supportive of me that they

• 49:22Speaker 01

  gave me the shot. So they gave me the drug. I didn't pay for it upfront. They won. I win, they win. So they had a royalty in the case that, you know, I finally got it to market and in a success scenario. But it was a bold move for them. They'd never done a deal like this before. And I think they bet on me.

• 49:39Tim Ferriss?

  How did you convince them?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  I don't know that I convinced them as much as those who had watched me build Slate and saw who I was and what I really cared about. And, you know, I really cared about women having access to this. Women with a medical condition deserved access to a medical treatment. Not any of our value judgments on whether or not they needed it, or the worthiness of treatment, but just purely the science had spoken, and we needed to listen. And I think they knew that that was my definition of success. I wasn't in this to create the next blockbuster drug. I was in it to make sure that women had access. And then they got to choose for themselves.

• 50:17Tim Ferriss?

  Did you first deliver that message via email, in person?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  In person. Yeah, in person.

• 50:25Tim Ferriss?

  How did you get them in person for it?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Again, thankfully, this kind of a key researcher reached out to them and said, "You need to meet with her." I think she can get this done. And he wanted me to get it done, I think, for women. He was, by the way, the principal investigator on the Viagra trials.

• 50:43Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  So he got Viagra approved for men, and I tease, he would have to tell the story. I, in my mind, the story goes, he did that, and he was like, okay, fixed guys. Moving on to women, and he's actually spent almost all of his years since then just working on women.

• 50:55Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and researching.

• 50:57Tim Ferriss?

  What's his name?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Uh, Dr. Erwin Goldstein.

• 51:00Tim Ferriss?

  Erwin Goldstein.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:01Tim Ferriss?

  Good for Dr. Goldstein.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 51:03Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, if you don't mind me asking, and if we can't get into the particulars, it's fine, but I'm just so fascinated by this stuff. So in publishing, for instance.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:10Tim Ferriss?

  Books.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:11Tim Ferriss?

  My world.

• 51:13Tim Ferriss?

  Typical royalties would range from, say, 12 to 15% for hardcover. Keeping in mind, we're talking about books, right? So the margins are very different, uh, I'm sure. But then it's, there are fairly typical

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:26Tim Ferriss?

  advanced ranges for certain types of books.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:29Tim Ferriss?

  Advance on royalties, and then there are fairly typical royalty rates. I mean, there's very little deviation in the traditional deals, which are still very, very common and certainly predominant. What does that look like in pharma, broadly speaking? We don't have to talk about your deals necessarily, I mean, but...

• 51:45Speaker 01

  You know, it's, in pharma, typically, if you had this type of discovery, you would go out and shop it. If you, as an organization, decided, not a fit, not a fit in our, you know, key areas of focus or whatever, you'd put it out there to auction, people would bid, they would be, you know, buying it on the basis of sort of a projected, uh, you know, ultimate kind of peak sales. And so ours was so different, I don't think the royalties look all too different than as you described, but, uh, but it was really a very unusual deal.

• 52:14Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Usually you're buying it for a hefty upfront that is anticipating peak sales.

• 52:19Tim Ferriss?

  Got it, and is that an advance on royalties, just like books? I mean, where you're getting sort of prepaid for the anticipated sales?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  That's making a big bet. Like, that's somebody coming in and betting on that future for it. So, you know, you, I buy it, you go away, it's mine now to, you know, to further the development.

• 52:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  So we, you know, we were, had, uh, interesting, I can't say it was a partnership, um, they just ultimately got a check if I was successful, uh, and maybe I even surprised them.

• 52:46Tim Ferriss?

  How'd you get it through the FDA?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Well, I'm telling you, I was talking about that moment of boldness of the rejection.

• 52:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  And, um, and that decision to fight them. And I was fighting them because I had 11,000 women worth of data. That's why I was fighting them. Because I knew that the science had spoken.

• 53:03Tim Ferriss?

  It's also a large sample size compared to, I'm sure, a lot of the other 26.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Extraordinary.

• 53:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  So, we're talking in the 700 to 800 patient range vis a vis ours. I mean, Viagra were big trials, 4,000.

• 53:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Um, but we were, you know, uh, uh, several factors higher than that. And, and a very different path. So, I think ultimately, look, ultimately, I won on the science. But what had to happen is we had to listen to women. And I think in categories where we have, we have natural bias, unconscious bias, we'll call it unconscious, conscious, unconscious bias, um, you really do have to spend time with the people who are affected by it. So, even if you look at things like AIDS, it took the patient voice for us to really appreciate what needed to happen. Our job as a drug company is to characterize the benefits and the risks with great rigor in trials.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Ultimately, the FDA's job is to protect patient safety if there's a showstopper in there. But otherwise, it is to turn that decision over to patients and the providers. And because of, again, I think, all of that feelings we have about sex, I was told all the time, I said this earlier, Cindy, why are you such a crusader in this? Nobody's gonna lose their life from this. And what I said is, go spend time with these women. They're losing their life as they know it.

• 54:20Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  It's breaking up their marriages, it's affecting how they feel about themselves. Our sex is a lot of how we show up in the world, our moxie.

• 54:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Um, and if it breaks down in the bedroom, it is breaking down over the breakfast table.

• 54:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. The, uh, uh, and I might be butchering this, but I've...

• 54:39Tim Ferriss?

  Read you quoted as saying something along the lines of in sexual dysfunction in males, we assume it's biological and in sexual dysfunction in women, we assume it's psychological. Or not we, but most people. You certainly don't, but many people.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Society at large, for sure. We absolutely do. We sort of pat them on the shoulder. When I sat with this woman outside of DC and she told me that, you know, she'd succeeded in every aspect of her life other than this, I saw the portrait of a woman who turned on herself, like, oh, if only I bought Sexier lingerie, if only I read Fifty Shades of Grey. And when I saw that, I said to her, hey, mind if I show you something? Popped open my MacBook, I started showing her, geeking out, showing these brain scans. And I turned to her and she's crying. And I thought, this is why I'm gonna do it. It's the validation that this is real, it's not just in her head. And that really was a defining moment for when I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight the FDA.

• 55:34Tim Ferriss?

  So tactically speaking, so now you have the motivation.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do you do it?

• 55:40Tim Ferriss?

  What do you do?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  It is actually a path available to drug manufacturers. I like to call it the road less traveled to take them on. But it was a path in which, to their credit, what happened was a lot of public conversation. So they opened their doors, they invited in women who have the condition, they asked them a number of questions so that they could have a better understanding, I think, for impact, for how they would define success. And then ultimately, they asked us to do, you know, additional work along the way, and they assembled a body of scientific experts to vote. Yes or no? It's an incredible process. So, you know, talk about the nerves in the room. I went in this day, it was a panel of 24.

• 56:19Tim Ferriss?

  Is there a name for this alternative path?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  It's called, so it's a dispute resolution path.

• 56:24Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  And then there's something called an advisory committee, which is the FDA can go out, assemble experts. You almost go on trial. They get to read all of your data, they get to ask you the company questions, they get to ask the FDA questions, and then the public actually gets to speak at the microphone. And on that day, by a press of a button, they vote. Would they approve it or not, based on everything? And so I can remember looking at the screen and my hand shaking with my phone, and they overwhelmingly voted to approve it. Again, science won. It had always given us the answer, but we just had to listen to women to, I think, listen to what the data was telling us.

• 57:00Tim Ferriss?

  What, what were their objections with the initial?

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  Like rocky territory that you then had to overcome via the dispute resolution.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 57:11Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, you don't have to get into it, I'm just curious.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  No, I think it was just additional study, additional study. We are very protective of women in the process. I think what we have to be careful of is that we don't become paternalistic in terms of being so protective of women that we are not allowing them to have choice. And here's why I say it. Twenty-six times, we had looked at data sets for men that had benefits and risks. Make no mistake, all drugs have benefits and risks. And we had said, okay. And we turned over the decision to the guy and his provider. We were being protective to the point of not just characterizing those benefits and those risks, giving women that information, letting them make the decision for themselves.

• 57:59Tim Ferriss?

  So part of the reason that I'm asking, we definitely don't need to get into this right now, because even though it's called The Tim Ferriss Show, it's not me being interviewed. So I'll try not to be long-winded, but part of the reason I'm so fascinated by this is that I'm in the process of doing my best to help get both MDMA and psilocybin through face-to-face trials.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:17Tim Ferriss?

  So very much top of mind for me.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:20Tim Ferriss?

  And fortunately MDMA was recently designated, or received breakthrough therapy designation.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, awesome.

• 58:27Tim Ferriss?

  Which is fantastic.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  It is awesome.

• 58:29Tim Ferriss?

  And the results with PTSD are truly astonishing.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:32Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, the magnitude of effect is just so incredible. It's like 22% efficacy psychotherapy alone, 72% efficacy, and of course you have to look at how that's measured, but with the aid of just a handful of sessions. In any case, that's why, part of the reason why I'm digging so much. It's very much of great interest.

• 58:51Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Where to go next? So you've sold two companies, right?

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yes, I have, yeah.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  At least, yeah, two.

• 59:00Tim Ferriss?

  To an entrepreneur who is someday thinking of selling a company, or in the midst of, maybe on the cusp of about trying to sell a company.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:10Tim Ferriss?

  What advice would you give them?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. The first is be prepared that if you sell it, it is both exhilarating and excruciating. I think you don't anticipate that. You know, it's the, isn't there the billion dollar happy ending? And I think you lose a big piece of who you are in that moment. And that's something you're going to have to wrestle with. So that's in a success scenario. But as you prepare for it, I think only do it if you believe it makes good on the mission that you hold dear. Like have a real sense of I'm, this is my baby, but in the hands of an adoptive parent, it's going to go to the next level. And when you do that deal, make sure you have safeguards that they really will raise that child you want them to. So I'll tell you a lesson learned from me.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  I sold my first company. And typically, when you sell a company, it's a structured transaction. You get an upfront payment, and then hopefully you participate in the success down the road.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  And certainly, that's good for your shareholders. And in the first time I sold, it was a best efforts clause. Best efforts can hide a multitude of sins.

• 1:00:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, describe a best efforts clause, because this is really important. So everybody should listen very, very closely.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Well, look, if you're going to participate together downstream, you don't want somebody to say, hey, I'm going to make my best effort to have this work. You better have some definition around that. I did that the first time, and I had pain when they were deprioritizing it, when they didn't have enough salespeople on the product. And so, lesson learned, when I went into selling Sprout, I had real rigor around the definition of performance obligations. You will have this many salespeople, you will spend this much money on marketing, you will do, you'll make this commitment in terms of disease state education. And what that ultimately meant for me is the opportunity, when they didn't do it, To get the product back.

• 1:01:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, well, we'll definitely get to that. And this best efforts is really important. I want to just emphasize it. Don't, I mean, it's certainly been said that the man or woman who acts as their own lawyer has an idiot for a client.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Tim Ferriss?

  So unless you're trained as a lawyer, get proper legal advice, please.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  On that point, don't worry as much about the bank. You know, people are always saying, well, who did you use? What does the bank? Worry about your transaction attorneys because of how you write these contracts. In any structured transaction, they are your most important asset.

• 1:01:35Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And this is important in so many different types of contracts. Whether, for instance, I've run into this quite a lot in many of my contracts, right? Publishing, television. If you are a product developer or inventor and you want to license something for a royalty, well, you only get a percentage of what is sold. And what happens if they decide it's just not a priority?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:03Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have an out?

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Well, how scary is it to think that somebody might take it on and kill it?

• 1:02:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  I mean, competitors wanting to sort of own the market. Like, often, you're bought by somebody who has products in the category. What if they're just buying you and they're going to kill your product?

• 1:02:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Or doing a phishing expedition to determine how they can kill you or steal your employees. It's super common.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  So you talked about the second company. What are some other pieces of advice for people thinking of selling a company or in the process of selling a company?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Well, I was selling it early. So from that point, at least in my case, it was actually having the full plan to go it alone. I couldn't go out and just couldn't count on, hey, this really needs to be in the hand of somebody who can march it across the globe. I needed the plan of going it alone if they never showed up.

• 1:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Meaning, so, you know, I had the whole plan to launch it myself, the ability to hire. I was capitalized to do all of those things, like never go into a negotiation running out of money in the bank because you think you're going to sell this grand idea that could be realized in the hands of somebody bigger than you. I think that's a huge mistake. I watch a lot of people do that, thinking they're going to sell it then. And in fact, if you want to command the highest price... You better have that ability to say, "Bye, I'm doing it myself. See ya. I know you want it. I'm gonna do it myself." I mean, and I think people sometimes mess that piece up.

• 1:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  They go in on, you know, on skids.

• 1:03:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, it doesn't, if you don't have alternatives, it does not matter how great a wordsmith you are with your negotiating. If the other side knows that you are shit out of luck, you are fucked.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Tim Ferriss?

  Or you, not necess-, I mean, look, could you pull some Jedi mind trick? Yeah, maybe, but I remember I was given advice a long time ago. Cause I've, I've just negotiated so many different types of deals.

• 1:04:04Tim Ferriss?

  I'll come back to why that doesn't actually conflict with the lawyer advice that I just gave, but the, the piece of advice that comes to mind that I was given at one point was, this expert, like master negotiator, done a lot of business development and bought and sold companies, I mean, just dozens and dozens of times. And he said to me, "He who cares the least wins."

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:04:25Tim Ferriss?

  And it's like the person who has, like, "Ah, take it or leave it."

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's true.

• 1:04:31Tim Ferriss?

  And I think, you know, also some, some advice that I remember in the fundraising world, which is slightly different, but, and we'll actually, we'll talk about fundraising too, it was, you know, "If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money."

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Tim Ferriss?

  So there are all these, but they're actually accurate. The reason I said, just for people listening, that the negotiating deals does not conflict with the get a good lawyer is that, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but lawyers are really, really, really, really, really critically important. I work with a ton of lawyers for a ton of different things. However, you have to recognize, like, really study the incentives and how lawyers are rewarded and how they are punished. So you'll, if you want to be very business forward and not play defense, it is oftentimes very, very helpful and often,

• 1:05:21Tim Ferriss?

  and certainly cheaper to spec out the basic terms of engagement and maybe along the lines, it doesn't have to be a letter of intent, but to have the basic, at least a range of what numbers could look like, so that you can disqualify a deal before you pay lawyers to put 20 hours in at $1,500 an hour.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  I totally agree with that.

• 1:05:46Tim Ferriss?

  So the second company, alright, so Sprout.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  Hurrah, hurrah, you get the FDA approval.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, before I get to my real question, I'll give another question, which I guess is just small. What did you guys do to celebrate? Did you do anything to celebrate? Like, and how did you feel, like, when you, when, button, button, button, button, holy shit?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Tim Ferriss?

  Like, how did you, like, in that moment, when you first realized what had happened, like, how, how did you feel?

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  So I have to tell you, it wasn't at the moment of sale, it's at the moment when we won that advisory committee.

• 1:06:21Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  And what we did was, you know, my team had, they were blood, sweat and tears, true to the cause. They'd prepared so hard for this day. I actually threw a victory party the night before. And I can remember the chairman and I board came up and said, wow.

• 1:06:34Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on a second, the night before you got the news on the advisory committee?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Because I thought-

• 1:06:39Tim Ferriss?

  Because you were waiting, you were waiting, you were like, alright, we're gonna get the results tomorrow.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yes. And I thought, win or lose, we will have given this all. Like, we will have taken it to the mat. And I needed the team to go in with that. They had, they had won the night before.

• 1:06:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's really smart.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Before we ever got to the outcome. And I can remember the chairman and I board came over and he said, he's a Brit, like, Cindy. Like, I'm not sure I've ever seen this before, but I'm questioning this one right now, but I'm gonna go with it. And I think that was really important. We celebrated the victory of having gotten it to there. And like, really having cared. When we sold the company, I think that was the whirlwind of, you know, there's a lot of emotion with it. I woke up the next day, I'm the same person, nothing's different, I still gotta go to work, I still gotta get it done. I think people think there's some kind of remarkable transformation, you know, from one day to the next. And I think it's actually often a little bit of sadness.

• 1:07:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, having spent time with a lot of people who just have more money than they could ever spend.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Tim Ferriss?

  Or even, in some cases, give away.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Tim Ferriss?

  Before they die.

• 1:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  If, yeah, it rarely fixes as many things as you would hope it to.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  No question. The day of the approval, I will say, we waited. So what we knew is that the day we won at the AdCom just informs the FDA decision. So it wasn't the day that we got the approval.

• 1:07:57Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, I see.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  So they take their information in.

• 1:07:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right, that's one factor, okay.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  They get to go back, deliberate, and ultimately the FDA comes forward with their decision. And you wait, they actually send it to you late in the day. So I flew the entire, the entire company was in. We were all standing around, you know, pink balloons everywhere, waiting for like a victory. And what was actually so sweet about this is that all the other companies on the same floor, we were on the 10th floor of a building, I used to say we could almost entirely fit in an elevator and we were going to change the conversation about women and sex forever. They waited too. They stayed and I can remember like them showing up and it was 7 o'clock at night and they're like, "Oh my God, how are you guys doing? Is it okay? Are you not going to get the approval?" And so that was fun that, you know, so many people, I was so lucky that as small as we were, we had

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  this extraordinary group cheering us on. We had this incredible bench.

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  So as, as the fearless leader.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Tim Ferriss?

  So you didn't know what the verdict was going to be. I mean, you had high hopes.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:08:54Tim Ferriss?

  But what, did you have anything prepared? What were you going to do if it came back a no?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Celebrate that we did it all.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:09:05Tim Ferriss?

  What were you going to say to the troops? Or if you had to imagine, if you can't remember, what you would have said? Like, did you even think about it, really? I mean, what would you have said?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I didn't imagine a scenario in which we wouldn't win. And the reason is, I really thought that at the end of the day, we all had the capacity to get out of our own way, get beyond our own bias, and look at the data. And I think that, in particular, look, I think that part of the characteristic of female leaders that I love is a certain empathy. And I felt like that data informed through a lens of empathy, of having like walked a mile in the shoes of these women, and now we having all, we have all listened to them. I just, I believed we would get there. I really did. So I don't know what, what I would have said to the team had we lost is, I would have said, you know, "I'm, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for putting it all in. And for caring that deeply to see it

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  all the way through." Because it was grueling work, and long hours, and a lot of, a lot of punches in the face on the way to get there.

• 1:10:05Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to entrepreneurship.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's right.

• 1:10:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you're going to conquer the world, huh? Okay.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  I will tell you, I have to go back to-

• 1:10:13Tim Ferriss?

  You have an off-guard? Good, because you're gonna need that.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  All right, I'm going back to your story for the people thinking about selling. I think there is, like, be a little bit reluctant to give it up. It's your point about who, like, you know, he who cares, he or she who cares the least in the room. When we went into our first negotiation with the company that ultimately bought it, we went into the room, they made an offer. They said, "We're gonna walk out of the room."

• 1:10:36Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, I'm sorry, say this one more time?

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  So the company that was offering to purchase us, we went to this room.

• 1:10:41Tim Ferriss?

  This is the second company?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  This is for Sprout, yes. So, we go into the room, a company's come courting, they want to buy us. And, you know, they throw an offer down. And they said, "We're gonna let you guys think about that." And, um, and leave the room. One of the things I had done is I had prepared binders of all of our data, of all of, you know, our research, and it was huge. We brought them into the room and let you know, set them down for effect. And, um, they left the room, and I looked around at my team, and I said, "Okay, when they walk back in, within five minutes, we're gonna all be out of our chairs, and we're gonna walk out of the room." They were like, "What?" So, they come back in the room, and I said, "Thank you so much, we're very flattered by that offer, we're gonna do it on our own."

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  And as we got up, a woman who worked for me, she had all of these binders sitting next to her, and she's looking at me like, "Should I take the binders?" I'm like, "Leave them, leave them, leave them." And so, we walk out of the room, and sure enough, I knew that they would call me back to get those binders. They had a reason to re-engage, which was, of course-

• 1:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's clever.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  The, you know, "Hey Cindy, we have these binders." I said, "No, no, those are for you, you can keep them." But they called back a little while later and said, "Hey, we still have those binders, we gotta give back." So, so the conversation continued. I mean, that's negotiation, right?

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  But, uh, but it was a fun story.

• 1:12:00Tim Ferriss?

  That's so, for people listening who are like, "Oh, that's one in a million," no. This shit works.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  And, um, God, I mean, it's-

• 1:12:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so a couple of thoughts for people listening. Okay, number one is, so there is a book called Getting the Yes, Harvard Negotiation Project, etc. I think Getting Past No, which is another book written by one of the original co-authors, is actually a little more realistic, but they talk about the BATNA, the Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. You really need to think this through. Negotiation rewards those who come in prepared. And I remember at one point, I learned so much, I mentioned I lived in China for a while, and it was in China where I really learned the flinch, and realized, wow, you can actually

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  improve so many deals just by letting someone negotiate against themselves. It's not like you're making a counter offer. And it's like, if you try to buy anything, at the time, I guess it was, I think it was just called Silk Alley in Beijing, where you could buy all the counterfeit Jordan shoes and all this stuff, right? And they would always start off at like 10x what any rational person would pay if they've lived in China. And then you would counter and they go, ah, like you've just, you know. Offended. Club their dog or something. I mean, the emotion would come pouring out, it was so exaggerated. And you would see these foreign exchange students immediately capitulate, or reverse, and be like, oh no, I'm so sorry, like I don't mean to offend you.

• 1:13:37Tim Ferriss?

  And then they'd walk off, and you'd just see these people laughing. And so, it's like the, you know, kind of the flinch, or silence, letting the silence do the work. And one that I encourage people to use, and look, read the room, know the person across the table, but is just to, before you counter with anything, if you're not going to use silence, just saying something like, is this the best offer you guys can make? You know, is this the best you guys can do? And don't be condescending about it, but just be like, okay, just so I'm clear, is this the best you guys can offer? Yeah, sure. And I would say, depending on who you're dealing with, but like, the vast majority of the time, if it's not someone who's paid to negotiate, you're gonna get something. But you have to be comfortable sitting in that silence.

• 1:14:21Tim Ferriss?

  So, once approved, so my homework says, could be inaccurate, three competing offers? Is that right? Okay.

• 1:14:32Tim Ferriss?

  How did those, were those forthcoming? Did they, were they inbound or did you?

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  They were inbound.

• 1:14:39Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, they were.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  They were.

• 1:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  And so walk me through then how you in a competition slash auction environment, how do you make the most of that?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Well, for me, I think the winner emerged, not on the basis of the price, but on the basis of willingness to keep my team. Funny? That was actually, and that had been important to me when I sold my previous company. So in both of my companies, it was really important what happened to the people who came to work for me. So that, that became one of the differentiators for, for me in the room. But no question when people know that others are interested, right? You do want that competitiveness because definitely it drives up the price and, and everything else. But that was my, that's how I reached my final decision.

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the most important terms?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  For me, it was that, that we were going to go to the distance together, that it was still going to be realized, I think, on our terms. And, and that there was a real commitment to making it broadly affordably accessible to women, that they were going to march it across the globe because I can pull this data, this incidence data out of the US, out of Brazil, out of, you know, the UK, wherever it may be. It's the same for women worldwide. So that and that, that factor of what became so attractive to me in this one company that came forward who bought us was Valiant. Sure. So when Valiant bought us, it was that they, they did this deliberately. So they had acquired a lot. They were highly acquisitive.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  They were a company with a lot of McKinsey folks and maybe fewer operators, traditional operators. And they really, their greatest criticism at that time, it has changed, but at that time was really no organic growth. And so I think they saw this product that had a lot of interest and an ability to prove it, to prove it from scratch, that they could grow it inside. And they saw in me, an operator who'd been there, done that. And so that deal structure was such that Here I could go out, run. I had all of their resources, the ability to do it at a much bigger scale than I could have on my own, and I got to keep the team who cared so deeply that they got it to the finish line of approval.

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  And you had deliverables and measurables instead of best efforts.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:52Tim Ferriss?

  We'll do our best.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  It was absolutely how many sales.

• 1:16:55Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks for that handshake, but.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:16:57Tim Ferriss?

  My mama told me, get it and rail.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  That's right. Exactly. So pretty, and it wasn't extraordinary. These weren't extraordinary. They were sort of market standard for what is brand new category drug launch 101. So there were reasonable expectations.

• 1:17:11Tim Ferriss?

  So, so let's fast forward. I mean, we could spend a lot of time on any segment of your story.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Tim Ferriss?

  This is just so amazing. And I've seen, this is not as, it's, it's rare, but it does happen. Like this kind of thing does happen. And it's happened to a few of my, my friends in, in tech, actually, who've had the opportunity to take, then take back their company or product or whatever it is that they've sold. So what the hell happened?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Well, what happened is.

• 1:17:40Tim Ferriss?

  First of all, so if, if, if you're comfortable, I don't, I mean, I think it's public at this point. So how much did Sprouts sell for?

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  A billion dollars upfront.

• 1:17:48Tim Ferriss?

  Billion dollars.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  And we had a pretty impressive kind of structured transaction on the back end.

• 1:17:52Tim Ferriss?

  Like earn out slash royalty thing, right? And so tres comas for your Silicon Valley fans. And, and then what unfolds?

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I couldn't have written it for a movie. I really couldn't have. So, you know, we, we got the drug approved in August. Everybody had come courting after that advisory committee meeting. We announced our intention to sell and then it takes time for a deal to close. So in that interim time, I'm just running. I'm building a sales force. I'm getting ready for launch and the deal is coming to full closure. 11 days into our deal closing, the world basically went sideways for Valiant. And, you know, if you follow pharma, you certainly know they were at about 260 a share the day they bought us. They've traded as low as eight in the last two years and it was just.

• 1:18:41Tim Ferriss?

  For those people who don't know, why did that happen?

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  Um accusation around drug pricing issues um and also a non-disclosure of a pharmacy relationship that they had that they hadn't disclosed so it really just I it it went kaboom and it was so sad for me for all of these salespeople

• 1:19:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  who'd come to work for me I mean they weren't in the field a week before this happened and you know me being who I am um here's my baby we've just gone out the world is sort of collapsing higher up I'm not getting information and I'm screaming quite wildly and and I think that just didn't fit for them at that moment they had enough distraction they did not need Cindy Whitehead screaming as well.

• 1:19:26Tim Ferriss?

  Hey lady, we have enough stress.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  So I was I was invited to leave um I actually they they called me and they said it's clear you no longer want to be here to which I'm pretty sure my answer was like hell and they said well as it turns out you are no longer going to be here and so um you know and it I I have to tell you at that moment for me like a founder

• 1:19:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  sometimes you have to go you know what like I'm the founder and maybe there will be a personality conflict this is their you know they've taken my baby they've paid good money um and so in an effort I think to sort of check myself I thought I need to step to the sidelines and cheer everybody on.

• 1:20:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  And I need to be positive about this and optimistic that maybe with me removed it will it will be championed inside of the organization and certainly I wanted to protect all of my people who were still there um I think if I have one regret it's that I didn't speak up then because what happened after I was gone um is that they surely not I can't even say slowly but surely pretty rapidly dismantled my whole organization and then everybody was gone.

• 1:20:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now there's more to the story.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  There is because um because of those important uh performance obligations I had an opportunity when they weren't meeting those to go back and open a different discussion with them that ultimately became the basis of a lawsuit and um. And you know, they, in this time, they changed CEOs. You know, we've had a really positive, it became clear to me, this was not going to be an area of focus. Again, remember, they had bought it very intentionally, but it was an outlier. It was different than what they had normally done, and they didn't quite have the infrastructure inside to put that focus into it. And so I think what was started off as a lawsuit, to be able to get through the noise of everything they were going through, ultimately became a discussion in, what's the win-win here?

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  Like, nobody's winning. We're not winning, you're not winning, women aren't winning. And I think in exchange for dropping that lawsuit, they decided to give me the drug back.

• 1:21:32Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so, a few things.

• 1:21:38Tim Ferriss?

  So in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, they decided to give you the drug back. So they did not charge you for the drug?

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Correct. They gave me a loan.

• 1:21:47Tim Ferriss?

  They gave you a $25 million loan to help you get started?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yes, they did.

• 1:21:52Tim Ferriss?

  And, did you, did you and other people who had equity in your company when it sold have to give back the billion dollars?

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  We did not.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good deal.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  It's a good deal, yeah. We're pretty, we're pretty happy with it. But, but let me tell you, for my shareholders, I do think this speaks volumes to them. We could have got, we could have stayed the course. Like, we had a pretty explicit contract, in terms of a lawsuit. Not a single one of my, this had to be approved by my shareholders to do this transaction. Not a single one of them voted against it. Even though, they could stare down-

• 1:22:23Tim Ferriss?

  Now, just to clarify, did it have to be, you're saying by all of your shareholders, or a majority or board of directors?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  So it was, no, no, all of my shareholders voted.

• 1:22:32Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  It had to be by a majority, but, but not a single one voted against it.

• 1:22:36Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Not a single one. And I, that speaks volumes, I think, to who funded me, what they really cared about. Because an easier path to money was probably just staying on the path that we were on with the lawsuit. This is the path of getting it right. And this is about, it always having been about the women, and really defining success the way we want to. You know, we had a great outcome for a company, and now we have the ability, I think, to just do it in a different way, in a way that we're all proud of.

• 1:23:07Tim Ferriss?

  So what's, I mean, I've, I've plenty of questions, but what's, what's next then for that particular drug?

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Uh, what's next is 101. It's access, that women have access to the product. It's education, that we remove some of the myth and misconception, I think, that surrounds, quote, female Viagra and the condition itself. Um, and then I think it is marching across the globe. We got a lot of work in front of us.

• 1:23:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so you're gonna, you're, are you gonna be at the helm?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:23:37Tim Ferriss?

  All right, okay. So, uh, so many, so many questions. And, all right, so let's talk about rules for a second. All right, so there are, I think you've drawn this distinction, there are a lot of rules out there. And there, there are some that you're generally, uh, better off following, uh, as they might-

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  The rules of law and order.

• 1:24:06Tim Ferriss?

  The rules of law and order, regulatory.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:11Tim Ferriss?

  And then there are unwritten rules, or just socially reinforced rules.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Tim Ferriss?

  So what are some of the rules that you have broken, or routinely break as just a matter of personal best practices?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Um, I, I embrace underestimation, uh, as an opportunity to surprise people. And I think that I break rules in terms of it, it's frustrating to me when people say, "Yeah, but nobody's, nobody does it that way." And I, I'm saying, "Okay, nobody does it that way, like, show me a rule in which, like, I cannot do it that way."

• 1:24:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  And if they don't have an answer to that, um, be they a lawyer, a consultant, whoever they may be, uh, that's an unacceptable answer. I think they just haven't dreamed up a new way to do something, or a better way to do something. I think that for particularly women in business, I think women are bound by many more unwritten rules. And you know, this TEDx talk I gave was about this, like, what's the DNA of a female rule breaker? Because I think that it takes this extraordinary sort of injustice and the empathy that surrounds that for them to really break a rule. And I, that certainly is my story of, you know, fueled by the injustice, really informed by listening, why would I move forward with something that nobody else was willing to do?

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  And I think there, you know, there's rules about, do you talk about money? I like to say, in the incubator, I want my goal is to make women really rich. That, that elicits a certain response. I do these pajama parties in the incubator. Eighth grade girls.

• 1:25:44Tim Ferriss?

  So, the incubator, and we're going to come back to this.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Tim Ferriss?

  But, could you just give us like a sentence or two on what that is?

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:53Tim Ferriss?

  Then we're going to come back to it.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so as part of the pink ceiling, it's, I make early bets on breakthrough first, either by or for women, and they all become part of my incubator. So, got 10 different companies in there right now, all with a female lens.

• 1:26:07Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Tim Ferriss?

  How are you going to balance that with?

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Having a great team.

• 1:26:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Having a great team. It's just, you know, it's certainly not all me. I didn't get to here without having had the most incredible people surround me. Many of them do today. I mean, I'm with people who know all of my stories because they've been on the ride with me for 13-plus years, and through the startups. And so, it's always about the other people you surround yourself with.

• 1:26:34Tim Ferriss?

  So, let's, let's, I mean, so far, we've talked about, not necessarily the highlight reel, but we've talked about a bunch of huge successes.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:44Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love for you to talk about, so this is from a bit of my homework also. So, I read, and you correct me if this is wrong, and I'd really love to, to dig in very briefly. So, for people who are listening, this isn't going to be all startup finance for the next 30 minutes, so just sit tight. This, this will apply more broadly. But I read that one mistake that you'd made at one point in your business was taking money from someone you either didn't know very well or didn't trust.

• 1:27:15Tim Ferriss?

  Can you talk about what you learned from that and to the extent that you can disclose whatever you're comfortable disclosing and then how that informed later decisions or approaches?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  My biggest fail.

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  So really and truly, early days of Slate, you know, was fortunate that this drug was adopted by sort of the top tier and they were out at medical conferences talking about it and all of a sudden I'm getting phone calls in from other people like, hey, I write testosterone wise, nobody come by to see me. So I, I really didn't have the capital to build a sales organization on my own. So I went out with a company that would build a sales organization around it. And, you know, did the deal, all the right intentions seemingly, couldn't have departed more radically in terms of our philosophy on how you compensate people, on how you treat people. And so-

• 1:28:08Tim Ferriss?

  And because you didn't have the money, you paid them in equity?

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  I, I, so they, yes, they had a seat on my board. They came into this company, had this partnership with them. And it was that inexperience, I think, in my first company of going, God, I need money. God, I need this partner. Like, I need to, I need this for scale and not being discriminating enough in terms of really who they were. And so it was painful because we really didn't get along and it had the ability to cripple the company. And at that moment that I could cut the deal, I had like swallowed hard, hired as many people as I could. Our eight people were outselling their 40.

• 1:28:50Tim Ferriss?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Cut the deal and I was off to-

• 1:28:54Tim Ferriss?

  Cut meaning ended.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Ended it and went off to the races. But it taught me the lesson of-

• 1:28:58Tim Ferriss?

  How long did it take you to cut the deal?

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  A year.

• 1:29:00Tim Ferriss?

  A year.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  I had a year agreement with them and it was-

• 1:29:02Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  It took years off my life. Like, it didn't feel like a year. Felt like a lot longer than that. But it was a lesson of who I was going to raise money from going forward. So I had to buy, this is the perfect sort of segue to it. I had to buy out their position. I needed them the hell off my board.

• 1:29:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Cause they couldn't, they could have stayed on the board even with that deal gone.

• 1:29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  So I had people coming in to try to buy it out. And actually, one guy came in, VC, and he came to our table. Like, one of the things I want to do is I spent time with them and then they came out to the, to the glass table where we have our lunch together every day. And he was hideous to one of my sales reps. Just like the attitude, how he treated them. And I thought, absolutely not. Like, I'm not doing it.

• 1:29:49Tim Ferriss?

  I've seen how this movie turns out. Let's not do that.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  The next, the next group came in. Um, it was a family office.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Also came, sat with my table, wanted them to be there. They said nothing. I was like, oh, my God, I'm not going to get the money. We're going under. It was so important. I needed to get this group out. And, um, and they called me back and they said, we're going to invest for what we saw at the table. So they were the right person. And I now started to understand, I have to have people who care about who we are and our mission.

• 1:30:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  So I raised actually almost all of my money through, um, basically, uh, angels or family offices. Very unconventional in pharma.

• 1:30:26Tim Ferriss?

  How much, how much funding?

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  Uh, a hundred million dollars.

• 1:30:29Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So a hundred million dollars through angels. I'm guessing we're not talking like $25,000 checks.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:30:35Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Tim Ferriss?

  So how does, how many of these people did you know in advance before raising the money? Or like, that, that's, it doesn't need to be an exact number. Like roughly what percentage of the people you raised money from, did you know beforehand?

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Three.

• 1:30:49Tim Ferriss?

  So, okay. And how, roughly how many were there?

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Uh, we were at a little over a hundred in the end.

• 1:30:54Tim Ferriss?

  So how the hell do you do that without it becoming your full-time job for?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Um, because I think it, it grew in, you know, it, it grew through word of mouth. They, I was fortunate that they introduced me to a group or they introduced me to groups. I had sort of pockets of investors that I treated almost like they were units. I have an incredible group of investors in Fort Worth, Texas. I love to go visit them. Um, you know, it, but it was, um, so flattering. I think that they helped me get there. I came from no background where, uh, I had access to this kind of privilege. Right? I didn't know these high net worth individuals. Um, but I was fortunate that once one of them came in, they introduced me to others. And I don't know, it, you know, the, the joy, I actually was great joy in communicating with them. I didn't see it as a full-time job.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  I actually saw it as this opportunity for an incredible network who today come in on a lot of my companies, um, as well and invest in them.

• 1:31:51Tim Ferriss?

  How did you choose people?

• 1:31:57Tim Ferriss?

  How did you vet them? Because I know companies with, let's just say in contrast, right? You could certainly have, say, a VC, venture capitalist, or somebody who comes in, writes a huge check, and they say, "All right, number one, I need 10%, 20% of the company, and I want at least one seat on the board," da-da-da-da-da, right? That has its potential pitfalls.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:32:17Tim Ferriss?

  I've also seen situations where startups that are super lean, right?

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Tim Ferriss?

  A small company have a ton of people on their cap table. So they're taking a ton of investors, and all of a sudden, they're getting the hug of death, basically, because even if the investor's trying to be helpful, they're managing communications with 100 people.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you think about avoiding that? I mean, family offices are kind of a unique animal, but how did you think about avoiding that potential problem?

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  I actually think I was hyper-communicative myself.

• 1:32:51Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  I was, like, I went on the offense on that. I was, you know, they were part of this with me. Like, they were part of the ride. I was gonna turn around to them and say, "How you gonna help me? You gonna introduce me to? What am I not thinking of here? I mean, these are very impressive people." So I think I didn't wait for that to choke me. I, if anything, they would, they would tell you, like, I communicated a lot. I expected a lot of them, you know, because I felt like they were part of it. They were owners in this, and they had to perform, not unlike the owners of my employees.

• 1:33:24Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so I promised we'd come back to the pinky better.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Tim Ferriss?

  So what is the pink ceiling?

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  So the pink ceiling is, uh, investment firm meets, uh, hell of a great place for mentorship, where we make bets on early-stage companies, buyer for women, mostly all health tech, and not only, I think, disruptive first, but often products that can be catalysts in social conversations we care about.

• 1:33:49Tim Ferriss?

  What would be some examples of products or companies?

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  So, a company with a technology that detects state rape drugs and drinks.

• 1:33:57Tim Ferriss?

  How does it detect?

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Through color change. So, put your finger, dip your finger in a drink, touch your finger to the decal, changes colors if there's a date rape drug.

• 1:34:08Tim Ferriss?

  Huh.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I have two nieces in college. It's sad that we need a product like this, but we need to put power in the hands of women. Great company. It's sort of the quintessential fit for who we are. Love the tech, first of its kind, patented, but also just, you know, love the, the social conversation it promotes. Flushable Pregnancy Test coming out, great female founder.

• 1:34:30Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  I think only a woman would have thought of that.

• 1:34:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  You know, it's got, it's not your mother's pregnancy test, right? And, and in so many ways, not only in the, you know, the eco way, but I think also because we have this belief that all women want a certain outcome when they take a pregnancy test, and, and some women want to get rid of the evidence, including women just who are going through infertility and don't want a daily reminder.

• 1:34:53Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  That's a product. Have a great young female founder who has a biometric sensor to recognize deviations in movement for athletes, so they could start to signal when you're moving differently and may injure in the future. You know, and she's such a story. I mean, mother was a Russian mail order bride, wanted to move herself and her daughter to a better life, came over to the US in a pretty poor neighborhood. She thought my only way out is if I get a scholarship in athletics. Became a nationally ranked soccer player, injured.

• 1:35:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, soccer's brutal.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Decided, okay, I still have upper body strength, became a rower, got a full ride to Duke.

• 1:35:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  And then invented this tech.

• 1:35:41Tim Ferriss?

  What a beast.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Lover. So, I mean, that's, you know, I'm betting on, that, when Ivana walked in the room, I will tell you, when she walked in the room, I was buying no matter what she was selling.

• 1:35:51Tim Ferriss?

  She didn't have to yell balls for you.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  No, she did not. I'm telling you, she had no, I didn't tell her this at the moment, but I was investing because even if this wasn't her deal, the next one was gonna be. And so it's fun because I get to bet on these great people, you know, doing, I think, really interesting things.

• 1:36:06Tim Ferriss?

  Where is it based?

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  We're in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I've built all my companies.

• 1:36:10Tim Ferriss?

  What, what are the, what should people know about Raleigh?

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  People should know that Raleigh is number two in the country in terms of exits. I think that surprises people.

• 1:36:23Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:36:24Tim Ferriss?

  You would expect me to know that.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  All right, so yeah. Pitch book data in terms of the multiples we get out of companies. So the next billion dollar company will come from Raleigh. How about, just like, who knew the birthplace of female Viagra was Raleigh, North Carolina? Great startup scene, wonderful talent in that area.

• 1:36:42Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to read a quote.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:44Tim Ferriss?

  And it may be off.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:45Tim Ferriss?

  But I liked it. And so I thought maybe I could ask you to elaborate on it. I'm not sure where I found this, but I think it's yours.

• 1:36:54Tim Ferriss?

  We talk all the time about how women need a voice. We don't need a voice, we need power. Money is power.

• 1:37:02Tim Ferriss?

  Please explain, or please tell me where that comes from.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  I think we just, you know, we're constantly in the discussion around women talking about needing a voice. What really changes is when women have power. The power that comes with money is to sit on the other side of the table and make the decisions. 2% of VC funding goes to women. 2%. It means we think half the population have 2% of the good ideas. It's ridiculous. If you consider it, what we need to do is get women to outcomes like mine so they get to sit on the table, sit at the other side of the table and pick those things that they really care about. Not pass over a product for women thinking it's a niche brand. And I, I think it's also just this comfort with the conversation around money. I started talking about these pajama parties in the incubator.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  We have eighth grade girls come through. We do all these drills, they're setting their sights for the C-suite. And the first group we ever had come in, one of their teachers came and she said, "Oh Cindy, when they were coming over here, they wanted to ask you about money, but we told them. They shouldn't do that." I said, "Oh no, no, have them ask me." And you know, the young girl who was asking me all the questions and getting to like the real data, that girl is going to create a big company and that's okay.

• 1:38:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  To have that conversation. I, you know, even as a woman, I'm, those are some of the unwritten rules. When I would first got an opportunity to go out and speak on these stages to, you know, rising star female entrepreneurs or women in business, a woman came up to me and said, you know, I love that you don't ever say that you sold your company for over a billion dollars. Next time I got up on stage, I said, hi, I'm Cindy Whitehead. I sold my last company for a billion dollars because I was clear that, oh, my God, I'm doing it. And I think that there is, here's why I say it happily, because women will pay it back. They'll give it back to other women. They'll give it back into their community. There's plenty of data sources on that. And what I love to see and my greatest pride

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  has been the ripple effect of ownership. Everyone who came to work for me got skin in the game. And to watch our outcomes and what it has meant for them in terms of freedom, and I don't really mean financial freedom. Like, if you're in it just for the money, you're never going to be successful. But it affords them not only financial freedom, but freedom to do the things they really care about. And I'm watching them either start their own companies or fund their children's companies. And that's what I'd love to see is a sort of army of pink ladies coming out of the incubator who are sponsoring the next group to do it.

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I love that you also caught yourself, or even if you didn't have that as subconscious behavior, made it a point to get up and say what you might have not been saying. And I think this underscores something really critical, which is, we, and this is not gender specific, anyone, we often think of the, the external opponents, right? And how we might be restricted by someone else, which could very well be the case and is the case very often. However, when you're looking for unwritten rules, it's important not to just look at unwritten rules that are being imposed on you externally, but to look at the unwritten rules you are following.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:40:18Tim Ferriss?

  And I remember talking to, I'm not going to name her because, yeah, I don't have her permission, but very, very super successful female entrepreneur. And I asked her what she, what, what the, some of the main challenges were that she thought women were facing. And she said, well, she, she mentioned quite a few, which you're very familiar with. And, but one that I didn't expect was, she said, Women need to learn how to ask for raises and negotiate.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Tim Ferriss?

  They just, a lot of them just don't ask.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, it's a, I don't know exactly why that is, but I was like, oh, fuck. And when I think about my, you know, the female founders that I've invested in, whether it's, uh, Italyya Taskraba, which was acquired not too long ago by IKEA, or Tracy Di Nunzio, or any, any number of these women, like, they are all so good at negotiating. It didn't even kind of cross my mind that I was like, oh, shit. I mean, it's certainly true for a lot of men as well, but the point being, like, be really cognizant of, and this definitely goes for everybody, not just women, but where you are following rules

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Tim Ferriss?

  that are really just enforced in your own mind. You can certainly experiment with bending.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  And breaking.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  I, I think a lack of asking for raises is also that discomfort or that, like, don't brag. It's sort of not ladylike to talk about money.

• 1:41:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Or be, you know, capitalistic, if you will. Um, and I think that's a, that has an incredible effect that maybe we're not so conscious of.

• 1:41:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:54Tim Ferriss?

  If, if you were going to teach a, say, freshman class, I'll come back to the freshman class again, uh, or a class.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:04Tim Ferriss?

  If you were going to teach a seminar.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:05Tim Ferriss?

  Could be any age range, you could pick your audience, could be female only, could be mixed gender, doesn't matter. What would you teach? What would the seminar look like? It's like, eh, once a week, two or three hours a week. You could pick as many, you have as many weeks as you want, but what would you teach?

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:42:24Tim Ferriss?

  This doesn't have to be anything we've talked about.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Um, what would I teach? Um, I think I would...

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  I would teach how you, I would push people around how you're going to make choices in life. I think that my, my teaching would be, you know, how do you set out there and sort of remove all of those confinements in thinking. I, I am lucky, I think, having grown up in such a mobile childhood, that I think what it taught me is, you can imagine, I was always-

• 1:42:55Tim Ferriss?

  Mobile, physically mobile.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Yes, physically mobile.

• 1:42:57Tim Ferriss?

  Your dad's State Department?

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  State Department, yeah, in that I, I was the perpetual new kid and always having to have that agony of what was going to happen. And it turned out, nothing bad happened.

• 1:43:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Right? In, in retrospect, nothing, but I, I went in anticipating that. And I think that really helped me. I don't know if that's a course. Is that a course? Can I, can I, can I teach a course in sort of losing the fear?

• 1:43:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  What's the worst that can happen?

• 1:43:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  And, and helping folks go through that.

• 1:43:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you could just have case study after case study after case study.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  I think when I do the, the Pinkubator, I'm, I'm teaching a, a course and really at its, at its core, confidence for these girls. And, and it's confidence in the choices that they make and the, you know, going all in when they're going to do it.

• 1:43:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, and I'd, I'd love to actually hear you elaborate on that because looking through my many, many, many notes, and one of the things that I highlighted where I was like, yes, please, thank you for that. Okay. Let's see here. This is for Fortune. Question was, what advice would you give early-stage founders? And it was, embrace the workhorse to become the unicorn. So tired of all the grandiose startup speak. The founders who declare their genius before they ever even execute it. So what I tell founders is, don't tell me you're going to change the world. Put your head down, do the work and show me. Okay. So, assuming that's somewhat accurate.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:19Tim Ferriss?

  I'm asked all the time- How do I build my confidence or how can I become confident? And the best answer I've been able to come up with, and this is just my perspective is like, you have to actually believe in yourself. The way you develop that belief is by actually getting onto the playing field.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:44:40Tim Ferriss?

  And taking your lumps.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:41Tim Ferriss?

  But proving to yourself that you have certain competencies.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's not about like Stuart Smalley sitting in front of a mirror telling yourself how awesome you are.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:50Tim Ferriss?

  And believing that and then going out and getting your face ripped off by the real world.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:44:53Tim Ferriss?

  Like, no, you actually have to put in the time to earn the confidence that you then carry.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Um, what has your experience been or how do you think of that with the startup founders?

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think, well, look, I'm, I'm particularly focused on, on women. And I think that just by virtue of the numbers, they tend to be unexpected in the room. Um, I feel like my whole career is.

• 1:45:21Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  They're unexpected. I mean, they're, you know, by the numbers, like, we're not expecting them to walk through the room and ask for the money. They're not likely to get the funding. They're, you know, all of that. And I think that, um, that's certainly been the course of my career.

• 1:45:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  When you say pharmaceutical CEO who sold her, sold, don't give a name, who sold the last business for a billion dollars, nobody imagines me showing up in hot pink. I didn't look the part. I'm not, I'm not your classic in any way. And I think that's been sort of the story of my career in terms of places I've gone or products I've taken on have been unexpected. And so as a result of being unexpected, I think is underestimated.

• 1:45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  And so my, my kind of key piece of advice is underestimation, you got two choices. I think you can either reel back in frustration and self doubt. You can let that eat away at you, or you can gamify it as this opportunity to surprise people with your competence. And so I think that, um, you know, for founders, I'm looking at how they reframe the frustrations, the setbacks, the kicks in the teeth to this opportunity to go forward and surprise.

• 1:46:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. What, what do you say to women?

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  That's confidence.

• 1:46:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. What do you, what do you say to women who, uh, and I don't get this question because I'm not a woman, but I've certainly, um,

• 1:46:41Tim Ferriss?

  With some of my founders, they get this question a lot from other founders.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Tim Ferriss?

  Which is a long, or the belief, it might not even be a question, that women should dial back their woman-ness.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Did you hear my reaction?

• 1:47:00Tim Ferriss?

  I did hear that.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  I choked.

• 1:47:01Tim Ferriss?

  I did hear the choke. But this seems to be a very common belief, not just among women, but certainly advice that maybe men would give to women, it's very prevalent.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  The worst.

• 1:47:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, what do you think of that?

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  The worst advice, and it's given, and it's given woman to woman.

• 1:47:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  For sure, men, whatever it may be, I absolutely, part of the reason I wear pink, so I wear pink all the time, and you should see my closet. But when I went through the process with the quote female Viagra, it was called the little pink pill. And people all but like patted me on the shoulder and said, "That's cute." Like, it was so, the little pink pill was so dismissive that I realized, "My God, this is the conversation we need to be having."

• 1:47:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  So I started showing up in blazing pink to the FDA. "Hi, we're gonna talk about this." And I think what it taught me is like in gender stereotypes or that underestimation, like you run away from it. And I guess if you're me, you run right toward it. And the idea that there isn't something valuable and unique that a woman brings to the table.

• 1:48:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  And in owning her femininity, you know, pink for me is about owning it as a woman, unapologetically pink. I like pink, I'm gonna wear it, and we're gonna have this conversation.

• 1:48:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think that's the way to go. Never, I tell women all the time, if you're in an environment in which you need to not wear makeup, pull your hair back, not be you. And I'd listen, I was at a table, I won't name the conference, where we were giving advice to younger women across the table, and a woman, very accomplished, sitting to my right, told a woman, "You're too pretty, you need to pull your hair back and not wear any makeup." And I said, "Absolutely not. And if you're in an environment in which you need to do that, move."

• 1:48:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Tim Ferriss?

  So I love the reason for the pink. And it makes me think of a conversation I had with Amanda Palmer, the musician on this podcast.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:03Tim Ferriss?

  And she's amazing. She's a hell of a character, certainly has her fair share of controversy. But I don't know how this came up exactly, but I heard her referring to herself, or her friends calling her Amanda fucking Palmer, AFP. And at some point, I was like, what is the story with this Amanda fucking Palmer? And it turns out, so it turns out that one of her frenemies, or just straight up enemies, like somebody who hated her, always referred to her as Amanda fucking Palmer. And instead of letting it bother her, the way she put it to me was, you know, take that pain and wear it as a shirt, basically.

• 1:49:48Tim Ferriss?

  And I might be, I'm paraphrasing, but I love the fact that she took this like barb, or something that was thrown at her, and turned it around and like co-opted it and used it in such a way that she found empowering and maybe, maybe just funny to start with, but disarmed it in that way, I thought was just fantastic.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  That's awesome. I love it.

• 1:50:06Tim Ferriss?

  So I think we should probably just do a round two at some point, or an extension. So I'm not going to ask all of my rapid fire questions, but I do want to ask two or three of them.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:50:18Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So, let's see. The first is, what book or books have you gifted the most to other people?

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Purple Cow.

• 1:50:28Tim Ferriss?

  The Purple Cow.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to everybody who's worked for me.

• 1:50:30Tim Ferriss?

  What books besides that have you reread yourself the most, if any come to mind?

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  Um, I won't name one of yours because that seems too flattering.

• 1:50:41Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, more, more, more. No, no, no, more, more, more.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  What else have I read that I love? Um, other books?

• 1:50:49Tim Ferriss?

  If none come to mind, that's fine, too.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pat Lencioni, Pat Lencioni's books, you know, I love that.

• 1:50:55Tim Ferriss?

  What is it, like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team?

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Five Temptations of a CEO.

• 1:50:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it was about how do you, what do you prioritize? Yep. What do you prioritize? What do you let go? You know, I thought that was actually a great book. Maybe they're the, maybe they're simple reads that I need to on the airplane.

• 1:51:14Tim Ferriss?

  What is the last time that you cried tears of joy? This is a new one.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Oh, tears of joy.

• 1:51:23Tim Ferriss?

  Or the time that comes to mind?

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  I rescued a pig.

• 1:51:26Tim Ferriss?

  You rescued a pig?

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  I cried tears of joy for taking this animal out of a terrible situation. I love animals, so went across the state, rescued a pig. In a Porsche.

• 1:51:37Tim Ferriss?

  How did you find a pig needing rescuing?

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  I was worried that my car was never gonna smell the same. Just through a network, like knowing that, but that I cried.

• 1:51:45Tim Ferriss?

  The pig called a scientist and he said, "I can't help you, but I know where you can."

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  I cried tears of joy for making a better life.

• 1:51:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on a second, this is a full grown pig?

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Like hundreds of pounds?

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  Not a hog, like a potbelly, but still big, yeah.

• 1:51:59Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  And I managed.

• 1:52:00Tim Ferriss?

  Are you now the caretaker of said pig?

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's important to have, you know, sort of in my daily routine. I still gotta scrape the shit off my boots.

• 1:52:09Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, so you have a pet pig?

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:11Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 1:52:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible. The most impressive, I hope I'm getting this right, I'm a little low on caffeine right now, but Jessie Graff, who's an incredible phenom in the American Ninja Warrior world.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:52:30Tim Ferriss?

  The most impressive hand strength maybe of anyone I've ever seen, certainly any woman. I mean, just probably 30 times stronger than I am.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:52:38Tim Ferriss?

  At least, which maybe isn't saying a lot, but like a thousand times stronger. Incredible athlete, and she has a pet pig as well.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:52:45Tim Ferriss?

  For those interested.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:52:47Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Jessie, call me and tell me what to do.

• 1:52:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Jessie, if you're listening, let her know. Best practices, best pig practices.

• 1:53:00Tim Ferriss?

  What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? Or love doing. And I'll give you an example just to buy some time. So give you some time to think. When I asked Cheryl Strayed this question, who wrote Wild and has done many, many, many other things and written many other books. She said, well, I like to rearrange my sandwiches. So the first thing I do when I get a sandwich is I rearrange the inside. So that with every bite, you get an everything bite. It's very important that like the avocado or the tomatoes or so on are evenly distributed. And she will also do this for like, I think her husband's sandwiches. She'll open his sandwich and rearrange. That's pretty odd.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  That is pretty weird. Yeah.

• 1:53:41Tim Ferriss?

  There are a lot of weird things that a lot that everybody does. So what is, what is one of yours?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  God, I was going to say nickname people, but that seems so vanilla now. What is the most absurd thing I like to do? I climb and sit in the sink to put my makeup on, which is really weird.

• 1:53:56Tim Ferriss?

  That's unusual.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  It's kind of weird.

• 1:53:59Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any superstitions?

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Um, not really. No, I grew up, you know, when I was a little girl, I was in the Fiji Islands.

• 1:54:07Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  And so I had a very unusual childhood where there was a lot of superstition. So I think that being exposed to that young made me lose them later in life. Not so sure they were true. Not so sure they were worth buying into at that age. They created a lot of fear unnecessarily.

• 1:54:25Tim Ferriss?

  Why? Do you have any examples?

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, in that culture, you know, everything was very superstitious about if you didn't see the fish first.

• 1:54:33Tim Ferriss?

  Good omen, bad omen.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I think that, you know, at a young and impressionable age, they probably had an effect where I decided now I'm not going to, I'm not going to worry about this going forward.

• 1:54:42Tim Ferriss?

  If you had to give a TED Talk on something no one would expect, so it can't be, it can't be the pharma stuff. Can't be the company building stuff.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  TED Talk on something people wouldn't expect.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Growing up in a third world country, I don't know, could I do that one or what? Lessons learned?

• 1:55:08Tim Ferriss?

  You can do that.

• 1:55:11Tim Ferriss?

  What if you had, all right, what if you had six months to prepare for a TED Talk, but it had to be on a new skill? What would you focus on?

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I would, I would learn how to fiddle.

• 1:55:22Tim Ferriss?

  Fiddle?

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:55:24Tim Ferriss?

  Fiddle like Irish bar music fiddle?

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I would learn how to do that and I'd teach her to do it.

• 1:55:28Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is this something you just came up with or is this something you've thought about?

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  No, I really would.

• 1:55:31Tim Ferriss?

  Like, one day I should learn the fiddle?

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I would love to learn how to fiddle. Like, I feel, I don't have any musical talent. It sucks. Like, I would like to be able to do that. That's a good party trick. I need a better party trick than my sexual medicine card. It's not good enough. It's not taking me far enough. I need to, like, play music or inspire through that.

• 1:55:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I will tell you, as someone who, who has been fantasizing about and simultaneously putting off

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55:56Tim Ferriss?

  uh, voice lessons for probably a decade. I just started

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 1:56:00Tim Ferriss?

  About a month, a month ago, I want to say, or six weeks ago.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 1:56:04Tim Ferriss?

  One of the best things I've ever done.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:56:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's really been empowering and also worth doing in terms of fiddle, just so that you listen to music differently.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:56:14Tim Ferriss?

  Now I hear things totally differently.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:56:17Tim Ferriss?

  Which is very cool.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Okay. Next time I come on, I'm gonna fiddle at the beginning of her.

• 1:56:21Tim Ferriss?

  Please, yes, that can be, some people hate my intro music, so perhaps I could license for a reasonable fee or fiddle. What do you do when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused? What do you do to get back on track or to let some pressure out of the tires?

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  I usually call my big brothers. I mean, I think that they're very, um, they're like the exact right balance of kicking me in the ass and encouraging me. Um, so when I'm feeling, like, overwhelmed or anything else, nothing like my, my family to be, like, totally unimpressed with my problems and, uh, and kick me in the ass. Uh, so I think that's what I do. I probably call my big brothers. They've been hugely influential in my life.

• 1:57:02Tim Ferriss?

  Can you think of an example, uh, of them kicking you in the ass or what they would say to you? To be like, really?

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Um, I, yeah, I, I think it's just generally-

• 1:57:14Tim Ferriss?

  What do they, what do they do professionally, if you don't mind me asking?

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Sure, um, so, so one is a lawyer, um, who actually has an operating role in a big construction company, and the other one was a startup guy, um, who's the head of sales and marketing for a, for a company, and he's grown through a lot of, he was, he was a big part of why I went smaller when I left my, uh, big company career.

• 1:57:33Tim Ferriss?

  When you left Merck?

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Merck, yeah, he said, go smaller, push yourself, challenge yourself, and I, I knew I didn't fit in a big environment, so he was important in that, but I, listen, I can call my brothers, same thing, overwhelmed or even overly like enthused about myself, like, hey, did you see I was just talking to Tim Ferriss, like, yeah, whatever, like, don't be, don't take yourself, don't, you know, don't be too proud of yourself, um, so I don't know, they, they're just, they're classic big brothers.

• 1:57:58Tim Ferriss?

  That shiny gnome with the big head?

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Tim Ferriss?

  Not impressed.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  They, they like a lot of mockery, yeah.

• 1:58:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, they've also both spent quite a bit of time in the trenches.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  They have, they're great.

• 1:58:10Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, they've, they've played full-contact sports, so, that's always very helpful. Uh, if you could have a word, a message, a quote, anything on a billboard, a message to get out to millions, billions, whatever, metaphorically speaking, a lot of people, right?

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Tim Ferriss?

  What would you put on it?

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  I, can I put it in the valley?

• 1:58:30Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  I'd put, fuck the unicorn, be the workhorse.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  I'd like that to get out to millions of people in the valley.

• 1:58:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  It would make me super happy. This is my distaste for the, uh, all the grandiose speak and startup, and, and I think the lack of attention on the fundamentals.

• 1:58:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Show don't tell, friend. Get it done.

• 1:58:54Tim Ferriss?

  How has a, a failure, or an apparent failure, uh, set you up or led to later success, contributed to later success? So, I mean, one potential example would be, you know, the decision to take that money from someone who's, your spider sense told you you shouldn't take money from, right? Are there any other examples that, that come to mind?

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  You know, professionally, that's certainly been the worst. I think that, I'm thinking of, you know, huge personal failures of mine that have taught me lessons along the way. I probably crashed and burned a lot going through childhood of, you know, trying to figure out how to fit in a new environment and, you know, sort of playing to the popular thought and it not working because it wasn't authentically who I am. And I think at some point I became comfortable that I might just be the outlier.

• 1:59:49Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what's funny about being the outlier is you tend to attract other outliers. And then it kind of works out.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  It does work. I love it. The band of misfits.

• 2:00:00Tim Ferriss?

  The band of misfits. I was just gonna say that exact thing. Wow, I've never said that before. That's crazy. Band of misfits. Well, you know, I think at this point, I would just say, where can people find you? Where can people say hello? Where can people see what you're up to? Where would you like people to wave a hand on the internets?

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Oh, I'd love for people to find me online on Twitter. I'm at Cindy Pink CEO. That or on Insta. I'd love for people to find me there considering I'm so late to the social media party. Being in a regulated industry with my point of view, my lawyers are pretty sure I should not be on social media. So it's been a pretty fun journey in these last two years. I've got a lot to say. So I'd love for them to find me there and say something back.

• 2:00:41Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. And I'll put those in the show notes as well for folks. Do you have any final parting words, advice, and ask of the audience, something they should consider? Try themselves, anything?

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  Look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play to my, my group that I'm looking out for, which is female founders. I'm just gonna ask you to share the stories. Share the stories of success. I think it matters that we do that. If I looked just recently, I learned that only 17% of those profiled on Wikipedia are women. More than that deserve to be profiled. And I think there's their stories. So I thank you too for having me on today for that reason.

• 2:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, my pleasure. And you know, for what it's worth, and maybe this, this could be taken the wrong way by some people, but hopefully not like I didn't, didn't invite you on because you're a woman.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get it.

• 2:01:32Tim Ferriss?

  But you're on because you're good on dinner.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Thank you, I appreciate that.

• 2:01:35Tim Ferriss?

  And if that also gets more women on the show, fantastic.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:39Tim Ferriss?

  You know, because they are out there. Uh, and I'm really glad you took the time.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:45Tim Ferriss?

  So thank you for being on the show.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  I think it's a your question to say, what's the worst that could happen? I do think people should ask themselves that.

• 2:01:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, it's, that is one of the most empowering questions. But you have to spend some time on it.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  You do.

• 2:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  Because if it's just a big scary shadow, it's going to continue to be a big scary shadow. You have to shine light on it.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:06Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who want to explore that, you can just check out my TED Talk. Uh, tim.blog forward slash TED. Uh, but this has been really fun.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Really fun.

• 2:02:17Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for taking the time. And, uh, we, we have so many other questions we could explore, but I'll let you get back to your evening. And for everybody listening, or watching, hi. Uh, as always, you can find links to everything we've discussed, books, resources, at Cindy Pink CEO on Twitter, Instagram, all of the places. Uh, in the show notes, at tim.blog forward slash podcast for this episode and every other. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:02:54Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. In the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

• 2:03:34Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 2:03:55Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom, which more than 2 million Americans have used to help start their businesses. Past guests even, such as WordPress lead developer, CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, now valued at more than $1 billion, have used LegalZoom to help with their business needs, specifically in his case, to form his company. But LegalZoom isn't just for launching your business. Their services include everything from helping you to manage changing tax laws, reviewing contracts, creating NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, important stuff, handling lease agreements, and assisting with really any other legal challenge, hurdle, inconvenience that typically takes time and effort away from running your business. The best part is that you won't get charged by the hour because LegalZoom

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• 2:05:20Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike and the whole system after I saw my buddy Kevin Rose. I've known him forever, some of you know. And he showed up at my gate at my house a while back and he looked fantastic. And I asked him, I said, "Dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to?" Because he's always doing a weird diet or another, but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, "I've been doing Peloton five days a week." Now that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really piqued my curiosity, ended up getting a system, and it's become an integral

• 2:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  part of my week. I love it and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc. New classes are added every day and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room. You can even livestream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors or find your own favorite class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes and you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you. But we usually just use classes on demand.

• 2:06:47Tim Ferriss?

  I really like Matt Wilpers and his high intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes. And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor or you can select by music, duration, and so on. Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen, performance tracking metrics. I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet.

• 2:07:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:08:11Tim Ferriss?

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