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Learn more about Ann here:
https://floodgate.com/ann-miura-ko/
https://twitter.com/annimaniac
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This week, Cory speaks to self-made billionaire, owner of the Houston Rockets and chairman of a hospitality and entertainment empire encompassing over 600 restaurants, various casinos and even amusement parks. Some of his famous restaurants you may of heard of include Morton’s Steak House, Chart House, Dos Caminos, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and more. Fertitta shares the secrets to his success in his new business book, Shut Up and Listen!
In this week's episode, he talks about his upbringing, where he got his earliest business lessons, what it feels like to be on the Forbes 400 list of richest people on the planet and the importance of adapting to new technological cycles in business.
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Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. As co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix, he laid much of the groundwork for a service that’s grown to 150 million subscribers, and fundamentally altered how the world experiences media. He also served on the Netflix board of directors until retiring from the company in 2003.
Marc’s career as an entrepreneur spans four decades. He’s founded or co-founded six other successful startups, mentored hundreds of early stage entrepreneurs, and as an investor has helped seed dozens of successful tech ventures (and just as many unsuccessful ones). Most recently, he co-founded analytics software company Looker Data Sciences, where he now serves as director.
Outside of the tech and startup world, Marc sits on the boards of Chubbies Shorts, Augment Technologies, the environmental advocacy group 1% For The Planet, and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), which he’s been involved with for most of his life.
A resident of Santa Cruz, California, Marc travels and speaks all over the world, and still probably manages to go surfing more than you do.
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This week, Cory speaks to renowned psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant. Adam is Wharton's top-rated professor and one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and a member of Fortune's 40 under 40. He's also the author of three New York Times bestsellers such as Give and Take, Option B and Originals, which combined have sold over a million copies.
In this week's episode, Adam talks about how to strive for an extraordinary career, the science of becoming well-known, how to build an audience with no agent or publisher backing, the landscape of education and more.
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In this episode we hear from technology executive and entrepreneur Marissa Mayer, who is known for formerly serving as the President and CEO of Fortune 500 giant Yahoo and being the 20th employee of Google. She is currently the co-founder of Lumi Labs, an early stage technology incubator.
Marissa recently gave a keynote address at Internpalooza 2018, an event which is the largest gathering of Silicon Valley interns, young engineers and STEM students, which was founded by Cory Levy. It was a great chance for her to speak about when she graduated and how she decided where to work, which lead to her extraordinarily successful career.
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and angel investor Daniel Gross. Daniel is the founder of Pioneer (an experimental fund that breaks down barriers to find the next great humans through tournaments and mentorship) and runs YC AI. Prior to this, he co-founded Cue, a personal search engine that was acquired by Apple. He is also a successful angel investor being involved with Coinbase, Cruise Automation, Github, Opendoor and more. In this week's episode, he talks about being admitted into Y-Combinator at just the age of 18, how to create life changing opportunities, the launch of his new company Pioneer, importance of celebrating victories, plus many more.
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, technology executive and angel investor Elad Gil. Elad has assisted in the growth of tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Instacart, Coinbase, Stripe, and Square as they've developed from small companies into global brands. Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved that Elad has packaged into a repeatable playbook called "High Growth Handbook.”
In this week's episode, Elad talks about why he invested in Airbnb early on, how to achieve product market fit and what to do after it, how to decide what to work on, recruiting for scale, how to pick the right executives while in a high growth company, and weird but exciting industries he's looking at.
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This week, Cory speaks to author and keynote speaker Alex Banayan. Banayan is the author of the highly anticipated book release of “The Third Door,” which covers a decade-long journey tracking down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg and dozens of the world’s most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers.
The Third Door is available in bookstores everywhere, including Amazon, iBooks, Audible and thirddoorbook.com. In this week’s episode, Banayan talks about coming up with the idea for his book as a college student, funding his book by hacking The Price is Right, common traits of successful people, a 2-year journey of landing an interview with Bill Gates, and more.
“SOMETIMES STATISTICS CAN BE REALLY MISLEADING BECAUSE THEY’RE ASSUMING THAT THERE ARE NO WAYS TO IMPACT THE VARIABLES.”As a pre-med student destined to become a doctor, Alex Banayan was miserable. “I was laying on this dorm room bed staring at these biology books, feeling like they were dementors sucking the life out of me.” Instead of his textbooks, Alex really wanted to read a book on how successful people got to where they are now. Since that book didn’t exist, the then 18-year-old set out to write it himself.
But before he could write the book of his dreams, he had to earn enough money to support himself while writing it. Instead of studying for his finals, Alex decided to test his luck on The Price is Right. The odds were against him even getting called down to compete on Price is Right, but Alex spent all night learning how to “hack” the show and beat the odds. “Sometimes statistics can be really misleading because they’re assuming that there are no ways to impact the variables,” said Alex. Alex impacted those variables and won prizes worth over $30,000. But this was just the first step of what became The Third Door.
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This week, Cory Levy speaks to entrepreneur JD Ross, co-founder of OpenDoor, a company that makes it possible to sell a home in minutes. Opendoor has raised a total of $320 million in venture funding and has surpassed a multi-billion dollar annual revenue run rate. Before Opendoor, Jd started 2 successful businesses during college and went on to lead growth as the VP of Product at Addepar.
In this week’s episode, JD and Cory talk about JD’s college experience, avoiding bankruptcy, landing in Silicon Valley, and how to accelerate your personal growth curve.
“MY LIFE HACK IS JUST THE WILLINGNESS TO DO THE THINGS THAT ARE SIMPLE AND HARD; SLEEP EIGHT HOURS A DAY, EAT HEALTHILY, BE NICE TO MY GIRLFRIEND, SPEND TIME IN THE GYM.”Entrepreneur JD Ross uses his curiosity to his advantage. “My superpower is just an incredible level of curiosity. I just get obsessed with certain things and dive as deep as I possibly can,” says Jd. He has used this superpower to quickly understand extremely complicated industries and business models.
Four years ago, Jd Ross and three co-founders launched Opendoor, a company that gives homeowners the option to sell a home online in just minutes. The company has raised a total of $320 million in venture funding and has exceeded $1B in annual home purchase rate. Before starting Opendoor, Jd founded two startups while in school at Washington University and soon became employee number five at Addepar.
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, author and early-stage investor Scott Belsky, who is well known for co-creating the online portfolio platform Behance, which later sold to Adobe in 2012 and wrote top-selling books ‘Making Ideas Happen’ and ‘Maximize The Middle’. Scott is currently the co-founder of referral network startup Prefer, he is the Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President at Adobe and a Venture Partner at Benchmark. He is also a seed investor with over 100 investments which range from Pinterest to Uber. In this week’s episode, he takes us back to when he landed a job at Goldman Sachs, how current graduates should decided where to work, when he quit to start Behance, how to turn an idea into a product, convincing talent to work for you and his first investment (which was Pinterest).
“DON’T OPTIMIZE (YOUR WORK) FOR THE ADDITIONAL BUCK, ESPECIALLY EARLY IN YOUR CAREER. JUST DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO GET INCREMENTALLY CLOSER TO WHAT YOU’RE GENUINELY INTERESTED IN.” -
Dear Old People, Meet Today’s Teenager
“THEY (TEENS) WILL CREATE MASSIVE CHANGES IN THE WORLD OVER THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS, AND FOR US TO BE ABLE TO TEACH AND INFLUENCE THEM AS THEY BEGIN TO MAKE THOSE CHANGES, WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THEM.”Today’s teenagers are part of what many call Generation Z, a group that is now the largest segment of people in the U.S. with over 26% of the population. With their recent success advocating for stricter gun laws and spreading awareness of issues that are important to them, it’s clear that this generation will impact all of our lives and the world significantly, but what do we really know about them?
In late March, OFF RCRD host Cory Levy spoke on the subject of teens at a Talks at Google presentation. Cory, who is in his mid-twenties, has stayed on top of what teens are up to even though they would now consider him an “old person.” As the Co-Founder of teen-focused social network After School and Internapalooza, it’s Cory’s job to understand young people.
Weeks before the talk, Cory tapped into his network to ask teens what they think “old people” don’t understand about them. Cory turned their responses into 10 points, which he shares in this special edition of OFF RCRD.
Listen to Cory’s talk to hear the 10 points, which include that today’s teens have no interest in working with big companies, idolize gamers, and think that you’re close-minded.
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and author Kathryn Minshew, the founder and CEO of The Muse. The Muse is the fastest growing career discovery platform for 50+ million professionals a year and helps over 700 companies looking to hire talent and grow. Kathryn is also the co-author of “The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career,” available on Amazon and other retailers.
In the episode, Kathryn tells us about going from working in international relations to McKenzie and then in technology, gives tips and guidance on finding the right career path, how to approach employers the right way, and where job seekers go wrong.
“I DIDN’T START THE MUSE BECAUSE I HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, I STARTED IT BECAUSE I NEEDED THEM.”As the Founder and CEO of Founder of The Muse, Kathryn Minshew (@KMin) spends “every day making work more human.” The Muse is an online career resource that gives a behind-the-scenes look at opportunities and companies. “We believe that you can and should love your job—and be successful at it—and we want to help you make that happen.”
Kathryn joined Cory Levy on OFF RCRD to talk about her journey as an entrepreneur and what she has learned about work and hiring.
Kathryn didn’t always want to become an entrepreneur. “As I started to get to know people who worked in the startup sector who were building businesses from scratch, I just fell in love,” says Kathryn. At the age of 25, Kathryn, who originally planned on studying and working in international relations, started The Muse, which was her second company and has grown significantly over the past seven years. The company reaches around 50 million people a year in over 100 countries, and works with around 700 employers who are customers of The Muse. Their team now features around 125 full-time employees, mostly based out of New York City.
Similar to her company, Kathryn has grown as well. “I have absolutely loved it (being an entrepreneur), but I think it surprised me how much I’ve had to learn about topics that I didn’t know anything about.” From raising venture capital (over $20M) to managing a large team of employees, Kathryn has had to pick up new skills throughout her journey, and has learned a lot about jobs and hiring through her own experiences as an employer.
The New Rules of Work
In mid-2018, Kathryn and The Muse co-founder Alex Cavoulacos published The New Rules of Work, which took the lessons they learned from years of running their company to give to millions of people across the country in a rule-like format.
One of the surprises that came from writing this book, according to Kathryn, was what readers resonated with, which was the idea of starting with your values.
“Most career advice; it has you start with ‘what do you think you want to do or what are you good at?’ We said, of course, that’s important but before that, what do you value? Is it flexibility, is it creativity and autonomy, is it compensation or prestige. There’s so many different things that a career can give you. What is it that you want, and that changes, right? Not only from person to person but it changes at different parts of your career. What you want straight out of college might be different than what we what you want five or 10 years later and that’s okay.”
Kathryn and Cory also touched on mistakes that ruin many careers before they even start. “I’m constantly amazed by how many people will sometimes put at risk getting a job that they’re otherwise highly qualified for because of something small.” Kathryn stresses the importance of the basics like a strong handshake, looking people in the eye, knowing how to interview, and understanding the company. “Even if it’s just 15 minutes, brush up on the basics of applying to a job and interviewing,” says Kathryn.
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This week, Cory Levy speaks to three guests from different backgrounds in life who have each experienced depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. They are also willing to talk about it and to share how they’ve overcome their lowest points through entrepreneurship and technology.
We hope this episode will help anyone listening who is going through a similar experience. If you are, you’re not alone. There is hope and people here to help. If you would like to speak with someone, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255, and our friends at Crisis Text Line are available 24/7 through an anonymous text service. Text 741741 to speak with a trained Crisis Counselor. Today we speak with Zach Latta, Amanda Southworth, and Ben Yu.
“MY PLATFORM IS DEVELOPMENT. WHENEVER I HAVE AN ISSUE WITH SOMETHING THAT I SEE, I MAKE AN APP ABOUT IT.” — AMANDA SOUTHWORTHNone of us are beyond mental health issues. In this unique episode of OFF RCRD, host Cory Levy speaks with three young entrepreneurs who have all had to face mental health issues, depression, and more head-on, and overcome additional obstacles to get to where they are now. We combined three interviews into this one powerful episode, intersecting the stories of entrepreneurs Amanda Southworth, Zach Latta, and Ben Yu.
Amanda Southworth
Amanda Southworth (@amndasuthwrth) is the homeschooled 16-year-old iOS developer behind apps AnxietyHelper, Verena, and Whizard App. After struggling with depression and attempting suicide between 5-20 times, Amanda found her platform–something she could turn to as a powerful and creative outlet. “My platform is development. Whenever I have an issue with something that I see, I make an app about it.”
Asked for her advice for others who are struggling and contemplating suicide, Amanda’s advice is to slow down, think, and wait. “I really felt suicide was the only option….the future and opportunities that are coming up are so vast and expansive that you have no way of guessing what they’re going to be based on this little sliver of your life.”
Zach Latta
Zach Latta (@zachlatta) is the founder of the Hack Club, is a Theil Fellow, and was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30. Through Hack Club, Zach helps students lead “coding clubs where beginners learn to code through building things.”
Before getting to a point where he could create opportunities for others through Hack Club, Zach had to find a way out of what he described as a “horrible pit” of depression. “One thing that really helped to get me out of that horrible pit I was in was finding an outlet that let me connect with other people. For me, that was coding.”
Ben Yu
Thiel Fellow and entrepreneur Ben Yu (@Intenex) left Harvard after a semester to save his life. “I knew for a fact that if I’d stayed there any longer, I definitely would’ve killed myself. I wanted to figure out something else to do.”
Before getting into entrepreneurship and tech, Ben decided to see the world. Around the time he conquered Kilimanjaro, Ben learned about the Thiel Fellowship and was accepted into the program. Ben later went on to co-found Sprayable and The Stream Token, and he credits his success to being able to overcome his struggles. “I think the worse thing that happens to a lot of people is that they get in a place where they’re unhappy with their lives, but not so unhappy that it really propels them to change. Whereas, for me, I was so unhappy that it was very clear if I didn’t actually do something about it, then, I would not be willing to go on living. “
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, bestselling author, and philanthropist Adam Braun, who is best known for being the Founder of Pencils of Promise, a non-profit organization that builds schools and increases access to education for children in the developing world. He also wrote a New York Times best selling book The Promise of a Pencil and more recently the co-founder of one-year debt-free college alternative called MissionU. In this weeks episode, Adam talks about his personal upbringing and what lead him to start his organization, his offers advice to current college students, he opens up about past failures and says what are the biggest misconceptions about the outcome of a degree.
“YOU SHOULD BE A SAVVY ROI-DRIVEN CONSUMER OF YOUR EDUCATION”Adam Braun (@AdamBraun) is a New York Time Bestselling Author, the Founder of Pencils of Promise, and the Founder of MissionU, a college alternative.
Cory Levy interviewed Adam on the OFF RCRD Podcast about his past and advice for others based on his experiences. “I would say to any student, that you should be a savvy ROI-driven consumer of your education…thousands of the schools around the country that are charging enormous prices without particularly strong results.”
In the interview, Adam also talked about the financial burden that college puts on students. “College is supposed to be this great economic enabler. My wife went to college and initially (went) out of state and transferred back in state because the tuition fees were so high and she just got absolutely decimated by this crazy amount of student debt and had to leave school before even completing her bachelor’s degree.”
MissionU is a tuition-free college alternative that earns money from students based on their future earning potential instead of charging fees upfront. Adam explained that MissionU students aren’t looking for a traditional overpriced college education. “They don’t just want to learn about theory, about these abstract ideas. They want to do things that they can actually present to the real world and that employers will actually value as a skill that’s going to be needed for the rest of their career.”
Adam believes in following your purpose but is skeptical of the advice that young people should follow their passion. “I think this idea that you should follow your passion is not a great piece of advice because passions are incredibly fleeting. The idea of following your passion means follow whatever you’re excited about at this moment, and I don’t think that it stretches people to really do the tough, introspective work, to not discover passion but to discover purpose. I’m a huge advocate of following your purpose.” Adam has followed his purpose, which has led him to become a best-selling author and the founder of two impactful companies.
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This week, Cory speaks to Catherine Hoke, the founder of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) and Founder and CEO of Defy Ventures. Defy is a national organization that transforms the lives of business leaders and people with criminal histories through their collaboration along the entrepreneurial journey. Before quitting her corporate job to start PEP, Catherine was an associate at private equity firm Summit Partners and went on to become the Director of Investment Development at American Securities.
In this episode, she tells us how she went from the corporate world to prison, her experiences working with the incarcerated, second chances, forgiveness, and the similarities between prisoners and CEO’s. Catherine also offers advice on how to overcome a crisis. She has just released her new book now available to purchase, A Second Chance: For You, For Me, And For The Rest Of Us.
“YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAST. YOU ARE NOT EQUAL TO THE WORST THING THAT YOU HAVE DONE.” -
This week, Cory speaks to author, marketer and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday, who is well known for being a controversial media strategist, particularly when he was the Director of Marketing at American Apparel and founder of creative consulting firm Brass Check Marketing. Ryan, in addition, is a bestselling author of six books, including “The Obstacle Is the Way”, “Ego Is the Enemy” and “The Daily Stoic” and has written for several of the worlds largest publications while being a media columnist and editor-at-large for the New York Observer. He has a new book out today which you can get now on Amazon and elsewhere titled “Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue”. In this week’s episode, he tells us why he left college at the age of 19, how he was then hired and mentored by prolific writers Robert Greene and Tucker Max, to landing an advisory position to American Apparel’s founder only to in only a year become its Director of Marketing. Ryan goes over his most controversial marketing campaigns, some of the best lessons he’s learned along the way and discusses his new book.
“WHEN YOU’RE BORING, WHETHER YOUR PRODUCT IS BORING, WHETHER YOUR ADVERTISEMENTS ARE BORING, IT COSTS A LOT MORE.”Ryan Holiday (@RyanHoliday) has never shied away from controversy, from leaving school at the age of 19 against his parent’s wishes to casting porn stars in commercials as the young marketing director of American Apparel. It has worked in his favor as he has risen the corporate ranks and then gone on to write over a half dozen books including Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, The Obstacle is the Way, and Ego Is the Enemy.
When it comes to giving others career advice, Ryan cautions against following a passion. “The common career advice is to find your passion, and that can somewhat be dangerous, right? Just because you’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean that you’re good at it,” said Ryan in his interview with Cory Levy on OFF RCRD.
Cory Levy spoke with Ryan about his journey as a controversial young marketing director and successful author of the OFF RCRD Podcast. Ryan’s newest book goes behind the scenes of a groundbreaking court case involving a famous sex tape, a professional wrestler, and tech investor Peter Thiel. The book, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, is now available on Amazon.
Ryan credits his success to his mentors, including authors Robert Greene and Tucker Max. Because of his experience with mentors and how he’s been able to leverage their help to build his career, Ryan is often approached by aspiring writers to become their mentor.
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This week, Cory speaks to journalist, author and startup analyst Billy Gallagher, who is well known for covering early-stage startups at TechCrunch and being an analyst at Khosla Ventures. Billy attended Stanford and was in the same fraternity as Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel, which he has now written a new book out today on Amazon titled ‘How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars’ covering the events that lead to its skyrocketing multi-billion dollar success. In this week’s episode, Billy talks about how he landed a job at TechCrunch while at college, his exposure to early-stage startups while in venture capital, how he met Evan, and if he thinks Snapchat can become the next Facebook and tells us more about his new book.
“LAUNCH AS EARLY AS YOU CAN.”Billy Gallagher (@GallagherBilly) is an investor and author, who recently published How To Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story.
Billy first met Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel as a sophomore at Stanford.
“We were in the same fraternity. He had already left the fraternity by the time joined, but we ran in similar crowds. He was two years above me, big personality on campus, had some mutual friends. Met him a few times socially and then, my new editor at TechCrunch was telling me to cover a story on Stanford and the two hottest startups at the time were Snapchat and Clinkle so I started chasing those down.”
Cory Levy talked with Billy on the OFF RCRD Podcast about his early interactions with Snapchat, their wild journey, and what other founders can learn from the Snapchat story. Among the questions asked was “what was the first interview (with Evan Spiegel) like?
“Evan was already very similar to what he is today, cocky, very brash, but also really intelligent…I remember one of the lines from our interview…he thought the sexting narrative was overblown because it’s not as fun as having real sex, which is a pretty funny line to have in the press.”
As Billy described in the interview, Evan and the Snapchat team took a unique and aggressive approach that helped get them to where they are today.
“Intense focus, Snap’s managed to stay pretty focused on what the core use case is. They learned a ton from their users. They came out with these things where, at first, when it was just photo and video messaging, users didn’t ask for Stories; they actually asked for group messaging. But Snap focused on Stories and made that a hit and then, much, much later added group messaging. I think that combination of listening to users but not just blindly doing what they say and actually saying to yourself, ‘What are they telling us? What is the problem they want to solve? What’s the best way of long-term for us to solve that?’ not just, ‘You asked for a feature, let’s blindly go build it.’”
Through his work with the company, time spent as an analyst for Khosla Ventures and interviews with Evan Spiegel, Billy had the ability to learn about and see Snapchat in action first-hand from the very start back in 2012. How To Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story dives inside the life of Evan Spiegel, the early roadblocks the company had to overcome, turning down billions of dollars, and much more.
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, investor, author, speaker, influencer and future owner of the New York Jets Gary Vaynerchuk, who is well known for being the CEO and founder of digital agency giant VaynerMedia, athlete representation agency VaynerSports, venture capital firm VaynerRSE, host of the popular DailyVee show and a 4x New York best seller. Prior, he grew his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million in revenue and was an early investor in multi-billion dollar behemoths Twitter, Snapchat, Uber, and Venmo. In this weeks episode, Gary talks about his secret life-hack, the biggest thing holding people back, easy skills you can learn that will benefit you in the long run and what’s next for influencers.
“TOMORROW, GO AND DO SOMETHING YOU’D BEEN WANTING TO DO THAT YOU’RE DESPERATELY SCARED ABOUT WHAT YOUR PARENTS, THE WORLD, THE MARKET YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS WILL THINK DO IT. THEN SEE HOW NOT SCARY.”If you’re not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk (@Garyvee), you probably haven’t been on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube for the past five years. Gary is a leading entrepreneur, author, digital marketer, and speaker whose online following is in the millions and constantly growing.
After building his family’s wine business up from $3 million to $60 million, Gary began branching out to help entrepreneurs as a mentor, advisor, and investor. His current company, VaynerMedia, has grown into one of the leading digital agencies in the world with over 800 employees and $100 million in annual revenue.
Cory Levy spoke with Gary Vaynerchuk on OFF RCRD about life hacks, what’s holding people back from accomplishing their goals, and his approach to controversy, which isn’t what you might think. “I don’t think you run into controversy for awareness. I think getting the right awareness matters,” says Vaynerchuk, who is not afraid to speak his mind and give direct responses to questions about business and entrepreneurship.
Asked what stops people from getting to where they want to go in life, Gary responded, “To me, other people’s opinions is the number one reason people are held back.” Gary encourages people to fight through these opinions and start taking action. “Do one thing that makes you uncomfortable. See the reaction from the audience and your inner family and your friends. (you will) Realize very quickly that it wasn’t as scary as you thought.”
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This week, Cory speaks to the Hollywood psychiatrist and author Phil Stutz, who is well known for his client list boasting top writers, actors, producers, and CEOs. Together with Barry Michels, Phil is coauthor of Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression, and Unleash Your Soul’s Potential and The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower—and Inspire You to Live Life in forwarding Motion, a New York Times bestseller. In this weeks episode, he talks about the common problems faced among the rich and famous, advice for those facing their fears and how to overcome failures, a few tools such as the reversal of desires, the dynamic evaluation, merit & power system and even gives wisdom on how to build long-lasting relationships.
“WINNING IS THE ABILITY TO FAIL AND MAKE A QUICK RECOVERY.”Phil Stutz is a world-renowned best-selling author and Hollywood psychiatrist. Before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1982, Stutz worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island. He’s been called the “Shrink to the Sars” because of his high-profile clients, and his ability to give them tools to overcome fear and roadblocks in their lives.
A key to overcoming fear and achieving success, according to Stutz, is to place something in your life higher than the specific result of an action. For example, if you’re studying for a test, you should have a goal tied with your studying that isn’t related to whether you get an A or an F. “Whether you want to get good grades, whether you want to have a successful business, a good marriage, it doesn’t matter. There’s got to be something higher than the results. If there’s nothing higher than the results your fear is going to eat you,” says Stutz.
One tool Stutz mentions in his OFF RCRD interview with entrepreneur and investor Cory Levy, is called the reversal of desire. “The normal desire that everybody has is to avoid pain, or if you want to say, it’s to avoid being afraid, avoid situations that scare you, even thinking about them. The tool is called the reversal of desire. Instead of the normal desire to avoid, the reversal of desire says, ‘I’m going right into the fear.’” Stutz continues, “If you approach fear aggressively and go right into it and that includes the circumstance that frightens you, fear actually shrinks. If you avoid fear, if you back away from it, if you run away from it, you avoid the situation, your fear gets bigger.”
“Worrying is a complete waste of time.”
While all of us worry to some degree, we also know it doesn’t get us anywhere. But what does? According to Stutz, moving past our worries and doing something about them not only helps us rise above worrying, it leads to knowledge. “Action breeds wisdom. You think wisdom comes from studying and all that. It’s okay. You get something from it, but it’s action itself. The action puts you in the middle of the world.” So if you’re worried about approaching a pretty woman to ask her out on a date, you will gain information and wisdom by taking action and approaching her. If you just walk away because of fear, that fear grows larger.
Not every action leads to success, and that’s okay. In fact, failure may actually lead us closer to success based on how we deal with a failure after it happens. “Highest achievement isn’t succeeding; it’s not avoiding failure. The highest achievement is to fail and recover quickly which requires a lot of things but mostly determination and the idea that I actually can recover from this.”
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This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and investor James Hong, who is best known for having founded fun viral project turned multi-million dollar dating property HotOrNot. He’s also an active angel investor and has invested in more than 80 startups. In this weeks episode, James talks experiencing virality back when it was rare, the importance of understanding peoples motives when designing products, the drastic differences in scaling today vs 2000’s, what it was like turning down multi-million dollar offers to then selling his company for more than he’d ever imagined and fast forward to today where James talks about trying to juggle being a founder and parenting.
“YOU CAN ONLY COME UP WITH OUT OF THE BOX SOLUTIONS IF YOU’RE ACTUALLY WILLING MENTALLY TO BE OUT OF THE BOX AND DIFFERENT.”James Hong (@JHong) is an entrepreneur turned investor. James and several co-founders started Hot or Not in 1999, a website that let users rate user-submitted pictures. “Today, you see pictures of people all over the place, on Instagram, on social networks and so on. It’s not as big a deal today,” says James. In the early 2000’s it was a very big deal. After a single week, the site reached an average of nearly 2 million page views a day. Within a year, the site was a top-25 advertising domain according to NetNielsen Rating’s. “It’s a very human thing to want to look at people and also to show yourself off.”
Instead of focusing on what’s worked in the past when building a product or starting a company, James works to increase his understanding of the people who will become the company’s customers. “When you want to study a product, fundamentally what you’re doing is you’re trying to study users and try to understand users. To understand them, I think you have to understand people; users are people.”
Entrepreneur Cory Levy spoke with James Hong on OFF RCRD about Hot or Not, his transition from entrepreneur to investor, and what other young entrepreneurs should focus on when starting a business. “If they want to come up with good products, they should think about psychology and try to understand people, try understand users, what they like, what they don’t like and why,” says James, who has gone on to invest in over 80 companies after selling Hot or Not.
For James, successfully investing in startups goes far beyond a good idea or even a well-written business plan. “I would have done better if I just ignored reading the business plans and just bet entirely on whether I liked the people.” While he’s been asked repeatedly when he’s going to start a new company, James is more focused on his family. “The only thing I should really value is my time, because you can always make money but you can’t make more time, we have finite amount of heartbeats.”
Asked about what he’s learned from the successful entrepreneurs he’s worked alongside, James said that they are all somewhat similar. “They are ultra-smart, but they are able to think of things at a meta level. They like things that are slightly odd or different. They don’t mind being slightly odd or different. Every successful person that I know is like that. They are slightly quirky.”
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