Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show.
I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here.
“Go to learningleater.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes.”
Go to learningleater.com now on to the night's featured leader Jamie Simmons off as an entrepreneur inventor and the founder of the home security company, Reng, he's best known for appearing on Shark Tank, getting rejected only to later sell his company to Amazon for over a billion dollars during our conversation we discussed. White Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called
Jamie quote a real builder scrappy original and unsatisfied with the status quo. So cool. Jamie talks about the exact hiring filter he uses. He calls it looking for quote marathon runners and why it's not about resumes or pedigree for him and then we want deep on a CEO or senior leader having a front line
obsession. Jamie still has his email address on every ring doorbell you buy.
It's crazy he's always talking with customers and is constantly working on making things
better. I love it and I think you're going to love this conversation with Jamie Simmons. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them.
“If you need to hire one person hire a team of people or transform your business through talent”
or technical services Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver hiring can be tough but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleater today to learn more that's InsightGlobal.com/learningleater I read that Jeff Bezos said Jamie quote is a real builder scrappy original and unsatisfied by the status quo.
He's poured his missionary spirit into this book and his story is a real world primer on founder mentality. What did it mean to you to have Jeff Bezos say that about you? It's pretty cool. I mean I'd say there's some pretty cool things that have happened in my life and pretty
amazing ones that I pinched myself, that one was definitely a pinch myself moment.
I asked Jeff, I wrote the book, I said I wrote a book on the story of ring and I said would you do something for the back cover and read it and you know I'd say like a lot of people you'd think like that would just sort of do some sort of can thing or have someone in their comms group sort of come back to you and say here you go which I still would have been by the way humbled by it but Jeff is Jeff and he did it and read it and looked at it and you
wanted to have his own very curated quote that's from him and so it was pretty incredible and I don't I don't think he's ever done any other book back jacket like that. So in a lot of ways it was humbling and incredible. We're skipping ahead and we'll get there but I'm curious I remember I had the founder of Whole Foods on so he negotiated with Bezos and John Mackey that was a fun conversation.
What was the negotiation like because you eventually sold your company for over a billion dollars to Amazon how involved was he where the conversations like I'd loved to go inside the process of that transaction.
“Yeah so for our transaction which happened after Whole Foods I think they learned that Jeff”
just loves entrepreneurs and so I think they learned to keep Jeff out of the negotiations because he does it I think he's like I love entrepreneurs like it I find it hard when you're you know it's a negotiate hard with someone who you respect is that's pretty hard to do because it's like you know Jeff's a builder he isn't inventor so for ours like we worked with like the Corp Dev people and he has a little bit sort of more how you to picture
like one of these deals going that said they were very like they understood we were a start-up
they leaned in you know these are never they're never easy I mean you're selling a company
for over a billion dollars there's a lot of a lot of emotion on all sides that takes place so you could have kept going without them personally it's probably really hard to pass up the money Amazon is one of the biggest and best companies in the world and and of all time it's their founder right I was talking about is also someone that I think is well respected by all and is built something incredible why say okay yeah I'm going to go join them or be a part of
them or sell to them as opposed to saying no guys let's just keep doing this on our own hardware
Companies take a lot of cash so balance sheet matters we grew we started reve...
thirty million one seventy four eighty which by a sounds like to anyone listening like that's
“amazing like what a great growth but the problem is when you think about it is how do you go”
from one seventy four eighty is you're buying you know hundreds of millions of dollars of products
when you're selling less than that at that time so you're busy always in some ways going out of
business if sales growth slows because you're over ordering in order to sell and so we were in a position where like from we were going from four eighty to over a billion as great as that was when we're selling it's like anything that happened in the market we were toast it's like on a motorcycle going 200 miles an hour like if a leaf falls down and hits me I'm dead and so at Amazon you know we say like hey we're even other billion dollars or order stuff for next year we're growing they're
like okay sure what else you want and again it's just because compared to their balance sheet it's just the size of ring compared to Amazon it just was able to tuck in and fit in so from that side I really wanted my missions of eight neighborhoods say for I wanted to keep sort of doing that I wanted to be the world's largest home security company I wanted to have a huge impact and I did not want to ace the thing into the ground which was a very likely scenario if we kept going
“alone looking back I think we probably would have been fine because you can again you can see how”
the capital markets were you can see how the growth was I mean like you can kind of see everything now but I'd say with the information we had at the time it was a great decision and I'd say what we did with the business has been great I mean like the impact we've had has been incredible it's crazy to think from an outsider's perspective like oh he's making whatever they're doing 500 million bucks a year in revenue obviously this dude's crushing it he's probably being able
to relax enjoy life you know go to work and work harder whatever but it sounds like that sounds amazingly stressful to have a company doing that much in revenue and yet could die at any moment our growth was so fast that it's what kind of killed us and it's in such a weird irrational thing because you're right like when you hear it oh we did 500 million this year people are like oh that guy's rich that company they must be worth a fortune and it's like
sort of yes but again the other side is if sales went down 20 percent that's a hundred million and sales on a company it just doesn't have the balance sheet like we just didn't have it and so it was super scary and at some point I just got to the point where like yeah it's like do you want 1.15 billion dollars or to keep trying to go with this thing and like I mean in some ways almost like Vegas where you're putting your money on black and you double and you double
and at some point you're like I'll probably lose if I keep doubling I'm curious this balance of
you are a scrappy inventor you're a builder that doesn't always mean you're going to be a good
business person and in a lot of cases they're not right it's like one or the other the great musician but they don't understand how to set up so they have to hire other people how was that for you being the scrappy inventor this builder and no it sounds like you know what you're talking
“about this funny when you say like that so I think I am a great inventor and I like still humbly but”
like I have I guess a track record that's you know decent of inventing things that never existed that have done pretty well so I'm gonna like take that and then I've done a lot of invention around how to like build a company fast like how to allow it to scale fast like the invention on that what's interesting is that if you're trying to like follow this there's a lot of people that made more money than me and I'm fine I'm not like trying to complain but because they're more
business people like they would have looked at how to operate ring for more profit because like but I was deluding myself with raising money and there was ways to sort of engineer it to make more money as me if I had looked at it in that way but I didn't care all I wanted to do is grow it fast get product out there build more product invent more things and so I kind of like
see that there's something like business people and I always see there's like different types of
entrepreneurs I'm more of an inventor entrepreneur there's entrepreneurs where like literally business entrepreneurs there's people that like we've never heard of that have just crushed it because they're just maniacal business people I am not a maniacal business person I am maniacal on product and that I bring invention into like how we run the company I was reading that you're hiring people from Craigslist you're trying to find people that maybe something's happened in their life
they're scrappy themselves they're humble they're going to work can you walk me through maybe earlier in your time what you look for when hiring other than like the table stakes if they got to be able to do X right but I'm talking about attributes of people as well as maybe how that's evolved if it's evolved over time when it comes to hiring more people to work with your companies I'm still trying to hire people just based on passion I think like you said there
Is like a table stakes like if you're there to do C++ programming like it tur...
kind of need to know C++ programming like there are some things that are like you have to be able to do the job but for most jobs I'd say and especially with AI by the way AI is made it's up by the way C++ programming you don't need no C++ programming just go to freaking cloud code so I do think passionate people that care that want to succeed at whatever the mission is
those are the people you want to hire so I always say it's for me it's marathoners it's like
someone who wants to run a marathon big marathons are the dumbest thing that any human could ever do even if you win it no one cares I did the boss in marathon twice so stupid 30,000 whatever people run it I finish like 22,000 place and I'm so proud of myself like it's like my proudest moment is alone finishing the boss in marathon in 22,000's place that I worked a year for training every day and spending hours doing it and so like you want those people that
whatever they're doing they care about getting the mission done and so if you can find those people and especially with AI democratizing like all information just fill your business with those people and they you'll crush anything how did you and how do you find those people what do you ask in the interview process people are getting better in trying to fool others so how do you make sure you're finding those people there's two ways to do it one is again I just sit with them and
talk to them I don't have like specific questions and all stuff I just want to listen to like what are they saying what are they saying in their lives I tell them what are mission is like a mission to make neighbor and safer like do you want to work on making neighbor and safer because if you don't you're going to be miserable here you're going to hear it every day you're going to be like rolling your eyes you don't have to care about that like not everyone does but if you do great
you're going to love it if you don't you're going to hate so like it's always like start with the mission
“I hire fast and I fire faster and I think like the reality is I haven't figured out a way and”
maybe it's my own failure in interviewing to raise the percentage of finding the best people versus finding to your point that people that say like oh I'm super passionate oh my I love making the effort to say for oh I'm like it's my life's mission and they come in and they just you tell they just hate it and so you know if you hire fast and fire faster like I don't like firing people like I don't I don't like the impact on their lives on their families but get them out quickly
have you found certain things that have increased your batting average maybe it's they've actually run marathon to maybe it's they've had a rough up bringing or a great one the best is when someone's
referred by someone because they usually feel guilty because we're very transparent here's what's
going to be here's what we're going to do here's how we work if you hate that don't come here and I think when someone's referred by their uncle by their whatever that no like they don't want to let them down and so I have found that referrals once I don't like referrals so you don't want to
“make an organization that's like oh you have to be the friend of Jamie to get in but the other”
side is I think there is a thing with referrals where they don't want to let you down where someone who's just like I sort of the off the street doesn't know anything no connection maybe just doesn't have that same level of care where does this mission from yours come from so you know it's funny we we started I invented this you know I've in my garage I couldn't hear the door bell I'm working on other stuff I just got in an iPhone I live build a video doorbell I just built
it to like so I could hear the door my wife says it makes her feel safer at home again the adventure I mean was like realize when she said that that way people were doing home security up until that point was not looking at it from an efficacy side they were looking at it from like a marketing and getting a contract for the home side I don't blame them technology had changed all sorts of stuff it happened but with having the phone with being able to be connected to your home
at any time you needed a whole new set of things and I realized like these things could make neighborhood safer they could actually reduce crime in neighborhoods like my head kind of exploded and that is why ring became so big it's why it became probably the world's largest home security
“company which I think it is today because I didn't like you know say like I'm going to build”
the passenger doorbell in the world I'm going to build the best video doorbell I'm going to get patents like it was like we're going to change the way home security's done with this like new thing that just happened which was basically a default now I mean I've got one everyone's got them it's like well yeah obviously you would have this but it's just bizarre that not that long ago and I think you've said in your Shark Tank pitch the doorbell's like one of the only things that had
not been updated or whatever the language you use since forever ago 18 whatever yeah like it was yeah it's just crazy that now at the time though it obviously had never been done you invented it and now it's ubiquitous we all have them it's wild and it seems because you are a tinker you're
A builder you're an inventor your wife said one statement to you and all the ...
to second this could be a thing but it's one thing for your wife to say that and for you to have a
“little bit of an aha moment it's another thing to actually create a full-blown company”
and create a product that seems kind of like a pain to build and then make it so that we all have them I mean what's the next step after your wife says how do you get this going how do you create a company once we had the mission and Jeff said this like in public too like this idea of infinite truth so like Amazon if you look at like Amazon's core principles they're infinite
well customers always want lower price more selection and faster delivery yes like it doesn't
matter like but if you deliver within an hour they'll want it in 30 minutes if you deliver in 30 minutes like they'll always want faster they'll always want lower price and they're always going to want more selection so it's like like you can work on Amazon's customer offering of like the e-commerce forever like until you're delivering it the instant you order it at zero dollars and 100% selection like there's like you can go forever so when I found making
neighborhood safer it's like that's an infinite thing to work on and as soon as you have that that's what unlocked ring from being another little business that I was working on and tinkering to literally what is today probably the world's largest home security company because you were now working on something that had infinite possibility infinite market and then the hard part is when you have that is now how do you bring that down into tactical tangible
short term like every day what do you do every day to work on that because you can also get overwhelmed by and you see a company's like oh we're working on solving all x and we're trying to do it all at once and so is it like how do you eat an elephant like you cut it into very small bites like you eat it like one little bite in the time you don't eat it all once so it's called doorbot and you go on shark tank what was the process like to get on the show
what were you thinking before I just rewatched the pitch but you know so you're like standing behind in the unit the doorbell thing what was it like leading up to it where you nervous I would love to go inside how you were feeling so I mean I you know here I am in the garage I'm basically failing I mean like I'm like there's nothing's going right but you had started insult to companies prior to this but we're like very little money so not okay so online it looks like you've made
millions it sounds like you did not know okay I wasn't broke but I was definitely not like I was not rich like I was not like I should not have been in the garage just tinkering like I didn't have that kind of money at all like I definitely didn't and so I'm kind of like working on this doorbot thing it's eating cash because it's hardware guys is less I'd love to go to lunch with you and chat about my business and so I'm like kind of driving this this lunch and I'm literally thinking my
head like oh my Jamie this is why you can never make it like because you're literally like you
can't focus like you're literally going out to lunch while you're basically you're burning to the ground your family and your garage and so I go to lunch super nice guy great business thing talking all the time he's like what are you working on I'm like oh I'm like on this doorbell and but when I when I would tell people that doorbot at the time they would laugh and they usually say come on seriously what are you working on because it was like I'm working on a doorbell that
goes to your phone they're like oh like that's a circle like you know it's like that's the stupidest they've ever heard I mean literally that was the response and so he's like oh that's so cool I'd be thought about going out Shark Tank still a big show but like at the time was like I mean
“it was the biggest I think it was the biggest show on TV at that time or like the rate you top five”
or something is crazy 30 plus thousand people were applying a year to be on the show so I might know I didn't apply like sending my one of 30 thousand application which I should have by the red just because I just was like down on my luck kind of talking and he's like oh the one of the producers is asking they're trying to get bigger products and stuff like this here's the email so I email the producer person on my page Jamie here's my website you know kind of like man
and I started driving home from the lunch the guy calls me he's like this is great you got to be a shark tank and I'm like holy shit you know it's just like insane so that was kind of my
getting too Shark Tank which then I slated a million things that actually get on the show from there
like I I thought at that point that I was just like oh my god I'm on but it turned out there was still a million things to do and then we go on Shark Tank it's like your point of the taping and if you rewatch the episode that you did so they said like you have these producers and they have
“like your pitch and you got to do it and they're like you need to do a live demo of your product”
and I'm like yeah you know because I'm like not telling them that it's like really not working very well like I did not of course like did not disclose that but like this thing is like super challenged and like barely working if at all didn't seem like the right thing to tell them so they're like yeah you have to do a live demo I'm like okay yeah let's do a live demo where we just tape it beforehand and then we show it because it just like you don't want to have all the
Things happening like no I'm like well let's do a live demo beforehand becaus...
could tape it because like there's interference I mean I tried everything like no so we do a live
“demo on the show and like it wasn't working like the engineer I had was like literally dying”
trying to set this thing up like the they're breaking the ones I really had like four in the whole world door-bots that had been like produced by hand so I go to ring the doorbell if you look at my face when I like turn around because I look up it's it's actually the live feed like that's on there and you kind of see this face it's like it looks like I'm kind of excited I'm actually like I can't believe that the picture came up like I'm like I'm like I'm like labor gas I was like
I was like watchers like this is really impressive it's a live demo in fact that picture quality
from door-bots never was is that good again ever like that was like the best if you could ask for like
the genie for like one wish it was like just make this that that one goddamn doorbell push work on shard tank please like just make that one work but I don't care if anything else works just in my life just make that one thing work and it worked you even held up Mr. wonderful
“space right in front of me when I was like going crazy I like yeah I went for it oh my gosh okay”
and so that they're all saying no no no no no offers Mr. Wonderful's the last I watched it is a family show for us right Mr. Wonderful's like oh let's do some royalty garbage that he tries to do with everybody else and you kind of stand firm and you ultimately walk away without a deal like how were you feeling in that moment I cried in my car in the way home I mean like I mean I really did go in there being like Markson gave me the money we needed money like I needed money what I wasn't
trying to just get markets around like I need money I mean six now people are like oh it's so great
you didn't get a deal I'm like it's like I knew it was going to be a billion dollars so like why
I took a deal you know it's like but at the time I needed money badly and Mark was out immediately and then the Mr. Wonderful deal just you can't like yeah I'm just telling you how bad hardware is on cash flow if immediately you're giving cash flow out like it just there's no way it would work I left I was devastated it doesn't he know that though why offer a stupid deal like that uncertain things it can work but not like yours where there's all that cost first of all you offer
because like someone's willing to give you like a crazy good deal on a business like you take it like
“you know so I think that's like the first thing the second thing is the way the show format works”
if you don't have that negotiation at the end it's likely you won't air okay and so a lot of what he's doing is actually he's probably the most friendly to the entrepreneur because by us having that negotiation it creates the book end to the intro to the end and if he hadn't done that deal I might not have ever got on air a lot of people I know there's a lot of people like go on shark tank to tape don't actually go on air because it's just like it's a boring episode like
it's just like you know I get on there and pitch and nothing happens and I leave no one wants to watch that got you so you leave you're crying in your car I'm a little cry devastated but something changes what happened to go from that to where we don't have any money I genuinely need money to a billion dollars the good news is that that point I was too far into it so I I couldn't back out of the business if I had at that moment just went back to the garage and said I'm done
I would have basically been personally bankrupt because I had I'd already ordered too many products and like I I owed too much money already so like it was a kind of a boiling the frog thing I didn't realize I was that deep in but like you know it was like 30,000 for this and just you kind of like okay great well sell these and then all of a sudden you realize that if you don't sell them I was in a bad place financially from that side if the business didn't continue so I couldn't stop
like I didn't have the right to stop so people always say like oh like you will think of like
tough that's so tough that you kept going it's like no I actually had to keep going it's actually the opposite of tough like I was like a chicken shit I just couldn't stop and so I kept going and then when Shark Tank did air it gave us a huge boost of sales that gave us like a cash injection which then we were the higher some more people to build ring then we were able to sort of raise some money around that and so that like you know there's still was a lot of hard sort of things along
the way but I'd say the airing of Shark Tank would start the clock on if you wanted to plot success like that's when it kind of started because from that moment on we kind of had like momentum that we could kind of keep trading on. I also read that you were naive at times and sometimes that can be really really helpful how was being naive helpful to you? What's a superpower I mean everything that you try to do I mean you know great inventions are things that people say can't
happen because if people said they could happen then they'd already be out there so like you look at like James Dyson and some of these amazing inventors you know Elon I mean people said
The electric car couldn't work you can go back and there's all this stuff abo...
can't have enough of this and you won't have enough capacity like so you need to be smart enough to sort of not put yourself into too bad of a situation but now even have to say like I think I can do this I don't even know that I can't and so people said you couldn't build a battery
operated camera at this time we go on Wi-Fi like but I didn't know I never built anything so
like what did I know so we just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed to what they would work together. It's funny my first sales job after I got them playing football after college Jamie was is this sales rep and it was 2008 and people were like damn oh my God that had
“to be the worst thing ever terrible market all this stuff and I was like I honestly didn't even”
realize it I didn't watch the news I didn't do anything I was just like you know going to work out in the gym do my sales job hang out with my buddies I didn't even realize that there was anything going on I'm like I'm glad I was just like a complete meathead idiot but sometimes that can be really good for you. I think it a lot of times it is because we get so wrapped up and like the GDP's gonna be down 1% off of whatever and the stock market's crashing you know oh my God but
the reality is like the markets are still huge the consumer still huge like but people build
more businesses usually when things are down when when when they're up and so you're right I think sort of like it's a hard thing to tell someone is you don't want to give someone advice to be like be stupid like it's not like good advice but the other side is if you try to sort of like do everything right it usually doesn't work yeah and there is something about like naive is kind of part of that is like and again especially break out big things usually come from people that
were like and you'll see it like almost as like that you can't do this and part of it too is if you are thinking and analyzing the whole world that's time you're not doing the thing you're not working you're not inventing you're not building you're not making the calls and so sometimes it can knowing too much or trying to know too much gets in the way of actually doing the work and
“I think that's a key takeaway for anybody is if you're sitting there like building all these plans”
and thinking about stuff and all it's like well when are you actually doing the work yeah because that's ultimately what's gonna build ring and speaking of ring the guy who owned ring dot
com I believe one of the sell to you for two million bucks right two million bucks and you're like
I don't know what to mean bucks but you got to your mind can you tell me the story of how you were able to get ring dot com my name is more right he won the sell for a lot of money I ended up getting it down to like 750,000 and the day I'm supposed to pay him I have 178,000 in the bank so like you got to start to figure out that math so I call him up and I'm like hey listen my board said we can't do the deal like I did just you know which is sure to true because it's like
I didn't have a board but it was me so like I wasn't like you know wasn't completely untruthful so my boards that I can't do the deal but they did approve me to do 175,000 today and it's total of one million for the purchase so I'm increasing now the price and paid over two years and so the guy's like f-bombs and just I mean the guy thinks he's getting 700,000 dollars that day and I like basically tell him the day of the wire and so just you know just not happy
hangs at the phone calls me back like you know over but I mean things like fine you know it was like when I was like like it was like but then I'm like okay so because I'm like figure I'm like listen well give them 175 and like if we can't afford the domain it's because the business went out anyway so like I don't need the domain for a bankrupt business and if a business works well uh you know we'll buy it and so I didn't end up being you know any of working out for us
I guess for him it worked out because he got 250,000 more than he thought he was going to but like it certainly wasn't my best from a negotiation so I would say it was wasn't my most moral negotiation but you gave them all of the money you had. Is that a very scary moment? It was a terrifying moment. I had a venture capital investment from true ventures coming in
“and that's why I kind of like was tiny if I didn't tell true ventures I didn't tell them that I was”
buying a domain because I was worried that so they were giving us like five million I think and I was worried if I told them that basically like 20% was going to a domain name that killed me I'm trying to keep everyone happy without like like blowing the thing up and so then true ventures delays their wire like a week or two just like but it's just like yeah like we have this going on you might like you know I'm like oh sure it's okay and they're like oh we wanted to do this
why I'm like could we maybe do Monday because like Tuesday was payroll and so I'm like we maybe do Monday or whatever and they're like oh sure okay I'm like great great and so they like wired the money on that Monday and like you know Tuesday we make payroll but like that was definitely like I was like we're not making payroll like we're not making payroll I cannot I don't know if I could live that I mean that's why you're you know whatever you don't you done but I also read
You did struggle to sleep mainly because you're working so much but I would i...
hurt sleep too stress was like that's it I'm not there are different types of entrepreneurs I met lots of different types there are people that can do that and literally sleep like a baby don't they don't even care I internalize this stuff and it just destroys me so like I wasn't sleeping I was super stressed I mean so I wasn't I wasn't doing it out of like a chest pump like I'm tough whatever it was more like survival and doing things to survive but it
was affecting me terribly I mean it was really bad how did that affect you and your personal life my son was like three like when I started so he was kind of like at that point if I six years old or something just I just have one kid so we actually were very like transparent at home which helped I just talked like openly like when my son was six I can do like where the business was like he would be like literally like a kindergarten teacher would say to us like
I hear the business isn't going well I'm like yeah but we were just open like it was just a very
open adult conversation always which I think helped on that because it wasn't like I was trying to hide
anything from them but it just takes a village I mean like having my wife and son sort of supporting me the whole way but yeah I was it was still pretty tough I mean it was definitely stressful what is your messaging around work life integration work life balance not killing yourself along the way with stress and not sleeping and trying to stay healthy but also trying to build something extraordinary how do you think about all of that now what advice do you give to others?
I just integrated my work and life and family together so like my son the first door about that came off the line in China like my son came with me so we just integrated the work life together and so there wasn't like a balance it was just integrated and I think that's
“everyone's different but for me that was the best way to do it so we spent a ton of time”
together my son's been the like 40 countries and he's almost been every state like I mean I literally I'd bring him to every meeting I didn't care we're gonna meet with Tom Deepo like all of her was there when he was seven six five wow and then people would say like it's funny if you will be like how do you bring your kid to a meeting and I said like who do you think they're going to remember more the guy that brought his six year old to a meeting or just some idiot with another
product it's so amazing like we're always scared to be different but I didn't guarantee you if
someone brings their kid to a meeting with me right now I will remember that meeting over the 3000 meetings I'm gonna have this month what a life for him he's been in some crazy rooms I bet and heard some amazing stories how was he now he's 17 now geez what's it like for him because now he's an adult basically I mean God it's pretty funny it's just like he and it's funny like he doesn't you know maybe because he saw this stuff like he just like loves basketball wants
like working sports it's not like he's like trying to sort of follow in the footsteps and being inventor and stuff like he's like he's happy wants to do sports stuff which is great I think everyone should again to the thing like people should follow their passion like you should do what you want to do like that's the best way to it so I've gotten all sides of this I'm glad you
“brought this up some say that's what you should do and other people say that's insane advice”
that billionaires give after they become a billionaire because it's easier to say what you need to do is go earn a living you need to get good at something and then you'll become passionate about afterwards like how do you feel about that passion and work and doing the thing that you're passionate about what's your overall thoughts of fair argument that like someone becomes wealthier and says like oh go do like what you love it is hard to see anyone though that's achieved
anything of greatness in the world that didn't do what they loved and so I think the other side of it is there are times like you know when I was a bellhop and valet parking cars like that wasn't my passion you know I did that in high school in college I did it to make money like there are times when you have to like work your ass off to make money like I've done sales I like and so but I think when you start like the career of what you want to try to do and you're going to
set out to do something like do something you care about versus I think the worst things when people do entrepreneurship and they're trying to do something to make money because they if they fail like if you fail trying to make money that really sucks if you fail trying to do something you love
at least like you try to do something you love like I always just say like if ring fails we try to
make neighborhood safer like we worked on something noble if it fails because we just tried to make a buck that's not fun you talk about sales I also think you're a much more effective sales professional when you are deeply passionate about the mission and about the product that you've created because of that mission are you can feel it in your voice I have since the second we connected on Zoom like you can feel that this is kind of ooze is out of the person versus someone
who's just like all right I got to like make some money so I got to sell it I think that's a real
“thing and it's certainly aspiration I hope for most people if you want to become excellent”
anything there's got to be that care love and passion behind it if you look back at almost any brand
The original and over time they look like loses and it doesn't matter but usu...
they start yeah like Nike was extremely full night is an authentic person Nike might now just be more of just like a big brand that produces shoes whatever I actually so like it but at the beginning like these brands have usually true authenticity to them that goes deep ring is it's a big brand but it's because it was so authentic it's it is authentic like we care about what we do and we just launched this dog search party thing that was my Super Bowl commercial yesterday which was kind
of cool but you know it's like how do you invent something like that why do you do it because you care like you that's that's authenticity which then drives also the brand so as the company grows and you're adding more and more people there are odds that some of those people are taking it as a job to earn a living and they'll work hard right but they don't care like you do or like some of the earlier people do that's just natural as a company grows in size so how do you maintain
“this culture of authenticity and care and get after it as you grow in scale one is you have to”
be realistic that yes as you get bigger not every single person in the company is going to like wake up eating their like making neighborhoods safer cereal I get it like that's just the reality I think leadership though is that for my side if I truly am authentic with it it does like sort of usually trickle down so that keeps it at a cabin a founder that's there that like keeps that energy and authenticity to it matters having other people around us you know helps I do think also you have to
as a company is bigger just be willing to be accepting that yes like it's going to be at a slightly less it can't be perfect because if you try to like keep it to perfect you're going to like die that said I think you can also do a lot of things to keep it much better than just letting it sort of go to just like a big corporate board there is a difference between being an inventor and being a CEO of a company especially a company that gets bigger there's more and more people
involved there's a lot of elements of management leadership vision public speaking I mean a million
things that go on with being a CEO how did you get good your world class inventor one of the best of our generation right but how did you get good at being a leader how did you get good at being a CEO and running a business I think this is where people overthink what it is to be a CEO a good CEO a good leader is someone who's leading it's like first principle thinking like how do you lead ring you lead it by leading it you lead it by going out and stalling devices you lead it by caring you lead it
by continuing to invent like you lead it by being transparent with people and honest everyone knows it ring that I will work harder than they will and so that's leadership I think like people have come down a leadership is a process and it's a how do you do this and how many emails you send a week and but that everyone knows they're coming from some group that's writing the emails and like
“I think authenticity and like the AI is going to get way more important as a leader just be authentic”
I mean I think people want to follow someone that is authentic in cares and wants to do it and so for me it's like it's not like I'm not a good CEO I am a great leader you know because I'll charge over the hill when the bullets are coming any day it feels to me like you still have and maybe
we have never not had a front line obsession the guy who started in the front lines and even as
the company is grown has stayed on the front lines you know the business inside and out your authentic I mean we didn't have a calm steam before this meeting you can just show up and talk because you're on the front lines you understand what's actually going on yeah I mean my email still on every box the letter j at ring dot com is my email it's on every box has been from the beginning and when you're on the front lines everyone else respects when customer
service as if someone emails me I'm going to respond they don't feel like they're doing a
“lesser job because they're not like they're doing the most important job as in my like we're all”
there for the customer do you get bombarded with emails not really people are pretty respectful I mean
like I say like everyone's in a while there's always like these like edge things that happen
or someone's just like kind of like sadly like just not respectful with it and stuff I would say most people think about we mess things up and so like I don't care if someone's unhappy they can email me if they're unhappy we mess up they up all fix it so overall I'd say like I don't get a ton because we're pretty good overall and by the way the reason I don't get a ton is because our customer service knows it at a scale of over a hundred million cameras in the in the field
our customer service knows like they do something egregiously bad and someone emails me like I'm on it like I'm going to call them like they know it they know it and so that everybody
I'd say works at a level that they know that like I'm here and so it does kee...
toes a little more I'm fascinated by that element I emailed you and I think you responded
“in less than an hour about doing this podcast and I thought wow but it's funny I'm curious”
get your take on this but maybe it's different now that you're more powerful person but
I feel like some of the busiest people that have the craziest jobs and that you think are literally building the things that are changing the world respond so fast and this has happened to me over the past 11 years they're such fast responders it blows my mind it's a weird thing where I've found that the people that are the most successful even almost tell who's successful by how fast they respond yes and it was just so flip flop of what it should be a successful
person should respond to you in you know a month yeah yeah you're probably right this is a common outie I've seen over the past 11 years that blows my mind it's better for me now with the show that has you know shown to give others a good platform so I get it it's more common now
but it's still even over a decade people who I would think oh no way and then
15 minutes later like sure dude let's do it how about tomorrow I mean it's wild to me how often that happens when you're running like the highest levels you're actually very efficient and there's something about it but you it's 100% right and I do I've been find it like when I look at investing in people I'll get like a founder like I'm sorry I'm so busy I didn't get back to or you know something and I'm like it doesn't mean that they won't be successful
but it is a like warning sign because yeah like when the most successful people get back to me in five seconds it's like there's something wrong here yeah I've been studying a lot Jamie recently great teams specifically the DNA of great teams whether it sports business any team yeah I would love to hear your frontline obsessed version of what are some of the attributes or the dynamics or the
“DNA of excellent teams I think the DNA is that people know what they're doing on the field I”
but I think I think the best company runs the same as the best sports team it's Seattle yesterday like that team ran freaking great and they ran great because the quarterback didn't think he's a kicker and the kicker didn't think he was a linebacker and so like and he trusted the kicker trusted the linebacker is going to do his job he's not like when they're about to hike it off is the kicker doesn't go back to like the guys hey listen you're gonna block that guy over there
I just want to make sure we should have a meeting about this so I think like there isn't a ton of me that happens where the everyone knows a play like the play is set so you know what that is and so I think like people know what rain the play is making the effort safer we know kind of where we're going but we don't have to all meet and talk about each other's jobs like Jason Metaro who runs my technology like Jason and I talk all the time but we don't have meetings I don't even have a
standing meeting with the team in any cadence because we meet what we need to meet we talk about what we need to talk about but like why do I need to if these are the best people in the world why do we need to get together every week do you not have a lot of meetings I have a lot of meetings on things that need to get done say more what do you mean by that the best day for me is like a products having an issue that we're going into production and we need to fix something like that's
a meeting like not standing meetings of we're doing the budget meeting we're doing that this meeting like how many direct reports do you have I couldn't even tell you I mean not a time you don't have reoccurring one-on-one or anything no no zero man no but but I talked to people like all the time responding I talked to people that work with me and I don't care if you're a skip level I don't even know what that shit means I talked to people all day long all night long Sunday like we're talking
about like things but it's event based we have to get the sales up on this we have to get like where there's issues where there's whatever we work on it and I trust that people but it like and if you're not doing your job we fire you like that's kind of how it works like that's the reality all right I just think reoccurring meetings should be absolutely eliminated from the world I hate them I don't have any if I get rid of the button that allows for them I would nuke it
yes man like it's not first principle thinking like there's no way every single Monday at night
am you have something important to talk about it just doesn't like the world can't exist like that
“there are times when you should meet but like it should be based on like when you need to do something”
not some cadence and that and they do they just become like and they just stack and stack and stack and like I don't have the best quarterback have the best kicker have the best coach let them work together let them practice together have the plays but you don't need to get together every day to talk about how we're feeling yeah Jamie one more question this is a little bit maybe adjacent to what we've been talking about and maybe it's personal maybe it's professional maybe it's both
Let's say we're meeting or I'm seeing what's happening with you one year from...
year from day and it's called a champagne question and you've got a bottle of champagne I don't know
if you drink that or not with your wife your son is 17 18 at that point you guys are celebrating what are you celebrating probably something probably something on the charitable side of things like what you know we we do a lot of work in South Central LA probably something more on that but we do a lot of work with the police LAPD we also do a lot of stuff we have a house in Missouri that at this farm and we do a lot of stuff out there with people so probably celebrating something
“like again I think the best thing you can do is kind of service to others and so it's”
probably something where we somehow help someone do something and it wouldn't be like the champagne thing
is like we wouldn't be like clicking it you know we're not that sort of family we were like oh
we did it again like you know we sold the business like yeah you know like six regards and stuff but it would be celebrating it like we were able to sort of do something good you know with our brains and minds and whatever that they've helped someone more service oriented yeah I read 75 acre farm in Missouri like are you there a lot what do you do there all I love it in there all the time it's you know it's again it became like a passion project I invested in a business out there
called Moink actually when I was on Shark Tank I went there the love of the place became like a I'm like sort of part of the town now I love the people the town had definitely been certainly impacted by opioids and by industrial farming and all the all the things that are impacting these towns like these towns are all over the US you know small little town and so I you know we started to kind of work there with the towns people and fix the streets in the sidewalks and put a little
coffee shop and everyone's kind of come together and it's a really cool place and I love going there and bringing people there and it's been fun love it man why really appreciate you being here and all the work you do you're making my home safer my neighborhood safer so thank you so much for that man I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress man absolutely thanks man it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club
if you are say me a note Ryan at learningleater.com let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jamie Simonoff a few takeaways from my notes front line obsession I love that Jamie still has this email address on every ring doorbell also by the way he's a very fast responder which we found to be a common out among leaders who sustain excellence over time back to front line obsession the moment you stop touching the actual work is when you lose the
feel for what's really happening distance from the front line is distance from the truth I think CEOs and senior leaders should be obsessed with being on the front line and then the next one got me kind of tuned up during the conversation no recurring meetings in the calendar no standing Monday morning meetings that doesn't mean you shouldn't meet with people but only meet
“when you need to get something done when you need to actually have a meeting other than that”
there should be no standing meetings on your calendar if you disagree please email me I'd be
happy to talk about and then the next part of that was pretty cool why Jeff Bezos wrote the first
book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie quote a real builder scrappy original an unsatisfied with the status quo what a cool part it was it was neat to have that part of the conversation with Jamie you could tell it meant a lot to him and then I liked his hiring filter he calls it looking for marathon runners and also he hires fast but then fires fast to be realizes he makes a mistake and I think that something we all could get better at once good I would say thank
you so much for continuing to spread the message telling a friend or two hey you should listen to
“this episode of the learning leader show with Jamie Seminoff I think it'll help people coming more”
effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify Apple podcast subscribe to the show rated five stars hopefully write a thoughtful review by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love in a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so so much talk to you soon hey wait
