701: Mark Pincus (Founder of Zynga) - Why We All Need a Coach, Maintaining High Standards, The Book of Life, Aggressive Ambition, and Why Your Instincts Are Almost Always Right

- Welcome to the Learning Leadership.

“Presented by Insight Global, I am your host, Ryan Hawks.”

- Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleiter.com for showing us of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleiter.com now onto the night's featured leader, Mark Pinkess founded Zingah in 2007

and built it into a 12.7 billion dollar social gaming

empire. He is a serial founder who sold his first company in seven months for 38 million bucks. He made an early seed investment in Facebook. And he's been teaching product development at Stanford

for years. His new book is called "Life" at the speed of play. During our conversation, we discussed what Mark learned from his tennis coach that ended up helping him build a culture that wins over the long term.

A big focus on long term winning. And then his quote book of life practice. What it is, where it started, why he does it and how you can do it too. And then we got really personal talking about how being

obsessed with excellence and having high standards

can impact us as parents. And the potential issue that creates. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy. My conversation with Mark Pinkess. I was talking to your team to prep for this.

And we were going back and forth for ideas. And one of the quotes I love is, I'm one of the most coached people in the world. So you've hired a surfing coach, tennis coach, chess coach, life coach.

You've hired a legendary Bill Campbell to coach you from a business perspective. I'm sure there are many other areas where you get coaches. Talk to me about how much you value coaching and being coached.

In a lot of ways, coaches are like cheat codes. It's like you spend so many hours trying to do better in a game.

I mean, some of us, and then finally,

you go on YouTube and you look for the cheat codes in the hacks because you just are so frustrated. I think in life, it's also like that. One of the times that I was in what I call the abyss, I said, OK, I have too much time my hands.

I'm squandering it. What can I do with my time? And I said, I'm just going to see how good a tennis player I can be. And I'm just going to go as far as I can go.

And I started training with a real coach five or six days a week. And I had a goal, a row down my book a life, that I was going to win a USDA match. And oddly, I mean, this is not a good way to hit a goal. But just before I started Zinga, I won a match.

I went to a USDA tournament, and I won, but only because my opponent didn't show up. So I technically won that I went out to the next round where I couldn't even get my racket on some of the balls that the person served to me.

So I'll take that one. But I learned in committing to something-- I mean, just in this case of tennis-- I got so many lessons that helped me in life and helped me in leadership.

And I can't remember if I get to them and my coach Jorge, who probably will one day be listening to this in the book. But one of them that Jorge said to me was, to teach me to serve, he said, Mark, here's how you learn to serve. He said, you throw to where you swing.

You don't swing to where you throw. Because in order to get your best serve in tennis,

“you need to have the natural movement of your body.”

And that is your natural swing. OK? So you go up over your head. And you just come across your body. And it feels good, like golf.

And he said, once your brain knows that you're going to commit to that swing, it'll throw the ball in the wrong place. And you hit it out of the court, you miss it, you look stupid. But eventually your brain is like, holy shit, he's serious about this.

The only way we're going to do this is if I put the ball in front of that swing, OK? This will sound like why is Mark going in all this detail. But what I learned from that, from committing to proper strokes, was that you play to get better, you don't play to win.

And there's so many lessons in that. You don't play to do anything you can't just to win this point or this match. The questions, what am I doing that is making me better in the next game?

And how do I kill my ego and get my ego out of the way

“of me actually being humble and curious and learning?”

And then that principle of throw to where you swing,

Because we said, OK, you get these people who

are such an amazing engineer.

They're so good at something that you contort as an organization or a culture. And you say, well, they're such a valuable individual contributor that we will deal with the fact that anyone who works for them quits or that they're bad for our culture and calling

a query who taught me so much and was our chief people officer. Said, no, you can't do that as an organization. And she was right when the organization sees you not willing to bend and contort just to win that one point, they start to build a muscle and a confidence too.

It feels like these coaches, a commonality among them, is a willingness to commit to the long game instead of just winning this one point. Or, OK, we have this high performer who's going to crush it, even though they may be bad for our culture or not treat people

with a type of respect that we want here. But they won that deal, they'll probably win the next one. And instead, you're playing the longer game instead of just winning the short game. Is that accurate?

Yeah, 100%. And you might go through periods where you're out of alignment with that because you have someone in a position

and it's crucial and you can't switch them out tomorrow.

And that's OK. What really matters is that you are aligned with that philosophy and Colleen had a sign on her wall that said, no jerks allowed. And she actually vetoed an acquisition we're going to do because she thought that the founder and CEO was toxic in it.

It was going to be harmful. So their tough decisions and some of those hard decisions where you say no to a person or opportunity does come back to define you positively. I read a lot about Bill Campbell.

“What's one or two things that you've taken from his coaching?”

I'd say that that guy lived and breathed and preached founder mode before Cheski and others so beautifully put a name on it. He swore a lot. He brought so much heart. He had such a big heart.

He was such a big hugger. And really, what I'd say, the number one thing that I got from him, I'd say two things. He sat in and listened to some of my management meetings and whatever and he talked to me afterwards

and just he would just cut right through it all. And the number one thing was like this commitment to absolute honesty, what I call intellectual honesty and just calling bullshit or more colorful language.

So the first was, are you as a leader

going to be committed to these deep truths beyond all the things? Are you going to say them to your team and people even when it hurts? And then the second thing that goes with the first was courage.

The most courageous thing a leader has to do often is standing up against their own team, their own board, their own investors. And he just espoused that. And he's just, they don't know what the fuck they're talking

about, like I'd say on this. You'd be like, Mark, your team is all over the place. Like you need to reel them in. Like it's too much democracy in that room.

“I like say that I think a well-run company”

is like a democratic dictatorship. He leaned heavily on the dictatorship part in unapologetically. I think he wanted the people he coached to be more grounded, more heartfelt,

and more unapologetic, including to the press. Because at the point that he was coaching me, it was just before we went public. And I was just getting skewered in the press for being a harsh environment and culture.

And I think he was paying how much I was kind of apologizing for it. - I read a while ago, so maybe things have changed. I'm curious to get your feedback on it. This is a 2013, so this is 13 years ago, profile.

They cited you as being fearsome and a control freak. And one analyst described you as a reputation that he is driven to the point of a madman. Now, I kind of admire that. I, that feels to be like, you're obsessed.

And you want to get after it. And you have high standards.

“And I think that's what it takes a lot of the times.”

To micro-managed things like crazy. And again, over the course of 700 of these and 11 years that I've been doing it, I've found that to be a commonality of obsession with excellence, of getting after it,

of having high standards and not being afraid,

to that standard as well as others.

Are you still that guy that you were,

“when you were described that way in 2013?”

Well, I like to say the more things change the more they stay the same and as we get older. Hopefully, we become more of ourselves. I would say, hopefully I have a little less of the harsh edges.

I don't feel as much chip on the shoulder to poke VCs in the eye or as I did. But I think with that passion, does come a fierceness, an adaptive commitment. And I think we do lead by example.

And I think that when our teams, and I also think, look, the world and the culture has changed since then. And during that period, if you were called a micro manager, that was a bad thing.

And now, Elon has maybe given all of us

a little more permission to be micro managers in this era. There's also a movement against middle management and some real positives. But I'm that person, and I'd say, probably like so many of the founders listening,

I find that I'm so often underestimated in the world. And even when I was starting Zinga, VCs who knew me for years, VCs who had backed me before, said, Mark, you're 41, you've made all this money.

I just don't get it. I just don't believe you're going to be really in this and committed. And you're not going to work as hard as a 20-something person. You're having a family now.

And they were wrong, it turns out. And that's part of why we become founders, because nobody else believes in us as much as we do. But every time I find the investors come up with some reason why this is a little too good to be true.

And you're out of fashion in some way. And it's funny that when I was in my 20s, that was not in fashion, you're supposed to have gray hair. So you just got to go for it. And then the world reshapes around you.

And they're like, oh, shit, you're two fears.

“They went from, oh, I think you're too soft.”

I think you're a retired guy.

And I also tell you, I'm the first one to own,

that I have actually a lazy on-wrap to curiosity, OK? But unpack that. This is not a humble brag. I have lots of different interests. And I'm not one of these people who has work ethic

with no reason. So I won't just sit in an office. I won't just go do meetings. Just because I'm trying to turn over every stone. I like to do a lot of different projects.

And I'm looking for signal in a lot of different places. And I'm processing it all. But I don't go all in. It's like in poker. I'm just willing to just be boring.

You know, chess, too, turns out I have a chess coach. Now, my chess coach is like, you want to be to a player who's rated much higher than you. You want to annoy the shit out of them. Just play boring and conservative.

And let them make a mistake. And I started doing that.

“And I started winning, you know, he was right.”

And so I just think that some people just have work ethic. And they're just going to like work no matter what. And I'm not one of those people. I'm not all in until I am. And then when I'm all in, people are shocked.

It's like with a fierceness, there's so much pent-up demand in me because I've been in this abyss. And I say, when the fish are running, we're up all night throwing nets, and until they're done running, you know, not until we're tired.

How motivated are you to prove people wrong? I think that's a secondary motivation. That's not enough for me. I have proven them wrong a few times. But that's not enough by itself.

I think it's helpful. I think it's also in Vogue to, oh, we want to back people of the chip on their shoulder because it seems like they're a little more committed to the work harder. That's true.

But I end the book by saying how ambitious are you. And that's a question I asked so many founders because I'm sure everyone in your listeners Ryan would say, I'm a 10 on a 10. I'm going to 11 on a 10.

But the flip side of ambition is sacrifice. So I like say, well, okay, let's test this. Are you so ambitious that you would toy on obscurity for the next 10 years? No one respects what you're doing.

But you have an 80 or 90% chance of being more successful than your wildest dreams of building something bigger than you ever imagined, or would you take an 80% chance that you just hit a nice single respectable. Everyone says you did a good job

and patch you on the back. That's kind of what we got to answer for ourselves. Maybe speaking from your experience as well as talking to other fellow obsessed people who have very, very high standards. How does that affect you outside of work?

I know your kids, your wife, you dedicate your book to them.

They obviously are the most important thing.

In my experience as well as experience talking to mentors and others on this podcast, that's where it can become an issue. Because you're obsessed. You have really, really high standards, maybe a perfectionist.

I know personally, this is a thing. And you then take that home with you, and apply it, and maybe it could be misplaced or it could create friction to put it nicely. How has that been for you?

There's a lot in that, since I have five kids, and they're all so different. And I talk a little in the book about it, but my dad was a very strong figure in my life and other people's lives.

And I was kind of determined to be a different kind of dad than my dad. And I probably gone to an extreme, this may sound a little Northern California,

“but there's a question of how are we passing on generational trauma?”

And I think being Jewish, there's a whole different kind of generational trauma that goes back a long time, and that maybe is like, really in my DNA around achievement, but at least in my own family history,

my dad was so focused on kind of valuing you by your achievement in the world, kind of by your resume. And I didn't want to put that pressure on my kids. Yet somehow my twin girls who are 15, I just kissed my one daughter goodbye today,

and she's going off on a service trip to Africa, and she spent every waking minute until that with math tutors, 'cause she's trying to place out of geometry, math, or next year. And I'm like, what have I created?

I'm like, I love that she's doing this, but I'm like, you're too achievement-oriented. I want you to have fun, you're passionate about surfing. You know, where's surfing this summer for you? You're sitting with Zoom tutors, and now,

you're gonna go get all this life. I love you're going Africa, but what are you doing to feed Carmen and feed your passions?

“And it was really funny, 'cause I'm like, how did we get here?”

I tried to encourage my girls to listen themselves and pursue their passions, and they're doing it, but they seem pretty achievement-focused, and I was like, oh, I know how we got here. They're not listening to what Dad says,

they're falling what Dad does. And so there's that. - Leadership is caught, not taught, right? - Yeah. - They see what Dad does and how you know it.

- Yeah, and they hold themselves as such high standards, and I don't think it's to be honest, I don't feel like it's completely healthy, and Carmen's sister, Georgia, their fraternal twins, is just this overachiever.

She just has one of his brains that just does so well in school, and she's self-taught and chastened, guitar, and she's an artist. She's just, I wouldn't want her as a twin,

because she just is always doing an achieving,

“and I think it makes it harder on Carmen,”

who puts all this pressure on herself. So I just want them, I don't know, it's also just take a break and have fun. - It's the thing we think about all the time, I can see it in your eyes as a fellow Dad.

It's wild, 'cause we do all these crazy things, work wise, to build stuff, and you obviously have success in multiple life categories done over and over again, and yet you're still a dad, who's thinking about their kids and wanting them

to, for it to go well, it's wild, isn't it? - Yeah, it is, and we, that pit and our stomach, that anxiety of like, oh, she's so innocent, and how is it gonna go socially? And she's gonna make the wrong friends,

and she's gonna be sad and depressed and not tell us, like all those things, and just, we just have to hope and try to communicate enough that they'll tell us some of what's going on, but it's a different kind of fear.

- I want to get to more of your story, so you mentioned your dad. He built a business, correct me if these facts are wrong, okay?

38 years, he eventually sold her for 38 million.

You built your first business, or one of your first businesses called Free Loader, it took you seven months, and you sold it for wait for it, $38 million, okay? Was that just a coincidence, or what happened here?

- Yeah, I can't say it's like a number, like for 20 for Elon or something. - Yeah, it didn't even occur to me for a while, and then I started saying, "Oh, that's weird." I mean, and it was weird for my dad,

it was a real shift in our relationship, and his views on the world, because my dad, like your resume was how you did in business, and he was like, work for Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, or he was all about the brand names, or the achievement.

I was like, his biggest disappointment at one point,

because I didn't take this path that he thought was gonna make me happy, and had made him happy. And then 10 years later, I was like, a success on a level that he, there was too much. I went from being like, his biggest disappointment

to almost a level of success that broke him, like broke didn't break him spiritually or anything, but kind of broke his frameworks on the world, because it's not the world he understood, that he built this amazing business over 38 years,

and then he was like, "There's something going on in the world "that he just felt like he didn't understand "when that happened," and that was odd for both of us. - How do you define success? - I love this book, The Courage to Be Disliked,

“which I think I talk about it in the book,”

and it's based on this Adlerian psychology,

and Alfred Adler, who kind of never got the fame he deserved,

he said that we get happiness from feeling useful to a community that we care about, not being useful. And that has really stuck with me, and I think you asked about success, which I think happiness and satisfaction come with it.

And for me, I want to achieve my greatest state of usefulness in the world. And to me, I believe it's theoretically possible that I or so many of your listeners in this era, we have the chance to build an internet treasure,

a service people can't remember life before, or imagine life without, this and your digital life stack. I'd like to say that the homepage of my phone is half empty, and the half that's full is mostly generic utility apps. And for me, success is that I invent

“one of these services that really brings new meaning”

to millions of people's lives. Hopefully, makes them feel seen, connected. For me, it's probably something social, but I think success is number one, it's about knowing ourselves.

Alfred Adler talks about what are you only at in the world? What could only you in a Ryan or Mark bring to this world? And how do we bring that to the most people that we care about in the world? And then I'd even within that great two levels of success.

To me, a life well-lived is a life that I'm living in alignment with that, okay? But I don't have to build Google or GPT to feel like I went for it was successful in my life, but I have to be aligned with trying.

If I really, really went for it in a way that I know, and I was all in on it, and I came up less, I'm not gonna feel like a failure,

“but the ultimate success is the greatest”

and station of our talents in the world. - What is the role of, or the achievement, accomplishment of becoming a billionaire? How does that play into being, quote, a success? Happy fulfilled.

- Okay, money is such a weird thing, and especially for men, you know, in our culture, it's so hard for men not to see their self-worth in the world by their net worth, and it's sad. And I can't say that I was any better in that.

To me, from the point that I made this split with my dad was 18, money took on a new meaning for me, which was freedom, not lifestyle. I said, I want to have enough money that I can pursue what I want to do in the world,

and not strings attached to my dad, to a job I don't like.

And when my first company was acquired at 28,

I made more money than I had ever imagined. I funded the company I had talked about in the book with the old fashion wave of credit cards and a friend loaning me money was living my couch, and then seven months later, I had more money than I could imagine

and I couldn't come up with anything to do with it. When I made the list of what I was gonna do now that I was rich, it totaled like $9,000. I mean, it didn't even occur to me to buy a new car. I just put leather interior in my pathfinder,

which I still have, and not to say, I'm like some folks, you guys. I just kind of love keeping some of these cars, but people from the outside look at money is being about material wealth and lifestyle.

I mean, look at Elon, I think they said he's homeless. I already made just now on one home,

“but he famously lived on everyone's couches around us”

in the valley. To me, it was more and more freedom, and I'll say back to the coaches question, I spent all these years when I was in the best working with a life coach, starting in 2003,

we came up with a vision of my future. What did I want the chess board? I call it the imagination chess board. And I said, and I'm sorry if this sounds toned after people, but I had some real money when I was doing this,

but not like huge, it could sound like a lot of money,

but maybe I had a net worth of around 15 million,

or something when I was doing this visioning. And I said, I wanna make $500 million. Not to spend it on any material things, but because to me, I thought it 500 million, that's so much capital that I can have a huge studio

and have teams working on tons of different ideas, and I don't have to go to anyone else,

“hat and hand, or with a cup asking them to fund me,”

I can think longer term and be more creative, and I said creatively, that's freedom. And I just kept focusing on that, but not on, I wanna make $500 million because I want to buy something out there,

but it was $500 million in capital to be able to really go for it and pursue things.

And it's so weird that we're in this cultural moment

where a billionaire is like a bad tag that is like, someone's tagging you with that in a way that's negative because now more than ever before, the people who are billionaires got there because they built things that delivered value in the world.

I mean, value for consumers, jobs, and I start the book talking about Elon, thank God, we live in the era of Elon, and thank God that there are people like Elon who are dreaming big, betting it all,

my editor and publisher said, you talk about Elon too much to the book, and it's like a love letter or fanboy, and I just call like I see it, and I'm like, this guy isn't just accelerating

the timeline for space travel

or reducing carbon emissions or putting technology in our brains, I mean, he's also just raising the bar on entrepreneurship because he's showing us all what's possible and we all reframe our own ambition

and not on that you can become a trillionaire, who gives a fuck about that. It's what can you do, how bold can we think about reshaping this world for the better? So I just think, thank God, Elon came along

and that he has the capital and who better to have a trillion dollars than Elon? I mean, the guy doesn't even want to spend it on a house, he's just gonna put it all back into doubling down on the future. - We look at how you earned something.

So let's say you want to earn a job or you want to earn more money, the number one way and almost the only way to do it is to add value to other people's lives. You add enough value, they will pay for your product.

You add enough value, you will get promoted. That's it.

“Now you could inherit money if you want to just get money.”

That's a version of that, but how do you earn money? I think inheriting and earning are two separate things. How do you earn money, how do you earn a job, how do you earn something, you must add value to people's lives. And so I don't know what it's like in your shoes

and maybe potential hate that you get, but to me, when I look at leaders who earn that type of living, what I admire most is obsession is being a value-added person that creates jobs and that creates valuable products that make other people's lives better.

And if you do that a lot, you then reap their awards and you earn every single penny of it. It's even cooler than if you put back into our ecosystem to help build more stuff or help other people build stuff and vesting in them.

And so to me, I think most people, other than some of the haters online, most people are down with that. We love that. I think it's great.

We're all trying to do that. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, all this other stuff is just weird distraction and noise. And I grew up in Chicago, people in Chicago are pragmatic and they don't want to get into all of this other

social identity stuff. And I think to me it's very Midwestern pragmatism to say,

And yes, this other stuff is just really awful.

“And I think about, I think about some like Jeff Bezos”

who sailed off into the sunset and thought we wouldn't hear from him again, other than like the party circuit or something, but he can't help himself. He's back with an even bigger idea.

And he's probably motivated by Elon. A bet he wouldn't admit this publicly, but I'll bet that he just can't sit there

and just watch the cool amazing stuff that Elon's doing

and just he can't feel good on the party circuit knowing that he could be doing so much more and it drove him back to work, which is great. - The people who put a dent in the world, I would put you in the same box.

They are not able to just sit on a beach and chill. They're just not, you're not able to do that. You can do it for a little bit, just like a little bit. But then you gotta get back to your purpose. You gotta get back to inventing.

You gotta get back to building. You gotta get back to being an value-added person. And you're not having that much value

“when you're sitting on a beach tipping well.”

Like that's not how it works. And so the people who make it happen, they're not capable of retiring and going away. I really feel this, big time you see them all here, 'cause I have friends who are like,

why isn't he just go chill or whatever? You're not able to do what he's done, what Mark has done, you're not able to do what you do, and then just go do nothing. It's as you're not.

- No, 'cause you know that, yeah. - You're capable of so much more, and it's such a high, no retirement to me is just death. Like it's just spiritual death. And look, these periods in-between building things,

I call the Abyss and they're hard. And my greatest high is when I'm in the middle of Zingah,

working with amazing teams.

And I see everything, like I'm teaching and training new people, I'm learning, I'm creating things that we're iterating, we're creatively productive at every week. We are getting things out, our users' hands, and lighting people up.

And once you do that, you've felt that. It ruins you, you can't go to anything else. You can't be happy with less. - Yeah, I love it, this has gone by quicker than I thought. Okay, a couple of days I want to get to high standard,

so I got this note. So, can you talk to me about the Allen and company investor tour, somebody said you, hey, you don't got to prepare, you don't have to do anything, and yet you over-prepared and made it count.

“What happened here at the Allen and company investor tour?”

- I love that, so there's one of my life philosophies that I say over-fund things that matter. And what I mean by that is, not every day is the same, not every life moment is the same. So, there's times that you really, it pays off to really surge,

kind of put all your best players on the ice mentality. And when these moments come being bold, I can give you a few examples of something's over-funded moments, but they've been incredibly life-changing for me. I mean, one of them was when I came in EA early on,

Electronic Arts wanted to sue us, because they said you're making games, we have the license to this Hasbro Games, and I actually sat down on my life coach and said, "God, this sucks, I don't know why,

"it's just a room full of lawyers, sharks."

And she said, "Well, what'd be amazing?

"How would you like that meeting to go?" And I said, "Well, I would like it if EA sauce "as their Walmart." Like they should see casual social gaming as a way to bring EA to the mass market,

'cause they're losing Walmart. And she's like, "Well, why don't you say that?" And so I spent two days going day and night all in on this presentation why Zingan social gaming is the new Walmart for EA.

And I walk into this room of lawyers, they used to call them business affairs, 'cause they knew you wouldn't meet with a lawyer. And it just turns out that this guy being Gordon is there, who's one of the founding team members of EA,

he wasn't supposed to be in the meeting. He heard me give this pitch, and he took over the meeting. He said, "I've been waiting for you to show up." With the Allen tour, they said,

"Oh, we're just doing this dog and pony thing. "We just bring fidelity and the biggest public market "investors through the valley. "And we want them to just say hi and shake hands "with some of the hotter early startups

"and we'd love for them to meet you." I said, "Guys, this is our IPO. "This is our roadshow. "We are gonna prepare for this like it's a roadshow. "If they're gonna give us 45 minutes

"with the biggest public market investors, "we are gonna use every fucking minute, "the way we want, not the way they want. "We're not gonna shake hands.

And I said, "I plan to meet with all of you again in one year. "I want you to take these numbers

“"and I want you to look at these numbers”

"when we meet in the year and you tell me "if I beat them or not." And if I'm a trustworthy CEO, and I did meet them again in the year and I crush those numbers.

So take those moments, I'll just give you one other. I, there's something else I call, "King for a day." When I get to talk to a company, Carol Bartz called me into interview me in front of Yahoo, their entire senior management.

I spent two weeks building a presentation and I said, "Carol, do you mind? "Can I just do a presentation of how I would run Yahoo "fark King for a day?" And she kind of sat there in the chair.

I stood up and took over Oprah's style and presented for an hour. And we got a deal done with Yahoo out of that. And one of the people in the room came to work for me because of that.

There was one last one I'll mention, 'cause I love these, the CEO of MX came through for Dog and Pony, you know, and I made a presentation on the fun card. And I said, "If I was run to AMX,

"I would compete on fun. "I would make a credit card "which is basically like legalized gambling." And he said, "I love that." And we made a card together

and they spent 75 million with us.

So we all have these moments, but we're kind of sleepwalking through life. And we're like, "Oh, I know I have this big meeting tomorrow

“"and the question is not why do they want to meet with you?”

"What's the agenda?" But it's what is theoretically possible that I have my five minutes with the king? How do I want to use that? And these people will give that to you

because they don't want to use their time badly and they might as well know I shit you prepared. So there's one of my favorite things that all of us can do. - Put another way you're interviewing for your next opportunity every single day.

Sometimes you don't know how, but it's on us as leaders, as people who have high standards, a people who are obsessed with excellence, to be prepared, to go over the top.

And so that when you get your five minutes, you make the absolute most of them. I think that's one of the coolest parts and most inspiring parts of your story is that people say, "Oh, this is just a dog and pony show.

"Oh, this is five minutes, just no big deal, Mark." No need to prepare. Don't need to do anything, you're good, you're good. - Hey, you're so fun. - You go, what?

Are you kidding me? Like, this is my shot. This is all right, yo.

“And maybe it flops, maybe it doesn't work,”

but not because I didn't give everything I had at that moment to try my best to make the most of it. - It also blows them away. I mean, I read the whole Yahoo homepage and my team, I had our designers work on it.

- I love it. - I did the whole artwork of what my Amix fun card would look like, I handed it to him. One more is I got a seven minute meeting with Obama 'cause I had been a big donor.

And even when I heard I had this meeting at the White House, I went into IPO, Rochomo again. And I said, what did all I wanna pitch this guy? And I came for a day, if I were president of the United States,

I would, who's running a second campaign

and I said, I wouldn't run a normal campaign. I would compete on 10 bold objectives for America and I'd say, what is unassailable? The other side can't even say this wrong. They've just say they'll do that idea better.

These are things like America's cash flow positive. America's a beloved brand around the world. And I went in and they said, he's gonna ask you about your kids. You're gonna be mesmerized.

You're seven to 12 minutes will be over and you'll walk out. I said, okay, got it. I had the PowerPoint I walked in. He asked me about my kids, I said, thank you for asking.

You're a busy guy. I happened to make a PowerPoint of what I would do if I were in your job. Are you open to going through it? And he was like, yeah, I'm open to that.

And on the meeting went on for 45 minutes, went so long that I got through the PowerPoint 'cause I kind of gave myself 20 minutes for it. And he's like, what else you got? And I was like, okay, and that gets

another principle I've got in the book, which is make sure you spend as much time preparing for what if everything goes right as everything goes wrong. And it's like, well, I under-prepared

for what happens if Obama's into this and he's like, yeah, I'm buying what else you got. - What was the feeling like in that moment? - I mean, you prepared for it. You know, it was like, set an expectation for it,

but then to actually pull it off in front of the busiest guy in the world,

also the most powerful person in the world.

How did you feel? - It's fun. It's such a high that you're like, okay, like, yes, he's a busy guy, but he's having the same human experience.

and I said, I don't know about your job as CEO,

“but I'll just, if it's anything like mine,”

I said, I come in every Monday full of hope and fire, I wanna like change the world. And I end every Monday tired and on defense because my team has thrown so many things in front of me and I'm just not motivated the way I started the day.

And I said so much of winning in this job is about playing offense, not defense. In Valerie Jarrett was sitting there and she said, he just said that to our team yesterday. We all threw everything and he said,

I don't wanna hear it, we gotta play offense, not defense. It's fun when you're like, holy shit, like he actually has some of the same challenges I do as CEO. It doesn't matter whether you're running the US government or American Express or your 35 person business,

we're kind of going through the same things. And I think when we can get grounded and get past the zeitgeist or the power of it

and kind of get into like the first principles,

it's a lot of fun and we can get through to people. - Okay, I wanna get to something that I meant to do at the very beginning and it's only taken me 54 minutes to get here. - Sorry about that.

- And I appreciate that because that's like how this would sound if we were going on to lunch, I'd be asking you these questions just chasing down my curiosity, it's fun to use your words. Book of life, okay, this book of life ritual because I think this is applicable to anybody.

It's something you've been doing for a long time. Let's first talk about, what is it? And how is it helpful for you? - Okay, so the idea of the book of life is every year during the Jewish holiday,

the Jewish New Year, which is 10 days, I go through this practice of writing in this book. And everybody can pick their own time of year, it could just be New Year's and your birthday, it doesn't matter.

“What matters is that you write in the same book”

or set of notebooks, you only write in that book during that time. This is not your journal, your everyday, whatever. This is like your spiritual board meeting with yourself. And you can have other people coach do this

with friends or family partners, but the idea is you're gonna take an accounting of how am I doing against what I wanted to do in this life. So you read back, I read all my previous years, all my hopes and dreams, what I hoped,

I caught partnering with your future self. What do I hope, Mark 2030, you know, what will Mark 2030 thank me for doing now? And it's a combination of things. There's very pragmatic things that we can sign up for,

like elective surgery, hard things that you wouldn't necessarily do this year. For me, it started with quitting smoking, you know,

October 19th, 1994 was the first day of the rest of my life.

I pulled my arm power back 'cause I took this little thing that I had lost control of and I said, if I can quit smoking and really commit to it, what else can I do? And a year later, I quit my job.

It did something bigger. So I combined a little thing like that that makes life change that compounds with really big audacious things. And I pick what's theoretically possible

and you learn over time. And if you have like a gigantic goal every year and you're not getting anywhere about it, it's a dialogue with yourself over time 'cause you go back and you're like, come on Ryan,

let's be real. You've written the same shit in your book every year. You haven't done shit about it. And it gets this point about aligning with your path. Even if you haven't achieved that big goal,

“what did you do last year that was serious against that goal?”

Did you talk about it? Did you do some real things? Did you turn the boat towards that if not why? Maybe you don't believe in that goal. And so to me, it's been literally life-changing

and I don't, sometimes I do better than others. The weird thing is when I'm in the deepest darkest part of the Abyss, when I am full of like self-loathing and I'm like, "God, why can't you fucking do anything? Why can't you beat ourselves up?"

Whether you do it nicely or badly, it's up to you, but we usually do it in some way. When I'm in my worst place is usually where I find the most grit and readiness to commit to things and when I'm really happy and really achieving,

I do the worst. And then I find another thing, when I'm in the lowest points, I'm humbled and I pick much more achievable goals, which is part of the path out of that Abyss.

I pick stratosphere goals.

And I see that pattern playing out.

“In fact, even with my companies in my career,”

I've found that after I've had my greatest success, I'm not humbled enough to be successful again. And I have to go through a lot of failure. And it's in that failure that I reel myself back in and I get less ambitious.

And I find connection points with the world. - You have the self-awareness to realize that when things are going well, it seems like your actions are gonna create something bad. If I'm hearing you right,

now that you've had some reps at this, why are you not able to string together? Hey, it's going really well. Let's keep this thing going. Let's not make it so that I have to experience

some sort of failure in order to get out of it. - It's a great question. I mean, there are practices that we can do to keep ourselves in a more humble, curious place.

“But I don't know, there's, you can't analyze,”

there's a lot of parts of the life experience that you just gotta go live. And you know, it's part of the curse of being over resource or overfunded that if you can pursue lots of things, you will, if you are on your last dollar

and you can't afford to get it wrong, you're gonna be a lot more careful with that dollar. It's just part of the human mentality and I wish I could get better at it. - Yeah, sometimes optionality can be overrated.

I got one more question mark. It's actually kind of related to this. So we're gonna fast forward exactly one year from today. - Okay. - You are surrounded by all of the people you love

and you guys are poppin' bottles. You're celebrating the light crazy, spraying whatever it is you want all over each other, okay? What are you celebrating? - Mm, I'd say, you know, on a professional

what do I wanna do in this world level, not a family level. I'd say we're celebrating two things. One is that my book, Life of the Speed of Play, really resonated and connected for hundreds of thousands of people of founders,

state homoms, people who wanted to pursue an idea but didn't know how, found something helpful in my book.

That would be amazing and a path on four and a half years of work.

And for my own internet treasure path, I'd say that if a year from now, I have created a product that connects the dots ideally around this social cocktail party that has delivered on the promise of the potential of AI

and agents and this amazing network that we're all part of and it's delivered on a product that people are finding real meaning in and it's helping people find their themselves and find each other and it's clearly hitting and resonating that would be my happy place by Wednesday.

- Love it, the book's called, as you mentioned, Life at the speed of play, launch products, people love. It's really fun, read, and also the stories are incredible,

“but also practical, I think very useful for people.”

So it's hard to hit that combo with an incredibly interesting life that you're living, the stories of all the stuff you've built, the highs, the lows, and then a lot of practical tools for someone who wants to live a better life to accomplish things,

to put a positive dent in the world, I think you hit all of that. So I really appreciate it, thank you and your team for sending that. And by the way, your team should be commanding

'cause this isn't always the case.

They were very fun to go back and forth with. You probably don't even know this, but they were very fun to go back and forth with, leading up to this, sharing notes, back and forth of ideas. We got to like 10% of them, but still,

it was awesome to go back and forth with a great group of people you could tell when a leader has done a good job of surrounding themselves with high caliber, high character people. It's enjoyable and speaks a lot about you. So thank you for making that happen as well.

And certainly man, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Maybe even end up on the same ski mountain someday. I think that would be so much fun. Yeah, let's do it.

We could do this from the gaundala. I love it, love it. Thanks so much, man. Thanks. (upbeat music)

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. I mean, well, you learned from this great conversation

Higher, a coach.

“Think about the coach who could most change your life right now.”

Then go find that person and hire them.

Park hired a surfing coach, a tennis coach, a chess coach, a life coach, and the legendary CEO coach, Bill Campbell, none of them were assigned to him. Mark went on offense and hired them because he wanted to get better.

We all should go look for a coach to hire in the areas

where we want to improve.

Then be over prepared.

“The next time you get a high stakes meeting,”

get after it, over prepare. Do not show up and just wing it. Even if others say, "Hey, I was not that big of a deal." If you get five minutes, treat those five minutes

as an opportunity to make an impact.

Just like Mark did with Yahoo or even with President Obama. He got five minutes and ended up getting 40. Also, be prepared for it to go well. Act like your king for the day. Do not be afraid to show them how much you've prepared

for that moment, make the most of it. Then your book of life. It's your spiritual board meeting with yourself. Partner with your future self, right down the one habit or change that your future self

would most think present you for making. Like Mark did, he said, "I got to quit smoking and he credits that one single commitment with unlocking everything that came after your book of life." Once again, I would say thank you so much

for continuing to spread the message

“and telling a friend or two, "Hey, you should listen."”

To this episode of The Learning Leader so with Mark Pink is I think he'll help you come in a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcast

and you write a thoughtful review. You subscribe to the show, you rated five stars, hopefully. By doing all of that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do red love on a daily basis and for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so so much, talk to you. - Bye. - Bye.