706: Daniel Lubetzky - KIND Snacks Founder & Shark Tank Investor on Kindness, Grit, Values-Driven Leadership. and Building a Billion-Dollar Brand

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Go to learningleaderscircle.com Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Insight Global, I am your host Ryan Pop. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleaders.com for show notes of this and all podcasts episodes go to learningleaders.com. Now on to the night speed surge leader Daniel Babetsky graduated from Stanford Law School.

And then declined lucrative job offers to start his own business only paying himself $24,000 a year for a decade.

But then he founded Kind and grew it into a snack brand that Mars later valued at $5 billion

and went on to acquire. Today he invest full-time on Shark Tank, and he's the son of a Holocaust survivor who story has shaped everything Daniel has built. During our conversation we discussed the difference between a scarcity mindset and one of abundance.

“Daniel shares a fascinating story about how he changed his mind about giving way product”

and how it changed everything for kind, then talks about the three must have attributes in an entrepreneur Hill Investin on Shark Tank and towards the end he gets really jacked up talking about the four seas of a builders mindset so good, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Daniel Lubetsky. I saw that picture over your right shoulder.

I did a lot of studying leading up to this conversation and that happens to be a picture of your dad and this is blew me away. I mean they're in your dad, his brother, and your grandfather, so your dad's dad, they're together but they're in, is it pronounced "dakau?" "dakau."

"Dakau." Okay. And they're on a death march to be pushed off of a cliff. I mean, I was floored, so what happened? Yeah.

So as the Allies, the Americans and their Allies were advancing to liberate both the concentration camps and the whole content of Europe away from the Nazis and their partners. Hitler's people, he and his people came up with something called the final solution because they didn't have enough bullets to kill all the Jewish inmates that had in all the concentration camps.

One walked them up the cliffs and then pushed them off so they would all die from the mountains. And my dad at that time, he was 12 and a half years old when he was entered into the concentration camp. My grandfather lied and said that he was born in 1927 instead of 1930 so that they would let him go.

Actually, they thought he was 15. There was 12 and a half when he got there, 15 and a half when this story happens. But he is six feet tall by ways less than 70 pounds. Like he is almost not alive. Like he is, you know, one of those people so emanciated and they start walking them.

He has no shoes, part of what my grandfather did is get him some makeshift stuff. Because other people died on the way, forget about being thrown off the ravine, they died from exhaustion and it's winter conditions, people are exhausted, they have no coats or anything. And as they get towards the top, a very big snowstorm takes over the place.

My father, my grandfather, my uncle, hog and say goodbye to each other.

“And the snow covers them but it forms some sort of eagle type situation where they”

stay warm with each other's bodies, they pass out, but hours later in the morning they wake up, cover out the snow, come out, can you imagine like all these barely humans of human figures coming out of the snow and they look and the Nazis are gone because they kept advancing because they allies were coming. So they were starving, they started walking towards a town to try to get some food, they

started walking on the roads and they see these tanks approaching and they're like oh shit, there's the Nazis again, but it wasn't the Nazis, it was the allies, it was the US allies. And what's really funny about the story Ryan is they were all Japanese Americans, it was the 442nd Battalion, 556 Regime and I hope I'm not messing that up, but Dr. Sui Tu was a captain and

these guys have never seen a Japanese person, an Asian person because they live in the little

town in Eastern Europe. So they're not understand what their witness is trying to find scoring a lot. And before they they find it figure out, these are American soldiers saving their lives. This is the most highly decorated Battalion in history and it liberated that how it liberated a lot more and my uncle Larry ends up getting attached to them. He's by then 19 after recuperating a little a little bit he goes as a translator and becomes a lifelong friend of the core people that Dr. Sui

Tu and his friends were with. But 70 years later, I get a call from my friends like always sitting with this guy, Dr. Sui Tu and he shows a postcard with this guy named Larry Lubetsky,

you know Larry Lubetsky. That was my uncle, he had just passed away. And through 70 years later,

I got reunited with Dr. Sui Tu who went on from being a captain in the US army to be a very, very highly respected doctor and scientist at Harvard. And I got to thank him and then unfortunately, I sent him some kind bars, but I was preparing to go visit him and his wife and unfortunately he passed away as a organizing the trip. So I only got to talk to him on the phone. But I gave a ulogy at his ceremony. And I got to meet his kids and grandkids who I'm still in touch with.

And my son Roman, whose name after this Roman came and thanked him also.

“Oh my goodness, what does that story do for you as a when it comes to like perspective and life?”

Or when we're feeling sorry for ourselves or complaining about things and then you think about that they're hugging to stay warm and to say goodbye because they're about to die and yet they persevere. And oh, I just can't even imagine how that impacts you from a perspective. How does that make you feel? Yeah, no, I mean a thousand things, the power of people to change other people's lives because if it wasn't because of Dr. Sui Tu and those valiant Japanese American

soldiers whose families were being interned in California, our government eventually apologized for it. But we didn't know if we could trust the Japanese Americans. We were interning all these families and here are these valiant people and black Americans, right? Like the most highly decorated groups were black Americans and Japanese Americans experiencing discrimination in their homes. And things have gotten so much better. But these were very, very heroic people. And the

power that all of us have to make a difference and to save people's lives and to make people's life better and every single day we're not going to pull off a doctor's suite every day. But every single day when you're walking down the supermarket and you look at a person's eyes and you see their humanity and you give them love with your eyes and just give them kindness.

“All you need to do is you give them kindness. You have no idea what that person's been going through”

and whether you're just going to give them a little of a nice sweet flavor or whether you're going to change their course of their lives. Last year, or maybe it was two years ago, I was at a conference in fighting terrorism and hate. And some of the people that were presenting were talking about how young people that are susceptible to being recruited for horrible crimes are going through difficult times and telling stories about how that human connection changed the course

of their lives and saved them in the important work of fighting counterterrorism and anti-terrorism involves just our daily lives, we're just being kind people. Just that, if all of us do that, we're making a little bit of a headway to prevent the haters from recruiting.

who, I guess, were supposed to fight each other and not like each other, but you're going

to get them to work together and call again a not only for profit, which I've never read before

until reading about you so that this idea of bringing people from different backgrounds who normally would literally be fighting a war and killing each other and saying, no, we're not doing that. We're actually going to work together and my business is they're going to be a reason to get you to come together. I'd love to hear more about that philosophy. You're talking about peace works. Yeah. It's interesting. I'm in Austin here and these are the shelves of success and in my other

“office, I have the shelves of failure and I think that's a mistake. I'm going to update these shelves”

to add the peace works products because there's no such thing as failure or success. These are

false simplifications because I would never have achieved what I achieved with kind,

if I hadn't achieved what I achieved with peace works, which is a lot of lessons and a lot of mistakes from which I learned. When I was in college, I wrote my thesis on the influence of economics in resolving their Arabies really conflict and the thesis was that if you use business to get neighbors working across lines of difference, you would shatter stereotypes, cement relationships, give them a stake and an interest in making money together and then hopefully help them discover

each other's humanity. It became a very, very famous book in medical circles because if people were having difficulty with insomnia and couldn't fall asleep, you'd give them this thick 268 pages

“thesis and then fall asleep right away because it was like the most theoretical boring thing in the”

world. But from there, I ended up getting a fellowship after law school to actually turn it into

something. And then so I started peace shorts where I actually got Israelis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Turks, Palestinians to trade with one another to make the most iconic brand name I ever came up with called Moshe Pupik and Alimish Munkans, World Famous, all natural gourmet foods. I still don't know why he didn't work out. But that taught me the lesson next time to keep it simple and they met kind, these poor letters and keep it simple. But Moshe and Ali's brought together people that

to this day, to their children's children, our friends and they have respect towards one another. And I just heard that the factory that we helped get started, they just shut it down after. I don't know, it's 93, like 30 plus years of them cooperating on for business reasons, they shut down that factory. But like that venture, there was so many other ventures I ended up starting in Sri Lanka in Indonesia, in South African, Chiapas, Mexico, to try to make a little

small contribution to helping people work together. But the model was what you said right and using business to not just make money, but to an sustainable way, healed wounds, build relationships between neighbors, in conflict regions, striving to coexist. And while kind is what I'm better known for, peace works is what helped me get to kind, because 10 years of mistakes and I'm telling you Ryan, the amount of stupid stuff I did while running peace works, the amount of mistakes I made.

But thank God that I learned the lessons from them because otherwise, I would have not been able to figure out kind. Were you going door to door, making like 20 grand a year? I mean, was this right? I mean, 24, don't cut my, oh sorry, don't cut me another, so you're making 24 grand a year and knock it on door itself. Have a Stanford low education after going to Stanford Law School. After going to Stanford Law, I have offers from law firms to pay me at that time $86,000

plus the wine and dine you. And instead I paid myself $24,000 and barely could make ends meet.

“And my team also, we're making $24,000, that's what I could afford. And when I started as a”

one-man operation and even for many, many, many years, I was still doing this. I would start on 122nd on Broadway because Broadway I determined was the most robust street in terms of amount of supermarkets. So it was the most efficient street for me to go and it's the way in New York city where the most supermarkets are. So it started on 122nd on Broadway on the east side and started walking door by door, store by store, walking into the stores with my jars of

some great to much, but the force-feeding people, like the poor buyers, could not escape me. I was like corner them and stayed there as long as it took to break a piece of bread, force-feed them and then they could not resist me. They were placed in order for $36, then the next door, then the next door. And I was made, even in that, I don't know, it sounds like a story of resilience. It's a story of

in the corner store of 84th and Broadway to try my product where I should have walked

two more blocks and go to the real super market rather than the tiny bodega and built up proper. So I didn't know what I was doing, but one of the lessons from that is grit is not enough. You also need wit and fit. It's a three-its grit, wit and fit. Too bad that it's coming from a Mexican

“Jewish confused accent, but grit fit with grit is that hard work ethic, right? Like you have to”

really push hard. You need to really not give up because it is going to be hard. When you build right in your business, I'm sure it was not automatically success. You need to put in the work. But it's not enough to put in the work. You also need to put the mind to figure out what you're doing.

And so to have this strategic element and the wit to be creative and outwitted the competitors

to be more creative than them. And then fit there has to be a fit between the product or service and what the consumers want. Well, I bring up the door to our selling, even if it maybe wasn't the most wittiest way to go about it. But I think dealing with rejection, the willingness to keep going perseverance, as you mentioned before, that kind of sets your foundation for the future of what you're going to. I mean, your family history is a story of resilience and

sticking together and the power of people, right? But you going out there and knocking on doors. Again, even if it wasn't the wisest way to go about it, I love what you asked and I love the

insight. I actually don't think enough about that. You're 100% correct, but it's a little bit more

complex just to be clear for anybody that's listening and starting their business. It's not like I'm like, yes, I'm going to keep going no matter what. Very often, perhaps multiple times a day. I asked myself whether I was doing the writing or was a total idiot. The amount of times that I cried on my own in my studio apartment sat down and cried because I thought that I had made a mistake and that I was wasting my life away. The amount of times that I made mistakes and sometimes those

rejects us and you're talking about for sure they made me who I am and stronger and maybe I already had some of that inside me and the fact that I was so passionate about what is doing, helped me give that thing. But some of these people that reject your absolute assholes, right? Some of them most of them, I think 95% maybe 99% were actually respectful kind and gave me hand, but some of them were so demeaning. So these respect for I still remember a couple of them.

They created holes inside me of insecurity and of pain because I was doing this work of love to bring people together, leading away my law school career to try to build peace in the Middle East once somewhere at the Middle Spread at a time and I believed in my mission. I believe what I was doing what I was making at the difference and some people were so demeaning and such jerks and they

“take the wind out of you and you need to just understand that's part for the process that you need”

to be strong, love yourself inside, even in part of the rejections and please do not assume that I was invincible and that I was not susceptible to feelings. And by the way, it's even more complex because some of their advice of these jerks was good. Think about that like there was one guy I'm not going to say names. He thinks he's my buddy still to there when he, oh I remember you so fondly he was an asshole to me but he's advice was good. He was not nice the way he delivered the

feedback. Once we were at a trade show and he'd stop me and said stop, stop you're just way too pushy, give me space, leave me alone, get out of my life, you just need to give people space. And I was like whoa that was can you imagine how that hits you when you're like a 25, 26 year old dreamy-eyed person that's trying to make a difference? It broke me, I was broken but then I reflect

“things like you know what, he's right, you cannot just be push push push you need to let people in,”

you need to let people give people the space and be smarter because when you're doing sales, when you're doing anything, the ultra passive person you don't want to be that they're just watching the world happen. Don't lean, you don't want to be that but if all you do is leaning and push push push, then you're just annoying. So you need to find the balance and the magic and the creativity to be sufficiently persistent and loved for it and that is very hard, that is not easy to do.

You said the word magic, that comes from you as a kid in Mexico City as I write, you learned some magic, how did magic play a role in your life in your upbringing? Well I told you my that

he was 12 and a half, he was sent before that to a getto and to horrible conditions. So he only

“had a third grade education and he was full of wonder. It was fascinating about him, you know,”

then we named the company kind after him because he passed away the year that we were about to launch kind that we were special about him, that in spite of all of the suffering that he went through, he was kind to everybody and he only so kind as in people, he was a very special person

and he loved magic and he always used to teach me little tricks and he used to ask him that teach

me teach me teach me an adventure, he taught me a couple things here and there and a little more and so that was a language he and I used. Those are our shared hobby and so we would go to magic conferences and watch magic shows and then he would buy me a book and then another book, about magic ever since I was eight years old started doing magic shows and magic tricks and till today it's a big hobby of mine. Is it one of the few things that you get really,

“really prepared for, like you're that right, what's this all about? You prepared, right, and that's”

impressive, I love when, you know, as you know, I'm about to launch builder break, so I'm entering your space of conversations and you have a really magical way, builder break is a show where I'm taking all of my lessons and the lessons of the most extraordinary builders out there, some of the most amazing people, I just did one with Matthew McCornick, it was magical, it did Kevin O'Leary,

Kevin O'Leary cried like you've never seen them cry before, like he opened up and shared

some introspective lessons and the show is called builder break because talking about those difficult moments that could have broken you but built instead of who you are, but what I've learned in my, I've done, you've done 700 interviews, I've done 30 so far, where I've learned is what you do prepare, but listen, and you do that beautifully the way you are, you have a lot of background, but you're listening to the guests and then connecting to where they are, so I really

like you're still like, I have to learn more of your tricks, but I used to do magic shows for my entire team, we had like a team of 500 or maybe a hundred of them were out of trade show and we were had a dinner and I would prepare a mentalism routine and I didn't want to screw it up, so I would

really work at it, I've realized I prepared for anything that I'm not prepared for, I love

winging it, it's just my personality, my style, I love winging it, I hate having to prepare, but I am disciplined enough that if there's something I don't know, I will put in the work today, tomorrow and then thereafter, that's my person, I want to deliver the best I can deliver, so for example, for builder break, it's been so much growth for me because it's hard because as you can tell, I love just talking and you ask me, you're the job of Ryan,

to you guys might seem, whatever, this is Daniel's show, he's but it is so hard to do what Ryan does, it's seem simple, but after every one of my interviews, I need an hour to just decompress because I'm actively listening, an actively listening takes a lot of energy, you're listening for a huge Stephen Bartlett gave me this advice which we talk about on the show about how do you listen, how do you interview, so every one of the builder break interviews, I go deep into the area of

accents of any particular person, we learn from their toolkit, so how do you become an active listener, how do you become creative, how do you become the best actor, how do you become the best entrepreneur, it's just, if I took recommend anything for my kids to hear, you'd be the Ryan Hawkshow,

“and then the builder breaks, but that's awesome, I think you could probably, you know how this feels,”

it's really cool to be able to do the thing that provides for your family and it happens to be your favorite thing to do, so I was talking about the concentric circles of life and when there's overlap, yeah, man, it makes this really, really fun, so it's a hundred percent, a hundred percent, I was talking to my son a few days ago and he started his own business at that, what I love about this is, this is my hobby, like I enjoy every minute of it, in the Scott Gallery where you

familiar with Scott, yeah, I've had a lot of few times, so here's this thing where he talks about, if you're pursuing your passion, that's probably some rich personal advice, but now the whole point is, and Scott is a very dear friend of mine, but my point is, if you enjoy what you're doing, you're so much more likely to kick ass at it and to do well with it, and also, you're already winning, like you, because you're doing something that every morning you get up and you're doing

something that's satisfying, I had something that gives you energy, purpose, means that's your hobby, what, you know what the danger is with that? What? The thing you overwork, like when I was building peaceworks and kind, you just do so much, where you love it so much, as you need to pay yourself.

kids are taking a nap or whatever, like I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to work, but it's not because I feel like I have to, it's because I can legitimately want to do that more than anything else, other than being with your kids. Well, yeah, so they're taking a nap or something, you know, so it's all your kids ages 19, 18, 17 and 11. So you have four, like me? Five, actually, there's twins in there. Well, I have twins too, but oh, but total four. Yeah, it's, I know, it's awesome.

But there's, there's a lot of crafting and learning the art of listening and interviewing,

“it's very hard. I'm glad you said that, because I think the skill, which it is a skill of being a”

good active listener, is something we all can get better at. It takes repetitions, you've got 30 of them formally now, recording and more coming. And obviously the rest of your life, too, but how has that impacted you as a communicator, as a leader, as a dad, actively building and intentionally building the skill of being an active listener? Yeah, this is one of my greatest opportunities. I talk in Builder Break, and the common theme that I detect from all of these

most extraordinary people, like, you're like in on Builder Break, green interviewing, in crap people have accomplished so much, the lead singer of Empire, the song, Luke's Teal,

Hocendres, the humanitarian, a ton of incredible entrepreneurs that built from nothing and

fell and fell Chris Paul from, oh my god, I'm going to get in trouble, because I'm starting to share names that have not been publicly disclosed. Okay, now you really have an exclusive ride, but we have 30 incredible people so far and more coming. And the common theme that I notice about this is people putting the work and then have a positive added to to make the best of it. And so for me, listening, I have to acknowledge that it's not my greatest strength,

and then I have to lean in to try to get better at it. And that's the sign of people that have achieved a lot is, and being introspective, understanding what's not working, and then putting in the work to make it a little bit better. And listening has helped me with my children. I'm not perfect still. I have way more work to be done, but I have become better at the dinner table with my team. My team might complain that I'm still not there. What do you mean by getting

better at the dinner table, asking better questions, asking follow up questions, listening,

all of the above. What do you mean? My personality is that of someone that always wants to be a protagonist.

I want to be part of what's going on. I got spoiled by founding kind from a one-person operation where I was alone in the windowless basement of my building to an entity that had hundreds and hundreds of team members full of joy, like hanging by my words for the most part, not all over,

“but for me. And so I get spoiled by wanting that. And my kids guess what?”

They want to talk about their football practice. And they're talking to each other, and I'm just observing. And I would like to be part of the conversation. And so all of a sudden, I'm learning the skill to listen and to gain more knowledge and to be a little bit more patient and to then know how to ask questions and be part of that without having to be that, without me being at the center of attention. Asking questions, my that, going back to my that was the best interviewer.

Because he was a coach, he always knew it was there to listen. And when I was talking to him and I

would ask him a question, he would come back with another question. And he would just let me feel at the answers. And that's the deepest way for you to really, really evolve is for you to ask yourself questions. So a great interviewer or a great coach or a great parent doesn't tell you what to do, which is the easier skill that comes easy for me. It helps you ask the questions in

“to ask yourself for you to figure out what to do. As you know, Daniel, I think parents can relate to this.”

Kids are the greatest in the world at making sure you always stay humble. No matter what you've accomplished, you create these incredible businesses and make billions of dollars. They don't care. And it says it should be. It's not just that they don't care. It is one of the most valuable aspects because it keeps you grounded and it keeps you human and if you, you need so much to run yourself with your kids or your spouse or your partner or your team members that can

call you out when you're starting to think that is it too crude to say that your shit doesn't smell? I don't normally use that expression, but that. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. We all need truth tellers in our lives. Kids are, I found to be some of the best because they'll love you and be there with you. But I think if they stopped making fun of you or they put you on a pedal still, that would be a really weird day. I would not feel good. Your kids are there to keep you

humble. Okay. I want to go back to actually 2002. You're training for the New York City Marathon

to find them. What did you decide to do about that? Well, I tell that story and I tell a couple

“of stories as uncormoments in my recognition that there needed to be a healthy snack that was”

portable, wholesome and convenient. Like that was the genesis of my idea that what eventually led me to kind because like when you're running a marathon and you're being served up, all these artificial gobbledy gooks stuff or stuff that doesn't look like food or in any occasion where in the airport or whatever, a lot of people don't know is that in the 90s, like 90s, early 2000s, there was no healthy snack set that didn't exist in the stores in the airport or whatever. That

did not exist. Your options were either stuff that looked like astronaut food and tasted like

astronaut food or stuff that was completely indulgent and devoid of healthy calories or

nutritionally dense calories. And so I was on the lookout for creating a product that could fit my needs when I was skipping lunch or dinner, a healthy snack that was wholesome and convenient that when you ate it, you could feel good about it and that was what led us to lunch kind. So there's so many different parts of the kind story. One, I'm curious you mentioned about your

“dad, but naming things is very important. We've already talked about this. How do you like,”

you know what? It's going to be called kind. What's the story behind that? Well, the funny part is that when Sasha Hare and I were, she was my head of marketing at the time and we were

riffing on what to call it. I need to find this page. I haven't found them, but we had like 80

ideas. And every one of the other ideas were stupid. And by the way, it's not a foregone conclusion that we would have focused on the word kind. And we have words like healthy and tasty, deliciously nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty, nutty. And it was too descriptive. It was too just on the nutty. Oh, fruits and nuts. Well, you're going to look at the product, these fruits and nuts. We didn't need to waste

our very valuable thing, just recombining people, these fruits and nuts plus kind of need to stay

“just in different nutstries. I don't know how this thing. At that point, that's what we have stumbled”

upon a fruit and nutty, but kind of served to be more. And we were very blessed. Thanks also to Sashan to a lot of my self reflection about losing my dad. And around that time, like we were looking for a word that could describe the three pillars of our brand, which turned out to be kind to your body, helpful, kind to your taste buds, delicious, and kind to the world. Social responsible, trying to make a small contribution to make this world a little bit kind of one snack and one

act at a time. That language came much later, but that's what it became. But when my dad passed away, like it just became obvious that the adjective that best described him, any time you met anybody still today, that was implemented by that. He was the kindest man, and he saw his mission in his life and bringing smiles to others. And this is the year 2003 where my dad died and what we're thinking of packing up our bags, again, in terms of not giving up our brand, or it wasn't

like it was so straight line to success, the opposite. We had just lost a huge account with our brand business, because the predecessor product we're selling, we didn't control the manufacturing at the time, and they had added sorbitol and sulfur dioxide. And so we had lost all of our business for that product line. And we were barely making ends meet. We had like six or 17 members in myself included. We sat around the table and we said, "Do we give this one last shot?" Or we just

pack our bags, and I'll give you guys two, three months to go look for a job. I'll go with the same, I'll look for a job, and then we'll call it a day. And we voted and part of me wanted to just be throwing the towel and just give up, because it's been ten years of a very, very tough journey. And maybe part of me wanted to go on, maybe I maybe I like to myself that I usually consider giving up, but we seriously took that vote. We literally took that vote. And all of a sudden,

let's give this one last shot. And then all of a sudden, from the greatest darkness of losing my best friend, my mentor, my dad, and just being so sad to lose him. And at business that barely can make some need, although some kind gets launching, we just takes over. I love the idea of the store behind sampling. So your budget for sampling was like 800 bucks,

You just gotta get people to taste it. Let's dramatically increase the sampling budget so that people can taste it. And once they do all the sudden, that feels like an inflection point. So the power of sampling, I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Yeah, but with a caveat, it needs to be the right mouse trap, because if you start sampling the wrong thing, it won't work. And I talk about a lot of these tools on Builder Break, both advise that I have for my journey,

but also that some of these extraordinary people have. And we go practical. We talk a little bit of this strategic and spiritual and everything, but we provide very practical tools. And I talk a lot about sampling, because it's misunderstood art form. And just to simplify,

you first want to make sure that if somebody samples you product, they're going to enjoy

and recommend to the friends. Because if you're sampling something that only one out of 10 people like, you're going to lose your shirt. Give me all these free samples. Only 10% they're going to

“want to consider buying it again. You need to make sure that that number goes off to five out of 10,”

six out of 10, seven out of 10. In kind of case nine out of 10 people that tried a time bar, it was like, oh my God, I want to buy more. And they were our ambassadors. They were the one saying, so it was a no brainer, but I had been mistrained by myself, because during the piece of years, whereas you know where I have, no money, everything was a cost center. And so I had developed a scar shielding mentality. And I talk about this a lot on Builder Break, about the different

tools on how to build a business and think about this stuff. But a scar shielding mentality is definitely better than a glutinous mentality, right? Like an overspending mentality where you just wasting money, a wasteful mentality, a wasteful money culture is just going to run you to the ground. You're going to run out of business. A scar shielding mentality is going to help you preserve every dollar, but it's not going to fulfill your potential because everything is a cost center to you.

You're missing opportunities. The right thing is in the middle, a resourceful culture and mindset where you're thinking like an owner and you're not wasting money, if you can do it for less do it for less, but sometimes you want to invest in that growth. And so sampling, what's a good example of? I started as a cost center and I hadn't realized that it was an investment opportunity.

And once we started sampling, we went from 800,000 to 800,000 to 800,000 into a nine to 20 million

dollars in free product within a few years. And that made all the difference in scaling to a multi-billion dollar company. You eventually decide to sell in different, I know, not all at once. So you become this guy who was making 24,000 bucks a year, knocking on doors to a billionaire. I mean, that's a dramatic change. How did that change you? So first of all, there's a difference between the liquidity event and the paper money, right? Like it. So I prior to selling kind already

have achieved a lot of success and I already have a lot of those resources. In my case, it was true that I was much more conservative because in my nature, I also I don't waste till today to be clear right. And I do not throw away food, perhaps because of what my father went through, perhaps because how they taught me, but I will not waste. So I find it very important to teach my kids not to waste.

“If you want to be a good entrepreneur, I wrote an not bad on the Washington Post. I encourage”

everybody to read it about frugality and resourcefulness because it's so dumb in this culture to think that all you should be just spending and that if you're saving money, you're a loser. I just don't understand what people think that like, you're not going to be able to build a healthy home or a healthy business. But yes, I do think that once you have a liquidity event and then when you have the money in the bank, you start taking care of yourself a little bit more and you know,

I didn't own an apartment or any housing till past 45 or something like I didn't own any real estate till I was in my mid 40s or something. We didn't have a car, we had one and then we sold it and we for a while didn't have a car then we had one modest car and still today we don't in our style

by the way, we live very well. We have an incredible home and vacation home and we ridiculously

blast and we cannot complain. We take very with care of ourselves. I'd like to say that I

“live within my means and that I always try to remember that you never know and never be”

ways full. We certainly in our decisions, I spend far more time and money on communal partners, which is our investment platform, our business and on the builders movement and the

I haven't yet bought a plane. I talk about it, I think about it, but I resisted it. I like flying commercial

sometimes. If the schedule's bad and the plane gets delayed, I'm like, oh damn you Daniel, were you trying to be such a dummy just by the plane? But as a general thing, I like to do things to stay connected and I actually think airports are the places where you see so much kindness. Of course, sometimes you see jerks. If you're on social media, sometimes you get down this rabbit holes of everybody hating each other and all this political stuff where they're hating each other.

And you look to the airport, people are kind to each other and nice and I like, I like connecting with people. Well, one of the ways that you connect with people, that you help other people, and I love getting a chance to watch this as Shark Tank. It's one of my family's favorite shows and to see like your style versus Mr. Wonderful who you just talked about, which you could tell like some of those people who are the most passionate and sometimes come

off is like a character also can be very emotional, which I love seeing that range. When you're on Shark Tank and you're thinking about investing in somebody, I use that phrase on purpose, investing in somebody. It feels to me like your style is more about the people and maybe less about the numbers and/or the idea because you're like a people, I'm not trying to put word to your mouth, but you feel like a people-centered guy who cares

for others is kind and wants to support someone who looks like they have the attributes of like, let's go build this cool thing. Is that how you approach Shark Tank or what is your overall philosophy? Well, it's evolving, it's evolving, but yes, they're actually yes, but I want to

“give an old of joy to Mr. Wonderful for our second move out. I think he's an under-appreciated”

genius, and I'll tell you why. First of all, he's like the glue that makes this thing work,

because he's comforting the jerk and the tough guy and saying what needs to be said, sometimes what others are uncomfortable. It's the hardest job, and he doesn't in a very way, and yes, by the way, do think it's the essence of his personality to say what needs to be said, but obviously he overdramatizes it for TV and plays it up a little bit, but I believe he's one of the most loyal people, and very bright, and a man of the world, and there is a role for the

Kevin O'Leries of the world who are just going to tell it like it is, because if all you do is just be nice, then you're not being kind. You understand the difference between being nice and being kind. If you're nice, you are polite, and you're not saying uncomfortable things, but if you're kind, you're honest. If you're nice, it doesn't cost you. It's easy. You can be weak and nice,

“but to be kind, you need to be strong. There's a huge difference between being nice and not”

causing problems, and being kind and solving problems, between being nice and not bothering people, not saying things, and being kind and giving honest feedback that's going to help people grow, between being nice, and just standing on the satin, being kind and stepping up against the Boolean, standing up to solve problems together. So kindness requires you being a protagonist. Now, I would not go so far as to say that Kevin is kind to all entrepreneurs, but he

does an incredible service to say things that some of us, the rest of the sharks might be thinking, and I'm like, oh my God, this person has a really, really tough story. They went through all this adversity, but their business makes no sense. How do we help him? By the way, I'd like

to think of myself, Lori is just the most nurturing person, right? She's always trying to help

heal that person, and Kevin is just going to tell it like it is. What I'd like to think is I am trying to be nurturing while being kind with a feedback, meaning I try to, in the way I provide the feedback, be nurturing, but I want to do it, I want to say what needs to be said, and I can, I don't always have the strength that Kevin has. He has no compunction, but he sometimes takes strength to tell people something they may not want to hear. I've evolved a lot in season, I've been now

eight seasons, this one that's coming is the eighth one, and it's starting, I think, September 29, I think, where our first episode, an incredible roster of guests, whoa, whoa, I mean, I think this season is going to be one of the best. The producer did an insanely good job with the guest choice. In season 19, it was one note, kindness, and as I've evolved, I've tried to be a little bit more leaning into also being comfortable, saying jokes and being within, understanding that people are

“here also to entertain. I wanted to just always be providing advice, but I realize that you need to also”

engage people, and that's what the rest of the sharks do so well, right? They're so funny,

you. The only thing that's different is that they record for 30 to 45 minutes, and then they edit

“it into an 8 to 11 minute segment, but you get the essence, like you're leaning your who's the”

editor and an executive producer, it was a very good job, but extracting the essence of the thing, and it really, it's very hard to do all of that, detect the patterns, the funny, and my fellow sharks are pretty good at it. What are some of them must have attributes and a founder that they got to have this, or these three things in order for you to say, "Yeah, I want to back them. I want to invest in them. I want to be partners with them." Integrity, if I don't trust the person,

I'm not going to waste my life, no matter how much can you sense that in that 45-minute pitch? Yeah, the best one I did is Barbara, Barbara, is like Dr. Freud, and like she, she has this an essence of understanding human beings, like nobody, she's got an incredible emotional intelligence,

but yes, you can, you don't always get it right, you don't always get it perfect,

but yeah, I think you can in between, by the way, and when you interview person Ryan, and when you meet people, it's not by saying do you have integrity, or like show me an example of it. It's by asking other questions and then seeing how they're performing that you get

“to the essence, but you have to dribble and look for the nuance, that's what you really need to”

be intently observing. Integrity is really important to me, and I want people that I would enjoy, because in 99.9% of the cases, it's not going to be like this, that it everything's growth. It's going to be up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster, and so I want to work with people that when I need to be in the trenches helping them, I enjoy that there are people worth helping, so I do want to find people that are worth helping, that are good human beings kind,

respectful, and I want them to have a ton of passion. I want them to really, really believe in their business, and to sense that they're going to hard work everybody else, because that's what it's going to take. Do you have a favorite that you've invested in? A flavored product or company or asking me to choose them on my children? I know, people ask me this all the time about my podcast, it's really hard, but I try to come up with a lot of things today. You're going to have a

favorite for sure, Ryan. Come on. We're here. Let's go. But I have the couple of home viewer, they're the salt of the earth. I love them. I don't know if you know this story, they invented this thing where this hummingbird dances next to you and drinks nectar from flower that is by your helmet or whatever, and the whole community in Colorado, that together to help them is like a town of I don't know, 40, 50 people. They're all assembling them, doing them. It's changed their lives.

They retired as a teacher and an electrician and started these things. It was a bit of a shock that it helps people pursue their life long dreams and be entrepreneurs and build their own

futures. I love it. They never got one more question before we run, man. This has been so cool.

Let's fast forward a year from today and you are surrounded by the people you love and you are

“celebrating like crazy, your pop and bottle, spraying all over each other. What are you celebrating?”

Well, if you say this logo, it's the builders movement. I worry that I don't want to over-dramatize things, but we are entering an era where a lot of the values that we take for granted are on their threat, respecting one another, being kind to one another, the markers you rule of law, and everybody that is listening agrees, but they think it's happening on the other side. They don't see it happening to their side or to themselves. We need to recognize that both political

parties and big number of politicians, they use this to divide us and they're no longer the true north is not to solve problems, is to get re-elected. Most of them are not but people. They're just responding to the incentives because on social media, if they're scandal, it troubles farther. If you send that fundraising email with some screams, you're going to get more dust. So we as people need to build a movement of builders that are committed to hold all special interests,

all politicians or political parties accountable to follow the will of the people. Think about it. Over history, as a United States was built, every industry group has a trade group, a lobby, a group representing them. There's the Napkin Association and the Food Association and the Disassociation. Everybody has an association lobbying the politicians, and the only people that don't

is the 80 to 90 percent of citizens that agree on almost those issues. The most divisive issues

that are used as wedges to try to get people to raise money and to get elected to the virus,

Democrats opposing it? But on the other side, Democrats support access. Why are there Republicans

“opposing it? There's things that are so basic. Even on the most controversial issues like choice”

and life, 70 to 80 percent of Americans can agree on 78 percent of the issues and yet on

gone rights and gone safety on all of these issues. We're paralyzed for making progress because it's ausvices damage, implementation and you've seen how that can end. You've seen what can happen to people where there's so much dehumanization. And so Builder Break is not just about personal growth and professional growth for you to build the best business. Builder Break is also but building a community of builders that are going to build their businesses, build their families,

and build a better world by being curious, compassionate, creative and courageous. The fourth season of a Builder's mindset are the essence that help be built kind into a multi-billionaire company with almost no investment and the essence of what's helped be built the one voice movement, the builders and all that. And it's the essence of what it's going to take for us as Americans and human beings overall across the world to build a better chapter. So what I would look like

is that Builder's movement made progress and helped start turning the ship to hold politicians accountable and politicians are not paying attention and they're standing who's the sheriff in town and doing what's right for the 87% of Americans that want to solve problems together rather than Terry Cho, they're a part. Actually that number's probably even higher. Man, I want to be celebrating with you. I love that mission. I love that you think big. It's inspiring. It makes

“me want to follow. You know, that's what great leaders really made. Go to Builder's movement,”

go to Adania Lubetski to Builder Break. Please follow our social media channels. Please join on the web and give us your email or others. We don't ask for money. We ask for you to become a better, the best person you can be. And it's going to give you tools to grow your business better and to help build this world. I will, man. For 1999, we'll also send your jeans or knife.

See, you learn to sell when you're in your early days and it never leaves you but you do it in a

way that I love. I love the juice you bring to it and the enthusiasm it makes. Again, it makes people truly. You can't get behind a leader and follow leader who isn't jacked up about the thing they're doing. And you can sense it and feel and you know, I love that. So, hey, man, this is great. I love it and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. I'm in Austin. I would love to see you be really, really cool. Thank you. It's a pleasure. And I hope to stay in touch. 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, Ryan at learningleadard.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Daniel Lubetski, a few takeaways from my notes. A scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset viewing something as a cost instead of viewing it as an investment. This was Daniel's early mistake with kind bars. He only budgeted 800 bucks a year in samples. We see viewed it as a

cost than he changed his mind and realized it was an investment. He uped it to $800,000 per year in

samples and eventually 20 million bucks a year. scarcity versus abundance view it as an investment instead

of a cost where are you doing this in your life and in your business? And then Daniel's four

“seas of a builder's mindset curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage. That's how you both”

build a company and a movement. And then the difference between being nice or being kind, being nice avoids conflict to protect feelings in the moment. The short term being kind is about being willing to risk the moment. Telling the hard truth because you actually care about the person we want to be kind more so than be nice. Once again, I want to 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 Leadership with Daniel Lubetski. I think it'll help people become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts. You subscribe to the show. You're ready to hope you five stars and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love and a daily basis and for that. I will forever be grateful that you so, so much, Krugussi.

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