Blockbuster CEO Reveals the $100M Deal That Would've Killed Netflix

In this episode of the Success Formula Podcast, host Shawn Lynch sits down with former 7-Eleven and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes to unpack the real decisions behind two of the biggest turnarounds and one of the most misunderstood collapses in American retail history. If you have ever wondered how a $4 stock became a $40 stock, or what really happened inside the boardroom as Blockbuster fought Netflix for survival, this conversation pulls back the curtain.

Jim Keyes explains how he used raw data and individual store level analytics to break ten years of declining sales at 7-Eleven, why Blockbuster intentionally kept new releases out of stock, and how the 2008 financial crisis derailed a streaming deal that could have beaten Netflix to the punch. Shawn Lynch and Jim dig into the mindset behind embracing change, the concept that change equals opportunity, and the leadership framework of change, confidence and clarity that Jim used to turn around two Fortune 500 companies. They also explore what Jim calls the caveman brain, the natural resistance to change that holds so many leaders and teams back from making the decisions that actually grow a business.

If this conversation sparked something in you, subscribe to Official Success Formula for more raw conversations on business, leadership and personal growth, and listen to the full episode on the Success Formula Podcast. You can also learn more about Jim Keyes, his book Education Is Freedom, and the Education Is Freedom Foundation on his official website.

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/jkeyesauthor/
Website- https://www.jameswkeyes.com/

Tune in every Tuesday at 10 AM for another inspiring success story, along with the proven formula to help you achieve your own goals. Don't miss out on the insights that could change your life!

Buzzsprout- https://successformulapodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7aRe06pXIq6yq8GQf62NBM
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1393b77c-626a-4a53-bdd5-43ce3b1aa15b/success-formula-podcast
Apple Podcast- https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/success-formula-podcast/id1748704615

Our Social Media:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialSuccessFormula
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialsuccessformula/
Twitter: https://x.com/_SuccessFormula/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@officialsuccessformula

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest today lives by the phrase change equals opportunity. But you won't believe what he told me about what that really means. 7-Eleven went bankrupt. And while everyone else had their head down, I had that attitude that, hey, I've been through this before. I got this. He went from getting a job he never thought he'd get to eventually becoming the CEO of 7-Eleven. I'm like, give me a chance. If you put me in the finance department, I can cut 50 million in expense. I asked him what he thinks is broken about education today. Education will be transformed because what we've got today was not built for the information age. It was built for the industrial age and it was mass production.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

He told me what he believes every single young person needs to learn before they leave school. More even learned. More even. He's been in some of the biggest boardrooms in America, and he gave me a piece of advice for young people that I honestly wish more parents would hear.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I think the biggest thing is the tendency for Bitcoin success with monetary boards. And some people never get off the hamster.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

He told me about a decision that looked crazy at the time, but ended up completely changing the trajectory of his career.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I hope that they think of me as somebody that helped stimulate positive change. I help people realize change is opportunity and help them understand the tools are available.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

You know, I know a lot about you. I asked uh Mutual Connection Artists to actually get you on the podcast because I've I've read a lot about you. I've you know, I know your story. But for those that don't know it, you know, maybe explain just just high level who you are and then we'll we'll dive into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Sure. Yeah. Oh and Jim Keys. Um I'm actually glad to be back here in Houston. This is where I started my career. Okay. Uh I ended up in uh from small town Massachusetts in uh uh graduate school, business school, got an internship with Gulfoil. And uh yeah, they sent me down here to Houston and I fell in love with Houston, Texas, except for I was down here for a summer internship and I was driving a uh Triumph TR6, old beat up Triumph TR6.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

With no AC.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, that's in the summer.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

That's bad in the summer.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So you can imagine I lived out in uh an apartment over on Westheimer, and I was driving to downtown in a in a TR6 old sports car with a convertible in a soup back and forth every day. So by the time I'd get to the office, I'd be basically a puddle.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Where, you know, for people that don't know Houston oil and gas, like everything was here in the was it the 80s? Like what what year was that when you had it?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

This was uh early 80s, yeah. And and who Houston was booming. And what the the thing I fell in love with, I you know, the Northeast has been around a long time, right? And so everyone is um it's just very different. It's a great place to grow up, but everyone was older and more mature, you know, it wasn't uh a dynamic and uh entrepreneurial environment. I came down here, everyone was was from somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

And yeah, I think though I the the industry back then, I think brought a lot of people to Houston. It did.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

It was so fun because we were all brand new. Yeah, everyone was, you know, you drive down the street and you'd be at a stoplight, and people in the car next to you'd roll down their window and say, Hey, come on, we're we're going to a party, come with us. It was just it was literally that that kind of atmosphere. It's like the whole city was a giant fraternity.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah. I still meet people today that, oh yeah, I moved here about 20 years ago, and oh, you know, oil and gas came, you know, moved here from so and so. I still meet people. It's it's it it's actually I feel like it's starting to happen again. Like our our market from I think just this whole shakeup in the world right now. A lot of New York people, a lot of California people um moving to Texas and Florida. And so I'm seeing it a lot more just as of recently, too, especially in some of the more affluent areas where I meet people. It's like, oh yeah, we're from New York, and oh yeah, we're from California, or oh, oh, we're from here.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Oh yeah, I'm seeing it in in Dallas too. And it it's not just people from other states here. It's it's a very multicultural state now. Um and it's freaking people out a little bit. Um, but I think it's good for the long term because it's I think we grew.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

I read somewhere that Houston economy grew like 10% last year. It's something pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's booming. But we're we're what I've discovered is Texas, um, especially Dallas and Houston, uh, are becoming really a hub for global activity.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Because the world is shrinking because of technology. That's partly why everybody's freaking out. There's so much change going on, but technology's not going away. So the world's gonna keep shrinking. And I'm doing business now. Just last night I was on a conference call with China uh and a Chinese company coming to the United States and a consumer products company, so nothing scary. Um, but they uh we're we're doing business now with live translation. It's so easy to do business. Yeah, and it and this is just the tip of the iceberg with where we're heading. So basically, for everyone that's scared and saying, no, we should pull back, we should, you know, we should worry about our own country, et cetera, et cetera, markets are opening up worldwide that we've never been able to tap before. And with technology today, borders are irrelevant when it comes to commerce because we can do business all over the world from your from your um basement in Houston, you can do business anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yeah, I agree. Internet connect kind of uh you know connected the whole world. And then now, you know, AI is is is kind of taking it to a different level. Exactly. Fun, fun time to be. So in business. You you started your career in Houston, worked for an oil company.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Did and then what where was the transition after the oil company to uh well it was it was kind of a fun story because my my objective, and this is because I grew up no frame of reference. I business was outside of the scope of my understanding completely. So I thought, well, I don't know, you grow up, you could be a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

I felt like it was that was the path.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Right? I mean, that's all I that's all many of us knew back then. So I thought, okay, well, I'll be a doctor. No, I can't be a doctor. I don't like blood and gore. So I said, maybe a lawyer. I'll go be a lawyer. So I studied political science, um, undergrad, went, was thinking about going to law school, got accepted at a couple of law schools, and I had a professor intercept me and say, Keith, you're gonna be a terrible lawyer. At least get an MBA. And I literally I joke about it. I didn't know how to spell MBA. I had no idea what an MBA was. And uh I I listened to him. I I ended up getting accepted into a joint degree structure uh with Columbia University, and um ended up with an internship at Gulf Oil, as I said, and I was starving to death. So I said, well, I'll put that JD on hold. And they offered me a job after my summer here in Houston, a full-time job. So I said, I'm just gonna go make some money for a little while. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

And then companies paid pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, they paid pretty well. And and at the time, the oil industry was really booming. Um, it was the Seven Sisters back at the day in the day. Uh, but I got caught up. I was I actually out of school, ended up in the chief financial officer's office, um, working on MA deals, trying to buy other oil companies. And the timing was perfect because I entered my career just as personal computers hit the market. So here I am working for the CFO of a major oil company. I've got a little PC that I brought to work. And they thought I was a genius. I wasn't a genius at all. I just was able to use a PC and everybody else was doing things by spreadsheet. So um it it turned into a great opportunity. And it ultimately led to 7-Eleven because Gulf and Chevron merged back in the day. Um, I ended up with an opportunity to go to 7-Eleven. They had bought the downstream of City Service, Citco Petroleum. So that was my opportunity then to uh enter 7-Eleven via the oil business.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

But how was that transition? So, your what role did you they hire you on at the oil company? I know you said you started working on mergers, but when you, I guess when they hired you on, then you left, what were the roles?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, the the thing, uh the magic in my career is I've never been in a box where you can say, well, Jim's a finance guy or an operating guy or a marketing guy. What happened is um, by good fortune, like I said, I'm doing this MA work. My target for Gulf Oil to acquire was city service. So I'm sitting on this a ton of information about city service. 7-Eleven then buys City Service. And when they bought the company, this is a retail company out of Dallas, Texas, they had no idea about the oil business. They bought refinery, pipelines, terminals, and retail gasoline business. So because I knew so much about city service and had so much data, one of the gentlemen from Gulf Oil came to be CEO, grabbed me, and said, come be the head of strategic planning. So at 20, I don't know, 23 years old or something like that, I'm leading strategic planning for the subsidiary, uh of a major oil company, now a part of 7-Eleven with Southund Corporation. Uh so that was my first big role as strategic planning for Sitco Petroleum. And then they sold Sitco, and that was my opportunity to stay with 7-Eleven at the time and and moved into the retail gasoline business. So I was I went from planning slash finance to now I'm an operator running a couple billion-dollar business in my mid-20s.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

What's the role though when they moved you over to actually 7-Eleven on the retail side?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Uh, that the that was the vice president of retail gasoline. So, you know, now this is the irony. It's how it works in big companies, right? You you do get put in a in a bit of a box. People assume that you know things. So I was an oil company guy. Well, they sold the oil company, so they decided to keep me the oil company guy to run the gasoline department. Well, I wasn't an operator at all, so I was totally out of my range of experience. Um, but that's where you learn.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Always.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Always. So it was a fabulous opportunity for me to then learn the retail business. When you were younger, did you ever think that you were gonna be in roles like that?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

No, no, no idea. Yeah, I I read that I mean you're working at McDonald's, I pay for school. Yeah, and you know, you're doing these things just putting yourself through school, and then now you're the vice president of operations for 7-Eleven at how 23?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yeah, 25 maybe, yeah. 25 at this point. Yeah. And and no, I had it wasn't like I sat down and had a plan. And the reason I didn't have a plan is I had no frame of reference, no perspective on what was possible, even.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, sometimes when you're not from an industry and people have been in from what I've seen, and when somebody's been in industry so long, they're kind of used to doing things the exact same way. Yeah. And this is how it's been done, and this is how we're gonna do it. And they don't they don't really see outside of that. And sometimes when you bring somebody in from another industry or somebody that has a different outlook, um, you you can make a lot of change.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, in fact, that's how I got my job as an intern. I I literally um I was just applying to everything I could apply to because I needed a job badly. I needed a summer internship. And uh the uh the criteria they listed was they wanted a chemical engineer, a petroleum engineer for the internship. I didn't worry about that, I just applied anyway. And I get into the interview, and the guy looked at my my background. He said, You're a political science major. What are you doing here? I said, Well, I I uh I applied for the job and you gave me an interview. And he said, Well, it's it's uh I don't want to waste your time. We're looking for a uh an engineer. And I literally said, You need somebody who's not an engineer because everyone in the company is thinking the same way. You should bring someone with a liberal arts degree into the company. It would be good for you. It's just an internship, after all. And and and basically I sold it. He he bought in and I got the job.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So when you did transition over into 7 7-Eleven, you get this pretty big role at a young age. What did you see right away that you thought that needed to change or had to change, you know, coming from you know your point of view?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, huge opportunity. You're in the in the in the uh in the industry, so you may remember this. I mean, it's a commodity product, gasoline, crude oil, et cetera, et cetera. But I was never convinced that it had to be a commodity. I thought, you know, if you manage it properly, you can get more for the product because you're offering convenience, perhaps, or offering a better brand, perhaps. So um I started testing that principle. And what I discovered, this was a big breakthrough at the time, it's shocking, but I started asking questions. Actually, when I was at golf, how do people set the price of gasoline? And the answer was, well, we look across the street and we've got a formula. So if the guy across the street is at a dollar, we're at a dollar two. You know, we'll we we always keep keep two cents above or below the guy across the street.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Just when you think these big corporations are like rocket scientists. Exactly. No, we're we're just pricing at two cents above everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Exactly. And and the reason for that is they were very, you know, fragmented. They had, you know, dealers and jobbers and and company operations all over the country. And there were no systems back in the day. So they didn't really have a way to communicate effectively pricing.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

I know most of it was franchised. Yeah. What was the percentage of company-owned stores, or was it all back then?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Well, 7-Eleven was about 50-50, but we managed all of the gasoline. So all of the gas corporate. Okay. Um, but but here's what happened. I I discovered, uh, you know, I I literally was wondering, you know, is there like one store in the country, one gas station in the country that decides to change price and everybody else follows it? You know, how does this, how does this work? Who's actually setting the city? I don't know. Well, so I I I literally started collecting data and I used a fundamental tool. I learned a regression analysis in in business school, and said, let's understand what the correlation is between price and volume and the location, et cetera, et cetera. Let's run some numbers. And what I discovered was there was a huge elasticity, there was a huge opportunity to raise prices. Uh, and the customer really didn't care because they were coming for convenience at the 7-Eleven.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Speed, time.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

But our perception at the time was we had to be the cheapest in town. So, so when we started using data to set the price based on the optimal volume versus margin scenario to make the most amount for the for the store while still keeping within a range of reasonable prices for the consumer, it was shocking how much money we made. And it was as simple as using that technology to collect data, assemble it, and make an informed decision rather than just tell the guy at each store price two cents below.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

And the easiest way to increase your prop profit margin any business in the world is just to raise the prices because you're not increasing any other operations, any adding any people. You're just like, hey, let's just raise the prices something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Well, but it wasn't just raising because what yeah, as you know, the the industry is very cyclical. So you've got to be careful about raising prices when the market is flat because you'll lose volume. But when the market's going up and you raise price, hopefully the rest of your competitors will follow because they know their costs are going to come up. So what we were able to do is lead the market up and then lag it coming down and uh at the right time build volume and at the right time build margin, but but manage that very delicate balance.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

How often were you changing prices? Is this like a daily or um couple times a day? Is it a couple times a week?

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Depending on back then, there were literally long poles with sock show cups. You remember that? And guys would stand out there and change the plastic numbers. So um back then it was maybe once a week we would change price. Uh today it's all electronic. And today uh we actually built a database. We had stores collecting competitive price information, capturing this data, built our own model to optimize sales and and margin. And today that's a service that you can literally buy from a third party and they'll give you pricing.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

You can pretty much figure out anything. It's much more sophisticated today. I would assume that is very location dependent on pricing. Um, I I can tell you, you know, inner loop right here where I live, there's one gas station and is the crappiest gas station in town. And it's outside of my neighborhood, but it's two dollars higher than everybody.

unknown 17:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Two dollars. Yeah. I mean, within like half of a mile of every there's not a lot, but they're the only one in like kind of this middle urban area that doesn't have a lot of other commercial, it's not just like a whole strip of commercial, it's just a neighborhood, a school, you know, and it's like right on this corner, and it's frustrating because I don't want to pay that, but it's convenient. And the store is really, really, really crappy. I'm like, man, at least if they would take some of this money and like make this little nice store, they could probably even raise it another 50 cents or a dollar. Um, but very, very location dependent. Like, there's no other way that they would be able to do that in a worse part of town. Yeah. And then like with a bunch of other competitors and stuff. Uh so yeah, I would assume like very location dependent.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

They're very location dependent. But but the but the the key learning that I had back then is making informed decisions is makes all the difference in the world. Because so many businesses, so many people, that that one story you're talking about, they're just probably going off of instinct. They're saying, I can charge whatever I want to charge. And they might with data be able to really optimize that location and make a whole lot more money. But with one story, you tend to be not very sophisticated. So um the the point was that I learned I can use data to make better decisions. And if other people are using their gut and instinct, and I'm using data, I'm gonna have a huge competitive advantage and I can make a lot more money. That same model I ultimately applied to the rest of 7-Eleven, and it worked.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

So did they bring you in from head of retail to or head of uh the gasoline retail to the actual 7-Eleven CEO?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah, here's what happened. Um, I I've coined this expression change equals opportunity. Um, CEO. Um it's uh I love the acronym because throughout my life I had all kinds of change. Growing up as a kid, you know, I joined Gulf Oil that merged with Chevron. Damn, change. And then every time I'd a change would happen, another opportunity would present itself. And so I joined 7-Eleven. Um I'm in the gasoline company, and they sold Citco Petroleum to Venezuela. But then another opportunity opened. I came on the retail gasoline side. Now I'm having a great career there, making all kinds of money, looking great. Uh, my career was looking great. And 7-Eleven went bankrupt in 1991. People forget this. And you were the CEO at the time? No, no, no, no. I was I I was still running the gasoline department. Oh, yeah, okay. So we're we're doing great in gasoline, but the rest of the company was really struggling. And uh and they ended up in bankruptcy. So again, change. I'm sitting there going, oh man, I thought my career was taking off. I had a chance to really grow in this company, they may go away. And while everyone else had their head down, I had that attitude that, you know, hey, I've been through this before. I got this. And if I could do this in gasoline, maybe I can convince them I can do it for the rest of the company. And I began to raise my hand. So everybody else is like covering their head. Yeah, like, you know, I don't want to get hit by shrapnel. And I'm like, give me a give me a chance. I here's what I can do. If you put me in the finance department, I can cut 50 million in expenses. I've done this before. And they did, and they gave me a shot. So we came out of bankruptcy and I ended up as the as the head of strategic planning again, but this time for all of 7-Eleven.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah, great fun.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

But it was because I I embraced the change and saw it as an opportunity, not as a once once you became CEO, what was the biggest thing that you changed just like you did in the retail where you said, hey, look, I'm gonna look at this data and make more informed decisions so we can make more money. What what was the thing that you did, especially coming out of bankruptcy? I'm sure everybody's looking to you to do something. What was like the big change that you made?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, I looked at uh one of our licensees uh that actually helped us emerge from bankruptcy with 7-Eleven Japan. And we're struggling in the US. We had sales declines, same store sales declines. We I mean we we had trouble selling a decent hot dog back in the day. And 7 Eleven Japan is selling restaurant quality rice products like you know, rice bowls and sushi kind of products. And so I looked at them and I said, How, you know, what are they doing? And and then I discovered that they had built an operating system for the company that allowed them to. Leverage the scale of a large retailer. So they had at the time probably 10,000, 12,000 stores in Japan.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

So they were leveraging scale, better, better buying power than anybody else, but they were more nimble at every store than any mom and pop or anyone else on the street, any competitor could have been. This is the power of technology to allow you to be both centralized in buying and things like that, but decentralized in execution. That's hard to do. It's not hard to do if you've got the right tools. Yeah. And that's that's what I did. I was able to borrow their technology. Okay. It was all C code. So granted, it was Japanese language for the user, but it was all basically programmed in C code. So we were, they were, they allowed us to share the code. And we built a model for 7-Eleven in the US that would allow us individual item management by SKU, by individual product in individual stores. Completely changed 7-Eleven. Gave us, we went from 10 years of same store sales to clients to using data to make individual decisions by product by store. Gave us 10 years of same store sales increases.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Insane. That's hard to do for that long for sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

It is, but it, but it, but it works. It's the power of data.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

And the absolute system for was to perform to identify underperforming SKUs, to identify uh overperforming SKUs in other stores, and then bring them into other stores. And so you're just using the ad to get better and better and better.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yeah, yeah, to constantly improve the product assortment. Because retail, from back in the day when retail didn't have data, we really let the suppliers manage shelves. And so Free Delight came in and managed all the shelves for chips.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Of course, yeah. That yeah, that ends up just being a sales floor for them.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, basically, you're selling shelf space, you're selling real estate. And what we realized, what I saw in Japan, is that they took back control of their store. So here's an example of something we did. I'm I'm looking at the shelves of the vault, right, where the cold drinks are in Japan, and they had a huge assortment, a lot of variety. We had Coke had one door, Pepsi had one door, Dr. Pepper had a door, not much room for anything else. So we discovered we can sell as much Coca-Cola classic with two rows, not a whole door. And now if we've got space, what if we try this new product? There's this thing called Red Bull. So we literally got Red Bull at start. 7-Eleven was one of the first retailers that broke the mold and said instead of renting the real estate to Coke and Pepsi, we're gonna give up the allowance and trade the sales allowance that we used to basically sell the shelves for. And instead, we're gonna bring in products that have a better chance of selling. And that's how Red Bull began getting shelf space. And then we, of course, we put three three cans in for the first week, and then maybe six the second week, and pretty soon they had two shelves.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

And then you you you look at it today and you think back like, oh, you would never even think that was the case because it's just so when you walk into a gas station now, it's like you have every choice, right? Every flavor, every energy drink, every brand, right, everything that's new. It's like they're everybody's trying to be the most convenient. So when you go into a store, that place is the most convenient because they have everything.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yep. And and the difference is they have data today. Yeah. Now that we have new technology or scanning, we could build a database and the store can decide what SKUs they want, what individual products they want. But this this wasn't the case uh back in the day. It was really the vendors, the suppliers calling the shots on virtually all the shelf space.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Do you think being a great CEO is more about like about the strategy, or is it about all the people that you bring in to help you, the people that are around you?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Both. I'd say that human resource is the most valuable resource of any company. Whether you have three people in your company or three million people in your company, you are gonna be as good as as your people. And so it's critically important. Um that's almost the fundamental. Too many CEOs take that for granted and I defer to their HR department, you know, when it comes to people issues. But I've discovered that having the right people in the right job and keeping them as part of the team is just critical to your success.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

I always wondered, you know, uh I've never owned a company, you know, near that size. But even me either I owned a piece of one. Yeah, I've never, I've never been the CEO. I've never, you know, been involved in a company that's that size. And I, you know, just from running our companies and just from having a bunch of different businesses since I was 26, I always found it, always was fascinated about the company, the big, big companies that can move fast. Because even as our companies got big, I felt like we were really slow and I couldn't make the change that I wanted to make fast enough. And then I started getting pushback from everybody. Like it was very difficult. And so in my mind, yeah, I'm like, how are these Fortune 100 companies like that? Of course, there's a lot of slow ones, but there's some that do what you do and they they make decisions fast and they have a system that can implement things fast. And I always was fascinated, like, how how are they doing it? It's like it's so hard. Or in my mind, it was so hard and difficult at time um to think that you can move it that fast if you're that big.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Here's what I call it big company disease. It's like it is a disease. And and here's what happens any entrepreneur gets to a threshold, and then it's like, well, wait, I I'm I don't want to take too much more risk. I'm I'm I'm successful now. I don't want to screw this up, right? But getting to the next level requires a completely different set of skills and maybe a different set of people than what got you to this level. I would agree with that. Yeah. And so a lot of people just get stuck at that level because inertia creeps in and people don't want to change. Happens in small companies, happens in big big companies. So when I got to 7-Eleven, um, the inertia was was mind-boggling. It was, you know, I'll give you an example. I wanted to increase uh add island card readers. You know, it's no-brainer today. You've got every gas pump has a card reader in it, right? But back in the day, the mindset was no, we've got to make people come in the store because we want to force them into the store so they buy something. And my pushback on that was, guys, I thought our business was convenience. Because if it's if we're going to be convenient, then we're going to sell more gasoline outside. And yeah, a lot more people will come in the store. The pushback I got was ridiculous. I mean, I had a guy literally pound his fist on the table, say, over my dead body, and then he died. And no, I'm just kidding. No, but people got all emotional about it.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

It's tough as a as a leader. You're like, yeah, you're you're having to fight your own people. And so you struggle. Sometimes it makes you second guess yourself a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Well, it it it it does, but the but ultimately the answer is data. And that's how I was able to break through that obstacle. That's a good one. Yeah. Because you can prove, okay, let me do it in one store. It'll take us longer, but we'll do it in one store, 10 stores, and we'll prove that we're going to bring more people across the lot. We finally did. He never did agree that it was the right thing to do. But can't argue with the data.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

But we saw same store sales increase in these 10 stores, uh, as opposed to these that don't have it. We need to put it in there.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But here's the here's the obstacle. I I call it the caveman brain. I wrote a lot about that in the book. The caveman brain, we are born with a natural resistance to change. And it's to keep us alive. Because, you know, we we've got this thing called the amygdala in our brain that causes fight or flight. And we're when we're uncomfortable with change, we trigger that caveman response that I'm gonna, I'm gonna defend myself against this thing. This is scary to me. Okay. Or what's even worse in a corporate environment is flight, which shows up as passive aggressive behavior. Yes, boss, that's a brilliant idea. Sean, I think I I'll go do that right now. And then they walk out of the room and they're like, whatever, he's crazy. He's nuts. That's I'm not gonna do that. And that both of those behaviors are killers in corporations. And that's what causes that inertia. It's that fear and uncertainty. I'm afraid I'm gonna get fired if I speak out. That's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

It's everybody tries to protect their little, um, their little job. And it's like, if they do this and they won't need me, and so I'm gonna make it hard for them to get rid of me.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Exactly. So that's what the role of the CEO has to be, to be able to, I call it change, uh, change confidence and clarity. You've got to be able to recognize change is real, I've got to adapt, I've got to have the confidence to do something, and not just me, I've got to teach my team to have confidence. And I do that through clarity because the more I can communicate effectively and listen to their concerns and and and push them to the point that I make them tell me what they really think, then with that clarity, we can together have confidence as a team and we can embrace change. If I don't do those three things, the inertia will kill us.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Well, that is a good explanation on how to fix what I always wondered about. Yeah, hours or hours. I you know, again, I'm I'm probably not the greatest CEO that ever lived for sure. And you know, it it was it is hard to make change even when your company got mid-size, you know, to me. It's like, man, it's like how do we how do we do it without you know, messing up our culture? And in you know, and I think you what you said is right. Sometimes, you know, maybe the people that got you to where you were, um you need different people to get to to the next level. Different people, we're different, or or getting the not everybody, but just uh some of some of the key roles might you know might need to change.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So it might change, and then but but everybody needs to to evolve too. And and if you're not gonna grow with the company, yeah, grow with the company. And but again, that's the job of the CEO. If if if they see you be afraid, they're gonna be afraid. Okay. Tone of the top matters. But if you're out there embracing change, taking risk, they're gonna emulate your behavior.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yeah, that's true. What's one thing from the 7-Eleven days that you still use today? Oh my gosh. Or a couple things.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Yeah, I mean, one thing that that I I I was not a retailer, as you know. I mean, I just kinda ass guy, whatever it was, but um I learned that retail is all about the product. You are what you sell. It doesn't matter how fancy or unfancy the store is, if you've got good product, um you're gonna you're gonna sell it. And so I became obsessed with product, with with new product. Or a service, yeah. Or service, yes, yeah. That'll that'll delight the customer. And to me, it's um I I'm I'm kind of a bit of an artist. So I paint, I write music and stuff like that. But I do it on purpose because we we tend to end up being very technical. We're accountants, we're engineers, blah, blah, blah. But very few of us, especially guys, exercise our creative side of the brain. But here's what happens when it comes to innovation and adopting, change adapting to change. You've got to, you've gotta be creative. We're all customers. So this bottle right here, the aluminum bottle, I helped bring that to the United States. Because I was in Japan and I What year was that? That was in the year uh 2001-ish, 2002.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

And then now people are freaking out if it's plastic. You know, it's weird. It's like took, you know, fast forward 25 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

So here's what happened. Um, the beer companies were going to pet bottles, plastic. Okay. People forget this, but I didn't know, I don't remember. Yeah, and and they were doing it because for stadiums and outdoor, you know, they wanted, you know, they didn't want glass, and and so they were trying, experimenting with plastic bottles, and it was starting to catch on. I thought that's a terrible package for 7-Eleven. And I was in Japan and I found a actually it was grapefruit juice, a little tiny grapefruit juice in an aluminum bottle like this. And it was so cold, I thought, man, imagine beer in that. So I literally brought that package back from Japan. I shared it with August Bush and the team at A B, and they decided to put Budweiser in these cans. I actually took me two years to push them. Yeah. Again, inertia in the big company. Yeah. But that's a classic example to me. And this is just one of a million examples of if you can provide a better product. Yeah, you put your head in the mind of the of the consumer, get creative. I see a new package, a new, a new color, a new uh formula, um, and bring it to those who can help execute it. And now you've delighted your customer.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

So, funny enough story about this water bottle. This is a friend of mine, and it's a great package. He owns a bunch of restaurants. And so it didn't start, yeah, it didn't start with this aluminum can. It started with a very nice uh bottle because he would go into all his restaurants and he would see those mountain valley spring waters, and they were they were green. And he goes, It was driving me crazy. He was like, I go in and I was like, Man, it's just I got all these green bottles and I got these white tablecloths. It's like it was just bothering me. So they made a clear bottle and it was like just blue writing, it didn't have the face on it, just really, you know, gold print, blue writing, very, very classy. And he's like, We did the same natural spring, like, you know, got source good water. Uh, he said, you know, I I needed it for my restaurants. Well, then all these other restaurants started picking up. Now they're in Whole Foods, and now they're like really scaling it to be, you know, a big brand. Um, but it's really cool. Same thing, he he's like, man, this like this this is ugly. Like, why, why, like, why do you have to package it like this? Like, why? Like, why can't you just make it nice? And so that's it, it's really cool. It's been, he's like really scaling it now, and it's pretty incredible um what he's done. But it all came from a um like how can I make a better product for for for my stores so my customers get a better experience. Exactly. You know, uh, of course, a startup.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

You just you just you said the magic word, why?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Because uh too often we just abdicate to somebody else to say, well, it is the way it is. It's how we've been doing it forever. Yeah, it's how we it's how we do it. That's the way it's packaged. What are you talking about? Um, but if we keep asking why, I mean it's good it goes back to the good old Socratic method, you know? Uh and it's critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to ask why.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

I teach our students that. So, of course, when you're a kid, you've have no idea what you want to do and don't know why you want to do it if you do want to know what you want to do. And I tell them that when they first come in, I'm like, hey, look, what do you want? And they're like, Well, you know, I want to make money. I was like, but why? Yeah. Why do you why why do you feel like you want to make money? Well, it's uh I want nice stuff. And I'm like, well, why? I want people to like me a little more or I want to like take care of my family. Oh, okay. So you want to be financially free one day? That kind of makes more sense. And then like we just keep doing it until they get to the final answer. And then I was like, there you go. So now you need to remember this for your whole life because when you go through the boring times and the tough times, like just remember the real why and not I want to make more money. Like, like, why why did you want to? Oh, I want to, I need to take care of my family one day. I need to fight have financial freedom. I want to have some freedom in my life. And so, like, when you're going through those boring times in the tough times, because business is always like that. I was like, just resort back to that. It's like, okay, why am I doing this? Like, I need to stick it out. Uh the same thing. Just like it's like, why, why, why, why, why until you get to the real answer.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

You know, you know what else? Um, why is good for one more thing? It's the it's a great way to disarm someone who gets in your face and is mad. I mean, think about the polarization we have right now. And I've got, and I'm sure you've got friends, you know, you throw a hot topic, a political topic on the table, and man, they're ready to come out of the chair.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

They're like, That's weird nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Yeah. But what what I've been doing, because you know, I look, I understand. I I've been calling myself a radicalized centrist because I like to see both sides of an issue.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

I kind of think most people are that. I think most people are. I just think it's gotten the just the craziness in the world and and and how you get more views is to become more polarizing. And so it's just naturally got to this insane part because that's how people make their money. It's like, okay, we need more views and we need to not go out of business. And so it just gets like crazier and crazier and crazier.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Um or they see it online and they get they have the perception that it's true and they get mad. Yeah. But the best way to disarm that I've discovered is if you just instead of me getting defensive and reacting to it and challenging it and saying, that's stupid. Um, instead, if you say, help me understand, why? Why do you, you know, why do you think that way? And it and it it's it's fun to watch someone when they're put on the spot like that because they're good about defending their position until you ask them, why do you really think about it? And then start probing. Well, tell me more and let me understand.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Those actually are some of the funniest videos on the internet when they go around and they're asking people on the street, like, well, well, why? Why you know what why do you think that? And they just go, I don't know. I know this is done. And they walk off because I saw it on the news. Those are so those are so good. Yeah, because I guess people have heard things repeated so much and then it's like burned in their mind. But it's like, why do you really think that way? Is there like a big reason? And if there is, maybe there is, I don't know. But 99 times out of a hundred, it's probably nothing.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Exactly. So so my my premise behind all of this and and and and it's really part of what I've been out both on the speaking circuit in my book trying to to solve for is that there is virtually no problem that we have in this country that can't be fixed. If we put a group together, sat down and looked at pick one, immigration, education.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

I would agree with that. It's just so political that's a solution. Oh, yeah, there's good solutions. It's just especially the I mean we got so many smart people, um, and so many people with so many experience and all these different things. It just god, the you know, there's one thing in my life that I know I would never do. Um run for office. Yeah. I I I just I don't like arguing with people. I just I don't I I don't know. I like helping people and and and I know where it comes from. You are trying to help, but I don't it's just so to get things done is very political and is it it just seems like your whole life's torn apart. So any rational person, why would they want to be president? Because it's like you're gonna ruin my family's life, no matter what. No matter what I believe, there's other people that are gonna hate it so much that they're gonna ruin my family's life, they're gonna ruin my life. And you kind of gotta be a little crazy to be a president. Like no, no rational business guy or just like normal, you know, uh level-headed person probably wants that job.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Like I just I I I I you're right, but I don't think it has to be that way.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

I I don't think so either. It's just I think it's just got to be the way it is.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yes, yes. But here's the here's the difference, I think. Uh, you know, I'm I've become a study, I was a I told you I was a political science undergraduate, right? So I've studied a lot of a lot of political science and and social issues throughout the history of mankind. There's basically two ways to lead. You can lead with fear, it works. You divide, you you know, you tell everybody why they're being hurt by the other guy of the other party, whatever. Uh you embed victimhood into their heads. It's like, oh, yeah, I'd be good but for, you know, and and it works. And it and it it always works. Now, I don't think that's sustainable leadership, because it, by the way, this lesson applies to the workplace too. We've all had or seen companies run by, you know, iron-fisted tyrants that will dictate everything and scare everybody, the crap out of everybody, and it and it can work for a period of time. Yeah. Question is, is it sustainable? The alternative form of leadership, I think, and uh, and this is perhaps what's lacking in the last recent times anyway, um, is that inspirational leader that doesn't have to scare you, doesn't have to make you a victim, doesn't have to blame somebody else, but will instead inspire you to say, you know what, we're better than this. And here's here's my plan. Um, it's very much like leading a company. If you can put a plan on the table to solve immigration issues, economy issues, you know, all of these things, that's a rational, reasonable plan and get people energized around that plan.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Man, I believe we could that still seem so tough in that, in that role, as opposed to a company where it's a little different. Um, because it it feels like when you even if somebody puts together that rational plan, there's always goes back to the thing where people already believe what they believe. And you know, if you ask them why, it's like just because that's the way it is. And so I feel like you always have some of that still in politics. That's just how it is. I don't care what, I don't care what the plan is, I don't care how logical it is.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

This no, no, there will always be some of that. In fact, Socrates said a democracy will never work because he said people are just too stubborn in their in their willingness to accept true leadership. But here's, I think, the missing ingredient. And this is what's really hard because for a leader to be inspirational, they have to also at the same time be completely self-confident so that instead of becoming a victim themselves and blaming the media, because media is always going to be mean, right? That's their job. Always. But instead of blaming the media, work with the media and like Ronald Reagan did a little bit of this. Turn it back on them, joke with them about their attacks on you. And there is a way if a leader is confident enough to be able to be inspirational. He did do that.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

He was a pretty funny kind of like a quick witted guy.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Like he would he would do that with the media a little bit. Yeah. There are always going to be arrows fired at you. And if you can deflect them with a little humor, um it it works. It really does work. So I I'm just hopeful we'll return to that kind of leadership. And I and I'm I believe enough in our system that someone will emerge, you know, with that inspirational tone and the ability. They've got to be smart enough to be able to navigate this difficult challenge and self-confident enough not to become a victim themselves, which then has them revert to blame. And well, I know one thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Ain't gonna be me. I don't want any part. I don't want to be part of it. Come on, the nation needs you. I'm a risk taker, but not in politics. Like I don't want any part of it. Um I'm just gonna I love business more than anything, but and I'm and I'm a risk taker, and I'll take as much risk as I as I need to to satisfy myself. But I just I never see myself going into politics. And I don't say that about a lot of things. I don't say about never say never, you know, because you know, you change over time and your priorities change. But you know, after having a family, like I don't I I just don't see putting them through. Even if my my views like I really wanted to go set out change, like I I don't think I'd want to mess up their life. It's hard. It's just the way the landscape is now, and like you're just you're you know, they're they're just they become targets for no reason. You know, it's just I don't know. I I don't think I could do it. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

See, I would do it, but I I'm I'm unelectable. I'm too I'm too much in the middle right now. I don't think either side would elect me given this climate.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

Yeah, that's where nobody wins. It's just in the even in history, it's like it's been super tough to win in the middle. Like when if you're just like, hey, I'm this independent guy and I don't, you know, I don't really think too much this way or this way, it's like it's almost like you you lose a lot of the the the the normal voters that were gonna go one way or the other. So yeah, that's true. But it's leadership.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

I know you know it ultimately at the end of the day, whether it's running the company, running the corp the the government, or even running your family, it it comes down to leadership.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

I I agree with that. I've used I've started kind of putting together a lot of systems that we use uh and all of our businesses I have for the last 26 years, uh, into our family and making it a little bit more um not systematized, but like you know, especially with teaching my son, you know, I've been bringing in a lot of these systems to like try to help him uh you know prepare for the real world and and a lot of stuff we use in business and it's been working really well. Sure, yeah. So back to real life and politics. Um How did we get off on that one? The uh Blockbuster. Yeah. So you what was the role from from what happened to 7-Eleven? So everything's going amazing. I don't know the story of what how you transitioned into the next role or eventually got to Blockbuster. I know I know of it. I just don't know the whole story.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Yeah, it was it was actually a a good story. The whole blockbuster story is a good story, but it's one that is sadly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Um, I we as I mentioned, we we had a great run at 7-Eleven. We turned it around, we had 10 years of improvement. The stock went from $4 to $40. And it was all about embracing technology. So um I started to look at, we well, we sold the company to our Japanese licensee um in 2005. And then I started to look at other opportunities. I was still pretty young, I wasn't done. And I said, what else is out there? I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to take this experience and put it to work.

SPEAKER_02 48:26

Use everything that worked here and put it together.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Yeah, especially the power of technology because companies were still uh afraid of technology. So I looked at Blockbuster, they had embraced technology for ordering DVDs by mail. Okay, right. So they were competing with Netflix, with a DVD by mail business, and they called it total access. They had stores, DVDs by mail. I remember that. I I remember a little bit. Yeah, it was a good it was a good foil for for Netflix because uh if you did get something by mail and you didn't want to see that movie, you could take it in and exchange it for something you wanted to see. Yeah. So competitive advantage, blockbuster. Now, when I joined, it was we weren't yet streaming. So the bandwidth wasn't sufficient. YouTube was there. You could stream YouTube videos a minute, barely.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

But anything longer than that was buffering. Uh I remember that.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

Oh, yeah, I remember those days.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yeah, we were like one notch better than dial up back then. So, so, but it was clear that streaming was coming. So the first thing I did was buy a streaming company called MovieLink from the studios. 3,000 new releases, all digitized, ready to go. As soon as the consumer's ready, as soon as people have the bandwidth to stream, we're ready to go. So competitive advantage again, blockbuster.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

It did when when you first came up, they pulled you straight to CEO from um 7-Eleven when that that yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

And now I actually I I wasn't planning to join the company as CEO. I was trying to buy the company. Okay. I was partnering with private equity. And trying to be entrepreneur. Trying to be an entrepreneur. Hey, I want to buy this company, fix it, turn it around, take it to streaming capability, and then private equity. Yeah, and then relaunch it. And private equity was 100% behind it. Um, Carl Icon was the lead director at the time, and Carl said, Ah, that's that's bullshit, Keys. You know, you don't have to worry about that. Just even I had to run a public company, keep it public. Now, had I had a crystal ball, I would have said no. Let me take it private because we would have refinanced all of the debt in 2007. Blockbuster had a billion dollars of debt. We would have taken it private, refinanced that debt, added an extra tranche of debt, but with a long term.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. What was the revenue back then on the if you had a billion dollars in debt, like approximately, do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah, the revenue. The the the billion dollars was only um two times EBITDA uh at the time when they when they put it on the company. And then it got to be a little bit higher as the as the earnings and the and the revenue started to fall with competition. Um, but net net, we would have refinanced all the debt, brought the company private. Yeah. Because what I didn't see coming, and no one saw this coming, the 2008 financial crisis.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

Lehman Brothers melts down. By the third quarter of 2008, we had one year now in the company with my tenure, we had double DBITA earnings, we had a streaming capability better than Netflix. We had DVDs by mail, we had stores, so we had uh a full range of total access, literally. And when Lehman Brothers collapsed, the banks informed us that you know you've got to repay this debt in 2009. Yeah, we're not gonna refinance it for you. Yeah, because the banks were shut down basically. So we had handcuffs on. Um did get the company restructured, got it sold to Dish Network. They lived to see another day.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Yep. Okay, I I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Yeah, most people don't remember this part of the story. I had several potential strategic partners. I had Google potentially, everything free, YouTube, everything paid Blockbuster side by side. That would have been cool. That would have been awesome. Game game over for most everybody else streaming if we had that. Um I had a shot at exclusivity on all the old titles, already had it for the new titles. Um but when the market collapsed and the press started to report on the potential risk of blockbuster's bankruptcy, it just sucked all the wind out of our sales. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

Yeah. So at that time Netflix already had some streaming, you had some streaming, y'all were both still doing DVDs by mail during the We were both doing DVDs by mail.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Netflix did not yet have streaming. Okay. They had no content to stream. We had a shot, and again, this is one if I had it to do again, I would have done it all over every day. Um, we had a shot at locking up exclusively all of the content that Netflix eventually started to stream. Wow. Yeah. But it was gonna be a hundred dollars a hundred million dollars a year to lock up that content. Well, our our cash flow was about two hundred dollars million dollars a year, but it was a pretty big bet at the time. And when the financial markets collapsed, basically my board blinked and said, We better not take this risk. When we blinked, Netflix then acquired the content, not exclusively, but it just now they had something to be able to stream. Uh kind of and still nobody was streaming. They had uh a box called Roku that had just been launched. I kind of remember that too. Yeah, but it was primarily kids streaming content on their Xbox and Yeah, even I remember that, and even uh early on, the content wasn't great on Netflix at all.

SPEAKER_02 54:25

Like it was really terrible. Like it was a lot of old, just not stuff that you would really want to watch. Um, you know, I guess over time that changed, of course.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

It did. I have huge respect for what they did, but um because they did stay the course, they had pretty lame content in the beginning. Yeah, stuck it out, and then but then they started creating their own. They they they placed a big bet on a couple of uh binge watching which if you take all of the old um premium channels, that was the model.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

HBO sure Cinemax, like they they had their own, like because what differ what makes HBO different than Cinemax or they had sopranos or they had you know it's like they had their own, like these, these own series that like people would uh keep paying the subscription to like probably see that. Yeah, exactly. And so they took that model and and executed pretty well and you know, you know, built some really good content. So they did.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

But here's ironically, a lot of people gave me grief because uh, you know, I I I put out a couple of quotes that said Netflix isn't really the competition. And everybody said, Oh, and you know, with 2020 hindsight today, they say, What an idiot, right? But but here's the deal they that model, that HBO uh Showtime model has been around forever. It has been, yeah. So Netflix was gonna stream it, but it's still the same old model. That wasn't Blockbuster's model. If you remember Blockbuster, it was the new release wall, it was the stuff that didn't come out on HBO for years.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

It was the thing that frustrated me about that was you always went to the movie store and every single new release was out. And you're like, God, and you would try to get there early enough and you would try to go to the section with the return section to see if the new release was there. So it's like, yeah, if you could have streamed that stuff, like that's what everybody would have paid for.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Yeah, you you wanna you wanna hear a secret? Yes. Is that on purpose? It was absolutely on purpose. Oh I was shocked. I got to Blockbuster. I said, Why are we always out? And they said, Oh, that's uh designed uh um uh dissatisfaction or something like that. I was like, What?

SPEAKER_01 56:25

Oh, I'm serious.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

I'm dead destroyed my life. I'm dead serious. That's why they were always out because they would order too few copies. And here was the logic. If you don't find the new release you want on Friday night, you're gonna rent somebody something else, and then you're gonna come back Saturday night because you still want to go see that new release, right? So this worked for years for Blockbuster design dissatisfaction or something like that. And I I got there, I was like, wait, you know, that may have worked when you didn't have any competition. When you got Netflix out there, they're killing you.

SPEAKER_02 56:58

Yeah. And then it goes like, well, I'm gonna go get it somewhere else now.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I the first thing I did when I changed was like I got in stock on the new releases and said, you know, we can't play that game anymore.

SPEAKER_02 57:09

Dude, my whole life when I was a kid, I'm like, mom, we gotta go early so I can get them the new release. And it's like there's one up there, I'm like run into it to try to get it.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Yeah, remember what else you'd do? You'd go to the bin, right? And you'd like to. The return bin, and I'm like, hey, you know how many returns of the new release? And like, oh, we just got one. Hey, I found one, yeah. Dirty, dirty trick. I know, I know. I just, I just I just revealed the secret.

SPEAKER_02 57:33

I get it. And then, like you said though, uh, competition creates you what you what worked for at for a period of time never works forever, right? So it's just every business, every business.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

Such a lesson in this. I I I call Blockbuster like the the best case study of all business because it had every element of you know, what can go wrong with a business and and to have that much domination and have that much domination and lose it and and and resistance to change because the resistance to that idea of being in stock was fierce. The resistance You've been doing it's been working so long. Why we don't want to mess it up? Exactly, exactly. But you've got to change. That's why I say change equals opportunity. Every business has to keep constantly changing.

SPEAKER_02 58:15

Everything that worked in a business never works forever. Exactly. I've learned that really fast. And now with technology, it's it's the the window is even shorter. Like back then, it was a little bit longer window. Um, you know, when the internet first came out and it was kind of young when I had my first company, it was still not mature yet, and e-commerce was fairly new and people were getting used to it. Uh, things were changing, changing fast then, and now it's just like I couldn't even imagine how fast-paced you got to be able to keep up with, especially when you have a big company and you have to move it fast. And then again, like I said, hard to change everybody's mind. It's like we've been doing it this way forever.

SPEAKER_00 58:54

But you know what happens with this the acceleration of change is the acceleration of resistance to change. People get more and more scared, more and more uncomfortable, and they get more and more resistant. And I, you know, honestly, I think that's a big part of what's going on in society today and why the polarization is what it is. Because change is happening at a pace we've never seen in our lifetime. It's so crazy. It's scaring the crap out of people. They're like, well, I don't, I don't want all this change.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Yeah, it's it's it's it's pretty crazy to watch it in real time. I mean, even within the last three years, like of AI kind of coming out and being a little bit, hey, this is no, this is crazy. You can just, it'll do anything for you and to like actually having tools and to, I mean, super quick time frame.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

From like when it got mass released to where it is today already.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Yep. But let me give you an example of the opportunity because people are freaking out about AI and they're oh my god, AI is gonna eliminate jobs and all this stuff. If we were sitting around, you and I having a beer 30 years ago, I say, Hey Sean, you know what you're gonna do in 30 years? You're gonna pick up your phone. And first of all, you look at me like this? It'd be a brick, right? Or maybe a flip phone 30 years ago. You go, What am I gonna do? And and I said, You're gonna call a total stranger and they're gonna come pick you up in their car and drive you across town. And you know what you're gonna do then? You're gonna go sleep in another stranger's bed tonight. He'd be like, There is no way ever in a million years I would do that. I just described Uber and Airbnb. Yeah, iPhone, Uber, and Airbnb, all a product of the internet. So okay, so AI's here. Everybody's doing what we did when the internet came, and let's say, Oh, let's figure out how to use the internet. But where I think the opportunity is, is to think about what new completely unheard of businesses will be created.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

I do think there is a gap of that will take some catching up to where AI will take a lot of jobs. Uh and and there'll be like a just kind of a you know, a three-year window or a five-year window where it's like this big change, especially when robots come out. Every business owner would have to compete, so they will also buy robots. Um but I don't think that's bad. So what I think happens is AI connected the whole world. And I think, or I mean internet connected the whole world, AI is gonna take it to this weird level where everything's fake. It's you're not gonna even know what's real anymore. So before you like social media because, oh, it's my friends, I can see people. And then when you're scrolling in like every single video, you don't know if it's real or fake. It's like, well, what do you want to do? You probably want to go to an old school restaurant and like meet the waiter and hang out and see a bunch of people there and go to a live event. And like, I think it skews a little bit the other way. And so I think you'll be able to walk into like a Chipotle style restaurant. There's gonna be three robots there, you're gonna be able to buy very, very inexpensive products and it'll be fast. That'll be one experience. And then you'll be able to spend less money, but then you'll also have another experience that will probably cost way more than it does now, and that's gonna be like the human experience. And so I think that that's the two products, and so that the human experience actually becomes this ultra-premium product because everybody starts wanting it, and this is always very affordable and cheap and fast and um uh very efficient because like there's five robots in there, but people are gonna get so tired of seeing it all over the internet. Um, everywhere you go, it's like, man, I want to go to like the steakhouse. I can just go and have a good steak and like talk to the waiter. And then that I think that that's what people are gonna pay more for. And then more and more opportunities will pop up, like entertainment opportunities. Yeah, you know, and hopefully we'll have more time. I I think so, yeah. And and I I think robots in the house are probably the the most beneficial thing to humans because you know, me having kids, luckily I have the means to have some help at home. But if people could free up sp more time to spend with their family, and you have one robot that you could lease for a hundred dollars a month and it does all your laundry and all your dishes and all your cleans your house, and you can spend more time with your family, and you're not doing that after you get off work or after you like that is like the best thing in the world. You spend like everybody wants more freedom. And whether it's freedom to spend time with their family, whether it's freedom to just do more of the things they want, they will be happier people. And if you can have something assist you to get more freedom for a very, very low dollar amount, like that seems very reasonable to me. Exactly. Uh, and it will make people happier, even though they're all freaked out about this. Like, I don't know one person in the world that's gonna be happy that somebody cleaned their whole house, did all their laundry, and you know, the mother didn't have to do it, and then she got to hang out with her kids more. Like, I I I don't I don't know how that wouldn't be a better place. Um, it'll be weird because it's different and nobody likes change, right? But I don't know how it'll be it it'll just allow people to do more of the things they want. Will there be a huge job shakeup? Probably. Um, but like you said, who knows what's gonna be available?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

Yeah, we just adapt. There will be new industries that emerge that we can't. It's like the internet.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

If the internet it created tons of opportunities, all kinds of just jobs and remote work and like every e-commerce and like just every step along the way, people making money online um in every shape or shape or form, that will go away. Um, but then there'll probably be something else that that people will be doing. But uh yeah, Uber, you know, it's these autonomous vehicles are gonna be so efficient and so cheap. Uber got so expensive. I remember my wife dropping my me and my kid off at the park um very in our neighborhood. Uh it's probably a mile and a half from our house. I mean, maybe. And this is a Sunday, so it wasn't like these peak times or anything. It's like Sunday, like two o'clock. And she was like, Hey, I'll drop you off because I need to hurry home to do the car, and y'all just do Uber home or whatever. I said, Yeah, no problem. And it was like $26 to come home on it, like the cheapest Uber you get. And I was like, that's so weird. I was like, that's really expensive. So we take it. I think it's just getting to a point where the company's so big now, the costs keep rising, the you know, the the uh people that are driving have higher costs on their cars, higher repairs and maintenance. Like it's across the board. And so I think that that is gonna be a huge shift when you could buy a car for 30 grand and let it drop you off at work and then it ubers throughout the day and then comes and pick you up from work. Like it's it's gonna be pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

Yeah, yeah. So it's it's one of those many, many things. It's gonna change dramatically. But what what the opportunity is is for those people to sit around like the next Zuckerberg or the next, you know, what will be enabled by AI that doesn't exist today that will create jobs.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

Man, that's hard to predict. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:46

Yeah. That's that's the that's where the opportunity is, right? Some some entrepreneurs gonna hear this and say, hey, wait, that's what I need to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:54

So tell me about the the the last the ending of Blockbuster. Like, tell me how that went. Tell me what What ended up happening, you know, CEO role, like where did it end up going from there?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

Yeah, it it worked out okay. I I stayed the course. I could have the easy thing for me to do would have been when the market collapses, bail, you know, just get out of there. But I I I wanted to see it through. Uh as I said, we had strategics, we had Google, we had uh Korea Telecom, we had uh ATT, Dish Network. Uh Dish ended up buying it. They had a great vision. Their vision was to go straight to mobility to bypass the internet completely. They had acquired a lot of bandwidth, and they wanted to get the government to release that bandwidth and to go straight to like 6G. Now, it took us finally, the government didn't release that bandwidth, and it took finally till what 2020 just to get to 5G. Yeah. And so the the strategy that they had to go straight to mobility probably wasn't um gonna work because of the slowness of the government releasing that that uh bandwidth. So they decided ultimately to shut down the stores. They had the streaming capability, but instead of trying to compete with Netflix via the internet, they said, we're just gonna mothball it for now. Now they may, who knows? They still own the brand. Will they bring it back someday? Uh do we have an aggregator in the marketplace today? Not really. I I would love to see Blockbuster come back as an aggregator, just like the stores were. Old movies, new movies. We'll see. You never know. It's a great brand. Lots of loyalty everywhere I go in the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:33

Especially our our my era. Um, I don't know how much loyalty you're gonna have after you find out that been tricking us into our new releases.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

That was the old days.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

That was the old days. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:46

No, the it very fees are absolved. How's that? Trade up? Yeah, that's fair trade.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:52

Oh man, it brings back a lot of memories. Yeah, y'all do have it, it's really iconic brand that everybody knows. Uh especially uh our you know, my age group and um and and up. So all that all that ends, you you know, you leave Blockbuster, and then what made you start focused on want to get so passionate about education?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Well, I was it was actually all the way back to 7-Eleven that I was passionate about education. I I I realized that it it was the enabler for me to change my life. And here I'm trying to hire. Blockbuster had as many as 400,000 employees, you know, and uh more with franchisees. It would have been millions of employees uh across the country and the across the world, if you think about uh all the franchisees' employees. And we were having a hard time even hiring a store manager or a franchisee. And I'm sitting there looking at these cities, going, kids are saying that they have no opportunity, but there's a path here. So my objective was let's build the bridge here between corporations that need employees and kids who were sitting around saying there's no opportunity for me. Um, and the key to that bridge was getting them educated, at least, you know, try to get them an associate's degree or whatever, and then come in and be a store manager. So we built a foundation by the same name, education is freedom, 25 years ago, put it in public schools, and just tried to talk to kids that, like me, had no frame of reference for what was possible in the workplace, and encourage them to use education as a path to get unlimited opportunity. That's how it started. Uh, 25 years later, um some friends were encouraging me to take this message to the world. This is not just a message for inner city America. People all over the world need to know that, and not just for young kids, people need to know that the more you learn, the more you can do. And that especially with the tools available today, there's nothing we can't learn.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

I agree with that too. That's kind of I guess it goes back to I'll never do the politics thing. Uh, because of uh, you know, but to make my change, like I I'm super passionate about education also. Uh and in in the right education, I I I still think the model is a little bit outdated for colleges. I think this AI stuff is actually gonna force them to change their business model. I think of course the top five will be fine no matter what they do, but I I don't know what's gonna happen, but I predict to stay in business and to meet the needs of these new crazy um industries that that that come about in the next five years or new roles. Um I feel like it's gonna be a little bit more like narrow, where you're not like, hey, I'm getting an associate's degree in science or or whatever it is, or I I think it's a little more narrow, like I'm going to um not like a trade, but like a more specific things like and to go into these whatever roles are needed for all these new industries and new jobs, and I think I think it becomes a little bit more uh narrow and specialized, is what I think it has to, just to really keep up with the new world. Because if you have all these old ways, like how do you keep up with the new because they don't not as many people care about college anymore, they care about skill. And so, like, if they could teach them the right the actual skills that are needed in this new world, then it people would pay for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

So you want to hear my big idea?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:36

Okay. I I think that education will be transformed because what we've got today was not built for the information age. Yes, it was built for the industrial age and it was mass production of an educated workforce. So the bell curve, the standardized tests, everything was built to force people to the average. So if you're on the front end of the bell curve, you're bored to tears. And a lot of kids fall out of the system because they were just really smart, but bored. If you're on the back end, you're relegated to special class or special ed or and you're left behind. AI will allow us to teach the way you learn. It can deliver content based on the way you're receiving the content and it can virtually eliminate learning disability. If you're dyslexic, no problem. We're gonna we know that we're gonna pick it up and we're gonna deliver content to you the way your dyslexic mind can best interpret it and deal with it. Um ADHD, etc. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. These are tools that will work. Now, then if you can do this, and here's how it works. Um what I'm proposing to the government, and I haven't yet broken through.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:50

Yeah, because tell me, because this is the hard part. It's like the government is slow to change. It's like a big company with a lot of inertia.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Yeah, it's afraid of it. And they're saying it, here's what they're telling us.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

We've been doing it for a hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:01

This is how this is how we're oh, and education is local, so you got to push it down. So it was a 7-Eleven store. It was local, but we had no data and we didn't leverage scale until we put an operating system in place. And then we could be better executing at local and national. And so that's what I'm recommending: a national operating system that takes the 13,000 independent school districts. I love uh Mike Miles is the superintendent here in Houston, old friend, doing a fabulous job with what he's got. But why does he have to hire a cybersecurity person, uh, an accounting person, all this massive staff? When we're doing this, we're replicating the same need 13,000 times across the country.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:47

Drop an operating system in. Take all that burden off of the individual districts.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:52

But it goes back to just being so political that how do you make the change? A lot of try to do it one place and then say, look, it's working. This is our data.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

You need scale. You have to have someone with the courage to step up and say, here's what we're gonna do on a national basis, and here's how it starts. A president or a governor that says, I'm gonna have 100% literacy. Why? Because I can. I'm not gonna have what we have nationally today, 40% functional illiteracy in our public school system. It's nuts for America. The tools exist to be able to fix that. So have someone with the courage to say 100% literacy. When I build this operating system, here's what else it gives me. Now I take away all of the redundancy and inefficiencies of 13,000 nodes, each doing their own thing. I bring them common services for everybody because we're all doing basically the same thing. Then when it comes to tools, take the very best ed tech tools that exist and let them have access to them. Everybody has access.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:53

A kid in rural Appalachia has the same access to a kid in in River Oaks. Yeah. Same tools. I mean, you talk about a game changer when you can provide the best tools and with scale, 55 million kids in this country, we can afford to buy the best tools and to make them available everywhere. Oh, degree. Yep. That's the that's the big idea. Okay. I'm you know what? I'm all for it. One last thing, Sean. Here's what that provides. A new system like that provides agency. So do I think we need classrooms, teachers, schools? Yeah, because I needed structure. I was the kind of kid that couldn't learn on my own. But boy, if I had that tool that gave me the agency to not only be in class, but then to learn as much as I want on my own and get credit for it because now all my certifications, transcripts, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

You're always gonna have like people that'll gonna go home and just overperform. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:47

And then the kid on the front end of the curve now keeps going. Yep. Kid on the back end of the curve comes up.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:53

Slow, slow, slow.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:54

Yep, yep. It's uh I I'm telling you, this is a game changer for the country.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:59

I agree. I'm oh so, you know, of course, we have our our program, our entrepreneurship life skills. Uh a lot of the stuff they you know they leave out in school. And then uh, you know, I have a a program that more my son's age that you know, I've been running these camps, and it's the same thing. It's it's life skills, entrepreneurship. Sure. And then we're developing a a product, my AI guy is, that is a personalized learning product. And so again, we're not gonna tackle what you're tackling as far as like reading, writing, math. It's more of all the other stuff. And, you know, we're halfway through building it, but it's personalized learning. So if a kid is interested in race cars or if a kid is interested in baseball, like we can tailor all this financial literacy, all this stuff in something they're a format that they're um they understand or they're excited about, and then let them learn at their own pace. Like some people are gonna go really fast, some people are gonna go really slow. And then also over time, they I should be able to recognize like if they do have a certain issue and they can tailor certain things, learning things to make it go faster for them. Um, and so that's what I want to do. It's like I, yeah, I I see my future is hopefully making an impact on traditional education. Um again, I'm I'm not a superstar college student or academic, but I do know a lot about life skills and business and entrepreneurship. And so that's what I'm leaning on. Like, I'm, you know, we're not tackling the reading, writing math. That's uh that's not what we're tackling. We're tackling everything else. Uh to to prepare them for this new world that um that again, like you said, the system was made for the factory age, it's kind of outdated. And I think there's this gap where people are graduating now for what's needed in the world um that they don't have. And so that's we're starting with that age group um and then and then having the learning product for the younger ones.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:44

So here's what you're up against. Okay. You got a great tool, a great product. We need financial literacy, we need these skills, right? That you that you want to make available. In order to make them available, you're gonna have to then sell them into 13,000 into you have to get if you want it in Houston Isd, you gotta get Mike Miles and his team to agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:04

We're kind of starting with the the outside of you know the the traditional education. So it'll be all the alternative stuff. So people that just want more and they're not getting enough from school, those are those those are original products. I think in the future, as as our stuff gets better, we have more data. But now you gotta advertise it. Yeah, yeah. But that's what our building.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:27

Okay. Because I've got this infrastructure now, right? And in Houston ISD, every kid has a portal that looks like this math, science, reading, blah, blah, blah. Okay. These are the approved Houston ISD tools in each classroom. Okay. Then the kid goes like this. Now it's your tool. You can now scale to 55 million kids and provide your financial literacy tool. If it's one of the best that exists, you can make it available to every kid. And as a student now, I've got to make sure I do my work here because that's going to go into my transcript. But when I do Sean's financial literacy, I still get certified for it and I get credit.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:04

Yeah, so it would have to be accredited by uh recognized by one of the schools.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:08

Not necessarily. With this infrastructure, then we come up with a different way of creditation, accreditation. Okay. So that you've got your official school transcript. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:18

And then these are like electives or bonuses or whatever you're going to.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:21

Yeah. Yeah. But I've got a certification that I've passed Sean's financial literacy. And then I flip one more and I've got my sports records. So I can keep all my stats, my sports stats.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:32

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

Um, and and or Boy Scout mirror badges.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:35

Well, in school, it's gonna be sports, football, baseball, soccer, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:39

But it's all here. It's all in one portal that everything I learned from the time I'm uh I've been calling this K-through Life. I like that. From the time I'm in kindergarten, because why why should we stop learning when we get out of school? Why not have those same tools right there at our fingertips?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:56

Or stop learning when you get out out of school at three o'clock. Like, why can't you just like, hey, I want to, yeah, I want to learn more about money or I want to learn more about uh you know math or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:06

Or get through call get through four years of college by the time you're you know 15 years old. Why not? If you're smart enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:12

I don't know why you shouldn't let people shouldn't limit people to um just do it because we've been doing it this week. Exactly. Ages. And I promise you, Google or Facebook or whoever it is, if there's this superstar that's 17 years old, they are they don't care. They want to hire him. It ain't because oh, he waited and you waited until he was 22 and you finally finished school. It's like, no, we're paying for the highest skills right now. How old are you? What can you do? I don't care.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's a good idea. Yeah, I think it's it it's an it's an example of what's enabled in a in a world of AI that dramatically changes the way we used to look at education. AI could enable this kind of capability to really put your future in your own hands. Because today we have to rely on, oh, that I have a good teacher, bad teacher, good school, bad school. Now it's all in your hands.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:03

I feel like it would have never changed. I feel like AI will probably force it. Like I said, the colleges would have never changed. I feel like to continue to sign up people and let them believe that they're going to get a better job if they take your program. I think you have to have something more uh tailored to this new world and all these new roles that are coming out. And I think that that's where they're gonna be forced to force the hand out of it. Man, I I don't know how the politically, like, how do you how do you get that done? That's the hard part.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:34

I'm hoping for uh this administration I've tried, I've been in there, they they um they they're just committed to pushing education down, which is not conducive to the use of technology. Uh state and local governments, uh, it's very difficult to have enough scale locally to provide this kind of robust capability. So I'm I'm hoping for a couple of governors that come together and say we're gonna change our state. We've got enough in Texas. If I could convince our governor that we need to do this statewide, it would be it would work. Um, or the next um presidential election, if I can find an up-and-coming candidate that wants to make this part of their platform.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:14

You might have to do I mean, there's gonna come a point where you almost have to do this. There might be like a breaking point where you it's like gonna be a crisis. And where I think happens is might be in the next five years to where the new job market is completely different, and everybody that's graduating is like, well, I I I don't I don't need to pay for this to go to school if like the whole all these new jobs are different, the whole market's different, all these industries are smaller, you need less doctors and attorneys um than what's required or about the amount that's graduating. So I think they're forced. I just don't know what's gonna be that tipping point to make them make that change.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:52

Yeah, I think that I think the tipping point is is coming, and I'll give you a scary stat. China in 1998 had 10% of its population in in college with a four-year degree. And I'm not saying that you need a four-year degree, but uh use that as the surrogate for for uh depth of education. Um 10% of the population in 1998. Today, 61%. That's 20 million graduates a year, many of with many with STEM education. We went the opposite direction in the last 20 years, so we are now at 39% of our 18 to 24 year olds. Or going or graduating college, yeah, and fallen pretty rapidly, and many of them graduating without you know serious degrees. But okay. So the net is we're not producing enough to satisfy our own technology needs. We're not producing the scientists, the technologists, the doctors, the nurses to be able to supply. So we see this already happening in Texas today. There's a lot of noise in North Texas. I don't know about down here, but Frisco, I don't know if you've seen this stuff about a lot of noise. I know some people live there, but um personally, but very, very large incoming population of Pakistani and Indian. Okay. But what's driving that is the tech business. Yeah. Because all these tech companies were looking for for for educated technologists to come. So they're hiring from where they can. India's producing 15 million college graduates a year, China's producing 20 million. That's 35 million against our 4 million a year. So there's going to be, as technology continues to evolve, and we need more and more people armed with technology skills, even if AI does take some of those jobs away, there's going to be a huge demand for an educated person.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:47

Maybe they've lost maybe our because of where the technology is and because of how old school the system is. Maybe they people don't like, ah, you know, I don't know if it's worth it to go into debt, or maybe my parents don't have the money to send me to school, or it's there's no ROI on it. So maybe if we change the system, they would see the ROI. If you have like if it was a narrow thing, like, oh, I could take this course in two years and get this job, that makes more sense. Instead of like, oh, you have to wait four years, you have to get an associate's, it's kind of do your basics first. It's like you're taking high school all over again. Like, how can you shorten the timeline and still provide like a narrower path, I guess? Like you graduate and you're gonna go into a role at XYZ.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:27

Which you which you can with this school.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:30

That's what I'm saying. It's like you need to shorten the the timeline and then also make people believe there's an ROI again. Like if I if I spend my time and my money, am I gonna am I gonna see a return on it?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:42

But you you said something earlier, uh, when you were talking about the money, right? Is it about the money?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:49

Education shouldn't be about the money. Because if it is, go be uh go be a welder. If you're worried about money, especially in the short term, education should be about opening up opportunities and freedom. So it's that's why my book isn't education is money, it's education is freedom. If I listened to that logic and tried to measure my return on investment as a kid, I would have gone to hamburger you. That was my opportunity. They tried to get me to go there, and I would have made good money in the short term. But instead, I said, the more education I get, the more ability I have to pivot and I can do more things. So it was a bad economic decision in the near term, but man, am I glad I did for the long term? And that's what we've got to pivot to to have people think of education not about short-term return on investment, but long-term flexibility, especially in an AI world where who knows what jobs will exist.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:49

A good point. But also tell that to an 18-year-old that wants to make a lot of money. No, it's um, it's like he's like, hold on, uh if I do this and I spend four years of my time and um I can only make $40,000 coming out of school, like he's like that that that doesn't make any sense. And so I think that's that's a big problem too, is like people are trying to think long term, and it's like, hey, that I don't know if that really makes sense. And so it's hard. I think the system has to change. And then if it if people had a better, a clearer outcome with you can get the right education, and it's not just gonna be wasted. Um, maybe that would fix a lot of the Sean.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:26

Some of this is mindset though. My brother, I mean, just look at me and my brother, right? He wanted the fancy car, he wanted the job, and he wanted to make money now. And he did. And he became an electrician. Not today. His hands are all gnarled up, and I mean, he's had a hard life, and he's thank goodness for his military benefits, because you know, he's able to get by, but he didn't have the freedom that I have. They're in high need, and and it's and it's it's a very tempting. Thing. I can go be an electrician, but people aren't thinking about I'm going to be crawling through attics at 110 degrees in Houston, Texas, and my hands are going to be, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:09

So that's what we teach. It's tough. Well, that's what we teach. So we teach them how to think like owners. Exactly. And so that's what we teach in our our our program is more, we know not everybody's going to be an entrepreneur. Right. And not everybody's cut out for it. But we teach the skills that it takes to be one. We teach the mindset of like having ownership of something. So even if they don't necessarily own a business, they still have that mindset of okay, they understand why. And they can understand owning assets and like investing in their future, investing in more skills, investing in whatever it is. And so kind of teach the mindset too of technically being an entrepreneur. Although I know not every single person is going to be one. Um, but the skills that you get from learning about it and doing it are super necessary, uh, I think for whatever path they choose.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:04

You you you said it though, it's mindset. It's it's it's like and that's what I tell everybody. Listen, take being a pilot. I'm a pilot. I love flying. I tell people uh all the time, go be a pilot. But it's nothing wrong with making that your career and avoiding college because you don't need a degree to be a pilot. But wouldn't you rather have the skills necessary to own an aviation company? Yes, rather than just have to work for somebody else as a pilot. That's what we teach. It's even better.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:31

That's what we teach.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:32

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:33

Uh, just only because that's how my mindset is. And I think that is one of the limiting factors of school because people um think that there's only one path. And so it's like, there's so like this is what I have to do, this is what my parents told me how to do. And so uh trying to open their mind a little bit and and understand that you can learn a lot of skills uh and like you said, be able to pivot into a lot of different things. I think that's the key.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:55

It's not education for a job, it's education for the ability to adapt and to change.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:02

That being said, what skills do you think are going to matter the most in the next like 10, 20 years?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:07

So here's the irony. Um, it was, in fact, right now, there's still a lot of people that think a liberal arts degree is a waste of time, waste of money, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I think there's gonna be a resurgence in some of those softer skills. Um if I was gonna be, if I was in college right now, I don't know if I would want to become an engineer. Because a lot of those skills are gonna be replaced. AI is very deep.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:36

You don't need a thousand engineers in a firm anymore. You need 10, 20, 30, you know, to and then with the help of a bunch of AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:42

Exactly. Peter Thiel's encouraging people to quit school and and just go be uh a coder, and that's all you need. You can be like me. It's but that's like Michael Jordan saying, just go play basketball, you'll be fine. But but but here's so here's what I'm advocating. It's it's breadth of education, not depth. The more you can learn, the more you can pivot. And and the ability to have communication skills, to have super important.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:10

That's one of the main things we teach, and one of the things I lacked when I was growing up, just because nobody really worked with me on it in school. The the traditional system didn't really, I mean, there's like one speech class, but like just freaks you out more than anything. And so, like instead of like building you up your whole life to get to that speech class and like understanding that it's that important, they just think one speech class is gonna change your life. And so I I do think that's one of the most important skills. I think it'll always be. Yeah. Um, people that can communicate communicate their ideas, uh, can lead a team, um, can have better relationships, uh, you know, articulate their ideas better, sell their self. I mean, you sold yourself to an oil company saying you're gonna like as an intern and like you didn't even know anything about it. I knew nothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:52

But I was a I was a political science graduate, right? And some people would say, like a father today may say to their kid, no, political science is bullshit. You don't want that, it's a waste of money, right? But what it taught me, I it taught me research, it taught me how to root how to how to write, how to communicate effectively. And all of those skills today, even though I'm not a political scientist, yeah, um, are super valuable versus if I went to be an engineer, I'd probably have made good money as an engineer, but I don't think I would have ever become a CEO.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:24

Makes sense. Um I I think that too. I think that they're gonna be life skills. I think those are gonna matter more than anything. Communication, um, problem solving, sure. Uh critical thinking. Yeah, critical thinking, you know, resilience, overcoming failure. Yeah, exactly. All the life skills, those are those are probably gonna matter more and more in this new weird, like, you know, technology boom of a world.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:47

My next book I'm calling meta skills, the the essential, the essential tools to compete in a world of artificial intelligence, which will be, I think, very human skills. It's gonna be things like you know, communication or compassion.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:02

Yeah, that's the so in our in our program, we actually do we have seven skills, like which are life skills, uh, and then entrepreneurship. And then the last one's consistency, because it's like all the other skills don't matter if you can't be consistent. And so that that's what we teach. Where it's it's it's basic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Characters and other ones, yeah, and respect and and and everything. And so um I think I always think those will continue to be. We're humans at the end of the day, like I said, I think the world gets so weird and so robotic that you start leaning toward this old it's like it's like skewing the internet skewed it other the other way, and then now I think it's gonna skew back to how it was. It's like drive-in movie and hanging out, and I don't know, just more experiences and uh going to those traditional restaurants because everything will be so weird and so robotic and people will still want to be around humans. Uh when you're watching stuff online, it's like, is it real? I don't think I don't even know if the person I'm seeing is real anymore. Where it gets weird to me is like when it's so real, how do you how do you report on the news? How do you because it's like so there's so there everything is so believable in five years when the AI is so good it can make a video that you can't tell the difference? How what what what happens at that point? How do you know that the communication do do people like do networks do you like buy your blue check mark of your life and like it's it's uh and and you analyze it, this is real, there's like this is like a real thing coming across. Like I don't know where that goes.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:34

I yeah, no, no, none of us do, obviously. But I I I have enough confidence that that the technology will help us with the critical thinking piece, which is to determine to seek truth ultimately. Because right now, truth is who knows what's true and what's not true, because we're in that in-between land. But I do think that over time, the use of our critical thinking skills and our knowledge, um, plus there's a whole faith element in here that we don't talk about a lot, but we've got to believe, we've got to have a certain set of values and beliefs. The combination of those two, um, I've been out quoting um John Paul II, of all things. I didn't expect I'd be as a business guy quoting a Pope, but he said something really powerful about 25 years ago that that your reason and your faith, um and faith in whatever context you want to put it in. George Lucas called it the force. Yeah, right. But your reason, your ability to have knowledge, and your faith are like two wings that elevate the human spirit to seek truth. And it's so it it's so accurate, really, because we all want the truth. And whether it's do I believe this on AI or not, we have the ability to use whatever tools are available to s to seek the knowledge to determine as best we can if it's true or not. And then we rely on our judgment, you know, our good old-fashioned human belief that I'm gonna go with this. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:12

What do you know now that you wish you would have known when you were 16?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:16

That uh or 18 or 19, teenager. To be fearless. Because I we're we're all, and even today, you know, I'm human. I I have natural emotions. I have that imposter thing that pops in every once in a while and says, Who do you think you are to do this podcast with Sean? You know. Um, but but and change that world education. Yeah, exactly. No, here I am. I'm tackling, yeah. Do I think I can do this? I don't know, but I I think why can't I? And and and and I am I have truly become fearless because I've just discovered that I can learn anything. So there's nothing I should be afraid of that I can't learn. And then what I can't learn, I believe in myself. I believe I can I can do just about anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:00

So I feel that way too.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:01

And uh I think it goes back to that why question. It's like, why can't I change it? Like somebody's going to. Why not me? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:10

Why can't I change the whole way we approach education nationally and even internationally? Why not? I can do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:15

Well, it's gonna happen. It's just like it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:17

Why not me? Yeah, exactly. But every one of us, and I wish I knew that when I was 18 years old, because I I would have probably wasted less time swirling around and being my own obstacle because of my own insecurity or fear.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:36

I feel like that happened to me too. Um maybe that's when I wanted to prove myself as excess so bad to myself. I don't think it was to anybody else. I was like, Oh, I just want to be successful, whatever that means. And uh, you know, I came from a small town, and so I would always I I don't even know who I was in competition with. Like I was in competition in my own head. It's like I'm never doing enough. I'm not I can be working harder. I like I would always just like think to myself that I wasn't I wasn't doing enough. And so um it created a lot of stress, but uh ultimately, you know, led me to where I am. Um, but it goes back to like I I I I was kind of fearless then, like I was, you know, I just didn't know it yet. And I was like ultimately just I'm gonna continue going. I don't care what I have to do. I was just like, why can't I do it? And so I just kept going and you know, eventually it works out.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:27

But you know, you have now a couple of things. One thing that I that that stuck when we first met is you talked about your family and how important they were. Super important. So that's one huge thing that you have now. You have the ability because you were able to pivot to do the things you want to do, but also to have quality time with your family, which is so important. Yeah. Um, the other thing that you have is something I've been I've been trying to research neuroscience, and you have something called metacognition. Okay. I think I have metacognition. I'm trying to build it. What that basically means is you're aware of your own thoughts. And too many of us when we are confronted with an external stimulus, whether it's good or bad, we react to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:15

As opposed to stepping back and saying, okay, is that real or is it not real? Is this something that will threaten me or not? I'm pretty good at that. Yeah. I you can tell.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:25

I don't make I don't know if that came from years of owning businesses and just like forced to do that. Um, because when you're, you know, when you're an owner and you don't have anybody to lean on, sometimes you can't overreact, uh, or you have a lot of people that you're responsible for. And so I I I kind of feel like that happened over time. And it's where I'm like, okay, hold on, let me like really think logically. What can I fix about this problem? So the whole, you know, the world's melting down. It's like, okay, what can I fix? What, you know, what what's logical, what's not logical. Um, and so I do that a lot now. I don't, I don't really when something bad happens or perceived bad or a challenge or a setback or or or something I can't figure out, I don't ever react to it right away. I don't uh my wife thinks I'm a robot or something. I don't know. But that's a good thing. Because she's a business owner too. She's like, she, you know, she's super passionate and and and she's really good. I I think it just came from over time. I think it does. It could all be like that. I don't think I was always like that. I don't when I was human, I think I've made I overreacted and did stupid things and made bad decisions. Sure, we all do, but it could also be called wisdom, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:35

And and the nice part about the science of neuroscience or metacognition and understanding it is if it's wisdom that took me probably decades to develop.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:49

I guess so.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:49

You could teach it. So could we teach an 18-year-old not to have those reactions that end up holding them back?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:57

So that's what that's what I I you know. Yeah, subconsciously. Like when I now when I think back to what I'm teaching them, yeah. Um, a lot of it's that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:05

Uh you know, teaching them wisdom that took you years to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:08

The ability to take action, like you know, like what we talked about.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:11

It's like, you know, um, 99% of people don't do what they want in life because they just don't take action. It's truly that. Like you're like you said, they're not they're they're not fearless. They're like always like, oh, I need to learn a little bit more, I need to know a little bit more before I before I do that. You're like, how hard can it be to run 7-Eleven? That's gonna be hard. I don't know what I'm doing, but that can't be too hard. Yeah, you must have been there one. But you know what? Like you said, it doesn't say you just have to understand um the data and and then make changes. It's not rocket science, right? Like make the best decision you can.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:52

Yeah, yeah. I I uh I tell the story I I had an opportunity in the worst of the dark, dark times of Blockbuster when the financial markets are melting down and I'm showing up in the press with negative press and all this stuff. I I ran into uh Warren Buffett and he and I introduced myself to him and he's like, Yeah, Jim, so what are you doing now? And I was like, Oh, I did this blockbuster thing and I'm getting the crap beat out of me. And I was being, I was being the victim.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:20

And I caught myself, but I I didn't catch myself before making excuses about what I was doing, and yeah, maybe I ought to quit. And he looked at me and said, Would you rather be on the bench or watching somebody else doing this? And he was so right. It was exactly what I needed at the right time because I know I would not rather be on the bench. I I wanted to be in the game. And and he said, it's not personal. Just get in there. You make the best decisions you can with the information you got.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:49

Another thing that I've always thought about, like when I told you about you know running a big company and it being slow, and like, man, how do they do that? I it's hard to run a company, it's hard to make certain decisions. Doing it while under media pressure. I I, you know, I I I've never experienced that. Um man, how hard that must be because when you go home and it's already tough to make a tough decision, it's like that skewing, it's it's like beating your decisions. Am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing? What are they saying? Were they are they right? Are they wrong? Like, like that has to be hard in my mind, like super hard.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:29

Somebody's second guessing you and your family looks at.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:32

I know, and then like you're they're seeing like all these negative things, and like, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:36

Yeah, but that's where metacognition comes in. Jeez, that would be tough. You get a you get a negative press release, and and someone you pick up the newspaper and you're reading all this heinous stuff about yourself, right? And you go, All right, what is that? Where's it coming from? Okay, they're making money. The more salacious the arg article, the more readers they get.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:00

Yeah, you don't get a headline just saying, hey, uh, Blockbuster's not doing good. Yeah, you say Blockbuster is failing and it's crumbling in front of our eyes.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:07

And the CEO's an idiot, blah, blah, blah. And he's not keeping up with technology. And so you realize that where it's coming from, they're doing the same thing you're doing. They're trying their best to make money, right? And so you do you get victim, yeah, or do you understand their motive? And and here's the way I looked at the press, because you know, a lot of people don't like the press and they're always negative. Press is enemy, blah, blah, blah. I look at the press as yeah, it's part of the, it's part of the system. They're making money.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:33

Because sometimes you can benefit from it.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:34

Yeah. So how do I feed them information that will make their job easy and how they can report something positive?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:41

I can use them for positive purposes as well as you know, based on on the information you're giving them. They may not have all the info. And so when they report, it might not be what it really is.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:50

Exactly. You turn down the interview, they're gonna say what they want to say. You take the interview, they still may say what they want to say. You've got a better chance, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:58

Man, that would be tough. Uh and you know what? I might be there one day, but uh I I don't know, but just because of the CEO, though, I don't I don't think I would be the CEO in that role.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:08

Um You still the the the more you accomplish, the more visible you are, yeah, the more you're going to at some point have pushback and yeah, um yeah, but it's not personal. The thing always remembered. That's a good point. It's just not personal.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:22

And if I can if I can if I can create the education bread I want to, maybe I do. You're gonna have pushback from like all the people that oppose that, and this is the other way that it needs to be, and it's like you're crazy and you're not supposed to do it this way.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:34

I got people attacking me now. I don't want technology in the schools, that damn stuff out of the schools, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:40

That's the weird line right now where people are like, I don't want my you know, screen more screen time is not the answer.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:46

No, you know what's crazy though? This and this are exactly the same thing. They're delivery mechanisms. That's why it's not the device. Well, this was the technology of the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:58

Well, they're also associating uh the cell phone with TikTok or the so associating the cell phone with Snapchat. They're not associating the cell phone with like access to pretty much any step-by-step blueprint plan that you can possibly have. That's not what they're associating with.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:13

This is the portal of unlimited learning.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:16

This is a portal to limited learning.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:18

And and so if you look at it that way, we have a hundred thousand books in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:22

It's about the content, not the device. Yeah. And that's that's where we're we're in that trapped in that period of of evolution where we're afraid of the device. When books first came out, people were trying to ban them because they didn't want they it's like you can't turn a kid a person loose with that book.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:41

Like it was gonna affect too many people.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:42

Like in fact, I mean, interesting story historically, if you look back at the invention of the modern printing press, Bibles were created by monks sitting around handwriting. So the very limited availability of Bibles. All of a sudden, the printing press comes out, the Gutenberg Bible, right? All these Bibles start showing up. All of a sudden, the Protestant Reformation came. Because people were going, hey, wait, that's not what this said. And it changed the course of history. But it was the technology of the time and being able to mass produce the written word in the form of Bibles that now anyone could have, that caused a big uproar in in society at the time. And you know, go back to the French Revolution, the American Revolution. Would American farmers have even known that they were being taxed without representation? Right? But they're getting information.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:40

So now it's just more and more access to information. It's just like incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:43

Yeah, and it and it caused people.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:46

People are associating it with a negative thing. Yeah. Our kids are um, they're associating the technology with the the bad things, like the brain rot stuff, and it's killing our society, and our kids are getting zoned out on well, yeah. No, I noticed that with my kid too, and you know, of course, he doesn't watch anymore, but I was a first-time parent and I gave him iPad and we were busy. Uh big mistake, and it'll never happen again. But I didn't realize how much he was learning at such a young age. And so, but me for me to dismiss technology because of that is not right either.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:17

Um, it was wrong to give him, let him watch all these weird shows on YouTube and like these evil things that I didn't know he was watching. That was wrong. But it doesn't mean that I'm never gonna let him have technology because I know how important it is in the future. Do I want him to do that? No. But just because I don't let him do that doesn't mean he can't use other technology. Yeah. And I think that that's what they're associating with. No more screen time, you know, more band phones in school, they're cheating. Exactly. So I'll I think I don't know. It's it's you gotta uphill battle. I gotta uphill battle, I think, but um somebody's gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:50

Oh, yeah, somebody's gonna do it. And you're not gonna put the technology genie back in the bottle. So how do we embrace it?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:56

Embrace the change. Um, people have did push back on change for a hundred years. Like that no matter what happened, it's always the new technology is always pushback on change.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:08

That's what that's where I've come up with that change equals opportunity and be CEO of your life.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:14

Yeah. That's that's been uh my case too, and my business career is like, you know, when something changed, you don't see it at the time. But when you look back, you're like, man, if that would have never happened, I wouldn't ever have done all these incredible things. It's like that one thing that just was a big change. Exactly. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. What's one thing you think about, or what's one belief about success that you think people might get wrong?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:01

I think the biggest thing is the uh tendency for people to equate success with monetary rewards. Yeah, money. Yeah. Um it and some people never get off the hamster wheel. You know, uh having twenty billion dollars isn't enough. They've gotta they gotta make more.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:21

Um but I think those people are driven by more like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't do it to make more money. Like Beelon's not trying to make more money. Um they want to drive big change and and do big things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:37

I I shouldn't equate I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:38

No, I know what you're saying, though. I know I know what you're saying because um But some of us get caught up in that being about the money. Yeah, yeah. I believe, I agree that you know I think a lot of people do have that wrong out there. It was like, oh, you're just trying to big corporation trying to make more money. I was like, dude, they employ more people than anybody in the United States. Like they're they're creating so much value and they're not like waking up to all this negative press because they want to make more money. Like that just they're really trying to like build something great.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:05

That's true. That's true. A lot of a lot of a lot of CEOs. I mean, I learned from a couple of mentor CEOs that you can do more from the helm of a big company than you can as a wealthy individual. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:19

Um, because you've just got you have so much influence, yeah, you have so many jobs uh that you're responsible for. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. Fifty years from now, when people look back at your life, what do you hope they remember about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:51:33

I hope that uh they think of me as somebody that helped stimulate positive change. That I help people realize change is opportunity and and help them understand the tools are available, especially through education, uh, to be able to embrace change in a different way. And um net net I believe that humans use such a small portion of our brain. Not our fault. You know, we've just evolved from caveman days. Um, but I think we've got the opportunity now to elevate human learning at rates we've never seen before. Yeah. And that's kind of my mission to make people believe if we embrace these new technologies, could we elevate human intelligence at the rate of artificial intelligence? And I think when you think about the way we behave now with wars and crime and poverty, could we eliminate so much of the nonsense that humans still deal with and replace it with people that are more informed and able to um succeed in a in a different kind of world? Perhaps a world where robots do help us out a lot, but perhaps we have more time to be humans.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

Yeah, I think that's kind of what's gonna happen. Well, hopefully one more thing they remember you for or remember about you is that you changed the got your technology in all these school systems. So hopefully, hopefully that works out. Hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:01

And they may remember me being on your podcast. Maybe so. It could be it could be the game changer.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:06

I appreciate you coming on. This was fun. Yeah, it was great. Thank you so much.