← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Why the People Closest to You Are Destroying Your Potential (Priceline Co-Founder's Hard Truth)
01:00:30
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- [00:00]
A
We get our advice from proximity, not relevance. The difference between the world's most successful people and you is in fact, not that they were smarter than you. They're not smarter than you. They weren't born rich or with money. The difference between those people and everyone else is they just got out of their chair and executed.
- [00:21]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you were a founding team member and leader of Priceline.com and booking.com today, the world's largest online hotel booking marketplace valued at over $160 billion, if you are the founder, chairman and CEO of Black Sky Entertainment, producer of a Grammy Award winning jazz album and executive producer of an Emmy award winning television show, and today, make a difference in the world by leading the Global entrepreneurship network and the World Youth Horizon Charitable foundation, your name can only be Jeff Hoffman. Welcome, Jeff.
- [01:02]
A
Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate that.
- [01:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. Here's my opening question for you. Travel is a central theme in your life. Where did that come from?
- [01:18]
A
So I'm glad you asked that because it happened long ago. So I grew up in the Arizona desert with a single mom in the middle of nowhere back then. Now it's all Phoenix became giant. But back then it was just a desert, Jeff, and no one ever left. And it's interesting because there's no right or wrong not judging anybody, but all the people I grew up with still live in the same five square mile area their whole lives that we grew up in. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I had different plans. And they started in seventh grade. We had to pick an author to do book report. I picked Mark Twain, opened the book up, and on the inside cover, Mark Twain had written, travel is the fatal enemy of prejudice. And it's funny, Jeff, because I knew he was dead, but I still thought he wrote that in that book for me, that he knew I was going to get it. And I was like, there was something about the quote. So I went home and I. I got my mom. I said, mom, I gotta talk to you. And she said, what's up? And I said, this quote just hit me and I don't know why. And I said, tell, talk to me about what it means. And my mother explained that hate comes from ignorance and ignorance comes from lack of understanding. And lack of understanding comes from never getting to know people that don't look like you. And I said, now I get it. And so even back then, I told my mom, I said, for me to ever become the man I want to be, Someday I need to get out of here. I need to go see the world, and I need to break bread with people of every different shape, size and color. So that was my interest in travel started then. I always wanted. But it was because I wanted to meet people of every type and every culture and just get a broader worldview. And that required travel. It's just that when you grow up with a poor single mother, that's not really an option on the table. Even though it was my dream.
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B
You became an engineer and that's how you started your career. What kind of engineer were you?
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A
Yeah, so at that time, all the jobs were in software. Because you go through those waves. Right before the Internet was a big thing, just writing code. Software was. It was software, then it was the Internet. Now it's a. Well, then it was mobile, now it's AI. There's always the next thing. But at that time, the word was go get a computer science degree in software engineering, learn how to write code, learn how to do software engineering, because there's a million jobs. So I didn't get a job in software engineering because I dreamed about engineering. I got a job because of the pressure. Everybody tells you you gotta go to school so you can get a degree in something where you can get a good job at a good company with a good salary. I kind of followed all that. But to be honest, Jeff, I didn't have a good life. Cause I actually hated my software engineering job.
- [04:27]
B
Yeah, I guess. What do they say, salary is the biggest killer of your hopes and your dreams?
- [04:33]
A
Absolutely. People, you know, and when I would ask people even now about their dreams, people roll their eyes and say, well, when I was young, I had those dreams. But now I'm a grown up, I have a mortgage and, you know, I have a family or whatever. And I don't hear the word grown up. I hear the word give up when people say that. Right? Because I. I've got this, this again, this salary and a mortgage to pay. And so I don't dream about anything cool to do anymore. And that's just sad. And that's the situation I found myself in, but I didn't stay in it.
- [05:06]
B
One of the things my mentor, one of my mentors said to me was, it's the owner's responsibility or the business leader's responsibility to speak a bold and powerful future into existence. And I think that's true in our business, and I also think it's true in our personal life. And one of the things that you shared was that you set a goal to have 50 dinners with 50 families in 50 countries as a young person. And if you think about that, that's one element of speaking a powerful future into existence. But what that would force you to do is it would really, to accomplish that, you would have to create a great life. You would have to integrate your business with your personal, all of the things there. And so, as I think about visioning, what was it about you that made you such a visionary? And what is your process for seeing opportunities and meeting those and over and over again, succeeding?
- [06:09]
A
Sure. So first of all, I love that this is called unemployable, because during my brief stay in corporate America, I found out that that's exactly what I was. Exactly. And a big part of that was that corporate America just fails to value sarcasm the way I do. So I was in trouble all the time for just about everything that I said. But it wasn't just sarcasm. It was even things. Like one time I was criticized for not spending enough time trying to impress the bosses. And I said, okay, well, if it's okay with you guys, I'm actually trying to impress the customers. And I don't have time to go schmooze the bosses because I'm trying to build good products for the customer. And they're like, yeah, that's not what's important. I was like, what? How is taking care of the customers less important? They said, because the customers don't sign your paycheck. So they, you know, they actually do. Right. As we know. But anyway, I just get a kick out of unemployable, because when I left, that was the last thing my corporate boss said to me. You should leave your unemployable. Anyway. So I kind of never forget those words. But anyway, the. The. I guess there's a couple of things, Jeff. The first thing about believing was that I had a mom. Just lost my mom the year before last, but I had my mom, my little mom. And my mom's answer to everything was, wait, why not you? Right? And so it was such a blessing, I realized later, to be around that attitude where other people would say you could probably never do this or that. Mom's attitude was, why couldn't you give yourself a chance? So I grew up around the influence of a mom whose belief was, take a shot, man. Right? Give yourself a chance. Maybe it could be you to do that. And I will tell you, though, Jeff, I didn't share the 50 families dream because when I told people that that I was going to visit 50 countries across the Length of my whole life, right? People laughed at me. And they're like, dude, you're broke and your mom's broker, right? Just go get a job. And that was everybody's answer. And everybody kept telling me, there's no job where they're going to pay you to fly around the world and visit different countries. And I remember thinking, well, if there's not, then I'll just create that job instead of accepting, no, I'll just create the thing that I wanted to do. But that was my big. And that came from something I would love everybody listening to us to think about. I asked myself one day because I was observing again, I'm not judging anyone. There's no right or wrong. This is a DNA thing. But I was observing some of the people in my little desert town that had never left, never gone anywhere, never done anything, and didn't seem. Not my place to judge them, but just didn't seem very happy with the results. And I was thinking that. And then I got this job, and everyone said, congrats, you have a good job and a good salary. And I was like, but I don't have a good life. I hate going to work every day. One day I was sitting there thinking, okay, then what is a good life for you? And that's what I want everybody listening to us to think about. What is your definition of an epic life for you? So that was mine. Mine would be. If I could fly to 50, if I have visited 50 countries before I die, that'd be a pretty epic life. And then I took it that step further because of the Mark Twain thing. If I had had broke bread in 50 homes with 50 families and 50 cultures, that'd be a really epic life. What stories I would have. So that's what I was thinking at the end. I want to look back and say, that was a pretty good ride, whatever the length of my life is. And that would have been meeting families all over the world and talking my way into dining with them in their home, with their family so I could get to know them the way Mark Twain suggested. That was the big plan.
- [10:22]
B
Yeah, it's very. It's. It's typical for entrepreneurs that have scaled things, but it's untypical across the general population that you grew up and you didn't have a lot of resources. And when you don't have a lot of resources and you don't have a lot of people pouring into you that have the kind of experience, right, it's all your local people and they're telling you you know, this is my experience. Get the job, do this, you can make two more dollars next year, an hour, or whatever it is. You know, it's. It's very untypical for you in that environment to reach outside of that and just reject it. Because one of the things that I coach and I just came out of training, we're a franchise organization. I got a. A dozen franchisees that I. I do the first two hours of training, and I closed it with a. With a conversation around ambition and sharing my story. Three different things that I did that I didn't reach my ultimate goal. But if I didn't, if I wasn't that ambitious, then I would have not got to where I got to. So ambition plays a critical role in your life, but also, don't take advice from people that don't have the experience, you know?
- [11:30]
A
Yeah. So I have this wall, right? Write down the lessons I've learned and the things that move me. And one day I wrote on the wall, here's the problem. I wrote, we get our advice from proximity, not relevance, because that was the lesson I learned. The people around you are telling you, husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, friends. The people around you are telling you what you can and can't do. That's a stupid idea, you're not good enough, or a false positive. Right. You should go do this, which is something that really isn't right for you. So you're getting all this advice, and the only qualification, Jeff, those people have is proximity. They're the people that you see every day. And one day I woke up realizing that. That I appreciate they all think they're helping me, but I don't want to be any of them. So then I asked myself this, who do I want to be like? And again, a question for everybody listening to this episode is that a mentor should be somebody you want to be like when you grow up, and I don't care how old you are, you're never done growing up, Right? Pick somebody in the world that you say, I want to be like her someday. I want to be like him someday. So when I figured that out, I said, I need to get my advice from somebody relevant, not somebody close. And there was a guy in the community, not even in my city, a guy named Roger, that I would read about. And I was like, man, I want to be like him someday. So I just started the process, cold calling emails, and called the office a few times. It was three months before his assistant called, called back and said, we're going to make you a deal. And I said, what? And she said, he'll give you 20 minutes at a Starbucks under the agreement that you never speak to us again for the rest of your life because you're bothering us. And I said, I'll take the 20. And after 20 minutes, he called his office and said, cancel my appointments. I'm spending the afternoon with Jeff. And he became my mentor. So you gotta find somebody that you want to be like, and it may not be the people around you. And that was a big lesson. I learned to stop listening to them. I still nod and thank them because they think they're doing you a favor, but they're telling you what they would do if they were you, and they're not you, and you're not trying to be them. So find that role model that you want to be like and try to build that mentor relationship with that person instead. That helped me a lot once I finally got Roger to become my mentor.
- [14:13]
B
One of your early experiences in identifying a need in the marketplace was when you had to wait an hour to get an airline ticket, which led you to realize that there had to be a better way. And then to invent the kiosk that we all use at the airports. Can you share just a little bit about that? And then what are the models of thought that came out of that experience that helped you then with Priceline and booking and those things?
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A
Okay, sure. So to go a little broader, first, it's really important that you have a intent, Right? Intent is a thing that has to be in your mind. So my intent was I was going to find some way in my life to go visit fifth, to travel, to visit 50 countries, even though, like, when I had my one job, even though I had a nice paycheck, I sat in a cubicle every day, right? And when I would say, man, I. I want to go see the world, everyone's like, dude, there's no job. They're not. No one's going to pay you to see the world. Right. And so the intent was. I wouldn't reply to them when they would say that, but I would think, I'm going to find some way then to create that job.
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B
If Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain was taken.
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A
Hey, yeah. If there's. If there's. I actually thought. I was jealous. I saw his. I was like, I love that job. You're absolutely right.
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B
Can't get enough of that guy.
- [15:42]
A
Yeah, I remembered thinking that, but. So I was thinking that I will find some way to create a job that Even though I had no idea how. So intent has to be in your mind, right? And then intent has to intersect with opportunity, right? And so when intent and opportunity intersect, you have to have your eyes open enough to say, wait a minute. This is what I was looking for. So the reason that's important is what started that day when I was trying to go, when I waited an hour in a line to catch a flight, when I, you know, when I was broke and unemployed. Anyway, so I can't afford. Back then, by the way, they had change fees. If you change your flight, you pay a change fee, but if you miss it, they take all of your money. You lost the whole ticket. And that's horrible. And because I was standing in the line still, I couldn't even tell the airline that I was here to tell them that I was going to miss it. I just missed a flight. And I was very frustrated. So first reaction was negative. Really upset. Why me? This is horrible. But then all of a sudden, this thought clicked. I said, wait a minute. This is the intersection between intent and opportunity, right? Because I've been trying to find a way to create a job that would allow me to travel and see the world, right? But I haven't seen the opportunity. And when I was sitting there and I was thinking, it's ridiculous that we have to wait in line to talk to a human being, and all they do is hit the print button and hand you a boarding pass. A boarding pass is a printed piece of paper. And I was thinking, why can't I find. I don't have to go in the bank anymore. I just go to the atm. So why can't there be something ATM like, in the airport? Like, there is at the bank, and I'll just check, get my own boarding pass. And that's when I got really excited because I said, aha. This is the moment. This isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing that I wound up here, because if I can create this thing. And guess what? I remember, Jeff, a particular Saturday, because it was a college football Saturday, and my buddies, I think it was Ohio State, Michigan was coming up. They're like, are you coming over for that game? I said, I won't be there that Saturday. And I remember everybody saying, why? Where are you going to be? And I said, in the Netherlands. My friends are like, what? How is it you're going to the Netherlands? And I said, this is the really cool part. It's my job now. Like, what are you talking about? And I said, you've been you know, we've created this. These kiosks, and we have a prototype now. And klm, Royal Dutch Airline called me and said, can we fly you to Amsterdam, to Schiphol, to their airport, because we want to see your kiosk. So all of a sudden, it's my job. The second one, by the way, Jeff, was Lufthansa. Can you come to Germany? All of a sudden I'm getting. Not only am I flying around the world, but I'm getting paid because I'm selling the kiosk, right? So I'm closing a sale, visiting a country in a job that I created. So that's why it's important to have that intent, so that when your moment comes, you don't miss it. I could have gone home that day and just been irritated that I missed the flight, but instead, I was still standing in the airport and I was like, wait, here is my chance to create a company that. Where my job is to fly around the world so I'll have a chance to both get paid and go meet those families I wanted to meet.
- [19:14]
B
All of the great ideas seem so simple after somebody else thinks of them and to realize that all of the. All of the information that people needed to book a flight, they could do themselves.
- [19:28]
A
And absolutely, you're right that you see that so frequently and you say, man, I wish I'd thought of that. And it does seem simple. But that's why I'm going to tell you another thing, Jeff, that's written on my wall. I wrote one day, actually, I wrote this on my door as a C E O. I put a sign on my door. The sign said, ideas are welcome here, but execution is worshiped. And the reason that I wrote that is because the difference between the world's most successful people and you is in fact, not that they were smarter than you. They're not smarter than you. They don't have something. They weren't born rich or with money. The difference between those people and everyone else is they just got out of their chair and executed. I met so many people that when I would hear my business heroes and I would hear the story, I would say, wait, that's it. I was looking for some brilliant moment, and the brilliant moment was the blood, sweat and tears of trying to launch it. Example, a friend of mine, Chris, that he's the creator of Shazam Right. It's been downloaded 2 billion times. He got it wrong 13 times. He just simply could not make it work. It could not identify a song. And he tried and he tried and he had no idea what he was doing and he was frustrated and he was ready to quit many times, but at least he was out there trying. And, and eventually he said, oh no, I think I figured it out. And again, 2 billion downloads later, Shazam was very successful. There's a lot of stories like that and their difference is they got off the couch and they just gave it a shot. Execution is everything.
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B
Have you heard that 40% of the world's billionaires are engineers? Is that true?
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A
I have not heard that. I did not know that.
- [21:20]
B
Well, hey, here on the unemployable, first time ever, a statistic. Statistic that's made up. But I did see it. I did, I did read that somewhere. And, and I don't think there's. Maybe there's a way to veri. You could probably very easily verify that because you can find the billionaires and see what they do. But to me it made sense. My youngest, he's 21, he's an engineering student at, he's very entrepreneurial, but you know, he's going to, to learn how to build processes. So if you think about execution, execution requires clarity, clarity requires processes, simplicity requires scales. All of the things that engineering teaches you.
- [21:56]
A
Absolutely, yeah. So so many times as a CEO, when I had no CEO training, my engineering training was a good fallback. Not, not not doesn't cover all aspects of business. But remember that the, the one thing I always tell people about entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs are problem solvers. Go solve a real problem in the world. And so to your point, that's what engineering is. A problem solving way of thinking, structured thinking and critical thinking. And one time, Jeff. So now I'm 20 something, I'm a CEO. My employees are 40 something, right? They have experience. And one day some of them come in my office like, hey, boss, we're stuck on what they said, this problem. And I said, why are you in my office? And they said, because you're the CEO. And I said, wait, you think I know how to fix this? And they're like, well, it's your company. I said, dude, I'm the one who hired you because I have no idea what I'm doing right? And they're like, well, we don't know either. So what are you going to do? So I said, well, just go in the conference room. And we went in the conference room and I said, write the problem that we're struggling with on the whiteboard. And it was a big hairy problem. And they wrote it out and I stared at it for a Minute. And I said, can you break that into smaller problems? And it turns out they broke it into four smaller problems. And I said, can you look at those and do it again? And they broke each of the four problems into about three littler problems. And then we had 12 little problems. And I said, let's split up and go solve the 12 little problems. Then we'll come back and we'll take those solutions to solve the four medium problems. When we're done with that, we should probably be able to figure out how to solve the big problem. And we did it, and it worked. And all my employees said, wow, that was amazing. They said, how did you know to do that? And they said, I didn't. But that's what my engineering teacher made me do. Every time I was stuck, he would say, jeff, calm down. It's a big hairy problem. Let's break it into little ones and solve our way back up. So my. In what I learned in engineering in terms of problem solving, thinking turned out to be a good skill set for. For a CEO as well.
- [24:13]
B
You've had incredible success with people Priceline, which turned into booking, and then loyal people working with you on ubid and some of the other successes that you've had. There's an interview question that I heard you talk about, and it has to do about asking people, if you get to the end of your life and you look back on your life, what would be the one thing that you would be proud of? Am I stating that correctly?
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A
Yeah. All that came, Jeff, because I lost my best friend, Michael. When he was 40 years old, he drowned in a freak accident. And there had been a time Michael used to go mountain climbing. And I used to tell him all the time, it's a really dangerous sport and I hope you'll stop one day. And one day Michael said He was actually 42 when he passed, but. And he did not die from mountain climbing. But one day Michael said to me, he said, hey, look, I know that some of my lifestyle, my hobbies are dangerous. And he said, but this is what he said to me, Jeff. He said, I would take 40 years of living life the way I live it versus 90 of what most people are doing. And it hit me really hard because looking at my best friend in his eyes, he meant that he literally did. And so for days I was thinking, why does he feel that way? And the answer is, because if you made a list of the things that whether Your life is 40 years or 90, when you look back and say, did I use my time well, what were the things that were important to me to do with this lifetime and did I do them? And so Michael was doing what was important to him. And so if his life, if he had to choose between 40 years of an actual fulfilling life or 90 years of always putting things off till tomorrow, you know, he would have taken that. And that's why we. It was so. I don't know, it just hit us so hard, me and my other friends, that we lost him at 42. But it made me think and asked the question you should all ask yourselves, which is, what is the list of things when I look back someday, whenever it's the end of my life, if I look back and no, I want to be able to nod and say, I spent my time well, I did things that. That I intended to do, whether they're business, it doesn't matter what they are. It's personal to you, but it's your definition of a life well lived. So that exercise, because of Michael and really hit me hard at his funeral, allowed, enabled me to go back and say, I need to understand what's my list of things I need to make sure I get done in this lifetime. It could be buying your mother a house and getting her out of the situation she lives in. It could be whatever, it doesn't matter. But that thought process. Thank you. To Michael, that his legacy is why I was able to kind of plot out a life, to make sure I hit those things that I wanted to do along the way. You asked what I'm most proud of. But it's funny, because it's none of the businesses, you know, we were successful in business, building highly profitable companies that made a lot of money. We won awards as well. But none of those are the things that I'm most proud of. The thing that I'm most proud of is that in the second half of my life, when I made a commitment to giving back by trying to share everything I've learned with as many people as I can. The first time I got an email from someone that said, dear Mr. Hoffman, the words you shared with me today and the lessons changed my life. And then I said, wait, what? I changed somebody's life. I was kind of stunned. And then I realized that maybe I could actually you make a positive impact on other people's lives. And that's why I do so much work with youth now. Right. If I can help a child set up a path for their life that ends the way it's supposed to end, the way we just talked about, with a fulfilling Life that they love versus the path that a lot of them are on. When I meet them, then that's the coolest thing I could ever do with my life. So I'm proud of the fact that we've been able to positively impact other people's lives along the way.
- [28:47]
B
The World Youth Horizon organization is something I had to ask you about, and it provides homes, school, food, healthcare to children globally, all over the world. And it's an organization that you founded?
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A
Yeah. So we. And, you know, that came, as I mentioned, in building travel companies, I was traveling around the world. When you travel around the world, by definition, you get out of your bubble, right? All of us live in a bubble. Wherever we live, that's not anybody's fault. That's not a negative thing. But the truth is we live in a bubble, right? So most people's view of how life is is where they live, what they see. If you lived your whole life in Chicago, then the. Then Chicago is your kind of view of how the world is, right? That's what you've seen. That's what you know. But when I would travel, I would be in places. And even though I was going on business trips, right, to sell kiosks, or later with Priceline and booking, where we were adding hotels and airlines to our system, but I would always take a day to sneak away to learn, see how the locals lived. And, you know, I might be in a village in Africa where none of the crap that was stressing me out at home, no one cares, right? All the things that were a big deal to me yesterday and my friends and all over the news are they don't even know what I'm talking about today in another country. And if I try to explain it, I feel like an idiot. They're like, that's what you worry about where you live. And I'm like, now I'm embarrassed that something so insignificant was a big deal. So that. That stuck with me when I started to see how different life was. A lot of times now, Jeff, people will tell me, they'll say things like, well, people are like this. And I have to stop and say, no, Americans are like that. You've never lived or been outside of the U.S. so when you say people are like this, what you're talking about is Americans. But they're not like that in Ghana, and they're not like that in southern Chile. They're different everywhere. And in that process, I also started to see the struggle. There were places I would go where I would think, wow, you know, I Forgot how good I had it until I saw the way these people were living. And so that's the, that's way back then is when I kind of made the commitment to say, you know, if, if I can do so, if we achieve any measure of success, then I would love to be able to come back someday and try to make a difference for these people. Right. And in the children's world Youth, the idea of starting World Youth Horizons was for children that do not have a chance at a better life. Let's give them a chance at a better life. So that's what we do. Whether it's raising orphans in Uganda because they've been abandoned in the jungles to die, or building schools in Ethiopia because there's no schools, they have no education, so they have no way up. Or it's showing kids career paths in Chicago and Detroit that do not include running the streets and running drugs, teaching them careers in tech, in gaming, in media. Right. In sports and entertainment. All those were what we do at World Youth so that kids have a shot at a better life than they would have had had we not helped them. Hope that made sense. It does.
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B
And there's a manufacturing engineering philosophy that says the earlier in a process that you correct a defect, the less expensive it is.
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A
There you go.
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B
And when I learned that with my previous company, I built a restoration franchise, national franchise, sold it in 2019. We were big partners with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
- [32:40]
A
That's awesome.
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B
And that was. And our franchise owners would do work for free for children that were leaving their pediatric oncology center anywhere that was doing the St. Jude protocols. They would connect them with us. If there was an indoor air quality issue, they needed their ducts clean. Our franchise owners love doing it. It was important. And then currently with my current build that we're doing, uh, we're building reading rooms in schools across the country to put books in safe spaces. Uh, it's with the Carson Scholars fund. So for 25 grand we can outfit a room with books, furniture. School will allocate space to, to us. Uh, some of the feedback we get is that it reduces misbehavior by 14% because they use the reading room as an inducement for good behavior. And it just fills it up with books and, and all of the things. We've got some of our franchise owners that are building reading in their communities, putting their name on it. We're just really. I've always had a heart and a passion for children. I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports when I came off the road and I was on the road building a, you know, working in the Caribbean disaster response. So I was anywhere there was a hurricane and I changed to a franchise model and I was able to, you know, do more from where I was instead of having to be out and on the, on the front lines all the time. But, you know, it's, it's, it's just. And especially now, and, you know, that leads into this question that I had about your impact work. Has AI changed the things that you're worried about? Has AI changed the things that you're focused on when it comes to making an impact with children across the world? Is there a different set of needs that you see based on what's happening with our technology?
- [34:32]
A
So I'm going to say no, the needs are the same. But yes, it's changing everything because it accelerates it. Our job for. For the youth and disadvantaged youth, whether in the US or anywhere in the world that we work with, education is their only way out of their situation. Education gives them job skills and entrepreneurial skills, whether they start a company or go to work for one. Education in general is the, is the way out and the way up. And so these sets of AI tools are increasing the ability to distribute education faster and farther and enable these kids, all people, but the kids. It's what you asked me about. Enable these kids to get educated, to learn at a faster pace. So AI will speed up the process. And that's really, really exciting. It doesn't change the need. They're still trying to acquire knowledge that they can use to be an employee or start a business or do something productive in the world. But I think AI is going to allow them to get there faster. And that's really exciting. Yeah, that's a win.
- [35:48]
B
It's a huge win. Okay, I want to do some futuring, if we can, and just maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that are going on. Thinking about founders, you coaching founders and evaluating founders and then looking at deals and investing. What's happening right now? What are some industries that you find interesting today that are not AI? Because everybody says when I ask the question, it's like, well, I'm going to build an AI app that does this. And there's thousands and thousands of people starting companies now.
- [36:27]
A
So, yeah, there are. So I don't know if there's, quote, anything that's not AI, But I'll tell you what worries me is that, and that we focus on a lot is that we're losing the ability to make things right. There's going to be a day where the plumber makes way more than the cardiac surgeon because AI can guide him through physically. You still need somebody to come and push that thing down the pipes and clean it out and literally unscrew a pipe, weld a new one in. A lot of. A lot of the. And just generally making things, we still need things, right? So many of the items, whether it's your pair of socks, your pants, your clothes, little by little you get robots combined with AI to make a lot of things, but just the ability to make stuff still matters. And all the physical tasks are going to become. We are going to become more useless as people when AI does more things. And the people that can physically build or fix something are going to become more valuable, I think so, you know, we've definitely been looking at that and it's less, you know, when you have young people that want to go to a vocational skill school and, and learn a skill to build something, fix something, make something, whatever, you know, we definitely encourage that because those skills are going to be more and more demand. But again, I think if you add the word robotics, the word AI, it covers a lot more AI, an app can't physically go and fix something. But I've been. Last time I was over in the Far east looking at robotics projects, the ones we haven't even seen yet. The stuff that's stealth in Japan and China and other places, when I was over in those places last year, and I'm blown away. They are creating robots combined with AI that are going to do a lot of the physical tasks, which is going to beg the question, what do all those people do that used to do that stuff? I don't know the answer yet either. We have to upgrade them all. But I do know this customer service. There's a lot of things that we all know that take my industry, travel, all the AI and all the data and all this. I'm planning my vacation, right? And there's tons of data and AI apps and, and everything to tell me where to plan a vacation. But you know what I'd like to know at which AI and nor as any robot can't answer this. That's great, but have you ever been to that beach? I see all the videos and I see all the data. Have you been on that beach? What is that beach really like, right? Literally from feeling the breeze. Is it breezy on that beach? Is it a warm breeze? Are you too close to whatever condos? There's so many things that the human Touch that. We're going to wind up cyclically wishing you could talk to. We already do. There's a lot of times where you wish you could talk to a human because you don't feel comfortable. I had that with medicine recently, Jeff. I had an AI app that was telling me about a medication, and I was like, I would like a doctor to tell me he agrees with the AI. I called back to the nurse and I said, yeah, I got the automated call, but I won't feel really good taking that medicine without ever speaking to any human. Can the doctor just tell me if that AI is right? Right. I didn't trust it. Ironically, it might have been more accurate than the doctor, but I wanted to talk to a human, so we gotta solve that. And I think cyclically it's gonna come back around to where the hard thing to find is, can I please talk to someone? And 18 layers of AI later, you still can't reach a human.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah.
- [40:30]
A
Interesting stuff to think about, my friend.
- [40:33]
B
It is, it is. And I mean, AI is making business ownership more accessible to creatives. And here's what I mean by that. So before, I mean, when you built the kiosk, you had to make the coding, you had to for a price line, you had to build the underlying code and put together the engine before you even took it out to the marketplace and those types of things. Now, if you have an idea, you can action on that very, very quickly. So from your position as the chairman of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, what is the trends that you see in terms of startups, in terms of business plans, in terms of the volume of the types of things that people are doing out there, even today with AI just becoming really mainstream. And quite frankly, I'm shocked at the people business owners I talk to that are just playing wait and see game on it. Yeah, A lot of people, not the young people, not the young people, not the startup people, they're all over it.
- [41:41]
A
But I agree with you. There's still that big gap. A lot of these business owners have no idea what AI really is, why they should use it. They've gone decade running a business, generations in their family, the same way they always have. So they're not instantly ready to change. I agree with you. And that is, by the way, the other side of that problem, Jeff, is I see these AI people and when they go visit a business, they spend the entire time talking about the AI. And I sometimes say to them, do you even know what his company does? Right. Do you know what this franchise? And they don't so all they focus is on the AI, whereas the business owner is thinking, just tell me how this is going to make life better for me and my employees and my customers. But they don't. The focus is on the AI. The focus should be on what is your business and how can we make your business better. Except the AI tech person has never run a company like yours and you've never built AI and we have this gap that is still a huge gap. So you and I completely agree on that. To your question about what's going on in entrepreneurship, though, it's all good news. The problem that we set out to solve with Global Entrepreneurship Network and that we're now, you know, our mission statement is really simple, Jeff. It's to help anyone, anywhere, launch and scale a business. Our goal was, wherever you are, if there's no access to jobs and economic development, just go create one. Start a company, turn your idea into a profitable business. Take care of yourself, your family, your community, maybe someday your whole country. So that was the goal. Entrepreneurship is just the tool set and it's the mindset of how to get there. It's not the goal. Right. And so that's what we started. We are now on the ground in general in 200 countries. And what we're trying to do is shorten the time that it takes for you to turn your idea into a business and increase the odds that your business will succeed. So given those two goals, right now, all this new tech is achieving both of those. We're making it easier, meaning with AI and stuff, it's making it easier to start a company and to build the tools you need than it ever was before. And it's increasing your odds of success because now you have help, right? There's a lot of times things that you just don't know that a chat GPT actually might be able to help you get there. Say, hey, how do I do this? And those tools say, here are the steps to do that. And you didn't have access to that before. So we think that entrepreneurship will accelerate. We're seeing that and we're seeing more people. Like you said, you gave the perfect example, Jeff. Creatives than in the past would say, I could never start a business. I have no idea how. And now they don't need to know all the how, they just need to know how to use the tools. So everything is going the right direction and helping entrepreneurs get going faster and cheaper.
- [45:01]
B
What. What would be a really interesting emerging nation from entrepreneurial activity right now based on what you're seeing
- [45:12]
A
it probably, I see it a lot, but probably in Africa because some of the African nations, like I was recently in Kenya, I was in Nigeria. Now let's pick Nigeria because all these young Nigerians on the trip I was just on never thought of themselves as entrepreneurs, never thought they could build companies. And they're all in there exploring these new tools and saying, wait a minute, maybe the, the knowledge gaps that I had are filled by this technology and maybe I could start a company. And they never thought that before. I was just there not long ago, meeting with hundreds of of Nigerians, admittedly mostly young Nigerians, but they've been told their whole lives to go get a job and now they think they can go create one and they didn't before. The other thing that's interesting is they get to skip all the middle layers, right in places like the US we build this technology and then it's outdated, and then the next one it's outdated, they just go straight to the most recent one and skip all the levels that we had to go through in between. So it's an exciting time. I definitely feel like you'll see a lot. And the one other reason why I pick Africa, because in Africa, it's actually life or death. They actually have to find solutions to create food, to provide clean drinking water, to get educated, for transportation. It matters if you're. One time somebody said to me, by the way, this was a minister of a European country said in the cabinet, said, we don't see you in Europe a lot. And I said, well, I said a couple sitting at a cafe along the Seine river in Paris, you know, eating croissants really doesn't need my help. They don't need our help as much. Life is good there somebody in Africa that has no idea where they're going to produce enough food to feed themselves or anyone around them, they need to figure out an agricultural improvement to be able to eat. So it's life or death. Places where it's literally life. Innovation is a life or death matter. They're finding ways to get it done. That's why I pick Africa and a lot of the countries there, like Kenya and Nigeria as examples. To answer your question.
- [47:37]
B
Well, and a predictor of future entrepreneurial success is an early entrepreneurial exposure or experience. And in every family I talk about this with our, our franchise candidates and also our franchisees, but they may be the first one in their family that has take used the franchise model to accessibility into business ownership. So now, okay, they're the first time they're getting all the road rash. It's hard, they're getting all the hard lessons. But as they're going through and building capabilities as a business owner, and I also want to talk about curiosity with you before we get off here. But as they're building these capabilities, there's a child or a niece or a nephew or a brother or sister that's watching them try to become an entrepreneur. So if you go to Africa and you give these people early entrepreneurial experiences, it's a, it changes the paradigm, it changes the way that they think about life. They don't feel so trapped. You're giving them hope, you're giving them direction, you're giving them inspiration and all of the things. And I've. One of the reasons, I mean, I came out of retire, I say came out of retirement, but like when I sold my first business, I had to decide what to do. And we all, you know, when you have an exit, it's like, okay, what am I going to do next? What matters the most to me? I could go coach kids, I could go do this, I could do speaking, I could do all the things. But for me, going back right into it and, you know, creating accessible businesses for families on Main Street USA in this country. Now we're in Canada and I think we're coming to the UK here pretty soon. I mean, that was worth doing to me and I feel it's more of a, it's a contribution in that way. Now, I didn't have a lot of visibility into how quickly that the singularity would be upon us with all of the stuff, but I mean, it's made it so much more interesting and so much faster.
- [49:37]
A
Yeah.
- [49:39]
B
I have a question about curiosity and you talk a lot about it. And one of my views of a business is owning a business does all the things you take advantage of. The tax code, accelerated depreciation, the employment tax, you get to create synergies between different businesses that you own. But one of the things that I think is undervalued is that business ownership gives you the freedom and the resources to pursue your own curiosities. What are your thoughts about that?
- [50:11]
A
Yeah, and so part of the reason curiosity is such a big topic to me is decades ago, more than 20 years ago, I had this question, what are the world's most successful people doing that everybody else isn't? Because they must be doing it differently or they wouldn't be them and the rest of us aren't. So I started studying that. And especially when I got a chance to be around my business heroes. I would be like a sponge to soak it up. But I would be a sponge that had a list of questions, right? And one of the common traits that I noticed very strongly in the world's most innovative people was they still had their childlike curiosity. Right? And so that's why my, my TED talk is the power of childlike wonder. Because I talk about the fact that a five year old doesn't accept any answer, right? Why I had the example get in the car. Why? Because we're going to the store. Why? Because we need food. Why? Because we have to eat. Why? Because if we don't eat, we'll die. Why? Right. They never stop asking why. And I started to notice that these really successful people never lost that inner child sense of wonder about everything, questioning everything. So I made curiosity a huge part of my life because I was trying to emulate what those people were doing. And sure enough, the reason those innovators always come up with the next cool idea is because the funnel of knowledge and data they're taking in from the world is much broader than everybody else's. Right. If I were to ask you if you were in travel, and I said, hey, read this article about how the banking industry works, you'd be like, jeff, I'm in travel. Why would I care how the banking industry works? But these people would have read it. And if I said, why are you reading a bank thing? You're in travel? They would have said, maybe they have a good idea that no one in my industry has thought of. So curiosity is critical because it's what enables you to find good ideas in other industries and be the first person ever to bring that idea to your industry. And I like that kind of, that concept of synthesizing knowledge by putting together things that haven't been put together that way in the past. Right. Travis didn't create Uber by looking at taxi companies. He created Uber by saying, what is the sharing economy? Oh, well, it's. People have resources they'd be willing to share a little of. That's where he started. And then he said, what are task based workforces? And the answer to that was, people don't want another. They have a job. I don't want another job. I just want to make a little money on the side before my job, before I go to work. And then he read a story about micro payments. What are micro payments? You don't, all you need is a phone. You don't need a cash register and coins. If I have a phone, I can Pay you. Right. And then he read about side hustles. People want to create a side hustle, right. A little, little income outside of work. Those are the concepts that he said, how do I put those together into something useful? And he's like, I know before you go to work, why don't you give me a ride to the airport? And hence Uber was born. If you had been studying the taxi industry, the world's largest transportation company doesn't own any cars. Right. If you'd been studying the taxi industry and said, I want to start a transport company, the first thing people would tell you to do is go buy some taxis. But that's not what he was doing. He was combining cool ideas that he was curious about in a way no one else thought of. I can give you lots of examples of that. But that's why allowing your curiosity to wander and go look at things that have nothing to do with. I try to learn one new thing every day or every few days that I have no need to know. It's not in my industry. If I'm in travel. It's not a travel thing. I just try to see what's going on in the world around me and see if that idea could be used on the problem I'm trying to solve before anyone else thinks of it.
- [54:34]
B
You still take a newspaper?
- [54:37]
A
Sometimes I buy them on the road, not at home. I'm never at home. But sometimes I buy newspapers and magazines when I'm traveling.
- [54:47]
B
Yeah, it's, I don't know if the Wall Street Journal, I, I guess they're still delivering.
- [54:52]
A
They are. I, I, I see that in the airline clubs when I go in and I'll pick one up, I'll see a New York Times and a Wall Street Journal and a lot of airline clubs. So I'll grab one of each to see what's up.
- [55:03]
B
Yeah. So 15 minutes a day or every couple days. Just being very intentional. But I've also said that you have to put borders around it, meaning don't, don't spend a half a day going out down a rabbit hole when you've got important work to do.
- [55:18]
A
That is why I literally schedule my rabbit hole time. Right. I schedule time that I say for the next half hour, I'm going to go down rabbit holes. But when the, when the timer goes off, I'm done. I got work to do, and I'll do another half hour tomorrow. So I have regularly scheduled time to go down rabbit holes. But once the alarm dings, I'm done and I have to get Back to work and be productive, but schedule some time to do that. Otherwise work will eat up all your time and you'll never go down rabbit holes because I don't care what they're doing. In banking, I run a travel company. That is where you miss opportunities.
- [55:57]
B
What's the best time management piece of experience you can share for new business owners?
- [56:03]
A
For me, and I know we just have a few minutes left here. For me, the I stressed for years over my to do list because there's 20 things on it, and even when I cross one off, another one comes on and there's always 20. For me, the. The release from prison was the day I said, I'm never going to get all these things done and I don't care. It doesn't matter. When I stopped, I released myself by acknowledging that I will never finish my to do list. But more importantly, I don't have to. So instead, what I do is every day I pick up that list and I say, of all the things I could spend today on which thing gets me the closest to my most important goal, and I'll just do that and not worry about the rest. So focusing in on the tasks you can do that advance the ball farthest down the field towards the goal line. Just do that and don't worry about the rest of the stuff. I used to worry about it all, and now I say the single most important thing I could do today is this. And I'm not even thinking about the other stuff.
- [57:11]
B
Nice. So schedule time to pick up a shiny object here and there, but do it with boundaries. Awesome. Awesome. Well, look, this hour's blown by. I know, I know. We got a hard stop coming up. I really want to thank you for being on today, Jeff. It's been an honor.
- [57:27]
A
Absolutely, my friend. I. You and I could talk for a long time. I enjoy it. Join it very, very much. Thank you for having me.
- [57:35]
B
Yeah. You know, all of the things you say are things that I teach our franchise owners, so I probably pick them up along from you along the way somewhere. And. And now. And then I forgot that now I just think they're mine, but they're not. Every. All. Everything. Everything we think belongs to the universe anyway. But I do have a. As we. We're going to tug on the reins, move this towards. We're going to nudge this podcast towards the Barn. But I have a final closing question for you. All right, and before I do that, is there anywhere that you would like to direct people to pay attention to what you're doing now? Any of your charitable work.
- [58:08]
A
Yeah. The most important one to me is World Youth Horizons and it's WorldYouthOrizons.com and I only say that because whether people make a donation or volunteer time, if people want to help again, we are raising abandoned children around the world and giving them a shot at a better life. That's my most important mission. And then you could take a look at what we're doing at the Global Entrepreneurship Network, which is gen global.org as well, where we're teaching people in 200 countries how to help themselves. LinkedIn is the best place for me. My Instagram is speaker Jeff Hoffman And I have Jeff hoffman.com as well. So thanks for asking.
- [58:55]
B
Great assets. I've been to all of them and we will get everything in the show notes. So last question here. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [59:12]
A
That's hard. I know you're gonna ask such a hard question. So wait, I'm saying one sentence to somebody, right?
- [59:18]
B
One or two. Just if. What's your. What's your best go to piece of
- [59:24]
A
wisdom for, you know, probably the most useful one that I've told people, they've come back and told me, and we already discussed it a little bit today is, is take the time to define what an epic life is for you so that you're actually steering towards something. We're all so busy. Here's why we're all so busy doing so many things. And a lot of times when I listen to people, I was like, what you're doing is not taking you, is never. Was never going to take you to the place you just told me you were trying to go. So make sure you understand your definition of an epic life that you're trying to get to and have that as a North Star. And ask yourself regularly, the people I'm spending time with and the things I'm doing, are they actually taking me there? And if they're not, I shouldn't be doing those things.
- [60:17]
B
Perfectly said. Thank you so much.
- [60:20]
A
Thank you, my friend. Look forward to staying connected.
- [60:23]
B
Yeah, this has been great. My name's Jeff Duden. We have been here with Jeff Hoffman on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.