← The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
609: Eric Jorgenson (CEO of Scribe) - The Obsessive Genius, Flawless Fundamentals, Building Mountains of Leverage, The Power of Writing, All Things Naval, & Manifesting Your Dream Job
01:03:57
Go to www.LearningLeader.com for all episodes of The Learning Leader Show. Eric Jorgenson is the CEO of Scribe Media, the largest Professional Publisher. He’s also the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness and The A
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- [00:00]
Ryan Hawk
How did you accidentally manifest your dream job?
- [00:05]
Eric Jorgensen
I became CEO of a company through a very surprising path. But it turns out there's some side doors into this job.
- [00:13]
Ryan Hawk
I think writing is the ultimate tool for clarity of thought.
- [00:17]
Eric Jorgensen
Publishing my book absolutely changed my life and I was about halfway through when the company suddenly went bankrupt.
- [00:23]
Ryan Hawk
How do you identify someone who is a quote, obsessive genius?
- [00:26]
Eric Jorgensen
If you find yourself having like epiphany after epiphany, you're like, oh my God, chef's kiss. Beautiful. I want to be uncompromising. So if they're a bit of an, I kind of don't mind.
- [00:36]
Ryan Hawk
What are the fundamentals in your business?
- [00:38]
Eric Jorgensen
Professional communication and presence. Understanding the emotional highs and lows of publishing a book, it is an absolutely life altering journey. If you're planning on over promising and under delivering, by all means go with traditional publishing.
- [01:01]
Ryan Hawk
Welcome to the Learning Leaders show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Texthawk 266866 to become part of Mindful Monday, you, along with tens of thousands of other Learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book, the Score that Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text hawk266866 now on to tonight's featured leader. Eric Jorgensen is the CEO of Scribe Media, the largest professional publisher. Scribe helps entrepreneurs, executives and experts write, publish and market books of exacting quality. He's also the author of the Almanac of Naval R.A. guide to wealth and Happiness. His books have sold over 1 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. During this conversation, we discuss why Eric likes to invest in quote, obsessive geniuses. Talked a lot about that and then the importance of carefully curating your content diet and why that is more important than your actual diet. Really interesting. And then Eric goes deep into the story of helping Scribe get out of bankruptcy and then ultimately being chosen be their CEO. Then we closed by talking about the importance of leaders creating a writing practice. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Eric Jorgensen. So I'm curious, how did you accidentally manifest your dream job?
- [02:57]
Eric Jorgensen
It's a, it's a pretty good hook, isn't it?
- [02:59]
Ryan Hawk
I love it. It's really good.
- [03:01]
Eric Jorgensen
I, I really only thought there were kind of two paths to being CEO. Everybody that I knew who was a CEO basically started their own company and, or climbed the corporate ladder and like worked at one company for 30 years. And last year I became CEO of a company through a very surprising path that I had not anticipated or planned for whatsoever. As a little bit of a long story, but turns out there's some, some side doors into this job. And yeah, middle of the year in 2023, found myself as CEO of a rebooted, bankrupt company that publishes books. And it's been a crazy ride so far.
- [03:38]
Ryan Hawk
Can you tell the story? I'd love to, love to hear it from your, your words. I've read about it, but I haven't talked to you specifically about it.
- [03:44]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. So, okay, so I'll start with the story of the company and then sort of make my entrance. Scribe Media is about a 10 year old company and it started 2014 with a very well known author, Tucker Max. And he just kept getting phone calls from his friends being like, how do I write a book? Should I write a book? Is this a good book idea? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And finally he's like, all right, you know what? The people need an answer. The people need to serve as a solution. So he started along with Zach Obrant, his friend and a wonderful entrepreneur and a great human being. Scribe Media, it was originally called Book in a Box. And that gives you a hint a little bit. I remember that. What they do. Yeah. So it started out as like a kind of a loose conglomeration of like writing services and publishing advice. And it turned into this like really super full featured, very high end professional service where you can essentially get a book written and published and, or published at the same level of quality that you'd get from a traditional publisher, except you own all of your rights, all your royalties, and you have complete creative control over your book. And for actually the majority of authors, that's the preferable thing. That's what's more important to them. So they started this thing 10 years ago. It grew and grew profitably and about eight years in they were ready to go do other things. Right. Zach and Tucker are founders. Like they start. So they both sort of sold their shares, stepped back and went off to do different things. And the person that sort of took over the company and took sole control and ownership after they left, there's a lot of details about this that we don't have to get all the way into, but let's just be charitable and say did not a good job. And within about 18 months, the company was absolutely bankrupt and due to sort of the nature of what he had told everybody along the way, went bankrupt. In a really surprising way. There'd been some, some sort of misleading information along the way. And so the bankruptcy caught everybody completely by surprise, including me. So I published my first book with them in 2020. I was just like tweeted, hey, I, I think I have a manuscript. And Tucker replied and was like, let's get on. So he gave me this beautiful lay of the land of publishing and showed me what my options were and sort of talked me through it. And I ended up publishing my first book with Scribe through 2019 and eventually in 2020. And I had this incredible experience, like publishing with Scribe I felt like was the future of publishing and publishing my book absolutely changed my life. I'd be curious to hear if you had a similar experience like going through that for the first time. And I, I just felt like this company was the future. And so I immediately started writing a second book and of course I started publishing it with them. And I was about halfway through when the company suddenly went bankrupt. And as an entrepreneur and as somebody who doesn't like taking no for an answer, I just, just felt like we had to save this company. So I started hitting the phones and calling everybody I know who buys companies, who knows what to do in these situations. And I eventually found these guys at Enduring Ventures, CVA and Xavier, who I'd met a couple times at these different conferences that we go to. And they have a background in publishing, they have a, in turning businesses around who had been struggling and they just felt like the perfect fit. They're a long term holding company, not a fund. So they don't flip companies. They fix, buy and hold. And so they got on a plane the next day, went to Austin, met the team, met the bank, got a feel for the situation and felt like, oh, there's a real business here, let's see what we can do. And so they ended up buying the brand essentially out of the bankruptcy, hiring over some of the team. And then this is the surprising part, calling me and saying, hey, we think you should come be CEO of this company. And I didn't know that was just like a thing that you got hired for or got phone calls for. So it was, it was a little bit of a surprise. Took a few days to kind of wrap my head around that and talk to my wife and decide if I wanted to take this leap, but ended up going for it.
- [07:36]
Ryan Hawk
Wow. What were the first, like 30, 60, 90 days like as you becoming a CEO of a company that you had not planned on you, you accidentally manifested your dream job. What was it like though, once you were then in the actual job as.
- [07:54]
Eric Jorgensen
The operator, basically like two main priorities of just trying to establish trust with everybody, especially internally, especially coming out of like a really traumatic event that everyone had just gone through inside the company and key stakeholders.
- [08:11]
Ryan Hawk
I want to hit on the trust part before we get to the second one too, because I remember paying close attention to Scribe. I've had Tucker on this show, I've seen him speak Bennett, Jason Gaignard's events with him and he left. And once I saw all the bad stuff happening, I remember thinking like, there's no way they're going to get anybody to write books with him anymore, even with Eric, because they're just too, too tall of a mountain to climb because of the trust issue. I feel, I felt like that. So that's why I was curious. You on the inside as the operator, having to regain trust from both the people working there as well as then your hopefully future customers. I can't even imagine how hard. I mean, you're probably still actively working on that, I would imagine.
- [08:55]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, definitely. I mean it's been, I mean it's just hundreds upon hundreds of hard conversations and that's, you know, that's the work at this point. You know, it definitely started with the team. And you know, the good and bad of the team is on the one hand, you know, they come into this with the most knowledge, right? Like they'd been. Some of these people have been at the company since the very beginning. So they knew what it was like under Zach and Tucker and they knew that things weren't really normal for the previous year, year and a half that led to the issue. And so they were a lot of people, I think, especially the people that kind of stuck with the company all the way through the painful parts just to like keep serving authors and taking care of each other. Like think of the people who stay at their desk truly not knowing if they were going to get paid for that work. Like, it's the most dedicated, the most hard working, the most hardcore, the most mission oriented and the most resilient. And you know, a lot of people left and during the kind of summer before as everything was falling apart. And I don't blame them, but it became this really unexpected filter for the most die hard people. And like, those are who I sort of came into at Scribe. And you know, as I joined I was like, like every single person here has the full benefit of the doubt of like, I assume you are incredible at your job and incredibly dedicated. Like, I have to Earn your trust. You don't have to earn mine. You already have it. And we're going to do our best to, like, make our way out of this really hard situation together. And it's going to be, you know, an uphill battle for a while. You already know that. But the best thing to do is just start plowing. So that's what we did.
- [10:34]
Ryan Hawk
I'll never forget one of my heroes, Jim Collins. Good to great was like the bible for me when I started out in the leadership role in corporate America. So to actually get a chance to have him on this podcast a few times is amazing. But one of the things he talked about was being both a trust willing and a trustworthy person. Like, you got to lead with trust. You have to lend it and give it fully without making people earn it. And that sounds like something you just said as the leader. Like, you don't have to earn my trust. You got it. I though, am going to work to earn it. So I'm going to be both trust willing, right?
- [11:09]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah.
- [11:09]
Ryan Hawk
And a trustworthy leader. What are some of the examples of things that you did to help establish that? Let's start first internally, with the people working on your team working for you.
- [11:21]
Eric Jorgensen
I mean, it's really the second bullet point that I was going to get to anyway, which is trying to learn as much as possible from everyone as quickly as possible. And so, you know, I think, yeah, I mean, leading with, hey, I trust you. I'm sure you're doing your job. I'm sure you're excellent at your job. I'm sure you're dedicated because you just made it through this incredible ordeal. I'm new. I need to learn everything as much as I can. And if, you know, what better way to sort of demonstrate your earnestness as a new person in a company than to try to learn everything that you possibly can about everyone and about every job. And I can't become an expert in every feature of publishing. I mean, a lot of the people on this team are, have been in publishing for decades, and they're absolute craftspeople at what they do. But I can, I can try to catch up as quickly as I can and get the big picture and understand how the pieces fit together and just like, absolutely immerse myself in that learning process as well as try to show them that I'm listening. Going through this full exercise of like, you know, what went great? What did it feel like at different times in this company? What are the things that you think are most important? What would you focus on? If you were CEO, these are conversations that bring out really interesting things and at the same time sort of start to build that trust. I really wanted, especially after such a period of instability, going into a hard time, to have people feel really comfortable and stable and like the company was or would quickly be a safe place for them to work and a stable place for them to focus on their, their true job instead of worrying about the context in which they're operating, which is all they've had to do for months beforehand.
- [13:08]
Ryan Hawk
How's it going as of today?
- [13:11]
Eric Jorgensen
I think fantastically well inside the company. I think the other thing that you listed of just like bringing the community along, you know, on the team, there's 27 people. In the community, there's hundreds and thousands. And many of them had wildly different experiences. So some of conversations go incredibly well. Some of them go badly. You know, no matter how long they go, no matter what evidence we provide, some people can't sort of change the feeling that they had or overcome it or understand that, you know, we are separate group of people working under a similar brand and that these things happen. Brands change hands, companies go bankrupt and restart. And it's happened to some of the greatest brands of our time. Yeah, Brooks Brothers Marvel, like famous brands that people really know and love, have gone through bankruptcy sometimes multiple times. And it's, it is hard and painful. And you know, people, people do take losses and I don't take that lightly. And I was one of those people. So like I, I feel their pain. I empathize deeply. And it's just, it is a, you know, we were all left in a tough situation where there's no, there are no perfect solutions and everyone is left worse off. You know, it's, it really was a tragic, tragic loss.
- [14:26]
Ryan Hawk
One of the commonalities I found among senior leaders who are running companies that have sustained excellence over time is they're really good at surrounding themselves with amazing people. Eric, I'm curious. When you're making hiring and or promotion decisions for people to be in leadership roles to work with you? And this could be whether it's at Scribe or when you're investing or you're going to back somebody, what do you look for? What are some of the must have attributes or qualities in a person that you're going to back?
- [14:58]
Eric Jorgensen
I think to your, your question speaks to it already. But, you know, the person must fit the role. There's a shockingly diverse array of people in the world and some of them, God bless, are absolutely madly in love with doing something that would be a nightmare for somebody else. And just understanding, you know, I see this as a common trait in, in the great oper I study too, like understanding and respecting this super wide array of differences between people. Ray Dalio is like very good at, very good at this and one of the earlier ones to it, I think. But over and over again I see the pattern in people coming around to personality tests or something as hiring decisions or as role planning. That's not something we've implemented yet. But just, you know, working with a really wide variety of people and understanding that, you know, when I invest in a founder, I kind of want them to be a little megalomaniacal. Like I want them to have an insane vision. I want them to be uncompromising. So if they're a bit of an. I kind of don't mind. Like they're going to have to be tough and dedicated and push things through almost no matter what in order to reach their goal. On the other hand, if I'm hiring someone to manage a team inside a company and be like the oil in the machine, that helps everyone stay focused and keeps everyone feeling good and staying like together, that's not who you want for that job. Like you've got to find somebody who's very happy to, who manage personalities and loves those conversations and is super patient. And so it's a really a dance of finding out, understanding really what that role is. And that's the first thing you can go wrong for is what puzzle piece am I actually trying to fill and trying to find someone who fits it.
- [16:45]
Ryan Hawk
When backing founders or investing in someone. I've, I read you like to fund obsessive geniuses building utopian technologies. Okay, so how do you identify someone who is a quote, obsessive genius?
- [17:02]
Eric Jorgensen
That is usually the most reliable indicator, is a track record when someone has been already working on a problem for years. Like you've got a good, you've got a good sense that they're obsessive. If they, this is like not always a good signal, but if they are almost singularly focused on it to the exclusion of other things in their life that other people would consider like table stakes, normality, like that meme, that meme of the, like the folding chair in front of the TV and the mattress on the floor of dudes will live like this and see no problem. That's a good sign. If you're finding a founder who has been obsessing about. I don't just pick a thing like AI model tuning or something and he owns nothing but Like a sick computer rig, that's a good sign. If he's built, like, a chemistry lab in his living room and sleeps under his desk, that's a good sign. Stuff like that. Those are, like, the most easily identifiable obsessive geniuses. Some people, it's just a conversational mode of, like, how deep can they go? Sam Hinkey has this great line of how deep people can go, or the depth of the person within their expertise is a truly great signal. And so you just kind of poke at. You don't have to be an expert to necessarily read the depth of the person that you're talking to. And if you find yourself having, like, epiphany after epiphany in talking with someone, you're like, oh, my God, this guy knows the history of the space. This guy knows the technology of the space. This guy knows all of the competitors in the space and has predictions for why they're going to fail. This guy knows the scientists that are working on the future materials that are going to affect this space. Like, those things. When someone really has one aspect of a market or a business, like, absolutely surrounded from what we would think of as like, a discipline perspective or a topic perspective is like chef's kiss. Beautiful. You're obsessive and demonstrably brilliant. Let's go.
- [19:05]
Ryan Hawk
Are you an obsessive genius?
- [19:09]
Eric Jorgensen
I think if I have any talent at all, it is in recognizing the genius of others.
- [19:16]
Ryan Hawk
Say more.
- [19:19]
Eric Jorgensen
I mean, look at the books that I write. Like, I. I don't try to sit down in front of a blank page and demonstrate my genius. I find people that I think are brilliant, and I spend hundreds and hundreds of hours organizing what I think are the most brilliant and useful things that they've said into a useful structure for others. If you look at the companies I invest, I think I'm a much better investor than I'm a founder. I idolize founders. I would love to be a founder. But when you meet these people that are sleeping on a gym floor and have been reading every battery chemistry paper for the last 10 years, you're like, I'm not that. I'm not that. But I love that you are. And I will do everything I can to support you in building this utopian technology. So in that is another mode of, like, I'm not a genius, but if I have any talent, it is in recognizing that you are a genius about that thing, that what you are doing is important and valuable, and that you need all the support you can get. And if I can go be an advocate for you. If I can marshal resources, if I can help convey your vision, if I can help swell your tribe, then I think that's a beautiful thing. I've got a line I drop at the end of my podcast. Every time you make a new friend or install a new good idea in your head, you move us one step closer to Utopia. And so in that sense, like recognizing brilliance, recognizing genius, amplifying it, curating it, sharing it, packaging it, repackaging it, I. I am slowly coming to terms with that. I think that's just my craft.
- [20:53]
Ryan Hawk
I think that's a skill. How have you developed that skill?
- [20:59]
Eric Jorgensen
I don't know if I can practice. I mean, I don't know if I. I can't help myself. But to do it, it is the thing that I find myself doing even when I'm supposed to be doing anything else. And I've. I think I've just gotten better at it over many, many, many repetitions. You get better at investing. The more deals you look at, you get better at writing and organizing ideas. The more hours you spend at your desk. Get better at helping authors. The more authors I talk to, I get better at, you know, crafting books for every book I read. Like, these are just putting in reps and trying to, you know, get better every day.
- [21:34]
Ryan Hawk
So this idea of recognizing obsessive geniuses, recognizing the greatness of others, and being able to synthesize some of that genius and repackage it, maybe for the masses, I guess, if that's the right way to put it. How has that skill made your life better?
- [21:55]
Eric Jorgensen
I mean, it. It really makes me who I am. Before I was even writing books about anything, I would be reading blog posts, writing, reading books and organizing those ideas, reading and.
- [22:09]
Ryan Hawk
And.
- [22:09]
Eric Jorgensen
Or listening and then processing that information is. It's how you build yourself. Like, it's. I don't think it's an overstatement to say, like, you know, the same way that your body is what you eat and breathe, literally, physically, like, your mind is the ideas that you ingest through your ears or your eyes. And I. I take that discipline relatively seriously, and I try to feed myself things that I think are, like, nutritious and valuable ideas, and it shaped everything about who I am. It's impossible to extricate that. I don't know who I would be without that. If you just stop learning at some point, what do you become?
- [22:48]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah, well, I mean, it made me think of when, as you were answering that, Paulina Pompeiano, when we focused for, like, 15, 20 minutes on what is your content diet? A lot of people who are trying to be healthy think about their diet. Diet as in the food they, they eat and some of the exercise stuff, which is obviously very important. But not enough focus is on what are you actually ingesting from a content perspective. What do you watch, what do you read, who are you following on Twitter. All of those things really are going to influence your life in a way that maybe if you're not intentional, you don't realize. And so what she was talking about and what I've, I've tried to learn from this podcast after 600 of these in 10 years, is your content diet is as important as the diet of food that you choose to eat. And I feel like that's probably something you've gotten really good at is a high caliber, high quality content diet.
- [23:51]
Eric Jorgensen
I have tried and continue to try because I think what you said before isn't, isn't quite correct. If it's not that if we stop learning, we die, it's that if we stop learning we, we will never stop learning. We're never, we're always taking in new ideas. If those new ideas are bad, then we become like zombie. Like our level of conviction does not change. Like we are just, we are certain. Ask anybody how confident they are in any idea they have and it's probably above a 5 out of 10. We are just conviction machines. Confirmation bias is a real thing and we are all learning something all the time. But if your content diet to your point is, then you're becoming a, a high conviction like zombie because someone else is smearing the equivalent of junk food information in your head, probably with an adversarial agenda, either a selfish agenda or an adversari agenda. And if you don't learn how to filter those ideas, if you don't choose for yourself what are high signal sources of information, you're going to live, but you're going to slowly become more useless, more ineffective and then outright harmful to yourself. Depending on your life depends on your ability to filter good information from bad in an, in an environment now where anybody can generate almost any level of information, where institutions in many cases have been like captured. It's a really dangerous information environment out there and it's very, very hard to pick the good from the bad. And there is no more important skill in the modern world. I think, I even think information, signal selection is a meta, is, is more important than health, fitness nutrition because you are getting health, fitness, nutrition, environment like information from the environment and you see so many people just like trust whatever is said the most times or whatever they heard 10 years ago, even though science and truth has advanced well past that. It's a really an interesting problem and it's a bit of a mind if you get too deep into it, but you can't afford not to pay attention to it.
- [26:12]
Ryan Hawk
One of the areas you chose to go really deep on is Naval. Your book, the Almanaca Naval Ravikant. I believe you sold over a million copies published through Scribe, which means as a traditionally published author, three times. I see royalty statements. They're great. Yeah, I'm glad I out earned the advance all three times. However, I know they would be much bigger if I would have published through Scribe because you, you basically take home the entire back end when you do it the way you do. And I am going to ask about some of the actual business sides of it, but let's focus more on the content for now. What made you want to dedicate your life? Because I certainly think writing a book is, is definitely dedicating at least a portion of your life to a specific topic and in your case, one person and a lot of that person's thoughts. Enough so to put it into a book.
- [27:05]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah. I'd been following naval for maybe 10 years, so I had a really good sense of what he talked about and how he talked about it. You know, I've been following him since the days when he and Nivi were writing the Venture Hacks blog, before he even started Angellist. I was probably 19 when I first heard about that blog. And I, you know, I don't agree with 100 of what he had said, but it was probably 90 plus. And that's an incredible track record. Like most people you see out there, you know, even if you hear one good thought from them, you're not like, oh my God, yes, everything this person says I agree with and it's a useful novel thought. And I mean, how many people. Just look at the track record of his life, right? Like, immigrated to the United States from India at I think 9 or 10 years old, single parent, immigrant household, super intelligent, tested his way into Stuyvesant, got into Dartmouth, had like a meandering kind of first 10 years of a tech career where he made a bunch of money and then got cheated out of it. Multiple startups, had to sue his investors to get what he was owed from his first company. Like really a fascinating American dream story. And then ended up investing in hundreds of companies that became wildly successful. Twitter Uber early to crypto. There's Postmates is another one. There's a long list of companies that he's done, plus building Angel List and a million person following from his talent in synthesizing, you know, these, like, long standing, enduring human questions and reading old philosophers, especially Eastern philosophers, and sort of making those extremely accessible, basically by tweeting summaries of what he was learning in like, six word statements that make sense to people and that resonated and that were problems that so many people have. I just felt like he was a really unique talent in a lot of different ways, and I wanted to learn from it. And I, you know, going into writing that book, because you're right, it's. I thought it was going to take three months and it took three years. So, you know, books take a long time, as I'm sure you know, but, man, it's just you've got to really want that person's ideas in your head to spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours taking those ideas in. But I knew that I would come out smarter as a result of writing this book, even if nobody ever read it. And that was, you know, that was enough reward for the. For the work.
- [29:36]
Ryan Hawk
A lot of people have read it, and he. He probably was put on the map for most of us, beyond guys like you, who were following a long time for his thread or may have been called a tweet storm at the time he did it called how to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky. You remember when you first read that and what you thought and what you picked up from. From that thread?
- [29:57]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I think I was maybe a year into writing the book and I was kind of like, you had started.
- [30:02]
Ryan Hawk
Writing the book before he that for the first time?
- [30:05]
Eric Jorgensen
I think so, yeah.
- [30:06]
Ryan Hawk
Wow. Okay.
- [30:08]
Eric Jorgensen
I started writing the book after I heard him on the Knowledge Project podcast with Shane Parish. I think that's one of his best interviews. And hearing that, I listened to it probably three times in one week, and I was like, man, there's just such timeless, universal wisdom in here. I cannot let this go. It's. It's just too sad to let this. This level of quality of information just be, like, stuck in a podcast rather than put in a book.
- [30:35]
Ryan Hawk
I was just reading through it again because I remember thinking about specifically the tweet on curiosity and, like, the power, because it almost made me rethink this podcast of following your genuine curiosity is much more useful and probably beneficial and better for everybody else than following whatever's popular right now. And I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what it is, and I've passed along that advice, but I think there is so much power and following what you're gen. It's kind of like the obsessive genius stuff. If you're obsessed about that thing, you have such genuine curiosity about the thing, whatever comes out as a result, there's a. I think a higher likelihood that will, it will benefit others than if you're kind of chasing the hottest thing right now. And I. I think that could be useful advice for anybody, not just somebody who's got a podcast or is writing books. It's following what you're genuinely interested, curious and obsessed about rather than whatever is popular.
- [31:35]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I think we are. I know that we are extremely memetic creatures and we are so influenced by whatever we see someone we look up to doing or whatever we think we see the crowd doing. But to your point, like, every time you switch a track or attacked or a medium or a project, you are interrupting the compounding process. Right. Like, I try to only do you know, naval's got another great quote of like, if you wouldn't work with someone for 10 years, don't work with them for a day. Like, that applies to almost everything. If you don't want to do a job for 10 years, I think he says your whole life, but like, let's just use 10 years because it's a little less extreme. Don't do it for a day. If you don't want to talk to somebody for 10 years, don't talk to them for a day. Like, these are, you know, this is your life and it's ending one second at a time. And you need to be very deliberate about what you choose to work on and what skills you choose to cultivate, because they're all going to compound and you want to compound to kind of reach that truly unique level of awareness, excellence, talent, craft, skill, whatever it is that you're pursuing.
- [32:38]
Ryan Hawk
When you think about the person you were before you wrote that book versus the person you were three years later after you had published it, and then even after you saw that it kind of went viral for a book. I mean, if you sell a million copies, that's basically a viral book. And books don't really go viral. I think of, like, Atomic Habits is a viral book, but your book about naval, in least the circles where I live, every single person has read it. Everybody. How did that change you? What has it done to you as a leader, as a person having experience, like the process of getting the thoughts out of your head onto the page. Compressing ideas of a guy who is one of the greatest compressors of ideas ever. And then seeing it take off in the impact it's had on you and your life. I'm curious like what that process, what that's been like for you.
- [33:29]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I mean the change from writing it was, I think, I think meaningful. Like, you know, you're spending three years marinating in these ideas, choosing which ones are important, really trying to pick up every idea, fully understand it, collect all the pieces he's ever said about it, put them in the right order. Like, like it's a, it is a high bar for understanding to assemble something like that. And so going through that really installed a lot of those mental models in my head permanently. And I, you know, I think gave me like a, almost like a Hogwarts portrait of Naval, like a mini naval sitting on my shoulder that I feel like I can converse with. And I hear him whispering like that's dumb. That's not the decision I would make when I'm about to do something that, you know, conflicts with some of those principles. So I think, you know, that's a really. And in two, most, some of the, like in both career sort of business building mental models and, and thinking and just finding mental peace on the other side. You know, nobody's perfect at this, but just giving you some of those tools to manage your inner voices, you know, try to find peace more often on a day to day basis. Like the earlier you learn that in life, I think, you know, the more time you spend happy. So I feel very grateful that I got those in and I think I was already relatively like even keeled I would say. But that gave me not just more of that, but more ways to communicate about it, I think with others.
- [35:04]
Ryan Hawk
What does he think of the book?
- [35:08]
Eric Jorgensen
He's been supportive, he's been kind about it. I'm sure that it is like from his perspective, challenging to read or to know that a million people are reading a book about what you thought 10 years ago when he's like updating himself constantly. So this is sort of a. Conversations we've had about it. But I, you know, back to sort of like going into this book, all I wanted to do it was an audience of one. I was like, I'm writing for myself. It'll be a beautiful experience for me to go through it. I want a book that my younger self would have appreciated and loved and found transformative. And I, I know that Naval is standing over my shoulder like. And I want this to be a project that he is proud to be associated with. I want it to reach that level of quality polish professionalism so that, you know, this is not something that he like, rolls his eyes at having his name attached to and that, you know, I am not known for being a perfectionist in my life, but I became a perfectionist about this project because I created that feeling for myself. And it just really raised the bar for what I felt like was done and what felt like was good enough. And I think that's a big part of why the book has done so well and gone so far is I just maximum effort.
- [36:27]
Ryan Hawk
So again, that book and the work that you had to do is really about the compression of ideas. And I think leaders within companies, whether they're big or small, and you know this because you are one, need to be extremely effective communicators in order to move the company forward, in order to hit the aggressive growth goals placed in. In front of you. And so compressing ideas is a part of that. How have you taken what you've learned from that process of writing books, which is full of that act? Right. It's full of developing that skill. How have you taken, what have you learned from that process that has now helped you as an operator, as a person running a company that needs to be an effective communicator both inside and outside of the company?
- [37:21]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, Naval is quite good at this. Another that's good as an operator communicator is Bezos. So famously he would have one really clear tagline for a year or for an era of the company. And so I've tried to do that. And coming into Scribe, in the situation that we were in, like, we have a reputation to rebuild. Right. This team is excellent. We know what we're doing, but we also know the brand and the sort of perception of the brand just underwent this super painful, like, trauma. And so how do we rebuild that? We absolutely nail the fundamentals. And so the. For the full first year and continuing still. So we're at the first year and a half. Basically the theme has been flawless on the fundamentals. It's on every slide deck. We say it in every all hands. We pin it to the slack channels. Like, we try to be flawless on the fundamentals. We don't miss deadlines, we don't ship mistakes. We absolutely nail it in effort to show everyone who's coming through right now taking a chance on us that, that we are serious, we are professionals, we are experts and we are doing the work. And this is a new day at Scribe and you can absolutely count on us to deliver what we promise. And as we are sort of now publishing that first class of authors, we were almost 100 books published since, since last fall. You know, as word of that makes its way out, I believe that is what drives that flywheel. Our reputation is everything and we have this one opportunity to rebuild it from a fresh start today. And that's what we need to focus on doing.
- [39:00]
Ryan Hawk
Eric I remember I played quarterback in college and a little bit after college and at the beginning of every practice, before practice started, the quarterbacks would go out early with our centers and we would take snaps and then we would take our first couple of steps, whether it's a run play or we would call a play and then run that play, just us in the center to work on our footwork. I think of that as mastering the fundamentals of being a good quarterback. You got to get the snap, you don't get the staff. Nothing else really matters. You fumble the ball. What are the fundamentals in your business for scribe? You mentioned a couple. Don't miss deadlines, can't make mistakes or ship mistakes. What, what are, what are the fundamentals in your business?
- [39:37]
Eric Jorgensen
There's kind of two different ways to think about this. One is the experience that authors have. And in that sense, the fundamentals are basically constant professional communication and presence. There's a lot of people who claim to sort of do the work that we do. I don't think there's anybody that does it at the quality level that we do, but I know there is nobody that does it at the experience level that we do. So we have. True, we have. They're called publishing managers and they are like your one point of contact. It's like the Mayo Clinic. Like you've got one point of contact who will be your trusted person and guide you through this entire process, this entire organization. And I don't think there is ever longer than a two, maybe three week period where you don't hear from that proactively from your publishing manager for any reason. Even if there's no updates, we message no updates like that is. That is a fundamental on that side of things. Another is understanding the emotional highs and lows of publishing a book. It is an absolutely life altering journey. As you know. You have high highs, you have low lows. It's almost like starting a company. Like, there's moments where you feel like, oh my God, we're going to sell a million copies. This is going to be the new bestseller, I'm a genius. And there are moments where you're like, I'm a. I have nothing to say. This thing is trash. I hate it. I'm throwing it away, and I'm moving to Mexico. Like, it's just, it is that high and low. And if you don't have somebody as a creative sort of partner to you who understands that and who can coach you through those moments and who says this is totally normal. Do you remember a month ago when I told you you were going to feel this way in this moment? Now, let's breathe. Let's talk through it. We've got an expert coming. We can help. Even if you have to put it on the shelf for a week, we can come back to it. Here's some affirmations to do. Watch this video, whatever it is. We will find a way to sort of coach you through it. So I think there's like, one very good, very sort of predictable cadence of communication. And then there's like, the emotional experience of working with someone who truly gets it and who's done this hundreds of times for hundreds of other authors. And then on the, the fundamentals on the craft side are numerous and varied and depends if you're talking about, like, the layout or the COVID or the manuscript. Like, there's a million different details that you have to get right through a ton of different disciplines. We have all of those disciplines on staff and experts in each of them. And so there's actually a lot of fundamentals on that side of things. It's a long list, and we just got it all organized and nailed down. But it's a very long process, and it's tough to compare apples to apples in this market. Right. Like, there's people who say they're ghostwriters who are barely literate, and there's people who say they're cover designers who do it, you know, for on Fiverr for $10, and they'll spell your title wrong. And then there's people who, you know, get paid six figures to write manuscripts, and there's people who get paid five figures to design covers, and those are very different results, even though they're listed as the same service.
- [42:40]
Ryan Hawk
Personally, I'm curious. I've published three books traditionally.
- [42:44]
Eric Jorgensen
Why'd you do that?
- [42:48]
Ryan Hawk
I got introduced to Jim Levine, a good literary agent who's worked with some of my heroes and wrote my first proposal in 2018. 20. Yeah, 2018. 2017. 2018. And I, I, I look at him as a mentor for me. He's been around forever, and we shopped it and it's, I don't Know if you had this, if you even tried, you probably didn't even go this route. But it's, it is, it is kind of a cool feeling when the book agent shops it and a few people make you an offer. We're going to pay you this advance, which is bigger than how much money I made my first job coming out of college, like my first real job, which seemed insane. And you get kind of flattered and say, okay. And then they also have first ride refusal for the next books and they do it again and you're like, okay. And before you know it, you're here. So I'm curious now though, and this happens a lot. I've talked to a lot of authors. They do the same thing I did. They get excited, they're pumped up, they get flattered. Right. Flattery works a lot. Worked on me. Still would work, I'm sure, but. But they get into like fourth and fifth and sixth books and think, hmm, I don't know if I want to go that route anymore because I know Eric's probably getting huge checks from his book sales because you own it all. Why would somebody like me switch to a company like Scribe for my next one versus going with a company that's going to offer a nice advance?
- [44:27]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, there's a few like pithy versions of this, which is if you're planning on over promising and under delivering, by all means go with traditional publishing.
- [44:38]
Ryan Hawk
Wait, if I'm going to over promise to under deliver or they are.
- [44:42]
Eric Jorgensen
You are.
- [44:43]
Ryan Hawk
Say more about that if you can.
- [44:46]
Eric Jorgensen
If you can get a fat advance and like only sell a few thousand copies and you care much more about your podcast than your book and you're just going to dash out a book and like pocket a six figure advance, like, rock on, like, absolutely do it. That's a terrible deal for them and a great deal for you. And you should take that if you are planning to really, as I call it, be the CEO of your book and have your book be a meaningful product that represents you out in the market and you're going to use it as part of building your business and representing yourself for years and years to come. You want to own that thing. You want to own all of it.
- [45:21]
Ryan Hawk
It.
- [45:21]
Eric Jorgensen
You need to control it. You need to control 100% of the rights, the creative decisions and the royalties and the reason for this. I don't know if this is a feeling you can empathize with, but I've talked to many authors who sort of, they're a year out from, they've published Their first book with a traditional publisher. For a year, they've sold, you know, five or 10,000 copies. Maybe they are not their advance, maybe they haven't. But they cannot get their publisher to give a shit about their book.
- [45:48]
Ryan Hawk
Book.
- [45:50]
Eric Jorgensen
They're one of, you know, 200 authors who published that year. They were one of the smaller advances. They're selling steadily, but not a lot. And they're screaming and begging for their publisher to do something to help grow their book. And the publisher says, you do it like you're the author. You go promote it. And the author's sitting there doing the math, being like, well, you make $7 every time I sell a book, and I make $1 every time I sell a book. Why should I go do something with it? And at that point, the book is basically like dead in the water. You've got a lazy majority partner. You don't get 100% of your income. You don't have enough margin to invest in the growth of your book. You care about spreading it as part of your building your reputation, building your business, building your awareness. But if you want to go buy copies of your book, you have to buy them from the publisher. You're basically paying full price rather than owning 100% of your rights, owning 100% of your royalties, being able to buy it directly from the publisher at cost and either resell it yourself for full margin or even make, you know, 5, 6, 7, $8 per book. So you can spend $4 on ads, you can spend $4 on marketing and still earn more than you would be earning otherwise. I. I think you have to understand that at the end of the day, you are responsible for making your book successful. That's not what the pitch meetings say. That's not what the industry says. That's prob. Agents say, because the whole industry is set up to make money off this. You failing this marshmallow test, which is like, you're gonna give me that much money right now. And it's not quite because you got milestone payments and stuff, right? But, yeah, give me that money. And you don't think about what you're selling for that, which is the majority of the equity of your book, forever.
- [47:35]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah, I think it's more than the money. It's also this idea of. Of the professionals picking you. Right. And that's a little bit embarrassing to admit, but it's. If I'm honest, that's a real thing. These professionals who have published these amazing authors, my heroes, and they're like, we're gonna sit you Right next to them. And so that probably was more impactful to me than the money. That idea of, wow, you know, because you don't necessarily, before you do it, may not think that that's possible. And now they're telling you, oh, it is. Oh, by the way, here's also. We're gonna put a, you know, some money where our mouth is at the beginning as an advance.
- [48:20]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah.
- [48:20]
Ryan Hawk
I mean, I think that that's alluring. That's also, though, why aft after you've done it a few times, that part's gone. Like, that's gone because I've already done it. I've already proven I can do it. So I don't. That. That part of it wouldn't work at all anymore. It's more like, let's think about beyond just this allure of being next to Tom Brady's book or whatever, because we have the same agent or, you know, publisher. So I think that that part is strong. I'm guessing. Do you guys get a lot of authors who have published traditionally and then said, okay, I'm coming over to you now?
- [48:54]
Eric Jorgensen
Yes. And I think there's a lot of people who go through that phase you're describing where they. They need. Even the ones who really admit it to themselves and are really honest about it, which not many are, but some people are really honest about it, and they're just like, you know what? It's validation.
- [49:08]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah.
- [49:08]
Eric Jorgensen
I want to be validated.
- [49:09]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah.
- [49:10]
Eric Jorgensen
And they. They have this perception that that's validation, and they are willing to pay whatever it takes, even if they give up hundreds of thousands of dollars on their back end of royalties in order for. To get that validation.
- [49:24]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah.
- [49:24]
Eric Jorgensen
Y. And. And who am I to say that's not a good deal for you if that is what you. Your ego needs and your. What, like, gives you peace? And you can turn that into something like, truly no judgment. Like, we all. Yeah, we all serve the ego right at the end of the day. And so it's a very. It's a good pitch. It's interestingly, like, the thing that I always try to do is keep people focused on the reader. And like, yeah, think of your favorite book. Who published it? Do you have any idea? Nobody knows. And so being having your book, like, next to Tom Brady or published by Penguin Random House or Simon Schuster or whatever, it is purely or almost purely an orientation towards what your peers think of you. Right. It's like being able to tell. Tell your author buddy that you got picked up by, you know, this agent or this Publisher, Right, right. Nobody really. None of the readers give a.
- [50:24]
Ryan Hawk
Right.
- [50:25]
Eric Jorgensen
You. What you need is to reach us. Now.
- [50:27]
Ryan Hawk
I don't even know if authors care. I don't even know. Like I would now I'm like, you know, I don't know if anyone, even authors care. I think they may used to maybe. I don't know, maybe that's just the place where I'm at currently.
- [50:37]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, I do think. I think it depends who you are and how, like, how much credit you give, like the New York publishing scene for being like top tier. But so many PE excellent, excellent professionals now have left like that little enclave of publishing. And the industry is moving more and more towards hybrid or even professional publishing, which is what scribe does at the most extreme level.
- [50:59]
Ryan Hawk
Yeah. How is it different? Because I've talked to the leaders at Page two. A number of my friends have published with them and I. I don't know if you call them a hybrid or a professional or something in the middle of that. And it seems like they do a good job. I would imagine they may be seen as competitors of what you guys do. I don't know. I haven't done the full compare contrast thing, but they seem like good people who do good work because not only do you compete probably against traditional publishing and book advances, but you also have people like that. So how do you manage that?
- [51:28]
Eric Jorgensen
Yeah, there's a whole kind of spectrum of options. And yeah, you know, traditionals on one side and scribe is very extreme on the other. And in the middle you've got, you know, somebody who'll give you like, no advance but a higher share of royalties. And then hybrid is you pay for their services and they take some. Some lesser amount of royalties. And my position is is. Is pretty extreme. And I think Tucker was correct about this 10 years ago, which is like the authors deserve and benefit from maximum quality and maximum freedom. So we charge flat fees for services, for our expertise, and we give the authors 100% of their rights, 100% of their royalties, full creative control and zero lasting commitments to us, which I think fits the whole tradition. The whole context that publishing operates in has changed in the last 10 years, basically 15 years maybe. And the traditional model that was important 100 years ago when it was created was because you need a big print run which takes upfront capital, you need physical distribution into bookstores, and you need connections to big centralized media in New York, like to get a column or a book review or get on a talk show, because that's how you sell books now. Almost all Books are sold on Amazon online. You don't need physical distribution. Most books are sold print on demand. So you don't need a big upfront capital run. You don't actually have to manage any inventory. And three people just recommend books to each other on social media, newsletter, podcasts. It is a totally open, meritocratic thing. And what you need to do is enter that market at the very highest level with your vision executed to the best possible degree. And that's what scribe does. Like, whatever your book is, we'll help you do it your way.
- [53:13]
Ryan Hawk
I think writing is the ultimate tool for clarity of thought. And so for the leaders I work with, the ones I advise, the leadership teams that my team works with, one of the things I constantly push them is when is the next time you're teaching somebody else something? Because teaching is also another tool for learning. And what is your writing practice? If we don't have one, we're going to create one. So that leads me to that person who may be a senior executive or a senior leader somewhere that they, they may have a book in them, but they're not getting a traditional book deal because they don't have that platform out there. And all traditional publishers care about is will this person, does this person have a big enough platform to sell books and then they'll give you a deal. And so those people within companies, they're not ever getting a traditional deal unless they're famous, which most of them are not. So that's where you guys could potentially come in. I'm curious, Eric, how do you help that person who thought like, ah, now I have some ideas, but I don't know if I have a full book. I'm not sure. Wow, this sounds like something that maybe because I'm not trying to run a commercial for you guys, that's not, not what this is about. It's really to me about encouraging leaders to develop a writing practice. And the ultimate writing project is getting all of those words out of your head onto the page with a focus on whatever the topic your book is going to be about. So how do you guys work and help with people like that?
- [54:37]
Eric Jorgensen
Awesome question. I will first say, like many people come to us initially with just a shadow of a thought and, and they are uncertain at the beginning. So I would say like, if you, if that sort of described you, you know what Ryan just said about like, maybe they have a book, maybe you have a word file somewhere with like book ideas written in it, maybe like a half an outline. That's when a lot of People come to us, and that's a good sign. Like basically, if you have worked your way through a hard problem that you now help others through, whether it's learning to be a leader, learning to be a manager, working in a particular industry, leading a unique kind of person, it could be for a specific career transition. Like we work with all kinds of people and this is actually kind of our bread and butters, like executives, speakers, consultants, especially people who are too busy to sit down and write, you know, with their 500 or a thousand hours at a keyboard. And what we do in that case is a time honored tradition of pairing you with an incredible interviewer and writer. And this is the way some of the most famous books ever written were written. You know, a lot of the names that we know as authors weren't the real writers of their books. They are ghostwriters or scribes more historically known everywhere throughout history and throughout literature. So there is no stigma about having a partner in creating a book like this. And yes, writing is an incredible tool for thought, but so is conversation, and so is critically working through these ideas and editing your own ideas. And really the bread and butter of what we do, the thing that we do. Most commonly, some people do choose to write and we'll coach them through that writing process. But the thing that we do for most people is pair them with someone who can help them structure their thoughts, position their book, understand who it's really for, understand what they really know and how they can teach it, and then writing out those stories and those tips and those tidbits that help them really transform their reader and position themselves as a credible expert and authority in their space, in their field, in their industry, in their company, whatever it is, and publish that, that, that book at a really high level. And you'd be shocked at how small the target audience is for some of these books that are still really transformational for people's lives. We're, we, we, we've been talking about selling big copies and stuff like that. That's good, but that's like, that's the game that most people in the traditional game are playing. Most of the authors that we work with, they have other ways to win in their business or in their life. And they have a sense that a book will position them better to win or they're trying to give back to their industry, leave a legacy or just it's on their bucket list and they've always wanted to do it and they feel like they have that gift to give to the world. And I really think it's the ultimate medium for that.
- [57:31]
Ryan Hawk
The interview process is big time. I read a story, I think it was Matt Rule, who's now the coach at Nebraska, but he was going through the interview process for the first time in a long time. This was years ago. And he said it was such an illuminating experience because he hadn't done it in a while. And so they were asking him questions that really made him think. And it in the process of preparing for the multiple interviews with multiple different football teams in this case, he's like, I got really clear on who I am, what I'm about, what I value, what I would do if I got the job. And if you don't regularly put yourself in the interview process, which you're describing really well, if you don't regularly do that, you don't get that practice. You don't get those reps of knowing who you are. So I think that's why I like to go on as a guest on podcast, like I'm sure you do regularly, regardless of audience size, because I need the repetitions of regularly voicing what I think or what I believe about any random question. It makes me sharper, makes me better. And so I think too, that's probably a good thing that you offer for somebody who. Who maybe has been in a job for a long time or maybe hasn't been in the interview process for. For quite a while. It will sharpen your thinking, the dialogue will do that. And so whether you do that to write a book or you just create groups of people to regularly talk through those things where they're curious and they're going to ask questions. I think from a leadership perspective, it is a really good idea to both ask lots of questions of others and answer questions of others so that you could really refine who you are, what you're about, and what you believe.
- [59:15]
Eric Jorgensen
It's so easy to forget how much you know and how unique and special your knowledge is. Yeah, you know, you live with it all the time. And we regularly have exactly what you're describing, where people come in and they start really talking to someone who's interested in their stories and engage and trying to help them tell that and they're like. It feels so energizing and refreshing and rewarding to look back at this mountain of knowledge that you've created and really start to organize it and process it and share it with others. It's really. It's really an incredible thing. People end up so bonded with, with their scribes and, and with scribe, because it's a sometimes a once in a lifetime experience to go through this and the process of teaching itself is so rewarding and so illuminating that people really find themselves transformed by it as leaders and as people.
- [60:06]
Ryan Hawk
Perfect way to end round one. I say round one thinking that this would be great to have around two at some point. Eric so thank you man for sharing your thoughts. The compression of ideas. This is really good. I enjoyed it. It's good to connect after I followed your writing and your story for some time. And as I said before, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both both progress man.
- [60:27]
Eric Jorgensen
Thank you so much for having me. It's a great conversation.
- [60:33]
Ryan Hawk
It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are send me a note ryan learningleader.com Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Eric Jorgensen. A few takeaways from my notes Eric's first 90 plus days as the CEO of Scribe, he spent as much time as possible learning from the current members of the team, leading with curiosity, asking questions, listening and leading with trust. Being both trustworthy and trust willing. You do not have to earn my trust. You have it then. The Obsessive genius Eric likes to invest in founders who have been obsessively trying to solve a problem for years. They are myopically focused on that one thing. They have a depth of expertise in the area where they focus and I think Eric has developed the skill to get good at recognizing that genius in others and that's helped him make really good investing decisions over the years. Then we went in depth about Naval Ravikant and I realized as I was talking about him that not necessarily everybody knows about naval and so I wanted to share some pieces of his viral Twitter thread from 2018 titled how to Get Rich without Getting Lucky. Here are some of the tweets from that thread. Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth status is your place in social hierarchy. Understanding that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you and ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. Now pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people, not short term transactional people. Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy and above all integrity. Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self fulfilling. Learn to sell, learn to build and if you can do both, you will be unstoppable and then the one that I talked about with Eric is specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. So a few of the tweets from Naval's thread and Eric was already in the process of writing a full book about the compression of ideas that he has shared and it's turned in to be an international bestseller and super useful. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader show with Eric Jorgensen. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple podcasts and you subscribe to the Learning Leader show. You write a software thoughtful review, you rate the show, hopefully five stars. And by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so so much. Talk to you soon.
- [63:48]
Eric Jorgensen
Can't wait.