#380: Ed Zschau — The Polymath Professor Who Changed My Life

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? No sean. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the skeleton. No

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Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm very, very excited. for this episode and my guest because he's had such a tremendous impact. in my life and I haven't seen him in quite a long time. So let's just jump right into the bio, which does not quite do you justice and we're gonna dig into some things that have been artfully omitted here. Ed Shaw.

Shall spelled Z S C H A U. Among many other things, interim president of Sierra Nevada College, which is a pro bono assignment he's accepted. Much much earlier he founded system industries in Palo Alto, California in nineteen sixty nine, and as its CEO led it to a successful IPO in nineteen eighty. In the nineteen nineties, he was the general manager of the IBM Storage Systems Division headquartered in San Jose, California. I believe that was what, a six billion dollar business, something along those lines. And we'll come back to that. Ed has a total of 10 years of teaching experience as a professor in the graduate business schools at Stanford University and Harvard University, and he has taught high-tech entrepreneurship courses for a total of twenty two years.

In the engineering schools at Princeton University, Caltech, and the University of Nevada, Reno. In addition to serving on the boards major public companies such as Readers Digest and StarTech, Ed has helped to start and build several technology companies during the past twenty years, some of which were founded and led by his former students, and I've met many, many of Ed's former students who have started and built tremendous companies. In the nineteen eighties, Ed represented the Silicon Valley area of California for two terms in the US House of Representatives, serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Also during the nineteen eighties, he was a general partner of Brentwood Associates, a venture capital firm, and he was the founding chairman of the Tech Interactive, which I lived very close to back when I was in California, formerly known as the Tech Museum of Innovation, a nonprofit educational institution in San Jose, California. Ed holds an A B degree, cum laudi in philosophy, bridging with physics from Princeton University, as well as an MBA, MS. statistics and PhD degrees from Stanford University and a doctor of laws degree, honoris causa, hope I'm getting my Latin correctly, from the University of San Francisco. Currently he is a senior fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. You have three children, nine grandchildren.

And I'm gonna leave out your exact resident specificity just because of the size of the audience. Ed, welcome to the show. Oh it's great to be here with you, Tim. Uh I think back to The spring.

Semester. Of two thousand. When you contacted me after all of the other students had registered for my course and Made such a Uh an impressive

Clea. to be able to enroll in the course. Uh committing if you were enrolled that you would clean the blackboards, clean the erasers, do whatever it took to make my life Easier. And

I almost cried when I heard uh those words and uh you took the course and I'm so proud of what you've done. over the past nineteen years. I don't uh blame the course for your success, but I I do blame uh

You're enrolling in the course. For our friendship. And you've taught me so much from the very beginning. I and I I I wanted to take the course for many, many reasons. This was ELE four ninety one, high tech entrepreneurship, which was in the electrical engineering department and the ORF department which I can never remember uh the the actual full name for operations and research. Operations, research and financial engineering

business whatsoever being in any engineering school, but Uh at the time The Yeah. The Princeton courses, undergraduate courses

were only very recently being voted on by students. This was a very new thing. This is before Yelp and so on. And one of the standouts. was this new course, high tech entrepreneurship. Uh taught by Professor Shao. And I I really wanted like many people to be part of this course.

And when I f when I finally was accepted to the course and um began learning. I remember at one point I was cleaning the blackboard and cleaning the erasers and you said to me, I don't know if you remember this, you said, Tim, don't get too good at cleaning the erasers. Ha ha ha. And uh there was there's a lot of direct teaching and a lot of indirect teaching, just observing you as you interact with your students and the world.

And there there's certain things. that uh you know when I describe you to my friends and I do that very often and uh a lot of your students I mean you were just telling me before we began recording stay in touch with you. And these are people from forty, fifty years ago. Uh it's it's it's remarkable. One of the things I throw in that was not in the bio I read was figure skating.

Uh Could you please tell us about Your background with figure skating. Well, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and we were fortunate to have uh an indoor

Skating rank. Where uh uh I professional ice hockey team played. Uh the Omaha Knights, they they were uh probably a farm team for one of the N H L Uh hockey teams.

And uh my mother took me to that ice rink when I was about seven years old. And uh I really enjoyed the challenge and I remember coming back from one session when I was just beginning to skate and I I said, Mom, I I really had a good day today and she said, W what was so special about it. And I said, I only fell forty times this this time. And from What you might call small beginnings, uh

began to get more proficient and more interested. And in those days uh figure skating was really figure skating, where there were precise patterns on clean ice with turns and loops that you had to uh perform in order to pass certain Tests. And I pass the pre test and then I pass the first test and the second test. And at that point I was kind of on my way, but the ice was only available during the winter. So I when I was thirteen I began spending summers away from Omaha where there were ice rinks and continued to train and continued to pass tests.

And um when I was sixteen years old I had passed the sixth test and I uh qualified for the national championships in men's singles in a a lower group, not the the world class group, but a lower group. And um I was also ice dancing with a uh a partner And in nineteen fifty six we won the silver dance championship in the Midwestern sections. There were three sections in the country, went to the national championships. And then the my senior year in high school, nineteen fifty seven, again I skated in the national championships and Uh in Berkeley, California. I never was a winner.

But um it was a special experience to meet a lot of w people throughout the country going to these championships. And I still stay in touch with my dance partner And uh a gentleman who I competed against uh in uh uh the singles championships. It was a big part of my life, Tim, and And as I think about it The hours that I spent Training.

Getting up at six AM or actually five thirty AM Being on the ice in Omaha at six AM in a cold winter, Nebraska winter, and then skating in the evening too, fitting in homework, uh school. Uh to prepare for one competition where if you did well enough you could go to the national championships It taught me a the power the value.

Of uh practice. uh of dedication Of persistence. Uh and um Determination

Those are valuable. Life lessons and character building lessons. So When people ask me, Well, how do I prepare to be a leader or to uh change the world Uh it's Through learning those values.

You don't get a a quick return. Creating value for the world. You get a quick return doing something that doesn't matter. But um if you're going to make a difference in the society, changing the world for the better, you better be prepared for the a long journey. You To me.

As as one of your stand out characteristics. Have preparation. You have you have very meticulous preparation. I remember this because Uh keep in mind people listening. As as we said, I was showing up to Potentially do my o

chalkboard duty and my eraser duty and so on. So I would arrive to ELE four ninety one early. And you would be arranging the name cards. So you had placards for the students, which is not common at Princeton. So you'd have you'd have the name cards, you'd be arranging chairs and uh reviewing potentially the uh case study materials and I don't remember

any TAs, any teaching assistants for that class. So could you talk about how you've thought about preparation outside of say figure skating? And did that come from your parents? Where did that attention to detail before the competition, whether that's a competition in business, sports, or otherwise, or just getting up in front of a class of students. Um Can you talk a to where that comes from and how you think about preparation? Uh

Well, I was a uh strong believer in Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Yeah. And so um I would come to the classroom typically forty five minutes early. Make sure that the projector was working. Uh I didn't want and and sometimes it wasn't.

Yeah. And so I w had time then to call the uh audio visual people and they'd come over and Uh get it fixed. Rather than showing right at the time the class starts and then finding that there are problems that uh disrupted the flow of the the of of the class. Uh, I think it was Benjamin Franklin.

Who wrote Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. And and so it it it's it's very important to me not to be surprised by things that go wrong. And the way that you prevent that is through preparation.

And making sure everything is the way that it needs to be for success. As far as the class is concerned, even though I had Taught uh the lessons, the sessions many, many times. I usually spent two to three hours prior to each class, preparing again.

Um I I viewed My classes which were taught by the case method of teaching and learning where

uh students would read about an actual company situation and put themselves in The position of the uh CEO or the founder or the technical person and describe what to do, I would ask questions and they would uh give the answers. And um I felt that That that approach

to um teaching and learning, putting someone in the the the position of the of the founder or the person who had to achieve the results rather than just listening and learning and reading from a book. would uh not only help to To learn but also build the confidence that uh they could do that. uh kind of job.

Well, in order to make that Experience that Classroom experience. Yeah. The best.

It was like a performance. Yeah. I w I would come in and uh I didn't know exactly how the discussion would evolve. But I knew the lessons that would come out of it, and I'd find a way regardless of what the students would say Two

convey those lessons through their Words. And the the case method. First exposure to the case method.

was in your class. And it's a method that Uh as as I understand it is is used at Harvard Business School. Uh also at Stanford Graduate School Business.

What I also found so appealing about the case method is Is it you'd As a student have these Peace s short modules, these case studies and

they would often be uh a part one with a cliffhanger, right? So the so the module one would end with some type of dilemma or disaster or big decision. And you didn't have The conclusion. You didn't you didn't have the answer meaning what actually happened in that particular case. And it allowed you to Think for yourself, but it also gave you an opportunity to speak to the class, to speak to you and to be assertive also.

Right, because you would have d I I remember, at least in my in my class, many differing opinions, some of which were polar. And uh it it it really struck me as a as a pragmatic way.

Two Allow people to be active. in the way that they're gonna have to be active if they're Ultimately. Yeah.

Yeah. When Uh Yeah. Teaching and learning

About starting enterprises or creating something new. Uh You learn by doing. And so

Yeah. The case method helps in that. Projects that are real Help uh do that. Uh One of the Princeton graduates, uh three

No, it's now four years ago. wrote her senior thesis on Can entrepreneurship be taught? Or is it something you're born with? And there are articles that have been written that um

College courses and entrepreneurship were a waste of time. They don't Matter. So in twenty fifteen when she was working on this, I uh created uh an online survey instrument.

Which I sent out to all sixteen hundred Princeton students that I had had in my classes over thirty one semesters. And uh we had to cut off the responses in order for her to m meet her thesis deadline after four hundred responses of the sixteen hundred But of those first sixteen hundred responses A hundred and sixty

had been founders of companies. And uh Among the survey questions was the question what Princeton experiences have helped you in choosing your life path and succeeding in what you Pursued.

And of the Hundred and sixty founders. Ninety five percent said it was the course. That made the difference. Um

I think what It was it's not so much what They learned in detail, but rather Pointing out to the students that this is a possible life path. That you can create something from scratch and create value.

And And what great satisfaction you get from that. It also And I attribute this to the case method. Okay

uh students the confidence they could do it. They'd read the case and say, I'm as smart as that person. I know I could do that too. And I tried to choose the cases with youth Uh founders rather than old People like me. And uh

Then there were some tools. The techniques that they learn from it. But uh I believe that everyone is born with the desire to do something beyond themselves. And as an entrepreneur

Uh starting something from scratch, making it real. Uh impacting the world in that way. Uh It fulfills. desire to do something.

Meaningful beyond themselves. Is that what uh an entrepreneur is to you? I mean, if you were to define entrepreneurs, is that someone who who built something from scratch, whatever that might be. How do you think about the term entrepreneur? Well, y you probably remember this, Tim, from the course, but Uh I assert that entrepreneurship isn't

About starting companies. Entrepreneurship is an approach to life. And you can be an entrepreneur in anything. It's about starting something from scratch. It's about making good things happen that hadn't been done before. It's a combination of innovation.

A lot of people get ideas And implementation. And that's second. Part. Implementation is the most important.

A lot of people So Wouldn't it be neat? If we could do this. And that's as far as it goes.

But entrepreneurs say Wouldn't it be neat? If We could do this And then they do it.

I wanna Say a few things and underscore a couple of things. The first is that there are only two courses I still have all the notes from. Uh meaning Courses.

classes I took as an undergrad that I still have three ring binders. Uh which contain all the notes. uh from uh one was the literature effect with John McPhee. And the other was ELE four ninety one. So I still have all of those notes. And

Uh It it strikes me that Well first from a uh just from a tool perspective, if if people want to find Uh case studies that are used at places like

Harbour Business School or Stanford Business School, you can actually find quite a few online and and order them. So th I I would encourage people to look into that. Uh the reason that I have notes from those two classes is I think In large part because I had and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, a very, very difficult and dark period in my life. Uh Junior year.

and took some time off of school. It's very, very hard time for me. And what I found in Uh The literature fact and also uh particularly in high tech entrepreneurship. was

A A teaching and reinforcing of optimism. Right, which is very different from giving all of your students rose colored glasses. You were showing that And I found this.

to be really personally very helpful in these case studies, a lot of things go wrong. But you were able to show how people figured it out. And how they learn to navigate around those things. How do you think about, if you do, the role of optimism

In any of this. Well I'm a chronic optimist. And um I believe that that

Is important. To doing things that haven't been done before? You can imagine All of the things that can go wrong. And I guess there's some value in being a realist.

But Um I don't think you do things that Haven't been done before. And succeed in that By being negative and focusing uh uh on the all of the things that

uh need to be done. Rather it's having a vision and then committing to making it real. And uh I was blessed that way. I I just look at the world I don't think through rose colored glasses. No but I when when people say that's gonna be hard

I say that It's gonna be more fun. Then'cause doing something that's hard. is a lot more fun than doing something that's easy. How did you

Uh the well I'll I'll ask uh ask two questions, so I'll start with the the one that uh should probably ask first, which is when you were, say twenty years old, fifteen or twenty, somewhere in that range. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up? Oh I knew exactly what I was gonna be. I was gonna be a physicist. Uh and uh I came to Princeton uh in nineteen fifty seven. Uh with a plan to um

Major in physics. And then in my sophomore year I discovered philosophy. And

This is way cool stuff. And I decided that I would major in philosophy with w in those days what was called a bridge program with physics. So I took all of the required courses in physics. Uh and but my department was the philosophy department. My independent work both as a junior and senior were on subjects that combined philosophy

And and physics. Uh my senior thesis was um Describing what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's theory of space and time would have been had he been born fifty years later and had known Einstein's general theory of relativity. And I described in my thesis

Yeah, this is what Kant's theory of space and time would have been. Unfortunately, uh he he didn't know general relativity based it on Newtonian physics, but uh Um Presumptuous twenty one year old. I knew what was inside Kant's head. And if he'd just known about Einstein and and his theories, uh, he would have had a different

That and uh two dollars and forty cents will get you a cup of coffee at Your favorite coffee shop. And you mentioned Einstein, I mean th the the Princeton certainly has a storied history in in some respects with with physics. Uh I mean Einstein spent time not not too far away from where we're sitting right now and uh Richard Feynman and others Certainly. Uh is that how you ended up

focusing on on Princeton and physics? I guess at that point. Uh I I'm not sure what specifically would have drawn you here, but is that what drew you to to Princeton? Well w starting from the time that I was about twelve. I was uh an Einstein

Uh Lover, I guess you'd say. I began reading about uh his theories and biographies and Uh and so forth. And So I uh applied to various colleges

Uh in the physics department, engineering physics in one case, uh And physics and all the others. And I was accepted to all of those schools. And all of them provided me with a uh rather Attractive.

Scholarship. Except Princeton. Princeton uh wrote to me and said uh You can work in the dining hall as a busboy And uh I think I could make with

twelve to fifteen hours a week, four hundred dollars a semester. And I chose Princeton because I concluded that must be the toughest school. They're not making a big deal out of me. And I wanna go where it's most challenging. Uh I've never looked back. Did you end up finding Princeton challenging?

Oh, way too challenging. And uh that that ended my figure skating career. Uh I did not have the time to continue to um practice I tried to compete in my freshman year in the Eastern Championships and didn't do that well and I began to realize that I wasn't gonna make it and

Looking back, I don't know whether I would have ever made the world team. But in nineteen sixty one Many of the uh skaters that I had either competed with, trained with, my skating coach All perished in a plane crash.

The world team on their way to the world championships in Brussels, Belgium in nineteen sixty one. And we lost the whole generation of uh world class figure skaters. And I don't know whether I would have ever gotten to that point, but I'm glad I made the choice that I did to go to Princeton, to give up figure skating

And a focus on What's Led me to be here talking to you. When did teaching enter the picture? What uh what did you what happened after if you could just paint a picture for us after your your undergraduate

experience. Navy Officers Canada School in Newport, Rhode Island. uh to begin my training in September of nineteen sixty one. Uh I went Back home to Omaha, Nebraska, worked in manual labor on the night shift in a can factory Uh and in late August was called to Fort Omaha to be inducted into the US Navy. During that uh pre induction interview I was asked if anything had happened to me health wise since uh I'd applied

In February and had it physical then and I said well I broke my leg in a rugby game at Princeton in April, but it's fine now. Uh They didn't take my word for it. They ordered an X ray and concluded it wasn't up to Navy standards, so I was unable to enter OCS in September of nineteen sixty one.

Uh very disappointed. Uh I did have an alternative. I had uh applied to Stanford Business School for the MBA program. I only applied to Stanford'cause uh Only had one essay in the application and all the others had three.

So um I I focused on on Stanford for that reason. I had been accepted and I never sent in the postcard Uh that Uh indicated that Uh I was not coming. So I retrieved the postcard, sent it in, and within

Oh, I'd say six days. My whole life changed from going into the Navy to going to California and entering the MBA program. I did not know. In that split second in April when I heard a crack When I f I fell in the rugby game.

That that would change my life so dramatically. And that's why I tell people who ask me about career planning Uh uh Yeah. Career planning is overrated.

You asked me the question though, how did you get into teaching? Well, I was uh in the MBA program at Stanford University and there, just like philosophy at Princeton, I discovered operations research, applying mathematics to real operating business problems, but operating problems in general. And I said, This is way cool.

And so rather than looking for a job as I was approaching my MBA degree, I applied for the PhD program to pursue operations research And after my first year in the PhD program The um Professor who had taught the most popular

Second year MBA course. Electronic data processing. It was the only course at Stanford Business School at that time that had anything to do with computers. He left. Unexpectedly.

And uh I went to the Dean of the business school and I said, Mr Dean, you have a problem. We've got a hundred A second year MBA student signed up to take business three sixty six electronic data processing this September And you don't have anybody to teach it. I am the solution to your problem.

I can teach that course. And they said something like Don't call us. We'll call you. And In late August about four three weeks before the course was to begin, I get a call.

Good? Can you teach that course? I said, You bet. And that's how I began my teaching career. Again, there's a life lesson here. Uh

Opportunities unexpectedly happen. And many people say Gee, that's an interesting opportunity. But it only matters in life. If you seize the moment.

If you Take advantage of that opportunity. And commit yourself to do something that You've never done before. I find that I learn the most the fastest

When I don't know what m I'm doing. And and so I'd never taught Oh. university course and all of a sudden I'm in front of a a hundred second year MBA students twenty four years old teaching a course, but I did okay.

And then uh Stanford Graduate School of Business said, Would you teach another course? I taught different courses and that's how my Teaching career began. How did you become good at teaching or Study teaching.

refine your teaching. How did you how did you work on that? because um you're an excellent teacher. There are plenty of bad teachers out there. Uh plenty of But I would consider you a

A very, very Adept teacher. How did you How did you learn to teach? I think I became a better teacher by not being smart.

And here's what I mean by it. Uh people who are really super smart Uh Learning comes too easy. I believe you can be a better teacher.

When it's more difficult for you to learn so that you can explain To Somebody else How Two

Mast or Some lesson. Uh I was I also um had the chance as a high school senior to take a course in debate.

Uh uh it was a full year course in debating. And that helped me with public speaking, but more importantly Uh the um High school teacher who taught debate. uh also uh taught the various individual events like uh oratory

And uh extemporaneous speaking. And I um wanted to compete in extemporaneous speaking. What is could you just d uh define what that what that means in this context? So well, this is the way it was uh in uh when I was in high school. Yeah, next temporary speaking contest.

A uh each A participant. Individually. Would be given a topic On which to uh speak for ten minutes.

And uh they were each contestant would have one hour to prepare the ten minute speech. So th my high school teacher said well. Come in after uh school's over every afternoon and I'll give you a topic. I'll give you an hour. And then you come back and give Your ten minute speech on that topic.

So the first time I did that, uh he gave me a topic, I spent the hour preparing, I gave my talk and when I ran out of words, uh I said, is the ten minutes up yet? And he says it's only been three minutes. And Uh but every afternoon he would do that. And uh

By the And of the Public speaking Events. that year, the contest that year, I'd become a a state champion.

In extemporaneous speaking. You asked earlier, Tim, about preparation. This is just another example. I wasn't born to be a speaker. I wasn't born to be a teacher. But I learned. To do both. And there are tools also, as you as you mentioned in your own teaching, there are tools. that you can give people and strategies which is certainly part

uh was part of ELE four ninety one. And in the cases of of your students. With the extemporaneous speaking, what were some of the What were some of the

uh keys to getting better. Were th w were there any techniques or strategies or ways of thinking about the topics you were given. That were particularly helpful. Uh

Yeah I In that Final uh event. Uh

I remember the topic. It was what was the significance Of the conflict. Between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. And I had it.

An hour to prepare that one. Before Google. Before Google. And and so Um the style of presentation, it wasn't a sort of matter of fact. It was too Prepare.

What might be called a ten minute oration. With drama. With stories With uh life lessons. And sort of end on a crescendo.

And um Let's go back to teaching. Uh I view uh teaching More about nurturing About personal values, about inspiration.

About recognizing that You can have fun. Doing great things. And um Yeah.

W the the the lessons or the facts but rather it's It's building uh I maybe even contagion uh uh this optimistic attitude and understanding that if you can change the world for the better You're that's

That's as good as it gets. Yeah. I I do think the uh You know, in retrospect it's maybe easier well, of course it's easier to see in retrospect, but How these various

chance opportunities and encounters with philosophy. With the teaching. with the extemporaneous speaking, not necessarily in that order, but how they've combined into this alchemy that has enable you to Transmit and infuse these beliefs to your students in a way that is very, very memorable, right? It's not just the text in the book.

Uh What do you remember I mean, you remember the topic, Aaron Burr? And so on. Do you remember any of the choices that you made? In uh In how you competed.

With that um competition. Oh and uh in speaking? Yeah. No, I remember Uh my debate partner At uh in high school

And then at Princeton, he was one year behind me. We had started kindergarten together and then I skipped first grade so I was one year ahead of him. Uh but when he was a junior and I was a senior He um Uh we were debate partners. In a debate team there were two on each side and one uh you were g assigned whether you were uh the affirmative speakers Uh behind uh and uh supporting the resolution or the negative speakers uh against the resolution

And I remember he was the um First affirmative. Speaker. And uh I was Sitting near while he was standing.

And He got confused and he gave the negative case. And I'm sort of making hand signals to him as he's giving the negative case against the resolution he's supposed to be speaking for. And I was gonna have to follow up on this. And he finally f realized what was happening. And He was so smooth. He said.

And that Ladies and gentlemen. Is what Our opponents would lead you to believe. However And then he quickly switched to the affirmative

That's incredible. But th there's also a lesson in this that Things sometimes don't work out exactly the way you plan, but you've gotta adapt. And figure out how to segue into what will work. I see you s you strike me as very

uh very adaptable in so many ways. I mean you've you've spent time in so many different worlds Uh And you're very good at seizing opportunities. Uh but you've also done certain things for periods of time. You've you've run uh you were in politics for for for an extended period of time

Uh How do you uh this is actually some phrasing that I heard from Rabbi Jonathan Sachs in the UK. He said, uh you know, uh how do you differentiate between opportunities to be seized And temptations to be resisted. When

I you focused for extended periods of time on single things when no doubt there were other opportunities being thrown at you. How do you think about Focusing for extended periods. Or opening yourself to opportunities. Uh this is really a simple

Uh question. Uh and it's answered with one word. P Uh

I I had situations where I had opportunities to leave Uh Uh companies that I was running. I would not leave Until

It was appropriate to leave. Where there was a successor, there was success. Um When y you're an entrepreneur and people are investing And you. When you're an entrepreneur and a CEO and employees

And customers and suppliers are counting on you. Uh You've gotta have a commitment to Do the job until You're no longer necessary.

When I took the company public My first company public and uh it was about a A ten year period. And there were times during the that ten years where We almost went under.

But when we had gone public and I could f uh and then did a secondary financing so there was sufficient capital and then did a search for a successor I felt that then I could leave to run for the Congress. Perfect segue. Why why did you decide to run for Congress? I thought I could be good at it. And and here's why it wasn't just uh

Gee, that's Way cool, like philosophy and operations research. Uh in uh nineteen seventy seven Uh I was on the board of directors of the American Electronics Association. And uh electronics companies during the seventies were

uh unable to raise sufficient amounts of risk capital. Yeah, the amount of um Capital committed to professionally managed venture capital funds during the nineteen seventies. funds that would be investing in tech companies.

was only fifty million a year. Wow. Fifty million a year. And uh I was asked to chair a task force for the American Electronics Association on capital formation to figure out what to do. And I assembled a group of entrepreneurs and investors and we concluded the single um inhibitor to sufficient quantities of risk capital investment was the high rate of the capital gains tax at the federal level at that time, which was

Fifty. Uh and looking at it, if an investor invested And uh lost money. Uh the lost all the money. If they invested and made money, they gave half of it to the federal government.

forgetting about what they'd have to give to the state government. So We felt that lowering the tax on capital gains was essential to stimulating the environment for risk capital investment, not just for electronics companies, but all kinds of job creating Yeah. And um The the task force

put together a white paper And usually that's The end of The story. Well we've um proposed the lowering the capital gains tax, but keep in mind, Tim, that This was a group of entrepreneurs.

And entrepreneurs don't just talk about it, they make stuff happen. And uh so The first thing we did is we did a survey of our the electronics industry and documenting the importance of more risk capital investment for job creation and for the ability of these companies to get started and grow. Uh then I went to

Uh Washington and testified before Congress. And there was a young Congressman from Wisconsin, Bill Steiger, who was on the House Ways and Means Committee And uh He became intrigued with this idea of lowering the tax on capital gains and so he introduced a bill to do so. And I worked with him and my

uh the whole uh electronics association uh w worked in lobbying the Ma Ways and Means Committee, uh worked with the uh Senate And by November of uh Nineteen seventy eight, about uh a year after we'd started this process with our survey Uh the federal tax on capital gains was lowered from fifty percent to twenty eight percent.

And within uh about eighteen months One billion dollars of capital flowed into professionally managed venture capital funds compared to the fifty million a year that had been happening during the seventies. And anybody who studies the nineteen eighties That number on an annual basis, uh, four or five billion a year flowing into uh No

Funds that were supporting new enterprises and job creating enterprises. So that experience particularly because Bill Steiger died of a heart attack. within a month after this bill was passed in Nov he he passed away in early December of nineteen seventy eight. The bill was passed in November of seventy eight

Uh His example inspired me to For public service. He had changed the nature of the debate in Washington on tax policy from who pays and who doesn't.

to what will be the economic impact. And uh I felt Gosh, somebody who has built a company, somebody's had the experience that I had with working with Bill Steiger to get the tax uh rate on capital gains reduced. Perhaps I had uh contribution to make in public service.

I it also strikes me, and I think you may have even said this in an interview that I read in preparing for that in uh in a very real sense you had Uh an advantage in the sense that

you could always go back to building companies. Right. Which means You weren't necessarily dedicated to being a politician as a career indefinitely from that point forward. You had very you had some attractive plan Bs or plan Cs if it didn't work out. So it Did that uh enable you to think more aggressively or differently?

Well, I I had a a a personal Um principal. The Uh I was only going to stay in the House of Representatives at most

Three terms. Six years. Um And that gave me uh Two advantages. One, a sense of urgency.

I couldn't just kinda wait around and and uh Learn the ropes. I had to start making a difference as Quickly as I Was able. And secondly, it gave me the freedom to do what I thought was right.

Uh the worst could happen is I get Retired. Or maybe it's the best that could happen. I get retired after one term or two terms. Certainly I wasn't gonna serve more than three. As it turned out, I only serve two terms in the house because As a

Congressman from California. I think there were at that time forty eight or fifty California members of the House of Representatives. And um We were a dime a dozen.

Yeah. uh congressman or congresswoman to Uh So I Felt that uh if I

Have ideas. Uh I o not only need a message, I need a megaphone. And I decided that I could get a megaphone if I became uh a US Senator from California. Uh I

Ran for the US Senate. In uh nineteen Uh started in eighty si uh eighty five for the nineteen eighty six campaign. I won the Republican nomination. Uh but I was defeated in a very close election.

But Percentage point. Three term incumbent. Uh

Alan Cranston. And um Looking back I was disappointed at the time because I felt I wasn't as good enough Canada. I had lots of support and I'd let people down.

But uh looking back I dodged a bullet. With that very close loss because Uh since then I feel through leading companies and through

at least my view, changing lives for the better of my students over many, many years. That I may have through uh Not Just their lives, but how they've changed th in a positive way the lives of others. more of a contribution to a better future than I would have as a US senator.

I believe that. I definitely believe that. Uh and Or I shouldn't say and But at the time

Uh you were disappointed. And I would be very interested to hear because we've been talking about a lot of uh your successes and you've had a lot of successes, but At that time.

When You got the news. That you had lost Uh What did the next few days or weeks look like for you? What did you what do you say to yourself when you when

When you have Uh when you experience a loss like that. Uh what do I do next to make a difference? And um I'd never been out of a job.

I mean when you think about it, it it was from teaching to starting a company to running for Congress and now I was I didn't have a next What am I gonna do next? And uh

I had the opportunity to join the venture capital firm. uh that uh was the lead investor in my first company and I uh accepted that assignment as a general partner of the firm. Uh it was Brentwood Associates at that time was a Los Angeles based venture capital firm and uh I established the Silicon Valley Office of that firm. Uh

I think they my uh partners would agree that uh I wasn't really very good at uh being a venture capital investor. Uh I'm too much of an optimist. Every deal I looked at Oh gee, that it that's really interesting. I can see how to make that happen and as of venture capitalists, you really have to be more realistic and maybe even super critical. Um but also at that time in my life

Um I viewed being an investor as Kinda like a football coach. Uh, you walk the sidelines, you send in plays, you make substitutions, you rant and rave at half time. But you never put any points on the board.

And I was still uh in At that time in my life wanting to put points on the board, meaning running a company, not being the better in the stands, but the jockey on the horse. And so when I had an opportunity to become CEO of one of the companies Brentwood had helped to start Uh I I took that opportunity in a company in the magnetic recording components business called Sensor.

How do you make uh What is your decision process like for something like that? Because you you mentioned with the venture capital general partner position. Perhaps you were too optimistic. Everything sounded interesting. But

when you make a decision to say become the CEO of a startup in the portfolio You're saying no to Other things. Presumably. So h what was the decision process like in evaluating That And saying yes to it.

Well it's it's it's again. Commitment. I mean I was part of a firm General partner of a firm that had made a a significant investment In this company

And they felt that there was a need for Uh A new CEO. And so um When uh they

Talk to me about it. It started out as well, can you go in there and help out? And be on the board and um It evolved into can you go in there and run it? And I wasn't gonna say no to my partners.

Did you in your mind or explicitly with them set expectations in the way that you did for yourself. Uh with the three term limit. as uh as a congressman, did you go in to it saying I'm I'm committing to this for

X period of time and then we'll re evaluate or was it left totally open ended? Well it was left open ended. Uh The goal is success. Rather than how how long? And um

I think you're getting to a An issue that we're I may not Be like a lot of other people. I don't do things for me.

I do things for others. So If you want to get down to what motivates you Finding something that I think is meaningful, that needs to be done, and recognizing I

Do it. And it's not about the money. That's why I do things pro bono. Um My wife is not particularly thrilled with that.

Approach. But uh on the other hand, uh I uh It's I focus on where can I make a difference for the benefit of others rather than what's in it for me.

And Um I don't know whether that's unusual. Uh but Um

It served me well. How do you uh differentiate Between The things that will Have the greatest impact for others.

And Feeling peer pressured. To commit to something, if that question makes any sense. Because it it seems like uh

It seems like people pleasing and Committing to things that will help. the greatest number of other people or deeply help other people are two different things. And I guess I'm I'm just wondering if If there are times when you commit to, say doing certain things because the general partners to whom you've made a commitment

Ask you to do it. may not always be the same thing that will have The greatest impact. Uh Maybe it's not a good question. I'm just wondering if you've ever run into a position where people want you to do one thing and you could be very good at it.

But you feel like your your abilities are better put in a different place. Yeah, w usually the the decisions that I make About how I'm gonna spend my time and my life. Are are uh made by me.

Rather than responding to requests. Uh when I Um came To offer my course here at Princeton. I hadn't gotten a phone call saying

Hey Ed, would you please come and teach a high tech entrepreneurship course at Princeton? Rather in uh June of nineteen ninety seven I asked for a meeting with the then Dean of the Engineering School, James Way. Uh and in that meeting I proposed uh that the engineering school would benefit from having a rather comprehensive program in entrepreneurship.

Uh it it just made perfect sense to me that Engineers innovate. But in order to make a difference in the world, that innovation has to then become real and commercialized and often in a startup venture. So exposing engineering students to that process and that opportunity seemed to make sense. And that was the origin of the first offering of ELA four ninety one in the fall semester of nineteen ninety seven.

Um again an instance where Uh I decided that there might be some value that I could create and Now um Princeton. Entrepreneurship the Princeton way is pervasive across this campus with many courses, with many uh co curricular and extracurricular

uh programs for the benefit of student entrepreneurs. And um the survey that I mentioned before, out of four hundred of the students that took my course, forgetting about or not including the courses, the many other courses that are now offered, uh to have uh a hundred and sixty founders of uh companies from that cadre. It would suggest to me that out of the total of sixteen hundred, that there may be three, four hundred uh founders. And I still

See, I'm I'm uh touched. when I got emails from students I I may have had a dozen years ago Uh saying Ed um You planted the seed. twelve years ago and it's finally sprouting. I've just founded my first company. It took me this long, but

Um You gave me the confidence to do it. How have you thought about Parenting. And your own kids because you're you've

You you're so deliberate in how you teach and you've prepared so extensively n not just for the courses, but for each individual class. How have you thought about Parenting. Uh

Or how would you describe your parenting style? It's It's almost the same. That um It's just that the students start A lot younger.

Um I believe that um The best way to help people Find their way. Nurture them.

Is through encouragement. Rather than direction. Um but when I was um When our children were young We have

Three children. I coached Thirteen soccer teams. Uh With

Um All three of them played soccer at one time or another. Uh I was a Cub Scout. Leader and a boy scout. Uh later.

And um The We're really proud of the way our kids turned up. Uh. We were lucky.

Uh, they were growing up in a good place at a good time. Uh probably not. Uh a lot of the challenges that Uh all parents face today. With uh the world more complicated, uh

With uh communications technology more advanced. Um But um Um Loving'em.

Uh Caring And Letting'em know. They you love'em. And you care.

Yeah. It's kinda the secret, apparently. Could you speak to the encouragement instead of rather than direction? uh a bit more. Does that mean that you're Exposing them to a lot and whatever they gravitate.

towards naturally is what you then try to foster. What what does that mean? When you say encouragement instead of direction. Uh Well They've got to live their lives.

You can't live their lives. And uh I think I benefited a lot from My own parents? They were proud of me. Whether I did well or not.

Um I learned uh When I was maybe five, six, seven years old had a Build radios and build Uh motors and uh

A basement workshop from my father who had a degree in electrical engineering, but Sadly, uh during the depression he lost his engineering job and got into a uh an assignment that really didn't have anything to do with engineering, but he c stayed in it in order to provide for his family. Uh one thing that I remember from my

parents. Uh I was as we talked about earlier, a competitive figure skater. And sometimes I didn't do well. In a competition, I may have fallen, I may have not done a school figure uh very well, not up to my ability. They never criticize me. In those situations.

They never put pressure on me. They were always supportive. And proud. Uh regardless of how well I did relative to what I could have done.

What might they say, let's just say on the car ride back after you've had for you a disappointing performance, what what what are the types of things they might say to you? Great job. Great job. Yeah and uh having been a soccer coach, um

I know that not all parents act that way. Yeah. Sometimes parents are the problem. The players are just fine. Parents are a problem. Uh but um Both of my parents Weren't raised by their parents.

My uh Mother was raised by her grandmother. My father was raised by his Mother sister Uh his mother died when he was about twelve years old.

Uh his father was in the German newspaper business in Montana, but um He he and his sister grew up in Omaha raised by His deceased mother's sister And I think as a result

Of their not having parents? They wanted to be the best parents. And so my sister, uh we n never had a whole lot of money. But my sister had ballet lessons and she was an exquisite Ballerina.

I had Piano lessons and uh Figure skating lessons and uh They just Wanted to be the best parents ever.

Um And I think they Felt blessed. To have

Two children who Wanted to succeed. Yeah, we both studied hard. We We're both good students. Went to college. We did other things besides that.

And And we wanna Both wanted our parents to be proud. Where where do you think that desire came from? Was it watching their example And the

Perhaps the diligence with which your father showed you how to disassemble and reassemble these radios. W where did the desire to please them come from if I'm not I'm not sure was The focus of my life was to please them. Right, or for them to be pregnant. I've had from the time.

I was in grade school, maybe even in kindergarten or or first grade. An overarching goal. And and that is to live a life that matters. Uh to make a lasting positive difference in the world, I call it leaving footprints.

And um That's what drive me. So some

Say well, my overarching goal is to be the richest person around. Or my overarching goal is to have a whole lot of adulation Uh and be a celebrity. My goal. Um maybe even in a quiet way.

Uh is to Leave footprints. Have there ever been times in your life where you felt like you've wandered Or been pushed away from that and then have corrected course. I don't recall. I don't recall. I I've always

Sort of m march to my own drum. Yeah. You know, one of the that's another uh Thing um. And I th maybe this is important.

Uh. For Uh your audience. Um I

Always wanted to be different. There are um People particularly with social media these days. That wanna be accepted, that Wanna be like

Others. Uh if someone has a new kind of shoe or Sure. Every You know, others want to have the same thing.

And so I've always had a desire to be different. from others. And maybe that uh enables me not only to Venture where others may not venture, but

Um Also to be satisfied. Uh doing something that Nobody else is doing. Are there any

Books. that have had a particularly large impact on your life or that you've given the most to other people? Or recommended. Well the four hour work we're

Or the four hour body. You know, I've heard they're fine books. I've heard they're those are very fine books and everyone should read them. Besides those, of course. On the top shelf, uh A are there are there any any any books that come to mind that um have impacted you strongly or that you've recommended to students or other people?

When uh I was little L when I'm talking about little like uh Six, eight. Ten years old.

There was a whole series of Writ for Children my age. Thomas Edison.

Abraham Lincoln. Benjamin Franklin. And I would read those books over and over. Because They Their lives and what they accomplished.

Yeah. What I hope to do. So it was that set of experiences. There was a book uh On the right brothers. Uh

And these were written for somebody my age. Now You can uh read Walter Isaacson's book on Benjamin Franklin or on Steve Jobs or Walter Isaacson's book on Einstein. And uh but it's the same thing. Yeah, or David McCullough's on the Wright brothers. Yes. A fabulous book. Do you still read biographies? Do you d is that's kinda

All I care about. And and it's the stories. The stories that uh are inspirational. And it gets back to what we were talking about before with the case method. Where When I'm reading a biography just like I'm hoping the students when they read a case that they think of themselves

In that situation, and what would I do? And Reading uh uh biographies well the wonderful McCullough book on the Wright brothers. Um Amazing Lessons.

Of They didn't just go out, build a plane, and fly it. A lot of setbacks. And uh disappointments. And struggles.

In order to do what they did. The same with uh I mean all of those the the it gets to what we were talking about before the preparation the commitment to excellence Uh it doesn't happen overnight. People who achieve great things even though it may look like

Uh it happened. uh quickly easily and everybody can do it. Um, most of those stories have a lot of sacrifice and difficulty and disappointments and setbacks in'em. For entrepreneurs Uh whether it's a

Students. in your classes or people listening, are there any particular biographies or books that you would Recommend. In particular. Any st any standouts or like or just particular

Figures. Well Again, uh Don't buy the books because they um Have uh lessons in them?

Buy the books because they have stories in them. And there are a bunch of'em. Um my colleague uh at Princeton, Derek Lidow. uh has written uh a couple of books and the his most recent is built on bedrock. And it's uh

Uh a l a lot of the book is about Walmart. And Sam Walton. And how it started. And he went to the Walmart Archives. And and based

his stories about Walmart on those facts. Yeah but it's it's filled with Stories about companies that were built by people On

Solid. Foundation. Built on bedrock. I had a chance. The stories are so important, I think also Uh for for for many reasons, of course, but also because it's really the glue

That's We as humans are programmed to use to remember. any of the lessons that might come out of those stories. And uh That's something that struck me when a few months ago I ha I was uh invited to go to Bentonville.

Arkansas. and interview Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart for this podcast. But it's my first time in northwest Arkansas. My first time in Bentville and I went to the I g well I I was able to see Sam Walton's pickup truck and the keys and the stories are what stick. Ah, and uh it was a fascinating, fascinating experience.

What are you most excited about? these days. I mean you're you s you seem to be moving as quickly Doing as many things as ever. Uh you certainly don't strike me as someone who's ever idle. What are you personally most excited about?

These days. Well I'm focusing No on Education. Uh

Yeah. My years of teaching uh are just Um But you look at higher education today, very expensive.

Lot of students would uh uh may not be prepared for first jobs. Um May not be prepared for a lifetime of contributions. And so just in the last couple of weeks I

volunteered to be the interim president of A wonderful Small college, Sierra Nevada College. Yeah, located in Incline Village, Nevada, right on the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Uh midst of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

And um This is a college that has Uh A dedicated faculty with real life experience In the areas they teach.

Uh they're not just teachers. They've done What they teach. Uh it is uh a college in which entrepreneurship Is pervasive.

Uh it uh has some real Focused uh capabilities in Environmental science. Well, right there on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Keep Taho blue. Environmental science is critical, uh, in that area. What a wonderful place to learn about that. It has um uh a a strong um

Entrepreneurial based business. Um Program. At the undergraduate level. And then it has a marvelous

Fine arts and creative writing. uh program. Um you don't go there to major in neuroscience. You don't go there to major in philosophy. But if you want to go to a a small college with small classes with dedicated teachers

uh to be an entrepreneurial leader both in your first job and for a lifetime of uh contributions in uh uh establishing and and building enterprises or uh being a leading environmental scientist with entrepreneurial uh approaches to that Um

Or You if you want to be like a writer You know Tim, better than anybody. Writers aren't just Uh writers. They're entrepreneurs.

to creating content but then getting their content Uh Right. And Podcasting.

That's a way of communicating with people. Um I have friends who are photographers. They became photographers. They didn't gr born photographers, but they became photographers, but they're entrepreneurs. So here's a a small college that I've volunteered to lead until a successor uh with entrepreneurial leadership capabilities is identified and takes office and continue to um

Uh one of the uh challenges these days as I just mentioned was how do we do this Less expensively. And I believe That

uh there are ways in which education can use technology to um Reduce the cost. I'm not advocating well there will never be any more classrooms, but a combination of that classroom experience with Online. Learning.

uh can uh reduce the uh costs of providing a top rated uh uh educational institution. Uh I'm also um attracted to um income sharing agreements, perhaps your audience is not familiar with them. But rather than taking out student loans, there are sources of um financing where the student uh s signs an agreement that to repay based on their income. Uh above certain levels. And if they never make

That much they don't repay, but if they make more than that threshold level, uh then they uh pay and May pay more than uh the the amount of the the debt. But having uh students graduating with huge amounts of debt r reduces their uh choices. And you asked me earlier, well w how do you choose what you wanna do? Well I wanna change the world, I wanna do

Things that will benefit others. You have a lot of debt. you may not be able to make those choices that are in that direction. You have to focus first on well how do I make um enough money to pay off my debt. So And

Um I don't know whether uh any of the people who are listening to this podcast are thinking about enrolling in a a unique educational institution, but we do have a few Uh openings left. uh for f entering freshmen this even this fall in late August. Uh so if there are

people who are interested in coming to a um get a uniquely valuable educational experience in a beautiful setting Um Look up Sierra Nevada dot EDU. And I'll link to that in the show notes for everyone as well. So

You'll be able to find those links really easily. Uh The income sharing is is very, very interesting to me. I d I don't have much exposure to it, but there are some programming schools, for instance, uh I believe one is called Lambda School, which has this exact model and has proven very, very successful. It also puts a very uh productive onus on the Educators.

to really think through the practicalities of what they're teaching and how effective they are. how effectively they're imparting these these skills to their students. Uh Ed, do you have any particular quotes or m mantras, anything that you live your life by or remind yourself of often. Are there any particular

I mean you you mentioned say one earlier if if if you're failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail. Do you have any other any other quotes that have have really stuck with you? Do what you enjoy doing. Do it the best you know how, good things will happen.

I love it. I I may be unusual. Well, I don't know whether I'm this unusual. Uh

I like Two Get out of my comfort zone. Do things I haven't done before. Uh

I believe that Uh doing so Enables me to learn But the more I learn, the more I'm able to contribute. To others.

So do Doing the same thing. And and being able to be the best at that. Uh That's laudable.

But I my mother had a problem with me when she was alive. She so I I started out with this teaching. I mentioned how I got into it, the Sanford Graduate School of Business. And after I'd done that for a while I said Mom, um I'm gonna start a company.

And she said Buzzy That was my nickname that and my sister still calls me Buzzy and my high school friends call me Buzzy. Buzzy, you were just getting good at teaching. And and now you're gonna start a company. You don't know anything about that. And then uh the company did okay and we took it public and I said Mother, uh I'm gonna run for Congress.

Buzzy. You were just getting good at running a company. You don't know anything about politics. And um She lived long enough. So that she saw me sworn in to the US House of Representatives in January of nineteen eighty three.

And then she passed away that April. Wow. How did she how did she respond to seeing you sworn in? Uh Well, I think it's not.

She she was N She didn't express her emotions. And our feelings a lot. But

I believe she was proud. I'm sure she was. How could she not be? Yeah.

You have a uh an incredible Tradition. That's the I think is is so suiting. to you and it's so memorable for so many of your students.

And uh it has to do with Singing. And uh it seems like there have been a few different versions of this. But Uh

Where did the singing Enter the picture. With your You're teaching. Well it started way before the

Started way before that. Oh yeah. Uh when I was Probably in grade school I would write. Poems about

Things. Like The busy bee is lively. All he does is buzz. But yesterday he stung me.

And now he is a was. I said something you wrote. Going way back. And then uh I started um composing uh or using music that already existed. Then um When I was

Um in first teaching At the Stanford Graduate School of Business. There there was a tradition there where in the spring in May Uh they held a a joint faculty student event called the spring fling.

And uh The faculty would prepare a skit. And um It had perhaps Uh acting. It had perhaps some

Songs. And I became the writer For the Uh faculty skits. And then there were student skits as well.

And uh my f most famous I wrote many in for those skits about various courses and uh Well, primarily about courses. Uh, but then I'd also write the words and we had uh takeoff on Batman and Robin and we had uh um Uh a mission impossible skit and with uh where I'd write the songs and the m music.

And even after I left Uh the faculty They uh as a teacher they kept And I'd started my company they kept me on the Stanford business school faculty from the time I left, which was nineteen seventy, to nineteen eighty one. So I could continue to be the writer of the faculty skit.

Well the most famous song I wrote was um About the linear programming algorithm. how to it was called the simplex method, where uh poor students in nineteen sixty six uh when I was teaching the quantitative methods course had to learn how to do this. And linear programming was

Um Abbreviated L P linear programming. And so I wrote a song about the algorithm that was mathematically correct. That if you listen to the words. Uh you could do the simple algorithm to achieve an optimal solution to a linear programming problem. But I wrote it

Uh in the form of a dance. And uh It went something like this, Come on gang, now gather round, see what your math prof's putting down. Get in close and listen to me I'm gonna show you how to do the LP It's a new dance but it's easily done In fact you learned it in two hundred sixty one just to make sure that you can do it. Listen close while I review it Do the LP Come on baby do the LP

Be with me. We're going to pivot step day and night and optimize it out of sight. And then it went through a series of verses with the details of the simplex algorithm. First of all, form a big strong line that's it. You're looking fine. Form one more come on everybody get out on the floor. Keep forming lines one after one when you're out of cats, then you're done. Now you see how I get my kicks I've got all. Y'all in a big matrix do the LP Come on baby do the LP. Be with me. We're going to pivot step.

Day and night and optimized it out of sight. Ha ha. Incredible. So you

You use stories, you use music. I I feel like I feel like uh these these are communication skills that sort of transcend the era in which you were born. I mean these you could have gone back a thousand years and used these. You could probably go forward a thousand years and use these. And uh your students remember these things. They really remember these things and I'd love for you to talk about

Another song. that I certainly was exposed to and that is my way. And why you chose that song? Well uh Again, uh I was teaching a

Harvard Business School, uh uh in uh nineteen ninety six a course called Entrepreneurial Finance. And um For the last clas of the course I wanted to end with a a number of stories. And and s share with students my

Philosophies and It was a captive audience. Attendance was mandatory. And uh I I thought Uh what would be an appropriate

Message to convey. And um That message we've talked about It earlier parenting Um

Teaching. The message is just do it your way. And so then I thought of the song My Way and um I Put some words to that.

Song. This course's end is here. But I have in this final session. Uh. For your career, it is a most important lesson as you go down life's path.

Whether slow or in a hurry, recall the Nike and Just do it your way. Yeah. Uh It brings back the memories. And I and it not just it not only brings back the memories, but it it just refreshes

The Mark that you had on me and continue to have. And Uh I I really

Just want to Thank you, Ed, for Doing things your way. it's really had such an incredible impact on so many people and uh I I'm not gonna mention him by name, but he's a mutual friend of ours. You introduced us because we were both We are both students of yours, but

I will is a very, very, very successful entrepreneur. And uh we were going back and forth Uh emailing. in preparation for this this interview with you. And He in closing

says please give my best to Ed, any success I've had in business was due to him. That is an incredible sentence. And It's incredible. Also because

He is not the only student who would write that. I've met students of yours From China, I've met students of yours. From countries around the world who have some version Of that sentiment. And it's so incredible and it's been such a

uh privilege and such a great stroke of luck that I ended up in your class. And I just want to say that to you because it's at such a significant impact on the trajectory of my life. And uh

Certainly for me, that's a big deal. That's a really, really big deal. So I just wanted to thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Tim. And Now you know why I do what I do. I've I concluded a long time ago

I'm not gonna be able to change the world. Alone? I said My goal in life is to live a life that matters. I call it leaving footprints. But

I can Better achieve my goal. Leaving footprints with your feet. Ha ha And so

That's why I do what I do. Yeah. Well, Ed I I hope this is uh certainly I mean I can't wait to have dinner. We're gonna have dinner after this and continue to catch up. Uh

I can't wait to see what you do next. And uh I'm uh So, so happy to have a chance to Spend time together today.

And uh This has been a real pleasure for me. to do this. Well, I'm proud of you, Tim. And I'm Proud of so many people who

You refer to Who have Mm. taken my course, they've taken many other courses, they've had other experiences. But

They go out and Do great stuff. And deep down I Say to myself, Well I'm really glad I lost that Senate race.

Because otherwise I I may not have been able to do what I've been doing. Yeah. Uh I I this sounds strange to say, but uh I'm also glad I'm really glad for my sake and for the sake of many people that you lost that center raise. And uh you've just done so much

So much good. And uh you're gonna continue to do so much good. It's really inspiring. And Uh I think this is a great place to to wrap up. Is there uh anything else you would like to say or

To say before we wrap up. Well, I've told you my story. And with you know some detail that Uh Based on Tim's questions.

But Um Most important thing for you to do, you speaking to the audience Is To do it your way.

Don't Just Follow what It's recommended. Don't just Um

Pursue What others are pursuing. But Do what You enjoy doing

Do it the best you know how. Good things so Happen. And if you're Thinking more about doing something different than you're currently doing.

It's time for a change. Yeah. Yeah. Can I could not imagine a better place. To close uh

Ed to be continued. We're gonna go grab some food and continue the conversation, but thank you so much for Taking the time to do this. Oh, this is a a real treat, too. And uh oh I noticed that

There's a blackboard that's dirty and and erasers that need cleaning. So um Get to it. Yeah, there is literally. A whiteboard right behind me. So I'm gonna get get back to my my my other tasks cleaning up for Ed and uh to to be continued to and to everybody listening Uh I will include everything we've talked about in the show notes.

Uh which you can find as always at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And uh I I hope you enjoyed this even half as much as I did. And thank you so much for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Fibullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one.

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