Transcript

How to find your big idea w/Spanx's Sara Blakely

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

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Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. My grandfather in Lima Told me this legend.

Of the Spanish conquest of Peru. The few Spaniards that return from the jungle come back with these horrible stories, right? They talk about giant snakes that can swallow them in holes, spiders as big as your hands that eat birds, fierce warriors with poison arrows that can kill you in a nick. And one of the details In this legend. Was a river that boiled.

That's really where our entire story starts. A detail in a childhood legend. That's Andre Srusseau. He's a national geographic explorer and geothermal scientist. In 2010, he began a personal quest to find the boiling river he'd heard about in a childhood legend.

Did it exist? Every company that I'd work with, every geologist I could get my hands on I'd ask, hey, have you heard of a Boiling river, a large, big thermal river in the middle of the Amazon.

And some people just laughed it off and said, Well, whatever. The very last time I asked that question was actually kinda funny. I was at a mining company. I'd just give him this presentation and it went really, really well. Yeah, very put together.

And things had gone so well that I kinda loosened up a bit and I was like, Hey, one random question And I asked him about the boiling over and I asked him if if he had heard about it. And his response was Andres, you know your geothermal work is very interesting, very innovative, but Don't ask stupid questions. I walked out of that meeting with my tail between my legs. Most people thought he was asking a stupid question.

But Andres had grown up between Peru and Nicaragua. He was fascinated by the Amazon. And he believed as a scientist. That the boiling river. could exist.

Like any explorer, he found help. In some unlikely places. I've been asking around for two years, case closed. No Boiling River.

In the Amazon. I go to a family dinner and my aunt asked me about my research and I told her about the boiling river and and the legend and how it doesn't exist and how it can't exist. Well, She looks at me very seriously and she says But no one dress, it's real.

I've been there. And then my very straight least psychoanalyst uncle, you know, kinda chimes in and says no wonder she's not kidding. It's protected by a powerful shaman. Yeah, it's it's at least as wide as a two lane road, and it's so hot you can not only not touch the water, but you can't even put your hand on top of it because the vapor will burn you. My aunt used to do indigenous rights work.

And had worked. in the central proof of Amazon and made friends with the wife This very powerful shaman. Who protected this sacred thermal river. She ended up leading me into the jungle.

And then that's where I met Maestro Juan Flores, the the shaman of the boiling river. Someone who's truly changed my life. Andres found allies in the local shamans. who saw his respect for the sacred site and for traditional spiritual practices that had protected it.

The shamans offered him guidance. Still. The road ahead wasn't easy. And it wasn't exactly a road. plane ride followed by two hours by four by four on dirt roads.

Then another hour on a motorized canoe, and then another hour hiking into the jungle. Andres is quick to tell you. That he wasn't trying to discover the boiling river. Which was already known to local cultures. Rather he was trying to document it from modern science.

There were several false starts. But then The fateful moment. I walked out of the jungle and when you think of jungle you have to think of shade. It's dark in the jungle.

you see these sixty foot walls of green, which are the trees, you know, shooting straight out of the jungle. And then among the tre tops you see a cloud. Going up towards the heavens. You start following that cloud down towards the earth, and you see it's coming from this riv.

And it's It's it's hot. It was like a veil of steam just covering the clear tort colored water and then there were these beautiful just ivory colored stones on either side the bedrock. I mean I get there and I was just dumbfounded.

I ran down to the edge of the river. There were these kind of rock steps hewn into the side of this little cliff. And I climb down. And I remember almost being hugged by the vapors. You take your first breath in. And there's not too many places in the world where you're conscious of your lungs.

That dense, thick, hot air, you know, goes into your nose, goes into your body, fills up your lungs. And then you exhale. It It was Awe inspiring.

In the most Yeah. Mm-hmm Honest sense of that word. Andres first observed the river.

In two thousand eleven. It would take him another three years to prove that it was a naturally occurring phenomena. And that was still only the start. You can read Andre's full story in his Ted book. The boiling river.

It's a delightful short read, full of adventure. And science. Like any great explorer, Andres knew what it would take to succeed in this search. He had a guiding idea of what he was looking for, and he constantly surveyed the environment for clues. He recruit useful people to help him each step of the way. He had the resilience to overcome the inevitable obstacles and setbacks, and he just kept searching. It's the clasic.

Hero's Journey And like Andres. Successful entrepreneurs are always on the search for their big ideas. They aim for it, they track it, they keep their eyes open for clues, they surround themselves with a team who can help, and they rebound from dead ends and false discoveries. I believe there's only one way to find your big idea.

Look for it. Look for it. Look for it. And then act.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Not ball ten years later, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is masters of scale.

I'm Reed Hoffman. Founder of LinkedIn. Investor at Graylock. And your host. And I believe.

There's only one way. To find your big idea. Look for it. Look for it, look for it. And then act.

I often play the role of mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, and the question I'm asked often is How do I find my big idea? And how do I know it? When I see it. I always compare launching a startup.

to jumping off a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down. So this week We look at the earliest step of scaling a company. Finding the idea. you'll jump off the cliff with.

You have to have an idea. And then you have to jump. There's a myth amongst entrepreneurs of the lightning strike.

Or the aha moment. When the idea just comes to you. In reality It's rare to find the successful scale entrepreneur. Who simply received an ID.

It's more likely They were already on the hunt. If you want to find your big business idea You have to constantly search for it. Surround yourself.

With a human equivalent. Hack of bloodhounds. And when you find yourself on its trail. Follow the scent relentlessly. And be ready to act.

When you think you found it. What differentiates successful entrepreneurs from everyone else with a good idea? They pursue it. I wanted to talk to Sarah Blakely about this because her story of spotting Pursuing and realizing her big idea is both legendary

and highly unlikely. She came up with the idea for Spanx at age twenty six. by cutting the feet off a pair of pantyhose. With no background in fashion, fabrication, or business. She grew it to a billion dollar company that reinvented underwear.

without ever taking outside investment. Ай болівди кіта гер сус. happened before the idea. Popped into her mind. She succeeded because of her clarity of purpose.

Her consistent optimization of her own best thinking and her willingness to act. and her persistence to follow through. Her story is the perfect parable. For any entrepreneur looking for their first Or the next.

Big idea. She's also really fun to talk to. For a tech guy like me, I don't get to have many conversations. Like this. One of the things that I love talking about to you is, you know, my world is this whole digital world and the people who actually build things. That's super cool. I know. My world is all about butts, Reed. Hey, it's it's you know, it's uh it's different.

Whether you're making undergarments Or iPhone apps. Great entrepreneurs. are always on the hunt for the idea that changes everything. Sarah's no exception.

For her entire adult life. She spent her waking hours hunting for that big idea. Well when I was in my twenties in college, I had a visualization that I created for myself that would mean that I had arrived, and my visualization was me sitting on the Oprah Winfrey show. Because in my mind, if I was sitting on her show, it means I had done something really right. and done something amazing with my life.

And I had no idea how was gonna get there. Sara was constantly looking for the clues, trying to figure out what moves to make, so she could do something so amazing that even Oprah had to notice. And then I called the next ten years of my life filling in the blanks, I was always thinking. Is this what's gonna get me on the Oprah show, you know? I went to take the LSAT and go to law school because I thought maybe I try a famous case and that's how I end up on Oprah, but then I failed the LSAT twice and couldn't get into law school. And then I did stand up comedy for a while and I thought maybe something here is how I end up on Oprah. So I was consciously and subconsciously pursuing things that I thought could ultimately get me to that snapshot.

That meant success for me. At age twenty six, she found herself pretty far from the destination she had aimed for. I was selling fax machines door to door for a living. Door to door fax machine sales. Not exactly disruptive tech.

It was a dead end career, and Sarah knew it. She had to get out. I literally had a moment read where I pulled off the side of the road and was like, I'm in the wrong movie. This is not my life. Call the director, the producer. I'm not supposed to be being escorted out of buildings and business card ripped up in my face all day, cold calling. On the side of the road that night. Sarah's despair led to a clarity of purpose.

And that clarity became the catalyst that sparked the big idea. And so I went home that night and I wrote down in my journal I want to invent a product. that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good. This was something that I set intention for. I had really asked the universe to give me an idea. that I could bring

To the world. Different people have different ways of expressing how ideas came to them. Sarah will tell you she asked the universe and the universe answered. I would interpret it a bit different. I'd say Sarah kept asking the same set of interesting questions, starting with

Is this my big idea? And one day inevitably the answer was going to be yes. It came to her as she was getting ready to go to a party and found herself aggravated by her wardrobe options. I wanted to wear my cream pants to a party and I was a frustrated consumer that had No undergarment to wear under them that wouldn't show. So I cut the feet out of my own control top pantyhose so I could throw them on under my pants and wear any kind of great strappy heel.

And it worked beautifully. Except for they rolled up my leg all night at the party, and I came home that night and was like this should exist for women. Sarah just uttered three words that flicker like a neon flashing light. over the truly big idea. Those three words? This should exist.

They're your clue that you've stumbled onto something with real potential. If you feel as a consumer that you need it. If you can imagine a crowd of others nodding with empathetic encouragement. This just might be your idea. And Sarah had spent years scanning the horizon for that neon sign pointing to her big idea.

On she saw it. She followed the sign. How many other women had mutilated their pantyhose in exactly the same way? The answer apparently is

Plenty. I meet women all the time that have been cutting the feet out of their panios for years trying to solve undergarment issues for themselves. And they're always like, Why didn't I do sphinx? And I really just think it's because I had been looking for this and was prepared. in my mind to go for whatever idea presented itself. Sarah was prepared to go for whatever idea presented itself. So when the idea struck, she was ready.

All the other women who had the same thought. simply went to their party and back to work the next morning, leaving the neon sign This should exist. Behind them in the night. And this gets the heart of a major misconception around entrepreneurship. There is a myth.

that big ideas drop out of the sky, land in your lap, and transform you into billion the next day. Ta-da! This almost never happens. Yes, Sarah did have a key moment of inspiration in her bedroom, getting ready for a party, and that matters. But you have to look at what happened. Before that moment.

Sarah had already oriented herself squarely in In the direction of a big idea. She'd been on the hunt. For the last ten years. Whatever kind of idea you're staking out, you have to be intentional about looking for it.

Think about our explorer, Andres Russo. He knew his find was in the Amazon, and he could make some informed ideas about his launch point. As an entrepreneur, you have to put yourself in situations where your great ideas Are likely to strike. Sara has made a science of staking out.

Her own great ideas. You know, I've identified where my best thinking happens and it's in the car. And I live really close to Spanks, so I've created what my friends call my fake commute, and I get up an hour early before I'm supposed to go to Spanks, and I drive around aimlessly in Atlanta with my commute so that I can have my thoughts come to me. I mean, I thought of the name Spanks in the car. Sarah knows that she does her best thinking in the car. So she intentionally creates the time and space.

First thing every day to open herself up to new ideas. This may seem like an interesting bit of trivia, but But it's more important than it seems. When I interview guests for the show, one question I ask every single person is What is your favorite place?

To think big. Here's what some of them have said. Your favorite place to think big. Oh my god, um the Walt Disney Family Museum. Mary the easy opened Running by the Golden Gate Bridge. Mike Zuckerberg of Facebook. My one.

Pacing around in circles. Anywhere I'm with you. I mean when I'm rubbing elbows with other people who are not in my space, listening to them talk about what they do makes me better. Hasty to Netflix My living room at home in Santa Cruz. Somewhere beautiful in nature.

Yes, bitches. I keep very strange hours. I have this span of time between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. usually. In which I do a lot of thinking and a lot of work. So it's kind of a when, not a where. It's a when not a where. Walking Anywhere. Show Saber. Treadmill.

But T And getting the feeling of a good office down is really important for good thought. I saw what I thought was the perfect office, which was a Japanese tea house with beautiful custom wood by itself in a forest.

Jackie Of crash bass The Dan Studio. Yeah.

Of the Gate Foundation Taking walks and driving are for me a good time to think about things. My surfboard and then my bike. In the nature because on one side it really grounds you to see how incredible extraordinary nature is.

On the other. It really m stimulates you to think big, to dream and be ambitious. Sarah and I had already discussed her fake commute. So by the time we got around to the lightning round. The answer was pretty obvious.

And this is the one that you get a laugh. Your favorite place to think big. My car! Yes, exactly. Ha ha.

I haven't had the chance to answer my own lightning round questions. Yet. But if I did. I'd be torn between two answers. The first that I do my best thinking with other people.

Usually with just one person at a time. I have a thick skin and I don't mind being challenged. In fact, I usually ask people to tell me all the reasons why my idea will fail. This gives me an edge when it comes to spotting landmines and roadblocks. Even before I act on my idea.

But my second answer is about location. Some people think big and familiar places, like the shower or their favorite running path. And it makes sense. Familiar spots will let you go on autopilot. While your mind wanders.

But my favorite thinking spots are the ones that are brand new. I do my best thinking in cafes or new spaces, places that I haven't been in a lot. usually requires a little bit of bustle. It doesn't have to have people or not, but it has to have a a thing where I can really focus on

like a purely kind of blank page uh new part of thinking. There's a number of events where the content on stage is super boring. But I'm locked in my chair because I can't walk out. Right. And so that's the reason I always bring a notepad with me, because what I'll do is I'll start working, but I I have the focus of the fact I can't leave, I can't get distracted, I can't go work on something, I can't do email. And I'm just sitting there with my pad of paper, sitting there going, Okay, this is really fing boring. And I pull out my notepad and I start working.

Sara has some great practical advice for anyone. Looking for their next big idea. I get my ideas all over the place. I mean in a magazine I'll see an image, I'll see a color. In nature I'll see someone wearing something that just sparks something, I'll overhear a conversation. Oh my God. Have you heard this podcast Masters of Scalebox. Anybody could do this exercise. Go home and look at fifteen things in your life. And write'em down on a piece of paper and then write down how and why they could be better. You'll have

Probably a big idea right there on that sheet. Let's say you found your perfect thinking place and you stumble onto that big idea. The one that starts with This should exist sign flashing in your mind.

That's great, and I'm happy for you. But that's just the first step. Of the entrepreneurial journey. Some people have a bunch of ideas for products, but then they think they have an idea. It's like oh it's um Like I had an idea for a smartphone, because I thought, what if you had a computer in your pocket? And it's like, Well, if you had a computer in your pocket, it's not the same thing as having an idea for a smartphone.

So it's actually can we build it and can we make a business out of it? So an idea isn't complete. Until you figure out how to build the business. And we're about to see how Sarah does it. But it's useful to spend another moment looking at how some of the best business minds find that initial idea.

This happens a bunch in Silicon Valley. Tend to go, oh there's a platform shift, which businesses does that open up? Right. Now we have mobile phones, what businesses are not possible. You know now we have cloud storage, what businesses are not possible. Now we have artificial intelligence, now what businesses are possible. Another way that entrepreneurs find their ideas is by noticing a more abstract pattern or trend and building toward it. I can see this model for how the components can come together. And even though there's no initial demand for those things, I figure I can build to that.

Yeah, LinkedIn is one of those, Airbnb is one of those, right?'Cause There is a little bit of demand for Airbnb, but not a lot of demand. Right? Like it's kind of the, I want something really cheap, I wanna stay on someone's couch, that there's this thing called couch surfing. But it's like the you know I want to rent someone else's a room in their apartment or their apartment. For a night. That's like a new thing.

No matter how quickly you translate those patterns into ideas. Chances are Other people will be doing the same thing. The difference between you and them.

Is your willingness. To actually do something. You can't scale an idea that only lives in your head. You have to act on it. Because that's the only way to find out.

If it has legs. And great entrepreneurs know. Not every idea is going to succeed. But every idea should be treated Like it could.

You can only know in retrospect. Which ideas go the distance? But even if your first idea doesn't take flight. It may land you at the doorstep of your next big idea. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position.

The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years. Building. Creative planning where wealth works together.

Lear more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.

Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Chayubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.

Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Sarah's big idea. Came to her after she improvised. Her under garments. I came home that night and was like this should exist for women.

This is a pivotal moment. In Sarah's trajectory. She calls it the moment that Spanks was born. But here's the thing. It wasn't born.

Just because Sarah came up with an idea. It was born because she decided to do something about it. Sarah could have just kept cutting the feet off pantyhose every time she had a party to attend. She could have just tolerated her makeshift contraption, rolling up her legs all night. Instead, she saw an opportunity.

And seized it. It started with a little reconnaissance. I went to Neiman's and Sachs and asked, you know, what do women wear under these white pants? And the sales ladies would always say, Well, we don't really know or they'd Point me in the direction of the shapewear that did exist and it was really thick and dreadful and too much control or not what I was looking for. And then there was like regular underwear, which left a panty line that was visible. So there was this big gap. At this point in the episode

I want to acknowledge that women's shapewear is not exactly one of my personal areas of expertise. But every great investor spends time understanding underserved markets. That are not their own. So for those of you in the audience who are not

In the Spanks target market. Here's what you need to understand. Spanks may have started as normal pantyhos with their feet cut off. But that isn't where it ended. The classic spenks.

Which women by the millions now rely on. Are the length and shape of bicycle shorts. They look great under pants and dresses. Never creating seams or lines. You could compare them to old fashioned corsets.

except that spanks are breathable, flexible, and invisible underclothes. Their architectural marvels. The waistlines have an incredible non-sticky grip that keeps them in place. The legs don't roll up or show through clothes. On top of all that.

They have a funky provocative name that says This ain't your grandma's girdle. But none of this existed yet. When Sera first had the idea. She saw a gap in the market and started building toward it.

So I was doing two things. I was trying to determine if there was a marketplace beyond just my own thought and what I wanted. And at the same time I was iterating the product. Mind you. Sarah had no background in fashion design or clothes fabrication. But that didn't stop her. I tried to make the prototypes myself. I went to fabric stores and bought elastic and tried to like paper clip it to the end and then I tried to sew it. It was through the iteration of

The prototype that I really started to love it and love what it could do for my wardrobe. Sarah loved her handmade versions. But she quickly saw their limitations. She wanted to take it one step further by partnering with a manufacturing plant that could produce at capacity. And this is a critical step for anyone developing an idea.

You have to surround yourself with people who can help. Remember the river guides and shamans that our Amazon explorer called on. You have to surround yourself. with this kind of network. Sarah didn't know anyone in manufacturing.

But when she reached out to find them, They instantly understood her vision. Right. Not exactly. No one took my call.

Sarah couldn't get anyone to see the genius behind her simple idea. Footless pantyhose? What's the point? As an aside, I have a sneaking suspicion that Sarah was speaking to mostly male manufacturers. If she'd been pitching other women, she may have found a willing partner more quickly. Because they would have understood the problem she was trying to solve.

Great ideas get passed over. Because the people in charge Just don't understand the issue. But I digress. I cold called all the manufacturing plants. Every single person thought this was the craziest idea. They didn't get it.

I ended up getting one manufacturer in North Carolina that called me after I did my cold calling rounds begging all of these people to try to make my product. He said, Sarah, I've decided to help make your crazy idea. Whoa! He said the only reason why he gave me the chance was my enthusiasm for the idea. He still didn't think it was a good idea. If you're a regular listener of the show, you may remember our episode with Stuart Butterfield.

The founder and CEO of Slack. Remember what he said about getting people on board with your idea? Your ability to show your passion. to tell the story of how you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into your product. Із часто з импорт.

As the product itself. And when you have a great story, you'll bring people along. Andres, our Amazon Explorer. has another great example of how you get help. In short.

You ask for it. Yeah, at the very beginning, you're begging people to come. Heck, it's true. You're begging people to come. You're asking anyone willing to help. My wife was the first person that helped me. I had a friend from high school, cousins in Peru, cousins in Nicaragua that came down actually and helped out as well. Just friends, people who are willing to donate time at the very beginning.

So it was really home grown. I couldn't pay anybody. But people wanted that experience. You might not have the best and the brightest, you might not be the best funded, but As long as you've got a desire to move forward, I think that's where the the change really happens. That's it.

That's it. As Andre Sincera's stories both show You don't need to start with an impressive or high powered network. All you need is passion, persuasion. And grit.

And Sarah's story is one of real grit. Remember She didn't have any experience with business. Or retail. Or fashion.

I was just like, okay, this might be my way out of selling fax machines and being able to sell something that I actually really want to sell and love. One of my theories about how scale businesses work, you build a product that people love and then you scale it. And so it totally makes sense that you said, look, I cared about scale. already coming into it. Right. That was the thing. And I cared about like could this be the ticket to transforming My life and and millions of people's lives.

She was teaching herself how to realize every piece of this idea. And that included something I don't think we've mentioned yet. In twenty one episodes of the show. Patents. Most entrepreneurs.

Don't think to pursue patents right away. And my world of tech. They aren't the most important part of developing a business. But in other industries. They matter.

A lot. So I reached out to someone who knows patents inside and out. To get a bit of advice for any would be entrepreneur or inventor who's just getting started. Michelle Lee is the former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Try saying that five times fast.

Basically, she was like the chief of ideas for the entire country. And so even in an increasingly digital world, she says patents Are never gonna go out of style. People would ask me, do I ever think that all the great ideas have been invented and that at some point the patent office might run out of ideas to patent? I say absolutely not.

In this day and age, our most valuable company's assets are its intangible assets. It's algorithms, its brands, its procedures, its processes. So if you've invested your time, energy and effort and resources creating that something new and valuable You really don't want someone to be able to copy it.

Taking advantage of your work. And if you're an independent entrepreneur Like Sarah Blakely was. Michelle has a message for you.

Really, the intellectual property system and our patent system is designed to be available to everyone, whether you're Not so well funded or extremely well funded. We hope that the small players grow up to be big companies and that is how the system was designed. I think Michelle.

Would be proud of Sarah's Patton's story. I immediately went and researched patents at the Georgia Tech Library and I wrote my own patent. I got a book on patents and trademarks at Barnes and Noble on Peachtree. I have a feeling that a lot of patents have been researched at that Barnes and Noble. On Peachtree Street in Atlanta. Or the one in Union Square.

In Manhattan. Or the one on Almond in Place. In San Jose. When you find your idea, you should protect it. And if you only talk about your idea to one person

You might want to make that person A patent lawyer. And that brings me to a fascinating in Sarah's story. As she leaned into the idea of spanks, Naming them, fabricating them,

Pattening them. There was just one thing she did not do. I didn't tell anybody my idea for one year. This was a surprise answer to me. I tend to think that the best ideas are produced by networks, not individuals, and that feedback is a huge part of scaling an idea successfully.

But if you listen closely, you'll hear who Sarah means when she says she didn't tell. Anybody. I didn't want to tell friends and family because I didn't want to invite ego into the process too soon, so I kept it a secret from everybody in my life and didn't seek validation, but I did share it with like manufacturers or patent lawyers, so people who could help me move it along. And by doing that, I didn't spend My first year explaining it and defending it, I just spent it pursuing it. It's not that Sarah didn't have any input.

She just figured out where to get the most useful input. For the people who knew the ins and outs of the business. And she shielded herself from the kind of criticism that might have crippled her. An idea is its most vulnerable in its infancy, and that's also the moment in human nature we wanna immediately turn to our right or left and tell our co worker, our friend, our boyfriend, our boss, you know, I have this idea. And out of love and concern we hear a lot of things that stops us. Right in our tracks.

Well, sweetie, if it's such a good idea, why doesn't it already exist? And you know, even if this idea does take off, Sarah, you're gonna spend your savings and the big guys will knock you out of the water in six months. This kind of unhelpful input. is very common. And we've heard it on the show before. Remember our episode with Linda Rotenberg, the CO of Endeavor?

Linda has now built Entrepreneurial communities all over the world. But twenty years ago. She was a recent graduate with a dream. A dream that was about to be crushed.

My parents freaked out. And in fact My parents overheard us plotting this global organization that was gonna support high growth entrepreneurs and emerging markets. And my mother looked at my father like you've got to stop this. And my dad gently came over and reminded me that I needed to be financially independent. I didn't have anything to fall back on, and I this didn't sound like job security.

If you've listened to that episode. You know that Linda's idea ended up providing much more than just job security. And that's because she held tight to it. Even when people tried to talk her down. It isn't only entrepreneurs that face this kind of naysaying.

It's anyone with an idea that's out of the ordinary. Once again, our geo scientist Andrees had a similar experience. When he talked about his quest to find the boiling river. he didn't get a lot of love. I spent about two years asking people.

And In general, I think I could break those down into three groups. Number one the group who was like, Hey, that's funny, let's check it out. The second more average group, the central part of the bell curve, if you will, was more than

A little more dismissive of you know what, that's interesting, but highly unlikely. Like, well, you know, while you're at it, you might as well also look for Baititi. You know, that lost city of gold is gonna help you fund your research, you know? There was a final group that really personified best by the gentleman from the mining company that just thought, that's stupid, don't waste my time. As a whole, I think that we are very much geared towards the average. We teach to the average. We serve to the average. We Try to create things.

for that central part of the bell curve. Just from listening to the podcast, just from Knowing other stories, knowing my story, knowing the story of other Explorers from National Geographic, for example, who have done amazing things. You can't listen to that average.

So it's important. For entrepreneurs and anyone with an outlier idea. To remember that not everyone has the entrepreneurial mindset. Many people will tell you. That's crazy.

That's risky. You'll never succeed. Lots of people have tried this and failed. What makes you different? Why don't you just take a nice safe nine to five job?

So if you're the kind of person who will get discouraged or bullied out of your idea. You might want to do what Sarah did. And keep it to yourself. But there's also a real advantage to feedback. As I said earlier in the show

I do my best thinking when I'm around people who challenge me, who poke holes in my ideas, and who can tell me where the landmines are. This is one of the advantages, in fact, of taking investment in your company. Each time you pitch your company, you get valuable feedback. Even from the nose. Especially from the nose.

But Sarah didn't take investment. She started spanks with the five thousand dollars she had in the bank. And while I would never recommend this route to anyone. For a whole range of reasons that center on speed, support, and sanity. You have to admire.

That she grew a billion dollar company. without ever taking outside investment. Her reason? She didn't know it was an option. I just didn't even know that I could go try to raise forty million dollars read. I think I'd be not quite as tired right now. I'm really tired, but Well I mean your demonstration of grit is

Simply awesome. Thank you. My advice to each of you. You don't have to be quite that tired. But you will need Unwavering persistence.

You have to search high and low for your idea, putting yourself in situations where inspiration is most likely to strike. You have to act on it once you find it. Surround yourself with people who can help. And seek feedback from those who can help build your idea. And you have to persist.

Through the inevitable failures and setbacks. And naysayers. And when you start to bring that idea into the world. Don't let massive gaps your knowledge of how to scale your product get in the way. What you don't know.

can actually work to your advantage. Like to tell people what you don't know can be your greatest asset if you let it, if you have the courage. You know, a lot of us second guess ourselves and think, Well, I didn't go to school for this or I'm not an expert, so we don't ask the questions or we don't Pursue it. And after all that You might just reach your goal.

Remember how Sarah set her sights on the Oprah show? Well. So I invented this product and I sent a gift basket to Oprah of the product with a note in it and found out Andre who dresses her put it in her wardrobe and she put it on and loved it and basically has worn it every day since. So I ended up on Oprah's her favorite thing. Which was really helpful. Yep, of course. Describing an appearance on Oprah. As

Helpful Із лайк the universe as Large. It's a vast understatement. But here's the thing.

Sarah's entrepreneurial journey. Didn't end. When she reached her goal of appearing on Oprah. She still had years and years ahead of her. Where she built brand awareness.

One customer at a time. And what about our explorer, Andres? Remember that moment of euphoria. when he finally breathed in the steam of the boiling river. Turns out.

It too. was just the beginning. My goal was to go in. Figure out if this legend was real, and then, you know, yay, how cool, the boiling never exists, legends come to life. But there was a darker side, and that darker side was the question of why the jungle is disappearing.

This place is as wonderful as all of the legends and all of this stuff. What are you gonna do about it? Because one thing that is certainly disappearing just as quickly as the jungle are traditional belief systems and traditional respect For the jungle.

Um What do you do? We ended up starting a nonprofit, the Boiling River Project. If we do want to protect the jungle, we need to find value In it.

We need to find value in those trees standing up rather than being Cut down. You can learn more about the Boiling River project on our website. Mastersofscale.com And with that

I'll revise my theory. To find your big idea. You have to look for it. And look for it. And look for it.

And then act. And no. Та десь онли за фер степ. In a long entrepreneurial journey. I'm Reed Hoffman.

Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. The show is recorded on site in California. And produced at the studio inside SY Partners in New York. Our executive producers are

June Cohen and Darren Treff. Our producers are Dan Kedme, Chris McLeod, Natalie Chang. Jenny Cataldo and Ben Manilla. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi.

Original music and sound design is by the Holiday Brothers, mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chris Yay. Lisa Shriver, David Sanford, Saida Sapieva, and Stephanie Kent. Visit masters of scale dot com to find the transcript for this episode. and be sure to subscribe.

Mm. I had a crazy day. Can I tell you about my day before we start? Of course. Okay, so My husband's out of town for the night and I have four children under the age of seven and my seven year old locked himself in his bedroom with like a five point lock system and he figured out how to engage it. I couldn't get him out, so we had to call an officer came over to my house this morning. We got him out through the window of our second story.

And it was like seriously late for school. All my other kids were screaming, they were hungry. And then I was late for this interview because I don't know what happened with Uber. And I'm going to the Hawks game right after this and I have tequila in my bag that I'm gonna try to smuggle into the game.