A Bit of Optimism - Conversion with Ric Elias

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

On January 15th 2009, Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, against all odds, landed his US Airways Airbus safely on the Hudson River. How would you have reacted to the sound of the engines shutting down in mid-flight and the captain announcing “brace for impact”? CEO and venture capitalist, Ric Elias, was on that flight. He shared how that near-death experience transformed his views on his business and his life. This is… A Bit of Optimism.YouTube: http://youtube.com/simonsinekFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinekLinkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinekPinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/officialsimonsinek/ 

Many of us can remember when Captain Sully Sullenberger landed a U.S. Airways Airbus on the Hudson River. How would you react if you were on the plane that day? Rick Elias, who's a super successful venture capitalist, was on that plane. I wanted to talk to him to understand the lessons he learned from a near-death experience and how it transformed him. This is a bit of optimism. I wanted to start January 15th, 2009, flight 1549 from LaGuardia to Charlotte. This is the plane that landed on the Hudson River. And you were on that plane. And one thing I know, because you've talked about it, is how that experience changed you. Can you tell us what happened that day and how

it affected you? Yeah, listen, it was January 15th. So it was very cold in New York. I had had a good dinner the night before for work. I got up early, went to play hoops on the Upper West Side. And I remember walking, it was snowing, this big flakes. And I'm like, it's so beautiful. I'm just going to walk to the gym. And I had a couple of meetings, went to LaGuardia. It was coming home. I've taken that flight a hundred times and I was coming home and I had my son's basketball game when we landed and I needed a coach. And, you know, that was it. I was coming home. It was a normal day. It was gloomy and rainy and cold in New York City. But to get to the crux of it, I was given the ultimate gift, Simon. The ultimate gift to me was a near-death experience

with zero suffering where no one died, so you can talk about it freely, where you had 100% certainty of death. So to me, the question was, am I going to blow up or am I going to drown in freezing waters? And with 90 seconds to really look at life and say goodbye. So all that combination to me made it, it wasn't too long, it wasn't too short, kind of the right kind of parameters to really change your perspective on life. And I was given a massive gift, which was the chance to come back and live differently. That's my whole goal in life now. I know that when I die, I'm going to ask myself one question is, did you make the most out of the second chance you got? What were you like before or what most profoundly changed after?

I was caught up on the race. I was caught up on building a business. I was caught up on making money. I was caught up on being successful. I was probably like most people in similar circumstances that I had a little luck. I was starting to believe it was because of me. I was starting to get a little bit of a big head. Our business was really booming. But what really changed that day for me is realizing, Simon, that it all changes in an instant. We can talk about other stuff right now in this COVID environment,

but it was the realization that we can't postpone the things that matter to us. And that is a hug, a forgiveness, an experience. You know, we talked a little bit about this, but my only original thought is, you know, I collect bad wines. I drink my good ones. And the point of that is that's how I approach everything in life. I want the things that matter to me, I'm going to prioritize and I'm going to experience them and enjoy them now. And that was very clarifying. The reason I like hearing the story and the reason I think it's important to share the story is because most people won't have this kind of near-death experience themselves. And if they do, as you said, 100% of the people survived.

There was no pain. It was the best kind of near-death experience you can have. But the reason I think it's important to share these, I think it reminds the rest of us. I had an experience when I went with the Air Force to Afghanistan where I was only supposed to be there for 24 hours, and the plane that we were supposed to come home on, we couldn't get on it

because they needed the space for wounded warriors to bring them home, which is a good reason to get bumped off an aircraft. It's the best one I've ever heard. We couldn't get on another plane and we were going to be stuck there for at least four days. And I didn't tell my family that I was going to be in Afghanistan

and now they won't hear from me. Wow. Plus, when we landed, 10 minutes after we landed, the base came on a rocket attack. I've never been in a war zone before. Three rockets hit 100 yards off our nose. And so this intense paranoia came over me that I was going to die in Afghanistan

because I just didn't know. That's how my parents would find out I was there. And I remember the intensity of those feelings and the panic and the, you know, becoming someone I'm not and sort of the way I talk to people wasn't me, you know, like, you get me on that plane is the way I talk. I'm like, I don't talk to people that way. But I have one intense memory. I remember being self-aware enough to say to myself, you better remember these feelings. You better remember this. And have you been successful?

I have. And one of the ways I've been successful is I've told the story many times and I tell it more for myself than I do for others. And I'm able to go back to that time and find those feelings again because I made a specific, I put a bookmark. Long story short, we did get on another plane home that day. And it was an unscheduled flight where we brought home a fallen soldier, where I flew for nine and a half hours in the back of a cargo plane with a flag-draped casket. And it changed me. I think one of the things that

you and I have both done is we've taken these experiences and yes, we've internalized them. And yes, we've been able to live differently because of these experiences. One of the things I love talking to you about is you're very happy to share everything you know. You're not possessive with the lessons you've learned. And this is a dog-eat-dog world. Every little lesson, every piece of information you have, it's considered advantage. One of the things I find inspiring about you is you're so generous with what you've learned. First of all, thank you.

And second of all, I kind of joke, I'm like the Forrest Gump of CEOs. You know, so I never thought I would be in this position. And it is with a lot of humility that I accept the responsibility of, you know, leading 4,000 people across the globe. And if people knew how little I knew most of the time, they would be wondering if they're on the right team, right? So I, you know, I was a kid that grew up in Puerto Rico and I was a normal kid and there was nothing about me that said I was going to be able to get to this situation. And I look back and we all work hard. I just, the ball bounced my ways more often than not. And, you know, the day that that changes is the day that I'm a different person. Do you think that luck is made? I mean, you talk about being lucky a lot.

Yeah. Do you actually believe that? Yeah, 100%. 100%. Now, you can improve your odds for sure. And you can learn from a lot of the things that people will deem unlucky that ultimately may result in bigger luck. And you believe that. I know that. But I do believe that a lot of times it's understanding that you're getting lucky. Listen, we were born in incredible situations and an incredible time period and great families. And that's all luck. Having our health is perhaps the most remarkable luck you can have, right? You don't find me anybody that is worth billions of dollars that is

dying or sick and they'll trade it all. You know, I think luck can be very basic, but also can be opportunistic. You know, I struggle with the concept of luck and I consider myself lucky and I semi-joke that my biggest fear is that my luck will run out. Yeah. And I look at my own career and people are like, you did this, you did this. And I was like, no, I was lucky there. I was lucky there. And the timing was really in my favor there. You know, it's like my TED Talk when it went viral in 2009.

I mean, it happened at a time where there weren't that many TEDx talks. Yeah. And so there's no way it would stand out now. It just wouldn't happen. There's just too much. I got lucky. There's no other way to describe it. But very recently, I've started becoming uncomfortable with the term lucky. And it came from listening to people when I would watch interviews on television or something with people who were born, especially people who were born into extreme wealth. And they had this humility where they wanted to sort of downplay their position because they knew they didn't earn it. And they would say to the interviewer, you know, I'm very, very lucky. And I realized it was almost demeaning to call it lucky. Like the rest of us are unlucky. And I realized the things that I would say that it's like,

I was lucky because I'm trying to sort of be humble about that. I don't deserve this, but I realized it doesn't sound nice. And so I realized it was an insecurity. And so what I started doing is calling it gratitude. Instead of saying I'm lucky that this happened, I'm saying I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that I was able to give that first TED Talk at a time where there weren't that many TED Talks. at a time where there weren't that many TED Talks. Yeah, the difference is, and I can see how you would want to put it in that way,

is did it happen to you or did it happen because of you? In many ways, someone that was born into a lot of wealth, and by the way, I think that most of those people are actually unlucky because they're robbed from a lot of things in life. And I worry about this a lot for my kids. I worry that the success I've had has created a burden on them that is unfair. And this is why you see so many kids of what others will perceive as successful people

really not struggle in finding their rhythm is because they don't have that ability to achieve more than their parents achieve or to do certain things that others do. So, you know, it's a choice of words. I think gratitude is what you feel, what you feel about something. I think acknowledgement that you're not in complete control and then there's randomness to something, that's what I call luck.

You can improve your odds of that through hard work, through, you know, commitment, through not giving up and all those things. But it makes me feel better that, you know, commitment, through not giving up and all those things. But it makes me feel better that, you know, again, this is a belief. And the great thing about beliefs is like you choose what you want to believe. If it empowers you, then choose it. If it holds you back, then get rid of it. Was the culture in your company different before 2009 than it is today? I listened to your TED Talk and you have a lot more listens than mine, but I loved it. I was a big student of yours even before we became good friends. But I came back and I said, hey, I've realized now that this is the perch where I want to live the rest of my life. And I have

no desire to go public. And growth is an important part of attracting the talent that we want. But this is kind of a race to nowhere, which is the infinite game, right? And the core of the infinite game is winning in the game is to play the next game, right? So I came back and I decided, you know what? I'm the painter of hopefully a 50-year mural of which I'll paint the first half. Someone else will paint the other ones if we're lucky enough and who knows how long that paint will last. So that mindset really changed. I was building a company that I was going to sell and then I was going to go be happy. What I realized is I was sitting on a perch from which I could do a lot of the things that matter

to me. And at the end of the day, this doesn't belong to me. It belongs to itself. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Kars before he died. He was the originator of Finite and Infinite Games back in the mid 80s and of course as soon as i sat down with him i said how did you come up with it i have to ask and he's he was part of this uh this core of intelligentsia in the mid 1970s who were all talking about game theory but always with an eye to win they were always talking about winning yeah and dr carr said well what about play what about the actual game rather than the end of the game? And what I ended up calling the infinite mindset, he called play.

And I think a lot of people, especially in business, they keep thinking about the end where there is none. They keep thinking about the winning, which is impossible, but they actually forget about the joy of play, the joy of work, the joy of building a business or being a part of a business. And you embody this more than any other CEO I've ever met. Just an absolute love of the game with no desire to win. Yeah. When I see successful business people that are driven, their competitive spirit comes from a fear of failure. They kind of run out of gas.

If they achieve a lot, they're like, wow, I don't want to lose this, so I want to cash out. And I see a lot of people that just tap out of the game because the burden of losing becomes so massive because they're winning. The burden of losing becomes so massive because they're winning. If you take the infinite mindset back into competitive spirit, it's this notion that you're competing only against yourself. Right. And when you compete against your version of yesterday, that gives you this like endless potential.

You're never going to be the best, but you can be like one-tenth of a percent better tomorrow. I think it's very hard for us, right? There's always someone prettier. There's always somebody smarter. There's always somebody stronger. There's always somebody luckier. Always, no matter who you are, there's always somebody else. What did Teddy Roosevelt say? You know, comparison is the thief of joy. That's right. But it's so hard not to compare in a world where so much of what we do is finite and we do have to be ahead and we do have to compete for a job. You have to compete for this.

Nobody at school tells us, come to school just to get a good education. You come to school to get good grades. We define good education by the grades that we get, not by how much we learn. You mentioned earlier the sharing of knowledge. There's many ways to frame people, but some people come from a position of scarcity and some people come from a position of scarcity and some people come from a position of abundance. You know, when you meet somebody, you can quickly tell where they're coming from. You know, if your success, if your thing is something you're taking away from them, perceived or not, those are people that kind of subtract from you.

By nature of what you do, you're trying, you know, as a thinker, as a philosopher, as somebody that is really trying to, you know, bring knowledge to, you know, the masses, what you're really doing is, you know, using abundance as a principle. And I think there's something to that in the infinite game is, you know, you want to associate yourself with people that are ambitious for something greater than themselves. And that's really a big principle of our company, of Red Ventures. It's like, how do you find that? And again, it's the infinite game in a different context. That's a perfect segue. How do you find that? And how do you do that? I mean, you know a lot about a lot of companies. And when you look at the culture of your company, you compare it to others or quote unquote, the norm. What is it that you have been able to do inside your own company

that is so different than everywhere else? You know, my good friend, Danny Meyer says that a culture is like a shark. If it stops swimming, it dies. And, you know, a lot of people come and ask the question, so how do you preserve the culture? And the answer is you don't, right? Your goal is for the culture to continue to evolve in a way that is aligned with where you kind of want the general energy and direction of the team towards this version of infinite game. There's no winning of this. You just want to keep momentum in progress because life has plenty of inertia that you have to overcome. It's all physics. You know, people will be like, okay, so what's your mission statement? What's your vision? What are your values? And our model was evolving a lot,

so I was afraid to kind of anchor on something. But the one that I really struggle with is this notion of like, here are my values. And I was like, but values are things that I learned at home or I learned before I got here. I'm not really sure that I can teach somebody values. I learned before I got here. I'm not really sure that I can teach somebody values. And we landed on this word that is semantics, but it matters is we run our company through a set of belief systems. There's a series of beliefs that is how we hire, how do we promote, how do we encourage people to go work someone else. And we go to people and say, you have to believe this and it's a choice, but if you don't believe it, you're not going to do well here. So we have found a common language by which we get people to almost opt in into their journey.

It's not for everybody. Can you tell me some of the specific beliefs? Yeah. So one of my favorite ones is we believe everything is written in pencil. So what that means is you have to be really comfortable with change and adaptability. And that even things that we believe to be true today are likely not going to be true in a couple years. So you have to have a curiosity and a level of being okay with that. So what we do is we do lots of things that will make you get comfortable with that. We'll change your desk every nine to 12 months. We'll move teams around. We don't have a lot of big groups doing things. Everybody's volunteering to other things. So everybody's flexing different muscles. So it's not just

what you say, it's how do you kind of structure your organization to do certain things. We believe in running up the escalators. To us, pace of play really matters. This is like, if you can play business like you play the two-minute drill in football, you'll get a lot more done. You drop a lot more passes. You'll do a lot of things, right? I'm not sure we got it right, but it's been a really interesting journey that it just gave us a common language on culture building. We want to be great people to work with. So no assholes allowed. If someone has too big of an ego, people to work with so no assholes allowed yeah if someone has too big of an ego and that means you know you walking into our building people will say good morning be you get in an elevator

people will smile every new hire i meet with all our new hires after like 60 90 days i just like to see their experience and they're like i'm shocked at two things i'm shocked at how much you trust me and number two i'm shocked at how nice everybody is and willing to help me do my job. We are full of imperfections, but I think when you have a culture that is in harmony, it doesn't matter what tune your orchestra is playing as long as every instrument is kind of on the same note. Yeah. You have this magical mindset. You have this amazing disposition, this calm that I wish I had. Do you have something that is a constant nagging struggle to you? It's your boulder, you know, your Sisyphus boulder, the one thing you feel like you're always pushing.

You know, I was born and raised Catholic, and I even went through confirmation, and I don't practice organized religion. I believe myself to feel the spirituality. I'm not claiming I'm spiritual. But with that, I let go of guilt. Like I have no guilt. It's like, you know, guilt is a complex I don't suffer from. So I think if you really think about that boulder question inherent in it, there is some level of guilt that you carry that is making that boulder seem like a boulder. Listen, I laugh at myself all the time. I really just realized that I'm so ill-prepared for

the role that I have. And I'm okay with it. I don't beat myself up. I'm my best friend. The conversations in my head are so positive. know 98 of our conversations are in our head why not make them great like and i'm like wow you were really bad there dude or like oh wow wow you got lucky look what happened like this is what it's in my head all the time so i've been thinking a lot about friday nights i'm going to see my parents right and until last a week ago i will go and kiss my mom and and what what uh alzheimer's dimension patient has is the ability to still give you a kiss it's amazing that they they don't remember anything but they can give you a kiss and i go and i see my mom and i get a kiss and and it makes me

yearn for one more conversation with her and then i sit outside with my dad and we share a great bottle of wine and you know i'm super grateful in this, like knowing that, you know, I'm in awe that I can have this experience with my dad, but I'm also grateful that I was able to have that with my mom. In life, everything we do for the first time has awe. And then everything that we do for the last time, you know, has gratefulness. If we could marry a state of mind, which would be impossible to do where you can combine both emotions and most things like if you and i were together and we knew this was the last conversation we were going to ever have one of us is not going to be here

tomorrow we probably will say a few things we haven't said correct for sure it's going to happen with lots of people so So it's the appreciation. I love that we're friends. I've learned a ton from you. I am grateful that you invited me to have this conversation. Yet, in some way, we have the inability to be there in that sense of both awe and gratitude for too long. Let me play devil's advocate a little bit here. Sure.

Because I'm tempted to have that conversation with you right now and tell you how I feel as if this were the last time. And if it's not the last time, do I have that conversation again? And then if I do it too much, if I do it every time for fear that this is the last time, does it cease to be special because it happens every time? It's like somebody who says I love you too quickly. And it's like when they say it to me i'm like but you but you don't know me but you loved every boyfriend you had prior what makes me so special it's the infinite game they can love a lot of people why are you uh trying to contain love i don't think i don't think you can fall in love with every person you date. I just don't.

Maybe I'm a cynical bastard. I just don't believe every person you date you're going to fall in love. So there's no infinite amount of people you can love. So the infinite game does not apply to love. No, that's different. That's not the same. That's not what I said. I said I don't believe you can fall in love with every person you date.

You can absolutely have an infinite amount of love. I think you need some therapy to go dig in that one just talk to every ex-girlfriend they will agree with you oh that is too funny dude too funny you know but i i don't think it's it's a matter of saying it every time it's making sure that you said it yeah so what i what i realized you know in that moment of clarity in those 90 seconds we talked about earlier is that there were a lot of things I wanted to say that I thought I had time to say. There were people I needed to ask forgiveness from that I never did. There were people that I wanted to tell them how important they were to me or how much they had helped me,

and I had not. I think we go through life not we we think we're going to be here forever those 90 seconds on that u.s airways plane I didn't realize there's only 90 seconds yeah from the moment sully came on and said this is and you I assume you heard the engines go quiet brace for impact brace for impact and then 90 seconds later you're on the Hudson River yeah they've done a study on people who face near-death experiences and they did some with people who were parachuting out of a plane and their parachutes didn't open, their first or second. So they thought they were going to die, and through some miracle they landed in a swamp and survived.

Right. And they all have the proverbial life flashing before their eyes. Mm-hmm. Did that happen? Yes. You know, because you can see the water coming. And as a matter of fact, I had an internal kind of countdown. When we were going to hit the water, I closed my eyes.

I was holding my own arm, and I said, I love you. I tell you something for me, having been raised Catholic, I always wonder in the moment of death, if I had a moment that I knew I was going to die, was I going to ask for forgiveness like was was i going to buy insurance i have some friends of mine it's like i you know what i believe in this because it's insurance and i wonder like it would have been free it's like a free insurance that you say and one of the things i'm most proud of was the fact that i said you know what i am who i am and if that's what it took and not my owning humanity,

I'm not going to do it. And that also gave me clarity on coming back on my relationship with religion. I got to tell you, that really chokes me up. That in this moment of imminent death, after you've thought, you know, whole life has flashed before your eyes, you thought about your family,

that you hold yourself and say, I love you. It's really profound. And I think it's the thing that we don't do. You know, I think that the term of loving yourself has unfortunately lost its, it's become pejorative. It's become synonymous with having a big ego. But if you can love someone else and that's not egotistical, like why can't you love who you're trying to be or who you were when it's the end? You know, why shouldn't we all live a life that on our deathbeds or, you know, being told to get into the brace position that we hold ourselves and say, I love you. You've lived a good life. You've earned my love. Mm-hmm. we hold ourselves and say, I love you. You've lived a good life. You've earned my love.

What a standard to live by, to earn one's own love. And the amazing thing about it is you can't learn that from a book or a magazine. You learned it in the moment. There was no prediction how you would have reacted in that situation. Some people may have been screaming. I don't know. Some people may have found solace and quiet. Some people may have been screaming, I don't know. Some people may have found solace and quiet. Some people may have been making phone calls. You know, Simon, at the core of love is forgiveness. Yeah. And I think we have such a difficult time forgiving our own selves about our past, about our habits, about our own moving in our heads of the things that we have failed to do. And I think learning to love ourselves is learning to forgive ourselves.

Yeah. And to truly forgive and to move forward in a way that, you know, it's without carrying the weight of the world. Too many people walk around carrying so much guilt and shame. And society puts it on us. And raising teenagers is really interesting. How do you raise kids that are accountable but don't feel shame? We have two teenagers, and my wife and I are really driven to make sure that we don't ever shame them. And nor should we shame anyone.

Well, I love you too. I love you too. We collect friends and we collect memories. And hopefully we collect bad wines. Those are the three things worth collecting. Because if you live that way, life is rich. Another friend of mine had this concept that everything in life should be at least a threefer. You ever heard this concept? No, no. I really like it because if the ultimate currency in life is time, right? And there's every study that show you that over

$60,000 or something, it has zero effect on your happiness. You know, the only currency that really matters at the end of the day is time. If that's the case, how do you get a lot more yield out of time? And the example he used when he told me this, and I use it for everything, is to say, hey, you love golf. You go play golf. That's valuable. You go play golf with your best friends. That's two times valuable. You go play golf with your two best friends on a beautiful day. That's three times valuable. If you do it in an amazing course, that's four times. So he always says everything in an amazing course, that's four times. So he always says everything in life should be a three-fer. You know, when you talk about things, it's like when you and I are together,

I am learning, I am seeing a friend, and we're usually drinking a good glass of wine or a good coffee somewhere, right? So every experience you should dimensionalize. And that means abundance. That means you bring people together. One of the things that gives me the most pleasure is when two of my good friends become great friends. So, you know, everything in life should be thought of

as maximize the yield out of your time. I love that. I love the idea of making something a threefer. Once again, every time I talk to you, I'm richer and wiser and immensely, immensely grateful. Coming from the teacher, I'm humbled by those words. I hope our paths cross before long, my friend. Please.

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