Founder's Story - How to Build Billion Dollar Companies | Ep.54 with Serial Entrepreneur Jeff Hoffman

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Jeff Hoffman is a successful entrepreneur, proven CEO, worldwide motivational speaker, bestselling author, Hollywood film producer, a producer of a Grammy winning jazz album, and executive producer of an Emmy Award winning television show. In his career, he has been the founder of multiple startups, he has been the CEO of both public and private companies, and he has served as a senior executive in many capacities. Jeff has been part of a number of well-known successful startups, including Priceline.com/Booking.com, uBid.com, and more.  He is a frequent keynote speaker, having been invited to speak in over 60 countries. He speaks on the topics of innovation, entrepreneurship, and business leadership, and is the author of the book SCALE, a how-to guide for growing your business. Jeff also teaches innovation workshops to major corporations on a regular basis. Outside of the world of technology, Jeff has produced TV shows, has produced movies in Hollywood, has produced musical events including concerts, tours, and charity events with such artists as Elton John, Britney Spears, NSYNC, Boyz II Men, and others, and serves on numerous charity and non-profit boards. Visit his website at www.jeffhoffman.com For more info on guests and future episodes visit KateHancock.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ibhshow/supportOur Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. Entrepreneurship is not a job, guys. It's a mindset. And it's the mindset of self-determination. I was like, no one's going to create, there's no job I can go get right now that are going to pay me to fly around the planet. Could I make that job? Could I create a reality, a future for myself that enabled me to have a job, pay my bills and go live that dream of visiting families all over the world. And so that's really the origin story, trying to help my mom out, trying to be independent,

realizing that you could set big dreams as long as you were willing to work as hard as your dream was big. You could still make it happen. And when I got a little taste of that even if it was just buying a pair of shoes without asking my mom I started to realize that I can keep setting goals and finding a way to get there myself and ultimately that's what happened my original startup way before PricelinerBooking.com was actually a travel startup when I was trying to find a way to make some money and travel the world in a job that didn't exist. So I just went out and created that with my first startup. That's a very powerful, powerful story. Two things about that stick out to me. One is, you know, the deep love and the protective nature that you had over your mother and her stress. You had a desire to do that.

And the other thing that stands out for me is the resilience in the face of the negativity or the doubt that those around you that were closest to you had. Can you talk a little bit about the root of that protectiveness and that resilience and did you have to protect that i'm sure as an entrepreneur you had to protect the resilience in yourself going forward and if you could talk a little bit about how you were able to to maintain that and if it ever wavered because I'm sure it was tested. Yeah absolutely and you know part of that came from a bad part of a family history and I'm just being really transparent here with everybody but which was a stepfather that was both drunk and violent and the helpless feeling of not being able to protect your mother gives you a desire

to sit down and say, how do I prevent the bad things I don't ever want to see happen to anybody again, starting with my mother? Can I do something as a human being to prevent these things from happening to people? And what steps would I have to take to prepare myself, to put myself in a position to be able to stop this from occurring again. And by the way, that drives a lot of what I do later. The first charitable thing I ever did when I sold my first company was fund housing for abused women. But the sort of connective tissue there was, and I know a lot of people listening have felt this way,

when you ever had a moment in your life that things weren't where you wanted them to be, life wasn't what you wanted it to be, and you felt helpless. You felt like you couldn't change it, and that helpless feeling is powerful, and that's the way I felt being unable to protect my mom, but it was the silver lining because every cloud has one was that it made me

stop and say, what is the problem? And what can I do? What is the solution? Instead of just sitting there being upset, can I figure out a way to fix this? And again, that's the root of successful entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurship is about problem solving and again that's the root of successful entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurship is about problem solving and the world's best entrepreneurs are literally that they're just problem solvers well everybody else complains about the problem entrepreneurs stop and say all right there's got to be a way to make this better and that was sort of my mindset because

feeling helpless is not a good feeling and even if you can't fix it now for anybody that's not in a place in their life where they want to be that's listening right now the you may not be able to fix it instantly but once you have a plan literally the next minute you start to feel better i've got a plan i can start to see a light at the end of the tunnel and even even though the tunnel's long, I know which direction the light is now. So I started making a plan for what it was I was trying to do. And it's tough. To be honest, it's tough when you get no support, when everybody around you just laughs at you and ridicules you and uh so there's a lot of times uh where all of us have felt like and by the way when i would tell people crazy things like i'm gonna go see the whole world

visit 50 countries and meet all these families and everybody's laughing and everyone's calling you a fool just so this is what i heard my whole life why can't you just be like everybody else i heard that my whole life and just go get a just be like everybody else? I heard that my whole life. And just go get a job like everyone else. And by no means was I ever criticizing a job. That has nothing to do with it. This isn't about right or wrong. It was that I thought instead of just

go get a job, which clearly implies settling for something way less than you might have intended to do. Designing a job, designing a future, designing a career, designing a life makes way more sense instead of just saying, I just have to settle and accept what everyone else does.

I don't want to be everybody else, and you shouldn't either. I wanted to be me and do my thing, and if they wanted to laugh at it, that was fine, but that wasn't going to stop me. Part of what you asked me, though, a big key, which I did not have, which is specifically why I do the mentoring all over the world that I do now to kids, to women's groups, to entrepreneurs. I spend so much of my week mentoring now. That was my give back commitment because I know what it feels like to not have anybody be there when those moments happen. You said you used the word wavering. There are times when nothing is working and you start to think maybe the world is right and maybe I'm the one who's wrong. Maybe I'm the fool who's wrong. Maybe I'm the fool. And they're all right. And if you don't have a tribe, and a tribe, by the way, you can have a tribe of one. You can have a mentor.

But you need to have somebody or multiple people out there, like I said, a mentor, a tribe, that when you're really down, there's someone you can reach out to that's been there, that's felt that way, that can just tell you it's going to be okay and you're going to get through this and don't give up. And I didn't have that back then. So I try to be that for people now where I can, because I know what that felt like. But there's no doubt that there were moments where I definitely wavered and I definitely wasn't sure. And the noise starts to get through your head and you start to think that the world might be right but the other part of being an entrepreneur and being a success in anything is you have to shake it off if you can't shake it off and get over it and tune those people

out it's okay if one day you want to go home and cry because everybody's making fun of you and you're not sure you can do it. But you know what I used to tell my team when we would fail? I would tell them on Friday, I would say, you can take Saturday off and cry all day. And Sunday, you can do whatever makes you feel better. Drink a bottle of wine, go hiking, do something. But Sunday night, shake it off. Come back Monday and we'll just start

something else. We'll try again. You have to be able to shake it off, which is much easier to do when you have somebody out there to catch you when you fall. I didn't have that, like I said. So that's the importance of why I do what I do today. But there were a lot of moments where things weren't working and I started to doubt. I just, I bent a lot of times, but I never broke. It's okay to bend. It's okay to cry. It's okay to say, I'm not sure, but you've got to shake it off the next morning and come back stronger from that. And each time I did, and I have to tell you, that makes the victory so much sweeter at the end. When you do pull it off and you fight

through the doubt and you get you pull yourself back out of bed the days you don't want to get up and you hear the people laughing and the haters the naysayers and then one day it all comes together exactly the way you thought it would that's a really good feeling and I'll just say one more thing about that on my whiteboard in my office I have a thing that says upgrade your haters to VIP and the reason that I wrote that as I was talking to a bunch of

kids one day doing a big event for youth and a lot of them were telling me in the Q&A we did this event honestly it was for black and brown teenagers around the country And a lot of them were telling me in the Q&A. We did this event. It was for, honestly, it was for black and brown teenagers around the country. It was a specific event that I was speaking at live. We had about 20,000 teenagers on with us live.

And I let them do a Q&A. And so some of them were asking me questions. And a lot of them said to me, Jeff, my parents don't even believe in me. None of my friends believe in my goals, my dreams. And, you know, they used that term. They said, I got so many haters. And they said, what do you do about that? And I was telling them the story that's interesting that we all know.

That when you succeed, all those people, so I use the example because when I took a break from tech and I'm a software engineer by trade and I started a music company, and later we wound up doing tours. The music company worked, even though everybody laughed at me. Dude, you're a software engineer and now you're going to get in the music business? Are you nuts? You know, there goes Jeff with another stupid dream because you can't just be like everybody else. And we started the music

company and uh through a lot of reasons uh you know we were we were blessed at work um that's the company where we won the grammy uh but we were also wound up doing tours at the time and concerts with everybody from elton john to britney spears and in sync and justin timberlake and people would all show up. We were doing something with Beyonce. And everybody called me and they said, dude, can you get me backstage passes to meet Beyonce? And I just remember laughing and thinking, everybody wants backstage passes to the concert that will never exist, produced by the company that will never exist, created by the guy who has yet another stupid dream that isn't going to work. And I said, that's the show you want tickets to?

And all these people were saying, wait, I never said that. And I was like, sure, you didn't. Nobody remembers that they didn't believe in you. At the end, they just all show up asking for tickets. And one of these high school kids said to me, I hope you didn't give many tickets and i thought that was interesting uh because we have a lot of social media out there that kind of glorifies negativity and hate and so it was a good i thought learning

moment because the kids said all those people didn't believe in you and they were all your haters and then they asked you for tickets and they said i hope you didn't give them any tickets i said no not only did i give them tickets but i upgraded them all to vip and the kids thought about the minute at that for a minute and then it was i could see the ones that i could see online nodding their heads and saying cool and i said what and they said that's a really cool idea i said you know success is the only form of revenge that matters. You don't get revenge. You just get successful. And imagine what those people feel like standing in backstage and someone says, where'd you get the VIP passes?

And they have to say, Jeff gave them to us. And everybody there knows the way they treated me on the way up. And you just handle it that way. So there will always be wavering moments. There will always be doubters and haters. the way they treated me on the way up. And you just handle it that way. So there'll always be wavering moments. There'll always be doubters and haters. You need a tribe of people or at least a mentor to help you get through those moments. And I just never gave up.

Sorry for the really long answer. First of all, you don't have to apologize. I almost feel like this is the easiest interview I'll ever have to do this is a keynote speak and a TED TED talk all in one so I salute you, that's so rich upgrade your haters to VIP

the other one that I love was I didn't have it so I decided to be it that whole mindset right there is just so so powerful you said that you had a plan so you kind of you kind of took us from that mindset at the beginning of why you're doing it you know where you are now and

but you said you had a plan how old were you when you kind of started to formulate this plan that you were going to create to get out of that small town to build this whole other life and then can you take us down that journey to kind of kind of how that started to unfold for you? Yeah, sure. So I thought about that. So I'm going to tell you a moment where I kind of briefly maybe lost faith and I let the world get to me,

which was I went to college and that's its whole other story because I worked really hard. I had this big educational goal because I just knew that education was the key to everything I was trying to do, and I needed to create my own educational opportunity. My mom certainly couldn't pay for it. I wanted to go to a good school, and in fact, I worked really hard. I found out what it would take to get into the school I wanted to go to, which happened to be, I wanted to go to Yale. And

it seemed completely out of reach. You know, in high school, they tell you about reach schools and safety schools and schools you can probably get into. I didn't want to, why are you telling, teaching kids to settle right before they even turn 18? What a great message. Let's raise kids to prepare for failure and be willing to accept it immediately. That was not working with me. And I was like,

I have a goal and I'm going to go hard at it. If I have to step down later and I don't make it, that's fine. But if I already accept that failure is okay, then I've already eased up the pace. If you're in a race and someone tells you just come in the top 10 as opposed to saying try to win,

you're already slowing down. And I just wouldn't do that. I did work hard and I got into Yale and I got kicked out on day one because I didn't pay. We didn't have any money. And I showed up anyway and they were like, you've got some nerve coming here when you can't pay the bill. I'm not blaming the school. You've got to pay. You can't go to a restaurant and then say, I don't really have any money, but I came anyway.

So I wasn't mad at the school, but I wasn't. Everybody's answer was go home. And I said, I ain't going home. This is my dream. I worked so hard to get in here and I'm not just going to walk. So I actually started my first company, which was a software company while I was a college student. And with the singular goal of being able to get the diploma that I wanted. And I wound up being able to fund my entire Yale education and graduate in four years.

So to answer your question, I think that was probably the start for me of when I started to realize that setting big goals and putting the work in, you know, working as hard as your goals are big was actually real. Even though everybody was telling me to just be like everybody else and just go get a job and stop with the crazy goals and dreams, I realized that you control your own destiny. Nobody but you. as an analogy and I know I've shared it here before but it's a very real moment for me from one of my closest friends for the last whatever 25 or more years. It's a friend of mine who's a fighter. If you're not a boxing fan his name is Evander Holyfield and we've been like family for the last

25-30 years. And if you don't know that Evander's the guy that knocked out Mike Tyson you at least know that in the rematch, Mike Tyson bit my friend Zero. But when Evander was fighting Tyson the first time, I used to go with Evander to all of his fights and stay with him in the hotel and everything and just try to be there during that time. I remember that was a fight that Vegas had, like, seriously, like 50 to 1 odds

that Tyson was going to literally kill Evander. People were saying Mike Tyson might physically kill Evander Holyfield tonight. It was crazy. And I remember somebody in the corner saying to Evander right before the fight saying, the whole world expects you to lose this fight tonight. And the reason people say that to you is so you already know it's okay to fail. You won't feel bad. And so that's why that person, Jim, was saying that to him so that he would feel okay failing. That was not his attitude. But what he said was the whole

world expects you to lose this fight tonight. And Evander said something that was really life-changing for me he said uh when I heard him say um he said when he said the whole world expects you to lose this fight tonight he said well I don't and lucky for the rest of you guys I'm the one in the ring and I remember that gave me goosebumps because in the end the whole world might be expecting you to lose this fight but you're the one in the ring. It's on you. It's not on them. So quit listening to them.

And so that's what I had to do when I started that first company when I was in college. And then that's when I really realized that I could just tune everybody out. And if I was willing to do what I had to do, it's not on them. It's on me. And I could actually achieve something I was willing to do what I had to do it's not on them it's on me and I could actually achieve something I set out to achieve and that turned out originally to be that that degree uh from Yale which I wound up getting and so now instead of starting out you know in the world first leaving school as a young person that's already been trained to expect or accept failure I walked out the other

way. I had my chin up a little higher and I was kind of like, come on world, bring it, right? Let's see what you got next. Because I sort of believed that I could stand up and fight and win. And if I hadn't done that on my own, I don't think I would have known that. And that's the lesson that I try to share. I speak to kids in schools and universities all over the world. And when I visit them, that's a big piece of the message is getting kids to know that no matter what your past was, what your upbringing was, what your present situation is, you're the one that can change that. You can stand up and say, I want something more for myself. And you can get there. So because I felt that and went through it myself, it's a lot easier for me to share that when I'm

working with young people around the world now. That was kind of a turning point moment for me. That's incredible. As you're kind of matriculating through your college career and your ideas forming to start this company, I mean, looking back in hindsight now, how important was it to be able to pick a direction? Was it because of a gift that you discovered that you had? Was it a strong pull in a certain direction as far as software or technology? What was it that was kind of the determining factor?

Because a lot of people get stuck on, well, what business do I start? Where do I go? And you had this motivation around being able to fund your life, you know, your dream. But what was it that was kind of foundational that you can kind of pinpoint now that said okay this is okay kind of pull me over okay yes can you do a quick reset so people that joining know what's going

on sure yes I can it is not it is 930 and so I want to welcome everyone once again to the room you are into what it takes to run a 1 million dollar business club how to run a $1 Million Business Club. How to run a successful business. Come speak or listen. But tonight we have a very special guest in the room with us. None other than Mr. Jeff Hoffman, who is the founder of Priceline.com. Extremely powerful company.

Successful company. He's sharing his journey, his lessons. Dropping a gallon and a half of gems and wisdom for us. So make sure that you're taking notes as well. This conversation will be recorded for the sake of the founder's story, but afterwards we'll have Q&A from the mods as well. So I think there are speakers on stage and members of the club. If you are not yet a member of this club, then tap that green house at the top of your screen and make sure that you are following the club

and can follow all the great speakers on stage. Jeff himself, let's make sure that he is here. Oh, there he is, okay. I had to pull to refresh. Let me see if you can pull to refresh your screen so that makes sure that you can keep the algorithm getting some people into the room so that people can your friends can hear this story as well and inspire and continue to spread this powerful message

that Jeff is sharing with us as well the room was this club has been founded by Kate the Pivot Queen Hancock and her amazing husband Daniel Robbins and so once again we're gonna dive into the story with Jeff. Jeff, do you remember the question or do you need me to refresh? Let me refresh the question. Sure, I'll do that. I'll do that. So you were talking about how when you got into Yale, that pivotal moment when you were kind of being pressured to leave

and you decided you were going to start your company there in college, you know, and that was one of the catalysts for you beginning to create your success and your, your path and your journey of success. But I'm curious because a lot of people are stuck at that point where they're trying to figure out what, what, what do I want to build? What direction do I go in? How sure were you? And looking back, what role did your gift or your superpower really play into the eventual development of your success? Okay, so I think that's an absolutely great question.

And I want to start with this. Probably one of the most valuable lessons I've learned. Again, you know, we've been blessed enough that I've been part of several startups that we turned into multi-billion dollar companies. why did we have that level of success? And I can look back and see here is a really, really important lesson. Because you said a lot of people are sitting there and saying, what business do I start? What skill do I use? And here's a big thing I learned. Most everybody is doing it backwards. And let me explain.

People are sitting in their office. They're looking at sort of their skills and their resources. And they're asking themselves, what business should I launch? And then try to grow and then try to turn it into a million-dollar business, a $50 million, $100 million. You know, in our case, like I said, we were lucky enough that they became multi-billion dollar businesses along the way. But here's the thing. I didn't know this then. I'm going to tell you how I learned it because it was kind of by accident.

That's backwards. The most successful people in the world did not skill set, their superpower, their office and saying, what do I do with this? They were out of their office. They were in the world. They were experiencing the real problems the world has because believe me, there's no shortage of them. And they stopped and they said, Hey, this one, I think I have the skills to solve. So that's different. The world is presenting you problems every single day. And somehow, instead of solving those,

what most people do is they complain about problems. You have an errand to run at lunch. It takes two and a half hours. It should have taken 30 minutes. What do you do? You come home and complain. Those people are morons. How can this take two and a half hours? I was late for work. And instead of saying, the world literally just showed me a big giant problem that affects millions of people. All I did was complain about it and go back to try and invent to invent something in my office. No, the answer, next time you find yourself literally standing in a problem and hear yourself complaining about it, that's the moment to say, whoa, wait a minute. Could I fix this? And that's where the superpower part comes in. That's the first time you look in the

mirror and you say, this is a real problem. Do I have any of the skills required to jump on this one? And if the answer is no, there'll be another one tomorrow. But if the answer is yes, then you say, I think this might be the start. So I'm going to tell you mine. I mentioned that briefly that I did kind of lose faith for a minute because when I got out of school, I was able to fund that degree. But when I got out of school, the pressure from everybody, my mom, everybody, was go get a job. Now you have, you know, you're out in the real world. You've got to be a responsible adult. Go get a job right now.

And so I actually went and got a job at an engineering company, a big firm. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. There's no right or wrong here, guys. We're talking about your DNA. Your DNA can't be right or wrong. It's just you. And so I worked in that job for a little bit, for a couple of years, and I had a good job at a good company. I had a good salary. I just didn't have a good life because I hated my job every single day. Hated it. And I quit. One day I just got up and out. And I left a good job at an engineering company with a good salary, health benefits.

Because I said, well, a good job and a good salary is important. What I really want is a good life. And I don't have one right now. I actually hate my work. And that's what percentage of your week is at work? A huge percentage of it. And you're willing to settle for not being fulfilled or enjoying that or even hating it like I did. So I quit.

And I'll just briefly tell you the story of my first company because it kind of brings everything we talked about together. In the back of my mind, really in the front of my mind every single day, actually, I wrote it on my bathroom mirror, actually, was this goal. Jeff, before you die, for you to become the sort of person you want to be someday, the man I hope to become, I've got to go visit 50 families in 50 countries and 50 cultures. So that being the goal. And in the forefront of my mind, I was out in the world. I bought an airline ticket to go visit a mentor of mine. I talked about before, when you're down, you need someone to pick you up in the world. You an airline ticket to go visit a uh mentor of mine i talked about before when you're down you need someone that picks you up in the world you need a mentor and i bought an

airline ticket to miss to go see him and i was at the airport it was super crowded the lines you had to check in at the counter back then and get a boarding pass from a person uh were more than an hour long an hour later i missed the flight i hadn't even gotten my boarding pass. And I was standing there in an airport full of everybody groaning that this is ridiculous. The line shouldn't take an hour. How come it takes forever to check in? How is this so slow? I'm missing my flight. But instead of being in my office trying to say, what skills do I have? What could I just randomly create and push out the world and hope they'll buy it? The world, I just said this, the world tells you what it wants you to do. And the world was saying, fix this one. And I was like, wait a minute. The problem here is it takes an hour to check in because you've got to wait in line for a human. But I actually am a software engineer.

I wonder if I could write something. I wonder if I could use my tech skills to attack this problem because it affects people in airports all over the world. So that Friday I actually started my first company right away. And so, again, I apologize for repeating this for people who have heard me talk before. if you have gone to an airport, you know, pretty much anywhere in the world and checked yourself in on one of those kiosks that you now walk up to and you check yourself in and get your own boarding pass. That was my first invention.

And I was 20 something years old, unemployed, broke. And I was like, hey, wait a minute. If I could fix a problem in the travel industry, guess what? It would be my job to travel around the world.

That's all I ever wanted to do. My job was literally to go to a different country every week to install those kiosks and airports all over the world. So suddenly I'm flying around the world, visiting different countries every week, and I'm getting paid for it because they're buying kiosks. They're now in airports all over the world. So I created, and I think one of the key words here is intent. All the time I had the back of my mind and intent. The intent is to create a revenue generating business. The intent is to find, to create a job where it's actually my job to do the thing I want to do. In my case, that was travel.

I could create a job where it's actually my job to go to different countries and where i'm selling a product somebody actually wants to buy instead of inventing something in my office just because i have the skills to do it and hoping someone will buy it i think the thing the world was complaining about um and that company was my uh first real startup out of school uh and we were again again, right place, right time. The company was very successful. But that's kind of how all these pieces came together for me. I didn't start with my skill set. I started.

So what I'm telling you is the more time you spend, now COVID didn't help this, but the more time you spend out of your office and engaged in the world around you, the more likely you are to stumble across a problem that you hear yourself complaining about. Then you look around and everybody else is complaining about it. And that's the moment you say, now I want to do a skills assessment. Do I have the skills that it takes to fix this problem? Because if I do, I need to own

that problem. And that's the one that's going to take me to the future that I wanted. That's how I got there by solving a big problem for the travel industry. Awesome. Awesome. I think that's a tremendous point because we see so many businesses that start in one direction and sometimes they hit a dead end or hit a wall and you wonder how come they didn't see that coming it's because they started the wrong end so i appreciate you sharing that when it when it comes to the actual trajectory of growing a company you have this great idea and it's growing and and we want to thank you for

the kiosk for those of us who traveled at any point in our lives in the airport. But there's a difference between starting a product and building a company. Where was the area where you had to grow the most? And maybe you could tell us a story that kind of illustrates when that moment of truth or that transitional point came when you realized you had to become something different than just a software engineer. You should see my smile because when you said share a story about that, oh, I can remember the moment I started that kiosk company. I'm 20 something years old. I've had one job in my life and I sucked at it. And now I'm a CEO really. And my employees are in their 40s. And I'm some 20-something-year-old failure with my first company. And I'm a software engineer. That's the only experience I've ever had writing code. So now I hire the first three people. And one day I'm sitting in the

office. And the third guy comes down the hall. And he says, Jeff, come quickly. I said, Hey man, what's up? And he said, the other two employees are fighting and I think they're about to hit each other. And I get up and I start walking down the hall and I said, wait a minute, what am I supposed to do? He said, I don't know, dude, it's your company. And I said, I'm a software engineer. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, how to break up a fight or solve an argument. And he's like, well, you better hurry or you're not going to have any employees if these two start fighting. So I'm running down the hall and I'm thinking not one single moment of my software engineering background included resolving arguments when people are fighting. So I realized then that the skill that most people lack is HR.

If you went and did a poll right now of all the people that are on this call that have started a business, the percentage of those that were HR executives before they became founders is going to be really low. It tends to be domain expertise. If you started a construction company, you probably worked in construction, right? A tech company, you probably have a tech degree or a tech background. If you're in FinTech, you probably have a finance degree. So a lot of us that are CEOs or managers of any kind, even if you're a manager in a bigger company, didn't have HR training. I don't know how to resolve an argument. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. And I'm walking down the hall, like, you know, completely clueless and thinking, why didn't it occur to me before right now that I don't really know anything about managing people? And part of the reason is because if you're a founder of a business, that's what you do. You're the founder. You hire the people. It's your company. It's your money. So of course you hire them. But it never occurs to you that you're actually not the right person to do that.

You do it because you have to. But as quickly as you can, you need to get somebody on your team that knows something about HR and people. And one of my favorite quotes I saw on a presentation somewhere once was a CEO that said everything was growing excuse me everything was going great until people and I totally agree with that because that's the big uncontrollable variable right all of a sudden as your company grows I used to be sitting along sides the people writing code and then the company's getting bigger and I'm the founder and CEO, and now all of a sudden I have to have people reporting to me

and hiring people and managing teams. And so as your company gets bigger, a higher percentage of your time is spent managing people. And that is the part I just had no training for. How do you attract super talented people? How do you retain them? How do you motivate them? How do you manage them?

How do you resolve disputes? How do you build a corporate culture that entices the right kind of people? How do you compensate people fairly? How do you fire people and when? All this is people management stuff that most of us were not, in fact, trained for. And so that's the place where I was most unprepared. And it was trial by fire until it occurred to me I need professional help. I wouldn't be pulling my own teeth.

I'd be going to a dentist. So I'm not going to try to run my HR. I'm going to find an HR professional as soon as I possibly can. And it turned out that I did. Her name was Angela. And Angela saved my life. And, you know, we wound up getting on a street there where people were buying our companies or we took some public. And Angela ran HR, ran people for me for

four straight companies. And there is zero chance that I would have had any success in life if I hadn't found Angela. But that was the piece that I was least prepared for that I think most of us are the least prepared for. That's awesome. That's really great insight too. I'm curious, did the fight actually happen? How did you stop the fight? Luckily, it did not. They were arguing, but what was really interesting, which was also a learning moment for me, when I came down the hall, they looked at my face and they're like, what are you so upset about? And I said, wait, what are you so upset about? I'm running down the hall so upset about i'm running down the hall and stopping you guys and they said we're not upset we're passionate they said you should be glad that we're so into this uh that we're literally you know getting this passionately involved and actually emotional at that moment about our work uh and you know there are people that that talk about things like i once had an employee somebody i had an employee that was crying about something at work and i heard somebody else

telling her what a horrible thing it was to do to cry at work you don't cry at work you cry at home and i called every i said everybody stop working for a minute and listen to me. And I said, that is completely wrong conventional wisdom. Right? I am thrilled that I have employees that care so much about this company that they could actually have tears, that they actually feel this deeply.

They're passionately committed. Right? So I would be much more concerned about someone who never showed any emotion. Right. Never cried about anything. I'm much more worried about that person than I am about the person that feels deeply and cares. And so that's what I learned out of that moment. They said, oh, don't worry about us. We're just passionately into this thing. We want to get it right. And we're going to argue it out. The other person thought that the argument was escalating because they were getting louder. And they said it was, but it was escalating towards convergence, not towards a fight. And I just stood there and they said, let us be passionate. That's a good thing. And so that was an important lesson for me because the job I'd had at the big company, if you showed any level of emotion, you were weak. And in fact, those people were wrong. My employees were very professional, but very professional doesn't mean

you don't have high highs and low lows. You're allowed to have those because you actually care about what we're building here. You care about our customers. I've had account managers cry with customers. I don't criticize them. I promote them for being that deep into our customers because that's why we won in business. Because I hired people that understood the difference between professional and human. You still have to be professional at all times, but you're also allowed to continue to be human. And I learned that in that moment when the guys told me, leave us alone.

This is taking us somewhere really good. And I was coming down there to separate that. Jeff, that's so inspiring to hear a leader talk about that, to allow their employees to be human. It's just amazing. Okay, so logistically, I have to pause here for a second. I'm going to ask you a quick question. How much time do you have? Because we want to make sure we leave some time for Q&A for some of the other speakers in the audience. So how are you on time? Oh, I think you're on mute, Jeff. Oh, sorry. No, all good. No problem.

Okay, great, great. So I'm going to let, hand the mic to Kate right quick so she can reset the room and then we're going to dive back in and pivot so we can get some questions in here as well. Yes. So Jeff, I just wanted to let you know that this is actually under a marathon room. We've been running this room for 56 days, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with 540,000 listeners during that time. And we have about 300 moderators. So, so honored having you here, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you guys very much for including me. I appreciate it. Yes. And you are in the, what it takes to run a $1 million business club. You just heard the pivot queen, Kate Hancock. And we are here with our special guest keynote

for the evening, our founder story with Mr. Jeff Hoffman, the founder of Priceline.com. There's so many questions I have because you just opened up the door and you've got so much wisdom. I'm going to try not to ask them all. What I want to know is, as you were progressing, you had to make this evolution as a leader. I'm really fascinated by leadership and how we can all become better leaders. You talked a lot about the humanity of your employees, but there's also the human side of being a leader. What are some of the struggles or the dark sides of success that people don't really talk about, that people don't really know? Okay, that's a really good one. And by the way, I just want to be clear out of respect for Jay,

the idea, the founder of Priceline was a guy named Jay Walker. It was Jay's idea and Jay's patent. He's the founder of the company. I was part of that original team back at the beginning, but I just want to be clear that it was his idea, the business, not mine. So, you know, I've been a CEO for, since I was 24. And so I've been in that role for a long time and I've learned a lot of it, trial by fire, a lot of it the hard way. There are really tough things. The, let me, let me give you guys, this this in a story as well.

I speak that way because I learn that way. When somebody tells me something, the first thing I always say is, give me an example. If I can hear a story, I can figure out how to put that knowledge to use. So that's why I always give you guys kind of an anecdotal story for each thing because for me it's the most effective way to learn. So the hard part about leadership is that you have got to be swift. And let me tell you that story. Let me do that first, and that will set the context a little bit better. I'm coaching a lot of leaders and CEOs and mentoring, and I'm calling a guy at

our schedule time and he says, can you call me back later? Something just came up. I said, sure, what's up? And he said, I got to go find something for John to do again. And I said, okay, honestly, every part of that sentence is wrong. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, find something for John to do. And again, all that's wrong. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, you don't run a company from the people in. And the reason I'm using this is because, to answer your question, this is hard. You run a company from the

objectives out what is the difference running the company from the people in means that you're looking at all the people in your office and you're saying okay here's John what skills does he have kid what can he do and what I want to tell you this is what I always tell people, if you are finding things for people to do at your company, because you tried John in sales and that didn't work. So you moved him to marketing and that didn't work. So now I'm looking at John, looking at his skills and saying, what can we put John to do on? What work or what job can may give John. If you are finding something for people to do in your company, then you are not running a business.

You are running an adult daycare center. And the reason I was telling people that is an adult daycare center is a place where people drop off adults in the morning and you create activities for them. That is not a path to success. The path to success is that you make a list of the company's objectives for success. What is the list of milestones this company has to achieve? What are the tasks required to achieve those milestones? And then what are the skills required to do that and anybody in the company that is not

using one of those skills to do one of those tasks or more obviously to achieve one of your main objectives cannot work for you anymore um so the business is driven from the objectives out and that is why it's so hard because what happens is, I'm going to be honest with you guys, I have had many a tear crying on my shoulder, and I've cried many tears myself in my office, hugging somebody while we're both crying while I am telling them, I know, I love you, you're a great friend, you're a great guy, but you have to go. Because in the end, this is the tough part, is that you are running a business. And a business is driven by objectives. It has

responsibilities to shareholders, to investors, to employees whose lives, families, and careers are staked on it, to customers. To all those people, you have a responsibility to deliver the best you can deliver of your product and service. And therefore, when you have people in your company that aren't delivering that, they can't stay. And the problem as a leader is they're really cool people and you love them to death. And you know that this will be devastating when they get fired. And you know it'll put their family through hardship. So what so many leaders do is they don't make the hard decision because it's too painful. I'm like, you're finding something for John to do again? Are you kidding me? How many jobs have

you created to that guy? And then simultaneously, you're wondering why your company hasn't gotten where you thought it was going to go. Because you're dragging along all this dead weight of people that aren't contributing, right? You have a 12-cylinder engine, and one of the cylinders is shot, and you're still driving that car expecting it to be at peak performance. It's not going to happen. So that's the hard part about leadership is you have to be to do the one to make tough decisions that nobody wants to make, but you have to be strong enough to make them.

Now, that does not mean – I want to be clear on this, that does not mean it's an inhumane world. I'm going to tell you guys that twice in my life, I had employees living in my house, but I fired them anyway. I fired them and I knew it was going to cause them hardship and they didn't have money, they didn't have savings. So as a boss, as a business leader,

I removed them from the company because they were not contributing to the objectives. As a human being, twice I let people live in my house and I loaned them money and said, you can just live in my house so you get another job and another place to live. I'll take care of you. I'll feed you, house you, and I'll loan you some money,

but the company will not that's the hardest part of leadership is making difficult decisions that impact people's lives that no one else wants to make but I'm going to tell you again if you are not swift and decisive in those moments you will not succeed you will be slowed down and by the way it brings down the product to the of the entire rest of your team when they notice that one person isn't really doing their work john and seems to get away with constantly changing jobs and never producing you are actually decreasing the productivity of your whole team because that is very deflating so that's my answer to your question it's tough

and you got to make those hard decisions and i didn't know it was going to be that hard when I had to let people go that were friends of mine or became friends, but I still did. Wow. Wow. That was just a swing of emotions. I was sitting there laughing as you were talking about you did the one part of leadership and then then my jaw drops you're talking about the fact that you have people living in your home that you just fired um such a such an incredible swing and a range of emotions that you have to deal with and but it kind of brings me back to where we started in the beginning when you were talking about the protective nature that you had for people you you have carried this throughout your career. It's evidenced.

And I always wanted to ask you about it later on. And it shows up again and again. Now you're mentoring people. You're working with United Nations and the White House and on different boards like the Global Entrepreneur Forum. So can you talk a little bit about how you have transitioned to that role and that part of your life now, where you are more of a, almost a entrepreneurial benefactor of wisdom and helping people to kind of realize their own potential for their own dreams. Can you share with us

maybe a story or something that kind of illustrates for you the reason why this is so meaningful in this part of your career now? You know, it's really interesting because like I said, I've been blessed enough to, you know, it almost feels crude to say, but I've worked hard for it, but, you know, make billions of dollars

to create these companies that became multi-billion dollar companies we went into entertainment and won grammys and emmys and stuff and so i had a lot of blessings along the way and a lot of really fun moments but what i never saw coming is that this part of my life is by far the most fulfilling part of my life, what I'm doing now. And it's not the business stuff anymore. I sort of finished that part of my life. And I sort of made a commitment, a personal commitment to paying back all those blessings I just described to you. By finding, doing anything.

This was a commitment I made. I'll try to spend the rest of my life doing anything I can to help all the rest of you, everybody else get to wherever they're trying to go. I got to go to more than one of the places and some places I never dreamed of. So I said, look, I need to pay that debt back and I'll pay it back by doing whatever I can to help other people get where they're going and the one thing I do know how to do is this entrepreneurship thing is to turn ideas into profitable businesses uh so I committed to uh doing that and and I I know some people that know me know that when I quit uh after we built youbid., which also, uh, we took public and you bid at one point became a multi-billion dollar company as well.

Um, with you bid, um, after that is when I stopped being a CEO. I was the CEO of a public company again. Uh, and I stopped doing that. And I decided to start literally walking the walk instead of just talking to

talk and giving back. And I took a year off. And the goal was at the time I told nobody this, but I did a year of yes. And I said, for a year, I am going to, for one year, I'm going to say yes to anybody that asks me for help with anything for a year. And what that means is in that year, I am not going to do any business. I'm not going to make a dime. I'm not going to go to my office. I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow. I'm not going to make a dime. I'm not going to go to my office.

I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow. I'm just going to say yes every time the phone rings, i.e. the email, the direct message, the Instagram, whatever, for a year and just help people. And I had no idea what to expect. It turned out, by the way, the second call I got was an email from a 19-year-old kid in West Africa in a village that asked me. It started out, it literally said, his email said, I have a TED talk, and he found me on the TED website. His email said, dear Mr. Hoffman, I know you won't read this email. And if you do, I know you won't reply. And at the time, I was telling my friends, I was like, oh, it's on now. Because, like, you know, you don't know me like that. The guy's like, I know you won't read this.

I know you won't reply. So not only did I reply, but it was my year of yes, so I went to West Africa to a village. And not much expectation. And it wound up, I didn't ever want to leave. I was in the dirt of a village where people lived in houses made of mud with no water, no electricity. And it was like the coolest place I've ever been.

And I knew my friends didn't understand, right? Because in the other part of my life, whether I'm giving a talk in the White House or addressing the United Nations or even now at Global Entrepreneurship Network, I literally meet with presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens. And yet the coolest thing I'd ever done was sitting in a village, being really real with these people and saying, how do we build a better life for you? And so that was my one year of yes, I wound up going on for about seven years.

Each year I said, told all my friends, they'd be like, are you coming home? I said, yeah, one more year. And I spent the last seven years teaching entrepreneurship, teaching self-determination, helping children around the world build self-esteem, you know, helping women start companies, working with underrepresented populations. It's been far more fun and fulfilling than any business I've ever built. But I will be fair in saying that I'm able to do that now because when it was go time, I was ready to go.

When it was time to work, I did my work. And I think that's an important message that i tell the kids when when adults sometimes will say stupid things to me like they're jealous oh man you get to do all this cool stuff and i sit there and think because they say it like someone just handed it to me right and they don't see the trail of blood sweat and tears that you left behind you because you did the work that they, everybody wants to be successful just till they find out what it takes. And they want your life. They just don't want to do the work you did to get there. And so it always amazes me when they say things like that. And I'm like, where were you at 3am? Right? When you were out at a party and I was finishing my commitments

that I made to myself and other people because I got places to go and things I want to do. So the learning from that is that success is not the destination. Everybody's trying to get rich or famous or Internet famous as though success is the destination. We're driving towards getting rich. We're driving towards getting famous. It turns out that success is not the destination. It's the platform. And when you get there, you can finally say,

wow, now I can really do the stuff that matters. And so that's what happened to me. I hit that point in my life where I realized, but I didn't know it until I started doing it, that now because I worked hard and dreamed big and didn't give up when everybody was laughing at me and spent time nurturing people. So I wound up having the best teams on the planet. All those things went the right way, but that put me in a position to be able to spend my time

now just trying to be, you know, I guess the wind in other people's sails right when other people when i get to watch other people go on and live their best life and achieve some of their dreams that's the thing that's way more fun and way more fulfilling than to me uh than some of these exit strategies i just i'm being honest by saying i can do that now because I worked when it was time to work and like some of the work we do just very quickly uh you know we fund for example an orphanage of 50 children in Uganda and I see on here uh I haven't really scrolled through but I see Bianca Pinato and Brandon Adams and our youth charities called World Youth Horizons, and they're both involved in that. And this morning I did a Zoom call with all the kids.

And I did, you know, some board meetings and some business calls, and we're filming a new TV show about taking companies public. And I had a very busy business day. But the highlight of my day was I did a live video call on zoom sorry on whatsapp uh with all those kids in the orphanage in the dirt in uganda and they told they sang me a little song today and there's no way anything in the world could have brought me down from that high there's no business deal it was gonna gonna be better than having those 50 kids sing a little song to me today. So that's where we spend our time now is trying to help other people get where they're going. And it's the reason to work really hard. When you're successful and you get some money

and you can buy anything you want, you know what happens? You suddenly don't want it anymore. It sort of loses its shine. It's just stuff. i'm not pretending i i don't have any nice stuff i do what i'm telling you is it doesn't become a driver anymore what becomes a driver is being able to be a positive influence in somebody else's life and working hard put you in the position to do that that's so great jeff that's so great. I love the story about the 19-year-old kid in West Africa. No, it's just so good. I've got one more question, and then we're going to hand it off to the mods, call them mods. There's speakers on stage because they've got some amazing questions. They're just running over, and I'd love to be able to hand that to them as well. My last question for you is, as we're

thanking you for your generosity and giving us your time this evening, my question for you is simply tell us something about yourself that would surprise us, that would surprise people to know about you. Wow, I'm pretty sure I'm still learning a lot of stuff about myself every day. Even those kids that teach me things about myself. Man, that's such a hard one to think about. Because when you tell me that, I think of, I have this short list of stuff I'm good at and a million things that I wish I was better at. And so all those things come up, all the things that I'm not good at or the places that I could use.

By the way, I'm just making this crap up right now because I'm selling for time. Tell us something that you wish you were better at. You asked a hard question. Aren't we out of time yet or something? I don't know something that um it is funny because for a lot of time my secret pastime is right okay i'll give you one my secret because i never talk about it and i never share it uh my secret pastime is writing so if i could paint I might paint but and what I'm talking about is it can be a a place a moment or a person there are times where I meet a person in my life and they leave a big

impact on me and I want to catch I want to capture that impact or that moment and so I write but what I write is fiction and what i typically write is a short story so purely fictionalized about that person and about the day and the way that i met that person but i don't never tell anybody that i never share those writings it's like as though i painted a little portrait of you and hung it on the wall so i never forget the impact you had on my life i don't think i've ever shared that publicly before. So there's one that people don't know because I never talk about that. But I write little short stories about the people that move me

so that I can read them again and recapture sort of, you know, the richness of that impact that somebody had on me. I'm blown away. That's actually pretty cool. That's really great. Tiff, I want to thank you. This is not the end, but I'm going to ask

all of the speakers on stage to come off mute and to give you a round of applause and appreciation for your sharing. That's what we're supposed to do. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. And I'm handing the mic to Daniel so he can begin the Q&A for the speakers on stage. Thanks again, Jeff.

This is Frederick and I'm complete. Ever forward. Yeah, thank you, Frederick. That was amazing. Jeff, how much time do you have for Q&A, just so I can keep track? I'm okay still. We can keep going. All right.

So I know a lot of people have come in the room. Just really quickly, we are doing our Founders Story segment today with the amazing Jeff Hoffman, who has brought a few companies public, like you mentioned. Many of those companies we use on an every single day basis and have really changed many of our lives. Before we go to Q&A, something you said in the beginning, which I absolutely loved, and that was around you need to have a community of others, like-minded entrepreneurs or individuals. Like you mentioned, you didn't have that in the beginning. And that is so crucial.

And it really got me thinking about how much, you know, this app has changed people's lives and this club. We have a mission in this club to impact 100 million entrepreneurs in our lifetime, which is another amazing thing that you do. How you've really impacted so many lives around the world. How many CEOs or founders have said, I'm going to take this time to answer every single question or whoever comes to me, I'm going to answer them. I actually don't know any. So all the amazing things that you do, but I just wanted to just let everybody know a big reason what Jeff said around having

that community around you that is actually a reason why we've been trying to figure out ways that we can really help even more people and impact more so we recently created a mastermind group through this club so if anyone wants to know more about that please reach out to kate up here you can send her a message or myself but you really do need that community around you. And just amazing to have all these great people here around us. And just so happy that you're here, Jeff. Just absolutely always inspiring.

Even though I've heard some of your story before, it's even more inspiring the second or third time I've heard it. So thank you so much for being here. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. every time I've heard it. So thank you so much for being here. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe and visit katehancock.com so you don't miss out on the next episode.