Founders - #52 The Republic of Tea: The Story of the Creation of a Business, as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders

Episode Date: December 25, 2018

What I learned from reading The Republic of Tea: The Story of the Creation of a Business, as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders.----A business is born (0:01)don't start a business unless you are the first customer (22:49)what it is like to fall in love with an idea (25:31)starting a business is like making a movie (27:15)on slowing down (32:32)the problem with being able to argue both sides of an idea (37:00)editing & narrowing your focus (46:51)ideas in the form of action (51:39)history doesn't repeat, human nature does (57:00)the doubts of nascent entrepreneurship (59:51)Steve Jobs had one speed: Go (1:07:39)be the customer, not the seller (1:16:21)Bill finally gets it (1:22:00) ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

And so a business is born. Like all birth, it began with a gathering of the energies of conception, then a fusion, and growth. As a gestation, it was exactly as long as it needed to be. Recognizing that true creation takes place outside time, the Republic of Tea came to life when it was ready to be born. It was, to be sure, Bill who carried it in him for the 20 up and down all around months documented in these pages. And it was Bill who, in accepting his first dollar for a tin of tea in May 1992, delivered the baby to the world.

As for my role, I got him pregnant. In compiling these letters for publication, a keystone of ancient Hindu philosophy comes to mind. Everything happens as it does because the universe is as it is. There is no formula for starting a business. It is an exercise as unique as the individuals who undertake it. Starting the Republic of Tea was an exercise in allowing things to happen. So starting a business is no different from starting anything else. A marriage, a painting, a new life. The opportunity it presents as a path to self-realization is the one most often overlooked and yet I feel this is ultimately its greatest benefit. A business that is conceived in practicality will be congenitally dry. Bill and Patricia and I may have been a little wacky in some of our early ideas,

but this is because we knew the day of practicality would come. Because we dared to be impractical at the outset, however, the Republic of Tea will likely carry with it a legacy of free, unmoored thinking, which is really the only true insurance policy a business can have. So now we have the Republic of Tea. really the only true insurance policy a business can have. So now we have the Republic of Tea. How long it will live, whether or not it will realize its limitless potential, the destiny it will shape for itself, these are the things that cannot be foretold.

The Republic of Tea is no longer a dialogue among us anymore. It is a dialogue between itself and customers. And if we correctly heard the winds whispering to us all those months that the Republic of Tea lived inside our heads, it will soon have people everywhere pausing for a sip and a little piece of tea. Okay, so that is from the epilogue of one of the strangest books I've ever read in my life, the book that I want to talk to you about today. That book is called The Republic of Tea. The subtitle is The Story of the Creation of a Business as Told Through the Personal Letters

of Its Founders. And it's written by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenweg, which are all the co-founders of Republic of Tea. Okay, so if you listened last week, we were introduced to the crazy characters that are Mel and Patricia Ziegler, probably best known for being the founders of Banana Republic. And after they sold Banana Republic, they kind of went back to what they were doing in the sense that they only wanted to start a business so they could make enough money so they could live life on their own terms. They weren't really starting businesses for business's sake. And a few years later, they became obsessed with tea, which we'll get into today,

and they, through a chance meeting, which I'll tell you about in a little bit, they decide to start another company. And the reason this book is so bizarre is because most of the books we cover, you know, they're biographies, autobiographies, basically they're telling us something that happened in history, something that is already done. In this book, the genesis of the ideas took place in writing because it was a series of faxes that were happening in I think the early 1990s from 1990 to 1992 I think and somebody came along saw all

these faxes and compiled it into a book and so the book ends with the epilogue where I just got to it. The book ends at the founding of the business, which is very different from what we're used to discussing on this podcast. Well, actually, let me stop there. My name is David. If this is the first time you've listened to founders, the premise of this podcast is really simple. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur or a company builder, and I share ideas that I think were useful. Highlights, notes I left myself, not meant to be a summary, not meant to be a review, just ideas that I want to remember.

And so instead of them just living in my notebook and in my highlights, I record a podcast so hopefully you can learn from them as well. So the reason, going back to what I was saying about this being different is, what we're gonna see here, and what unfolds over 250 pages, is the genesis of an idea. And so let me read some of,

what are they called, when people, like the blurbs. So here's the blurbs that I think will help you understand what the hell the book is about. So it says, this new book is a gem. The idea is inspired, allowing us to observe a new business unfold as two co-founders fax letters back and forth. For aspiring company owners, the resulting business plan is in the back of the book. This alone justifies the cover price. That's actually part I'm going to skip. This is the blurb I meant to read just now. I didn't mean to read that one, but this is the one that I think is better. This book is what every entrepreneur desires, a myth-exploding, paradigm-busting dissection of the moments when the rubber of an idea hits the bumpy road of commercial reality.

So this is what we're going to see. And what the main focus of this podcast is going to be about is basically what he calls the gestation of an idea. They have a general thesis, a general idea, back and forth. And it sounds really silly and it will get silly. And like, why does it take two years to start a tea company? And part of that has to do with, you know, the intrinsic doubts. In this case, Mel's the experienced entrepreneur trying to mentor and be partners with somebody 15 years younger than him that's never started a company. And so the reason I wanted to make this a founder's podcast is because I know there's a lot of people listening to this podcast that haven't yet started companies, but want to, and you're going to recognize a lot

of your thinking here. So let's see. I'm going to start at the beginning of the book so you have an understanding. Actually, you know what? This is what I have to do. I'm working from the original copy published in 1994, but when I was doing extra research, I download the Kindle version and it has an updated version that Mel Ziegler wrote in 2012. That's where I want to start the podcast today. Before I get into that,

before I jump into the book, I want to remind you that if you leave, for people that have listened to the podcast, that enjoy the podcast, I need your help. If you listen to it on an app that you can leave a review or you can recommend, so most of the people listening to this podcast listen to it on Overcast or Apple Podcast. On Apple Podcast, you can leave a review. On Overcast, you can recommend specific episodes by pressing that star. So if you leave a review or if you recommend the episode, take a screenshot after you've done that. So on Overcast, the star will turn gold. On Apple Podcasts, you'll be able to take a screenshot of the review as you're writing it.

There's a bunch of other apps. Whatever app you're using, it has some kind of mechanism usually to recommend or surface that. So if you'll take a screenshot and email that screenshot to foundersreviews at gmail.com. So it's foundersreviews at gmail.com. I'll reply back with a private podcast feed that I have for people, only for people that have left reviews. So, you know, I'm sure you listen to other podcasts.

Everybody asks for reviews. I want to do a step above that. I want to ask for a review because it is helpful, but I also want to give you something in return for taking the time and actually doing that. I consider a personal favor to me, so I really appreciate it. I've made two founder review podcasts so far. I'm going to do one about every quarter. So not only if you do this, you'll immediately get two new founders episodes that are available nowhere else. But as I release them in the future, this private podcast feed will automatically update just like any other podcast feed does. So for a minute of your time, you'll get literally hours of my work for as long as you want to listen

to them. So please consider doing that. The second thing is, a lot of you guys have said that you wanted a way to get in touch with me. The best way to get in touch with me is Twitter. My Twitter is davidcenter1. Everything I talk about is in the show notes, which you can pull up on your podcast player, or you can go to founderspodcast.com and see that. So if you want to send me a message, get in touch, whatever you want to do, davidcenter1. One thing I do want is if you have a book that you recommend that you would think would be a good candidate for me to cover, the best way to send that to me is send it to me on Twitter. So at davidcenter1.

And then something I've been doing, the podcast also has a podcast feed. It's at Founders Podcast on Twitter. What I do there is I take quotes, because now we're up to what? Almost 50 books covered. So I take quotes, things that I want to remind myself, little things that will fit into tweet size, bits of knowledge basically. And it tweets out about two to three times a day. So some people have requested I do this. I thought it was a good idea. And now I've committed to doing it constantly. So if you want to basically kind of refresh your memory from things that you might learn from this podcast, you might want to follow at Founders Podcast. And finally, before I get back in the book, I need your support.

Once I get going, as you guys know, because I say it on every podcast, this podcast is independent and ad-free. It only survives because people that get value out of it support it themselves. I don't like to interrupt. I will not interrupt the podcast with ads. I'm not part of a podcast network. This is an independent production. I do everything myself and I can only do this. I can only afford to dedicate as much time as it takes every week because the people that get value from it are willing to support it financially. So the best way to do that is please sign up to become a Misfit. Misfits are the people that support Founders Podcast on a monthly basis.

You can do it for as little as $5 a month. It does not cost a lot of money. And in return, you'll get an extra private podcast from me every week and you can unlock my entire private podcast back catalog, which is up to, I think, 17 now. The only thing that, so you've probably heard me say that before. So if you give value from the podcast, please consider doing this because it will ensure that the Founders Podcast stays around for a long time. Um, and,

and that's all we really need. We don't need to interject the third party. It's just me and you guys. Um, so second thing is I also got a few emails saying some people were saying, Hey, um, I want to support you.

Is there a way I can do it on a one time basis or on like a per episode basis? So I don't have anything set up for that besides the reoccurring. Um, but I, now if you want to make a one time, uh, or support, donation, whatever you want to call it, that will also be in the show notes. And if you go to founderspodcast.com, at the top on the header, there's like a little dollar sign where you can make a one-time contribution. Because some people said, hey, I want to do it on a one-time basis. And that's fine.

So far, every single feedback you guys have given me, all the ideas you've given me have been really good. So I'm definitely listening because I think it's helpful. So what I'm going to do is before I work off the book, I'm going to work off of the updated, I guess, preface. I don't know. He calls it the first sip. These guys are very, very creative. So

it would be to me like the introduction of the book or the preface of the book. So I'm just going to read the updated version. I'm going to go back to the version that was printed in 1994. So this is going to set the table for the entire book. So this is Mel writing. He says, I found myself sharing a car to the airport with a young man who had been attending the conference and was leaving early to make a meeting in San Francisco. As it turned out, we were on the same flight. We struck up a conversation in the car to the airport, a conversation that became so quickly intense that it obliterated everything else around us as we negotiated through the check-in procedures and boarded the aircraft. We immediately rearranged our seats so

that we could sit together. Strangers on a plane speeding at 35,000 feet across aircraft. We immediately rearranged our seats so that we could sit together. Strangers on a plane speeding at 35,000 feet across America, we found ourselves in the grip of an energy that was clearly overtaking us. Whatever the energy was, it had us spinning into the vortex of a creative zone. So Mel, as I said last week, he's an amazing writer. He was the one that wrote the Banana Republic catalog that won best catalog of all time for the direct marketing association. And so he's got a beautiful way to communicate. But what he's really talking about here is they started talking about their love of tea. And so on this flight, in the five or seven hours or however long it took,

they come up with the idea to say, hey, why don't we start a business together? Which is kind of crazy if you think about it. So it says, we were in a highly charged, and this is something that's gonna be very, what he's about to describe here is gonna be very familiar for those of us that have had an idea that just kind of captures you and you can't. It's a high, is the best way to describe it.

And it's very, very satisfying if you've experienced it. It says, we were in a highly charged no man's land outside space and time, so basically in a state of flow, right? Where the source of an idea was revealing itself to us in its yet unborn state. Time and space reappeared seven hours later when we took up, or excuse me, when we looked up

and saw that the plane was on the ground in San Francisco and already empty. By then, it was apparent the idea had been born in us. And so I'm going to skip ahead a little bit, but I love this idea and this is going to sound familiar to some of you. So it says, the business had its own own mind a mind at least as strong as mind and it was that mind given to needs other than mine with which i frequently find myself clashing it might seem odd if not a little unnerving to some readers that a business tends to develop a mind of its own that is independent of its founder. But in fact, it is quite a natural development.

A business is a living thing, a confluence of energies, each of which wants to see its own self-interest served first. If you're a young, hungry entrepreneur, as I was when I started my business, he's talking about Banana Republic, you find it quite hard to make the distinction between you and your creation. But as a business grows, it becomes more concerned with its own survival than yours. This does not mean it is always smarter than its founder. It just means it doesn't always see things the way he does. And if he is unwilling to yield to its demands on him, it eventually grows willing to go its own way. So when I read that paragraph, when he talks about the idea of taking control of you, and then eventually that idea going out and becoming a real thing in its world, and then kind of has its own life.

At first, I thought it was a beautiful description, but also what I've noticed in doing, so not only am I reading a biography every week and doing that for founders, but for founders notes, which is my personal podcast notes, I listen to a lot of other podcasts that feature entrepreneurs because I really feel founders podcasts and founders notes are two sides of the same coin. What I mean by that is founders podcast is studying entrepreneurship in a historical context, right, which I think is extremely valuable, a love of history being, you know, one of my main interests in life. But two, by listening to people that are building companies now, you realize that the feelings that we have and the ideas that we have

and the experiences that we're going through as you build companies, they're very similar regardless of the industry you're in so what Mel was describing here was happening to him and Bill on the plane subscribers to founders notes this week will already know what I'm about to say but one of the people that was listening to speak and I was taking notes on was the founder of Dollar Shave Club which is a really fascinating business if you really think about how fast. They went from basically zero people to three million subscribers in four years, and then they

sold the company for a billion dollars. But Michael's name, Michael Dublin, was talking about something that I think is very interesting because he was talking about it just seems so weird. He was living in New York at the time. He'd have to go into the stores to buy razors and they'd be under lock and key. You'd have to go find the guy that was working at Dwayne Reed and be like, Hey, can you unlock this for me? And they just kind of seemed like pissed off about it. And like you were inconveniencing them. And so he said he, he, he brought the, he tied this together with like how to stop spot

an opportunity and then how to know if that opportunity is worth pursuing. So he's like, listen, I'm just going to read directly from the notes. He's like, this is on spotting an opportunity and then knowing that you have to do that opportunity. He's like, if I had this feeling, meaning the feeling I just described about the frustration with the cost of razors and the buying process, I knew that there were other people that were experiencing the same frustration. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, once you become focused on an idea

and you've identified a problem that needs solving or a thing you want to bring into the world, it is really hard to get that out of your head. That is like the perfect description of the beginning of this book because we're talking about a conversation on the plane. This idea sticks in Bill and Mel's head. Remember, from the time they start faxing each other and writing to each other there's two years that

you're going to see where not a lot gets done other than talking about the idea um it's clearly and then there and then i'll get to the point later in the book where they take like a year break and then they go back because that idea won't go away i think if the reason i bring that up is because i know i've had this own experience myself and so what's the chance that you had that you haven't it's very small it's like you have an idea you know it's what you should be doing yet you constantly distract yourself it's kind of similar to what eddie murphy was saying on the podcast last week the clip i played where it's like i know what i want to do maybe i'm fearful of doing it

or maybe I don't know how to do it. So there's like a level of uncertainty. And so I pick what I am capable of doing. And you're going to see that later in the book where Bill wants to start this company. He's enthralled with the idea, yet he comes from a consulting background. So he winds up taking all these other jobs as a distraction

because he doesn't know how to start a company. And I think that problem is exactly what the blurb was saying in the back of the book, that there's a big difference between when it talks about the moments when the rubber of an idea hits the bumpy road of commercial reality. And that time that experience is something that a lot of people understand because they've experienced it and a lot of people unfortunately never get out of they don't get to the other side of hey there's an idea hey this is a business i want to start to actually that business starting um and i think that's if if there's anything i can do in the sense of like surfacing information that may be useful, I think that's a good use of my time because I do think that more people should start their own companies. All right. So I wasn't expecting to go offing from the founder like Banana Republic did with its founders.

So it says, although he was younger than I by nearly a decade and a half. Now he's Mel's describing Bill. I could relate to him in many ways. And this is going to sound very familiar. When I was his age, I shared his deeply conditioned need to succeed. His quick, curious, and restless mind. He was careful, but eager, astute, but naive. And he was on a personal mission to find the medium in the real world that would give his essence fullest expression. So that sentence right there, I think that not only applies to entrepreneurship, but I think

that applies to everybody, period. Even people that would never, that have no desire to start a company. We're all searching for some kind of personal mission. So some kind of, to me, that's just, he's talking about fulfillment. Nobody wants to live a life that has no fulfillment in it. It was almost too much to hope for that he could arrange a life in which what he did would be one with who he was, but he hoped for it anyway. And so now we're going to get to the end of this whole point. And so that sentence, like how many people actually like what you do is in perfect alignment for who you are.

For the vast majority of people that for humans that have ever lived throughout human history to the ones that are alive today that is a tiny tiny percentage and to me that is a worthy goal in life and it's not an easy goal it's not going to happen automatically but if you can somehow align how you spend your time with who you really are inside and there's so many barriers to even get there. First, you have to do some self-reflection. I think it takes years. I don't even know if this is...

I was going to say it takes years to figure out who you are. And maybe we never actually really figure out who we are. But to have that introspection, you can only do this alone in quiet moments by yourself because only you know what the contents of your mind and your heart are. Okay. I have not even made myself to the introduction. This is going to be a long podcast. All right.

So now this is Mel talking about who he was at the time when they're starting Republic of Tea. He said, I am mad about tea. I can't think of a commodity more inappropriately marketed in the United States. I can't think of a product that is less appreciated for its awesome history, less heralded for its stunning effects, less savored for the haunting boundlessness of its many tastes. For reasons best left to the others to explain, tea, which he's calling the cup of humanity, civilization's oldest beverage getting down to a practical way to think about starting a business. He says, I would not think of starting a business unless I was its first customer. And no matter what's been said or written to the contrary, all it takes to launch a business in which you are the first customer is to find a second customer and sell him the product.

That's what I did. I sold Bill Rosenweg on T. Okay, and then a note. So somewhere along the line, Mel talks about the idea that he likes to confuse companies with countries. So they don't have normal titles. There's no chief executive officer and president, stuff like that. That's not how they refer to one another. They're saying, hey, we're starting a republic.

It's a republic of tea. And so the republics have ministers. So Mel is the minister of leaves, meaning he kind of sets the tone, the basic philosophy of the brand. Bill is the minister of progress. It means he's the one that's supposed to be responsible for running the business day to day and making sure there's progress and pushing forward. And then Patricia is the minister of enchantment.

She's the artist in this. She's the one, like she designs the product labels, does all the sketching, all that kind of stuff. Okay. So when you hear leaves, progress, et cetera, that's how they refer to each other. Just remember leaves is Mel, progress is Bill. Okay. So they start faxing each other. I'm going to skip over the first few faxes because in between the faxes, they also make notes in their own private diaries and journals that are also published in the book. So I want to start with one that takes place right at the beginning in April, 1990. And it's Bill talking about what it was like, because we just heard

from Mel what his experience was like selling Bill on the idea. And then this is Bill's experience with being sold on the idea. And the note I left myself is what it is like to fall in love with an idea. Okay, so this is Bill writing. He says, when I returned home home to sedona he's living in sedona arizona i was really obsessed with this i with this tea idea i didn't know what had gotten into me neither did my wife my plate was already full of other work and responsibilities but it all seemed to dim in light of the potential of a new business and the thrill of collaborating with mel and patricia i couldn't stop thinking talking or drinking tea i was exhilarated by the thrill of collaborating with Mel and Patricia. I couldn't stop thinking, talking, or drinking tea. I was exhilarated by the idea of forming the Republic of Tea, was motivated by some inexplicable energy to make it happen. Basically, I didn't sleep. Everything became tea for me. The shelves

in the supermarket took on a whole new meaning. I no longer saw tea as a product on the shelf to buy, but was now looking between the packages. What was missing? Where were the opportunities? Magazine and newspaper articles were suddenly speaking to me about the need for tea in our culture, and for the first time in my life, I was noticing how many really weird teapots there were on the market. Honestly, I was feeling pretty woozy about this whole thing. I think I had fallen in love with an idea. Okay, so now this is a fax that is sent the next day, or excuse me, later on that day, from Mel to Bill.

And so Mel, what I really enjoyed about this book is we're seeing, and most of the highlights that I'm gonna share from Mel's perspective is not just about specifically starting Republic of Tea, but it's more about his overall business philosophy and how he thinks about companies. And he's got a lot of unique and interesting ideas that are helpful that I think we should steal

and use in our own lives. And this is one of them. And he's writing this on April 12th, 1990. And he says, starting a business is like making a movie. So he says, when it comes to creating a business, film is probably a better analogy than poetry. Starting a business is like making a movie. First, there's an idea, and then it gets worked into a treatment or screenplay. Next comes the

money and the casting. Often those two go hand in hand. Next, you shoot the picture. So think of what we're doing as a production that we are going to call the Republic of Tea, written by the Minister of Leaves, designed by the Minister of Enchantment. So he's writing the copy. The Minister of Enchantment is doing all the visuals, which is Patricia. Produced and directed by the Minister of Progress, which is Bill, and starring its customers. Now here's the weird thing. So that is being – I read that this week and it's, that was,

those words were written in April 12th, 1990. So in case you're listening to this far in the future, I started numbering all the emails I send for founders notes. And so on founders notes 16, which also took place the exact same week I was reading this book, I took notes from one of the founders of the startup Open Door. And this is, let me just read what the note I sent out, which is really funny how, remember I always say history doesn't repeat, human nature does. These ideas are separated by close to 30 years. Startups are like a movie. This is from Founders Notes number 16. You have an inspired narrative, then you have to cast it properly. Imagine Rocky without Sylvester Stallone. It's a very different movie. It probably doesn't work. You have to get the right characters,

founders, executives, employees, in the right places to make the movie potentially successful. Then you have to create a trailer, which he describes as the value proposition of the business succinctly described. Never thought about trailers like that, but that's exactly what they are. Then you have to sell tickets. This is basically true for any product. So I like this idea of thinking about the creation of a business as a movie because it in that sense it becomes more of what i believe it is like it's a it's an endeavor and creativity and just like no movie should look the same no business should look the same and i like that you're applying the same

skill set uh and and thinking about it and using basically a metaphor to think about it like you have to do the exact same thing like when you're you're laying the foundation of a company usually comes from an inspired idea just like a movie comes from inspired idea or a narrative rather and then you're like okay well i i'm employee number one who am i going to go and recruit who are the movie stars so to speak um and then how do we once we have the movie stars once we have the script how do we convey to to people that we want to that we want like customers to go see the movie how do we convey why people that we want, that we want like customers to go see the movie? How do we convey why you would go see the movie? Well,

this is commonly done with a trailer. What is the business equivalent of that? And then I like the idea of selling tickets, you know, selling the product. So I find it fascinating that, that Mel is kind of using that metaphor to describe how he feels about the creation of a business to somebody

that's never done it before. I think it's very, metaphors are extremely helpful because they're, basically it's just a compression of an idea. And I think because we live in an, especially now we live in an environment where we have so much information coming at us all the time, compression, compressing ideas is valuable because it's saving people time. Okay. So I'm going to skip over the next week or so in the faxes. And I like this idea because, you know, Bill, keep in mind, he's from a consulting background. His faxes are much, much longer than Mel's are. So he's sketching out all this other stuff.

He's sending this over to Mel. And Mel is basically trying to tell Bill, listen, because they're trying to talk about marketing, all this other stuff. And that's fine. Have a marketing plan. But what Bill's about to succinctly describe to us in two sentences is like the product has to come first.

So he says, communications is the business. And what Mel means by that is the communications they're going to have with their customer, right? Because they're selling, some people could argue a commodity. How are you going to differentiate something that's been around, a product that's been around for 5,000 years? So it says communications is the business, we're gonna have to explain why you should buy the republic of tea over you know all the other competitors but there is nothing to communicate

unless we've got great tasting teas and so the note i left myself is product first then pros see i wrote the word why do i do this myself i can I can't even pronounce simple words you know that prostitutes the word like you know when religious people are other people go out and kind of convert people prostitutes basically product first then go out and convert people okay so let's skip ahead to a few pages later. And this is, now, this, what I'm going to read to you here is Mel's journal, like a journal entry that he, I don't think he ever sends to Bill. But I like this idea of slowing down. And immediately when I thought of this is not only did I think of, because I just came off of reading the book about Banana Republic. So you see a lot of, you know,

they had, they, they, they were out of jobs. They only had $1,500. They couldn't afford to slow down. So they had to rush, rush,

rush. But I thought of what we learned back on the podcast on Space Barons with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, compare and contrasting the two different ways they're building their rocket companies. And the statement that Jeff Bezos would repeat over and over again has been in my mind since then. He's like, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And so his thing is like,

we're not gonna rush and make a bunch of mistakes. We're gonna take our time. And because we take our time and think things through and we don't stop over a long period of time, we're going to get a lot done. So what looks on the outside from a day-to-day perspective looks slow over the long term accumulates a lot of actual progress. So therefore, slow is fast. Okay. So it says, as much as I loved volleying with Bill over the fax machine, it was not in my mind to actively involve myself getting another business started. So this kind of happens by accident.

I had stashed enough money in the bank to buy myself the time to smell the flowers for a few years. This means after he left Bonaire Republic. To reflect and read and write and raise my child. As much as I liked Bill and loved the idea of being in the tea business, I could see no reason to torture myself by going round and round in the mind-thick unreality maze necessitated by lawyers, accountants, and investors who not only tend to see business in the most boring and narrow terms, but who usually also lack the humility to see how tiny a pinprick is their view on the world. So sometimes I'm going to be reading his words. I feel sometimes when I read them aloud, they don't sound as good as when

I read them in the mind, just because he has an interesting way to communicate. I was in no hurry. When I started Banana Republic, I hurried, and I found out afterward that it would have been a lot more entertaining and probably no less profitable in the long run had I not hurried. At that point in my life, hurrying made me feel I was getting more done. I feel this too.

I feel my wife always tells me that I'm like in a perpetual rush. I think most people that know me think that way. And something I've been trying to do is like really kind of slow down and be a little bit more methodical. Like I have some internal drive that's making me try to speed things up when maybe I could get more done by slowing it down. But the fact is I was more likely just just making more work for, but there you go. This is kind of the way I feel sometimes. But the fact is I was more likely just making more work for myself. What is it about business that makes one forget that no matter how fast or slow one goes, no matter how straight or meandering the path,

all business people end up in the same place, even if one gravestone happens to be bigger than another. There is only the journey to savor. The end is the same end for all of us. The opportunities in tea were screaming at anyone who would be quiet enough to sip and listen. It was a perfect example of the fact that although entrepreneurs might like to think otherwise, one does not create a business.

A business creates itself when the circumstances are ready for it. And if the people it needs to create it are not yet ready are up to the task, it will wait. For the moment, I was happy to wait along with it. Okay. So I'm skipping ahead in time a little bit. And this is now Bill is writing to Mel and we're going to start to see how, you his mind it's not he's not sure of what to do there's a lot of confusion when starting a new business so the normal life myself was the problem with being able to argue both sides and then this quote I'm gonna read you that I just took notes on from the founder

stripe Patrick Collison which I think is a wonderful illustration at this point so he's a bit this is Bill writing to Mel. He says, the question we've got to ask ourselves is, should we come out of the box with everything, like a full product line, thereby making a profound statement about who we are, or do we start with a few lines and introduce new lines gradually? So do you try to incorporate everything from inception, like everything's pre-planned and then you launch,

or do you launch and then kind of iterate as you go? And he's going to argue both sides of this. He says five thoughts about this in favor of the splash, meaning going all out. One, the catalog would not be complete unless we had the full line. So if we introduce lines gradually, the catalog would be delayed.

Two, if we go all out, it seems inevitable that we'll have to bring in outside investors and therefore we'll have the money to do it right and do it big. Three, good story, media attention could help frame the Republic of Tea as a phenomenon, much excitement, meaning if you give them more than just maybe, let's say, five teas to talk about. We stand the chance of, number four, we stand the chance of making the Republic of Tea a household word in two years. Number five, much easier to sell to stores

with a high profile and introduction will do great in the self-paced wars. Now here's him arguing the opposite. Five thoughts about this in favor of a slower buildup. One, we'll need less money and therefore we'll own more of the company. Two, learning curve. We get to make our mistakes quietly. Three, people factor. It's always hard to find good people.

Four, timing. We're still a few years ahead from our time from the perspective of the world coming around our way, meaning one of their goals is to get people to drink less coffee and to drink tea instead. So basically calm down, slow down. And five, what's the hurry? So there's a lot of confusions that follow in the following pages because he can't really, they don't basically make this decision

for another two years from the time he's writing this. And that's the problem with being able to argue both sides. And it reminded me of one of the notes I took where if you don't know who Patrick Collison is, he's the founder of this company called Stripe. Stripe is basically like the new PayPal but on steroids. It's a much larger business. If you purchase anything online, I think like 80% of Americans, at least speaking from the country that I live in,

80% of them have purchased something online through a business that uses Stripe to process the payments. And it's run by two brothers that are really, really young. Patrick's being the older one. He's about 30 years old. And it's a massive business right now. But he's a really interesting person to listen to because he's just a really well-read and thoughtful person.

And there's a lot of things when he was talking that surprised me. And just like everybody else, no one's immune to the entrepreneurial emotional rollercoaster. So let me just read some of the notes I took. He said, There are times I'd reflect on the enormity of the challenges that lay ahead, all the work that we still had to do, and I would be immensely dispirited.

I would ask my co-founder, which is also his brother, is there really any actual point of doing this? And then right after that, he talks about this inevitable feeling that you're going to have when you're creating something that is kind of like you have to have two minds. And this is what we're seeing Bill do here, where he's like, have i can argue both sides like both arguments sound good i don't know what the hell like which one i should choose so he said

this is patrick's experience with us he's like you have to be optimistic on one hand because if you weren't you wouldn't bother doing it in the first in the face of adversity meaning starting the company or the product that you want on the other, you have to be pessimistic because there are tons of problems and you have to be tuned to spotting them so you can fix them. And this is his entire point of bringing this up, which is why it's so weirdly difficult and why I think entrepreneurs have a hard time relating to people like explaining their problems to people that aren't entrepreneurs and he said this is a weird psychological state

meaning you're you have to be of two minds constantly and to remain in it as you must for many years is just not normal and I think that's why you see so much talk about in the entrepreneurial community about like trying to advocate for like a healthy mental state because not only are you probably pushing yourself to a physical limit, but you're most likely pushing yourself

on a mental limit as well because you're confusing yourself because you have to be able to switch back and forth from being completely optimistic that it's gonna work out and then completely pessimistic because you can to be able to switch back and forth from being completely optimistic that it's going to work out and then completely pessimistic because you can actually identify the things that would prevent it from working out. And it can be very, very confusing and very, very, very hard to deal with. Okay. Okay. So now I'm going to skip ahead and this is getting more into Mel's philosophy on happiness, business, and profit. Okay, so he says, this is Mel writing

to Bill. Reading over your personal goals and vision, I find myself moved. I was not nearly so clear thinking when I set out to establish Banner Republic. And a lot of the problems I endured in the last decade could have been avoided had I been able to see life in the full spectrum that you do now. Your goals nearly mirror mine. In fact, with one notable exception. In starting a business, mine would be a different expression of priorities. To explain why, I need to go back in time.

In my view, all things are born to thrive. You cannot go wrong when you create something, be it a life or a business. If you take responsibility to see that it thrives. What makes a thing thrive? People thrive on happiness. There is nothing elusive about happiness. It's here always.

The only problem is that sometimes we're not here for it. One sure way of not being here is to resist the uninvited, meaning stuff we have no control of, things we can't plan, which is sadly what most people do most of the time. But happiness is the primal birthright of the man or woman who does not resist it. The common fallacy about happiness is that you have to do something to attain it. Not so. Happiness is built into our DNA. It's not an add-on option. Happiness needs no cause. It is an unspeakable great tragedy of our times

that so many people are desperately looking outside themselves for the source of happiness when it's already inside them waiting to be tapped. Now he's going to apply this to businesses. To make a business thrive, however, takes a little bit of effort. Business is about another kind of relationship, the one between you and me. When we conduct business together, we create a third entity, the business relationship. Unlike you and me, the business itself is not

endowed with a natural innate happiness. It is our responsibility to make it happy, and that means making it thrive. What causes a business to thrive is the mutual agreement we make between us that we will both benefit from our business relationship. Fortunately, business guides us with an absolute way to measure its success. This is the key point here. Business always thrives on profit. So when everyone who has an association with a business,

its investors, its employees, its vendors, and its customers, all realize a profit from that association, The business is happy. That is why if you start a business, you assume the responsibility to make it thrive. You will hire others who will join you in your cause and whose families as well as they will depend on you to captain their ship through the choppy waters of reality. In other words, the first order of a business is to be successful, and a business is successful because it is profitable. Because for so long business has measured itself only in terms of profits,

there is a tendency now on the part of young entrepreneurs like you to overcompensate and think more in terms of saving the world than making a profit. For all its virtue, there is a fundamental flaw in this thinking. There won't be a business to save the world with if the business does not make a profit. Okay, so I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. This part was interesting to me because there's a lot of notes I left myself. One was the importance on editing or narrowing your focus. Then what's fascinating to me is in 1990, they come up with their distribution strategy, and then it looked up because the company's few years later they sell it to another private company and that company is run by a family to this day and i was researching like how they what the state of the business is today and it's they're still using the same distribution that mel is writing uh out in 1990 and there's just a lot of ideas in in a few short paragraphs so let me just jump into it so this is mel responding because he's trying to like focus bill he feels

bill is he's not gonna be able to start a business without understanding where like what where are they gonna set like where are they gonna set out from so this is our focus should be flavored teas these are healthier than coffee tastier than other teas that are popularly available, and have a whimsy about them, as they should coming from our mirthful little republic. By staying focused on flavored, lightly caffeinated teas, we are espousing the ethic of everything in moderation, which is one of the taglines of the business. We are about balance and harmony, about looking at ourselves and liking what we find. Coffee is slimy overkill. Tea is sweet union with life.

So now he's going to talk about some product ideas. He says, peach, pico, passion fruit, peppermint, blackberry nut. These are among the first 12 treasures we will make from the obscure, vastly underappreciated asset of flavored black teas. We will be welcomed on the shelves of natural food stores and gourmet supermarket shelves. So to this day, the Republic of Tea, which in some cases has valued about $125 million. They've explicitly rejected distribution deals with larger companies like Costco or Target in favor of this. Specialty stores, you can also order on their website. It's funny because in the book they have, let me just tell you, let me go off on a little tangent real quick. So the appendix is full of stuff like the appendix the appendix might be a reason enough to buy the book but because it shows like early catalogs shows you the sketches the early product ideas

um early advertisements they did and again it's i i think that's the biggest thing i learned besides the founders of banana republic being relentlessly resourceful it's they create entire new worlds they're just creating a product like you're reading you'd have to i guess just you can just google it if you want um or if you don't get the book i think i might have i had the book is actually hard to find i had to buy a used copy on amazon um but anyways i i was reading over the appendix and looking at their advertisements, and remember, they start off also, just like they did at Banana Republic, by selling by catalog.

And so in these advertisements, they came out in the 1990s, early 1990s. They have phone numbers. I called the phone number just to see if it led anywhere. It still leads to the Republic of Tea. And the greeting kind of sounds like it was still influenced from Mel and Patricia. Like it's not like, hey, you reached Republic of Tea.

It's like you're going into a new country. And I wind up talking to one of the sales reps there. And she's like, do you want to order something? I was like, no, honestly, I was reading the book about your company, and I just wanted to see if the phone number still worked. Okay, so let me get off that tangent back into the book. So my point being is he laid out something they're still doing almost 30 years later. So he said, we could test the concept inexpensively in one major market,

then use the results of the market test to raise national treasury to blitz the country. So, again, he's still speaking in country terms, not company terms, which means basically, hey, we'll test to make sure people like our tea, then we'll raise money, and then we'll go all out like on a federal level. As you know, this idea is entirely inconsistent with my previous utterings. Consistent, and this is why I said there's a lot of information in these paragraphs that I think are valuable. Consistency can offer only safety and certainty. There is no such thing as safety

and certainty. It's human folly to think there is. I personally, that sentence, like I kind of agree with on a personal level. So in a world where nothing is certain and nothing is safe, what I'd like to do is offer the customer the next best thing, a great cup of tea. I think I've said this to you before, but back in the day when I had a MySpace profile, the quote on my MySpace profile, I still remember to this day. It's still one of my favorite quotes. There's no such thing as security, only opportunity. And I think that's very, very much what he's saying there. Okay. Skipping ahead.

This is a large part of what I focus on is the fact that there's a lot of times where Mel just becomes completely discontent with Bill. Because Bill is, as you can imagine, like what I said earlier, like, why would you be writing faxes over the course of two years? You're selling tea. How long could this possibly take? Bill was paralyzed by inaction. He just constantly wanted to keep making business plans and all this other stuff that you could imagine somebody that's never been on a entrepreneur might think to do,

which gives the illusion of work, but you're not actually getting anything done. So this is Mel reflecting on what's going on. And keep in mind, he's writing these words in 1990. You could easily think of how they could still be applied today. So he has this idea, basically you need to have ideas, but ideas need to be in the form of action. A vaguely uncomfortable feeling began to set in, and then I suddenly realized. The discomfort was Bill's, not mine. He was obsessively thinking the business through,

but other than typing words on a computer, he wasn't yet doing anything to get the business started. Did he find the doing of starting the business less compelling than the idea of it? If he represented the Apple generation, meaning the company Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started, if he represented the Apple generation of young business mavens, and indeed he brought every new Macintosh computer as soon as it was released, it made me wonder if a generation of great thinker-typers, he made that word up by the way, it's thinker hyphen typers, was not yet about to inherit the world.

They definitely did, but I would say thinker doers or typer doers. I started to worry about who might be able to spare a moment away from the keyboard in the 21st century to grow my fruit and vegetables. The whole idea of our exchange was that Bill was going to start the tea company. He wrote about it. He talked about it. He came to visit about it, meaning coming to Mel and Bill's house to stay, but no tea company. Now, I am not unaware that the reader could easily

view me as a quixotic, if not demented, for expecting a young gentleman he converses with about starting a tea business on an airplane at the beginning of the month to have the actual tea on the supermarket shelves by the end of the month. Perhaps a more reasonable assessment of me would be to recognize that I am a man who himself once started a business on $1,500 in three weeks

and got lucky. Therefore, I tend to place a greater value on ideas in the form of action than action in the form of ideas. And so what he means by there, the action in the form of ideas, is that, yeah, Bill's doing stuff. He's working on this every day, but he's just typing. He's just generating more ideas. He's got it completely backwards in mel's opinion that experience of founding my own undercapitalized highly impractical business taught me an undelible indelible lesson not the sort one might hear in the hallowed halls of business schools life is not an idea starting a business is not an idea it is getting things done so that's you know

something very competent common come something common that we hear all the time that ideas are not important to executions everything this was the most valuable thing i had to say but bill was not ready yet was not ready to hear it yet, and I decided a better messenger to tell him was the business itself, not me. Meantime, as the Minister of Leaves waited for the tea business to snatch Bill away from the computer to get itself started, he himself thought it best to serve the Republic by taking the opportunity to further explore the philosophical underpinnings that made him so excited about T as an agent to change the world. So that's from Mel's perspective at this time. On the very next page, we see a private

journal entry from Bill. It's basically agreeing because what is Mel saying there? Mel's saying that Bill's thinking too much. You've thought about it. That's great. You know what you want to do. Just go do it, right? And so now Bill's kind of realizing that himself. And he says, I had that peculiar feeling one sometimes has in a fall in love at first sight relationship that things were moving so fast that I needed to keep under control so I didn't lose myself. On the other hand, I just wanted to go with it. I often felt that I thought too much and I could see the continual self-consciousness that accompanied me through much of this early exploration. So the note I also love myself doing this is like, if you think too much, the more time you dedicate to thinking about an idea instead of actually trying and testing it it's too easy for

you to talk yourself out of it so so i was constantly reflecting on my own search for the right thing i bad i badly wanted this to be it meaning on his life's work although i yearned for tea to be right for me to be my true true calling. I knew this was beyond my control, but I kept on pushing. In retrospect, I might have been trying to. So that's just one example of many where I don't think after reading the book, I don't think Bill was unsure of the idea. I think he was unsure of himself. So I think that probably stops more people than being unsure of the idea. All right, so a few pages later,

they're doing some market research, and a lot of that stuff I'm going to leave out of the book. I mean, there is some interest. They have business plans where I skip over. They have pro forma projections, all that stuff. It's honestly just not interesting to me. I went to business school once. I don't want to go again. But in this, I found another example of something I've

already mentioned in this podcast. I mentioned others. And one of the reasons that I spent so much time reading about history and listening to podcasts about history is because I love the fact that history doesn't repeat what human nature does. And in this case, Bill has had a bunch of conversations with people already in the industry, trying to do more market research, get more advice. And he's going to hear some stuff that you hear constantly. And there's actually, he numbers them. It's wonderful. So he's telling Mel the results of this conversation. He goes, this was the conversation where you hear these kind of things coming from a person who is there and who has tried, meaning is already in the tea industry.

Number one, the market is controlled by several big players. Number two, there's little opportunity left. Number three, the field is not as hot as it once was. Number four, there's a lot of people already doing it. Number five, who needs another one? Number six, difficult if not impossible to move within the market. Number seven, difficult if not impossible to enter the mass market. Number eight, very risky to get involved. And number nine, and the one that you hear constantly and the one I hate all the time, there's nothing new to be done. So then Bill continues writing. He says, in a bigger context,

these are the types of things you always run into when you start a new business. And what's weird is it starts to give him doubts. I don't think that's weird. I shouldn't say it's weird, but he's saying, but this is a moment that separates entrepreneurs from weenies. We have to plug ahead to find the opening. My point being is like those things are usually not true because it's only too late. In most cases, it's only too late if you're just going to copy what other people are doing.

Like they said before, tea has been consumed and sold by humans for over 5,000 years. What this guy, the guy that Bill's talking to is telling him is like, oh, it's too late. The ship has left. You're just too late. You got to go find an opportunity. Well, we know that's not true because a few years later, they start the business. That business succeeds.

They sell it and the people they sold it to are still operating profitably almost 25 years later so it's just a reminder that um you i'm not saying don't go out and research that's that's not what i got from reading this book it's just that you're gonna run into this kind of thinking constantly because humans do not it's weird Things change all the way around all the time, everywhere around us. Yet like we somehow like delude ourselves into thinking that things aren't changing, that there's that. I just I don't see the point of ever uttering the sentence. There's nothing new to be done because we know that when that's never true. OK, so I want to skip ahead. I don't need to spend too much more time on that.

So this is actually really good because the note I left myself is the doubts of nascent entrepreneurship. And then on the very next page, advice from somebody who has already done it. So we're going to see the difference between somebody that's full of doubt and then somebody that has a certain level of confidence based on past success. So this is Bill, first Bill writing to Mel. I share this in the spirit of our friendship and in the interest of thinking out loud in search of your voice. At the moment, I'm being pulled. And unfortunately for me, I guess, and for many, its root is monetary.

I'm pulled by opportunities that exist today for me that provide an income. These opportunities are real and tangible. So this is his day job as being a consultant. Although they lack many of the qualities that are important to me. So basically doing something he doesn't love. He's just doing it for money. I am pulled by the excitement and potential of our new endeavor. I believe in it, yet it is unproven.

It offers unknown potential and unknown failure. I like to take risks. How much risk can I afford? I need to provide an income for my family. My challenge is to transition from my present income to my new income as smoothly as possible. So the reason I'm including this because I'm sure this is a very common feeling. I think it's helpful to understand that other people throughout history and throughout different times have these same feelings and that it's perfectly normal. The Republic of Tea needs me full-time right now. I want to spend all my energy and concentration on this. It's tough when your head and heart have to be at odds. This clarifies my goal. I want to develop the plan for the Republic of Tea to make it a viable income-producing entity soon.

I want to be working full-time for what I believe in. I want to end the frustration of working with my head for income while my heart lies elsewhere. I'm sure that it's pretty universal that people understand that feeling that he's going through right now. I guess it's a little like going out on a date with someone when you know you're in love with someone else. And so this is the, um, the letter that Mel writes him back,

which I think is again, he's, he's got like this whole like entrepreneurial philosophy that I find interesting. That's based on other things that he spent time learning. He's kind of remixing it into like and applying it to building companies. So this is Mel writing to Bill. The flip side of every opportunity is a problem.

You may think it is a remarkable thing that you've come face to face with a problem within hours of expressing your commitment to taking on the challenge. But I am not surprised at all. Among your many talents is a clear-headedness combined with a willingness to see. This is probably so much a part of you that you may not even be aware of it. This is a hugely important sentence. Problems drive most people to distraction. Distraction is a way to avoid looking at what wants to be looked at. So after your sobering day, let me offer you a few hopeful words from, there's some, like he's heavily influenced by like Eastern philosophy. This guy named J. Krishnamurti. I've heard this word said

properly before and my mouth just will not accommodate that request right now. The request from my brain is being denied. So Krishnamurti. That's not how you pronounce it. I've heard it said right. All right, don't worry. The important part is the quote. We don't need to worry about that. The answer is in the problem. I take him to mean that if you want the right answer, you better be careful you're having the true problem.

A suggestion. When you define the problem, example, this is a niche business and we need a tangible, practical niche to succeed. I understand your frustration and I agree, we do need a niche. But is this really the problem? I hope you can find the time this afternoon to take a walk and look at this. You may not want to hear this, but no matter how good yours is, the world never finds it easy to welcome a new idea. Let me repeat that because I think it's so important. No matter how good yours is, the world never finds it easy to welcome a new idea. Think about what we just heard a few minutes

ago, the list of nine reasons on why not to get into the tea business. A great example of that. And that's all the more true in business. And it will be even more true in a sleepy business like tea. Who has time for yet another product, especially one that's already 5,000 years old? In a society charged on replacing yesterday's gadget with today's latest greatest

technological technological breakthrough not a lot of people are going to be eager at first to use up their mastercard limit on an item that they may might they may that they might think was already obsolete before rome was built here's another thing to think about. Where would the computer industry be today if it focused on selling computers only to people who already had computers? I think you'll readily agree it wouldn't be. So basically at the time, somebody, I can't remember which podcast we covered this on, but they talked about, you know, the market for the personal computer maybe birthed by the first Apple computer was so much larger than the people

that already had mainframes. I think it was Paul Allen. I'm pretty sure it was the Paul Allen podcast. They talked about this too, where it's just like, if you focus on just trying to redo what was already being done, that size of market was tiny

and you're probably not going to succeed. But if you focus on all the people that didn't yet have a computer, well, then that market's huge. And if you could build something that is interesting to them, then you have a path to success. So he says, I think you readily agree it wouldn't be. And as long as I'm rambling, allow me to comment on this thing called shelf space, because that's one of the worries that Bill is having. Oh, we're not going to be able to get, you know, they're not going to, the shelf's. Oh, we're not going to be able to get, you know, the shelves are already taken. We're not going to get in there.

He said, let's not, and this is really an example of first principles thinking by Mel here. Let's not forget whose shelves they really are. The shopkeeper may pay the rent, but those shelves belong to the customers. And this is an extremely important point. So I say, sell the customer, not the shopkeeper. It is not our job to make the business. It is our job to deliver the tea. The tea will do the rest.

The time is right. Okay, so now I'm skipping way ahead because this goes on for months. So now I'm like 90 days and almost 100, more than halfway through the book at this point, and they're still just going back and forth and back and forth and then these projections. At some point, I got frustrated reading the book where I wanted to jump into the pages, grab Bill by the face, and just be like, go! Just start the business already. Stop talking about it. So it made me think, uh, I'm going to read you a private reflection that Mel has that I think is extremely valuable. And it, it reminded me of, um, if you listen to founders podcast number 36 on Nolan Bushnell, which was the founder of Atari

and then Chuckie cheese, which is kind of an interesting resume. Um, the name of Atari and then Chuck E. Cheese, which is kind of an interesting resume. The name of the book of that podcast is like Finding the Next Steve Jobs because he was Steve Jobs' boss when Steve Jobs was like 19. And something that he said in that book that's just stuck with me forever, and he said, Steve Jobs had one speed, go. And that's something I always think about when I think I'm thinking too much, which is basically what Bill's doing here. And in the context, Nolan was talking about, I had no problem giving Steve like responsibilities and letting him run a project or run off with an idea

because I know I didn't have to do anything. I'd give him the green light. And in many cases, he would even do it without the green light. But he just, if he was in charge of something, it was going to get done because he could not, not do it. And so this section, I want you to keep that in mind as I read to you that this, this next section where you have Mel just contemplating like, what the hell, what is going on with Bill? So he says, if tea is the juice of patience at this point i must not have been drinking enough of it so he's starting to get like a little perturbed the

brainstorming for names before we had even decided on the teas we would sell began to unsettle me so he's getting you know constant faxes about stuff that doesn't matter because you still don't have a product um i found myself yearning for bill to stop typing faxes and start starting the company. Well, starting a company is a different exercise for every company, and there's no prescribed way to do it. Writing about starting a company does not get a company started. Taking action, not talk about taking action is the one absolute requirement to start a business. You check your instincts, you check your information, you check the known

risk against your anticipated rewards as best as you can in an uncertain world, and you plunge, you take action. So he said all he had to do to get started was come up with a deal proposal, negotiate it with me and Patricia, propose how he wanted to finance it, put the lawyers to work drafting the documents, and find a few investors willing to throw a little money at him in the idea. I could have spelled all this out, but then if I had to spell it out, dot, dot, dot. So when I got to that point where he's like, listen, this is very simple to me. It should be obvious to Bill, but we have a bigger problem if I have to tell him this. What's the chance of a business succeed if he doesn't even understand the basic fundamentals? This made me think of a famous quote attributed to Mozart, where somebody comes up to him and says, hey, how do I make a symphony and he's like oh you're far too young um to do that and the respond the guy the person responds he's like but you did this

when you were younger than me he's like yeah but i didn't go around asking people how to do it and so mozart's point there to me is like i if you want to make a symphony you just make a symphony you don't go around asking people how to how to do it knew I wanted to do it, so I did it. I think it's very much similar to the point that Mel's making. Like, why would I have to tell this guy who professes that he wants to start a business, who writes, at this point, I mean, 160-something pages of faxes between the two of them? Like, how much more talking do we have to do here? So it goes back to, let's go back to what Mel's saying. He goes, if anybody shows you a list of attributes that make up the entrepreneurial spirit,

don't even bother to read to the second item if the first item is not nerve. It takes nerve to start a business, lots of it. If nerve is the first attribute of the entrepreneur, then practicality is number two. It was time to probe a little to find out if this whole affair was never going to be anything more than the clever finger exercises of two guys tapping on computer keyboards. Okay, so what Mel does here, he sends him a fax. He's like, listen, I'm going on a Buddhist, like a silent retreat for a week.

You're not gonna be able to get in touch with me. The week I'm gone, he goes, you need, like it needs to be a practical week, basically saying getting something done. So this is where I'm going to talk about the doubts of nascent entrepreneurship part two. This is Bill's response to that fax. He says, my self-defined job description for uh for minister of progress had involved a lot of digging around but no decision making i wanted to become the leader and driving force of this business but i was still looking to mel for the big answers like

when is it time to start the business after all he was far more experienced than me i figured that if i kept bringing in new information and plans that he'd pick one and say let's go and that from Mel's perspective that's exactly what he doesn't want him to do. At this point I lack the confidence and understanding to do the business on my own. See this is good that at least he's self-aware. That's like hugely important. He's saying straight out I'm just I don't I'm doubting myself not the idea. So Mel's departure was that much more unsettling. But I also didn't want Mel to lose confidence in me,

so I kept trying to make a plan. I wrote several progress reports, yet left on my own, I wondered if I could make it happen or if I would fail. I'm sure Mel was wondering the same thing. So his week of practicality, the practical week, we find out what what what took place um well took place while mel was on a silent retreat and it's not good so now mel is going to give us more of his philosophy on business which i want to include into the podcast because i think it's helpful for all of us and a lot of this reminds me mel's a weird i shouldn't say i don't

mean weird in a like in a pejorative mel's an interesting character a lot i don reminds me, Mel's a weird, I shouldn't say, I don't mean weird in a, like in a pejorative. Mel's an interesting character. I don't know if he's similar to any of the other entrepreneurs that I've covered so far on the podcast, but I do, there is, if I had to pick one person he reminds me of a little bit is, if you listen to Founders number 42, about the founder of Visa, Dee Hawk. There's a lot of similarities between d d and mel and so we're going to see a little bit of that here so he comes back from his his silent retreat and this is what happens he says awaiting me from federal express when i returned was a 25 page progress report from bill that was a rehash of everything we had brainstormed to date as it contained nothing new in the practical department, I was not heartened.

It left me with a sinking feeling that he was growing more and more lost and groping for what to do next. If he was waiting for me to do something, he was in trouble. And now he's going to lay out how he thinks about business. There are people who do business even when they don't have to. They do it compulsively for the game of it. They do it because it offers a clear measure of success in an otherwise chaotic world. But I am not one of them. This is a whole DeHawk-esque philosophy.

To me, business is something you don't bother with if you don't have to. And fortunately, I didn't have to and fortunately I didn't have to when Bill came along. On the other hand I firmly believe that if you do have if you do have to do business then you should do it without complaint without ambivalence with full mind and heart as best you can never allowing yourself to forget why you are doing it. I did, quote unquote, a business, was lucky enough to succeed and left it gladly because the reason I went into business in the first place was to free, this is probably the most important part,

was to free myself of ever having to work for anyone, including myself. I was glad to leave because it had become increasingly clear to me that the true path to personal growth for me would be to do nothing, not to do more of something. The point of business for me was to become financially independent

so I did not have to spend my life acting out anybody else's construct of what life is about. However, in looking to me to fashion the what of the tea business, Bill was clutching at vapor. I knew I wasn't going to run the business day to day, and I knew the business could never have any staying power unless Bill felt in his bones that it was his. He needed to figure for himself what to do. He had to get over the compulsion of turning to someone outside himself to tell him what the business should be. And this is a perfect two-line summary for this section.

Nobody invents the business for the entrepreneur. That's his job. So unfortunately, this continues for quite some time. We're still about a year and a half from the start of the business here. But I do want to focus on just some really great advice that Mel is giving to Bill, and I think it's good advice for all of us. So he has this idea of be the customer, not the seller. So he's responding to a fax where

Bill is just coming up with all these excuses of why it just might not work out. And so Mel's response is, you have fallen into the treacherous booby trap when you say, I also know that a lot of people are not we the customer, meaning they don't look at tea like we look at tea. This is the trap into which many businesses fall. By definition, it creates a boundary between the business and its customer. It signals that the possibility that the business has something to sell that the customers may not have any use for. And this is such a good point. Since need is today so infrequently the criterion for whether a product is sold or purchased, it is no wonder

that this booby trap has become so prevalent. Be the customer, not the seller. Approach business from the standpoint of the customer's needs, not yours. All else will follow. And then he makes another good point here. We're selling tea from an inner passion. Passion is something that everyone understands. So eventually, well, let me just read this. You're going to see that Bill's not really listening. Now he's sending him over. He's going, hey, I'm going to open this little tea stand in Sedona, Arizona. And you're like, what is going on here?

So in the book, all the faxes are dated. So you can see who responds and when. And there's just a big gap. It's just like Bill sending Mel faxes and Mel not doing anything in return. So Mel's going to explain that to us here. He says, there are very few letters from me in this period because I was becoming more and more troubled by Bill's unwillingness to grapple with the real issue of whether he wanted to be an entrepreneur or not. And if he did want to be an entrepreneur,

whether or not he wanted to start the tea company. In our conversations and letters, he seemed to be shrinking from the big idea, growing a bit dispirited, running in circles looking for something he could do instead of doing what he clearly needed to do. That's so important. And I think, again, I bring that up because I think that's very common. And if you feel that in yourself, just know, okay, my mind's playing tricks on me. I'm going to snap out of it and I'm going to focus on what I need to do,

not what I can do. He was waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen, initiating nothing. So their communication slowly just dries up and there's a year gap. And so I'm going to skip over that. The book doesn't have any many separation of parts. It's like the beginning. So they call the first sip, which would be introduction then all the the faxes i just read to you then one year later and then the epilogue the epilogue is where i started the podcast so now we're in one year later and this is bill i mean you kind of get an idea of and i don't mean i don't want to uh i don't want you to be mistaken like i'm making fun of this guy because i'm not like i've done this

myself with ideas and I've just seen this, so many other people do it. It's just so much easier to see it when it's happening outside of ourselves. So this is one year later, no progress. He eventually gets his stuff together and I'm almost there. It's just, it's, by now you realize Bill's hyped up about the idea, he loves the idea of tea

and then we see his actions are not lining up with his heart. And so this is here. Here's what happens in the, in the interim between this, I should say, I should explain before I read this part in the interim this year, he decides to start another business with a friend. So his friend has this business that does like design work for companies. And he, his friend makes him a partner, brings him into the business.

So that seems really weird because where did this, it's called Clement Mock Designs. Where did that come from? You've been talking, we've been sending faxes now, we're two, let's see, 200 pages of faxes. How did you make this left turn into another business? So he says, a year has passed since my last letter to leaves. I had spent a busy 11 months with Clement Mock Designs,

developing marketing programs and materials for clients. Although Clement, that's his friend, and I hope to get the tea company going during this time. Oh, that's another thing. Then he said, well, I can't get this done, so let me add another partner. You know how that works. You have everything you need. Adding is just going to make it more complex. Our casual efforts amounted to nothing. Not a surprise there from anybody that's been listening so far, right? Neither of us had had the time or the energy to make it a priority given our other responsibilities running the design firm. We tried to get some logo and packaging going for the T, but the pressing needs of the studio always took precedence and we made little progress.

So now at this point, we are 15 months from the day he said he was going to start the company. It's still not being run yet. Yet even after a year of not doing much about the Republic, the idea was still very much alive in me. I grew discontented and unfulfilled producing marketing projects for other companies and began to spend more of my mental energy figuring out how to get in the tea business so the faxes come back up and you notice that maybe for every i don't know like five faxes that um that bill sends mel he actually gets a response because

i think mel at this point is just tired of um basically just tired of of going back and forth and not not i mean he doesn't want to brainstorm anymore. He wants this company to exist because he thinks it's important. So these last few sections are – I'm going to skip over that part because I don't want to bore you more with that. This is Bill – you know what it is. I feel like any kind of movie that's kind of heroic in nature like this – not even movie. It's stories, I guess, as old as time.

We're introduced to what will eventually become the hero hero we get to know him a little bit uh then he goes on some kind of quest to realize his full potential on that quest and downly he he um like the story arc he gets pushed backwards down and then we understand that he doesn't give up and eventually he triumphs i feel like that's what happens with bill in this book and we're getting to the triumph part here and so this on 237 pages later bill finally gets it and this is him writing in his journal i finally gained the confidence i needed to jump into the tea business. The difference now was that I was willing to jump in without counting on others to help me swim. Ding, ding, ding. That's so important. I realized that it was completely up to me to create a plan and implement, another

important part, and it would have to be a plan that satisfied me first, then others. Damn, he's getting it now. I had arrived at the point where I was willing to trust myself completely with the idea of Republic of Tea. Bam. That's how you come from employee to entrepreneur. So he wrote some of this in a letter to Mel, and this is Mel offering his wisdom to him. He says, listen, it doesn't matter how long it took for you to get here. As the ancient Hindus were were fond of saying the fruit on the tree ripens slowly but falls suddenly yes you could have saved yourself a lot of soul

searching had you surrendered instantly to the tea mind and throwing all resistance to the wind excuse me let me read that uh again you could have saved yourself a lot of soul searching had you surrendered instantly to the tea mind meaning the idea of tea and throwing all resistance to the wind recognize that you had no choice but to do this business once you saw the potential of it. But don't fret. The soul can always use a good searching. Nothing gained, nothing lost, I say.

The news is you are finally here, meaning ready to actually start the business. So they have a product. And the most important part, so they start developing the product. And then this is, I'm going to close here on a letter that takes place in December 1991. Remember, they make their first dollar in revenue in May 1992, so about five months after this. And this is Bill finally getting it.

So our hero has finally arrived with the desire and more importantly, the action to become an entrepreneur. And he's reflecting, he's writing to Mel and he's reflecting on, I think anybody who reads this book would see. So he says, I reread some of my earlier letters to you this afternoon, and I'm almost embarrassed by them now. How could I be so oblivious to the fact

that there's no way to start a business without having a tangible product, or a full-time commitment, or a workable business structure. My letters were all dreams about marketing and positioning. No wonder I was stuck. I understood the concept for the business, but I guess I was waiting for someone to give me the product. I have learned so much in the past 20 months. Business isn't just about an idea for a business. It's fundamentally about a product

that has an intrinsic value to a customer. It is taking me a long time to get here, and I'm still only at the beginning. That is where I'm going to leave this story. If you want to pick up the book and help support the podcast at the same time, you can buy this book or any of the books. All the books that I've featured so far that I've read for the podcast are available at amazon.com forward slash shop

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And that's another great way to support this podcast. Oh, no, one more thing before I leave too. Wow, this podcast is long. I'm losing my voice. Some people have sent me messages about turning this into a book club. Love that idea. So by the time you hear this, if you go to amazon.com forward slash top forward slash founders podcast, you will see next week's book. And if you want to pick that up before the podcast comes out, read it. Turns this into the world's largest book club on entrepreneurship. I think that'd be pretty cool. So that's another option. Other than that, thank you very much for your support. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the reviews. Thank

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