Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - The Creator's Code

Episode Date: February 20, 2015

Priceline soars.  Solar City feels the heat.  And Jack-in-the-Box hits a new high.  Our analysts discuss those stories and share some stocks on their radar.  And Amy Wilkinson talks about her book, The Creator's Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill, and joining me in studio this week from Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser and Matt Argesinger, and from Motley Fool Deep Value, Mr. Ron Gross. Good to see you, gentlemen. We have got the latest on energy, travel, restaurants, and more. We'll find out what makes entrepreneurs extraordinary with our guest, Amy Wilkinson. And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week with the world's biggest retailer. Walmart's fourth quarter profits rose 12%, but that was overshadowed by the news that Walmart is raising its minimum

wage for starting employees to $9 an hour. And, Ron, higher wages, that's a good thing, also means higher costs. Exactly. I think the best thing I could say about the quarter was, for Walmart, not too bad. Doesn't mean that was that great. It was their best quarter in nearly two years. Right. And after you make some adjustments, net income was actually up 18%. You had improving customer traffic. Lower gas certainly helps Walmart. Holiday season was solid. The same-store sales were up, which for Walmart is not necessarily a given, so it's really nice to see that. But guidance for this year, below expectations, partly because of what you just said. They're going to $9 per hour, then to $10 per hour by February 2016. They'll

add about $1 billion worth of costs, not inconsequential. Obviously, Walmart can handle that, but it does cause net income to come down a bit. But they're doing it for an important reason, not just because they're nice people, because I quite frankly don't know if they are. They're doing it to improve morale, to improve service. It's desperately needed in those stores. And so, we'll see if this bears fruit. I'm not convinced, because actually, this will bring them higher on an average basis. $13 per hour, on average, will be their wage. But the national average retailer is for $14.65, still below average. So, not sure it will get the job done.

Yeah, but Jason, if it does reduce the amount of employee turnover, that's definitely going to be a benefit. It's just not going to be a short-term benefit. No, it's definitely not. I mean, I think if you want to see the benefits from this, you definitely have to look at it from a longer-term perspective. A couple of things to note here, if you look at Walmart over the past, the stock over the past five years, over the past 10 years, it's done OK. It has trailed the market on both counts. And now, while they've done a good job over the course of time maintaining their margins, and I think they've really been able to do that because of their scale. This is not something that will help that

margin line at the end of the day. So, if I'm looking at this from a shareholder's perspective, or even considering buying Walmart stock, I'm looking elsewhere. While I applaud the decision to do this, I don't see this as making any kind of a compelling argument from an investing point of view. This should be happening, though. Corporations in America are as profitable as they've ever been. And I know, from an investor perspective, we want them to maintain that profitability, We want them to grow at profits, but eventually, you kind of have to reward your employees. If we go back in history, in Ford, back in the day, he wanted his customers to be able

to buy his cars. Therefore, he paid out pretty generous wages to Ford. I just think Walmart's been way behind the curve on this. I think a lot of companies are going to step in and actually start paying higher wages. Overall, for the economy, I actually think it's a net positive. And all the while, Jeff Bezos continues to build out his robot arsenal at Amazon. True that. Those guys don't demand higher wages ever. No, but they do break down from time to time.

Occasionally. And they could take over the world. I mean, just saying. Oh, that's absolutely coming. Let's move on to the travel industry. Last week, we talked about Expedia stock rising on the news that it's buying Orbit. This week, shares a price line on the rise thanks to good old-fashioned earnings. Fourth quarter revenue up 19%. Jason, you looked at the quarter. What stood out to you? It's a phenomenal quarter. And I think that people who dismiss this as an investment idea are not seeing the forest for the trees. I think probably it's mostly due to misunderstanding

the actual business, because we here, domestically, are used to seeing William Shatner and Kaley Cuoco just slinging their products on the commercials all the time. But really, the haymaker for this company is Booking.com. And I think we're seeing more advertising for Booking.com. You see those commercials all over now. If you haven't cut the cord yet, it's, you know, write Booking now. That's their big slogan. And that makes the majority this company's money, they have now more than 600,000 hotel providers in their network worldwide, more than 200 countries. That's up over 41% versus last year. From a hotel provider's perspective, from a hotel perspective, it's an attractive network to be a part of, because

generally speaking, hotel shoppers aren't loyal to the hotel, they just want a certain type of experience, whether it's a two-, three-, four-star experience. Priceline offers them that marketplace, And every time they buy off of Priceline, Priceline gets a little scrape there. So, just a phenomenal business, I think. Tremendous runway in a multi-trillion dollar market opportunity. Ron, this is also a stock that is traded. You want to buy a single share of Priceline, it's over $1,200. Do you think that kind of sticker shock just scares away a decent number of investors?

I think it does. It shouldn't, theoretically. But if you only have $500 or $1,000 to invest and you want to buy one stock, well, yes, it does really limit you to stay to the more reasonably priced stocks. But as we say time and time again, it's not the number of shares you purchase, it's the amount of capital you're committing to an idea. So, if you've got $1,200 to commit to an idea, it doesn't matter if you buy 10 shares or one share, it's $1,200. Last thing on Priceline, Jason, guidance for 2015 seemed a little cautious, soft, pick your adjective. Is that a concern?

Not at all. I think you raised a good point there. I'm glad you mentioned it. But the biggest concern there is just regarding the currency headwinds. And they make 75% of their money outside of the United States. And so, when we have a stronger dollar, that implies weaker other currencies. And Priceline is exposed to a lot of other currencies. But when we look at it over longer periods of time, 3, 5, 10 years, we don't take currency effects really that much into account. And so, I think when you look at something like Priceline, they can certainly weather that storm. Eventful week for Zillow. The online real estate site announced fourth quarter results,

and then a couple days later announced that its acquisition of rival site Trulia has closed. And, Matty, the stock up more than 15%. And it seems like that's due more to the Trulia acquisition being closed than the actual results. Absolutely. I mean, Zillow came out, it was last Friday, Friday the 13th, in almost like an excuse-me press release at 6.30 at night. Zillow comes out with their results way after the market closed, way after everyone's gone home for the weekend. In that release, again, great quarterly results, but they said, hey, we've gotten FTC approval, the Trulia deal is probably going to close early next week. Certainly it did. On Tuesday, the deal closed. They did a press conference on Wednesday to announce

the deal. This is combining two internet powerhouses in real estate together. Together, they're going to control about 80% of the online traffic for real estate. It creates virtually a lockdown monopoly on the internet of real estate. You've got a company with $500 million in annual revenue run rate. They're supposed to bring out about $100 million in cost savings. There's a lot to like of this. Spencer Raskoff always throws this number out, the total spending on real estate advertising in the U.S. annually, it's $13 billion. Combined, Zillow and Trulia, which dominate the space where 90% of people are going first to real estate, there's a small fraction of that total spend. So, they think there's lots of upside, we think there's

lots of upside. We just bought the stock for a million dollar portfolio. I'm sad to say that we bought it about 25% too late from our watch list, but we still were excited about the opportunity. They also rebranded the company to the Zillow Group. They're keeping the Trulia brand separate. Do you like that move? I do like it, because it also fits with their other brands, their StreetEasy brands and their hot pad rental brand. So, it's a group of brands now, and I think it all can work together that way.

O' It could be kind of the middle B of real estate, maybe. You think that's how they're referring to themselves? Let's hope they have better marketing folks over at Zillow. O' That's a little bit of an insight. Nordstrom's fourth quarter revenue came in higher than expected, but profits were a bit light on Friday. Shares of the fashion retailer were up and hitting a new all-time high. By the way, Ron, we were talking about this before we started taping. They announced on Thursday evening, and the stock was down immediately in the wake of the results. What's going on

here? The aftermarket, which is after 4 o'clock when the market closes, is a tricky and often misleading market, where people trade too often, I think, based on knee-jerk reactions, where they read a headline and they think they understand what's going on, and in this case they sold the stock off. When you delve in a little bit more and you wait for the conference call, you see that the company is actually doing quite well. They're spending, which is impacting net income, but they're spending for good reasons. They're spending to grow. They're spending on technology, store expansion, some acquisitions. They're doing

the right things to grow the business. And the numbers actually reflect that. And except for the net income being lower because of these higher expenses, the sales numbers were good. The same-store sales numbers were good. And unfortunately, you do see lower margins as a result of higher spending, but the company continues to execute well. I'm not saying they shouldn't be spending on technology. Certainly, we've seen retailers that are effective in having the in-store experience and also the online experience. But Nordstrom has always struck me as one of those businesses that the in-store experience was a big differentiator. I'm just wondering, how far can they go with online sales if that

continues to be a differentiator for them? I agree with you. The service experience you get at Nordstrom in the stores is by far superior to other things that are out there. But they're making a concerted effort to grow the online as well, because quite frankly, you have to in this environment. So, website was up 19%. They made an acquisition of Trunk Club, which is online men's business. And they're really trying to increase the sales that come from that segment. Coming up, a tale of two restaurant stocks. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money.

Chris Hill here in the studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Ron Gross. SolarCity's fourth quarter revenue rose 52%, which sounds like a lot, Matty, but their spending a lot more than they're making, and losing $141 million in the quarter was more than even Wall Street was expecting. Keep losing it. You love this strategy. I do. This is a company that it's all going to be about spending for at least the next five to ten years. I mean, really. And what I look at is, look at the customers. I mean, they added 100,000

customers over the past year. 190,000 customers that they've served so far. They're responsible for 39% of solar panel installations in the fourth quarter in the country. So, the first mover, big lead on the market. Their cost per watt keeps going down, which is a good sign. So, they've got their new solar loan program, which is really taking off. This is really all about expanding capacity and expanding their customer base. If they're doing that, I don't care how much they spend, I care how much at some point, but if they can really build out this network and establish themselves, that's where they want to be. You love this strategy. Do you love the fact that shares of SolarCity have fallen

more than 30% over the past year? I do, because I'm a net buyer and I think our servicers should be a net buyer of the company as well. I think as gas prices come down, you see the stock price come down as well, because theoretically, there's alternatives that are now competitively priced. I think that's short-term thinking, quite frankly. Gas prices won't be low forever, and the alternative is certainly the wave of the future. I'll just throw out this, too. One of the things that's compelling is not directly from SolarCity, but Elon Musk, in his conference call with Tesla Motors a little over a week ago, talked about the idea of the new battery

pack coming out. I just think the idea of efficient home energy storage is going to be another thing that can propel SolarCity. Two restaurant stocks going in two very different directions. We'll start with Noodles & Company. Fourth quarter results much worse than Wall Street was expecting, and shares down nearly 30% on Friday. Ouch. Jason, how bad was this quarter? So, one number for you here, 1.3%. And that really tells the tale there. That is the company's comps number that they turned in this quarter, which is just brutal. I mean, when you're in a market where you have restaurant concepts like Chipotle or Buffalo Wild Wings are turning

in these high-teen, double-digit comp numbers, and then Noodles & Company brings a little wimpy 1.3%. I mean, I've never been to Noodles & Company, so I'm a little bit ignorant as far as to how good or bad the product is. But everyone I've spoken with, nobody has ever said, oh man, you've got to go there. It's just really good. So, the best I've heard is it's okay. I think that we're seeing that play out here in the market, really. This is a situation where they went public, they did very well from an IPO perspective, they raised a bunch of money. But from an investing perspective, I look at this stock, and even if it's a screaming value today with potential catalysts on the horizon, this isn't one I

want to own for years to come. We actually had a department lunch a couple of months ago, and the lunch was catered by Noodles & Company. I have to say, The food was pretty good, but not so good that I wanted to go out to the restaurant itself. I think that's what it is. And Jason said that it's pretty good, actually. And we like it as a family. And whenever we're thinking about on the weekends, where should we go? And someone says Newell Company.

No. But not because it's bad, just because it isn't great. If someone showed up at your door with some, you'd be happy. Right. And they do have Rice Krispie treats the size of your face. So for those that like that. Maybe that's the place where you're going to go to Chipotle. You get there.

The line's too long. you're like, ah, maybe we'll go to noodles and company. And if that's the case, that's fine, but I don't want to be investing in a perpetual runner-up. Second choice, right. At the other end of the spectrum, shares of Jack in the Box hitting a new all-time high on Friday after strong first quarter results. Sales at the Burger Chain were good, Ron, but this is also the parent company of Qdoba Mexican Grill, and quarterly sales at Qdoba were great. Oh my goodness. Same-star sales up 14% at Qdoba. Who would have thought it? Not me.

They're doing a great job. They've simplified their menu pricing. I think it was a little bit confusing to people. They've seen positive traffic, less discounting at Qdoba. So, everything is going really, really well for them. Net income was up 24% for the quarter, and they continue to expand. Stock's up 67% over the last year, which, who would have thunk it? Again, not me. They're just doing really, really well. What about the main store, the Jack in the Box itself? Have they simplified that menu at all? I think they've pared it down a bit. Same-store sales for them were up a bit more than 4%, which is not too bad. That's certainly

healthy. There's 2,000 of those stores. There's only about 600 Qdobas right now. Still room for expansion, both franchised as well as company-owned. So, the growth runway is there, and if they continue to put up positive same-store sales like that, stock, I guess, could go higher. When you think about how how, once upon a time, McDonald's had Chipotle and spun it out, and obviously that didn't turn out too well for McDonald's. When you look at these results, and we've seen a few quarters in a row now of pretty good results from the Jack in the Box restaurants, but much higher comps at Qdoba, and now you're starting to hear rumblings of, maybe they

should spin this off. Is that something they should consider, or should they just hold on to Qdoba like grim death? No, definitely, I think you have to consider it. You have to run the numbers and see how it makes sense. You have to decide whether this is going to be a franchise model going forward or a company-owned model, because that could impact the decision. But if they think that they can create value for shareholders by spinning it off, as a shareholder, which I'm not, you certainly would want them to think about it. Well, you talked about how they simplified the menu last year. When they did that, some

of our listeners sent me emails and hit me up on Twitter with, they had gone into Qdoba's and taken photographs of the menu, and it bears a striking resemblance to the menu at Chipotle. Right. Well, at the same time, Jack in the Box is retooling their menu and catering it to all the stoners out there. Like, as marijuana becomes legal in more and more states. I'm not kidding. That's a growth industry. You look at this, it's like Taco Bell's fourth meal. Jack in the Box is basically doing the same thing. I mean, Mark Reif was talking about it a couple of months back.

I think he actually tried some of this stuff maybe at one point. It looks pretty disgusting. After smoking? Some of the food. Some of the food. Right. The food. But I think that it's a tale of two real different cities here, so to speak. And, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with a jack-in-the-box, but certainly Qdoba is interesting, to say the least. Finally, guys, when we think of innovation, we tend to think about industries dealing with technology or medicine, when really we should be thinking about pizza. This week, Little Caesars announced it will begin selling a bacon-wrapped crust pizza. Speaking of stoners. Selling for $12.

And I'm quoting directly from the company's statement here. This is an H-corner deep dish pizza wrapped in decadent whole strips of thick-cut crispy bacon and then topped with pepperoni and even more bacon. Ron, it's three and a half feet of bacon wrapped around this pizza. Don't tell me you're not interested. 450 calories, 23 grams of fat, 830 milligrams of sodium. I'm in. Wow.

I got the corner pieces. What's eight corners mean, by the way? It's basically two rectangular pizzas. Oh, together. It's not an octagon of pizza? No. I mean, well, I just love that Sam Whiteside, who's our fitness trainer, health consultant here at The Fool, and she has a Twitter account she rarely tweets, but she tweeted the other day about this and saying,

thanks a lot, Little Caesars, to contributing to the obesity epidemic in the country. So I love how it brought out the anger from Sam. Well, we've got one week until our monthly pizza day here at The Motley Fool. It'll be interesting to see if one of these just happens to show up. All right, Ron Gross, Jason Moser, Matt Argus. Hey, guys, we'll see you up later in the show. Eat it. If it's getting cold, reheat it. Next, what are the skills necessary to be an extraordinary entrepreneur?

Amy Wilkinson shares some of what goes into the creator's code. This is Motley Fool Money. Eat it. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. You must throw yourself off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down. That's how LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman describes the process of creating a business. Hoffman is just one of 200 business leaders that Amy Wilkinson interviewed for her new book, The Creator's Code, The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. And she joins me now from New York City.

Amy, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me on your show. All right, let's get to it. 200 business leaders. Which one was the most boring? No, no, no. I'm kidding. I'm not going to make you go there.

But let me start with just sort of the general topic, because I'm sure your publisher might have mentioned to you, there are a lot of books about entrepreneurs, what makes successful business leaders successful. What am I getting in The Creator's Code that I might not be getting in another book about entrepreneurship? Well, it's a good question. And actually, Dan Pink, who did one of the blurbs for the book, the blurb is, the shelves grown with these kinds of books.

And the real difference of the creator's code is five years of research and 200 entrepreneurs that inform a framework. So I think that's one of the big things that's cracking the code on what does it take to create and scale an idea. So the research and the data set behind it, I think, distinguish this book from a lot of other entrepreneurial books or business books that are one man's example. or, you know, a list of three things that just seem to work in one industry. The Creator's Code goes across industries. It goes across geographies. And it basically brings this perspective to crack the code and unlock the six things that could make all of us a lot more successful.

One of the things you found in your research is that creators set their sights on something bigger than the business at hand. and they really want to make a bigger mark than just whatever their business is. At Chipotle, you've got Steve Ells, who wants to change the way people eat fast food. Elon Musk, who founded Tesla Motors, is really interested in getting to Mars. And I'm curious, how do they balance those type of long-term views with the interests of shareholders? Because, as we all know, there are shareholders, particularly on Wall Street, who have much shorter time horizons. And sometimes you get investors or analysts on Wall Street saying, can you just stick to your knitting, please?

Yeah, I think that the creators, and the word creator is very specific, right? To try to say that anyone can create and scale a company. I think that the creators I've interviewed, they definitely have a long-term vision in mind. and it stays very, very motivating. But they also focus on the details, right? So it's not an either-or. They are very attentive to short-term metrics, financial metrics, making sure they're driving their businesses every single day.

But the long-term vision of trying to do something bigger than just clock in and out 9 to 5 on a job is what they're also doing. So it's not either-or, it's actually both. One of the things that pops up in your book is this idea of failure. Some of these business leaders, it's easy to look at them and think, gosh, they've had nothing but success, when in fact, the opposite is true. Before Starbucks, Howard Schultz creates an espresso bar that's not successful. Reid Hoffman, before LinkedIn, he starts a dating website.

What were your observations, and what did your research show about not just failing, but, as you put it in the book, failing wisely? Right. So everyone interviewed in this book talked about failures, and that was surprising to me, because they do look like such unbelievably successful founders. The kind of takeaway here, there are a couple, but one of them is, I truly believe that these people set failure ratios meaning they want to get it wrong a certain percent of the time and that's a new way of thinking about failing wisely they don't want a perfect record and in the past

business was about scaling and replicating ideas and striving for perfection in the new economy we don't really know there's you know globalized technology and the speed of everything accelerating So, in fact, you want to be wrong 20% of the time or 15% of the time or 30% because you're pushing the envelope to explore and innovate. So that's one thing. And then the other is while you want to be testing ideas, you don't want to fail catastrophically. So this is the idea of small experiments.

And that's another way of failing wisely. So I can give an example. Opower, which is a great company, They went public last year. They are conserving energy, and in order to do that, the very founding of that company was based on experiments where they tried an experiment saying, please turn off your air conditioner in the summer and use a fan. This was in California, and they put door knockers on the doorknobs of a number of homes, and the first one said, please be a good citizen.

You know, turn off your air conditioning, conserve power. It didn't matter. That experiment didn't work. Then they did a door knocker that said, please turn off your air conditioning, turn on your fan, save the planet. That did not work. So they tried a third experiment that said, please turn off your air conditioning, turn on your fan, you'll save $55 on your monthly bill. That did not work. And then the fourth experiment worked, which was 77% of your neighbors are turning off their air conditioning and turning on their fan.

And so that was the very genesis of that company saying, hey, let's experiment, and then that worked, and we'll keep doing that. And most recently, they've done a big experiment in Baltimore of trying to get people to turn off dishwashers and other things during peak demand hours. And they've saved enough energy to power the entire city of Miami for a year. So these little tiny experiments actually add up to something quite big. See, I hear stories like that, and I think, you know, that's the positive aspect of peer pressure. Nobody ever talks about that. That's right. Let me spot you up with not all 200, but just a few of the leaders that you interviewed,

some of the people that you profile in the book, and just your top-of-mind takeaway. Let's go with Elon Musk, who I think most people identify, and probably rightly so, with Tesla Motors, but he's also obviously heavily involved in SolarCity and SpaceX. Mm-hmm. So Elon Musk, I believe, is the Albert Einstein meets Steve Jobs. And I think he's the entrepreneur of our time. He's trained as a physicist. That's why I'm thinking of the Albert Einstein angle. And that is a large part of how he sees opportunities. I was actually just with him three days ago in Los Angeles, talking about SpaceX and asking him more questions about Tesla. He's the CEO of both of those very dynamic companies and the chairman and co-founder of SolarCity, as you mentioned.

But I think Elon, because he is trained as a physicist, he reasons by first principles. So he will say with any kind of business that he's trying to build, he really goes from the ground up. He will question every single assumption, and he will build his own model. So SpaceX, for example, he's trying to build a reusable rocket, and he has taken over NASA's contracts to resupply the International Space Station. It's extraordinary, and he's built a rocket currently that's one-tenth the cost of the previous NASA rocket. So because he reasons by first principles, builds these things from the ground up, he can do it a different way, And in this case, make it much cheaper, which will make space exploration much more possible. So that's a pretty exciting way to look at the world.

Let's go with Under Armour founder Kevin Plank. Sure. So Kevin Plank is one of the most relatable entrepreneurs in the book, where he was a walk-on fullback to the University of Maryland. He had been kicked out of Georgetown Prep in high school, bounced into a military academy, walked on 5'10", 260-pound fullback, slow, not a great athlete, but really wanted to play Division I football, and was weighed down by his cotton shirt.

So he weighed his undershirt on the football field, and it weighed 3 pounds because the cotton was absorbing water. So he went to a local fabric store, explained his somewhat comical problem, and then got this microfiber, you know, synthetic fabric, took it to a tailor, and with $450 and seven prototypes, he came up with what today many, many of us know as the Under Armour performance gear. And that business has continued to expand. I mean, he also is quite funny in that he, at one point, did a shrink it and pink it campaign for women. He just thought that he could take the existing products for football players and make them smaller and make them pink. And that didn't work. They lost a lot of money on inventory, and he had to hire in a whole women's team.

And now that is the fastest growing part of his business, is women's gear. You know, the story you just shared about him sort of methodically going about figuring out how to design and create a new shirt is maybe not at odds, but certainly is a different side to the coin than another story you share about Plank in your book, which is where he is basically trying to get in the face of Nike. and going so far as to sending Phil Knight, the co-founder at Nike, sending him a Christmas card every year. This is well before Under Armour was anything that anyone would consider a success. And, you know, sending a Christmas card saying, you haven't heard about us yet, but you will. That's right.

Which leads me to this question. You have these six essential skills for entrepreneurs, But I have to believe that you've got this very wide range of personality types among these leaders. Kevin Plank showing tremendous chutzpah in doing something like that. To what extent is charisma or that sort of force of will an important ingredient for successful business leaders? I don't know if charisma per se is what drives these individuals. I think it's a real belief in something that they're doing. So Kevin really believes in powering athletes.

He is a football player. When you talk to him, he looks like, sounds like, and acts like a football player. Under Armour has huddles instead of staff meetings. And they have team members instead of employees. I think that he's really driven by a competitive spirit of an athlete, And he wants to make other athletes better by, you know, the gear that they would use in whatever sport that they're playing in. And across different categories, the Revolution Foods founders, for example, and they're in the East Bay of California, they are moms who wanted better food quality for their children in the public school system.

And so they have very dynamically gone about believing they could make that better. And they have over $100 million in revenue in a business that improves the nutrition for kids, basically, and what they eat. I don't know if it's a personality trait per se. I think it's a belief in what you're doing and then a real drive to make that happen. Coming up, more with Amy Wilkinson. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here talking with Amy Wilkinson,

author of the new book, The Creator's Code, The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. a lot of data in your book, obviously a lot of research driving the book. Did anything surprise you while you were working on this? Well, I'll tell you one of the big surprises to me is that all of these entrepreneurs, the creators and the creator's code, they feel uncomfortable, which that was a surprise to me. You look at them and you think these people have, quote unquote, made it, right? They are at the apex of their industries and yet when you really ask some you know deeper questions what comes up is the work is never done it is an uncomfortable feeling to think you want to create and you want

to build and people just get comfortable with being uncomfortable there's no striving for a corner office where you actually feel secure because that's not going to be something that anybody really achieves, I don't think, in the new economy. It's the curiosity and the willingness to try and the willingness to think that it won't be easy, but it will be worth it to create and build something new. One of the things you point out is that entrepreneurship is, you know, not necessarily just for the people who are looking to start a business. It's something that people can do in whatever their current job is. What's one thing that we could all do to sort summon our inner entrepreneur? Well, that's a really great point because

being a creator, and this word was chosen very deliberately, we can all create new initiatives inside of a big company or a nonprofit. People can create activities that are not necessarily business activities, but still they're creating and scaling ideas. And all of these six skills are very accessible. But I like find the gap. It's the first skill. And it basically is a way of seeing the world where we can all go and spot an opportunity. And there are three ways that I discovered the research is informing. One, I'm calling a sunbird. It's the Australian word for hummingbird. And Howard Schultz of Starbucks is a great example that you mentioned. He saw coffee culture in Italy. And then he basically picked it up and lifted and shifted it, flew it over to the

United States as a sunbird would, and applied it in Seattle and then on from there. A second way of finding a gap or seeing an opportunity would be as an architect. And Sarah Blakely of Spanx is a great example. She cut the feet out of her nylons and came up with a whole new undergarment, made her the youngest self-made female billionaire that didn't exist before. She saw an open space, and then she built something new. Or the third way that you could see an opportunity would be as an integrator and going to an intersection or integrating ideas. As Chipotle founder Steve Ells did, he's a classically trained chef who loved burritos.

He was working in a very fancy restaurant called Stars in San Francisco, but hanging out in the Mission District where he was eating burritos. And he basically put two and two together and said, I can make a new category, which is now called Fast Casual in the restaurant industry. So he integrated cooking for the line, as he talks about it, but cooking right in front of you, but in a very fast format. So all of us could look at the world as a sunbird and lift and shift ideas or look at the world as an architect, try to build something new in an open space,

or look at the world and see where we could remix ingredients and where we could, you know, look at an intersection of ideas. So I think that one, for absolutely everyone, regardless of where you are, is very, very applicable. The book is The Creator's Code. The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs is already an Amazon bestseller, so check it out. Amy Wilkinson, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I really appreciate it. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks

based solely on what you hear. Joining me in studio once again, Jason Moser, Matt Argesinger, and Ron Gross. Guys, it is that time once again, time for the stocks on our radar. Our man Steve Broido is not behind the glass. He's sick this week, so this will be just stress-free on that. This is dedicated for Steve Broido. What do you got this week, Ron? I've got a micro-cap deep value for you. Amco Pittsburgh, AP, $193 million company. They make forged and cast steel rolls, so big rolling pins that make sheets of steel. They report next Friday, they hold a conference call. The first time they've ever held a conference

call, or at least the first time in my 15-year experience with this company, Gabelli owns 20% of the stock. That might be why they're starting to get shareholder-friendly. Stock's at $18.50, I think it's worth $25. You get 3.9% dividend yield while you wait for the cyclical play to turn out right. O' Jason, what do you got? This is from my guys, Drab T-shirt and EWOD, over at 106.7, local radio station here. They have been on me about GoPro, and GoPro is now finally on my radar. The lockup is over. I think that there's a lot of pessimism here. The stock has just gotten hammered here recently. But GoPro is the name you know in this market. I don't think Apple, I don't

think Google, I don't really think anybody's going to be able to get in there and displace this market any time soon. And I like their transition into a media content provider, so GPRO GoPro is on my radar. O' Matt Argersinger? Going with one everyone knows well, Tesla Motors, TSLA. Now, I know it looks crazy expensive, it just looks, but I have to say, going on through the conference call, excited about the new battery pack, stationary storage power. If you really look at this company, it's $26 $26 billion. It's a huge company already, but I think this is a much, much bigger company with all the things they've got going for them. So, if you haven't ever looked at Tesla

before, take a look at my very small position. O' Worried about Apple? Yes or no? No, not at all. O' The fact that Apple's potentially working on a car of its own? No, not at all. Building a car is a very hard thing. Apple's great. It's going to be a very hard road for them to travel. O' Any chance Apple buys Tesla Motors? Yes. Yes.

O' That is going to do it for this week. Jason Moser, Ron Gross, Matt Arkansinger, guys. Thanks for being here. Thank you. The show is mixed by Rick Engdahl. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening, and we will see you next week.