The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 378: Brad Feld: 378: Brad Feld - How To Collect Amazing People, Question Your Biases, & Build Community

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

Text LEARNERS to 44222 IG/Twitter: @RyanHawk12  Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com #378: Brad Feld Notes: Excellence: Honesty - Clear view of what's going on with self and others Transparency/Authenticity is overused Confirmed process of learning - Hypothesis, clarity of though around experimentation Advice to a new manager: Ask a lot of questions REALLY LISTEN - Engage in conversations... Don't just try to get the right answer We have endless biases "People defend their biases instead of questioning their biases." --> Have a curious mind. Curiosity: His parents gave him positive feedback for being inquisitive... An exploration of new ideas. Brad loves to read and takes a digital sabbath every Saturday. Approach new ideas with a Buddhist philosophy --> Let go of assumptions. Approach each topic with a beginner's mind. A founder who is an explorer -- "Don't get stuck as an investor by constantly asking questions. You need to want to deeply understand someone. It goes both ways. Literal answers aren't enough." The role of the founder is "to collect people." → Mentor side, peer side, employee side, customer side. Engage with people. Create a 'bi-directional' connection. This has shifted over time for Brad. Think #GiveFirst Life partner - Amy... They are equals. It's important to acknowledge that. They almost split up after 10 years because Brad's words were not matching his actions. "YOUR WORDS MUST MATCH YOUR ACTIONS.' Prioritize what's important and then follow through. If it's important to you to spend time with your spouse, then do it. Brad and Amy had to learn how to fight... When their 13 year old dog died, it was devastating. Amy and Brad deal with tragedy differently. It's important to understand that it's OK for your spouse to deal with grief differently than you do. Key Parts to building community: The people in charge must be leaders Must have a long term commitment --> 20 years+ Inclusive of anyone who wants to engage Have events that engage people Complex systems to how communities evolve --Complicated systems has more steps. Goal setting - They tend to be too rigid. The time component can be a problem. Brad prefers raid iteration. Better to have a hypothesis. If the hypothesis fails, learn it. Eric Ries - Lean Startup Rapid experimentation - Rapid learning is better Vast majority of goals you set are not right in the future Writing - "When I write, I learn." Force yourself to write it down. Put it in public. Have an open mind to feedback. "People get stuck in dogma when they don't write things down. They don't know why they believe in it." You can't do this quickly. People don't feel like they have time to think. That's a problem. The role of selling: Selling is crucial. You are selling all the time. Sales is a noble profession. Acknowledge it. Develop the skills to do it well. Everyone works in sales.  

Having a goal and then saying if you met the goal, you're good. If you didn't meet the goal, you're bad. In a lot of ways, it's self-limiting unless the goal is correct. And this is the challenge is that the vast majority of goals that you set on day one for some time in the future, 30 days from now, 90 days from now, a year from now, in three or four days, you realize the goal is wrong. If you don't change the goal when you realize the goal is wrong, then you're just spending time going after the wrong thing. We are opening up applications to our learning leader circle. We do this once per year. Think back to the great conversation I had with the legendary Jim Collins, episode 216.

He said, Ryan, before you get too caught up in your why, in your what, you need to be very intentional about your who. Who will be your friends? Who will be your mentor? will you help? Who will you choose to surround yourself with? That will be the single greatest determining factor in your long-term success. Think about that. I'd ask you the same question. Who are you choosing to surround yourself with to help you grow, to push you, to challenge you, and to be there when you need help. This is a chance to surround yourself with other growth-oriented leaders looking to challenge themselves and grow to become more effective, both personally,

and professionally. We've added specific curriculum elements so that by the end of the year, you'll have tangible outcomes to measure your growth and be a more effective leader. These groups are intentionally curated and kept small. And time and again, the thing that people say they love most about these groups is the relationships they're able to build with one another very quickly. If you'd like to apply, go to learningleaders circle.com. That's learningleaders circle.com to apply. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates. What I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management will help you become a more effective leader. Text, learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leader, it's Brad Feld, an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987.

He's a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. He's written a number of books as part of the Startup Revolution series and writes blogs at Felddots and venture deals. His latest book is titled The Startup Community Way. A few of the topics we discussed. The problem with traditional goal setting practices and how you can do better. And then three critical pieces of advice for new managers. And I think these apply to experienced ones as well.

And then the four key. keys to building an excellent community. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Brad Feld. Brad, it's so good to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I am curious from your perspective, you've been a member of many boards. You've surrounded yourself with some of the most impressive leaders in the world.

And I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time? A couple of things. First and foremost, I would put honesty. Just real clear view, both honest of what's going on, external honesty, but also internal honesty about oneself and one's own sense of where they're at. I think words like transparency and authenticity now are way, overused is to be meaningless. This continuous process of learning, though, is incredibly powerful,

whether it's learning about a particular thing, about a particular system, about things outside one's own experience, or about oneself. And approaching problems, not from the frame of reference of, I know the answer, but from the perspective of I'm interested in having a, with the group of people I'm with hypotheses, testing them together and iterating through it. So sort of this clarity of thought around experimentation and learning rather than the continuous need to have the answer or be absolute. Love it.

When you, can you even count how many boards you've been a part of? It's hundreds. Hundreds. Maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, more than 500, less than a, thousand probably over my whole career that's wild so when you think about that aspect of it you have got you have had the pleasure of experiencing many different styles of management and i know it's probably dependent upon the industry and the current time you were on the board for those companies but are there

a few people and if you don't want to name people but are there a few key learnings that really jump out as to when you meet with perhaps a new founder or a new leader, because there are a lot of new leaders listening, Brad, perhaps they're not founding a company, but they work within a business. What key pieces of advice would you, have you gathered that you would pass along to them as they begin this leadership slash management journey?

Ask a lot of questions. I'm always amazed at the number of conversations I have with people at all levels. where there isn't much being asked, it's being told or being asserted. Next, really listen. It's hard. It's hard for everyone. It's hard for me, right?

You ask a question and you immediately go on to start to think about the next question. Or if you're answering a question, you're trying to get the answer right rather than to engage in the conversation. So I think this combination of asking questions and really listening is an attribute that is hard but is incredibly powerful. Another which I search for the right words to say it, but is very perplexing to me even in this moment. We all have endless biases no matter who we are and how clearly we think. people defend their biases versus question their biases. And coming back to this idea, I know the first two questions you asked me

we're talking about questions, so it's a little self-referential. But this notion of one has a fixed view of what they want the answer or the outcome to be rather than a curious mind about what's going on. and especially for first-time entrepreneurs, I would say as an investor, I'm much more interested in the questions they ask me than I am and the answers they give me to the questions I ask. How does one, maybe a better way to say this is, I found, oh, after six years, 300 plus, 375 plus

of these episodes, Brad, that having an intellectual curiosity to be one of the, of the key common traits among leaders who have sustained excellence. And you obviously have that, and we're going to get into that more as we talk. Did that have to be developed? Do you think that was innate within you, a little bit of both? Because there may be some listening to say, well, I hear that a lot as I listen to your podcast. How does that get to be developed in a person? Yeah, so I think develop is the right word. I view it as something that one develops over time. And for me, it started very young. When I was, you know, a little kid, my parents gave me positive feedback for being inquisitive and for exploring new things and for asking questions. Sure, I got, you know, positive feedback for getting good grades. But I got way more feedback for the exploration of new things. of new ideas. As an adolescence, I would say same thing. You know, when I was a teenager, I was loved to read today. One of my favorite things to do is to read. I take a digital Sabbath

on Saturdays. I don't do any phone or email. And, you know, during digital Sabbath, you know, I often read at least one book on Saturdays, sometimes more. And I've learned to approach new ideas from a Buddhist philosophy perspective, not a Buddhist philosophy perspective, religious religion perspective, but a philosophy perspective with a beginner's mind, where I let go of what I think I know, what my assumptions are, what my historical perspectives have been. I don't get rid of my learned experience. That's still in there. But when I'm approaching a new topic, I try to approach it with very much a beginner's mind so that I'm open to understanding what's going on rather than imposing my view of what should be to it.

And when you're choosing who to invest in, how critical is that skill to have been developed in one of the founders that you're going to put money behind? It's hard to judge and hard to evaluate. So I'm not sure that that's a thing, a priority that I'm searching for. It's a thing, by the way, that meant most of the. time, emerges. And because of the way I approach things and how I interact with other, you know, with the founders, I would say it generally comes out if it's something that they're, you know, they're comfortable or interested. It's certainly something I encourage.

Very much the case that I'd rather the founders be exploring things, trying new things, running experiments, recognizing when the experiments fail, that they should learn from that failure versus dismiss the failure, and when the experiments work, figure out what works and do more of it. The other part of it, which is powerful, is to not get stuck as an investor in the Socratic questioning mindset, where you're constantly just asking questions, especially if you're trying to lead somebody to an answer one way or the other. But you're trying to, you're asking questions because you actually want to understand the next layer down or the next layer down of what's happening. And a lot of times that's a mutual back and forth questioning. So the founders are

engaging as much in the search for meaning as you are as an investor, rather than just trying to provide an answer to a thing that I as an investor am asking the question about. The literal answers are fine but insufficient. And when I ask a question and somebody gives me a literal answer and that's it, if I'm self-aware, which I am sometimes and sometimes I'm not, but if I'm self-aware, I realize that the person just gave me the literal question and I need to do a better job of asking my question, sorry, the little answer. I need to do a better job of asking the question to get something beyond just.

the literal answer. If it happens over and over again, then that generates a discussion because I start to feel unsatisfied. And I think that a person on the other end that's answering the little question, the founder of the CEO, it's not that they're doing a bad job. It's that I'm doing a bad job of explaining what I'm looking for and how I'm looking to engage in the thought process. you've said one of the key roles of a founder is to quote collect people both on the mentor side the peer side employee side the customer side there's a lot of collection that needs to happen in order for a founder to do well i think this relates a lot to when i spoke with jim collins from good to gray great great by choice fame when he stopped me cold in my tracks and i was talking about my why and what

was doing and he said, your who is more important than those things. Who will you choose to surround yourself with? Who will you choose to hire? Who will you choose to marry? Who will you choose to be your mentor? Who will you help? That will be the single greatest determining factor in your long-term success ahead of those other things you're talking about. And I sense that from you when you're discussing the role of a founder in collecting people. How does one, develop the skill to be good at collecting quality people. I use the word collecting instead of networking as well because they mean something very different to me.

Collecting is the act of actually engaging deeply with those people because almost by definition, by collecting them, you're building a bidirectional commitment, you to them, them to you, versus networking as you're just making a lightweight connection. Everybody has their own approach, and there are lots of different styles to how you figure out who you want to surround yourself with. I've shifted over time. I used to be sort of very open to anyone who wanted to engage with me, and I wasn't very discriminating around.

the engagement over a medium period of time. Over a long period of time, things tend to sort themselves out. But in the short term, I was very open, but then I wasn't discriminating. I continue to be in the short term, very open to anyone who wants to engage with me. That's an important part of my own value system, just being very accessible, being very responsive. But what I've shifted to is to be more discriminating about the medium-term interactions, not in cutting them off or necessarily making choices that are deliberate choices, but really paying attention to the interactions back and forth and trying to figure out how to use the philosophy that's now become a hashtag at Techstar is called give first. But the notion that I used in my first startup community's book,

before you get, where I'm willing to put energy into something without necessarily knowing what I'm going to get back in return. It's not altruism. I expect to get something back. I just don't know when, from whom, over what time period, and what consideration or in what magnitude. And this is the linkage to how a founder can think about collecting people, is that you're willing to put energy into others without necessarily knowing what you're going to get back. But you pay attention to what's happening. If it's one directional, if you're just putting energy into the person over and over and over again, but you're not getting anything back, that's very different than if pretty quickly you start to have a relationship that has benefit both directions. However, you don't know

when you started, again, in the short term, what benefit that's going to be. And there's some magic in that because if you go in saying, all right, I want to get to know this person X. And the reason I want to get to know person X is because I want thing Y from person X. Well, if you don't get thing Y, you're going to be unhappy and you're going to be dissatisfied. If you go to meet person X and you say to yourself, I want to get to know person X, but I don't know what I'm going to get out of it. I just, I feel like there could be something or person X approaches you. You're like, okay, I don't know this person, but I'm happy to see where this relationship goes.

in the medium term, when that relationship starts to evolve into something where there's bidirectional benefit, the relationship will stick. And, you know, in Jim Collins language, those are the people that you start collecting. Those are the people that you start really bringing in close. Semi-related, but kind of a left-hand turn. Brad, every time I get a book, and I appreciate your team sending the startup community way over to me so I could read prior to us talking. But every time I get a book, I look in the acknowledgement section first. I am very curious about the people and the lives of those who are

able to produce something like a book. I know how hard it is from writing my first one that was published this year. And the first name you mentioned is Amy, who is your wife. And I know the, I've recorded a podcast with my wife recently. And I know the benefits of having and being a supportive partner. And I love to get a guy like you who is a deep thinker and a thoughtful person in general and who has gone through success and failure when it comes to relationships with a spouse. I'd love to hear your overall philosophy on relationships, particularly with your life partner. Well, first, Amy and I are equal partners. We've been together now almost 30 years. and a principle in our relationship is that we are equals.

And that's been the case from the beginning. And I think that's explicitly acknowledging that in a relationship. It can be extraordinarily helpful. Next, we almost split up after 10 years. We wrote a book together in 2015 called Startup Life and the subtitle, Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. And it was a very intimate book to write. It's both memoir-ish, but it also has a lot of our own behavioral dynamics and values and things, you know, tricks and tips and things we figured out over the years as a couple.

And then lots of stories, probably 20 or 30 stories from people we knew as couples that reinforced many of the points who were trying to make. And the book starts off with the story of us almost splitting up after 10 years. And the punchline to that was the real issue. was my words didn't match my actions. There was no fundamentally bad behavior on my part, but there just wasn't this synchronization between words and actions. And the example that's an easy one to relate to is this is 2001 time period. I would tell Amy regularly, she was the most important person in my life. And in the middle of, and pick your favorite activity here, in the middle of an activity, the phone would ring and I would answer it without even acknowledging

that I needed to answer it, not even knowing who was on the phone. So the idea that Amy was the most important person was not reinforced by my actions when I would answer a random phone call in the middle of some activity with her. And there's a bunch more in my words and my actions didn't meet up, right? You know, I'd be late to dinner by 30 or 45 minutes because I had just one more thing to do. And so my prioritization was the one more thing to do rather than prioritizing her and getting together with her and being on time and really investing time and energy in that. So those are the two, I would say, that are the most profound for us. The last is something that I have a lot of amusement with and talked recently at length with somebody else on another podcast about, which was learning how to fight. and I think every couple has conflict.

Any couple that says we don't have conflict is either in deep denial or is avoiding acknowledging the conflicts that they have. Human beings all have conflict. That's part of being human. And early on in our relationship, we didn't really know how to argue or fight. And we have very different tempers and different personalities. And we had different upbringing. So we had different dynamics as kids. As adults today, we know how to argue.

We know when something's bothering the other person. We don't necessarily try to solve the problem a priori. Let's come back to learning or listening or asking questions, but also doing it in a way that's not burdensome. An example that I would give you there would be an experience I had with Amy where she was not feeling well, she was having some trouble with a personal relationship. She was very upset. And I said to her something empathetic, but then I said, how can I help?

And her response was ferocious, right? It was, I don't want your help. I don't want your fucking help. Don't give me another fucking thing to do. Don't ask for, don't tell me, I don't, you know, like she was just no ability to respond because I was asking her to do one more thing for me, which was to tell me how to help her in this moment where all she really wanted. me to do was anything other than ask her to tell me how to be helpful. So learning those sorts of

things in the context of the relationship versus, you know, when you get a wall of that flung at you when you're just trying to be helpful, you can say, ah, screw that person. I'm trying to be helpful and she's not paying attention. So learning those things and learning how to have conversations in those moments when there's real tension. Last example I'll give, we had a we had a tough weekend this weekend. Our 13-year-old dog passed away on Saturday. His name was Brooks, his beloved dog. He was her third dog.

We have another one that's five years old called Cooper. So we're lucky that we have another dog. But it was coming. He had seizures two months ago. So, you know, we talked about it a lot. We spent a lot of time with him the last two months. But it was still really a difficult, a difficult couple of days. and we process our emotions very differently, externally and internally,

and I tend to process my emotions internally for a while, and they eventually come out. And Amy knows that, so she was able to encourage me to process my emotions, but also to give me some space over the course of the weekend when she was also hurting because she knew that if she didn't give me any space, I would have difficulty processing my emotions. So learning those things about your partner, whatever they are, having that conversation continually, not all the time, but continually, and being comfortable with each other so that as you grow and develop, your relationship gets richer and more robust rather than limited is a powerful, powerful driver.

It lends itself to, I think, part of your life's work, which we can get into one of your latest books called The Startup Community Way. And I want to talk about the keys to community building because I'm finding that people seem to be seeking connection and community. One of the aspects of my business, Brad, is running what we call leadership circles. And I'm working with leaders who is essentially paid mastermind groups. I'm working with leaders who work within big companies. Their companies do great, great things in their communities and in their space that they are, but perhaps are not providing the community that some growth-oriented type people are looking for. And so they search for that outside of it. And I'm one of those places that people

go. And this is what you've built your career, I think, out of building fantastic communities. What have you found to be some of the keys to building strong communities? Yours is in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. But I think if we just take a look more broadly, what have been some of the key parts to building a community? A couple of pieces. And in 2012, when I wrote startup communities, I came up with a set of four principles,

which I called the Boulder thesis, that are generalized. to all communities, but I really focused them on startup communities. And if you look at those four, the way I described it was the first principle was that entrepreneurs have to be the leaders. You can generalize that to whoever is the community is primarily about have to be the leaders of the community. There's lots of other roles and participants, but those entrepreneurs in this case or whoever is the one the community is about, has to be leaders. Not all of them, just a critical mass. The second is you have to have a very long-term view. I like to say at least 20 years. And today,

I like to say at least 20 years from today. So it's a long-term view and a long-term commitment to building the community. The third is you have to be inclusive of anyone who wants to engage. And in 2012, I would say inclusivity and equity were interesting words, but we're not. not as front of mind as they are in 2020 around specifically gender and racial equity and inclusivity. And I think that's a powerful construct, this idea of being open to lots of different lived experiences, perspectives, behaviors, desires, backgrounds. And then the last is you have to have activities and events that actually engage people in whatever that community is about. So in the case of a startup community, engage people in entrepreneurship. This comes back. I used the word

networking earlier, networking events, cocktail parties, you know, in the entrepreneurial world, entrepreneur of the year events, not helpful. They're not terrible, but they're not really helpful in developing startup communities. And so how you operate in terms of engaging people around the community becomes important. In the new book, the startup community, way, we generalized it to all kinds of communities, not just startup communities, and we use the notion of complex adaptive systems to describe what a community is and how it evolves. And we shorten it to complex systems because the phrase complex adaptive system is a little bit ponderous and complex adaptive system is a subset of a complex system. And the example here I'd give just so people

understand without getting into the theory is a simple system would be making. making a cup of coffee. There's a recipe, there's a set of steps. Yeah, you can modify the inputs a little, have different beans, maybe you have a different coffee maker. But fundamentally, inputs or beans, output is coffee. Simple. Complicated system has a lot more steps. They don't have to be done necessarily in a certain order. And the playbook is much, much larger. doing your monthly financial statements is a complicated system. Building a Boeing 787 is a complicated system. Designing it the first time is very, very challenging, very hard, lots of experimentation.

But once you've designed it, you've got a rulebook for how to do it, and you can have a very complicated assembly line stamp out 787s. Raising a child is a complex system. There is no playbook. There is no rule book. the inputs become outputs, lots of things evolve. You incorporate the notion of positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. All of these things that are languages from complexity theory are essential in raising a child.

And if you told the child when they were born, you set down a rulebook and said, we're going to do all these things. And when you're 18, this is going to happen, almost by definition at 18, a child would be in therapy. And if you think about a company, a company is effectively a complex system. If you think about a community, a community is a complex system. If you think about the COVID crisis that we're in the midst of, the health care crisis or the health crisis is a complex system. The economic system, which was generated by, or the economic crisis, which was generated by COVID, if the health crisis hadn't emerged, we probably wouldn't have an economic crisis, at least not now, at some point we would.

That's a complex system. The mental health crisis, which we're dealing with because we're not used to, you know, being in our houses 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we're not used to all the constraints on our life, on the different challenges that we have of kids being homeschooled all of a sudden because they're remote schooled because they're in. in our house, of losing jobs, of losing economic capability of not being able to do the things or see the people we want to see, that's a complex system and how that unfolds is not predictable. You can't say in September it will look like this when we're in the middle of July. You can make hypotheses, but the things that we do right now will have all kinds of interactive effects that we can't predict that will impact the future. So this notion of complex systems is so essential for how a community grows and develops because you can't say if we do the following 27 things, we will have this outcome.

Speaking of outcomes, there are a lot of people listening who are big time goal setters. And given the fact that I received notes from many people who work as mid-level managers, so I would define that as anyone from a front. frontline manager to a senior vice president, not necessarily the CEO or the founder of a business. The traditional goals that are set by a person like that, and I've been one of them, and I've set these exact goals at points in my life are the traditional goals like getting a promotion or getting a raise. And you've written and spoken about the problem with traditional goal setting and that there is a better way. And I'd love for you to share your philosophy on perhaps a better way for people and leaders

to set goals both for themselves as well as for the people that they are leading. Yeah, I think the biggest problem with goals in general is that they tend to be too rigid. They tend to be deterministic based on time. So the goals generally have a time component associated with them. And if you don't accomplish the goal in the time period, you weren't successful. I'm much more of a fan of rapid iteration. I think the goals in a lot of ways, especially when you're trying things you're not necessarily experienced with or that there isn't a complicated system to execute against,

they're better approached as hypotheses. And if you have a hypothesis, what you're trying to do is very rapidly test the hypothesis. And if the hypothesis fails, your goal, I'll use that word, is to learn from it and extract as much learning so that you can run a new experiment. And if you succeed at the hypothesis, you should do more of it. I think Eric Reese did the world of entrepreneurs a huge favor when he wrote. to book The Lean Startup because he broke people out of this mode of long-term planning and shifted entrepreneurs into this mode of rapid experimentation and rapid learning.

And essentially, until you land on a hypothesis that you verify that works, you're still in this very emergent part of the business. And even as your business grows and develops and gets larger, as you try new things, you're running experiments. And the trick is to run them really quickly and learn really quickly and iterate really quickly. And I think for many organizations, goals inhibit that. Now, it is useful to have goals. All the cliches about them, you know, bound. I think the one I heard is a little kid that stuck with me is it's really hard to play basketball if there are no hoops because, you know, you can't determine whether somebody got a point or not. And if you go to sports, sports is a good

easy metaphor for it. But if you think about business, especially around growth and entrepreneurship and the creation of new things against the backdrop of complexity, having a goal and then saying if you met the goal, you're good. If you didn't meet the goal, you're bad. In a lot of ways, is self-limiting unless the goal is correct. And this is the challenge is that the vast majority of goals that you set on day one for some time in the future, 30 days from now, 90 days from now, a year from now, in three or four days, you realize the goal is wrong. If you don't change the goal when you realize the goal is wrong, then you're just spending time going after the wrong thing. I think a thoughtful person like you developed some of that

based upon your ability and willingness to write a lot and share it publicly, both and blog essay formats online on your website as well as publishing books and it's my belief that all leaders and really people in general but all leaders people who are listening to this show should build a regular practice of documenting their thoughts and their beliefs because I truly didn't learn I didn't know how much I didn't know about a topic until I tried to write a book about it until I did write a book about it and then I realized wow I don't know what I thought or I'm not as clear on my beliefs as I thought I was when I was just talking about this in my head. And so I think there's some magic, there's some beauty in getting what's in your mind down

on a piece of paper or typing it into a Google Doc, whatever your choice is. Can you share what it is about writing that you enjoy why you do it and why perhaps others should as well? I think the last thing you said was really well said. and is a big part of it. So I'm not going to repeat that. I'll add to it. But everything you said, I would start with.

When I write, I learn. And when you are forced to write or when you force yourself to write something down versus just say it, it has a different kind of integration into your brain. When you're willing to put it out in public, it has yet another. dynamic, which is it invites people or allows people to give you feedback, feedback about what's helpful about what you're thinking, what's hurtful about what you're thinking, what's right about it, what's wrong about it, what they agree with, what they disagree with. And if you have an open mind to that feedback, even if the feedback is not well constructed, and you're looking for in the

feedback, things that help you iterate on the thoughts that you had that you committed to paper. Over time, you learn. And my own experience is people get stuck in dogma when they don't write things down. They start to believe things just because. And we see this in lots of parts of our lives today, especially publicly, right? the number of things that are asserted as fact, when you listen to it and you're like, there's no way that's true or I don't agree that that's true.

How do you know that's true? And then when you dig a little deeper into it through both reading and writing, and you realize that that's just anecdotal information based off of two examples, or that's just somebody's opinion. Nothing wrong with an opinion. But if somebody says, this is my opinion,

I have no idea if it's true or not, but it's my opinion based on the following things. It has a lot more credibility than when somebody just asserts something like that opinion. It's actually one of the reasons I really like long form. I like to read and I like to write in long form. And one of the reasons I've really come to be uninterested in, maybe the word is less interested in, anything short term, things like Facebook, things like Twitter,

especially cases where people can engage and argue with each other in these very short arcs, but where these short arcs don't really have much substance behind them. And so it becomes impossible to really understand what people are talking about or thinking. And I also believe it's one of the greatest networking or connecting tools in the world. If you have the guts and the willingness to share what you believe, you can create a magnetism towards yourself for others who are curious about what you've put on the page, whether they agree with it or not. And I found the same thing could be said from writing online, publishing a podcast every week,

writing a book that it has put me in the sphere of others who I love to be in their presence because of the willingness to publish things publicly for others to judge. And I sense that, I mean, I've started reading your work many years ago because you had the willingness to publish your beliefs. And I've sensed that that has had to open doors and create relationships and friendships and friendships and colleagues for you because of your willingness to do that as well. Totally true. More powerfully, though, there's an element.

of it that is self, I don't say, I'm not sure selfish is the right word, so I want to anchor on it. But there's an element of it that has enormous reward, which is you can't do this quickly. You have to spend time on it. And I think many of us professionally today don't have, don't feel like we have. time to do anything. I was talking to somebody earlier who was talking about carving out time to think. And, you know, had a lot of empathy for her because we're just talking about sort of the scheduled life. And in that moment, I didn't, I didn't have the awareness in the moment to articulate this, but a lot of the reading and writing in the foreground, you're processing something very

specifically, but our brains are mysterious things. And I believe that in the background, your brain is synthesizing stuff as you're trying to put those thoughts together, or as you're consuming whatever you're consuming. So there's really a lot of additional benefits to this versus just attracting other people, getting your thoughts out into the world, getting feedback on your thoughts. It's a very internal and intrinsically helpful dynamic. Do you have time for one more question? Yeah. So the word sales to some people can elicit bad experiences.

Perhaps they are buying a car or another place where you've had a negative experience with a sales person, a sales professional. Sales is deeply ingrained in my DNA. My dad was sales professional. This entire career is still one. has written books about that. That was my, the beginnings of my career, was an inside sales job cold calling all day, every day for years. And I learned so many valuable tools and how to develop a work ethic in the professional space

because of jobs like that. And I think from a founder's perspective, from an investor's perspective, from a writer's perspective, that there is a lot of selling going on. I mean that in the most noble way possible because as my dad told me from a young age, professional selling is the most noble profession in the world. If there weren't sales professionals, then nothing would exist. The chair I'm sitting in, the computer, I'm using the camera that I'm looking into, the microphone. I'm speaking into all of those was sold from one person to another.

And there are many other things. You bring in ideas and writing online and that's all part of selling. What's your overall philosophy when it comes to sales and the ability of a founder slash leader and his or her ability to sell determining their success long term? I think selling is crucial. I have a joke with my parents that I used to use a lot, which is, hey, ma, look at all this education and I'm just a salesman. And, you know, as an investor, as a VC, when I raise capital for our funds, I'm selling a product, which is our ability to generate a return by investing other people's money alongside of our own.

When I'm investing in a new company, in addition to investing the money, I'm selling to the entrepreneur that I'm going to be a good part. I'm a book salesman, right? Right now, I'm selling books. I want to buy a book? there's lots of different ways to be a salesman. And I think the notion of it being a pejorative construct is an error. I agree with you.

I love your dad's phrase that it's the most noble profession. I'm not sure that I would rank professions personally. But it is something that is embedded in all humans and is a characteristic of what we do on a daily basis. whether we acknowledge it or not. I think it's a lot better to acknowledge it and to understand and develop the skills around whatever category of work you're doing. And look, even if you're in a very, very large company and you're in a junior or mid-level position in a very large company, a lot of, and your role has nothing to do

with selling your company's product to customers, you still have a lot of sales in your work. You're selling your ideas, you're convincing your colleagues, you're selling your colleagues of your perspective, you're selling yourself up the corporate hierarchy, if that's your aspiration to grow and develop. So letting the word be pejorative is foolish in my mind

and instead repurposing it so that it's part of the word, that you're doing and recognizing, acknowledging when you're selling ideas or you're selling a perspective or selling a frame of reference, selling a future view, whatever it is. Absolutely. Brad, I'm very grateful for your investment of your time. It's your most valuable asset. So I'm very appreciative of that. The book for everyone is called The Startup Community Way, evolving an entrepreneurial ecosystem. And for that person who maybe works as a mid-level manager, or in a big company. There are many takeaways from this book just because you aren't starting a business or

you're not a founder. I promise it still applies to you. And it's something that will be useful. And I would read, Brad, I would push people to your website. Maybe I'll let you share. But feld.com, I've been reading this for years. I remember trying to find a way to get in touch with you five years ago for my podcast. And I was struggling.

So I'm so grateful that we finally had the opportunity to do it. But where would you send? What are the places that you would send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, feld.com is the best place because I write almost daily something. And it's not just how to be a better entrepreneur, how to be a better investor. It's same felt thoughts for a reason because I let it just roll around wherever I'm going and whatever I'm thinking about, whatever I'm trying to learn and understand. that's one place.

I'm on Twitter at D. Feld, although I mostly broadcast thoughts rather than engage in conversations. And I'm also just easy to find out email now, Brad atfeld.com, and I try to respond to anything that comes inbound. Love it. Well, Brad, thanks so much again for investing your time today.

I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Thanks a time for having me. All right. Thank you. That was a thrill to have that conversation. I've read Brad's work. for many years so it was great to have the opportunity to directly question some of the things I've been thinking about for years a few of the key takeaways specifically with management advice he said we have endless biases people defend their biases instead of

questioning them have a curious mind as Elon Musk might say always strive to be less wrong and have that assumption that you are constantly striving to learn to grow and to prove the hypothesis right and by doing that sometimes you're going to be wrong and then the role of a founder is to collect people and I would expand that and say the role of a leader is to collect people it's a bi-directional connection and have a mindset to give first with the the expectation to build genuine relationships in order to then collect and build fantastic teams. Then one other one details writing.

He said, when I write, I learn. People will get stuck in dogma when they don't write things down. They don't know why they believe it. I am a firm believer of this of regularly journaling. And if you're so inclined, publish those thoughts to a allow others to judge you. And it can be the greatest networking tool in the world. The same has been true for me with a podcast and a book.

Once again, I want to say thank you for continuing to spread the word by telling a friend or two that they should listen to the Learning Leader Show because it could potentially help them become a better leader, both at work and at home. Because you continue to do that. You give me. the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so much talking soon can't wait