Terry Crews and Richard Koch | The Tim Ferriss Show

Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. In this podcast, I sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable. Optimal minimal at this altitude—I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now, we see the broken time... I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

This episode is a two-for-one because the podcast recently hit its 10th-year anniversary and passed 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best. My goal is to encourage you to not only enjoy the household names—the super famous folks—but also to introduce you to lesser-known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life, and I feel like they can do the same for many of you.

For the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim.blog/combo. Please enjoy and thank you for listening.

First up, Terry Crews—former NFL player, American film and television star of The Expendables, Everybody Hates Chris, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, host of America's Got Talent, and best-selling author of six books including his memoir, "Tough: My Journey to True Power." I thought we'd start somewhere that perhaps people wouldn't associate you with, and that is art. Can you tell us a little bit about your background with art?

Growing up in Flint, there were a number of obstacles—the height of the crack epidemic and also the demise of the auto industry. It was like the '80s, probably late '70s all the way through the '80s into the '90s. There were two ways out: one was through music and performing, and another way was athletics. I had one teacher, one man, Mr. Eichelberg—I’ll never forget this—who said, "Terry, you are an amazing artist." He filled out all the applications for me, and I didn’t even know. He took my pictures and my paintings and sent them to Interlochen Arts Academy. Terry, you have a scholarship from Chrysler, a full ride to go to Interlochen Arts Academy.

Believe in yourself, even when you don't—life is a confidence game! ✨💪

Nobody's gonna pay me to do this, but I got to use football. He filled out all the applications for me, and I didn't even know. This is crazy! He took my pictures and my paintings and everything that I did and sent them to Interlochen Arts Academy. Interlochen is just world-famous. You get to study with people from all over the world. He already filled out everything.

Terry, you have a scholarship from Chrysler, a full ride to go to Interlochen Arts Academy. First of all, I didn't think it was possible. You've got to let people believe in you, but I didn't believe in myself. Coming from Flint, coming from the hood, this changed my life. Big on competition. If you were a violinist, you had to be the first chair and second chair. With art, we had to do two drawings and put them on the wall without our names on them.

A guy from the Cleveland Institute of Art judged each painting. I put up my drawings, and the art guy pointed at mine and said, "That one's the best one." Then he went all the way across the room and said, "That one," and they were both mine. Life is a confidence game. You couldn't tell me nothing. I got too arrogant then—you have to be humbled some other way. It let me know I could do it.

Then I got a scholarship to Western Michigan University in art. It was small, not a full ride. An art scholarship, and I walked onto the football team. My mom passed away, and she always told me, "Never forget you're an artist, babe. You're an artist." Whatever you do... what I'm doing right now. I get to do so many things that so many people never got to see, go so many places, and do so many things that none of the people who wanted to were able to. It's a responsibility. If I don't do it, everything they've gone through is for nothing. Try it. Go for it.

Football was hard. I had to depend on this art thing because this is what got me here. I was married; I had two kids. I asked them if they wanted their portraits painted. "Oh man, come on, man, you can't do..." Damn, dude. I want to paint you over this big. I'mma put you, and you're going to be a giant over the city, and you can have wings. "Oh damn, yeah man, I want the wings, dog. How much for them Wings, man?" Masterpieces.

In college, I played football, and you don't get money for SI; you only get book loans. The scholarship is a jip. Showing my portfolio, they were like, "Damn, dude." I was like, "Look, man, I want to paint you over this big. I'mma put you, and you're going to be a giant over the city, and you can have wings." Football players are the most egotistical people in the world. They were like, "Oh damn, yeah man, I want the wings, dog. How much for them Wings, man?"

I had a scam in college. I would make like probably ten paintings and then make four of them really suck. I would bring those in at the beginning. These were labs, and I would go to the teachers. "Man, you know what's wrong with this? Help me out here." They were like, "Oh Terry, oh my God, look, okay, we're going to work on your perspective, and we're going to do this," and I was like, "Yeah, I know. Help." Then I brought another one that was a little bit better. Let me tell you, I did this the whole semester.

Then I would bring out the masterpieces, and I’d say, "Look how much you helped me. You took me from here to there, sir." They were like, "You get an A. You're awesome." The whole thing was a scam, but I had to survive. I had to find a way to stay in school. A lot of people don't know they could take your scholarship. It was crazy. You’re there as a body, and if you don't perform, they'll find a way to get rid of you.

In 1986, my senior year in high school, the score was really low. They were up 47 to 45. I intercepted it with literally 5 seconds left to go. I took the ball all the way down the court. I had visions of, "Oh my God, this is the thing. I'm the hero." I went for this layup, brought it up there, and it totally got around the rim and...

You get what you desire, so shoot your shot! 🏀💫

They were up 47 to 45, and it was literally under a minute. I intercepted it with literally 5 seconds left to go and took the ball all the way down the court. I'm thinking, I had visions of, "Oh my God, this is the thing. I'm the hero." You just, you know, I'm already at the party in my mind. It totally gets around the rim, and it rolls. Let me tell you, that place goes nuts because it was the upset of the year.

I collapsed in a heap, and I knew my life was over. Other players were yelling at me. In the locker room, the coach was like, "You had no business taking that shot. It's your fault." Everybody in the room was like, "Yep." It was the most dark moment. I mean, when you're 16 years old, I was beyond crushed.

One guy was taunting me, and I got in a fight after school. I was in the deepest funk. I should have passed it. Maybe I messed up. I took the shot. I took the shot. You took your shot, man. You did that. I learned from then on, I said, "Man, wait a minute. If I win or if I fail, it's going to be on my terms." The scariest thought ever is one thing that blew me away: you really do get what you want.

If I showed up wrong or messed up on something, I was like, "I didn't really do what it took to get it." That comes from taking that shot way back in high school. No one ever remembers that game. It's one of the least important things in my life, but the lesson I learned is still guiding me today. You get what you desire. Everything about you—you get what you want.

You want it, and you get what you desire. You get what you want. If you wanted something different, you change it. It's scary because if I failed or if I didn't, I didn't really do what it took to get it. One of the things I really appreciate about you is how forthcoming you've been about your difficulties and some of the challenges you faced.

A lot of folks we see on magazine covers give people the impression that they're flawless. People feel uniquely flawed in some way, that they're damaged because they're not that person. I'm going to share this story which changed my life.

It took me years to overcome that. I was on a TV show called Battle Dome where they literally put me in a cage, and I fought my way out. My aunt called me and said, "Terry, your daddy hit your mother in front of the kids. Knocked her tooth sideways." I beat this guy for about an hour. He was pleading for his life. I felt not one bit better. It didn't make me feel one bit better, not one. Now I'm just like you.

It was just the most hollow, hollow feeling I've ever had. After years of therapy, I go back to my father, and I've been listening to things and trying to do this thing correctly.

Real strength is in healing and forgiveness. 💪❤️

You and I remember it just feeling empty and cold. It was probably the darkest place I've ever been. Because here's the man who's the reason I'm here, and I put him in his place, so to speak. I'll never forget it; it was just the most hollow feeling I've ever had. We got out of there. It took me years to overcome that. We got out of there, I got the kids out, and we never came back. Forget the holidays, we're not doing this anymore.

After years of therapy, what I'm talking about happened like in '99. I go back and I go back to my father. I've been listening to things and trying to do this thing correctly. I have to find one thing that I can tell him that he did good. We called him Big Terry; his name is Terry too. I said, "Big Terry, man, I want to thank you because if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here. If I had to choose my parents, I'd choose you."

Let me tell you something, he just broke down. He said, "Terry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for beating your mom, I'm sorry for everything I did." Those words broke him down. He cried in my arms for about the same time as I was beating him years earlier. I was like, this is not hollow, this feels good. This is healing. I said, "Man, I have to use my strength for good because everybody can knock somebody out, but to give a hug with muscles is a whole other matter."

That's the vulnerability, that's the authenticity, that's where real healing takes place. Shame wants punishment; it just wants to get back, boom boom, and it's temporary. But guilt develops discipline. When you admit, "I was wrong," guilt says, "I did it, I'm sorry," and then you develop the discipline to change. Man, I'm getting it. It was one of the darkest periods in my life but totally reversed. I decided that's going to be my life; this is who I am now.

Some people got their ass whooped. I'm trying to tell you one thing: some people try to take that and you're like, "Ah, I can push you." I'm like, "Hey, yeah, get out of the way." The big thing was that I knew the only way I would ever use that strength is to protect, not to get back, not for revenge. There's a time, but I'm telling you, man, that was a period that I learned from forever. My father, I wish I could say he changed, but he kind of went back to his old ways. But I'm healed, and I did the things I needed to do.

"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards," Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's my favorite quote; I literally have it on my dressing room wall in giant letters. Fear begets more fear, but courage begets more courage. You don't even get to be born unless your mother has the courage to have you. Any great thing, from literally creating a business to making art, it takes this courage. It takes this willingness to be looked at, to be judged. You have to face down your fears and you have to step outside and go. It helped me to just lay out what I was afraid of.

You have to ask yourself, "What are you scared of?" and then you have to attack. Fear begets more fear, but courage begets more courage. You don't even get to be born unless your mother has the courage to have you. Any great thing, from literally creating a business to making art, it takes this courage. You have to face down your fears and you have to step outside and go. What are you scared of? Then you have to attack.

You have to be willing to let people judge your stuff, willing to let people hear your song, willing to let people hear you sing. Vulnerability is actually strength because the vulnerability is part of courage. Anything that's created, anything that you see that you admire takes so much courage because people are going to judge it, especially in the age of the internet. You have to be willing, and you have to be vulnerable.

When you grow up in the ghetto, they kick you into the pool, and these are not good experiences. My first experience was horrifying; I almost drowned. I remember going in the backyard and just diving into the deep end over and over again to get rid of the fear. It's a confidence game. You have to beat it. And you just keep jumping in until you're not afraid anymore.

The first time I ever got a movie, it was a big movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I walked up on Arnold, and I was like, "Adam Gibson, we need you to come with us." He turned and looked at me, and I was like, "Dammit." Everything went through my head like, "You don't deserve to be here, you're just a dumb football player, you're a farce. These people are going to figure you out, you're a fake, you're a phony." Something was wrong with the camera. I froze.

I just went to the side, and I was like, "Terry, you survived the NFL. You were sweeping floors, you were doing security. Do you want to go back to sweeping floors? Do you want to go back to security? Go in there and say these lines, man." I literally was cussing myself out. Get some guts, dude. I walked back in there, and they were like, "Action." Arnold was like, "This guy, I like his energy, he's amazing, I like him." It's always there. Don't let anybody trick you and act like, "Oh man, I'm good."

If you care, you're going to always always be nervous. You have to face it.

Embrace the nerves; they mean you care. 💫

Some guts, dude, and I walked back in there, and they were like, "Action!" I was like, "Adam Gibson," you know, and Arnold was like, "This guy, I like his energy. It's amazing. I like him." Let me tell you, after that, I learned to go in, rush in, rush in. There's never been a time—I've been acting for almost 20 years—and there's never been a time that I didn't have those bubbles right before action. Never ever. It's always there. Don't let anybody trick you and act like, "Oh man, I'm good." If they say they're that good, they don't care.

I'm trying to tell you, if you care, you're always going to be nervous. You're always going to have to face it. But when you walk in, it turns into a mirage, and it just starts to disappear. I remember on the set of "White Chicks," it disappeared. I remember I was rolling, and I kept asking, "You got any notes?" They were like, "Man, do what you do." I remember just flowing, and let me tell you, people who know and understand it will agree—if you've ever been in flow, it's amazing.

There's a time when all the light, the writing just comes, the lines just come, the job is smooth. You're like, "Man, I could do this all day." That's by practicing, facing that fear, fear, fear, just going in, going in until you hit that zone. Man, it's a high like you will never ever experience. I encourage everyone, and I'm not here to mystify it—you will be nervous always, but go anyway. It's beautiful. Terry Crews out... [Applause]

Focus on your strengths and the world will follow. 🌟

Maybe if this 80/20 principle applies, there will be some questions which are asked much more frequently. And lo and behold, I got the papers for the history exams for the last 20 years, and it was absolutely true. There was always a question about the French Revolution. There was usually a question about the Russian Revolution. There was always a question about the origins of the causes of the First World War. So I said to myself, well, you know, I don't need to study very extensively.

You could write the answers to three or four questions; it was your choice during three hours. What I said was, I will research six subjects, no more, for each paper, and I will be word perfect. If I do that, I don't have to do much work, and I will get a top degree. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. That was my introduction to the 80/20 principle, and perhaps I've never looked back in some senses.

I did something very similar, but I just was not aware of Pareto at this point. When I was doing my undergrad, I, about halfway through, began asking teachers if there were any particular areas they thought I should focus on. And they were very forthcoming, although I definitely was pleased that in most cases, not everything hinged on final exams. I think I probably would have been crushed under the sort of psychological intimidation of that type of sink-or-swim setup.

I was quite nervous in my sense, but I found a solution to that. After the morning paper, I would go down the pub and have a couple of pints of beer. I found that calmed my nerves, and it was notable that I got better results in the afternoon than I did in the morning. Discover what you are best at doing and enjoy—that is different from what all of your peers are doing—and that requires relatively little effort from you. Then put huge effort into honing that skill so that it becomes monstrously greater than anyone else's. Use the skill to make the world a more interesting place. Don't care about making money. If you have a fantastically different and useful skill, everything else you want will follow.

I was always very, very interested in history because it enabled me to develop a certain skill in analysis with non-quantitative analysis. In terms of understanding structures, in terms of understanding trends, in terms of really getting to grips with what might have happened that other people had not noticed. I came up with some pretty wacky ideas during my time studying history. For example, it seemed to me that Hitler had copied pretty much what Lenin and Stalin had done. He actually had followed Lenin's policy, for example, of a one-party state, which no one before Lenin had really done, and of death camps for dissidents and enemies of the regime.

Numbers, but in terms of understanding structures, in terms of understanding trends, in terms of really getting to grips with what might have happened that other people had not noticed, that's what I did. I came up with some pretty wacky ideas during my time studying history, but I thought that they were plausible, and the examiners must have thought so too. It seemed to me that Hitler had copied pretty much what Lenin and Stalin had done. Hitler was a great anti-communist, and they were great anti-Nazis, but he actually had followed Lenin's policy, for example, of a one-party state and of death camps for dissidents and enemies of the regime. No one had really done that, certainly not on such a ruthless scale as Lenin and later Stalin did.

It was my theory that Hitler had based his policy on the Bolsheviks, trying to winkle out things that might be true, which are interesting and important, but which no one else has spotted. That's what I try and do; that's what I enjoy doing. I do have a very good track record, thank God. I've been very lucky or very fortunate at least in my investments, but it's not based on being an analyst in the conventional sense. I got fired from the Boston Consulting Group because I was no good at doing financial and market analysis, despite the fact that I was quite good at doing some other things which they didn't value very much.

It is true that I'm not particularly numerate, but I believe that's a skill which is, you know, readily available from other people. I never make an investment unless the business is a star business or has the potential to be a star business. BCG's definition, my definition of a star business, is the market leader in a niche—a defensible niche where you can protect it against other people, other competitors—and a high market growth rate. Betfair doesn't do that. What it does is it started an electronic market which enables people to either act as the bookmaker or to act as a punter. The odds for the punters are vastly better because there's no bookmaker's profit.

None of the managers in the business had any experience. One of them used to be a professional gambler, but that's not experience which venture capitalists would recognize as being applicable. They've never run anything.

Invest in star businesses and shine bright! 🌟💸

So, I said, "Yeah, of course I want... Anthony, of course, I want the real truth. What's the problem?" He said, "Well, no venture capitalist, no professional financial firm would invest in this company." When they first had their round, they started about six months prior. He continued, "From their point of view, there was a very good reason for that, which was none of the managers in the business had any experience." I asked, "Oh, you mean they didn't have experience in the industry?" He clarified, "No, no, they don't have experience in the industry. Well, one of them used to be a professional gambler, but that's not experience which venture capitalists would recognize as being applicable. They've never run anything."

I asked, "So, you are telling me that I should put money into a business run by people who've never run anything else?" He replied, "Well, one of them used to be a financial debt person at Morgan Stanley. He was trading loans and doing that sort of stuff. Trading loans is not a million miles away from running a betting exchange. But the truth was that they really were all sports enthusiasts or gambling enthusiasts and had no experience in management. This explained why only friends and family had been willing to invest in this particular company."

So, I asked Anthony, "What's the attraction?" He said, "It's a star business, Richard." Anthony had worked for me at LEK and also in a company we set up after LEK called Strategy Ventures, so he knew that I knew the way to make money in investing in small businesses was to actually invest in something which could be or was a star business. Despite being tiny and losing money, it was clear that Betfair was indeed a star business. Why was it clear? Because no one else was doing what they were doing. Their business model was completely different, their cost structure was different, and their customers were different. Most of their customers were sophisticated and quite large gamblers.

They didn't compete with Ladbrokes or Coral, the other British bookmakers. In fact, they didn't compete with anybody because there was nobody. There was another firm set up originally in San Francisco called Flutter, which had a slightly different business model, so they had no competition and an infinite relative market share. I said, "Well, that's fantastic." He said, "Let me give you the website so you can see how it works." Unfortunately, I couldn't because I didn’t know how to work the website. So, I went along, talked to the people, and just tried to make sure that it was indeed a star business and that I thought it could actually get some professional management later on. After an hour, I decided to invest 1.5 million in the business. They were quite shocked by that. They asked, "Are you sure?" I explained to them what a star business was and how wonderful it was.

They had been trying to raise money again from institutions, and they all said no. The mates who put the money in originally didn't want to put more money in, particularly as they used that money much more quickly than expected. The reason they used the money more quickly was that the growth was fantastic. It was a tiny, tiny business, but it was growing at 40%, 50%, even 60% a month. I said, "Well, the other thing I believe in, apart from the star principle, is compound growth rate." Their financial projections were incredibly conservative considering the market growth rate. So, I invested and went onto the board.

About four years later, they had an away day where I talked about how wonderful star businesses were and so on. Then, I said, "Actually, last week, I decided it was time to learn how to use the website." They all burst out laughing; they thought I was joking. I said, "No, I did. I think it’s a great website." They asked, "How could you possibly have invested in the business without using the website?" I said, "Well, it’s a star business." I think I went down in their estimation quite considerably as a result of that. Of course, now I use the website most days, and I think it’s wonderful. I've sold my shares, so I’m not advertising the company or anything like that, but I ended up making about 1 million profit from that investment. That’s the power of the star principle.

I believe in principles, and I believe in the star principle, and it works. I’m the only investor in the world that does this, and I think I’m the only investor at my scale that doesn’t employ anyone and does it on the basis of probably about a day or week of work. I do use my personal assistants to do some of the work, and I use contacts for special particular jobs, but I don’t have any staff. When I tell people this, they say, "Well, your portfolio is X; that’s absolutely unbelievable." I only have one question when I invest in a business: is it a star business or could it be a star business? Once I’ve invested, I want to retain it as a star business or make it more dominant. The only question is how to do that. Life is very simple.

I don’t have much money to spend, and I don’t really mind that. When I’m in London, for example, in normal circumstances, I take public transport. I go on a bus or the tube, or I cycle if I can, but I wouldn’t take a taxi or even an Uber. I don’t believe in being desperately short of time. I always make sure I have plenty of time because I don’t want to be rushed. How do I decide on the bet size? It’s just a matter of what I have available if I think it’s a good bet. I don’t make money out of my horse racing gambling; that is purely for entertainment. I don’t place particularly large bets relative to my net worth either. Conventional gambling, whether it’s poker, at the casino, horse racing, or betting on sports, is something people can make money from, but they usually either have some inside information or are incredibly skilled at judging probabilities and often have research.

I know someone who had 50 employees tracking football to see whether the odds on particular matches were right or not. He would take positions and made a lot of money from it, but he had 50 employees. I don’t want 50 employees.

I hope this story provides valuable insights into the importance of principles and the effectiveness of the star principle in investing.

Bet on what you know and win big! 🎲🏇💰

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Gambling is purely entertainment for me, and I don't place particularly large bets relative to my net worth either. I mentioned, "If I can go for 18 months without having to put any more money in my account, I'm very happy." Conventional gambling, whether it's poker, casino games, horse racing, or betting on sports like tennis, baseball, or football, has people who make money at it. They usually either have some inside information or are incredibly skilled at judging probabilities.

I shared, "I know someone who had 50 employees tracking football to see whether the odds on particular matches were right or not, and he made a lot of money consistently every year." For someone like me, who doesn't know a lot about football or horse racing, it’s a certain disadvantage. I have a particular method, which is based on looking not at where the horse finished in the race but on the time relative to other times. All that is calculated on the Racing Post website, using something called top speed. Whenever I make a lot of money in horse racing, it's because top speed has shown me a horse that is not far away from the favorite but might be at odds of 30 to 1 or, in one case, even 330 to 1. That's unusual.

I then pivoted to a different topic, "Betting on companies is fantastic because if you understand how important relative market share is, and if you understand whether or not a company can segment itself and have a defensible position in a particular segment like Betfair, then it's absolutely fantastic. You can invest and know that you might lose your money, but overall, you're going to do very well out of that." I have very rarely lost money on star businesses. The instances where I've lost money are where I thought something might become a star business, and it wasn't. I asked, "Does that answer your question?"

I continued, "You wrote an entire book on this, 'The Star Principle,' published in 2008, focusing on investing in star businesses." When you say "segment itself," and you mentioned Betfair, what does segmenting itself mean? It means defining the market in a way that nobody else has done or very few people do, allowing the company to become the market leader in it. Betfair is a very good example of that. It's a betting exchange, an electronic market where people can post bets on either side—buy or sell. It doesn't take principal positions as bookmakers do, so once its overheads are covered, it can't lose money. It competes against other betting exchanges, not the big bookmakers.

I explained further, "Anyone who's a big gambler isn't going to go to Ladbrokes or Corals or the Tote or Paddy Power because they know that the bookmaker typically takes out about 10% on each event, whereas Betfair takes out maybe 2%, and that's only half the time if you win half the time and lose half the time. So, it's 1% versus 10%, meaning the customer profile and cost structure operate completely differently. It's a separate business segment because it doesn't compete with conventional betting firms."

Continuing my explanation, "A company has to do something differently, either have a price advantage and therefore a cost advantage like Betfair or offer something so attractive that people will pay the same price to use it. Think about Apple devices—they created their own segments with the iPod, iPad, iPhone, and other devices because they were different from conventional competition. Even the Mac didn't compete head-to-head with IBM. Anything where you can get a big price premium, for example, 30% plus as Apple did on all its devices, at least at the start, you have a separate segment because it's not competing against low-cost competitors. If you're going to be the low-cost competitor, you want to be low-cost in a segment different from other segments, otherwise, existing large companies will eat you for breakfast."

I then noted, "I am unconventional in many respects. My most valuable company in the portfolio constitutes about half the total value, and another one constitutes about a quarter of the total value. If I take care of those two particular assets and know they're going to do well, I can be relatively relaxed. I'm quite happy to increase my share in companies once I know or think I know. The company that's my largest single investment started with a relatively modest investment, and now I'm up to 60%. I buy shares from existing shareholders whenever there's an opportunity."

I clarified, "I don't have any rules on industry. I don't care what industry it's in or about the management because if the management doesn't perform, they’ll eventually get replaced. I don't care where it is as long as it's in Europe because I understand European markets. I won't invest in the US due to competition and because I don't like the IRS. It's a European portfolio, industry irrelevant, and I don't care about concentration. In fact, I rather like concentration."

I shared a story, "It was a slow firing, a very gentle one. BCG, like McKinsey, had the 'up or out' policy. McKinsey would assess you after three years. If you were good, you got promoted; if not, you’d be asked to leave nicely. They divided people into 'sheep' and 'goats'—the good ones and the clients. BCG wasn't as rigid but had a similar policy. If after three or four years you hadn’t been promoted, you were an anomaly. I had conversations with people where I said, 'You're dead wrong.'"

I hope this story provides valuable insights into the importance of principles and the effectiveness of the star principle in investing.

Know your strengths and play to them! 💪🎯🚀

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Because the people who left generally weren't as bright as the other people, it wasn’t that they could do things that the McKinsey people couldn't do, it was that they weren't as bright in terms of the strategy of a business and analysis and so on. I reflected, "So that worked extremely well." BCG did not have quite as rigid a formula as McKinsey, but they did have this policy that if, after three or four years, you had not been made from a consultant into a manager, you’d be pretty much an anomaly. I noted, "The consultant was a typical entry-level for someone who'd been to business school, and therefore, you might start thinking about what you wanted to do."

I recalled, "I had a number of those conversations with people, but I said to him, 'Look, you're dead wrong.'" This was me in my arrogant youth, and maybe I haven't got rid of the arrogance altogether. I continued, "I said, 'Look, I'm no good at analysis, but I can charm the clients. I can talk to the clients. I'm quite articulate and I can understand what the issues are, the strategic issues, and I can relate those to the client. So you know, I might not be very good at being a consultant, I might not even be very good at being a manager, but why don't you make me a vice president because I could actually do rather well.'"

I explained, "They would chuckle, they would say, 'Richard, you know we have to have a hierarchy.' And I said, 'Well, you know Adrian, for example, Adrian is now a vice president. We all know that he was a pretty good consultant but he wasn't a terribly good manager because he couldn't command the analysis, and that's the heart of what BCG does. So he had to rely on other people to do it, but now he's a vice president, he's selling a lot of business very successfully and helping clients. So I'm like Adrian basically.'"

I added, "They would again chuckle a bit, but eventually a guy, very nice guy called Phil Hume, who later started Computer Centre and made quite a lot of money out of it, sat me down and said, 'Richard, you know you are running out of road a bit.'" I said, "Well, look, I got a fantastic assessment from Roy Barbu the other day, you know he said how much the clients love me." He said, "Yes, Rich, we know that, but basically you can't do what is really our power alley, so maybe you should think about looking around." I pondered, "I came out from that meeting thinking, is he right? Is he right about this or am I right? And I thought to myself, well maybe he's right."

I shared, "So I actually then very quickly went to other consulting firms, to McKinsey and to Bain & Company, to see whether they might..." I was interrupted, "Just for a second, for people who don't have any context on management consulting, when you say McKinsey, when you talk about Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company... these are the most prestigious names in the world of management or strategy consulting. I just wanted to add that as a bit of background."

I apologized, "Yeah, I'm sorry, I assumed everyone knows and they don't. It was a very obscure industry when I was doing it, and now it's less obscure but still pretty obscure." Anyway, I went to McKinsey; they said, "No, you're a bright guy but we don't think you should be doing this management consulting stuff because you want to make decisions rather than advise." I agreed, "And I said, yeah, that's probably true."

I continued, "Bain & Company, I'll come back to in a second. I then said, well maybe I should be a headhunter. I was actually approached by firm headhunters, some of whom knew me personally." So I went off to see Egon Zehnder in Zurich with a view to becoming... I clarified, "Egon Zehnder was the leading European headhunter at that time and probably still is. Just a footnote for people, headhunting means recruiting at a very high level and taking very large amounts of money from the client."

I elaborated, "So anyway, I talked to Egon Zehnder and he offered me a job on the spot, and I very nearly accepted on the spot. But when I examined my heart, I came back to the conclusion that I thought BCG was wrong. And that I might not suit BCG, but I thought, you know, maybe I can get a job in another consulting firm. There happened to be another individual who had left the Boston Consulting Group and joined Bain & Company, a guy who rejoiced in the name of Floyd Bradley II. You might tell he was an American, very nice guy, quite a smart guy."

I arranged, "So I had a drink with him and said, 'I'm not too happy with BCG. I don't think they're moving me on fast enough. How about Bain & Company? Do you think they would be interested?'" He replied, "Yes, they're always looking for people. They find it quite difficult to recruit people at this stage." I decided, "So I said, fine, I'll go along and talk to them."

I continued, "So I went along and talked to the head of the London office, and he said, 'We'll send you off to Boston now.'" This was very interesting for me; it was my one chance to stay in the industry I wanted to stay in. I shared, "The only problem with Bain & Company was that it had a reputation for being extremely hierarchical, strict, controlled, almost mystical, where you had to do what you were told. Whereas BCG was a pretty freewheeling, entrepreneurial sort of firm."

I reflected, "This difference reflected the character between the guy who had started BCG, Bruce Henderson, and the guy who ran Bain & Company. I should say that he's dead now, so I can't be sued for libel or slander or whatever it is, and neither can you, although I have the utmost respect for Bill Bain."

I narrated, "So they sent me off to Boston. There I was, I had a 4:00 appointment to see Bill Bain in the afternoon. I got off the plane, got a cab to their Boston office, turned up at the desk, and said, 'I'm here to see Mr. Bain at 4:00.' The woman sort of looked a bit confused. No. Basically, what had happened was that someone in the London office had not told the Boston people. Although they'd given me a ticket to go and see him, they'd given me an appointment time, apparently it had not somehow got into the agenda of Mr. Bain."

I described, "So they said, 'Come back the following morning.' I went back the following morning. The offices were quite remarkable, beautiful, but the associates, consultants, and researchers were all hunched together. It was not quite a sweatshop, but you could see they were either expanding very fast or very tight on rental costs."

I continued, "Then I went into Bill Bain's office, and it was palatial. It was stuffed full of basketball and baseball trophies, insignia, and paraphernalia of all sorts. He was sitting behind this large desk and got up very graciously to meet me and said, 'Do you want anything to drink?' I said, 'No, I don't want anything, thank you.' Then he started talking to me."

I mentioned, "It was very fortunate for me because I didn't find out until afterward, but it turned out that Bill Bain was a historian. That was his undergraduate degree, and in fact, he had spent a year doing postgraduate research, which he eventually gave up because he thought it was terribly boring and because he got offered a better job as the development director of Vanderbilt University."

I noted, "During the course of that interview, Bill Bain said something. I thought, well, I want to ask him a question, but he was in full flood, so I let him carry on talking until probably about 20 minutes afterward. Then I went back to it and said, 'If I got it right, Mr. Bain, you said earlier such and such, and I want to ask you a question about that, blah blah blah.'"

I laughed, "He said, 'You're incredibly unusual.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Well, you're a very good listener, and not many people are good listeners.' I wasn't aware that I was a good listener. Maybe it was just that I was so desperate to get a job that I was actually listening. But I was also very curious about the business."

I concluded, "Right at the start when I had joined BCG, I thought what a wonderful industry this is. It requires no working capital, and basically, they charge huge fees. They don't pay people a hell of a lot of money; eventually, they give them bonuses, which is where the working capital comes from—the difference between the standard pay and the markup, some of which is eventually rebated to the professionals involved. And it's expanding very, very..."

I hope this narrative provides a glimpse into the intersections of career decisions, consulting industry dynamics, and personal reflections.

Don't settle where you're undervalued. Find where you truly shine! ✨💼🌟

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He said, "You're incredibly unusual." I replied, "What?" He explained, "Well, you're a very good listener, and not many people are good listeners." I wasn't aware that I was a good listener, and maybe it was just that I was so desperate to get a job that I was actually listening. But I was also very curious about the business. Right at the start when I had joined BCG, I thought, "What a wonderful industry this is. It requires no working capital, and basically, they charge huge fees. They don't pay people a hell of a lot of money; eventually, they give them bonuses, which is where the working capital comes from—the difference between the standard pay and the markup, some of which is eventually rebated to the professionals involved. And it's expanding very, very fast." They had this great model called the Growth Share Matrix, with market growth on one axis and relative market share on the other. They called it the Growth Share Matrix, but it was more popularly known as the Boston Box. It had cash cows, dogs, question marks, and stars.

McKinsey went one better; they developed an imitation of the Boston Box, which was a 3x3 matrix. But as always, economy is everything, and it wasn't as good and isn't as good, in my humble opinion. The end of the story is that Bill was quite taken with me, and I was quite surprised. He said, "I want you to come and talk to Ralph Willard, one of the other founders of Bain & Company." Ralph was a very jolly chap, and we got on very well. They actually offered me a job.

Ralph asked, "How much do you want to be paid?" I said, "Well, I'm earning such and such at Boston Consulting Group, but obviously if I'm going to take a step like this, I want a 50% increase." He responded, "50%? That's ridiculous!" I countered, "Well, maybe you can just make me an advance for joining and not consolidate it into the salary." At that stage, I was feeling confident that they wanted me, so I raised the stakes a little bit. Despite the fact that at the beginning of the day, I was totally desperate and wouldn't have cared what they were going to pay, they eventually paid me quite a large amount of money to join.

At the same time, I went back to BCG and said, "I think you're making a mistake, but if you want me to leave, I've got all this money which I'm due in a few months' time as a bonus. Please can I have that?" To my surprise, they said, "Yes, okay." They were so desperate to get rid of me that they agreed. So I made quite a bit of money from BCG and from Bain & Company. Apart from the fact that the previous two or three years had been very miserable, I redoubled my efforts to succeed at BCG. I worked 80 hours a week, got fat in the face from eating fast food at night, neglected my personal relationships, and stopped exercising. It was a complete disaster.

If I were to give advice to anybody in a similar or even less desperate situation, I would say: If you're not succeeding in a job, give up and go somewhere else where your talents can be better appreciated or more suited to what that firm does. I just could not admit failure. Personal success was essential to my happiness; it affected my self-image. I couldn't believe that these very intelligent people at BCG couldn't see the things that I could do. It would have been far better for me to say, "Well, they just have a different business model. Analysis, quantitative heavy-duty stuff is their bag, and it's not something I can do particularly well."

Ultimately, the long and short of that story is that it worked out extremely well in the end, but it was absolutely very unpleasant. I wanted my pound of flesh at the end of it from all the suffering I'd gone through.

"What did Bain & Company appreciate about you or utilize in you that was not utilized or appreciated at BCG?" It's very simple to answer that because I've always been interested in what I call the theology of business, which means the business model that a particular firm has. BCG and Bain & Company were very interesting to me. I analyzed in my mind, not quantitatively, the business model that BCG had and the business model that Bain & Company had. They both used the same concepts, like the Growth Share Matrix or Boston Box, which incidentally Bill Bain had helped to originate. So it wasn't really plagiarism, and BCG had put the stuff out there in the public domain.

However, the firms were completely different. BCG was a very decentralized company. The vice presidents in charge of particular clients were almost autonomous profit centers. Bruce Henderson, who started BCG, believed in the market. He was a red-toothed capitalist who really believed in competition. He divided his firm into three different parts at one stage, thinking that if one of those parts developed a slightly different way of doing things and was successful, the other parts could learn from it.

BCG was very decentralized, and even individual consultants or professionals were profit centers. They were rewarded at the end of the year not on team performance but on their billability—the number of hours they had actually billed. Incidentally, I was probably one of the most billable people because I was willing to work very long hours. Initially, at least, people wanted me on their teams. If they didn't, I could sell my own work.

Bain & Company, on the other hand, was very controlled. I actually later called it "Stalinist." It radiated out from Bill Bain, who did all the thinking initially, and the trusted vice presidents, including Mitt Romney, whom I have tremendous admiration for, and four or five others. The formula at Bain & Company was very tight and unforgiving. They generated all their business from a relationship with the chief executive or the head of the company. They wouldn't work for anyone who wasn't the top dog in the organization.

Their pitch to the chief executive was, "Mr. Chief Executive, we want you to be very successful because if you're successful, we will be successful. We've got this strategy, which really works, and we can explain it to you. Think of it as a wonderful formula, a secret sauce for increasing your company's market value and profits."

I hope this narrative provides a glimpse into the intersections of career decisions, consulting industry dynamics, and personal reflections.

Work smart, not just hard, to climb the ladder! 🚀📈💼

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They would not work for anybody who was not the top dog in the organization. "Mr. Chief Executive, we want you to be very successful because if you're very successful, we will be very successful. We've got this funny little stuff called strategy which really works and we can explain it to you, but basically, you should think of it as a wonderful formula—kind of like a secret sauce—for increasing the market value of your company profits and the market value. If we do the work with your company, your share price will double within the first year or so, or over the first two years anyway, and it will continue doubling every few years." This approach was very, very different from the whole of the rest of the industry, which was, in a way, salesman for hire or cabs for hire.

"We will only work for one company in an industry," or later they refined that to a competitive system, which was a sort of slightly more sophisticated way of saying industry. They had no website, but that wasn't unusual at the time. They had no business cards, no marketing literature, and the only way in which they got business was by personal recommendation of one chief executive to another chief executive. Within each client organization, someone from Bain & Company would be assigned to work alongside or with, nominally, the head of manufacturing or the head of a particular product area, or however the firm organized itself. All the work was specified from the top down, but it was validated from the bottom up. So that once you'd done a piece of work, you then had to show it to the relatively low-level manager and make sure that they agreed with it. When it eventually got to the chief executive and then later to the board, it had all been pre-wired, which meant that everyone had agreed to everything, and therefore there was no disagreement.

"We were the kings of concepts. We knew relative market share was important and we could explain why. We weren't unreasonable, but nevertheless, when it eventually got to the chief executive and then later to the board, it had all been pre-wired, which meant that everyone had agreed to everything, and therefore there was no disagreement. The only discussion which there'd be at the end of the presentation was about what Bain always used to call 'next steps.'" Next steps were about how we were going to make our next million dollars by consulting to you on this issue. It was justified because Bain & Company was a fantastic machine for getting consensus in organizations and getting consensus about some very radical strategies. These might include getting out of half the businesses that they were in—selling them, or in some way hiving them off or closing them down if they were cash negative and no one would buy them—and then making acquisitions to strengthen existing businesses or even to go into new areas.

I have no idea why everyone's interested in new clients; we don't need new clients. We should have built-in growth from existing clients if we're doing our job correctly. They used the existing clients who were satisfied, particularly those who sat as non-executive directors (outside directors) on the boards of other companies, to say, "You know, I'd like to show you a sample of work which Bain & Company has done in our industry." We went to present to a board of that information company, but one of the people on that board was the chief executive of a scientific company. Subsequently, they hired Bain & Company, largely because, I think, of the recommendation of the chief executive and to a small degree the quality of the dazzling presentation I made. Bain & Company made me a partner, nominally a partner, a vice president, whereas I went in as a consultant, and that would normally take several years. Well, that happened after 18 months.

Richard, you know, I'm going to say something which might surprise you. "You know, we've had our eye on you ever since you came and talked to me, blah blah blah, and I want you to be one of my partners. We are going to promote you, but in only nine months' time, and it's a done deal. There's no question that you'll be one of my partners. In that nine months, you've got to behave as though you're already a partner, without the authority of being a partner, but just through force of personality and through knowing that you are reflecting the Bain way of doing things." When we actually make the announcement that you are going to be a partner of the firm, everyone will say, "Well, of course," rather than saying, "How come this guy got promoted? That's unbelievable."

Bill was such a clever man at controlling his organization. He didn't work very hard, but he didn't work very long anyway. He gave a great deal of thought to the procedures and to the management of his own company. It grew at 40% a year for 20 or 30 years, whereas BCG had struggled to grow at 20%. Bain & Company fell on hard times, I think, in the late 1980s because they did a leveraged buyout, but that's another story.

I hope this narrative provides a deeper understanding of the unique strategies and dynamics within Bain & Company, and how career growth can sometimes hinge on aligning with the right organizational culture.

True loyalty and teamwork can transform your career! 🌟🤝💪

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He gave a great deal of thought to the procedures and management of his own company. Bill Bain ensured that everything happening in Bain & Company was initiated by him and was aimed at making the most money for the company and himself. It was a fantastically well-run organization, growing at 40% a year for 20 or 30 years, whereas BCG struggled to grow at 20%. Bain & Company did fall on hard times in the late 1980s due to a leveraged buyout, but that's another story.

It totally changed me. For one thing, it made me loyal. I was always someone on the verge of self-destruction because I'm a natural rebel, a non-conformist, and very opinionated—almost unemployable. At BCG, I was well-known for going off script. I remember one of my appraisals saying, "Most of the time, Richard is like a volcano." In Bain & Company, I'd have been fired if I disagreed with my vice president, even on a minor point.

I felt very loyal to Bill personally and to the organization, which was new for me. I didn't really do loyalty or teamwork very well before. I decided to become much more direct with people working with me, whether they were at the same level, below me, or even slightly above me. But I did it very nicely. It made me feel a bit cautious because, although Bill signed his bit of paper, I knew that could change any moment.

The prize was within grasp, and I felt confident. It gave me confidence and made me much more effective. In fact, I was probably more effective before becoming a partner because I wanted it so much. Although nobody knew I had authority, I did, and that was tremendous. I don't understand why firms don't do this more broadly; it's a fantastic way to encourage personal development and retain people who might otherwise leave.

The 80/20 principle is something we'll come back to. When asked what book had the biggest impact on my career, I answer, "My own book, The 80/20 Principle," because it sold over a million copies and has been translated into more than 35 languages. You can also recommend a book called "Perspectives on Strategy," edited by Carl Stern and George Stalk.

"Perspectives on Strategy" is a collection of early perspectives from the Boston Consulting Group. A perspective was like a tract from an evangelical group, presented snazzily in BCG's dark green livery, mailed to senior directors in America and Britain. The valuable thing about the book is that a lot of the content is by Bruce Henderson himself, along with more modern stuff, outlining theories like the Experience Curve, the Boston Box, and the Growth-Share Matrix. Bruce laid out the principles very clearly: if a chief executive was likely to agree, it wasn't argued; if likely to disagree, BCG pushed the idea that companies should reduce costs and prices steadily, contrasting with the conventional wisdom of maintaining high prices.

"Good Strategy Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt is another excellent strategy book. It's short and very insightful. I'm also producing the fifth edition of my Financial Times Guide to Strategy as we speak.

The web is amazing, and you are amazing. I was pressing the keys and came up with that myself. I keep my phone on silent so I can tap the screen without making noise to find things like that. You could have a flunky do it, but it's impressive to do it yourself.

Earlier in the conversation, I made a promise to the listeners about knowledge versus principles and the 80/20 principle. From mergersandinquisition.com, what I learned from consulting is exactly what...

I hope this narrative provides a deeper understanding of the unique strategies and dynamics within Bain & Company and the transformative impact it had on my personal and professional development.

Principles > knowledge for quick, effective decision-making! 💡🚀📚

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Well, I'll give away one of my tricks, and that is if I'm recording an interview like this, I don't use my keyboard. I have my phone on silence so that I can tap the screen without making noise. Earlier in the conversation, I made a promise to the listeners in the form of alluding to knowledge versus principles, which I think is perhaps a useful way to segue to the 80/20 principle.

The distinction that I've read you drawing is the following: what I learned from consulting is exactly what I've been teaching. Knowledge is great, but principles are better. Principles are ideas that enable you to sort the knowledge, help you analyze it, and get to the essence of the matter as simply and quickly as possible. Principles are important.

I just think there are certain meta principles, and I think there are probably only about half a dozen of them. Basically, the 80/20 principle and the star principle. If you know what those are, then you can look at a business in a way that most people don't and very quickly see whether there's potential for improvement. How did the book come about?

I wrote something called the A to Z of Management because I had an editor who was currently working at Pearson and later left to start his own firm with another editor there. Mark Allen said to me, "You've written this thing called the A to Z of Management, which is basically a paragraph about various different concepts. It covered all the principles I could think of, important theorists in business, anything of interest in business, and even jargon phrases like 'work in progress'." Anyway, I'd written half a page on the 80/20 principle.

He said to me, "Richard, I've got a book for you to write. What about writing a book about the 80/20 principle?" I said, "Mark, I couldn't possibly write a book about the 80/20 principle. I've said it all in that paragraph. I could maybe pad it out to a page, and if you really put a gun to my head, I could write a chapter. But I'm not going to write a whole bloody book about this because there isn't anything more to say." He said, "Well, I'm not so sure about that."

I went to see a guy called Nicholas Brey, who was the publisher of the firm. Nicholas Brey had previously published my book called Managing Without Management, which suggested that managing, particularly middle management, was a complete waste of time. The book wasn't a huge success but sold around 20,000 copies, which was good enough for Nicholas Brey at the time. I went to see him about another book shortly after I'd had the conversation with Mark Allen.

He asked if I had another book in mind. I said, "Well, not really." I described to him what the 80/20 principle was, and honestly, it didn't take more than about 60 seconds because there wasn't much to say as far as I was concerned. He said, "The hairs on the back of my head are rising... go and do some research." You know, you've mentioned Vilfredo Pareto. Read the book again, read all the other stuff, read all the stuff on the web.

I hired a researcher and said, "Find out everything that's going on on the internet about the 80/20 principle." I asked her, "Diane, is that all about the 80/20 principle?" She said, "Yes," and I said, "Well, maybe I could write a book." The more I went into it, the deeper it actually got, and the more interesting it was. I went back to my original guy, Mark Allen, and said, "Do you want to publish this book?" He said, "No, we can't. We've left Pearson at the time and haven't started our firm yet."

I went back to Nicholas Brey, and he was very pleased. The first draft I produced, he said very politely, "I think you need to go and do some more research." It was pretty hopeless, actually. The second draft I took back, and he more or less published it as it was because, by that stage, I had worked it through. The basic 80/20 principle, which I'm sure nearly all your listeners know, is that if you look at any particular relationship between sales and another variable or time and another variable, it's usually true that very few events or data account for a large majority of the total.

This was a well-known economic concept, generally called the Pareto rule at that time. The rule sounded too deterministic to me; principle sounded exactly right. The idea seemed applicable well beyond the sphere it had been used before, which was mainly for analyzing sales and profits. I said, "Why can't we use the 80/20 principle in other areas, like people's personal lives?" It's probably true that 20% of your time generates 80% of your useful output.

I hope this narrative provides a deeper understanding of how the 80/20 principle came to be and its broader applications beyond business.

🔑 "Find your Happiness Islands and turn them into continents! 🌴➡️🌍😁

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I became quite fascinated by the connection between time and results. The whole thing about the 80/20 principle is not that it's a rule but an observation. You come up with a hypothesis and then test whether it's true with data. It may be true that 20% of your time generates 80% of your useful output.

Tell me what the most valuable things are that you do. Do more of that and less of the other stuff. If you manage to do something which is hugely more valuable than the other stuff and you do that in half a day, take the rest of the day off. If you want to carry on working and do even more, that's right.

Work expands to fill the time available, and spending expands to fill the budget. They got locked into working for Salomon Brothers or Goldman Sachs because they needed the money. Maybe you get most of your happiness from a relatively small proportion of your time.

What are the periods of time where you actually feel that you are being fulfilled? You might want to be a bit more ruthless about that. I invented the concept of Happiness Islands. A happiness island is part of your life which is sort of not the main part but from which you get a huge amount of satisfaction. Try, if possible, to make them happiness continents.

Try and get yourself in a position where you're spending all your time doing that sort of work. I see it in many ways as a kind of amateur version of the flow idea. It's taking the rather arcane, dusty economic principle and then seeing whether it could apply to other areas of life. I invented the concept of Happiness Islands.

Happiness island is part of your life which is not the main part, but you get a huge amount of satisfaction from it. We live on those happiness islands and try, if possible, to make them happiness continents. I see it in many ways as a kind of amateur version of the flow idea. According to the guy with the unpronounceable name, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi... he's written a couple of books about this.

It all boils down to the idea that the 80/20 principle could be written on one page. It was a reinterpretation of the principle to apply it not just to business but to people's personal lives. The things that I really like doing are writing books and making money—through investments, not gambling—and talking to people. I really used to like going to dinner parties in the days when we had dinner parties.

I really like to go for long walks with a few people that I know well. We will discover something we didn't know beforehand. Doing something like this podcast is a flow activity as far as I'm concerned—an 80/20 activity. It's books, it's writing books, it's also reading books, and it's talking to people and making money through investments.

I do something very unsophisticated. Other people have therapists, personal trainers, and elaborate systems for keeping track of their objectives or concerns. I have bike rides every day. I go for a two-hour bike ride in the countryside.

During those bike rides, something will come up—sometimes not very often—but something always comes up. At the very least, I will work out what I'm going to do that day because that's one output from a bike ride. It just happens automatically; I don't even have to think about it. In the morning, I don't answer emails, I don't look at my phone.

I do have a cup of tea, and sometimes I take the dog for a walk, but apart from that, it's the bike ride. I couldn't do without it. It's a form of exercise that is mindless, not too difficult but enjoyable, where I can just relax and let my unconscious mind do whatever it does.

I hope this narrative provides a deeper understanding of how the 80/20 principle extends to various aspects of personal life and the simple yet effective routines that can enhance productivity and happiness.

🚴‍♂️ "Biking isn't just exercise; it's my therapy! 🌟✨

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I do have a cup of tea and sometimes take the dog for a walk, but apart from that, it's the bike ride. It's wonderful; I mean, you know, I couldn't do without it. In fact, when I'm away and can't ride a bicycle, I miss it. I spend a fair bit of time in Gibraltar, where I have an apartment, but it's too dangerous to ride there because the streets are too narrow. So, I substitute going for a walk or going to the gym. A form of exercise which is mindless, not too difficult, but enjoyable, where I can just relax and let my unconscious mind do whatever it does.

I make a point of only doing that when I'm in a good mood. I never do it when I'm feeling slightly down. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with a thought I hadn't considered before. I keep a notebook by the bed to jot down my thoughts, put the book down, turn off the light, and go back to sleep. I find journaling very helpful for me. Different forms of journaling are significant; it's the writing that matters. The act of writing somehow ingrains it on your mind. I don't do it every day and I don't do it systematically; I just do it when I feel the need.

There are two types of journaling for me. The first is almost like emptying the garbage bin on a Mac to purge the system. The second type is more deliberate and objective-driven. I write reflections, put the date, and then start numbering and writing. I realized I was spending a lot of time on stuff that wasn't important. I decided not to worry about companies outside the first half-dozen in terms of their value, unless their value was increasing very fast or had the potential to.

I realized that being almost completely invested wasn't a sensible thing to do. I should have two or three new companies with potential to be star businesses or that already are, where I like the people involved. For me, liking the people is crucial. I don't invest in things unless I actually like the people. I am too socially isolated, even though I have some very good friends. I don't see them as often as I would like. Living in nice, sunny places is important for me to be outdoors, but I have been too much of a controller and too little of an adventurer.

I divided successful people into controllers and adventurers. I was surprised to find that 14 of them were adventurers in one form or another, and only six were controllers. One controller's life was pretty unpleasant because he was always trying to control other people. It was an uphill struggle, and though he achieved a great deal in his terms, it wasn't enjoyable. Some of the more freewheeling people, like Bob Dylan or even Otto von Bismarck, had much more fun. They were determined to achieve things but relied on events flowing their way and just bided their time until the right moment.

I hope this narrative offers insights into balancing control and adventure in life, the importance of enjoyable routines, and how journaling and strategic investments can contribute to personal fulfillment and success.

Success isn't just hard work—it's about riding the waves of opportunity! 🌊🚀

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It was a very uphill struggle, and he achieved a great deal in his terms. He was the founder of practical communism and made communism a success in very large parts of the world. From that point of view, he was very successful. However, he didn't have much of a great time compared to some of the more freewheeling people, like Bob Dylan or even Bismarck. They had much more fun because, although they were determined to achieve things, they relied on events flowing their way. One of the great quotes I like is from Bismarck, who said, "Man cannot control the flow of events; all he can do is ride with them and steer."

I've always been fascinated by success and the discrepancy between the arbitrary nature of success in many ways. The people who are successful are not necessarily the most intelligent, the most expected to succeed, or the ones who deserve it. Winston Churchill was a prime example of someone who was a complete failure through most of his career. He thought that oratory would propel him to become Prime Minister. As Herbert Asquith said, "It does not matter if you speak with the tongues of men and angels if nobody trusts you."

The actual genesis of the book came during a train journey. I was traveling from Paris with a friend of mine to Lyon, and I always take a book with me. I didn't have a new book that I wanted to read, so I took an old one: Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." In "Outliers," the thesis is that success derives from deep experience and long exposure to doing something in a very narrow field. Gladwell came up with the idea of the 10,000 hours, which is now a trope. He gave a couple of examples early in the book that resonate very nicely.

For instance, the Beatles in 1960 were just a rather poor high street band. Then something happened: they went off to the strip clubs of Hamburg, where they had to play seven days a week, eight hours a day. As John Lennon was quoted in the book, "We couldn't help but improve with all of that extra experience." Gladwell also quotes the example of Bill Gates, who, because he went to a private school that had computers, unlike the vast majority of schools at the time, was able to acquire expertise in coding and using computers.

The problem with that thesis is that it's not universally true. It certainly applies to Bill Gates, the Beatles, and some other people. However, of the people I looked at, it couldn't explain it. I took 20 people whose life stories I knew well; in some cases, I knew them personally, such as Bruce Henderson and Bill Bain. These individuals are important to me and hugely underrated in terms of the impact they've had on American and world business. I asked myself if it would be possible to do what Malcolm Gladwell set out to do and, in my opinion, did not succeed in doing: identify things common to all 20 people.

Might it be an experience they had, an attitude they held, or a way they exploited particular opportunities? If you want to be what I call "unreasonably successful," would it be possible to isolate the reasons for that? I looked at 50 possible reasons. Would you need to be a high-risk taker? The answer was that of those 20 people, only nine of them actually took very high risks. I narrowed it down to nine reasons that were universally present.

The players I took included Bill Bain, Bruce Henderson, Jeff Bezos, Otto von Bismarck, Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Viktor Frankl, Steve Jobs, John Maynard Keynes, Lenin, Madonna, Nelson Mandela, J.K. Rowling, Helena Rubinstein, and Paul of Tarsus. Paul said that following a Jewish customer base is not the way to make a new religion take off. He wanted to convert people worldwide and thus took aspects of the Jewish religion that Jesus had been enveloped within and made them universally applicable. People often ask how I could include Lenin in the book. In fact, at one stage, I even had Hitler in the book, but the publishers insisted on removing him.

I hope this narrative provides a deeper understanding of the diverse paths to success, the importance of flexibility, and the role of serendipity and strategic thinking in achieving greatness.

True success? It's about daring to dream BIG and seizing the moment! 🌟💪

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It was just a miracle. Margaret Thatcher was another one of the 20 people I examined. I came up with these nine things which were common to all of them. I'll rattle through those if you like. Definitely feel free to list the nine. But before we do that, if you could just take a moment to define success since many people define success differently. Could you speak to what that means in the context of unreasonable success? Is it achieving what they set out to do, or is it something else?

Yes, it is. I think success is very subjective and can only be the person's objectives. People said to me, "How on Earth can you put Lenin in the book?" In fact, at one stage, I had Hitler in the book, but the publishers insisted on it being thrown out because they said the booksellers would never sell it if it was in the book. I said, "We don't like Hitler in favor of Hitler." But no, Hitler's got to go. So, it's value-free in the sense that it is what they achieved that changed the world the way they wanted to change it, whether that was a good thing, a bad thing, or an indifferent thing. That's unreasonable success in one definition.

Success is a whole continuum as far as I'm concerned. I'm not against minor successes at all; they are absolutely great. What I was really interested in, in order to establish the most important causes of major success, is what I called unreasonable success. I had four criteria for that. You could say that in a word it's undeserved success, but that's a little bit unfair. Firstly, it's such success in changing the world that it seems unreasonable for one individual to do that. We live in a world that is quite collective and governed by culture and constraints that are quite immovable. We think the world's changing very fast, but in many ways, the world doesn't change very fast, and then suddenly it does. What usually is behind that is not a huge number of people doing something; it's an individual deciding to do something and managing to persuade other people to do that. So, it's unreasonable in the sense that one person has all of that impact.

Secondly, it's success that is unexpected and was not predicted when the individual was young or early in their career. It's success that comes from nowhere. Thirdly, it's success that goes well beyond what the individual's skills and performance seem to warrant. Winston Churchill was a jolly good example of that. Some would say that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is an example of that. Completely disastrous foreign secretary, completely incompetent in his dealing with the coronavirus, but nevertheless, I think he may well go down in history as a great prime minister because he has certain objectives that he wants to achieve, like making sure Britain did leave the European Union. Maybe doing something about the excessive price of housing in Britain. It's almost impossible for young people to actually buy a house these days. Britain's a hugely over-centralized country, London-centric country. There are left-behind areas of Britain, which basically is most of the rest that's not in the southeast of Britain. I think Boris Johnson wants to do something about that. If he's able to do that, that would be a fantastic achievement.

I know that you're interested in very practical things, so in the book, I discuss what to do if you don't have self-belief. For example, one of the things that you can do is realize it has to be in a specific domain or context. You've got to identify that context where you could really change things. Secondly, find a fantasy mentor. This is, I think, quite an interesting and perhaps original concept. I was driven to it by studying Bob Dylan. Here, this guy arrived in New York completely unknown, 19 years old but with a fantastically high ambition. One of the things which he did was to seek out Woody Guthrie, who was probably the template that he wanted. Woody Guthrie had been not only a folk singer but also a protester really, and also someone who wrote his own songs. That was very unusual at the time because folk songs were meant to rise from the folk, not from individuals. Guthrie actually changed that. He wrote a lot of original songs, and Dylan did too. He started writing his own songs, one of which was called the "Ode to Woody."

He went to the hospital in New Jersey where Woody Guthrie was suffering from a terrible, terrible disease called Huntington's syndrome. Whether or not Guthrie was really aware that Dylan was there, whether he actually thought Dylan was going to be the new Woody Guthrie, is really unclear. But it's curiously irrelevant as well. Bob Dylan took from that template; he had to write his own original songs. He managed to get a contract with Columbia Records, which was a blue-chip firm that obviously signed him. It gave him confidence, it gave him contacts, and it gave him gigs and goodness knows what else. He hijacked, in a sense, the protest movement with songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," which made him, according to certain people, the voice of the generation.

The first characteristic is self-belief. The second one is Olympian expectations, meaning that you expect a huge amount from yourself and then from other people. The high priest of high expectations is probably Jeff Bezos, who's always emphasizing this. If you put someone who's not used to high expectations on a high-expectations team, they will adapt, but the reverse is also true. If you have people who are not high-expectation people, then people's standards will slip. His mantra is customer service and unbeatable prices, and he's totally inflexible on all that.

The third one, which is particularly interesting because it's really original, I think, and I was thrilled to discover this in my research, is transforming experiences. Before he founded Amazon, he was a failed investment banker at age 26, and a headhunter decided to send him, as a last resort, to see a guy called David Shaw. Shaw realized before anyone else did, by about 1992, that the internet was going to be huge and that it could be huge not just for information and other things but for selling things, for retailing. Between the two of them, they developed the format for Amazon and decided the first category they would go into was books. They decided that they would allow people to write reviews on the sites. Bezos went to David and said, "I really want to do it myself." David Shaw took him for a two-hour walk around Central Park in which he tried to dissuade him, but incredibly generously, David Shaw allowed Bezos to go off and found Amazon. He didn't even ask for a share in the company; he was very, very self-confident.

I hope this provides a clearer understanding of the concept of unreasonable success and the unique characteristics that define major achievements.

Transforming experiences happen when you take bold leaps in uncharted territories! 🚀✨

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Bezos got on very well, like a house on fire. Between the two of them, they developed the format for Amazon. They decided the first category they would go into was books. David Shaw wanted that to happen within Desco. One day, Bezos went to David and said, "I really want to do it myself." David Shaw took him for a two-hour walk around Central Park in which he tried to dissuade him, but incredibly generously, David Shaw allowed Bezos to go off and found Amazon. He didn't even ask for a share in the company. That was a transforming experience for Bezos.

Bill Bane had a similar transforming experience when he was hired by BCG by Bruce Henderson. Bruce Henderson, who had a tremendous nose for talent, decided to hire Bill Bane. Bill Bane took to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) like a duck to water. Bill decided to do the dirty on Bruce and leave to form his own firm. The people who had these transforming experiences didn’t plan them; they happened to them. The people who had these transforming experiences did not engineer them. You can then say, "Well, I better have a transforming experience, haven't I?" And then you come to the question, well, what is the most likely type of transforming experience which will put me on the path to becoming more powerful?

It could be going to a particular university and studying something very arcane and unusual. It could be finding a very high-growth firm like BCG or Boston Consulting Group or Shaw's company and joining that firm when it's still very young. The thing about companies in their early days is that they don't know what they're doing, and so if you don't know what you're doing, you can be very creative about it. If you're involved in that process, you discover things that you never knew you had. Not only that, you become identified with them, you become powerful, and you perhaps become a large shareholder in the company.

It's completely different from joining a company that is on tram lines, where basically it's not going to do anything radical or new. It's so exciting to actually be part of a company that's growing very fast, doesn't really know what it's doing, but has got something—some rare knowledge—which actually means that it can be very, very successful. It doesn't have to be a company; it could be a social organization, a way of thinking, or anything that's growing very fast, where it's unformed, and where you think you've got some affinity with it and the ability to contribute and be creative.

It doesn't matter as long as it's growing very quickly. One of the reasons, for example, that I left San Francisco after effectively a decade was that I felt like it was a place experiencing some degree of stagnation or even in decline. I moved to Austin, Texas, which was very much a startup of a city.

The fourth one is one breakthrough achievement. It is not a "how to do it," it's a "what to do," and in some ways, it's a bit odd of me to put it forth because it's the culmination of everything else and all the others really lead to this. I wanted to put it in the book fairly early because I wanted people to be thinking about this as they go through, which is: what on Earth are you going to do to change the world? It might take you a decade; it might take you several decades to actually work out what it is, but it has to be something that you believe needs to be done.

Once Lenin had his transforming experience, which was the hanging of his beloved elder brother that he idolized and adored, he instantly decided that his whole purpose in life was to smash the bourgeoisie and cause a revolution in Russia. My breakthrough achievement was starting or co-starting LE. It's not on a comparable scale with the people in the book, but nevertheless, it was a very successful firm which gave huge opportunities to hundreds or thousands of young people.

I hope this provides a clearer understanding of how transformative experiences and breakthrough achievements play a crucial role in attaining unreasonable success.

Breakthroughs come from daring to pave your own path! 🌟🛤️

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Lenin had this seemingly ridiculous notion as a schoolboy to overthrow the bourgeoisie and cause a revolution in Russia. He wasn’t political at all before this; in fact, he was quite well-liked and seemed like a nice person. However, after his brother's execution, he became very bitter and twisted, but also extremely effective.

So, it's about one breakthrough achievement. Not two, not three, and not one every five years. It's about something you do that actually changes the world in some way. My breakthrough achievement was starting or co-starting LE. While it may not compare to the achievements of the people in the book, it was still a very successful firm that provided significant opportunities to hundreds or thousands of young people. We trained and developed them, and it also made an impact on the corporate world.

We invented the idea of mergers and acquisition strategy consulting, which was completely different from anything anyone else had done. So, one breakthrough achievement is the fourth principle. The fifth one is to make your own trail. This means being bloody-minded and figuring out a way to do something that diverges from the usual path.

The sixth one is to find and drive your personal vehicle. One of the discoveries in the book is that every one of these 20 people had some kind of vehicle. Sometimes it was a concept, but more often, it was an organization or company. For example, the British state was the vehicle for Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, along with their distinct visions.

The whole point about a personal vehicle is that while you can't change the world on your own, you also can't rely on a committee to decide what to do. Take Jeff Bezos, for example. He decided to make internet retailing his thing, aiming for The Everything Store, not just a successful internet retailer within books, but dominating retail on the internet everywhere. This incredibly ambitious goal required an organization completely under his control.

Just as Lenin needed the Bolsheviks—a dedicated group to overcome societal inertia—Bezos needed Amazon to execute his vision. The choice of vehicle is crucial. Creating your own trail is very much like what Walt Disney did. Initially, Disney couldn’t decide what he wanted to do. He was a good actor in high school and then wanted to be an artist, eventually narrowing it down to being a cartoonist.

Disney’s studio, started in 1923 in Los Angeles, wasn’t very successful initially. The big breakthrough came with Mickey Mouse. The story of a mouse wooing a lady mouse by flying a plane was silly, but it worked. Disney turned the film “Plane Crazy” into an expensive production, almost bankrupting himself and his brother.

In the 1940s, Disney grew disillusioned with his corporation. Despite its success, he felt it was steering him away from his creative excitement. He even collaborated with Salvador Dalí on a surrealist movie, which the Disney board rejected. They thought he had lost his marbles.

Disneyland was Disney’s vision to create something representing the past, present, and future of America. Initially, the board refused to invest in this idea. Disney sold his houses and took second mortgages to fund the project. When the Disney Corporation saw its inevitability, they came on board, but not without initial resistance.

If Disneyland had failed, Disney would have been ruined, and the parent corporation might have faced trouble too. Yet, this was Disney finding his own trail, driven by his vision, no matter how nuts it seemed.

Revolutionary changes happen when you dare to challenge the few in power! ⚡👑

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Because there are hundreds of millions of people in the Russian Empire, how could a thousand people actually change that and make a successful revolution? But Lenin had an answer to that. Russia was a very backward country; it was an autocracy, not like Germany, France, or Britain where there are lots of different centers of power. In Russia, all the power was concentrated in the Tsar's army and the bureaucracy. There were only about 2,000 people in Russia who actually controlled things. So, Lenin's theory was: if 2,000 people can rule Russia, why not us? And that theory proved to be absolutely correct.

His vehicle was splitting the revolutionary movement but having a group of people who were absolutely dedicated to him and got shot if they weren't. The vehicle is very, very important. It doesn't necessarily have to be very large, but it hugely augments the power of the individual. You didn’t get shot, but you certainly got fired and so on and so forth.

Thrive on setbacks. This doesn’t sound very original, but it is terribly important. Resilience is not the point; you actually have to like setbacks. The reason setbacks can be very helpful is twofold. One is they give you feedback and might tell you that you’re on the wrong path. The other thing is that either you’re on the wrong path, or you've got the wrong tactics. It's quite important to distinguish between those two.

Winston Churchill and his wonderful failures—he went away from those failures, obviously a bit depressed at times, and did something completely different for a while. He was unpopular with his party and on the verge of bankruptcy. He went off and did a huge lecture tour of America, which was very successful, and then he got run over on Fifth Avenue by a car, suffering quite serious injuries. But battered and bruised, he got up and did it again.

Winston Churchill didn’t see it that way. It’s very interesting—the psychology of not just being resilient but actually really liking failures because they make you seem important in some ways. Acquiring unique intuition requires deep knowledge. Here, I think I overlap a little bit with Malcolm Gladwell. The quality of intuition is a function of the degree of experience that you’ve had in a very narrow field, but also your willingness to take notice of intuition, which some people do and some people don’t.

Distort reality, which is Steve Jobs’s phrase. He thought what was happening to him was terribly important. Most people would say, no, this is a semi-comical drunk who’s basically had a series of failures. But Winston Churchill didn’t see it that way. The psychology of not just being resilient but actually really liking failures because they make you seem important in some ways. Acquiring unique intuition requires deep knowledge. The quality of intuition is a function of the degree of experience that you’ve had in a very narrow field, but also your willingness to take notice of intuition.

Distort reality—refusing to accept current reality and redefining a way of making that different and convincing your followers in particular that you know how to get around or distort reality. Bruce Henderson did that, Bill Bain did that, all the other people in the book had a way of overcoming what was the incredulity of other people that they could actually change the world in a major way. Jeff Bezos, thriving on setbacks—Relentless.com, it will forward you to Amazon.com. A longer-term vision and horizon—longer than a quarter, longer than a year, always longer-term.

Bob Iger at Disney is another great example of this. Tobi Lütke of Shopify is another incredible example. You need to expect that you’re going to have massive impact, but it might take a very long time. Acquiring unique intuition—could you perhaps give us an example of that? Nelson Mandela was a leading member of the ANC who got caught, convicted, and sent off to prison—a life sentence—on this island called Robben Island, which I visited off Cape Town. During that period, something very interesting happened. The leaders of South Africa actually realized that they had painted themselves into a corner.

Mandela's intuition turned prison into a path for freedom! 💡🕊️

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He was on this island called Robben Island, which I visited off Cape Town. I visited a cell in which he'd been incarcerated, and it's so small you wonder how he could possibly have kept his self-respect. But during that period of time, something very interesting happened. The leaders of South Africa, including PW Botha, who was reckoned to be the great crocodile, very hostile to change, actually realized that they'd painted themselves into a corner and didn't want the possibility of a bloody revolution.

He acquired the charisma of a prison hero, so within the prison, he was viewed as the natural leader. There were various outside forces, including the British Commonwealth, that in the 1980s sent people to Robben Island to talk to Mandela and try to see whether there was any route forward. There was a group from the Commonwealth called the Eminent Persons Group—very self-deprecating—and these eminent people went and, of course, talked to Nelson Mandela because he was recognized to be almost the shop steward of the prisoners. Somehow, Nelson got the intuition that these people actually wanted a deal; they didn’t want this to continue forever and were willing to compromise in some way.

He said to them, "If you really want a deal, you're going to have to have one person, one vote." They said, "We couldn't possibly have that democracy. No, we don't want democracy; there are more blacks than whites. We can't possibly do that." But Nelson stuck to that. He formed personal relationships with the head of the secret service, the secret police, the minister responsible for justice, the minister responsible for state security, including the prisons, and eventually with PW Botha himself. It took five years, but in the end, his intuition won out, and the result was that instead of having a war and bloodshed going on and a possible revolution, you might have a transition to Black majority rule.

FW de Klerk, who succeeded Botha, would be the vice president and effectively the mentor of Nelson Mandela. If it had not been for Mandela, the odds against this would be a thousand. He would not have known that but for being in prison on Robben Island for 17 years and meeting all these people, gradually being able to size them up. He worked out the way the wind was blowing, and nobody else did. We never thought that there was a possibility of any solution. Nelson Mandela had that different intuition.

There are some horrible stories in the book, but it's very heartwarming. Intuition is hugely important. Thank you for sharing that example. I think it's a wonderful place to start to wrap up this round one. We may have to do a round two on the podcast. I would love to do that. I want to ensure that people know where they can find you. On Twitter, they can find you at @richardos8020. You've written many books, including many books that have influenced me, like "The 80/20 Principle," and your newest book is "Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It."

Once a year, rather than doing New Year's resolutions, I ask the same question: What did I do that meant the most to me and my family and friends, and sometimes strangers too? And what could I do in the next year? I think it's right. The question I would ask is: In your whole life, what is your breakthrough achievement going to be? If you want to change the world, how do you want to change the world? That's really my question. It's a question I ask myself as well. My own ambition is to have many more creatively, completely, and unreasonably successful people. Offering to work with a number of people who have already been reasonably successful but have not been unreasonably successful and take them through the process. I think this methodology is robust and could make a huge difference to the world. I'd like to see whether I can demonstrate that in practice through a few pilot studies. That's my personal ambition.

I think you should definitely test it. It could be a spectacular failure or a spectacular success, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. You do like to bet, so I figure this is a good opportunity to do that.

Test your ideas: Spectacular failure or success, nothing ventured, nothing gained! 🚀✨

I think this methodology is robust and could make a huge difference to the world. I'd like to see whether I can demonstrate that in practice through a few pilot studies, so that's my personal ambition. You should definitely test it; it could be a spectacular failure or a spectacular success, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I would suggest running a competition or having applications that can be vetted in some very simple way so that you're not overwhelmed, and pick a handful of finalists to take through that process.

People can follow you on Twitter at @richardos8020, and if you decide to do this, you can share that on Twitter. It's through your written words that I have come to admire and use much of your thinking with great effect. Thank you very much for taking the time today. This has been an incredible pleasure and I hope it's not the last.

I reciprocate; much more pleasure for me, I'm sure. It really is great. Anyway, thank you very much indeed, and I look forward to talking to you again at some stage, maybe a bit more frequently. That would be wonderful.

I will have show notes for everything we've discussed, including all of the books, all of the resources, and the most recent work from Richard, which is "Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It," at tim.blog/podcast. You'll have links to all the names and everything you can imagine, so please do check that out if you'd like to indulge in more exploration.

Until next time, as always, thank you for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. My super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday is easy to sign up for and easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found, discovered, or started exploring over that week.

Go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser—tim.blog/friday—drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=K9slJnQqN90

Terry Crews and Richard Koch | The Tim Ferriss Show

Table of contents

Believe in yourself, even when you don't—life is a confidence game! ✨💪

You get what you desire, so shoot your shot! 🏀💫

Real strength is in healing and forgiveness. 💪❤️

Embrace the nerves; they mean you care. 💫

Focus on your strengths and the world will follow. 🌟

Invest in star businesses and shine bright! 🌟💸

Bet on what you know and win big! 🎲🏇💰

Know your strengths and play to them! 💪🎯🚀

Don't settle where you're undervalued. Find where you truly shine! ✨💼🌟

Work smart, not just hard, to climb the ladder! 🚀📈💼

True loyalty and teamwork can transform your career! 🌟🤝💪

Principles > knowledge for quick, effective decision-making! 💡🚀📚

🔑 "Find your Happiness Islands and turn them into continents! 🌴➡️🌍😁

🚴‍♂️ "Biking isn't just exercise; it's my therapy! 🌟✨

Success isn't just hard work—it's about riding the waves of opportunity! 🌊🚀

True success? It's about daring to dream BIG and seizing the moment! 🌟💪

Transforming experiences happen when you take bold leaps in uncharted territories! 🚀✨

Breakthroughs come from daring to pave your own path! 🌟🛤️

Revolutionary changes happen when you dare to challenge the few in power! ⚡👑

Mandela's intuition turned prison into a path for freedom! 💡🕊️

Test your ideas: Spectacular failure or success, nothing ventured, nothing gained! 🚀✨