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Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. My guest today is none other than Daniel Eck who is Daniel Daniel is the founder chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors of Spotify. Most of you have heard of it. The world's most popular audio streaming subscription service with roughly three hundred twenty million users, including a hundred and forty-four million or so subscribers across 92 markets Daniel, welcome to the
show. Thank you so much for having
me.
I thought we
would start with a word. I have never known how to pronounce and it is your Twitter handle. @e LDS Jal. Could you please explain what this
is? Yeah. Sure. So the Swedish pronunciation is added the crap. It's a very special Swedish word actually don't think that the word exists in English or any other language, but it's basically the direct translation is off.
A Fiery Soul and it means someone who's intensely passionate about something and is kind of there in the good and the bad times and perseveres that's basically kind of what the name implies so you usually find it in, you know, the Greenpeace movement 20 years ago or you find it when someone's passionately fighting the local government somewhere. Those are usually those
Types of people and you know, it just always resonated with
me Hmm. This is that one of your favorite words or the connotations of it. Was it a nickname given to you? How did it end up? Your Twitter handle was it's a reminder to
yourself. Yeah. I think it was honestly, it was really a more of a reminder to myself and an Ode to a younger me because I was often called that because you know, whatever the issues were that I was passionate about.
Out people saw that passion on mile away and they always saw the advocating for this long before I realized I was going to be an entrepreneur and long before I realized, you know, I would start the Spotify. So it kind of just felt like a very fitting name for who I am and you know, it's just kind of been a part of my identity and a part of the things that I tend to get involved with. They all kind of share that
characteristic you mentioned. I'm not even going to try to pronounce it and
So glad I didn't try. Yeah, how do you say one more
time? Held the craddle
held well, I'm not going to get exactly pretty good. Thanks. It's pretty good. And it would usually have an umlaut over the a is that right the to Dawn? Yes. Yes.
That's correct. It's a very very Swedish
word. You indicated that it's a word that doesn't really have a corollary in English and there are lots of words in different languages like saudades in Brazilian Portuguese or steep or
geez doesn't really exist in English. Are there any other words in Swedish that you care for that come to mind that just don't have a good equivalent in
English. Well, there's actually a number of them another one of my favorites is a word called log. Mm. It's a word we use internally at Spotify quite a lot actually and log them in Sweden is I think the best translation I could give is it
Just about right. It's not too much and it's not too little and it's kind of I think encapsulate the Swedish Spirit more maybe than anything else like in Sweden. It's very much a culture of you shouldn't stand out you're part of a collective being and the best thing you can be in the Swedish Society speaking log. Mm just about right like not too much and not too little that's that's kind of what every Swede aspires to be which feels
Crazy if you're an American because that's about individuality and expressing yourself and don't be afraid to kind of like take space but it's completely opposite in the Swedish Society
in the context of Spotify is log mm from butchering that but trying my best. Is that for a minimal viable product. Is it for launching in what context does that word get used in the
company? Yeah. I think it's more around our culture.
So, you know we have in Spotify these two kind of distinct subcultures as part of it. It's the American part which is a very very large part of Spotify today and very inspiring to me to I'm clearly Swedish and people can hear it on my accent. But I've spent most of my time probably for the last 20 years involved in things related to America. I know more the most foreigners about us politics Sports everything that's going on there, too.
And so the Spotify culture is kind of a hybrid between the two but if you're an American and you encountered the Swedish culture, it's going to feel incredibly foreign. And so it's one of those things that we use internally to explain why there's some you--for assumes or things that we do in the culture then intend to be the Swedish side or the log mm side of the company and for me personally like this is kind of always been the internal conflict because I've never wanted to confine myself.
This log mm, but I have you know certain traits of it for sure, especially by us standards and you asked me about sort of my nickname on Twitter to and my favorite quote probably above all is the George Bernard Shaw quote, you know, the reasonable man and the unreasonable man. I don't know if you've ever heard
that fits himself to the world versus fitting the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. Am I getting that
correct? Yeah. Yeah, and and and
Now think about the sort of Swedish conformist Society where everyone's supposed to be the same and and then you have me coming into this Society basically wanting to be the unreasonable man. And you kind of see The Clash while there's still certain aspects of it that I like the fact that it's about a collective team work. It's not about the individual. It's about meritocracy in the sense that you know, everyone can have a voice all of those things are very important to me.
And very I think Swedish values as well. So Spotify is really kind of its roots is in the mix between Swedish and American and then it's kind of evolved to being distinctly Spotify
sounds like your personal story to and I'd be super curious to hear if you came out of the womb as a fire soul and being sort of half or maybe 70% rugged individualist or if You Were Somehow encouraged
and to develop in that way because even in the United States, there will be people listening who are perhaps in a conservative family and I don't mean politically speaking but a family where they're not encouraged to stand out where they're encouraged to follow the rules to go to high school college get a job get married to have two kids and follow a script of some type even though I think it's less pressure perhaps our expectation than you would find in some parts of Scandinavia or place like Japan.
At this just come to you innately or was it cultivated in some way?
I've thought about it a lot and I think the best I could say is I don't think that there's anything distinct in the culture, you know, some have the Immigrant background where they had to fight for everything to begin with and therefore that was kind of a part of their story and who they were I grew up in very much a working class family. My mom worked in a daycare center. My stepdad was a car mechanic. No one I knew was already.
As an entrepreneur around me so that certainly wasn't something to Aspire to but what I do think my parents gave me that it was incredibly important and I think it's certainly been a trait that I've been able to find with a lot of the entrepreneurs that are kind of in my generation to is a lot of psychological safety. So what my parents did do very often was allow me to explore things. Allow me to sit in and be part of
Grown-up conversations and not relegated just to the kids table and allow me to indulge curiosity trying to answer the questions even admitting that they may not know the answer trying to help me find a sources that can help me find information that then satisfied my curiosity and I think a lot of that then created that kind of drive from just that sort of safety. I always felt and you know, it's actually I think Super interesting when you think about this sort of
European Society model versus the American one and I'm not taking sides but I think you know a lot about the American model is clearly the necessity that creates the hunger sort of the fact that you have to strive and should strive for betterment and if you don't try to work hard and so on you will not do well in society and the European one is more like no there's a base level of security. Everyone should have food on their table everyone should
Of house to live in everyone should be able to for to clothes and things like that. It may not be the nicest clothes but that kind of level of security exist there and education is free and Healthcare is free. So none of those things are things you have to work hard for and you know, I've thought long and hard about that and obviously I think there's situations in where one leads to a different outcome that may be beneficial in both models. But in particular one of the big things I think is
Is I think the reason why Sweden for instance have so many talented songwriters and musicians that are doing so well comes exactly from that music education in Sweden is free. And if you want to try to make a living as a musician, you know that the base is taken care of meaning you can be on welfare for a period of time and that's an okay situation for a period of time while you go for your dreams and because music education is free.
Everyone can afford to do that and can follow their curiosity where it takes you so there's just inherently different structures and I think for various personality types lead to different outcomes, but for me, I'm not sure I would have done so well if I was forced by Society to kind of early on prove my worth I've been more of a tinkerer a Wanderer and I've always because I felt the safety I felt that I could think bigger and try new things.
Because honestly the consequences of failing were minimal.
Yeah, that is I think a really important both philosophical and structural difference that you're pointing out in certainly a lot of Europe compared to the US and I could see the arguments for both fostering entrepreneurship. Certainly the Arts I think more so in Europe for the reasons that you mentioned you have kids and how are you thinking about raising?
Newer kids if you're open to discussing it with respect to providing enough safety net that they feel they can experiment and Tinker but not so much safety net that they feel or not so much cushion, perhaps that they feel they can just stare at the wall, right and watch paint
dry. Yeah, you know, I don't know I that I've figured it out or that I have a sort of magic recipe. I'm still very much early in that Evolution. My kids are 5 & 7 but what I do try
try to pass on is I believe in fostering creativity and safety. That's the kind of two principles that is incredibly important in my household. But in order to do that, I actually believe in constraint and this is an important part because I feel like you know, one of the greatest things in my day job today is I get to meet some of the most creative people in the world in their various Fields, including of course music and arts
But the interesting thing for me when you think about creativity is most people associated with unstructured thinking and unfeathered just like they do whatever they feel like doing but some of the most creative people that I know are actually incredibly almost scripted in their creativity and their approach in their process and how they approach their creativity. And so I think in that sort of polarity between the structured and the unstructured there's so much
value and so what I try to do is I try to provide those kind of clear boundaries if you will with my kids when it comes to things like, you know, how much time they can sit in front of a TV or an iPad, you know, how you behave towards other people it regardless of where they come from. It's a lot of sort of values principles, even if you're five. Let's make your own bed kind of thing. So that kind of structure around you but then at the same time almost Montessori style kind of
Work with them on evolving their passions. What are they interested in following along their journey and kind of nudge them in various ways just to discover their own creativity discovered their own kind of interests and passion and I have no idea where ultimately will lead to but my hope is that it creates a way for them where they feel the psychological safety to pursue their own path in life.
Independently of mine because I think that's the most important part is they are their own individuals. I've no idea ultimately where they want to take life and what ultimate passions that they have but I feel very strongly that it shouldn't be my vision of what their lives should be. That should be the dictating Factor there and that's at least something I've observed feeling that from friends and growing up that that's been important to me to not do to my kids.
Thank you. Yeah, it's I can only imagine sit on have kids myself but like watching the emergent development of these personalities and observing all the different influences. Hopefully some of which are most of which positive right in a shape them into their own individual selves and I'd love to ask you about I don't know if influences would be the right word but books specifically might because
my listeners often enjoy hearing about books since they might not have access to some of the people who have influence do but they may have equal access to books. You were kind enough to be one of the featured profiles in my last book travel mentors and there's a question about the books. You've given most as a gift and why I wrote books have greatly influenced your life and I'd like to talk about two of them. The first one is a book. I have not personally read and it's black box thinking
Title the surprising truth about success by and I may get this last name wrong with Matthew Syed Sy D and now I would love for you to just describe how you came across this book. Why you find it
interesting? Oh, wow, it's funny. I probably I should say I read probably North of 60 or 70 books a year. So I that's why I often times. Yeah, I often don't remember exactly how I come in contact.
With things it's almost like a serendipitous process where I buy a book because someone usually recommended it and me hearing maybe a minute or two about it. And then I probably shouldn't admit this but then it often lies on my coffee table for a while and it's when I have curiosity or boredom whichever one hits the first that I tend to kind of delve into that book and is sometimes I finished it straight away because it kind of fits my mental States and sometimes
It is more of a sort of Journey where I may start it may not finish it and then come back even the next day or next week or next month and it's a process but I've always been specifically to this book. I've always been fascinated with decision making and thinking and how you what kind of biases and cognitive tricks that ends up happening in your mind as you approach different situations. I'm fascinated by the
the fact that you and I may even be experiencing this conversation entirely differently entirely different perspectives entirely different agendas. So what I felt was that Matthew kind of articulated some pretty useful Frameworks for how to approach thinking how to approach situations. What are good feedback loops for thinking what are good mental models if you will to approach that approach to decision-making
And therefore it's been one of the more recommended books for
me. You mentioned I can't remember the exact word Frameworks or toolkits. I know you're also a fan of of Charlie Munger and poor Charlie's Almanac. We don't have to spend too much time on that because I think a lot of people will recognize that book but it seems to me based on the next book. I'm going to mention which is the alchemist that toolkits alone are not sufficient necessary but not sufficient if you want to achieve some degree of
Of success. You also have to implement and persevere. Right and right is where the driving Spirit comes in and I'll just read this paragraph really quickly because I think it's I think it's provide some context. So The Alchemist by a Paulo Coelho and this this is your words. Feel free to fact check if need be but I spent inspiring evening with Paulo and Switzerland around the time. We were launching Spotify in Brazil such it was fascinating to talk to him about how this book came to be such a hit. He never backed down and allowed people to read it for free and
R2 then boost sales much like how spotify's freemium model was perceived in the early days as you allude to here because I've had a Paulo on the podcast lot of people only think of The Alchemist as this gigantic Mega International phenomenon selling 50 million or 75 million a hundred million, who knows what the copy the number of copies is now, but it was it was rejected repeatedly.
In the beginning. Yeah now and could you speak to and I'll segue from this to something else in a minute, but could you speak to what impact that had on you whether it's the book or just the conversation about the book with
Paolo. Well, I think I'm so inspired by people who are thinking on different wavelengths than yourself and for me Paulo has certainly been one of those individuals. I tend to draw myself to where I feel comfortable.
Which is around logic reason the engineering mindset, but there's a big part of myself and where I come from to you know, I come from a music family where music and emotions and feelings are inherently incredibly important to and Paulo for me represents. Not the free spirit but more spirituality but in a way where he can reason about it, he can talk about it and the big takeaways I've had.
dad is thinking about sort of for me to very profound concept which I kind of probably self-explanatory to most people but it's is really this notion of time and this notion of energy and and when I think about those two things, you know time is the one commodity we can never get more of and energy is your state of being in the present time and for me I used to be just honestly I was not
In a great shape, I weighed probably 40 or 50 pounds more than what I weigh. Now. I didn't work out. I was working, you know hundred hour work weeks. I looked at other people that weren't working as hard as I was and kind of was discouraged by that and just thought they could never make it and and they don't understand what it what's needed to be and reading the book talking to Paulo. I think started a process within me. It's it didn't culminate that that
point but it's it culminated years later, but it started a process about sort of thinking about the spirituality thinking about the energy side of things and where I am today, which is vastly different. I still constantly work on myself, but it's I think a lot more about balancing energy in my everyday life and overall and you know, it's you can't really balanced it but it's about finding enough things to do that gives you positive energy and we all have to do things that
Take energy as well. But even even during a day make sure that if you have a few things that you know will take energy from you balance it up by adding a few things that will add energy to your life and try to find those things that constantly do that. Those are things which are kind of unintuitive takeaways from the book. I would say, but the book for me represents more of a kind of inner process that it started rather than
The very specific part and we're all on a journey. I think that's the kind of big take away from the book and finding out what that journey is and and thinking about it bigger than just what our financial goals are or what our career goals are or the next week or next month and think about it in a broader perspective with energy with life for me has been sort of a big catalyst.
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Let's talk more about things that give positive energy and I suppose part of that would be rebuilding or refining the machine in which we all live right the physical body and you mentioned that you used a wave something like 40 pounds more than you do today. A lot of people struggle to lose weight what finally ended up working for you or what made the difference in terms of getting you at least started and successfully losing
weight.
It honestly it was easy and it was hard in that it inherently. I was trying to do things in the past and actually like many people I was successful for a period of time and then I kind of went back to my old ways and then I started eating poorly again not sleeping. Well enough stressing more Etc and then quickly weight gain followed and where it kind of clicked and changes. I realized that I needed to actually
actually change my life and change my habits and the only way to do that would to do it sustainably with things that I actually enjoyed doing and what I learned them in and it was that you know, I didn't think much about training. I didn't think it was that interesting. I didn't think that you know, I thought I'd needed to be on a treadmill for like an hour a day sweating like a pig and hating every moment of it and that's training. It didn't think it was for me and
And what I realized instead was finding those small enjoyment like when you start the process like I didn't then go to the gym every single day. I started going maybe two days a week and made it a pattern and I really made an effort to try to make every single time enjoyable in whatever way so the things I really didn't enjoy I try to skip but it didn't lean away from the sort of pain of training but more kind of trying to do the things that I actually thought it was
fun and more interesting and then the two days turned to three and then three turn to for and then also was doing that. I started seeing some results and and but I always thought about can I keep this can I keep this going it wasn't going to be a one-time kind of shift and then you know, what happens is once you start doing that and you start enjoying it, then you start realizing. Well, I'm not actually accomplishing my goals unless I also shift my diet. All right. Well, what are the things there that I truly?
Roy and I learned there was a number of things in my diet that I was doing that I actually didn't need and didn't even care all that much by removing and it could be all the smallest things. Like I used to have milk in my coffee but in all honesty, I don't really think it makes a huge difference to have milk or not. But if you have three or four cups a day it adds up and I used to take the elevator not this.
There's but I actually kind of enjoyed taking the stairs. So it was just a creature of habit. Now, I mostly take the stairs. And so it's these small micro things that then eventually kind of add it up but more importantly in the end despite the process. What I've realized is that it made myself more sustainable. It made made it so that I had more energy and the energy I could actually make myself more productive.
In my everyday life whether that was work or whether that was relationships to friends or even as a father to my children, all of it had a profound impact.
Thank you for sharing all that this highlights. So many I think extremely important takeaways for a lot of folks who struggle with weight loss number one, is that the small things seem small and isolation, but when you add them together like the milk in the coffee, they can actually have a really significant impact and I know
People who have lost 5 to 10 pounds in a given month just by removing the milk from their coffee. It sounds absurd. But but I've seen it over and over again because the milk is so insulin a genic. It's it really has quite a disproportionate impact and the importance also of adherence right in so much as the best program doesn't matter whether it's losing weight learning how to code or anything else if you can't stick with it long enough for it to
You have the desired effect and to sustain it. So those little those little tweaks really cumulatively at can have a huge impact. I'd like to come back to the a hundred hours a week when you were working a hundred hours a week. You you continue to work very hard and that is I think certainly a defining characteristic but even more so for me, it seems like one of your defining characteristics is the ability to focus and
precise focusing and you mentioned earlier that a lot of the most creative people in the world schedule their creativity and this is true across the board. Right? Whether it's Jerry Seinfeld or certain musicians. I've spoken with the most consistently creative people have rules and structures and constraints. So it seems like you've done something very much the same to box out time to focus and I just want to
Perhaps give an example of what your schedule might look like and I want you to correct this if it's changed but this is from the observer effect. And the question was about the schedule and the morning and here's how it goes. I'll just read a few lines quotes. This will sound incredibly lazy compared to some leaders. I wake up at around 6:30 in the morning and spend some time with my kids and wife 7:30. I go work out at 8:30. I go for a walk even in Winter. I found this is often where I do my best thinking and 9:30. I read for 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes read the
We also find a never rotating stack of books in my office next to my bed on tables around the house books on history leadership biographies. It's pretty eclectic mix much like my taste in music. Finally my quote unquote workday really starts at 10:30. Does your schedule still look pretty similar to this or as it
changed? No, it's pretty similar actually today. I started at 11 a.m. Was my first kind of thing. So I ended up getting 30 minutes longer than I
Anticipated but but yeah, I mean, this is pretty much my everyday life and I think Paul Graham of Y combinator Fame said a few years ago. He penned this paper that was kind of an aha moment for me about meeting schedule or makers schedule. Yeah how different they are and it was like something kind of resonated deeply with me and I think a lot of people think they have to be in the meeting schedule all the time and that that is what's required.
Wired to Be an Effective leader. We're in reality. If I think you can kind of Be an Effective leader, no matter what your style is, but it has to be true to you so that you can unlock your own sort of superpowers and in general I would say most people don't stop enough and think hard enough about their priorities and focusing on the problems. That is the most worthwhile for them to try to solve and they more operate on a kind of first come first served.
Bases when it comes to their time, so it pretty much is the way my current schedule works too. And I often don't take more than three or maybe four things that I do on each and every day and I try to be very very sort of tough on saying no which isn't always the most fun thing to do. I will say but it also means as a factor that I tend to get more stuff done of the things that truly matter.
in a given day a more time to think about other things as well and perhaps a normal kind of CEO in a normal kind of 925 or 927 gig whatever they end up doing
and I want to give an example of one question that might I don't say surprise people but be noticeably lacking from the the mindscape of a lot of people from from day to day and this
This is this is the question of what your role is at a given meeting. What is my role and I've read about your contemplation of this of this question. But when you go into a meeting what different roles might you have and why is it important to be clear beforehand on what your role
is if we actually take a step back and we think about work for a moment and we think about work for knowledge workers because it's clearly different the reality is
A lot of knowledge workers that work in companies. Most of the work that they're doing is done in meetings. Some of us do some actual other work too, but a lot of it and zup being in meetings and it's surprising to me that we spend as little time as we do on actually thinking about the meetings. We're having if they're productive if they're worthwhile and if they're delivering on what the ambition was
And I can only say that when you survey people they tend to when you asked if the meeting was effective or not, most people actually say that meetings are wasteful and yet we see more and more and more of it. And so I like to think that huge point of optimization can be done by designing better meetings for people and you know early on it started with my own sort of process at Spotify not just thinking about how much time we were wasting but
Frankly in a meeting what I found myself many times in was maybe meeting a person in the company that had done a tremendous job putting together a presentation of some kind and if I put myself in that person's shoe and this is a person that may get a meeting with me maybe once maybe twice during their entire career at Spotify. And for that person. It could be the chance to get noticed for a future promotion. It could be the chance to have
have something that fundamentally changes their career and so it often times what ended up happening was the person came in and they ran through a PowerPoint that someone had sent me the night before I had already read it and they in verbatim read the entire thing and then in the end that would be a short period of time usually less than 10% of the meeting was spent on that of us discussing what the next steps would be again. I understand why this happens because
The person that's presenting this have all the incentives to kind of show off the good work that they're doing and wanted to seem very competent and realize that a lot is on the line, etcetera. And instead what I find is that quite often. We haven't been in ten full about why the meeting exist to begin with and in this case if it's recognition, we want to give I'm sure there could have been a better way we could have done that and we should have been clear that we were having a review meeting about the progress of a certain area and it should have been clearer.
Here to that this person is an amazing individual and that we should all try to give constructive criticism. But then in the end also give feedback positive feedback as well because we want to make sure this person feels valued but often time all of that context it doesn't exist. And so my role in that meeting could sometimes be just being that person who says that kind thing, but I realized more often than not that I had to prep people on how to do meetings.
And set it up like I do read the meeting material beforehand. I prefer spending only 5 minutes in the beginning rereading the material or the person reading it a summary out of it and states the reason for the meeting up front and then we can spend more time talking about were these the right questions should we have considered something else? And what are the appropriate next steps, but you can be an approver. You can be consulted you can be informed in a meeting and I think
Many people always think that if you're the CEO your job is always to be the approver in the meeting, but I find if you have a great team that's not at all the roll. You should have you should be sometimes the person who's only consulted about what they're doing as an FYI. Sometimes you can be the person who just isn't a decider because there's someone more competent making that decision but you could be a person who is the sounding board where you can bounce ideas off if we're thinking
Seminar for if you thinking roughly in this Dimension, should we invest a lot should we invest a little in that decision and all those things is highly contextual and your role in those meetings could be very different depending on all those variables and being clear and upfront about that meetings can have different forms. I think has profoundly changed how I look at meetings and I think a lot of people at Spotify too.
And I want to mention the URL of Paul grams essay that you gave new to just a bit earlier for people who are interested because this also had quite an impact on me. Paul Graham has a lot of fantastic essays and they're short for people who are worried that this is going to be 50 pages. It's probably a two-page read but Paul Graham.com forward slash makers schedule dot HTML and you can just search makers schedule and has has profound implications for
Anyone who seeks to create in any way whether it's in a company or as a creative professional like an artist for instance, I think it's just an outstanding essay, and I'd like to hop next to an annual Cadence. So I've read about you sitting down with everyone on your leadership team once per year and doing a mental closing of the year what went well one went poorly and specifically in addition to that.
That is this what you want to do for the next two years and I'll just I'll just quote this is from Fast Company and if they decide not to do, you know, it's not personal. It's not because of poor performance at this level. It's never about that. It's about future performance. I find this very interesting, but I'd love for you to flush out some of the details. Do you still do a mental closing of the Year using some type of format like
this? Yeah we do and and I'm actually right about I'm riding my reviews at the
I meant for all of my employees and huh. I'm gonna start or not all my employees all my direct reports and I'll start talking to them about it in the next week or two. So it's still very much sort of top of mind for what we do and maybe I can just kind of say what the Genesis is of that and please this is kind of inspired by Reid Hoffman store of Duties concept. I was thinking about my own Journey at Spotify and you know, a lot of times the easy way to say it is
is I've had the same job for 14 years, but obviously my job looks nothing like it from the beginning because you know in a start-up it's very different than running a public company with a global presence, etc. Etc. And so when I summarize that and I think about it and part of the reason why I'm still excited about the job. I'm doing every day and not just the company is because I'm probably on my eighth job at Spotify and what I came to realize is that part of
The reason why the tenure of people at companies end up being relatively short certainly in Silicon Valley and a lot of tech companies is that this job Journey when you deal with startups is it doesn't always confirm to better titles. Sometimes you retain the same title. But in reality your job looks very different and I don't think we're clear enough, especially in start-up environment switch incredibly fast growing if
you think about a company that's growing a hundred percent per year and you fast forward three or four years down the future. It is impossibly the same company and it is impossibly so that your job could be exactly the same as it was a few years earlier and most people aren't clear about that. So they just assume that because the person used to do the job that they'd be perfectly happy continued to doing that job and circumstances obviously change no matter if you make changes
Just or just by virtue of growth that I started calling it out explicitly by just kind of mental marking and saying, you know, we should try as a leadership team to see around corners and try to predict. What does the future company look like? You know when when Spotify was a thousand person company I said to the team, you know in the next Journey will be five to ten thousand people and everyone could buy into that, but then we started aligning on
What are things going to have to look like for that than if we are a 5,000 person company? What are the sort of things that will have to change? What are some of the things that will change even for your role in you realize as an example? If you're a leader of 10 people versus a thousand people your job is so different because you know, your leader of individual contributors in the first instance and in the latter instance, you're a leader of leaders and your
Primary job is almost around communication Clarity consistency and designing a scalable ways of interacting with all of these people and scalable processes. It sounds more boring than what it is. But the point is that it's so different and and I think you need to be clear about that because we just think about the role and the title and think well sure it ought to be the same but I feel like when people are disgruntled about the company's changing it's because they haven't realized
At their job changed as well and if it didn't that role and that person would hold back the entire company, which is obviously unacceptable. And so I talk to the employees at that time because there are some people who love the startup phase but they don't like when you're in the mature face and you have to focus on efficiency, which is the kind of key metric when you are more of a mature company and the reality is even though I'm kind of stereotype in a make it sound like it's
One or the other the reality is in a larger company. If done right every single thing in the company varies between these stages where it's like start-up where it's scale up and where it's mature and you go back and forth between those different stages in every company and every team and it's going to be highly sort of contextually relevant that the type of leadership you need to have for that situation is very very different and there are very very few.
The leaders that can do all three and no leader that I'm aware of that can do all three of them incredibly. Well, you can pass on a few of them but not be amazing on all three of them. So a few
things that I want to underscore for folks. I feel like I'm the Kindle highlighter of these conversations as we go for that's okay. I try to be useful. The the first is for people who don't recognize Reid Hoffman. He is the co-founder of LinkedIn
Was the firefighter in Chief or nicknamed such by Peter teal when a PayPal and has done many many other things and the Tour of Duty Concepts people can read more about also in Harvard Business Review if they just searched Reid Hoffman and Tour of Duty, you mentioned a few minutes ago how very often your role as CEO is not the decider in Chief in every meeting right? And if if you've done things well that
I will be a many decisions made perhaps in consultation with you, but you can't scale to 5,000 employees with everything running through Daniel. What do you view as your most important jobs for some CEOs its recruiting top talent for others its long-term long-term product Vision in your mind. What are the absolute critical functions if you could only choose a few that
Need to fulfill that you focus
on I actually you know, one of the sort of biggest realization for me. The last few years is that I'm not sure the obvious thing would be to say you can't scale and do 5,000 persons jobs, and that's obviously true. But I do think that there are bottom-up companies and top-down companies and both can be incredibly successful. You don't have to look further than looking at someone like Elon Musk to know that he is intimately involved in a million different details in the company.
And how he managed to do that and how he managed to scale. It's beyond me. I'm very impressed by it. But I know also know I couldn't do that and it's not my philosophy. And so I think I just wanted to start by saying I think the the leadership style that you ultimately have has to be authentic to who you are and I think a lot of us take so much inspiration from leaders including myself, by the way where we often try to maybe copy someone
Big thing that they're doing without understanding all the underlying mechanics perfectly. Well and so I don't want to sort of say this is what you need to do as a leader because I think that there are many different leadership styles that can be incredibly successful but I can talk about what is important to me as a leader in Spotify in the culture that we have and there I am not a person that knows everything about everything.
I am a bunch more of a general list, but I try to pride myself instead these days about trying to be a decent Communicator about in an almost like an editor of our vision because I feel like you have to provide constraints to the organization. Otherwise, you have these thousand flowers bloom and let's throw things against the wall and see what sticks and the editor position in that and it's always back to purpose like why are we doing things?
Why doesn't matter how does this ladder up to the mission and and being the constant sort of guard rail against that and then the second part I find is when you're dealing with a larger company. The important part is we all get complacent, you know, this is true. You know, I just walked Walked through I've been having a cold no covid but like a cold and I was just starting to work out again a few days ago and I noticed
With myself that I became complacent like I didn't really go a hundred percent in to this and I was trying to self justify why I wasn't and all of those things and I realize I've no no no Daniel, you're taking the easy way out and instead it ended up being that I kind of stuck out 30 minutes longer and had probably one of the most amazing training sets. I've had in probably six months and the point being is like that's the role these days that I often have to place I have to wonder
Be the one who sets the bar for the organization try to adapt the bar for the talent that we bring in the bar for the ideas because complacency is so easy to get to and I don't know exactly why it is but I just feel like we're all built that way that we want to take the easy way out. And so part of this is to do the right thing. Even if it's not the easy way out and consistently just kind of pushing the organization to do that.
And raise the bar so I play that part 2 in many parts of the organization while almost being the personal coach I would say which is third role that I'm playing because I kind of look at my role is to enable other people to do the best work of their careers. And what I've learned in that process is that we're all highly unique individual and what motivates me be may be entirely different than what motivates you
And so to try to find out what psychological barriers you have what tensions in your life you may have in order to try to unlock that is something that I spend a good amount of time on and we've touched upon some of these things already, which is I kind of almost start with trying to find out how you prioritize your time because I find most people don't prioritize their time particularly. Well and in unlocking that you then have
To when you start prioritizing and you start thinking about what is important to you to prioritize and this isn't just work. By the way. This is in many cases. I played that role for people in their private lives to if they want to have more time for their kids or they want to pursue a hobby or they want to do X and Y and they feel like they're they're torn because they're right in between of you know, work obligations and private obligations and those types of things and I know know it sounds like pretty crazy to talk about those that level of detail.
But for me, if I can do that for some of my leaders that in many cases have thousand plus people under them and they feel more inspired by that they're going to inspire hundreds. If not thousands of people to do better and perhaps they'll pay it forward to and we can start unlocking more and more of that in the organization. That's kind of my view of what great leadership looks like in a company like Spotify, but I am so fascinated.
By other leaders and how they make it work and their cultures, you know, and I tried to be a great student of other companies, especially other companies cultures. And the reason why it enables them to do things differently than perhaps what we at Spotify
do. Well, let's grab an exhibit that we can put under the microscope just for a second because I know you and I both know Toby CEO of Shopify.
Not to be confused with Spotify that man right for to say those two the same sentence quickly is still challenging for me, even though I have known both companies for so long. How would you say you how are you and Toby different or how are the cultures different? You can approach this any way you like but in what way is that come to mind are the two of you different because its surface level a lot of folks who don't know either of you personally would say Well, they're both deeply analytical they have
really strong computer science backgrounds and that's kind of where the comparison might end. How would you describe how your most similar most different or just looking at approach
Toby and and Shopify is obviously very inspirational company to I would actually say where we're more similar than different and the similarity is and and I found that with some companies by the way, like another one is like my Canon Brooks and atlassian.
In Australian company, I don't know but a theory I have is that all of us had to do a lot of first principle thinking and what I mean by first principle Thinking by not being in Silicon Valley and button by not learning as much from osmosis of just the Google and Facebook and those types of cultures. We have kind of developed a different culture compared to the standard silicon.
I'm Valley type cultures and so in that regard, I think it's similar and I think you know Canada just like Europe is more kind of similar in that it in the holistic thinking about sort of the collective rather than the individualism and there's a lot of deep-rooted things and Toby by the way is German from the beginning to which is more akin to the sweeter side. So there's a lot of similarities between sort of philosophy upbringing and those types of things to I think in so the
It's there were different besides obviously the products and the markets we serve I do think it comes down to just the way perhaps we think about sort of talent and you know the development of talent and again, I don't want to sort of I don't know shopify's cultured intimately enough to kind of pass any remarks, but I can say at Spotify. One of the big things is the thing we just talked about which is we instead of tour of Duties we call
It internal emissions and every person at Spotify has a mission for about two years and in particular on my leadership team. We don't make any qualms about the fact that things don't change or that you'll have your job for eternity. You'll have your job for a mission and then you and I will discuss what the next mission ought to be and perhaps it fits with your skills and where you want to go or maybe doesn't and this is a big difference.
And so when I look at my leadership team and certainly the extended one, we've actually shifted our leadership team to a great extent and my sense by looking at Toby has been that they've kept it a little bit more stable than than what we've done. And by the way, there's no Pro or Cons with both model both model works. And if anything I would say, I'm probably a little bit more envious of the stable side for you know, I I like soccer and you know the coaches that
I like the most are the ones that develop young players and stay with them and like bring them through their full potential. But but I also realized that if I were a coach I'd be more about someone who brings in the sports team analogy where you bring in a lot of super talents and get them to work. Well together my own sort of mental image of who I want to be doesn't always add up to the skills. I have at the table as a leader as well and I suspect that there will be lots of differences between US just
In the Nuance between those two
things so many different departure points from from that answer. So fertile ground, let's let's start with one that is backtracking just a little bit actually before we get there the we brought up or I brought up biographies. Are there any particular biographies that really stand out for you for any
reason? Well, there are some many Walter Isaacson Leonardo da Vinci 1.0 got the nominal so good. Yeah.
Pablo Picasso's pyrography also amazing. I forget who the author was eroded. I think there's maybe a few of them, but I read one. It was just super super interesting talking about the creativity constraints thinking, you know, that that was kind of where a lot of the boxes ticked for me. I'm a big fan of biographies. I'm a big fan of of sort of unlocking yourself as you can hear and and working with yourself in order to
So kind of then take on the larger Community goals or larger societal goals that you may have but it has to start by managing yourself. Well, and then from there on you can manage others and you can manage other stakeholders as well. I learn a lot from biographies for sure
other any since you mentioned management there any particular books that have helped you in thinking about
Management they don't have to be books about management per se but do any any come to mind?
Yeah. I mean it all depends on where you are
in the life
cycles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like, you know early on as a manager there. There's high output management by a Negros fantastic hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz is also really good for someone whose first time journey and going through and kind of learning the basics and there's a number of other
About goal setting and about financial modeling. There's a ton of them but these days the most inspiration I take from our leadership Journeys more than the specific tools in the toolbox that you can have and I find that is the single most challenging things because as we talked about a little bit earlier you have to make leadership personal. I was having a fascinating conversation with Matthew McConaughey you
Just the other day and we talked about how you know the roles he 10 characters he takes on it has to be a part of himself because if it's not it's never going to shine through and it's never going to feel authentic. So how's the bring out that element of himself in that character in order to make it come alive? And I think for me and that is when true leadership shines through as well. I'll just kind of maybe share a
Little anecdote kind of embarrassing but but still perfect kind of
surely. Yeah,
but but the share the the little bit more about my personal growth story so early on like many others. I modeled myself on being a product Centric CEO kind of Silicon Valley style. You know, I should really be that and I was looking at what are the best practices? What is Mark Zuckerberg? What is all these other guys do and it felt like one of the
one of the things that they were doing was that they were running the product review meeting every week and they were doing it really well and I had a great head of product and I had a great product team, but I wanted to do the same thing because I kind of just picked up that's what a great CEO should do and I'm also a I'm just as good as you know, the CEO of Silicon Valley Etc and I remember vividly one day. We're after one of these meetings I get pushed aside by my header product and then he
Basically said look, I'll just be very honest. No one enjoys the meetings that you're having and I was like, well why not as well because you're not actually adding anything to the meeting and that was a very rough conversation and my honestly my initial Instinct was very defensive. I was like, well these guys they don't understand anything and like I probably should hire a new head of product and I should do X and Y, but I decided against doing that and I decided to sleep on it.
And I decided to test for a while see okay. Well, I'll see how well they do if I don't show up and it turns out that they did incredibly well without me and what I learned in that process was I needed to figure out a way then to add value and I realized that rather than deciding if the bottom needed to be green or blue or even if the needed to be about 10 at all, that's not where I added value where I added value in that meeting.
Was by Sharon context that they may not be aware of rather than sort of pushing towards a decision of a particular kind or even it wasn't about my preferences at all, but it was about sharing context so that they can make better decisions as a team and it's now happened many times at Spotify where I've had similar situations where
I'm told it started interrupt any what could you give an example of context that might be helpful in such a situation?
Additional contact.
Yeah. Yeah. So let's say you're in a product review meeting and you talk about what are the biggest problems we're actually trying to solve for the customer in this end and oftentimes. It could be we actually find that half of the people in the first session don't find a song that they really love and so the context then that I could share in that that's the data of them the context that could share would be either if I've had any
It's from talking to other Silicon Valley CEOs, or other people around what great ways to solve the problem could be a context in itself could be why that's a worthwhile problem to solve in the first place because if we do lose half of them the first day that means it's kind of a funnel and it's a leaky funnel. So that's going to be mean problem because even if we're only bringing in 5,000 users today and two and a half thousand of them stay that may not feel like much but if we were bringing a hundred thousand or they were going to lose
Fifty thousand people a day. So this is a leaky boat and we need to try to fix it. And in that context can be incredibly valuable to share and I was approaching this more from a control mindset. I thought I needed to control the prior to Sation of the product and I realized instead I needed to share more context to enable them to make better prioritizations themselves and that has been something as part of, you know, my journey now at Spotify.
A development of myself. I found myself now in many situations very similar where I thought I was pretty good at something and I realized that I run into someone who knows a lot more about the topic and it's a lot more skilled than I am at solving that problem. And so I've kind of then had to find out a new way to add value in that situation. That's been a huge personal growth Journey for myself both to be able to keep up with the
Company, but then then also realizing like and not being insecure about in those moments of time when I'm kind of is effectively put myself out of work to find a new job and trying to find new ways to add value to the company
returning to the two-year missions. I would love to know maybe you can't disclose her if you can that'd be great. Do you have a two-year Mission yourself? And or what might a two-year Mission look like is it your mission is
To do X by y using Z it is there a format to it is it spelled out really clearly.
It's more an aspirational feeling often times. Sometimes it's very tangible or often times such as say it's more an aspirational feeling. What do I want to feel once I've accomplished or feel like I'm at this level, but I can talk about my last one because it's probably cheaper for the most tangible and easy one, and that was just learn how to
To become a good public company CEO. I said good but not great because great will likely take time. But we went public about two years ago. And I I knew I needed to be good. And so what are ways what does a good public company CEO look like what are skills that I currently don't have today that I likely have to develop what are the rituals habits, you know processes to get
Me there and then work myself backwards and that was a process that ended for me in 2019. So I kind of set the bar where I would start call it the year and a half before going public and and then I was hoping I didn't anticipate to be they won because I needed some real Loop feedback from the real Market, but I kind of finalized it by at least not obviously seeing that I wasn't a decent one and so now I've kind of
And move down to my sort of next mission instead
become a three Michelin star Chef. Yeah, that would be fun. My wife would certainly
love that. I'm a
horrible Chef. Another time can make some make some pasta together the aspiration to become a good public company CEO. Let's use that just as as a bit of fodder to explore how
Then convert that into actions right because I would imagine you you approached it in a pretty systematic fashion. I'm looking at it description of your goal setting and I'll just quote here from Fast Company. I also write out my daily weekly monthly goals aren't every evening. I check how I'm doing and then I allocate my time then in parenthetical to match the goals when you have something like become a good public company CEO, but you could kind of fill in the
Like with just about anything. How do you keep yourself on track to break it down into micro tasks or practices just so you don't get lost as you mentioned with with lack of prioritizing. How did you approach that?
Yeah, I've actually started changing a bit about it because I realized the process was taking the over hand from the results and I was enjoying it as much so I've made the process somewhat simpler since that.
company article so I think more about time and habits than necessarily looking at a daily or weekly I still kind of review my goals for the days but I no longer have a goal for the week I then kind of look more at it from a sort of quarterly basis and then semi-annually nowadays so it's a little bit of a tweak just to not make it too much overhead but the way I approach that problem was just kind of being clear about
out what do I think oftentimes I kind of think about it like my mental image is that of a city when I approach a problem and it's City from 40,000 feet above on an airplane looking down and when you do that you don't see the Contours you just see a city you have no idea what aspects of the city like what's the topography you don't understand where it stands where it's not dense it just looks like a blob
And so the important part for me is I don't know what I don't know. So I always start by allocating enough time. So if something is important, I start allocating time towards it and then I quickly try to spend enough time where I can get to what I call level to which is when I'm more like 20,000 feet perspective where I can start seeing the Contours of the city. I can kind of workout that here's the rough branches of the trees.
So to speak I can't see the leaves I can see the details. I can see all all of those things but I kind of have an idea of blocks to start diving into and so if you look at something like that, you know, you have to understand more about one block is understanding the constituents in what way is a public market CEO different than a VC. It turns out that they're quite different so understanding the motives the motivations understanding what different types of them.
Cysts, which one of them do I want to attract which one of them should I possibly even talk about not attracting speaking about the Jeff basis quotes. You are the shareholder you deserve that kind of rings very true to me in the sense that should we as a company be part of the expectation setting as a public company. It's very fashionable for instance in Silicon Valley to not give guidance going forward because you don't care about the quarterly results. I find
It ironic because what it essentially says is that you don't want to be part of the participation of the expectations that the market does on your company, but they'll still have expectations. So the question is just if you want to participate in that expectation setting or not. It's not like you you really have a choice that they won't be an expectation. And so after seeing those nuances I realized that it was actually very important to me to be part of that expectation setting because if I'm going to be behind
Hold on to something. I'd rather be beholden to something which I was a part of informing them about rather than something that they just made up their mind all by themselves. And when you realize that you realize that communication becomes super important as one of the skills and how do you for someone who has a lot of optionality of their time communicate succinctly what the company is? They're not going to spend every waking moment of the company.
Or their lives thinking about your company. They might many times have other companies that they follow as well. So putting yourself in that mindset starting to see the nuances starting to see the blocks then start to think about what habits can lead up to the skills that you desire and even the increasing the resolution. So to speak of the image. I just said about the city so that you see all the streets see all those things.
Super important for me as I think about a mission of mine and an even honestly just learning about a subject that I'm interested in. I kind of use the same process over and over which is that kind of the city mental model or Elon Musk talks about it as the tree the branches the leaves which was also kind of an inspirational thing that I took away from account remember, but it was one of his interviews probably a few years ago.
So I want to give an example of communication and a quote that has been shared quite widely. But I think that it would be nice to have you just explain in brief the gist of it what it what it means and the quote is quote. We believe that speed of iteration beats quality of iteration, which is why we're not big on bureaucracy and I want to focus on the first part of that speed of iteration beats quality of iteration. Could you explain what that means,
please?
Yeah, you know again the II when I evaluate success among a future leader at Spotify or even someone who just joined the company. I look at the rate of their learning growth. I find that to be the best indicator for whether they will be long-term successful in their job at Spotify or not. And the gist of it is I think
ink macro eyes first and foremost that the world is changing just constantly and you have to adapt to that change. So I value agility and learning way more than I value the fact that you're really good at your job and just doing really good at doing a few things. The other aspect of that that I think is important is the notion not only about the sort of the world changing or any of that sort. But but also perhaps maybe
Or my own personality more than anything else. I love learning a first and foremost and the second thing is I am not Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. I don't just intuitively know what the world would look like and I don't think most people do I think most people learn as they go and so if you create an environment where you can fail that is transparent and where you're allowed to iterate and learn on the job. You will create a learning organization that keeps
Keeps getting better and better and better at hopefully a higher and higher Pace than ever before and that for me as a culture of feels a lot more resilient than one that relies on someone having an Godlike ability to see the future before anyone else sees it. I've never been that type of entrepreneur. I wouldn't know where to begin in inventing the next iPhone, but I do know how to make something a bit better than it was.
Yesterday and I do think that I know some things about the world but I also know in that process I'll learn a new things a lot of new things if I keep developing and iterating as I go
along the top to a completely different species of learning organism. And that is Brilliant Minds what is really a minds and how did it
start?
Oh, yeah, so really Minds is a conference that I started together with Ash Borer Nori who is the manager of a VT a few years back and the Genesis of the idea in all honesty started by Ashton. I traveling around the world many times often having to explain Sweden to people never been there are aspects again about the culture. I we talked about in the beginning about some of the
Very very distinct Swedish stuff and then in some part of the quotes, you know, the future is here just unevenly distributed. Also Rings very true about Sweden. We had Broadband in 1998 part of the reason why I believe Spotify came to be was I saw the need for it probably earlier than others because I had you know hundred Mega bed Broadband in 1998. That's why so there was nothing yeah, and so because there was nothing
for me to do I could only use file sharing services and I realized that it was wrong, but it was a lot better than the alternative of going down to the video store, which only had about a half of the things that I actually wanted to see so that kind of inspired me and then later on after starting a few companies then started Spotify. And so I wanted to bring Sweden to the rest of the world and frankly. I wanted to bring the rest of the world to Sweden to and create kind of a two-way Exchange Street.
And so we started this conference which is kind of an unconference conference. We're very light almost 10 style talks 10-15 minutes long lots and lots of music lots and lots of time to interact with other people and the focus is around creativity. And you know, we bring people from music from Arts. We bring people from Business and Technology together and talk about what some of the larger problems in society exists today and
Actually try to inspire them to see if they can make a difference in some shape or form. It's pretty small. It's just a few hundred guests. And yeah, I mean it's been a fun fun journey to see the relationships that's been formed and and I certainly for swedes. It's been you know, so valuable to be able to learn from some of the most creative and amazing individuals in the world. So I think paying dividends in
Spades when it comes to Sweden
you've dedicated as I understand it. I mean this would be an understatement but significant resources to funding and supporting suppose predominantly moonshots in is it is it across the is it across Europe? Is it specific to Sweden? How are you thinking about cultivating that that ecosystem using your own resources?
Yeah, so it's a billion euros and it's
across Europe. That's why
Understatement. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of a lot of come out of Comas.
Yeah, but but the but truthfully the number and itself isn't the most important thing and people actually asked me where I got the number from and the number was the most uncomfortable thing. I could imagine and sometimes I work that way I just put out a very sort of big audacious quantifiable thing and I work myself towards okay. What does it have to look like and what could we do with that as a constraint?
And this very much ended up being that way and the Genesis of the thinking was actually quite multi-sided. But when you look at Europe as a as an ecosystem for startups and Technology
it is very much behind the most mature ecosystems in America and the most obvious way to look at that is to say if you look at Europe it has about 400 and it's a more than 400 million depending on how you look at it as 5 to 700 million people with about the same GDP if not more than USA and yet when you look at the most valuable companies, you can't find a single company with the
Option of sap in the technology space that is worth more than a hundred billion that comes from Europe and at the same time you can find a number of them in the US and not only that nowadays. You can even find a few trillion dollar companies as well. And for me, that's just Unthinkable. Like why would that be you have every single core component necessary amount of engineers in Europe Rivals the ones from the US the
Out of scientists we have in Europe easily Rivals the one in the u.s. So all those recording gradients are there but it's still not happening the goal really essentially is how can we LeapFrog the current development which by the way is heading in the right way, so it's slowly getting better and there are more and more entrepreneurs that are thinking bigger. There are more and more people that pursue entrepreneurship which is fantastic to see and there's more and more Capital that supports and more.
More experience in the ecosystems. All Trends are in the right direction, but we're still maybe 20 years behind and so the question then ends up being is there a way we can LeapFrog the evolution of the ecosystem. And is there a way where we at the same time can take on some of society's largest issues and try to make a real dent in those types of of issues and that's essentially the Genesis of the Moon.
And why I've decided to dedicate, you know, a significant portion of my wealth to try to see if I can help make that happen for Europe and for hopefully the world to and yeah, and it's just felt like a scary big can of daysius thing to try to pursue and and frankly a lot better than just sitting on the money and not doing anything
collecting marbles. Yeah, I agree with that and it seems like some of the
the targets that certainly have implications for addressing very significant problems and meeting challenges and looking forward into the next 10 20 years and Beyond would include machine learning biotechnology Material Sciences energy. And that is it's very exciting to put the type of resources that you're applying into those fields in Europe to me for a number of reasons and
We won't have time to get into today is to see how that changes Visa Vie incentives, right? We were talking about Charlie Munger earlier the attraction retention of talent and in as I've seen with say Shopify and Ottawa Canada, which is the last place people would expect maybe not the last place but it's not on the top three in mindshare force a start-up communities, but because they are not subject suppose somewhat similar to Duolingo and
Pittsburgh also to Facebook and Google and Apple trying to poach their Engineers every second right around the corner. They have some real competitive advantages. So it'll be very exciting to see what type of that not just standing on equal ground can be created in Europe but also advantages for people who happen to be locator to choose to locate themselves in Europe. So I commend commend what you're doing.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean it's early days.
But I feel like it's one of those things where it's either going to be very successful or we will talk about all the lessons from the failure in a few years. Hopefully when we do this again, that's kind of how I like to live in my life. By the way. I don't like the the safelane I prefer the uncomfortable Lane where it either becomes big or you kind of go home. And and and yeah, it's the I guess the kind.
Very typical entrepreneurial Spirit, but I've tried to remain, you know naive enough to want to pursue those types of of
opportunities. Well, I think naive might be one way to put it I think agile and observant would be two other ways to put it because we're not going to have time to really dig into the value of failure, but there's a fetishizing of failure in Silicon Valley in some cases, but the reason that I think you are so capable and
Of harnessing failure as the Tinder for larger flames of success is because of that commitment to learning organisms and constraints and review right that type of assessment the mentality of two-year missions. I think that it's this incredible sort of structure and system of habits that you've built around it that allows you to again impart so converts effectively so we won't have time to talk about the UFC. I'm sad about that we want
Of time to talk about Alexander the Mauler Gustafsson. I really at some point want to talk to you about your interest and love him. Yeah, so some other time some other time guitar, there are all these subjects that we that we won't have time in this round one so last question or move second to last and this this question is sometimes a tough one, but we'll throw it out there anyway, and that is if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking to get a message a quote question and image anything out to
Hands of people non-commercial what might you put on that
billboard. Oh, wow. I don't know how I would find a way to write this a lot more marketable than the way I'm going to put it down so that it would resonate with more people but I think the single biggest thing that's striking to me right now with all the polarization on all the different issues that we're facing is, you know, the words be kind. Everyone is on their own journey, and I've encountered so many faiths.
It's and life situations certainly over the last nine months ago where I've learned so much I learned about issues. I didn't even know exist that I learned about situations and hardships but also successes and happiness as well. So all of those different things but what it kind of reminded me on is that we're all on their own Journey. We're definitely not perfect. You know this part of why I wanted to talk
Little bit about my own sort of Journey and growth because you know, I'm I don't even know whether I would consider myself particularly good at anything. So, you know, and that's actually like a mental thing that I constantly struggle with because I constantly face people who I always find are smarter than me deeper than me on various subjects and like all of that stuff. I think we're all on Journeys and we're all have our own.
Own insecurities. We have all our own stuff that's happening in our lives and just to be mindful about that just be mindful about that. We're all going through things has created a lot of empathy for me and created a lot of understanding for me as I meet co-workers as I meet people out in society as well. And yeah, I mean, it's especially important as we sit now in our own homes and digitally type away on Twitter and other things not thinking too much.
Add whose feelings we met her door not because we can't read each other's emotions. And so yeah be kind everyone's on their Journey would be that
that's it. I think the perfect way to wrap up Daniel fire Soul. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you carving out the time across time zones to have a wide-ranging romp of a conversation. That was that was very nonlinear cell. I
I appreciate you playing ball. Thank you so much.
Of course. Well, thank you so much for having me. This was the blast so I hope to do it again
sometime. Yeah, that would be great. I've got I've already had I put R 2 which is it within highlighter around all these subjects that we didn't get to just in case we do around too so we'll have plenty for next time if we do and how do you say let's say now in Swedish. Is there something I've chosen talk. How would you say how would you say
to some practices
- yes, I still need.
Work on my vowels, but one word at a time and perfect really appreciate you being so open to so many questions and to everyone listening we will have links to everything discussed ranging from Brilliant Minds to the books and everything in between in the show notes at MDOT blog forward slash podcast. And until next time be kind and realize everyone is on their own Journey. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things.
Things before you take off number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday is that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend and five? Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the
Old of the esoteric as I do it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that check it out. Just go to four hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one and if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.
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