The Peter Attia Drive - #79 - Ric Elias： Earning the gift of life

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. The drive

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00:03:58.200 My guest this week is Rick Elias. Rick is a dear friend. I got to meet him in 2013. I had seen his

00:04:05.380 TED talk, which at the time was, and to this day remains my favorite TED talk of all time.

00:04:11.320 And I was speaking at TED Med. Someone there knew what a fan I was of Rick and a few minutes following

00:04:19.080 my talk introduced me to Rick and it sort of became a love at first sight. He is someone I consider a dear

00:04:25.680 friend, an amazing mentor. And this podcast is really an opportunity to allow me, I guess,

00:04:32.680 to, through a discussion with Rick, share so much of Rick's wisdom with all of you as listeners.

00:04:38.840 We begin our discussion by talking about the day that would change Rick's life forever,

00:04:43.760 but we also go a lot deeper. And after we finished recording this podcast, you know, Rick said, man,

00:04:48.820 I have never been pushed so far and so deep into what really happened and transpired that day and

00:04:55.000 how it, how it impacted my life. So I'm honored that we were able to have that discussion and that

00:04:59.400 he was able to sort of trust me enough to share so much so broadly. I don't think there's much more

00:05:05.360 honestly that I need to say about this. There's so many things that we talked about that go beyond

00:05:08.800 surviving this plane crash. We talk a lot about Rick's incredible role as a CEO of an enormous

00:05:14.760 company, his remarkable work in philanthropy, but I think it's just better that you hear this one

00:05:20.320 from the horse's mouth. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy my conversation with my dear friend,

00:05:25.260 Rick Elias. Rick, thank you so much for making time. I know you're super busy this week, but when your

00:05:33.780 office was able to coordinate us getting together, I was delighted. It is so much fun to be with you

00:05:38.600 today, Peter. I'm a huge fan of your podcast and we're dear friends. So when you asked me to be on it,

00:05:43.220 that was honored. A lot of people have heard me talk about you. I wrote a blog post, I don't know,

00:05:49.060 probably five years ago about how your Ted talk was at the time and actually still remains my favorite

00:05:54.340 Ted talk of all time. It's a very short talk and I'm sure for folks who haven't heard it yet,

00:05:59.680 we'll make sure we link to it, but I can't resist starting with that story. So let's just put the

00:06:05.740 profundity niceties aside and just go straight to it. Thursday, January 15th, 2009, you're in New York City.

00:06:13.220 Why were you here? I was here because one of our partners, DirecTV at the time was here and I was

00:06:18.660 having lunch with the CMO. The night before I had dinner with a good friend of mine and was having

00:06:24.300 a couple of small meetings in the morning and then I was flying home to coach my son's basketball team

00:06:28.620 when I landed in Charlotte. The flight was going from LaGuardia to Charlotte. How many times did you

00:06:33.180 take that shuttle, that flight? That's probably a common flight. A hundred times. Yeah. Do you remember

00:06:37.780 having breakfast that morning? I went to play hoops in the Reebok club on the Upper East Side and it was

00:06:44.240 a cold morning and it was snowing, big flakes and I chose to walk because it was so beautiful.

00:06:52.440 How would you describe your life at that point in time? How big was Red Ventures, your company?

00:06:56.280 We had about 700 employees. We'd gone in this really nice growth spurt after really struggling

00:07:03.760 the first four years. We started in 2000. So we were doing really well, but we were at risk of

00:07:10.480 two bad things happening and not having a business. So there was this kind of constant juxtaposition of

00:07:16.440 this is not going to last. I actually told our employees, enjoy the good old days. They won't last

00:07:21.680 forever. And they were annoyed by me saying that, but it was the reminder that this was very fleeting.

00:07:26.820 Would you have described yourself as a happy person? Like how would people describe Rick back

00:07:31.400 then? Yeah, generally I'm a very positive person. I like to think that I've lived through a lot of

00:07:35.880 great things in my life. Some that have actually happened. So that's like how I see world. And since

00:07:41.220 I was a kid, that said, I was super stressed and I was trying to build a business so that we could tell

00:07:48.140 it and I could go do other things in life. Your kids at the time were how old?

00:07:52.880 My daughter was in first grade. My son was in second grade.

00:07:57.100 And so how were you thinking about balancing the incredible stress of running a 700 person company,

00:08:03.320 the travel that comes with that, and then being the dad, being the coach, being the husband?

00:08:07.660 Was that balance, did it feel in balance to you?

00:08:10.420 Looking back, it was completely out of balance. And it was, I kind of rationalized myself around

00:08:15.060 quality over quantity. And I would literally talk myself into, well, at least I'm coaching my son or

00:08:22.940 I was like, many of us are during those stages, just really taxed mentally. And my wife really

00:08:29.740 carried the burden of raising our kids. And I look back on it and it was 95.5 when it should have been

00:08:36.540 a different number.

00:08:37.940 Jeez. Yeah.

00:08:39.080 95.5. I can relate.

00:08:41.200 You were staying at a hotel that morning when you got up?

00:08:43.240 I don't remember the hotel. It was in the Upper East because of basketball in the morning,

00:08:47.260 which it was priority.

00:08:48.800 Life of a run in a basketball.

00:08:50.200 5.30 a.m. run, which is great.

00:08:51.960 This is pre-Uber, I'm guessing, yeah, 2009. So you probably took a taxi to LaGuardia.

00:08:57.220 Yes.

00:08:57.460 Do you remember anything about your transit from getting through security, getting on that plane,

00:09:02.520 anything about it? It was hard given that it's such a routine for you.

00:09:05.460 Yes. I do remember because of that impact, everything around it becomes kind of much

00:09:10.860 more real, but it's a wacky story. I remember I was a little early, which I never was. And I went

00:09:17.700 and got a soft serve ice cream at McDonald's and I worked out really hard that morning. And that was

00:09:23.980 the only place where I did this. And, you know, I think that it'll change that whole eating area,

00:09:28.000 but I'm making love to this ice cream. It just tastes so freaking good. I'm literally just enjoying

00:09:34.060 my vanilla ice cream while I wait for whatever, an hour for my flight. And I started walking to

00:09:38.800 the gate and it was so good that I turned around and went and had another one, which I'd never done.

00:09:45.880 I can relate to that as well, by the way. Although soft serve ice cream isn't a particular weakness

00:09:50.340 of mine, but there are other airport weaknesses I have. Trail mix is my airport weakness.

00:09:56.120 That's why you look the way you do and the way I look.

00:09:58.080 I don't know. I would say the ice cream is probably no worse for you than the trail mix,

00:10:01.500 by the way. So they call you guys to board on the plane. You're sitting at the front of the plane.

00:10:07.320 Yeah. It was a really kind of crappy day. It was gray, it was cold, it was wet, kind of gone out of

00:10:14.440 snow and rain. So it was not the most pleasant day in New York. So I boarded, I was in first class,

00:10:20.800 so we boarded first. And I remember sitting in my seat and kind of processing, okay, here's all the

00:10:26.200 stuff I got to do on the plane. As soon as I land, I got to do this. And then when I come back,

00:10:29.540 my brain is super busy just thinking about the non-never-ending list of things to accomplish.

00:10:36.320 You listening to music or anything? Do you know?

00:10:38.380 I'm not. I'm just sitting there kind of vegging a little bit, just thinking about life.

00:10:43.440 So 2009, we would have been sort of third generation. iPhone and BlackBerry were probably

00:10:47.660 the dominant things. Which one were you using?

00:10:50.000 I had just switched, literally like two days before.

00:10:53.500 So you're on like an early iPhone?

00:10:55.220 An early iPhone. And then the first row, so you can't have a bag under your legs. They have to

00:10:59.420 go up. And so I'm sitting there and it was a little bit of a slow departing. I think because

00:11:05.120 of the weather, things kind of back out.

00:11:07.200 What time was it?

00:11:08.100 It was afternoon.

00:11:08.640 It was like at 2.30 or something like that. And I remember kind of dozing, you know, the

00:11:13.400 plane puts you to sleep. And so I was kind of going in and out of that as the plane took

00:11:17.500 off. And I was very cognizant when we kind of took off. I was kind of in and out of consciousness

00:11:23.000 right when we took off.

00:11:24.420 How long after the takeoff do you know something is not right?

00:11:29.700 So about three minutes. I think we're about 4,500 feet up or something like that. There's

00:11:35.760 a massive explosion. Bam! Like a pipe bomb. And this was 10 years after September 11th,

00:11:42.840 but it's still September 11th. And for all of us who lived through that, and I had the really

00:11:47.820 lucky seat because I can see the flight attendant kind of kitty corner. I looked at her. We were

00:11:52.920 still flying. We were horizontal. And I looked at her, and she was calm. Her eyes were calm. And I

00:12:00.040 was like, okay. We probably lost an engine. And for the next couple minutes, Peter, all you could

00:12:07.140 hear was the engine struggling. Clack, clack, clack, clack. Like they were starting to restart it.

00:12:12.580 Once you go look at the transcript, that's where they were doing. There was a really nasty smell

00:12:16.660 going into the cabin. So it smelled like a really bad...

00:12:19.380 Something burnt?

00:12:20.100 Yeah. Burnt. Like burned and kind of not. He had turned the plane pretty quickly. We were heading

00:12:26.160 back into New York. And in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm not coaching today. The flight attendant's

00:12:31.260 eyes told me all I had to hear, which is, is there going to be a long travel day?

00:12:35.000 So when you're leaving LaGuardia, you're up and circling around. So you're sort of over Queens.

00:12:40.560 Yes.

00:12:40.860 And you shouldn't be coming back over Manhattan, correct?

00:12:43.540 Right. Correct.

00:12:44.500 So what do you see out the window?

00:12:46.200 I am in the aisle, so I'm not really seeing out the window necessarily. I'm just literally for

00:12:52.240 this two minutes, just going like, wow, this is really bizarre. I got to figure out who the

00:12:57.120 coaches practice for my son. And that's all I was thinking about.

00:13:01.600 Was the next sign that something was wrong, the reduction in sound in the cabin?

00:13:07.100 So about 90 seconds before we hit down. So two minutes pass of this.

00:13:11.560 Of the engine trying to restart.

00:13:13.480 Right. And then Captain Sullenberger gets on the voice system for the first time.

00:13:18.960 And he only says three words. He says, brace for impact.

00:13:24.620 At the same time, they turn off the struggling engines and he lines up the plane with the Hudson

00:13:30.760 River. You and I have been here long enough, long enough that there's no runway right at the end of

00:13:36.180 the Hudson River. So I knew in that moment, a hundred percent with certainty that we were going

00:13:43.120 to die. I looked at the flight attendant's eyes and it was no longer annoyance. It was complete

00:13:48.280 terror. I didn't know this, but in airline speak, that means we're not landing at an airport.

00:13:53.440 And all of this happened in 90 seconds from when you...

00:13:56.800 Two minutes. So there's the two minutes from hitting to when he does that. And then there's 90

00:14:00.780 seconds as he's gliding the plane down that you literally...

00:14:04.960 Because you're now at the very top of Manhattan when this is happening, right?

00:14:07.780 Correct. All the way up.

00:14:08.520 Yeah.

00:14:08.820 And you have 90 seconds to basically say goodbye to your life. What is really unique about that

00:14:13.980 experience is you are a hundred percent certain you're going to die. If anything, I was saying

00:14:20.240 to myself, please blow up. I don't want this to break in 50 pieces and drown in this cold water.

00:14:26.580 So you're kind of playing all these things out and you are just realizing that there's

00:14:33.160 no suffering. So you're not burning or drowning or something that wouldn't make it different,

00:14:36.960 but you have 90 seconds to say goodbye.

00:14:38.580 But you still don't know what that end is like, do you? I mean, it's not to get too morbid,

00:14:43.220 but if I were in that situation, I wouldn't actually understand what the end is.

00:14:48.440 I've just seen enough documentaries to know that planes don't land on water.

00:14:52.540 Yeah. They break into a million pieces and they spiral.

00:14:55.520 I didn't know how, but I know what was going to happen.

00:14:58.200 And at this point it's silent in the cockpit or are people screaming?

00:15:01.880 It was more silent than screaming. I'm first row, so I can't hear a ton. And you go into,

00:15:07.620 imagine the amount of adrenaline that is going through your system as you are literally trapped

00:15:12.860 to your death for 90 seconds.

00:15:14.880 Did you think I have time to make one phone call?

00:15:17.520 I didn't have my phone.

00:15:18.560 Your phone is up top.

00:15:19.440 Yeah. It was very cleansing. I look back and I was raised Catholic. So

00:15:24.440 first thing that crosses my mind is like, okay, I'm not a practicing Catholic, but

00:15:28.760 you can repent and all sorts of good things could happen. Right. And I asked myself that question,

00:15:34.280 am I going to do something that I have chosen not to believe in this part of my life? And I didn't.

00:15:40.960 And I said, I'm not a hypocrite. It may be.

00:15:43.240 Meaning I'm going to live with the choices I've made.

00:15:45.280 Yes. Which was interesting for me to, after my relationship with religion and so forth,

00:15:51.420 but it was very powerful 90 seconds because the most important thing I realized was, wow,

00:15:57.180 this all changed in an instant. I thought I had years and now it's all over.

00:16:03.080 How old were you on that day?

00:16:04.840 I was 42. How old are you?

00:16:07.300 46.

00:16:08.160 Yeah. I thought we tend to believe we're going to live forever and it would all change in an

00:16:13.240 instant. And there was, I really had a ton of regret about the things that I did not get to.

00:16:20.660 Things, experiences, people I needed to ask for forgiveness from, people I wanted to say again,

00:16:26.480 I love you. People wanted to hug one more time. And you're like, wow, it all changed. And then

00:16:32.840 there's no going back and there's no turning that back. And that was one emotion. The other emotion

00:16:37.820 and also around regret was really how much I had allowed my ego to become very active in my life and

00:16:46.420 how I spent so much time being wronged by people or just spending so much time trying to be right

00:16:54.860 versus choosing to be happy. I realized, wow, I've lived my life in a very wasteful way because so

00:17:01.420 much of my energy has been spent on things that did not matter with people that did.

00:17:07.800 Think about all the fights you've had with pick your wife. You don't even remember 90, you know,

00:17:12.120 30 days later what you fought about yet you were so passionate about it. It just doesn't freaking

00:17:15.600 matter. Yeah. You know, and then the last kind of regret, because that's what it felt like was this

00:17:21.760 notion that I had not focused on the thing that matters most in my life. I inherently knew that my

00:17:28.460 most important responsibility was to make sure my kids were the best versions of themselves. And I had

00:17:34.460 completely delegated that to my wife in a very unfair way. And I had prioritized not just work,

00:17:41.700 but just everything else. And so those were regrets. And I literally thought about all of that. But you

00:17:48.740 know what was really interesting, Peter? Dying to me was not scary. I've always thought it would be a

00:17:55.420 scary moment. It was super sad because I didn't want to go. I really liked my life. I really wasn't

00:18:01.140 done. I had lots of regrets, but it was not scary. And that in itself also has been clarifying for me.

00:18:09.300 Had you spoken or have you since spoken about this with the other people on the flight? And do you know

00:18:14.260 if any of them felt that? I have not. I have not. I had so much support when I landed on love and all

00:18:20.060 that, that I kind of stayed within my realm of comfort. And then immediately after, there were

00:18:25.180 all sorts of things, books and lawsuits and this, and it all felt so disingenuous to me. The US Airways

00:18:32.020 sent us a check for $10,000 and I refused to. I've seen your check. You've seen it. It's sitting in

00:18:37.660 Jay Walker's library. Yes. Yeah. You're probably the only person that didn't cash that check.

00:18:42.180 You know what? It just, that's bad karma. I didn't want to cash that check. And it's not

00:18:48.960 the right thing. No matter how big it would have been a million bucks, I would have not cashed it.

00:18:52.380 I was given the ultimate gift and the ultimate gift was to say goodbye to your life, to close your

00:18:58.700 eyes, to touch your own arm, say, I love you, to wish for it to blow up and to open your eyes and

00:19:06.800 realize that you had a second chance. As the plane is coming down, do you see the George

00:19:12.720 Washington Bridge? Can you see it? Oh yeah. I saw it more as we were going over it and you can see

00:19:17.960 the cars at a scarily close place. Like literally we... You see cars in a level, you never see them

00:19:23.180 in an airplane. Like I wonder... You see the level of detail.

00:19:25.620 We almost took on that bridge. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but if he chooses to go to

00:19:32.780 Teterboro, we take out a bunch of buildings. He literally made all these calculations that he didn't

00:19:39.500 have enough thrust to get there. And he said, the only chance I have is to go in the water. And you

00:19:46.400 will relate to this story because I know the struggle or your internal fight against authority

00:19:51.840 when it's not well placed. And we've talked a lot about this. So when he communicates to the tower

00:19:58.940 and said, I'm going in the water. And the tower goes like, please repeat because they can understand

00:20:04.560 that. And basically he was done with protocol. He's like, I'm going to do my best to try to land

00:20:08.280 this thing. There's all sorts of mathematical equations here. We landed, I think at 151 miles an

00:20:13.940 hour or something like that. If we are 153, we blow up at 149. We tip. The wind was like 12 and a

00:20:21.380 half miles an hour at 14. There were so many things that had to be within such a small degree,

00:20:28.000 all compounding into a moment that you can land a cylinder with 158 people full of gas.

00:20:34.220 That's like hitting cement.

00:20:35.980 Yeah. I just know that from sort of the literature on people who jump off bridges

00:20:40.020 and into water. And when you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, which is something like 220 feet up,

00:20:46.500 much lower than where you guys are coming from, it is like hitting cement. And the only people who

00:20:50.860 survive that jump are generally people who land exactly feet first. They end up breaking most

00:20:56.660 bones. They break every bone in their feet, ankles, compress the spine, but at least they don't pivot,

00:21:03.340 land sideways, have a rib tear through their liver or something awful like that. So yeah,

00:21:09.140 it's like a cement, a wet cement landing. I don't know if I've ever told you this story,

00:21:13.140 but about five years ago, I met a guy through a friend. We were in Houston and the three of us

00:21:18.760 were having dinner. And somehow it came up that this guy was in a helicopter crash. He was the

00:21:25.080 only one that survived. It was a pilot, three, maybe three or four other people in the helicopter

00:21:29.760 and him. And there was a technical malfunction in the helicopter. I don't remember exactly what it was,

00:21:33.940 but it was one of those things where it was clear they were crashing and it was clear they were all

00:21:37.840 going to die. I mean, helicopters just look like the most unstable things when they're out of control.

00:21:41.860 And interestingly, it was about the same length of time. He had about two minutes of crashing

00:21:47.060 and he hadn't heard of you. So he hadn't seen your Ted talk after the fact he did. Of course,

00:21:52.920 I directed him to it. And what blew my mind, Rick was the similarity in the way he described that

00:21:58.920 two minutes. He said, he said, Peter, you'll think this is crazy, but I just wasn't afraid to die.

00:22:04.660 But boy, was I sad. He was about your age. He was probably 40 when this happened. He was hurt in the

00:22:10.500 crash. I mean, he broke both his legs. I mean, he was, again, the only survivor, but walked away

00:22:14.680 with his life. I'll never forget that, how he explained something about not being afraid, but

00:22:19.720 just being so sad. Yeah, it makes me wonder how many other people on that plane would echo that same

00:22:25.440 thought. Obviously, I can't relate, so I don't know what that means. I feel like I'd be afraid, but

00:22:30.520 I'm looking at a man who's been through it and tells me that that's not what he felt.

00:22:34.280 I just bought a lucky ticket.

00:22:35.320 So when did you close your eyes? How far do you think you were above the water?

00:22:40.800 You know, when you fly a lot, you can almost sense when you're going to hit. Even if you're

00:22:44.140 dozing off, you feel the ground coming, right? So in about 10 seconds left, I can feel the countdown

00:22:49.760 in my system. And 10, 9. And that's when I grabbed my arm and I said, I love you.

00:22:57.220 Why did you do that?

00:22:58.340 I think I had a sense of needing comfort as you exit life. I probably

00:23:04.460 there was probably a lot of acceptance in that statement subconsciously.

00:23:09.820 Prior to that, were you someone who struggled with loving yourself? Were you hard on yourself?

00:23:15.940 No. No, no, no, no. I have many issues. That's not one of them.

00:23:20.280 That's interesting. I'm very hard on myself. I wonder if I would even have the foresight to

00:23:24.900 think that. It's a beautiful sentiment. What was the sound like?

00:23:28.780 It was, he puts the tail and then kind of the nose just jams. So it was a violent accident.

00:23:36.580 And then we skid to the left. I have my eyes closed. I open my eyes and I am completely disoriented

00:23:44.380 because I'm expecting to being upside down. Like if I left my eyes open, I think I would

00:23:50.440 have been much more oriented. And it took me a split second to realize that this looked like

00:23:55.660 a cruise ship. We had this plane sitting on the water kind of all around us.

00:24:01.400 When your eyes open, the plane is still moving?

00:24:03.400 I don't remember. I don't, I don't think so. I think I come to a stop or close to coming to a stop.

00:24:09.180 Was there any part of you that thought this is death? I'm dead. This is an afterlife. This is

00:24:14.000 sort of a few circuits firing in what remains of my central nervous system, but I'm actually dead.

00:24:19.800 Like, I mean, I, again, what, what is?

00:24:21.680 It didn't to me. You would think that that would be a very realistic, it just was so quick, right?

00:24:26.660 That it was confusing. It was unusual. You know, when you have zero probability of something and

00:24:32.180 it happens, you're like, did that really happen? And immediately we went into kind of, holy cow,

00:24:38.340 we got to get out of here.

00:24:39.820 Do you have a moment of realizing what has happened or do you immediately shift into business mode of,

00:24:47.540 okay, now it's an emergency excavation. Now it's like all that stuff that nobody pays attention to

00:24:52.280 when the plane is taking off the slide. How does the slide work? Who takes the door off? How many

00:24:58.000 doors are there? Where is the nearest door? All that stuff. You guys go right into that mode.

00:25:02.880 And is it orderly? Is it chaotic? Are people screaming, clapping, crying? What's happening?

00:25:08.180 That plane was not equipped for water. That's why people were standing on the wings, not on rafts.

00:25:14.240 I don't understand. What do you mean it wasn't equipped for water?

00:25:15.940 So if you look, first class, there's rafts. But in the coach section, there were no rafts because

00:25:21.600 that plane was not supposed to go over water. So that's why nothing deployed when you open those

00:25:26.320 emergency doors. Only you can stand on the wings.

00:25:30.200 I thought every plane had that.

00:25:32.260 No. If the plane had landed on the east side, there's not the ferries and the hustle and bustle of

00:25:38.040 where we landed. That thing was taking water. They evacuated the people from the wing because we were

00:25:42.360 sinking. So there were so many things. There were a bunch of ferries around us as soon as we landed.

00:25:47.700 So it never felt like we were not going to be safe in that regard. But on the east side,

00:25:52.220 I think it would have been different.

00:25:53.680 How cold was the water? Do you remember the feeling?

00:25:55.760 It was very cold. But adrenaline takes over. So it's only cold after it wasn't cold in the moment.

00:26:00.900 And I'll tell you a story that I have really not shared with many people.

00:26:05.300 I think because I was tired from hooping and staying out late and working and all this stuff

00:26:11.840 and eating so much sugar before getting on the plane, I'm kind of comatose sitting there on my

00:26:15.500 seat as people are boarding. Late in the boarding process, an elderly lady in a wheelchair in her

00:26:21.720 is coming down the ramp. And my voice inside of me, and I've done this before, says, get up,

00:26:27.940 give up your seat. Go sit and coach. I'm 6'5", but you know what? It's the right thing to do.

00:26:33.400 And then I'm like, I'm tired. You know, it's not a long flight. I'm being completely selfish.

00:26:39.760 And then her daughter's behind the person that is helping the lady. I'm out. There's two of them.

00:26:44.300 We can't do it. And I'm pretty sure this guy won't give the seat, right? So I rationalize

00:26:48.140 myself to being completely selfish. So once we are in the raft, and I know that this elderly lady is

00:26:54.960 in the back of the plane, I start freaking out because I know she can't walk. So I start screaming,

00:27:00.720 where's the lady? Where's the lady? We're in the raft. And by the way, it was really interesting

00:27:04.520 in the raft. In our side, some people were completely frozen. They couldn't understand

00:27:10.420 anything. Some people were panicking in the raft. And then there was a handful of us who were like,

00:27:14.280 okay, let's problem solve. And eventually the older lady comes to the front of the plane. They

00:27:19.120 bring her in because they got to put her in a raft. And I grab her and I'm sitting there and she's

00:27:25.200 completely traumatized by this. And I'm just thinking about, oh my goodness, my last act would

00:27:31.620 have been one of my most selfish acts. That was an interesting emotion. And then when we got to the

00:27:36.620 ferry, we had to climb about 10 steps. Everybody evacuated. I'm the bigger guy. I'm saying,

00:27:42.220 I'll bring this lady up. The guys were trying to hold her. Peter, I think something crazy happened as

00:27:49.540 I'm going up this frozen ladder with no gloves, no anything, no jacket. And I'm holding her basically

00:27:55.340 in my chest. My hand slips. I was within a split second of dropping an 80-year-old in the water.

00:28:03.760 And I grabbed. And that was a very, all of this is happening in this moment. As soon as I got to

00:28:10.680 the top of the boat and she was safe, we were all safe. I started crying. Like the river of emotion

00:28:17.460 was insane. What about others? Did they experience that? I mean, I'm guessing that different people

00:28:25.800 are processing this at totally different speeds. There are probably still people who don't actually

00:28:31.220 understand what has happened. It sounds like you've moved. You're in post-processing on some level.

00:28:38.220 Are you talking amongst each other?

00:28:40.360 No. Everybody, as soon as one of the people in the ferry, I grabbed the phone. I really wanted to call

00:28:46.380 my wife. By then, she was at the pediatrician with the kids. And her sister called her and goes,

00:28:53.380 where's Rick? And she's like, he's coming from New York. She goes, turn the TV on. And Brenda turned

00:28:58.140 the TV. And she thought that we all had died. So she's crying at the pediatricians. The kids are

00:29:02.720 screaming. And I call from a random number. And as she tells the story, she thinks it's the police

00:29:07.660 saying, hey, your husband died. Right. Random New York number.

00:29:11.740 It's like, uh, and I call and I say, honey, I'm okay. And like, she screams, he's alive. He's alive.

00:29:20.240 And the kids are completely confused. They just lost their dad, but he's alive. And, um, so everybody,

00:29:27.040 we were passing on this phone and all of that. Where was the crew at this time?

00:29:30.420 Yeah. So most people ended up on the New York side. Some people ended up in the New Jersey side.

00:29:34.960 I ended up in the New York side and I think it was pier 42. And my guess is the crew is the last

00:29:40.220 to get off the plane. They have to make sure everybody's off. And I'm guessing Sully is the

00:29:44.800 last of the last. A hundred percent. And he ends up, I'll tell you a quick story on Sully. So we end up

00:29:50.120 in, and by the way, New York is an amazing city in so many ways. Yeah. If something's going to go

00:29:56.060 wrong, this is the city to have it happen. You've got the best rescue. You've got.

00:29:59.320 Unbelievable. The first responders, by the time we got to the pier, they were like.

00:30:02.840 There's hot chocolate waiting for you.

00:30:03.880 The Red Cross. And you know, there were priests and rabbis and everybody. And they're kind. And

00:30:09.100 like, it was amazing. Like we were sitting there and they're interviewing everybody because they

00:30:12.580 don't know if I'll play or whatever, right? Before they release anybody, they need to interview

00:30:16.420 everybody. Three hours later, they release, they start putting us in buses to take us to a hotel

00:30:21.460 and Captain Sullenberger standing there, what it looked like fully dressed, stoic, probably

00:30:29.260 contemplating what in the world just happened. And I went up to him. There was nobody around

00:30:33.480 him. And I went up to him and I said, Captain, I didn't know his name. I said, thank you for

00:30:37.320 saving our lives. And Peter, he said something to me that day that I say to myself all the

00:30:43.040 time when someone thanks me for something. I don't say it out loud much. You know what

00:30:48.840 he said to me? He said, I was just doing my job. Can you imagine if we all just kind of

00:30:56.280 did our jobs at every level? That really shocked me that that was his process. So they put us

00:31:04.400 on a bus and the media is there and all of that. And we get to the hotel and there's food

00:31:10.160 and they were amazing. And they're like, okay, you want a hotel? The train is tomorrow? I don't

00:31:16.160 know. Many people lived here and I looked at the lady and I said, I need to get on the next flight

00:31:20.840 or what time is the next flight? And she looked at me like I got hit in the head, right? She's

00:31:26.260 calling the concussion protocol. Like this guy has completely lost it. And the way I said it to

00:31:32.440 myself was like, listen, the probability of this happening twice is like if this plane goes down

00:31:37.700 and I die, it's me. God is coming to see, right? Let's go get this over with. If it dies and I

00:31:43.160 don't die, Oprah Winfrey and I are going to share a stage somewhere. And if I get on this plane,

00:31:47.400 I'll never be afraid of flying again. Did you fly out that night? I flew out that night.

00:31:51.480 What did you feel like when that plane was taking off? How did it feel different?

00:31:57.680 I remember the next time I took a flight, which was maybe a couple of weeks later. And I had a seat.

00:32:04.540 And again, I got upgraded first class and I gave it up and I wanted to sit in the first

00:32:08.620 seat of coaching. I wanted to see me on that plane. And I sat on the left-hand side of the plane and I

00:32:15.180 just watched and I needed to relive all of that. That flight, I just wanted to come home. My mom and

00:32:21.640 dad picked me up because my wife was at home with the kids. They're young and our home got 60 people

00:32:27.760 within an hour and they all came and like everything, but nothing had really happened. We were fine,

00:32:31.900 but it's just beautiful love and beautiful expression of support and community. And

00:32:36.220 so my parents picked me up and there's media and everybody there. And I like squirt around

00:32:41.640 and I don't want any, like people are talking to the cameras and whatever. And you can see

00:32:46.240 when you look at the footage, I'm like pretending I'm a normal passenger on the plane.

00:32:49.520 And my mom, it's all a five, three at the time she was 70. So she's about to turn 80. And I remember

00:32:58.780 giving a hug to my dad and giving a hug to my mom and feeling like this was the safest place in the

00:33:06.340 world. A little lady hugging a six, five foot guy was the safest place. And I remember feeling like a

00:33:12.400 kid again. I had asthma as a kid and that was the only place that I could breathe. And it was so

00:33:17.340 beautiful to embrace my mom in a way that again, it started this journey of, I am not taking anything

00:33:24.100 for granted. And that hug, it was like the switch. And there's not a day that goes by that I will not

00:33:35.000 do something and remind myself, I'm not taking this for granted. And I'd love that hug with my mom. My mom

00:33:41.540 has fairly advanced Alzheimer's now, as you know. And so those hugs are not there anymore the same

00:33:47.760 way, but I'm so glad I was able to be a kid again as it relates to hugging her.

00:33:53.080 We were together a few months ago and you mentioned to me that you had never seen

00:33:57.780 Captain Sullenberger since that day you saw him on the docks. And then you saw him for the first time.

00:34:03.820 You had just seen him for the first time. Tell me about that.

00:34:06.200 So one of our companies is the points guy and the points guy has a big award show here at the

00:34:13.220 Intrepid. And he was going to be the guest of honor. And Brian, who is the points guy and a good

00:34:19.700 partner and a good friend, he's like, Hey, would you like to introduce him? And I said, I will be

00:34:24.040 honored. Why had you not sought him out earlier? I wasn't ready. I have a big idea that I have,

00:34:31.620 I've been working on and I'm going to do something my way. I just, I had said thank you to him that day.

00:34:37.720 And I know he had been overburdened. And I said, the world will bring our energies again. And so

00:34:43.280 we're in the red carpet, this big event, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, all sorts of

00:34:47.960 things. And he knows that I'm introducing him and he knows that I was a passenger. And I'm like,

00:34:53.320 I am so curious as to how I'm going to react. I see him, I shake his hand. We embrace, we lock

00:35:01.200 up. And Peter, not a word came out of my mouth. There was nothing coming out of my mouth and it

00:35:08.120 was amazing. And it didn't have to come out of my mouth. He could see my eyes, what I wanted to say

00:35:14.060 in a way that was so deep. And he understood. And I saw in his eyes, a connection that two human

00:35:20.100 beings can't manufacture. It was really an amazing moment to see the person that saved your life.

00:35:26.080 And then to have the honor of introducing him a couple hours later and give him an award.

00:35:31.300 How did you even think about and prepare for making introductory remarks in that setting?

00:35:37.440 Did you wing it? Did you plan it?

00:35:39.960 I planned it, but I didn't write it. Just like the TED talk. I'm not a great memorizer,

00:35:45.020 but I need to have a framework and I need to let my heart go.

00:35:47.620 So I told a few stories when I introduced him up that day of a very kind guy that basically

00:35:53.260 gave everything he had that day to all of us. And he was going under. And I talked about the

00:35:58.180 first responders and I told the story of him doing his job as the core of this. But what was unique

00:36:05.160 to him is literally he had prepared for that moment his whole life. And I went through his background as

00:36:12.520 a, as an instructor and maybe as a glide instructor, all the things that he had done was because he

00:36:19.920 will tell other pilots, you're only a pilot when you lose an engine. And he literally had prepared

00:36:25.940 his whole life to be a pilot, not for the tens of hours he flown, but the, for the moment that he lost

00:36:31.760 an engine that he didn't think it would be two. So I admired him doing his job.

00:36:39.360 Do you get the sense from all you now know about the details of that, what percentage of pilots that

00:36:45.900 fly commercial airlines could have done that under the same setting? I mean, we can never know the

00:36:52.100 answer to that. And I'm guessing the answer isn't a lot, but I know very little about this, of course,

00:36:56.820 but, um, watching the movie, reading the book, that sort of thing. But it seemed like improbable

00:37:04.480 that a lot of people could have acted the way he did because of the length of time they had to

00:37:10.200 process it. To me, it was, maybe I'm incorrect by the way, because I'm not a pilot. Maybe I don't

00:37:13.900 even understand all the nuance, but to me, the single most important thing was how quickly he could

00:37:20.580 process information and make a decision about what to do. And even a pilot with more technical

00:37:26.800 skill. And I'm not, I don't know how much more technical skill one could have or need,

00:37:30.540 but if you took an extra 15 seconds to come to the same decision, it wouldn't have mattered.

00:37:36.260 To your point earlier, if he had tried to go to Teterboro, no way you're plowing over land,

00:37:43.100 if not hitting the bridge on the way to New Jersey. If he tried to turn to LaGuardia,

00:37:48.020 he's probably plowing through Manhattan at that point. So I don't know. I mean, I just,

00:37:54.260 I think the answer is close to zero, if not zero, because there are a bunch of factors. I think

00:37:59.140 he, because he was a gliding instructor, I don't know how many of them are out there, but it was

00:38:04.460 what allowed him to place that plane in the water in a way because he had taught flying for so long

00:38:13.220 and he had prepared pilots for this. But more importantly, there were all those factors that

00:38:18.160 all had to fit within a very narrow margin. So even him in other moments where other factors go,

00:38:24.680 and then there's a lot of luck. One of those wings tips the water and we go through it. So

00:38:30.260 the odds of that kind of situation happening, it's close to zero.

00:38:34.900 Do you remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan at the end of the movie when the character played by

00:38:40.900 Tom Hanks is dying and Private Ryan, who's been saved, basically is sort of coming to grips

00:38:48.060 with the realization that in an effort to save his life, an entire group of men have died.

00:38:52.560 And the character played by Tom Hanks basically says to him just two words, earn this. Did you feel

00:39:00.600 some sense of, look, I've always lived my life. I didn't know you before this, but I'm imagining you

00:39:08.200 were not that different a person. I don't think you like you overnight became the great guy you are

00:39:12.000 today. But did you feel a bigger sense of obligation to your community, both your immediate

00:39:18.800 community, meaning your family, but your larger community, which is your company, and then the

00:39:23.480 even broader community than that, which is the world around you? Has that changed in any way?

00:39:27.340 A hundred percent. A couple of days later in my own quietness, I was trying to make sense of all of

00:39:33.020 this now. And I made a commitment to myself. I made a promise to myself that when I die in six months,

00:39:43.820 six years, or 60 years, if you help me live long, hopefully longer, I am going to ask myself one

00:39:49.120 question. And this is how I would judge my life. And that question is, did I earn my gift?

00:39:58.660 And I was given the ultimate gift because we in our evolution can't process death. Otherwise we

00:40:06.900 would have never left the cave. I left the cave. I was given the gift. And that gift is a

00:40:14.860 responsibility, not a gift. Who do you think was the first person around you to see that difference?

00:40:21.680 I mean, I have to guess your wife must've just because of her proximity to you and how close the two of you

00:40:27.360 are. What do you think she noticed first? Once the dust settled, meaning the months that followed.

00:40:33.820 Now think about the clarity of not postponing anything, not dealing with negative energy

00:40:41.180 and focusing on what matters. So my three thoughts at the plane was landing of no regrets. I try to live

00:40:49.420 a life of no regrets and by no means is perfect. But if I was to, I don't know, index the amount of

00:40:56.960 negative moments I've had with my wife. I bet you they're under 10% of what they used to be.

00:41:02.000 I ask for forgiveness, not because I may have done something wrong, but because someone was

00:41:07.800 offended by what I did. I choose to be happy, not righteous. I want to sort of focus on that a

00:41:13.080 little bit because even just, if nobody listening to this can relate to that, I still want the benefit,

00:41:17.520 but I suspect I'm not alone. When I was a kid, actually in high school, and I was a struggling

00:41:23.400 high school student and I showed, I wouldn't say I showed no potential, but it was certainly not

00:41:28.840 clear what I was supposed to be when I grew up. All I wanted to be was a professional boxer,

00:41:32.420 but they made me take this aptitude test. And it was not about sort of academic aptitude,

00:41:38.040 but more of emotional, like where would you fit? And I remember the result of the test was

00:41:44.400 the strongest signal they had ever seen for someone who values justice and things to be in

00:41:53.300 correct order. And they were like, well, you've probably got a career in law enforcement ahead

00:41:58.220 of you, son. You know, you really ought to consider joining the police force, or maybe you end up going

00:42:04.220 to law school and you'll become a judge, but you really have this strong arc of justice. You just want

00:42:09.780 justice. And I think that that's sort of a detriment sometimes. I think it's because you do,

00:42:15.420 you get into these arguments with your spouse. And even if you're going to be objective in some

00:42:20.180 situations, they're wrong and you're right, but you're right. This idea that what is the upside to

00:42:25.260 that? You could very easily just drop this case, quote unquote, and get back to just being a happy

00:42:32.140 existence with the world. So were you someone who would argue a point if you felt you were right?

00:42:39.500 Because I've never known that side of you, it's so hard for me to imagine you having any of that

00:42:44.060 streak in you that I have, for example. I'm Latin and hotheaded. Less than that,

00:42:51.260 I would be too passionate about certain things. But think about it. There's always three sides to

00:42:56.320 an argument. Yours, theirs, and the truth. And if you start every argument understanding that you

00:43:01.280 don't have the truth, you have your truth, it's really easy to surrender to that. And most things in

00:43:09.240 life are a shade of gray and not completely black and white. And the problem is when we believe

00:43:15.340 we're right, we have made something black and white. Do you think that that is something you

00:43:20.600 knew beforehand and choose to ignore? Or is it something that you somehow came to you as an

00:43:26.300 epiphany as a result of this? This is my mom's teachings. But I ignore them.

00:43:31.040 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite, I plagiarized most of the things I said in being Puerto Rican and

00:43:38.400 learning English when I came to college here. I literally, I'm constantly collecting new thoughts

00:43:43.560 from others. I had an original thought after the plane crash, like mine. Like I could literally claim

00:43:49.760 this set of words, may have been odder, but I've never heard them. And it is that I collect bad wines.

00:43:56.040 You know, now I plagiarize that from you. Oh, good. Finally. Tell us why you do that. Because

00:44:01.480 I love it. I collect bad wines is the trigger thought for not postponing anything. And the

00:44:10.100 thought is if you go to my house, I have a lot of bad wine because if the wine is ready and the person

00:44:15.480 is there, I'm opening my best one. This changes in an instant. I don't want to leave with a bunch

00:44:20.620 of good wine that I never drank. And it's a way of living. It's a way of living in everything.

00:44:26.900 So collecting bad wines means so much. It just means taking the trip, making the call, taking the

00:44:33.540 risk, having the courage, forcing yourself to things that you know you need to do. I know you know this,

00:44:40.320 but I was 45 pounds heavier at the time when this happened. And this was a commitment to me and saying,

00:44:46.400 I'm doing all of this. It becomes very centering. Which, by the way, a little counterintuitive.

00:44:52.220 Some would argue, good thing you had those two ice creams. Like, wouldn't you have regretted it if

00:44:57.940 that plane's crashing and you're like, man, I just wanted those two ice cream. You know,

00:45:01.360 you can take these things to two different extremes. And there is a bit of a contrast,

00:45:05.420 which is on the one hand, you're living for the moment, in which case we should be as hedonic as

00:45:10.980 possible. But at the other hand, you've lost 45 pounds. You were healthy to begin with,

00:45:15.160 but you're much healthier today. You're probably 10 years younger physiologically,

00:45:19.520 which is a very forward-looking point. How do you reconcile those completely at odds

00:45:25.900 behaviors? Behaviors is the wrong word, but viewpoints.

00:45:29.380 I still have the ice cream. I think, again, it's a notion of balance. I think it's defining the game.

00:45:34.680 Is your game longer or shorter today?

00:45:37.740 So there's a book that it's coming out called The Infinite Game. And I believe in The Infinite Game.

00:45:45.160 Before the book, Simon Sinek, and he's great. He's a friend. And he wrote this book. It's very

00:45:50.660 much a philosophy of which I live life, which is the whole purpose of the game is to play the next

00:45:56.520 game. There's no winning. There's no outcome. There's no end. So because I play The Infinite Game

00:46:04.420 in life, I want to be healthy enough to continue to play the game. I can win the game of complete

00:46:10.880 pleasure for a day, a month, a year, but then I lose my ability to keep playing the game. It's

00:46:15.740 called The Infinite Game. It's phenomenal. Yeah, I've heard him speak about it. I'm looking forward

00:46:19.160 to it very much. I want to go back to sort of the winter and spring of 2009. You did mention in

00:46:26.480 your TED Talk that, I don't know if it was weeks later or some period later, you're at a recital for

00:46:31.300 your daughter. Tell me about that. Do you ever watch the movie Ghost?

00:46:35.000 Ghost. That's the Bruce Willis or... No, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Yes, many,

00:46:40.240 many years ago. Many years. And there's a scene in that movie where he's dead and he's the ghost and

00:46:44.000 he's watching. He's seeing life as it's happening. And I felt like I was sitting there and it was

00:46:50.020 probably two weeks later or something. It was a very recent. And I felt like I was the ghost.

00:46:55.360 Like, I was not supposed to be there. And here I'm watching my daughter and just

00:47:02.500 completely bawling. And the people around me, I'm like, this is supposed to be a happy play,

00:47:07.500 dude. And I was bawling because I was giving that gift of seeing her on that stage. And by the way,

00:47:17.600 it doesn't have to be a stage. It doesn't have to be a play. The magic of seeing your kids every day

00:47:22.860 grow up, if you want to choose to see it that way, can be equally powerful. So it was a moment

00:47:30.300 where I realized, wow, this is the gift is to be able to watch my kids grow up. And it was centering

00:47:37.340 around that of all my priorities is my most important one. How did your travel schedule and

00:47:45.420 your relationship with work change as a result of this? Was that a quick change? Was it a gradual

00:47:50.080 change? I remember you sat me down six years ago and showed me your calendar. And we walked through

00:47:57.880 sort of the way you ran things. Tell me a little bit more about that today.

00:48:02.220 Time is our only currency. It's the only thing that matters. In our civilization, we solve for

00:48:08.660 wealth first. But find any really rich person that is old or sick, and they'll trade it all for more

00:48:17.300 time. Right? So it's worth pausing on that for a moment because most people listening to this

00:48:21.620 think, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's easy to say. But I've asked the following question

00:48:26.420 to probably 50 patients and more than a hundred people, I'm sure. And the answer is always the

00:48:33.140 same, which is you ask someone who's at the age of 40, 50, 60, would you trade places with someone

00:48:40.760 who's 90 years old in exchange for a trillion dollars? And everybody thinks about it for a

00:48:47.160 second and goes, well, no. I actually do the math. I said, well, take your age now, subtract it from the

00:48:53.640 age of 90, take that delta, divide it by the trillion. You're telling me that you value time

00:49:00.560 more than this. You could actually make a calculation and it's telling you how valuable time is to you.

00:49:05.920 When phrased that way, most people don't appreciate that. I certainly at times fail to appreciate just

00:49:11.080 how much of a premium I truly place on time. And yet, like, you know, even today, before we started

00:49:15.700 this podcast, I was lamenting the fact that I agreed to take a call as a favor to somebody and it like

00:49:21.200 ate into an hour of my day. And I was sort of like, sometimes I just don't say no enough. I don't protect

00:49:26.820 time enough. And yet if I did that calculation more, I would. So how did you calculate that and how did

00:49:32.760 you implement it? I'll tell you, but you reminded me of one of my favorite stories. And I tell this

00:49:37.320 story to kids. I go speak in a lot of middle schools and I just, or younger kids, and they're

00:49:42.960 all caught up in all this material stuff. And I said, okay, I'm going to give you a million dollars,

00:49:48.440 but you have to give me your arms. And all the kids are, no, no, no, I'm going to give you five

00:49:53.900 million dollars. You're going to give me your arms and your legs. No, no, no. Okay. I'll give you

00:49:58.460 $10 million, but you're going to give me your arms, your legs, and your eyes. And the value of the

00:50:03.660 story is you're already rich because you have your health. Money really can't buy that. So value how

00:50:11.440 lucky you are. The talk is around the power of luck. And most of the things that show up as unlucky

00:50:17.080 things end up being lucky things in life if you choose to see them that way. And so you just reminded

00:50:21.980 me of that story. So listen, I waste no time. I waste no time. I only do things that I find that

00:50:29.140 are aligned to what I want to, what I'm prioritizing or that I enjoy a lot or that put me in a path

00:50:35.640 forward of what I want. And as a result, I am really comfortable saying no all the time. I'm very

00:50:40.980 thoughtful and polite. I don't join any outside boards. I have demoted friends that I outgrew so that

00:50:47.880 I can make room for new friends. I travel light. I travel light through light because I need to

00:50:53.220 figure out a way to increase the value of my time. I have an amazing chief of staff who solves for 40%

00:51:01.320 of the stuff that I shouldn't be doing and all that stuff. So I put enough structure around me that I can

00:51:06.320 be really efficient with my time, but it's really finding always more ways to do it. But saying no is

00:51:12.480 everything. How do you say no? First of all, if someone says, Hey, would you come speak at this

00:51:19.540 event? My answer is pretty standard. I'm honored that you would ask. I'm humble that you would ask

00:51:23.780 right now. My priorities are my family and growing our company. And as it is, I don't have enough time.

00:51:30.800 Eventually I hope to have time to do things like this. And if you would have me, I would love to do it.

00:51:36.180 Does it feel bad to say no? Oh no. Because when you're saying yes, you're saying no to something else.

00:51:41.620 So everything in life has a price. You know, it's so funny. I interviewed a good friend of

00:51:46.740 mine, Jason Freed, and he said the exact same thing, which is such a beautiful way to think

00:51:50.580 about it is every time you say yes, you're actually saying no to a number of things that

00:51:54.600 you can't anticipate between now and then. It's easy to say, Oh, do you want A or B? It's hard to say

00:51:59.400 you want A or door number B and you don't know what it is. And most times we don't know. Opportunity

00:52:04.040 cost is really, it's by the way, one of the keys to business is not settling for good and waiting for

00:52:10.440 great. How many days a month do you think you traveled prior to 2009?

00:52:15.560 I went and tracked it. I was probably on the road 15 nights.

00:52:21.100 15. And what is it today?

00:52:24.320 That's not vacation with my family?

00:52:26.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, time away from family.

00:52:27.940 Four?

00:52:28.440 Wow.

00:52:29.100 And it's literally decreased like one per year. And I track it.

00:52:32.660 I track now too, thanks to you.

00:52:34.440 Good.

00:52:34.620 This is the first year I'm going to break, but meaning I'll be less than 10 days a month

00:52:39.820 away from family. I'll average through December 31st. I'll hit 9.9.

00:52:44.480 Wonderful.

00:52:45.320 Yeah. I want eight next year.

00:52:47.040 That's the way to go. We focus on what we measure. It's just our brains are destined. So that's what

00:52:53.180 they say. It's a dream until you write it down and then it's a goal. It's the same thing,

00:52:57.100 the same principle.

00:52:58.200 Do you think your kids at the time knew what happened?

00:53:00.980 Yeah.

00:53:01.280 They're sort of six and seven, right?

00:53:02.940 Yeah. They kind of understood that something really big had happened, but it really impacted

00:53:07.320 him. My son just did a project of his identity in life. And one of the central story was this

00:53:14.060 story. I didn't even know. And he's 18, right? So it tells you how hopefully it gave him context

00:53:21.180 of enjoying life.

00:53:22.720 You said something earlier that I just thought was so incredible and I can't stop thinking

00:53:26.300 about it. This idea that Sully basically said, you are only a pilot when you lose an engine.

00:53:33.840 Like everything you've done is sort of preparation for that one defining moment of your life. Have you

00:53:41.760 thought about ways that that extrapolates to what it means to be a father, what it means to be a

00:53:47.700 husband, what it means to be a CEO? What are the equivalents of the engine losing moment when the rubber

00:53:54.240 hits the road and all that other stuff is just there to prepare you for that moment?

00:54:00.120 The easy answer on the business side is you're only a leader in a moment of crisis. Otherwise,

00:54:07.680 you're just in charge. So, and you as a leader have to prepare yourself for the moment of crisis

00:54:13.060 and it's going to come. And unfortunately, because economically we've been in such a benign,

00:54:18.780 10 year period, there's a lot of people that don't have the temperament to deal with what's

00:54:23.780 coming. Maybe in a year, maybe in three, maybe next month. It doesn't matter. It's coming. There's

00:54:27.600 going to be a year. So that's the easier one is bringing your organization along to understand that

00:54:33.780 when things change, we're going to have to lead and doing fire drills around it and doing scenario

00:54:38.800 planning around, okay, what happens if we have a data breach? What happens if we have this issue?

00:54:43.240 What happened? Like all those things we do not constantly, but we do them enough to create

00:54:47.760 consciousness about it. And then time will tell. When the crisis comes, are you going to be able to lead or not?

00:54:54.100 I find it interesting when people call themselves leaders and they've never done anything in a time

00:54:58.880 of crisis. I'm like, oh, you're in charge. I'm not sure you're a leader yet. I think with kids,

00:55:04.160 we, like many other families, have had to deal with our share of experiences with teenagers that

00:55:09.060 are very, very hard. And our kids are in a good path and they're going to be great, but it hasn't been

00:55:14.180 easy at all. And has been really, and Brenda and I talk about it a lot, not only has it united us even

00:55:21.100 stronger to help our kids through their situations, but it is, I've learned more about myself through

00:55:27.980 being a dad because hard driving people like you and I think we know. And what you realize that your

00:55:34.000 key of being a father or mother is to find their gift and then to help them get to their gift and

00:55:42.200 accept them for their strengths and their weaknesses. And the last thing you want a kid to feel is shame.

00:55:47.860 And when we want something different for our kids than what they seem to want, there's a high chance you end up

00:55:56.980 shaming them without wanting to or guilting them. So I think for a parent to lead is to meet the kid where they are

00:56:07.300 and finding their natural bent and encouraging it and making them their various version of themselves. And that was not

00:56:14.860 apparent to me when I signed up for this. This has been with two teenagers that are super gifted and

00:56:20.400 super kind, but they are teenagers and they have to deal with a lot of stuff. You and I didn't have to

00:56:25.500 deal with. It's not easy. I'm dreading every second of it, truthfully, because I do think kids today

00:56:30.400 live in a world, maybe every parent says that. Maybe my parents felt the same way. Who knows? But

00:56:35.460 I think it's, I think it looks brutal to be a teenager today. Maybe what I'm telling you is that

00:56:41.400 you're going to have to grow up a lot to be able to do that. Well, that's what we've seeked a lot

00:56:47.260 of help and it's been great. And we have dug in and we've done a lot of research and we tried a lot

00:56:53.100 of things that haven't worked and it's a real commitment. And by the way, we're not out of the

00:56:57.820 woods yet. It's a, it's a, well, I mean, I'm just going to get incredibly selfish for a moment and just

00:57:03.120 ask for some advice. So how do you handle things like electronics and social media? Like what have you

00:57:08.360 learned? And this doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of your own relationship with your

00:57:12.100 kids, but even from other parents, again, you have a company of thousands of employees. You have a

00:57:17.560 purview into the lives of more than just your own. What advice do you give parents who are trying to

00:57:22.880 think through those issues? I'll tell you an anecdote. So last week, my daughter's school had

00:57:27.720 a trip to Disneyland and my daughter is one of the few kids in her class that does not have a

00:57:31.280 smartphone or a cell phone at all. So most of the kids do. And they're driving up and it's my wife

00:57:36.760 and another mom that are driving up in sort of the minivan. And there's the four kids are in the

00:57:40.640 back and three of them have a phone. And my daughter gets my wife's phone and they're playing

00:57:45.240 with it. And at one point my wife looks back and she says, all four of them are glued to the phones.

00:57:49.600 They're not talking. They're not interacting at all. It's like a road trip and they're all glued

00:57:54.520 to these phones. And so she sort of says, Hey guys, let's put the phones away and you guys got to do

00:57:58.540 something. You got to talk, you got to play a game, you got to whatever. Okay. Well, extract that moment

00:58:04.180 for a second. And you realize there is a lot of stuff that they're missing. And you could argue,

00:58:08.860 look, maybe they're getting things we didn't get that were better for them. Who knows? But to see

00:58:13.500 the lack of basic socialization concerns me, how do you, or what advice do you have to navigate that?

00:58:20.840 I don't have better advice than others. I think kids should be kids, meaning parents should decide

00:58:26.700 what are the controls. You don't give kid a remote to the TV and say, do whatever you want.

00:58:31.780 And I think my mom said, which I love raising teenagers is a tug of war. You ultimately must

00:58:37.620 lose because that's how they become adults. So there has to be enough tension. You can't lose

00:58:42.900 at 13. It's at 19. They have, but you have to be losing incrementally. Yeah. You can't be winning

00:58:48.280 and then lose. So it's a tug of war that you're the resistance. So you also have to think about it.

00:58:53.240 Kid specific. Every kid is different age specific, but you also don't want them to be the misfit.

00:58:59.100 You also don't want them to be missing out. And we kind of tend to project our reality into others.

00:59:05.000 They're going to live in a world where your kids are probably never going to drive. Your kids are

00:59:10.700 going to live with probably not even a cell phone. They're going to see screens in their glasses.

00:59:15.840 They're going to do all this stuff that you can't even understand. They're going to live in a mix of a

00:59:20.380 VR world and a real world. You want your kid to be able to be successful, happy, settled,

00:59:26.060 whatever it is, your goal in that world, not in 1982 of the VHS. So you also got to remind yourself

00:59:33.400 that this is a, you can't hold onto the past so much. And you know, I find very interesting. I have

00:59:38.800 this conversation with lots of friends. If you ask anybody, what is your goal for your kid?

00:59:43.700 They'll tell you some version of the same thing. Happy, well-adjusted, contributing, growing,

00:59:49.120 finding their passion, whatever BS we'll talk. And we mean it,

00:59:52.220 but then you watch the way we raise kids is overschedule, two sports, a trainer,

00:59:59.560 a this, a that, another coach, pre-SAT, pre-SAT, pre-this, take it six times. Did that really help?

01:00:06.460 Did stressing kids out to that extent, they're like, oh, why are they so stressed? Well,

01:00:09.860 we're making them super stressed. This culture is stressful enough. And I think as parents, we

01:00:13.820 judge so much of our own self-esteem by what others think about our kids that we fail to understand

01:00:20.180 what really is our goal. If you really want your kid to be happy, adjust or whatever,

01:00:24.400 you will do a lot of things differently. So back to your question of just remind yourself,

01:00:29.080 what is it that you're trying to do and try to align to that.

01:00:32.880 It's a great point you make about, you know, I was telling you a story before we started about my son

01:00:37.340 and that moment I had in that experience where I realized, man, how is it that I've let my ego

01:00:43.240 become tied up in his behavior? How is it that how he behaves in public as a five-year-old

01:00:49.180 and when he has a temper tantrum? I somehow internalize that as people are looking at me

01:00:53.780 as a bad parent. I mean, it's, it feels so silly to even say that out loud, but I don't think I'm

01:00:59.740 the first person that's felt that. And that gets carried forward. I think that is such a big part

01:01:05.440 of the overscheduling, overdoing it. It's hard. We make so many mistakes ourselves and we look at

01:01:11.620 each other. I'm like, what are we doing? Like it's a long race. I do believe, I think it was

01:01:16.300 outliers or whatever, but I do believe that the more you make kids feel comfortable and successful

01:01:21.540 in the race they're on, we judge ourselves against our relatives set. So put kids in situations that

01:01:27.560 they feel like they are progressing and they'll find whatever their ceiling is in a long enough

01:01:34.680 time. So many kids quit sports because we push them too hard too early. And they're like, this doesn't

01:01:40.000 feel good. This has produced no endorphins at all in the country. Right? So I think a lot of the

01:01:46.880 issues with kids in this age is the parents, not the kids. And we want to blame electronics and all

01:01:52.140 this stuff that are issues. But the issue is really that I don't think we're that honest as parents in

01:01:57.520 terms of our goals and our actions. Why do you think that has changed in a generation? I mean,

01:02:02.760 you've spoken a little bit about your parents and it's kind of amazing, right? So they seem to be wise

01:02:08.720 beyond their years. Your mom's comment about the tug of war that has to slowly be lost is honestly one

01:02:15.620 of the most insightful things I've ever heard about parenting. Were your parents as educated as you

01:02:20.660 are? I was born in a Latin family and my dad is an amazing guy, but my mom raised us four kids in

01:02:26.200 six years. And I think that the definition of one's life success is where do you come from and where did

01:02:33.100 you win? Did you help advance the cost of our race, the human race? And you do that through your family

01:02:39.080 first. And if you're lucky enough through your community, if you're lucky enough in a broader way

01:02:42.980 like you who are impacting a broader set of people. But I think the ultimately goal of life is to make

01:02:49.860 it better for others, starting with your kids. And I think my mom is the most successful person I know

01:02:54.980 because of what she was given versus what she gave us. How old were you guys when you left Puerto Rico?

01:02:59.680 I came to the U.S. to go to college. So I came to Boston College in January of 1990.

01:03:05.420 Oh, so your family stayed?

01:03:06.960 Yeah. Born and raised.

01:03:07.900 Yeah. Okay. What was that like to show up in Boston at 18 or whatever you were?

01:03:12.860 Ignorance is a wonderful bliss. If I knew what I didn't know, I would have never come.

01:03:19.820 I really think that ignorance is a bliss. I showed up as a second semester freshman because it was the

01:03:24.580 year after Doug Flutie and there were no dorms. And my parents are like, we're not paying for an

01:03:28.660 apartment. So I came as a second semester freshman. And they put me on a plane. They gave me 200 bucks.

01:03:33.780 My dad said, go be a man. And I got on a plane. I didn't even know how to go to the gate by myself,

01:03:38.920 travel a few times out of Puerto Rico. And what I realized as soon as I got to Boston is I didn't

01:03:43.840 really understand English. And I was ill-equipped to go to college. But overcoming that was the

01:03:49.180 greatest gift.

01:03:49.640 Why did you go so far into such a cold place? Why didn't you go to school in Florida, for example?

01:03:54.060 I don't know. My uncle said, Boston is great. So I said, Boston is great. Doug Flutie said,

01:03:59.700 I was raised in a Catholic school. So Boston College was Catholic. So I just, I landed. I'm

01:04:05.500 like, what in the world is this? And I ended up in the freshman camp.

01:04:09.220 Because you said second semester. So it's winter when you showed up.

01:04:11.500 And I showed up five days before anybody. I had 200 bucks. And I have lots of stories of like

01:04:16.480 completely embarrassing things that happened as I went through this. And because I was ill-equipped,

01:04:22.000 I was a misfit in every regard. And I never faced racism, which I did at the time. I faced all sorts

01:04:27.400 of things that I'm glad I did. Because it made me a lot more aware of what other people go through.

01:04:32.420 What had your parents or your mom even specifically done to prepare you for that moment?

01:04:37.220 Taught me independence. Taught me that.

01:04:39.740 Where are you in the birth order of the?

01:04:41.400 Three out of four.

01:04:42.360 Yeah.

01:04:42.700 Did the two above you leave Puerto Rico for college?

01:04:45.640 My brother, one above, is in Kansas City as a doctor. And my sister went and then came back.

01:04:52.000 After a couple of years.

01:04:53.020 Did you talk to them about it before you left?

01:04:55.020 Technically, my brother wrote my essays.

01:04:59.980 I think I gave him something in Spanglish and he wrote them and I got in.

01:05:04.280 Hopefully, they don't take my degree away.

01:05:07.880 If so, we'll find somebody to give you an honorary one instead.

01:05:11.000 Tell me about the remainder of those three and a half years though.

01:05:13.380 Obviously, it set you on a good path and you decided to stay.

01:05:16.480 Yeah. I came here wanting to go back to Puerto Rico and halfway through and I'm like,

01:05:19.860 I love this country. I love what this is about. I worked at Fenway Park as a security guard. I drove

01:05:24.760 a limo in the summers. So I was hustling, making money. My dad said, I'll pay a third. You get

01:05:29.760 loans for a third and I had an academic scholarship for a third, but you're responsible for your own

01:05:34.900 money. So it was the greatest thing. Yet, I don't know why I wouldn't do that to my kids

01:05:39.280 because it's very different.

01:05:40.940 Do you think about that? Do you think about your story of coming here as an immigrant,

01:05:45.920 having nothing is a story that many people can relate to. And because of your success,

01:05:50.900 your kids have a privilege that you've never had. How do you think about imparting on them

01:05:56.700 some of the, I don't know if lessons is the right word or internal fortitude or whatever,

01:06:03.940 call it what you want to call it. How do you think about that?

01:06:06.280 I actually think about it almost the inverse of what you said. I think it's really hard to

01:06:11.400 be our kids. I think we're giving them not privilege. We're giving them a big, big cross

01:06:18.460 to carry. And I feel a lot of responsibility for not bearing so much of a shadow that my kids can't

01:06:26.460 find their own son. And we travel, we travel in certain ways and whatever. What are you setting

01:06:30.940 our kids up for? I think it's really hard. It's a lot easier to grow up the way I did, which

01:06:35.920 I can do better. I think it's harder. And you have to set up a different game. You have to set

01:06:41.120 up a game that they feel they can win. And you have to get them thinking about the infinite game

01:06:46.460 of there's no end here. That's why so many of them end up in drugs and end up in other things,

01:06:50.700 because they say that's not something I can be successful at.

01:06:53.660 First of all, I actually think you're correct. I think both of the statements are correct. So

01:06:57.940 it's harder and easier and that the hardness and easiness are actually coexisting and creating that

01:07:04.320 dynamic. So you can't dim your own light. I mean, as you said, especially someone like you,

01:07:11.560 who's been kind of given this gift, we haven't even got to talking about Red Ventures, which I

01:07:14.980 want to in a minute. You can't not be Rick Elias. So how can they be your kids?

01:07:21.520 I think, first of all, it's not what you say, it's what you do. I work really, really hard.

01:07:26.580 I want them to understand that working hard is part of the way you achieve things in life.

01:07:34.380 To me, I don't have any issues with that. And as long as it's protecting our family time and what

01:07:39.300 matters to us, I think secondly, is how you treat other people. The best thing that you can do to

01:07:45.960 teach your kids how to live is to treat strangers with kindness. They're watching your every action.

01:07:52.560 They're watching. And by the way, you are a teacher all the time and not with your words

01:07:59.100 because they won't hear you, but with your actions. So every time you find yourself, which we all do,

01:08:04.220 getting upset about something with a driver or a waitress because something was cold or a manager

01:08:09.340 because they made you wait and you get a little righteous, which we all do, you're doing the

01:08:15.540 opposite. You're teaching them a behavior that is not going to help them. So I view our responsibility.

01:08:20.640 The best thing I can do is model hard work, model giving and kindness, model good energy to other

01:08:26.840 people, respect. We're lucky to know a lot of people that others will consider super famous.

01:08:31.560 And I treat them exactly the same way that a stranger that is doing whatever job and they see

01:08:37.080 that. So those are the things, the only things you can do. You can't apologize for your success and

01:08:41.160 you can't run away from it, but you have to talk to them about not, Hey, I want you to get into an

01:08:48.180 Ivy league school and I want you to do all this stuff. I, you know, I want you to find your gift

01:08:53.100 and I want you to figure out a way to give that gift to others. Again, that's a, I think that's

01:08:58.800 so well said. It's hard. And I'm, this is not a perfect journey, right? We're full of flaws in it.

01:09:04.040 Were you ever a person that struggled to apologize before 2009? And if so, is it easier for you to

01:09:10.060 apologize today? It was very hard. I'm very proud. I'm very competitive in those two things. And I can

01:09:15.880 rationalize anything as to why I was right. You know what, Peter, I apologize for things. I don't

01:09:20.500 even know what I did because I don't give a shit. If it's creating negative energy, I can really easily

01:09:26.120 say, listen, I am really sorry I offended you. It was not my intent. That's it. Move on. And I don't

01:09:32.160 seek to understand and argue the counter argument. I was like, does this really matter? Am I going to

01:09:36.700 remember it in six months? Is it going to change anything? Just move on. It's like a leakage of energy.

01:09:43.020 And when you leak energy, it consumes time. And that's your only currency. Imagine if you were

01:09:48.160 like your toilet was running of a hundred dollar bills nonstop. Like that's the visual. That's what

01:09:53.980 a silly fight is. You know, you probably have the longest list of anybody I know of things that don't

01:10:00.460 matter. What is on your list of things that do matter? What is worth fighting for? What is worth

01:10:05.380 being upset about? Those are two different questions. So that's why I might pause things that matter and

01:10:10.020 things worth being upset about. I think injustice is worth being upset about.

01:10:15.080 And obviously, based on everything you've said, it's not about your own injustice. When the Uber

01:10:18.800 driver doesn't show up and when the waitress spills your soup, that's not injustice.

01:10:23.020 It's, as you know, I'm attracted to places where the system fails people that can't help themselves,

01:10:29.740 that want to help themselves. That's kind of our sweet spot in all our social impact work.

01:10:34.160 Let's talk a little bit about that, actually.

01:10:35.460 I think to whom much is given, much is expected. And I think the best way to do

01:10:40.420 any type of social impact work is using your platform, not just using your wallet, if you can.

01:10:46.960 And so here I am, I have a thriving company with a lot of young people that are exceptional. How do I

01:10:53.020 put them to do something that matters to them, which is give back, thickens our culture, but also allows

01:10:59.980 us to do something that gives us a real purpose, which is leaving our woodpile higher than we found

01:11:04.960 it. That's what we talk about as a company. That's the only purpose of the company. We're not going

01:11:08.980 to go public. We're not going to sell. This is the infinite game. Someday it'll go to zero. Hopefully

01:11:14.020 someone else is running it. This is a way that we spend our energy together, the people we work with

01:11:18.580 and the problems we solve and all of that. So when you put it in that context of none of this really

01:11:24.380 ultimately matters other than advancing the game, I am attracted to injustices where the system is not

01:11:29.540 working. I'll give you an example will be undocumented kids. They're known as DACA now and

01:11:34.620 the Supreme Court is here in the case. And these are kids that were brought here without two years

01:11:40.440 old, four-year-old, six-year-old illegally. The parents brought them here illegally, but we don't

01:11:45.600 check education for primary school, secondary school, or high school. So many of these kids don't even know

01:11:50.740 Spanish or whatever the language is. They never really remember being in their country. And by the time

01:11:55.220 they get to 18, we said, sorry, you can't go to college. There's no federal financial aid because

01:12:00.560 they're not citizens. And then there is no in-state tuition in about 26 states. So their chances of

01:12:06.140 going to college are basically zero. And I'm not talking there's like thousands of these. There

01:12:10.300 was about a million of these in 2010. Kids that were zero to 18 that were investing all this money.

01:12:16.760 So even if you want to take the Republican side of this, which is a valid argument, they're going to

01:12:20.540 be a lot more productive if you educate them. That's the whole reason to do this. So they'll

01:12:25.180 pay a lot more taxes. So DACA is Obama passes his executive order where he says, okay, if you

01:12:30.660 graduate college and you are undocumented and you're within these ages, you can get a work permit.

01:12:35.440 So now going to college makes sense because it used to be that you got an education. There was no way

01:12:40.600 to get a job. And that's, what's getting debated right now. There's like 600,000 of these kids

01:12:46.340 with work permits. We have about, I don't know, probably 50 of them working at Red Ventures

01:12:51.540 right now. So what I did is- How many? 50. Wow. But we have 300 plus going through college

01:12:58.100 that we're supporting. So Golden Doors College got launched. We did our first class of 12,

01:13:02.720 then 17, then 25, then 30. We're now reviewing applicants for the next class. And this is the

01:13:08.980 first time we're using non-doc. So if you're undocumented, we're going to take a stance for you.

01:13:13.620 And if you deserve to go to college, you are going to go. Our top 200 candidates, Peter,

01:13:18.400 3.91 unweighted GPA. Unweighted. Think about the waste of talent. None of those kids are going to

01:13:25.420 college. Tell me what happens to those kids if they don't go to college. They end up working in a fast

01:13:31.040 food place or just waste time. Many times they don't even find a job because- Do they ever go back

01:13:36.280 to the country that they were born in? That's the problem. They don't feel culturally assimilated.

01:13:40.180 They're American. A lot of them don't find out that they're undocumented until they go take a

01:13:44.640 driver's license or something. They're like, you can't. It's very, very cruel for these kids. And

01:13:49.820 they're your kids' friends. And they're as American as our kids are. I find those kids did not commit a

01:13:56.200 crime. Those kids did not have a choice to move here at two years old. Those kids have done everything

01:14:00.760 we've asked them of the system. What is this country all about? Isn't this the country where if you want to

01:14:06.220 put in the work, we give you a chance? And so I find that to be a place that we put a lot of energy

01:14:11.240 towards. 18 to 24, there's about 5.5 million young adults in the U.S. These are not undocumented. These

01:14:17.840 are citizens. Out of school or out of work, terminally underemployed. 5.5 million. And I think

01:14:25.860 companies can do a lot more for them. So we set up a 501c3 call, Road to Hire, where we're training

01:14:31.460 these kids in coding, in tech, back tech, and all this stuff. And we're now opening the platform for

01:14:37.220 the company. So BOVA and Novant and other companies in Charlotte are literally hiring these kids. We

01:14:42.540 train them. It's an adulting school for six months. And we pay them to adult them. We train them skills

01:14:47.300 and then we put them in a two-year apprenticeship program. And we hold our hands for two years. We have

01:14:51.560 another program called Live Sports. Eighth graders in Title I schools in Charlotte are two years behind

01:14:58.680 on reading. Charlotte is probably no different than other places. Title I schools is assisted

01:15:03.580 lunch. And our belief is that hope has an expiration date. And that expiration date educationally comes

01:15:10.520 about that age. And sports is a universal language. So we have basketball, soccer, girls basketball,

01:15:18.340 where we bring these kids in out of the worst schools every day. We give them usually their last

01:15:23.680 meal of the day. We give them an hour worth of reading because we think if they can catch up with

01:15:27.960 reading, they'll extend their hope. And then we give them an hour and a half worth of exercise.

01:15:31.860 Every weekend there's activities. We have 250 kids now in the program. We started it two and a half

01:15:35.980 years ago. We're going to grow. We're going to build our own facility. So we're just trying to do our

01:15:38.960 part. Like it's our drops in the water, but they matter. And then for me matter after Hurricane Maria

01:15:44.700 that I did something for Puerto Rico. So we launched 7-8 forward 7-8-7. That's the area code. So we're

01:15:50.280 training right now. We're training about 70 young Puerto Ricans in the U.S. that we want to reverse the brain

01:15:56.900 drain. So we're going to bring them back. We're giving them real digital chops and we're going to

01:16:00.840 move businesses to Puerto Rico so that we can bring people back to Puerto Rico.

01:16:05.300 I want to go back to the first of those because you're not a dogmatic guy. You're not a self-righteous

01:16:11.800 guy. You're a very empathetic person. Help me see my blind spot, which is like you. Well, no,

01:16:19.820 no, you're one ahead of me. I'm first generation. So my parents came to the country with the $100 in the

01:16:24.600 pocket sort of thing. Worked like crazy and now we get to live this better life. And because I saw a

01:16:30.640 lot of that, I never really understood the sentiment against immigration. Now, part of that is because I

01:16:36.200 grew up in Canada. So Canada, very different from the United States on many levels. If you were to try

01:16:41.900 to explain from the standpoint of empathy, what do you think is the view that sort of opposes

01:16:48.460 immigration or opposes immigration reform? Because even though you're very clearly on this side,

01:16:54.600 you strike me as someone who can also see the other person's viewpoint.

01:16:58.200 I think immigration is one of the hardest issues for us to contend because philosophically,

01:17:03.680 this is a country of immigrants. Practically, this is a country that has lots of issues with

01:17:08.600 its own people. So this is not an easy answer that you say, okay, here's the solution to immigration

01:17:14.860 and anything that we as a country decide as a policy will have pros and cons. So I don't tend to

01:17:22.420 profess that we need to have immigration and we need to have immigration reform and we need to have

01:17:27.100 better controls and we need to figure out what we do with 10 million immigrants. By the way,

01:17:31.620 if we take all the illegal immigrants out of this country, we will not function because so many jobs

01:17:38.380 that get done today that you and I rely directly and indirectly, no one wants to do. Our unemployment

01:17:44.440 rate is sub 4%. So it's not like we have 18% unemployment rate and a line of people who want to do these jobs

01:17:50.520 and immigrants are doing them for half the money. No. There's no people that are sitting waiting to

01:17:56.640 do a job and these jobs no one wants to do. So I think this, we underestimate, but it's a real issue

01:18:03.120 and I think we have to deal with those 10 million people. I think kids should be dealt with separately.

01:18:09.900 These are the DACA kids. And by the way, both Republicans and Democrats agree on the undocumented

01:18:14.420 kids, but they don't want to give it up because then you give up all immigration issue.

01:18:18.820 Meaning it's the thin end of the wedge. Yes. Towards a slippery slope of this.

01:18:22.440 Right. And so that's what the argument has been. Well, I'll give you that. But if we do this and

01:18:26.840 I don't know if the answer is a wall or no wall, I'm not educated enough. We need controls. We need

01:18:31.700 smart immigration. We need, you know, the fact that we have all these PhDs that we're educating at

01:18:36.860 Stanford and all these places, and then we're sending them back when they want to stay here.

01:18:41.240 That doesn't make sense. Right. But it's not an easy answer. And there's a really good argument to say,

01:18:45.660 listen, we can't take our resources. And you open up the gate with Mexico and you have tens of

01:18:51.180 millions of people from Central America and all that coming in. We don't have our house in order

01:18:55.680 enough to be able to absorb that as much of a humanitarian as you want to be. But there should

01:19:00.600 be a thoughtful way that we allow different types of people to come in. Some decisions could be very

01:19:07.820 easy, which is any PhD out of our system. Some can be very humanitarian. We're going to bring in

01:19:12.580 this amount of people. Some of them can be very thoughtful in terms of skills. But everything,

01:19:17.840 again, I don't know enough, but there can be a lot around work permits. The problem here is that

01:19:22.540 it's an underground. It's an underworld. If you brought it above board and, you know.

01:19:27.380 About five years ago, maybe six years ago, I visited you at Red Ventures and I got to spend a full day

01:19:34.160 watching something you call the business review. I don't know why I came for that, but I knew I was

01:19:41.340 really looking forward to it. We must have been speaking about the way you manage teams. I think

01:19:47.320 it just interested the heck out of me. And I was like, can I come and spend a day watching? And you

01:19:52.120 were like, of course, we'd be honored to have you. I'll preface this by saying, I don't have a degree

01:19:57.140 in business. You went to Harvard, you have an MBA. But I was around a lot of Harvard MBAs and Stanford

01:20:02.280 MBAs and stuff because I worked at McKinsey. So I know, I mean, I've been around the block. I can talk

01:20:06.260 the talk a little bit. And I mean, they at least know enough to recognize when people know what

01:20:09.960 they're talking about. I have never seen anything like I saw that day, Rick. Your ability to process

01:20:18.320 information, to multitask, to make decisions, to sift through what was not relevant and to always be

01:20:27.040 asking the jugular question in the setting and context of more information than could be processed

01:20:33.140 by any person, blew my mind. And to this day, more than five years later, I still talk about that

01:20:39.820 day constantly. And when I ran into Dan, your partner, your co-founder, a few months ago, it was

01:20:47.580 the first thing I asked him about. How are the business reviews? Can you explain to people listening

01:20:54.120 how this idea came about? Because I suspect that anybody who leads a team in any domain will find this

01:21:01.140 to be illuminating. Yeah. First, I am humbled by your words. I'm not really sure that I buy all of

01:21:06.740 that. I think that I heard a quote that I love in life. There's two kinds of people. I heard it

01:21:12.300 recently from a good friend of mine, the humble and those that are about to be humbled. I think our

01:21:19.200 journey was such a struggle for the first four years. I don't know if you remember, we raised $2 million

01:21:23.540 and by November, we had no revenues and a hundred grand left. And it took us three years to get back to

01:21:28.900 zero. So when you taste your own blood for a long enough period of time, you realize that a lot of

01:21:34.920 this is you got to fight the fight and you got to stay with it and you have to stay hungry. And a lot

01:21:40.260 of this for me is avoiding complacency and all the things that end up killing most organizations.

01:21:45.540 So really you had two deaths.

01:21:48.320 Probably. That's true.

01:21:49.440 You basically tasted death on January 15th, 2009. And you tasted death a few years earlier than that

01:21:55.220 from a business perspective.

01:21:56.760 Yeah. And for me, I gave my word to my friends that I was going to do all I could. And I wanted

01:22:04.160 to go to my reunions. I decided we're going to hustle and we hustle. And by the way, I am so glad.

01:22:09.540 It's such a rich part of who we are, the humility that you see in our building. We have this beautiful

01:22:14.880 campus, but I see car payments. People see success and stuff. So the business reviews have evolved and

01:22:21.520 continue to evolve. One of our basic, and you know that I don't-

01:22:24.240 Maybe tell folks for a moment what Red Ventures does, even though I don't think that's relevant

01:22:27.420 to the story. I think if you were running any business, it would be the same way, but just

01:22:30.000 give people a bit of context.

01:22:30.840 So it's changed twice since you were there, but today we are a significant network of digital assets

01:22:37.980 that all have deep integrations into the different service providers. So we are trying to aggregate

01:22:43.720 lots of services that consumer price by owning assets like the Point Sky or Bankrate of

01:22:49.660 All Connect or Healthline. So we have about 130 million uniques every month into our network

01:22:54.800 of assets. And then we do very deep integrations with all the services providers, all the card

01:23:00.820 issuers, all the banks, everybody in healthcare, and basically trying to change the consumer

01:23:05.740 experience digitally. That's a very different business than we were when you were there kind

01:23:09.940 of five years ago. I don't know if you remember, but I don't believe that business should be

01:23:15.300 run with values. And I had this really interesting debate with Meg Whitman at the same

01:23:19.500 event we were at.

01:23:20.160 I didn't get to watch yours.

01:23:21.620 Yeah. And she's a much more accomplished CEO than I will ever be and all of that. And we

01:23:25.760 were talking about culture and she said, hey, it's all about your values. And then they asked

01:23:29.000 me and I said, well, to me, values is a noun. And I don't know how to run a business with nouns.

01:23:34.420 I know how to run them with verbs. So we have a set of belief statements. By the way, we're not

01:23:38.600 right, just the way that we choose to use the word, but we have a series of belief statements

01:23:43.080 that anchor our culture. And in the middle of that belief statement, the core one in the

01:23:47.760 middle is everything is written in pencil. It's a wonderful belief statement because

01:23:52.020 it helps us recruit. If you're somebody who wants certainty, you want all this stuff, you're

01:23:56.740 never going to fit in. It allows us to evolve and change our mind because the world is changing

01:24:02.100 so fast. So we're not anchor. And then it really gives us permission to experiment because

01:24:08.080 everything is written in pencil. The last one is we believe that our leaving the woodpower

01:24:12.220 then we found it is our purpose. So that's the...

01:24:14.840 Give us some of the others.

01:24:15.540 The first one is we believe in running up the escalators. So that means that businesses have

01:24:20.180 to play with pace. This is not about speed, speed, speed. This is about pace. The more reps

01:24:24.660 you get, the more you iterate through problems. And Business Review is an example of a place that

01:24:30.420 forces reps. And what that means is how do you organize your organizational design? How do you

01:24:35.820 compensate people? All those things really, really matter. Running a company is really like an

01:24:40.560 orchestra. There's no right way. There's no perfect song as long as the orchestra is in harmony.

01:24:47.040 Where you get in trouble is where there's dissonance in the orchestra and you see instruments kind of

01:24:51.260 going their own way. So for us, it's really important that we're playing at a high space.

01:24:55.960 That doesn't mean we work till 7 p.m. every night, but we work hard. We're very purposeful. We're small

01:25:00.320 teams. We're decisive. We're okay. Most things in business are pass fail, yet we are trained our whole

01:25:07.440 lives for grades. And I think where a lot of leaders get in trouble is this is why people have

01:25:12.700 a hard time prioritizing. This is a pass fail event. I'll put in 20% of the effort. I just passed.

01:25:17.720 So in the business, really understanding what's pass fail and what's great is a really important

01:25:22.220 kind of skill. And you do that when it's pass fail, you just run up the escalator. So that will

01:25:27.780 be another example. We're great people to work with. We believe that we want to be great people to work

01:25:31.540 with. And I think diversity really matters in a company because you make better decisions.

01:25:35.940 People not only feel accepted, they feel welcome. It is a way that it is important. But I think what

01:25:41.980 diversity does, it's lends the opportunity to create inclusion. And if you think about a lot

01:25:47.540 of our social impact work and all of this, it's about creating inclusion for people that are not

01:25:51.480 getting access to certain opportunities that we were lucky to have. So being great to work with is

01:25:56.440 to being very, very much attuned that we all bring something unique to the company and to the table and

01:26:02.040 so forth. But since they're all written in pencil, they're all going to change.

01:26:04.860 So explain how business review works. I know it has changed, by the way, but even the example of

01:26:09.700 the one I saw, not that you could possibly remember that day five years ago or whatever,

01:26:13.760 but you were basically in a room and you sat at a conference table and there were business leaders

01:26:21.100 basically all presenting to you. And what was the format? How did it work?

01:26:25.460 It's 20 minute meetings. No charts are passed, nothing in color, none of that. A couple of charts on the

01:26:32.900 screen are fine, but you got to be able to get to your point, right? No big PowerPoint decks were

01:26:36.900 being passed out. No. And you had to start the meeting. Okay. Here's the problem we're trying to

01:26:41.740 solve or here's what we're trying to talk about. Like you have to define your problem and then you

01:26:46.220 went through it and then we concluded with something. So there's many ways to organize

01:26:50.140 meetings. Amazon does it with, you got to write something. I think it's five pages and you come

01:26:54.580 prepared to the meeting. There's no right way of doing anything. As long as people understand

01:26:58.320 how you are going to calibrate work. But the pace of this was like nothing I'd ever seen

01:27:04.320 because I remember when I was getting ready to come forward and I wanted to sort of be

01:27:08.620 mindful of what I was about to see. So I could, if nothing participate by asking a question that

01:27:13.560 could be helpful. I remember them saying, okay, so it's a, I forget the numbers, 27 meetings.

01:27:20.200 And I was like, well, what do you mean 27 meetings? And they said they're 20 minutes each.

01:27:23.880 It's a 10 hour day. You know, there's an hour break in there and we keep it. Everybody understands

01:27:28.920 the clock. There is no, you play to the clock. One person would stand up there and explain some

01:27:33.520 problem about, Hey, we're doing this deal with AT&T and it's got to look like this and it's got

01:27:37.600 to look like this, but boy, we can't get this deal done because blah, blah, blah, blah. And you would

01:27:41.200 ask five incredibly pointed questions. And I was like, wow, I mean, that's amazing because 10 minutes

01:27:47.920 earlier you were hearing about something totally unrelated and you could pivot so quickly to this.

01:27:52.880 And then you'd exit with a plan, which is okay. Great. Here's an idea. You're going to go back

01:27:57.120 to your counterpart at AT&T. This is going to be the idea you're going to pitch. Boom, boom, boom,

01:28:00.680 boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll see you in a month. Let me open a window. I think it's an interesting

01:28:04.420 thing. I learned this from a good friend of mine that anything you do in life should be a three for

01:28:08.520 meaning at least three for some things can be a four for. And most people are happy to get a two for

01:28:13.580 in what I mean is you can do something that has many purposes. The quick example is you're going to go

01:28:18.700 play golf because you play golf. That's a one for if you go play golf at a beautiful

01:28:22.480 course. That's a two for at a beautiful course with your best friends and with great weather.

01:28:26.680 Great. So in business, the business review is the four for for us. It's a way to force

01:28:32.480 prioritization. It's a way to train people how to present. It's a high stakes environment.

01:28:39.060 Your team was so impressive. You're absolutely right about that. I've watched people. I mean,

01:28:42.840 I am a real stickler for having information presented and it just kills me to watch people

01:28:48.060 who can't get to the point. And there was not one example in 27 meetings of somebody who couldn't

01:28:54.220 get to the point. I think our strength is there's 2,000 25 year olds at Red Ventures that have been

01:28:59.920 trained at a level because of all this exercise that it's great. It's the best business school for

01:29:05.620 a lot of these young adults. The third is it forces decision making. A lot of those things were

01:29:10.720 tough decisions and the worst decision is a no decision. So it forces decision. And the fourth

01:29:16.580 is that acculturates. So it's a very much, there were teaching moments. There were things that

01:29:21.700 happened. You showed up with certain things, some things. So I'd like to set up as an organization,

01:29:27.880 if we're going to invest that kind of energy and time, something that has currency in many

01:29:31.900 different directions. How did you sharpen your sword to get to that point? Is it literally just

01:29:36.920 the reps? It's reps. Intuition is nothing else. I haven't seen something before. And when you start

01:29:42.060 getting all this pattern recognition, it's because you've seen so many times a movie. And the key is

01:29:46.480 not to see the movie, Peter. I think it's to be introspective about what happened in the movie.

01:29:51.960 So a lot of times I'll finish a negotiation and I'm like, oh, I screwed that up. I did not read

01:29:57.180 that cue. I was too aggressive. Last night I had a dinner and it was really great. In the last five

01:30:01.600 minutes, I fumbled it. As soon as I got in the car, I'm like, what did you just do?

01:30:05.920 I don't want to make you talk too much about it, but can you say a little bit more about what it is

01:30:09.440 that you think you fumbled? When you do a lot of interpersonal skills, the other person is talking to you

01:30:14.820 nonstop without words. And a lot of this is knowing when you stop. In my last two statements,

01:30:21.800 I lost some of the momentum I got with the other 55 minutes and I just knew it in their eyes. That

01:30:28.060 doesn't matter, right? That's just part of the journey. So my point being is you got to be super,

01:30:33.980 self-awareness is really important in life. Self-management is the key to success. Most people

01:30:39.700 are like, I'm self-aware. Well, can you self-regulate? Can you self-manage? Can you think about all the

01:30:43.760 things you think about and you teach around longevity and nutrition and all that? It's the

01:30:47.600 self-management part of that that matters. I would take it one step further. I mean,

01:30:51.560 I think the self-management on the emotional level might be the single most important of them all.

01:30:55.620 To manage how you eat and exercise, I think is much easier than to manage your thoughts and your

01:31:01.500 emotions in terms of how you interact with the world. That's so true. Yesterday morning,

01:31:05.720 I had a negotiation. Someone flew in before I came to New York and he was a pro. And the moment

01:31:10.540 he sat down, I'm like, oh, this is going to be a good one. He was a master chess player.

01:31:15.720 So I knew every time they asked something, he wasn't asking something. So you're constantly going,

01:31:19.780 okay, what's the question behind the question? What is it that you're trying to angle? What is

01:31:23.160 it you're trying to find? And good negotiation is when you can find currency that they value more

01:31:29.360 than you do. And then you find a way to make it work for everybody. When someone is a very good

01:31:34.500 negotiator and they're trying to do that, then you can almost play the inverse game. It's like,

01:31:38.260 can you create an impression of something so that you can create value for something so that you can

01:31:42.820 get something else? And then you're reading what they're doing. So it's really fun.

01:31:45.520 Do you teach this deliberately to your teams? Because I got to tell you, I don't think that

01:31:51.060 reps alone are sufficient. In other words, you could put me into a hundred deals to negotiate.

01:31:56.540 I don't think I could ever extract the insights that you seem to extract. I think you're doing

01:32:01.820 something at a meta level that few of us do, which is, it's what you said. It's not just seeing the

01:32:06.580 movie. It's knowing what the movie means and knowing how to recreate pieces of the movie in

01:32:13.320 subsequent movies. That's a totally different skill. I don't have it. I know that for a fact.

01:32:17.280 To start, by the way, I don't think I'm great at it. I think there's much better people. So this is

01:32:21.380 a journey that there's always someone better than you. So I'm in this constant journey and want to

01:32:25.060 get better. Out of all this aspect, so the moment you think, I'd finish negotiations, discussions,

01:32:30.580 we're like, oh, there was a pro at the table and it wasn't me. That was a masterful event.

01:32:39.420 It's happening. You kind of laugh, but when you're so attuned to it, every interaction is a game of

01:32:45.000 influence with your kids, with your spouse, with everything else. And it's not a negotiation.

01:32:50.120 Negotiation means someone wins, someone loses. You're constantly trying to influence with your

01:32:54.440 thoughts and then you're allowing other people to influence you.

01:32:56.660 What type of person do you run from in business?

01:33:02.380 Negative energy, selfish.

01:33:05.080 What are the telltale signs of that? Because when that's obvious, those people usually don't

01:33:08.740 even get in the door. What are the subtle signs of that?

01:33:11.820 For us, pronouns really matter.

01:33:14.880 We versus I?

01:33:16.260 Yes, but it's the subtlety on when you say it. Are you taking the credit for things?

01:33:21.000 So you may use the we, but it's all about you, right? So it's the next level of all of that.

01:33:26.420 So how do you internalize things? I'm looking for people that are really ambitious for something

01:33:31.660 bigger than themselves. And in that journey, they want to do well. They want to provide whatever

01:33:35.640 it is, but it's much bigger. If someone is interested in just one thing, I think we all

01:33:41.160 have a competitive drive, for example. So when I look at people, I'm trying to understand,

01:33:45.160 and this is a little bit what I'm trying to explore in the current podcast we're doing

01:33:48.520 with all the super athletes is what's driving your competitive spirit. And I've kind of honed it

01:33:53.580 down. And again, I plagiarized this from somebody. But you're either driven by competing and killing

01:33:59.880 a competitor. Think of Muhammad Ali or somebody, right? Like he needed to see the other person

01:34:04.160 stand over them. You're driven by fear of failure. I just interviewed Andy Roddick in the first episode

01:34:10.620 of this podcast. And you can tell he's like, listen, I was driven completely by fear. But what you see

01:34:15.520 is the first person is a warrior. And the warrior, unless they evolve, they know they'll lose the last

01:34:22.940 battle. And therefore they quit. And you see it. And sometimes in boxing, they come back for one more

01:34:29.320 and that's when they lose and whatever. The person that is motivated by fear eventually taps out out of

01:34:36.020 exhaustion. And the more successful that they become, the harder they fall. They're like, I got to run.

01:34:41.780 And I see a lot of friends of mine who quit at 48, 50, 52, and they have all this gas in the tank.

01:34:47.700 And I realize that many of them are driven by fear of failure. And they just don't want that.

01:34:52.720 The value of success is so much less than the pain of failing that they can't take the trade anymore.

01:34:59.380 The success became too significant. The third, and where I'm like really focused on is,

01:35:05.320 is the people that love to compete because they just love to get better all the time.

01:35:10.340 It's a race against themselves. One is like a race against somebody. The other one is a race against

01:35:15.400 fear. The other one is a race against yourself. And I find people that have that energy have a

01:35:22.500 better balance about it and can run the longer race. And if you see people like, I know lots of

01:35:28.280 guys that are in their 60s or 70s that are still refusing to let the old man or old woman in is

01:35:34.280 because they're driven by the game by getting better. Professionally, how much of your energy

01:35:39.040 is into your business versus your philanthropy? Not time, but energy.

01:35:43.780 It was 0% six years ago. It's probably 15% now. Going to go to 30. Eventually, it will be 50.

01:35:52.020 What do you want to accomplish philanthropically that you have not yet accomplished? And not just

01:35:57.280 necessarily at scale. Is there a problem that you have not yet gone after? Because A, you haven't

01:36:04.080 acquired the knowledge. B, you haven't thought of the angle at which you can have the most leverage.

01:36:09.040 But there's a problem that's nagging.

01:36:10.860 Again, because there's no winning. You're just advancing something forward. I am very motivated by

01:36:17.440 reversing a bunch of the trends in Puerto Rico. I'm not going to solve Puerto Rico. I may barely

01:36:23.400 do anything, but I think I can do something to start reversing some of the trends. I think the

01:36:28.340 bigger opportunity I see is how do companies become a force of good? How do business leaders

01:36:33.840 see themselves and their responsibility to be a force of good in their communities?

01:36:37.600 I think these platforms or businesses are so powerful, not just monetarily, but as engines

01:36:43.640 of people and problem solving and access to opportunities that I want us to become a bit

01:36:49.620 of a beacon of like, wow, you can be successful and be good at the same time. And they don't

01:36:56.200 have to come against each other.

01:36:57.760 Do you think that public companies can do that? Is that part of your decision to stay private?

01:37:02.440 I just, I don't like authority. So I hate having a stock ticker on my head. So that's why I don't

01:37:07.320 want to be public. But I think public companies today, this is a Milton Friedman kind of challenge.

01:37:13.700 And Simon talks about it in that book. It's a shareholder at the center. That's changing. Look

01:37:18.240 at what the business council just announced in the last couple of months. Hey, there's a bunch

01:37:21.680 of stakeholders here. These are pendulums that swing. When we get a fairly far left precedent in

01:37:28.220 our country, a lot of this stuff may change. And so these are pendulums. This is not new.

01:37:34.620 What challenges you the most in your business today? You get a great challenge. You play

01:37:38.700 basketball. It's still such a huge part of your life. You are so competitive with yourself

01:37:43.240 in basketball. What are you trying to sharpen your sword in business? I mean, you talked a

01:37:47.140 lot about negotiation. Obviously I can sense in you this passion to be better and better

01:37:51.540 and better at that and to understand the relationship and the dynamic because obviously

01:37:55.900 the best negotiation is one and when both people win. What other skills are you honing?

01:38:00.880 The answer you may not like, but I feel like I'm over my head right now. This is so much

01:38:06.860 fun. I'm like trying to run the matrix. We are in seven industries from financial services

01:38:12.500 to healthcare to entertainment. We're building a lot of tech and I'm not a techie and we're

01:38:17.940 a techie company. We have 800 engineers and I'm not an engineer.

01:38:21.160 How many total employees right now?

01:38:22.960 3,200.

01:38:23.840 We have 200 employees in London. We have 110 in Brazil. So you got to know countries. You

01:38:28.960 know, got to know markets. And most challenging is we grew organically for a long, long time.

01:38:34.660 So we were almost like a culture of settlers. So you came through our system and we've done

01:38:39.960 a number of acquisitions and now we become a culture of immigrants. And when your culture

01:38:45.820 is your competitive advantage, which I think a hundred percent it is, and you have added so

01:38:50.980 much newness to it, you know, leading our way through it is really challenging. And I have

01:38:55.600 no idea what I'm doing. I'm like Forrest Gump. I just show up every day and I give it

01:38:59.760 a really, you know, all my effort and I can't get fired, which is good. And if it goes to

01:39:04.520 zero, it goes to zero. I don't care.

01:39:06.600 Somehow I wouldn't bet on that.

01:39:07.760 No, for sure. I am a hundred percent sure that if Red Ventures went to zero.

01:39:11.440 No, no, no, no. I'm not sure.

01:39:12.620 Oh, that it will go to zero.

01:39:13.520 In 30 days, I'll be super happy to go to zero. I'm found purpose in something else. None

01:39:17.520 of this stuff really matters.

01:39:18.700 There are a few people who can say that with more certainty than you. But of course, that's

01:39:23.560 probably exactly why it doesn't happen. I'd certainly bet against it. If you go back

01:39:28.740 to the morning of Thursday, January 15th, 2009, and you could run into yourself as he's leaving

01:39:35.500 his hotel, rushing to the airport and you couldn't tell him what was going to happen, but you could

01:39:39.940 say anything to him. What would you say?

01:39:41.500 Don't miss that flight. That was the most remarkable, remarkable gift I ever got. And I feel bad.

01:39:50.720 There's people that were on that flight that will never fly again. I know there are people

01:39:55.400 on that flight that still can't sleep well. And I am really sorry for that. I'm really lucky that

01:40:00.240 the way it landed in my system was it gave me urgency, it gave me purpose, it gave me humility.

01:40:07.060 It gave me a game to play, which is a game of no regrets.

01:40:11.820 Rick, I can't thank you enough. I don't know what I did deserve two hours of your time today,

01:40:15.340 but you've given a great gift to a lot of people.

01:40:17.240 It's an honor to be here. You are one of a kind. I learn so much from you every time,

01:40:22.260 and thank you for being my friend.

01:40:25.920 You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast.

01:40:31.200 There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode.

01:40:35.460 You can also find my blog at peteratiamd.com. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my

01:40:40.940 subjectively non-lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to,

01:40:45.100 the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity,

01:40:49.200 science, performance, sleep, etc. On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

01:40:54.780 all with the ID peteratiamd. But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions

01:40:59.800 and comments. Now for the obligatory disclaimer. This podcast is for general informational purposes

01:41:04.760 only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health

01:41:09.140 care services, including the giving of medical advice. And note, no doctor-patient relationship

01:41:14.520 is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to the podcast is at the user's

01:41:19.880 own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional

01:41:24.040 medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical

01:41:29.540 advice for any medical condition they have and should seek the assistance of their health care

01:41:33.760 professionals for any such conditions. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of

01:41:39.480 interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures, the companies I invest in and or advise, please

01:41:45.000 visit peteratiamd.com forward slash about.

The Peter Attia Drive - November 11, 2019

#79 - Ric Elias： Earning the gift of life

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