YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Zschau

lines on the record: 80
first: 2024-05-28
most recent: 2024-05-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Do this. Oh, this is a real treat, Tim. And oh, I noticed that. There's a blackboard that's dirty and racers that need cleaning. Get to it. Yeah, there is literally”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I've told you my story and with some detail based on Tim's questions. But most important thing for you to do speaking to the audience is to do it your way. Don't just follow what it's recommended. Don't just pursue what others are pursuing. You enjoy doing, do it the best you know how. Good things will happen. And if you're thinking more about doing something different than you're currently doing, it's time for a change.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm proud of you, Tim, and I'm proud of so many people who you refer to who have taken my course. They've taken many other courses. They've had other experiences. But they go out and do great stuff. And deep down, I say to myself, well, I'm really glad I lost that Senate race. Because otherwise I may not have been able to do what I've been doing”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. Thank you, Tim. And now you know why I do what I do. I concluded a long time ago. I'm not going to be able to change the world alone. I said my goal in life is to live a life that matters. I call it leaving footprints. But I can better achieve my goal leaving footprints with your feet. And so that's why I do what I do.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was teaching at Harvard Business School in 1996, a course called Entrepreneurial Finance. And for the last class of the course, I wanted to end with a number of stories and share with students my philosophies. It was a captive audience. Attendance was mandatory. And I thought, what would be an appropriate message to convey? And that message, as we've talked about it earlier, parenting, teaching, the message is just do it your way. And so then I thought of the song My Way and I put some words to that song. This course's end is here, but I have in this final session a thought for your career. It is a most important lesson. As you go down life's path, whether slow or in a hurry, recall the Nike ad. Just do it your way.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to show you how to do the LP. It's a new dance, but it's easily done. In fact, you learned it in 261, just to make sure that you can do it. Listen close while I review it to the LP. Come on, baby, do the LP with me. We're going to pivot step day and night and optimize it out of sight. And then it went through a series of verses. With the details of the simplex algorithm, first of all form a big, strong line I that sit, you're looking fine. Behind that line, form one more Come on, everybody get out on the floor. Keep forming lines one after one when you're out of cats, then you're done. Now you see how I get my kicks. I've got y'all in a big matrix do the LP Come on baby do the LP with me We're gonna pivot step day and night and optimize it out of sight”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the most famous song I wrote was about the linear program, an algorithm, who is called the simplex method, where poor students in 1966, when I was teaching the quantitative methods course, had to learn how to do this. And linear programming was abbreviated LP, linear programming. And so I wrote a song about the algorithm that was mathematically correct, that if you listen to the words, you could do the simplex algorithm to achieve an optimal solution to a linear programming problem. But I wrote it in the form of a dance and went something like this. Come on gang, now gather around, see what your math prof's putting down, getting close and listen to me.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And even after I left the faculty as a teacher and I'd started my company, they kept me on the Stanford Business School faculty from the time I left, which was 1970, to 1981. So I could continue to be the writer of the faculty skits.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way back. And then I started composing using music that already existed. Then when I was in first teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, there was a tradition there where in the spring, in May, they held a joint faculty student event called the Spring Fling. And the faculty would prepare a skit. It had perhaps acting it had perhaps some songs and I became the writer for the faculty skits. And then there were students skits as well. My most famous song, I wrote many for those skits about various courses and primarily about courses. But then I'd also write the words and we had a take on On Batman and Robin, and we had”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, when I was probably in grade school, I would write poems about things like the busy bee is lively. All he does is buzz. But yesterday he stung me and now he is a waz.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now you're going to start a company. You don't know anything about that. And then the company did okay and we took it public and I said, mother, I'm going to run for Congress. Buzzy, you were just getting good at running a company You don't know anything about politics. And she lived long enough so that she saw me sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in January of 1983. And then she passed away that April.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but I may be unusual. Well, I don't know whether I'm this unusual. I like to get out of my comfort zone, do things I haven't done before. I believe that doing so enables me to learn, but the more I learn, the more I'm able to contribute to others. So, doing the same thing and being able to be the best at that, that's laudable. But my mother had a problem with me when she was alive. I started out with this teaching. I mentioned how I got into it, the Sanford Graduate School of Business. And after I'd done that for a while, I said, mom, I'm going to start a company. And she said, Buzzy, that was my nickname and my sister still calls me Buzzy in my high school friends call me Buzzy Buzzy, you were just getting good at teaching.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a unique educational institution, but we do have a few openings left for entering freshmen even this fall in late August. So if there are people who are interested in coming to get a uniquely valuable educational experience in a beautiful setting, look up Sierra Nevada.edu.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“to repay based on their income above certain levels. And if they never make that much, they don't repay. But if they make more than that threshold level, then they pay and pay more than the amount of the debt. But having students graduating with huge amounts of debt reduces their choices. And you asked me earlier, well, how do you choose what you want to do? Well, I want to change the world. I want to do things that will benefit others. Well, you have a lot of debt. You may not be able to make those choices in that direction. You have to focus first on, well, how do I make enough money to pay off my debt? So I don't know whether any of the people who are listening to this podcast are thinking about enrollment.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Challenges these days, as I just mentioned, was how do we do this less expensively? And I believe that there are ways in which education can use technology to reduce the cost. I'm not advocating, well, there will never be any more classrooms, but a combination of that classroom experience with online learning can reduce the cost of providing a top-rated educational institution. I'm also attracted to income sharing agreements. Perhaps your audience is not familiar with them, but rather than taking out student loans, there are sources of financing where the student signs an agreement.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if you want to go to a small college with small classes with dedicated teachers to be an entrepreneurial leader, both in your first job and for a lifetime of contributions in establishing and building enterprises or being a leading environmental scientist with entrepreneurial approaches to that scientific work or if you want to be like a writer, you know, Tim better than anybody. Writers aren't just writers. They're entrepreneurs. To the creating content, but then getting their content read. And podcasting, that's a way of communicating with people. I have friends who are photographers. They became photographers. They didn't born photographers, but they became photographers. But they're entrepreneurs. So here's a small college that I volunteered to lead until a successor with entrepreneurial leadership.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're not just teachers, they've done what they teach. It is a college in which entrepreneurship is pervasive. It has some real focused capabilities in environmental science, well, right there on the shores of Lake Tahoe, Keep Tahoe blue, environmental science is critical in that area. What a wonderful place to learn about that. It has a strong entrepreneurial-based business program at the undergraduate level. And then it has a marvelous fine arts and creative writing program. You don't go there to major in neuroscience. You don't go there to major in philosophy.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm focusing now on And my years of teaching are just part of it. But you look at higher education today, very expensive. A lot of students with debt may not be prepared for first jobs, may not be prepared for a lifetime of contributions. And so just in the last couple of weeks, I volunteered to be the interim president of a wonderful small college, Sierra Nevada College, located in Incline Village, Nevada, right on the shores of Lake Tahoe in the midst of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is a college that has a dedicated faculty with real life experience in the areas they teach.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, again, don't buy the books because they have lessons in them. Buy the books because they have stories in them. And there are a bunch of them. My colleague at Princeton, Derek Lidau, has written a couple of books and his most recent is built on bedrock. And a lot of the book is about Walmart and Sam Walton and how it started. And he went to the Walmart archives and based his stories about Walmart on those facts. But it's filled with stories about companies that were built by people on solid foundations, built on bedrock.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of setbacks and disappointments and struggles in order to do what they did. The same with all of those. It gets to what we were talking about before the preparation, the commitment to excellence. It doesn't happen overnight. People who achieve great things, even though it may look like it happened quickly and easily and everybody can do it, most of those stories have a lot of sacrifice and difficulty and disappointments and setbacks in them.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's kind of all I care about. And it's the stories, the stories that are inspirational. And it gets back to what we were talking about before with the case method where when I'm reading a biography, just like I'm hoping the students, when they read a case that they think of themselves in that situation, and what would I do? Reading biographies, well, that is a wonderful McCullough book on the Wright brothers. Amazing lessons of they didn't just go out, build a plane and fly it.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was little, when I'm talking about little, like six, eight, ten years old, there was a whole series of biographies written for children my age. Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin. And I would read those books over and over because their lives and what they accomplished were What I hope to do. So it was that set of experiences. There was a book on the Wright brothers. And these were written for somebody my age. Now you can read Walder Isaacson's book on Benjamin Franklin or on Steve Jobs or Walter Isaacson's book on Einstein. But it's the same thing.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't recall I don't recall I've always sort of marched to my own drum. You know, that's another thing. Maybe this is important for your audience. I always wanted to be different. There are people, particularly with social media these days, that want to be accepted, that want to be like if someone has a new kind of shoe or shirt, you know, others want to have the same thing. And so I've always had a desire to be different from others. And maybe that enables me not only to venture where others may not venture, but also to be satisfied doing something that nobody else is doing.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For them to be proud. But I've had from the time I was in grade school, maybe even in kindergarten or first grade, an overarching goal. And that is to live a life that matters, to make a lasting positive difference in the world. I call it leaving footprints. That's what drives me. people might say well my overarching goal is to be the richest person around or my overarching goal is to have a whole lot of adulation and be a celebrity my goal maybe even in a quiet way is to leave footprints on the world”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wanted to succeed. We both studied hard. We're both good students. We went to college. We did other things besides that. And we both wanted our parents to be proud.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes parents are the problem. The players are just fine. Parents are a problem. Both of my parents weren't raised by their parents. My mother was raised by her grandmother. My father was raised by his mother's sister. His mother died when he was about 12 years old. His father was in the German newspaper business in Montana, but he and his sister grew up in Omaha raised by his deceased mother's sister. And I think as a result of their not having parents, they wanted to be the best parents. And so my sister, we never had a whole lot of money, but my sister had ballet lessons and she was an exquisite ballerina. I had piano lessons and figure skating lessons and they just wanted to be the best parents ever. And I think they felt blessed to have Two children”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They never criticized me in those situations. They never put pressure on me. They were always supportive and proud, regardless of how well I did relative to what I could have done.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've got to live their lives. You can't live their lives. I think I benefited a lot from my own parents. They were proud of me whether I did well or not. I learned when I was maybe five, six, seven years old how to build radios and build motors in basement workshop from my father who had a degree in electrical engineering, but sadly during the Depression, he lost his engineering job and got into an assignment that really didn't have anything to do with engineering, but he stayed in it in order to provide for his family. One thing that I remember from my parents, as we talked about earlier, a competitive figure skater. And sometimes I didn't do well in a competition. I may have fallen, I may have not done a school figure. Very well, not up to my ability.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's almost the same. It's just that the students start a lot younger I believe that the best way to help people find their way, nurture them, is through encouragement rather than direction. When our children were young, we have three children. I coached 13 soccer teams. All three of them played soccer at one time or another. I was a Cub Scout leader and a Boy Scout leader. We're really proud of the way our kids turned out. We were lucky. They were growing up in a good place at a good time. Probably not a lot of the challenges that all parents face today with the world more complicated, with communications technology more advanced. Caring and letting them know that you love them and you care kind of the secret of parenting.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To have 160 founders of companies from that cadre, it would suggest to me that out of the total of 1,600, that there may be 300,000 founders. And I still am touched when I get emails from students, I may have had a dozen years ago saying, Ed, you planted the seed 12 years ago and it's finally sprouting. I have just founded my first company. It took me this long, but you gave me the confidence to do it.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exposing engineering students to that process and that opportunity seemed to make sense. And that was the origin of the first offering of ELE 491 in the fall semester of 1997. Again, an instance where I decided that there might be some value that I could create. The Princeton Way is pervasive across this campus with many courses, with many co-curricular and extracurricular programs for the benefit of student entrepreneurs. And the survey that I mentioned before out of 400 of the students that took my course forgetting about not including the courses, the many other courses that are now offering”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually the decisions that I make about how I'm going to spend my time and my life are made by me Rather than responding to requests, when I came to offer my course here at Princeton, I hadn't gotten a phone call saying, hey, Ed, would you please come and teach a high-tech entrepreneurship course at Princeton, rather in June of 1997, I asked for a meeting with the then Dean of the Engineering School, James Way. And in that meeting, I proposed that the engineering school would benefit from having a rather comprehensive program in entrepreneurship. It just made perfect sense to me that engineers innovate, but in order to make a difference in the world, that innovation has to then become real and commercialized and often in a startup venture.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was left open-ended. The goal of success rather than how long. I think you're getting to an issue where I may not be like a lot of other people. I don't do things for me. I do things for others. So if you want to get down to what motivates you, finding something that I think is meaningful that needs to be done and recognizing I can help do it. And it's not about the money. That's why I do things pro bono. My wife is not particularly thrilled with that. But on the other hand, I focus on where can I make a difference for the benefit of others rather than what's in it for me. And I don't know whether that's unusual, but it served me well.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's again commitment. I mean, I was part of a firm, general partner of a firm that had made a significant investment in this company, and they felt that there was a need for a new CEO. And so when they talked to me about it, it started out as, well, can you go in there and help out and be on the board and it evolved into, can you go in there and run it? And I wasn't going to say no to my partners.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every deal I looked at, oh gee, that's really interesting. I can see how to make that happen. And as a venture capitalist, you really have to be more realistic and maybe even super critical. But also at that time in my life, I viewed being an investor as kind of like a football coach. You walk the sidelines. But she never put any points on the board. And I was still in, at that time of my life wanting to put points on the board, meaning running a company, not being the better in the stands, but the jockey on the horse. And so when I had an opportunity to become CEO of one of the companies Brentwood had helped to start, I took that opportunity in a company in the magnetic recording components business called SenseTore.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do I do next to make a difference? And I'd never been out of a job. I mean when you think about it it was from teaching to starting a company running for Congress and now I didn't have a next what am I going to do next I had the opportunity to join the venture capital firm that was the lead investor in my first company and I accepted that assignment as a general partner of the firm it was Brentwood Associates at that time was a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm and I established the Silicon Valley office of that firm. I think they, my partners would agree that I wasn't really very good at being a venture capital investor. I'm too much of an optimist”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Least my view changing lives for the better my students over many, many years, that I may have, through not just their lives, but how they've changed in a positive way the lives of others that I may have made more of a contribution to a better future than I would have as a U.S. senator.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was very difficult for a single California congressman or congresswoman to get the message out. So I felt that if I have ideas, I not only need a message, I need a megaphone. And I decided that I could get a megaphone if I became a U.S. senator from California. I ran for the U.S. Senate in started in 85 for the 1986 campaign. I won the Republican nomination, but I was defeated in a very close election, about a percentage point, percentage point and a half by the three-term incumbent Alan Cranston. Looking back, I was disappointed at the time because I felt I wasn't a good enough candidate. I had lots of support and I'd let people down. But looking back, I dodged a bullet. With that very close loss, because since then I feel through leading companies and through”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a personal principle that I was only going to stay in the House of Representatives at most three terms, six years. And that gave me two advantages. One, a sense of urgency. I couldn't just kind of wait around and learn the ropes. I had to start making a difference as quickly as I was able. And secondly, I gave me the freedom to do what I thought was right. The worst could happen is I get retired, or maybe it's the best that could happen, I get retired after one term or two terms. Certainly, I wasn't going to serve more than three. As it turned out, I only served two terms in the House because as a congressman from California, I think there were at that time 48 or 50 California members of the House of Representatives. And we were a dime a dozen.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had changed the nature of the debate in Washington on tax policy from who pays and who doesn't to what will be the economic impact. And I felt, gosh, somebody who has built a company, somebody's had the experience that I had with working with Bill Steiger to get the tax rate on capital gains reduced. Perhaps I had a contribution to make in public service.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“of capital flowed into professionally managed venture capital funds compared to the 50 million a year that had been happening during the 70s. And anybody who studies the 1980s, that number on an annual basis, $4 or $5 billion a year flowing into funds that were supporting new enterprises and job-creating enterprises. So that experience, particularly because Bill Steiger died of a heart attack within a month after this bill was passed. He passed away in early December of 1978. The bill was passed in November of 78. His example inspired me to for public service.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then I went to Washington and testified before Congress. And there was a young congressman from Wisconsin, Bill Steiger, who was on the House Ways and Means Committee. He became intrigued with this idea of lowering the tax on capital gains. And so he introduced a bill to do so. And I worked with him and the whole electronics association worked in lobbying the Ways and Means Committee, worked with the Senate. And by November of 1978, about a year after we'd started this process with our survey, the federal tax on capital gains was lowered from 50% to 28%.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just for electronics companies, but all kinds of job-creating ventures. The task force put together a white paper, and usually that's the end of the story. Well, we proposed a lowering the capital gains tax, but keep in mind, Tim, that This was a group of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs don't just talk about it. They make stuff happen. So the first thing we did is we did a survey of the electronics industry and documented the importance of more risk capital investment for job creation and for the ability of the”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“50 million a year. I was asked to chair a task force for the American Electronics Association on Capital Formation to figure out what to do. And I assembled a group of entrepreneurs and investors. And we concluded the single inhibitor to sufficient quantities of risk capital investment was the high rate of the capital gains tax at the federal level at that time, which was 50%. And looking at it, if an investor invested and lost money, they lost all the money. If they invested and made money, they gave half of it to the federal government, forgetting about what they'd have to give to the state government. So we felt that lowering the tax on capital gains was essential to stimulating the environment for risk capital investment.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought I could be good at it. And here's why it wasn't just, gee, that's... Cool, like philosophy and operations research. In 1977, I was on the board of directors of the American Electronics Association. Electronics companies during the 70s were unable to raise sufficient amounts of risk capital. The amount of capital committed to professionally managed venture capital funds during the 1970s, funds that would be investing in tech companies was only 50 million a year.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is really a simple question, and it's answered with one word, commitment. I had situations where I had opportunities to leave companies that I was running. I would not leave until it was appropriate to leave where there was a successor, there was success. You're an entrepreneur and people are investing in you. When you're an entrepreneur and a CEO and employees and customers and suppliers are counting on you, you've got to have a commitment to do the job until you're no longer necessary. When I took the company public, my first company public, and it was about a 10-year period, and there were times during that 10 year, Where we almost went under. But when we had gone public and then did a secondary financing, so there was sufficient capital and then did a search for a successor, I felt that then I could leave to run for the Congress.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's also a lesson in this that things sometimes don't work out exactly the way you plan, but you've got to adapt and figure out how to segue into what will work.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he finally realized what was happening. And he was so smooth. He said, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what our opponents would lead you to believe. However...”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In speaking No, I remember my debate partner in high school and then at Princeton. He was one year behind me. We had started kindergarten together and then I skipped first grade so I was one year ahead of him. But when he was a junior and I was a senior we were debate partners in a debate team. There were two on each side and one you were assigned whether you were the affirmative speakers supporting the resolution or the negative speakers against the resolution. And I remember he was the first affirmative speaker and I was sitting near while he was standing and he got confused and he gave the negative case. And I'm sort of Making hand signals to him as he's giving the negative case against the resolution he's supposed to be speaking for, and I was going to have to follow up on this.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the style of presentation, it wasn't a sort of matter of fact. It was to Prepare what might be called a 10 minute oration with drama, with stories, with life lessons, and sort of end on a crescendo. And let's go back to teaching. I view teaching more about nurturing, about personal values, about inspiration, about recognizing that you can have fun doing great things. And it's not so much the lessons or the facts, but rather it's building maybe even contagion, this optimistic attitude and understanding that if you can change the world for the better, that's as good as it gets.”
2024-05-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #741: Jim Collins and Ed Zschau · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT