This is the full transcription of podcast 'Hidden Forces'.
How Technology is Advancing Networking & Accountability in Commercial Real Estate #Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
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This is the full transcription of podcast 'Hidden Forces'.
How Technology is Advancing Networking & Accountability in Commercial Real Estate #Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
What's up everybody? Welcome to this week's Market Forces segment of the Hidden Forces Podcast where I speak with market professionals, business people and anyone else with an economic perspective on current events. Today I speak with Ben Friedland, Executive Vice President and Co-head of Alternative Investments Practice for CBRE, the largest commercial real estate services firm in the world. In his capacity at the firm, Ben advises many of the world's top hedge funds and private equity companies regarding real estate investments, leases and acquisitions and is in a unique position to provide insight into how the forces of technology and globalization are changing this age-old, multi-trillion dollar industry for the 21st century. Let's get right into it. Now I want to welcome Ben Friedland onto the show. Ben, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Welcome to Hidden Forces. Excited to be here. What does it feel like? You're the first Hidden Forces listener to actually come on as (1/43)
a guest. I'm the first one? Long time listener, first time caller? Well, I mean, hopefully there are others who, well, obviously many of the guests have heard the show, but I think they heard it primarily because they were prompted, but you're actually a listener, so that's really great. We're getting into this. So, Ben, we're kind of friends. So I've known you now since it was cold the first time we met. I feel like we met close to a year ago. That's right. Right? You remember? At dinner. At dinner. Where was it? It was... It was in good memory, Ben. It was in Rock Center. It was me, you, Porzio and Todd Rollin. Porzio. We were having fish or something. That's right. Well, you're Greek, so we went Greek. Cool, cool, cool. All right. Why don't you tell our audience a little bit? I mean, I have many specific questions for you and there's a good reason I brought you on, but why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what you do? Sure. I am at a company called CB (2/43)
Richardella, CBRE. It's the largest real estate firm in the world. I'm located in the New York office and I run the Alternative Investments Group with my partner, which is a global group representing hedge funds and private equity firms for their real estate concerns. You basically sell real estate or what to hedge funds to private equity people. You also facilitate investments and what exactly do you do? It's the nature of your job. It's advisory. They hire me for advice when they're looking for their own space to operate their operations either in the city or elsewhere or investments that they have that they want to optimize or investments that they're looking into that they want to do some additional due diligence around the real estate. Those are all things that they'll look to me for. It's really successful, powerful people in finance. Anyone we would know? Yeah. It's a lot of this sort of Wall Street Journal type names and they're interesting type A personalities. Are you allowed (3/43)
to tell us anything about them? I'd rather go general then specific. We'll see if we'll get into that. That's interesting. For me, I was thinking about this because the audience knows this. We do a lot of episodes and then you'll know this as well because you listen to the show, but we do some of these market forces segments where the rules are relaxed for me and I can do things that are not within the bounds of a big structured show. I'm not clearly thought on exactly what everything is that interests me most about you and what you do and what it is that I wanted to bring you on here for, but one just simply has to do with the fact that you interact with so many successful people at the very top of finance. You've been doing it for years and I think it's interesting given also the fact that you listen to a ton of podcasts, not only this one. I would actually call you, I think I've told you this, I would call you the classic Tim Ferris listener. The way that you're very structured, (4/43)
organized, you have answers for everything that are clearly thought out as to why you do. I don't know. Is there anything, Ben, that you do in your life that you haven't clearly thought about? I try to be pretty thoughtful about everything. Sometimes people think that I'm being overly thoughtful, but even something like going away on vacation and having time to do something random, I would structure that time within the vacation to say, all right, here are the things that I'm doing that I need to make sure that I'm doing and then if I want to have some spontaneity. Structured fun. Yeah, structured spontaneity. Structured fun. Let me ask you this. Since you do listen to a ton of podcasts and this is kind of a phenomenon today that a lot of people listen to podcasts and a lot of people listen to podcasts discriminately in order to learn things, what about your clients? Is that you find that's common among your clients? Do they have the time? Do they have the interest? Yeah, I think that (5/43)
these type A's what they're very focused on in every way is time and efficiency. One of the great things about podcasts, unlike other mediums, is you can do them while you're doing other things, whether you're working out or for me on the train or cleaning your house, whatever it is that you're doing, your hands are free and you're able to transport yourself into a story or ideas that you can listen to while doing other things. I think it's taken off in the same way that it's of interest for me. A lot of my clients have found it similarly valuable. Let me ask you this then. This is interesting. We're kind of going off the rails now because this is not actually the question that I had, but it is interesting to me. I'm thinking about this because I remember what it was like for me when I went through this learning period using podcasts, a combination of podcasts and YouTube videos and blogs. Before that, of course, it was books. I would go to Barnes & Noble and I would just take books (6/43)
off the shelf. I learned much more after college than before because in college ... I'm not surprised at all. You're an auto-didact. I didn't like me giving a syllabus and being told what to read. I knew after I read this, this is what I wanted to read. After I read this, I need a little bit of that and listen to that. How do you listen? Let's say you sent me that one podcast by a Furnham Street with Naval. You really love that. I do. You have a whole structure to your podcast. You listen on overcast and you're able to put your favorite podcast or whatever else. How does that work? Let's say you hear something like Naval's podcast, the one with Naval. What goes through your head in terms of what you want to hear next, what you want out? How does that change where your mind goes? Part of it, I start out by saying what do I not want initially. I try really hard to filter out things that I think are noise to make sure that I'm hearing the best stuff. Once I ... that Furnham Street, when I (7/43)
heard Naval, I just love that guy. I said, I want to learn everything about Naval. Fortunately, there are lots of different ways to learn about people. I went through the same thing with Yuval Harari when someone had recommended ... He's very interested to listen to. When you hear it, it's just mind blowing stuff and you want to hear more. I will get lost down the rabbit hole of these things and follow them as they interest me. I think if you think of it not as any pursuit, but just pleasure of knowledge, then that's the best path that you can go down. I agree. That's interesting. We were talking about Sam Harris's podcast that he did with Ben Shapiro and Eric Weinstein. Did you ever follow up on Weinstein stuff? No, not since ... Have you ever listened to Shapiro's stuff? Yes, previously before the ... I listened to ... I hadn't. I heard one episode with him and this other guy at the Reuben Report. I didn't find it interesting. I didn't actually ... I found Ben Shapiro more (8/43)
interesting when he was contrasted to Sam Harris because of my views on Sam Harris's ... my opinion on materialism that I'm non-materialist and my thinking around philosophy, whereas Sam Harris is and I thought Shapiro made some points that I would have made. I thought that was interesting. Eric Weinstein really impressed me. I think he impressed you too. We were talking about this. I looked into some of his stuff. I started listening to him and he's a partner with Peter Thiel, which I didn't know. It surprised me in a sense because of just the vast array of his intelligence. Yes, there's so much stuff. There's a ton of stuff and you have to really filter. Do you feel like your approach to that is similar to your clients? Is that something that they do? Yes, I think we're all pretty ruthless with our time. We are really ... Just as an example, I know a lot of people like Shark Tank. I just looked at that a little more critically and said, I love new business ideas. That gets my brain (9/43)
going in a way that I enjoy. Then as you break it down, you've got the four judges propping themselves up or you've got false choices that are made or forced negotiations that are created. If you enjoy that sort of human drama, then that's all fine. For me, I said, all right, in an hour program, I'm getting 10 minutes of the good stuff. I'm trying very hard at one of the things in the Tim Ferriss book. I forget who initially said this, but unless it's a full body hell yeah, then you should pass. That's the way when you think about your time and whether you want to read a book or whether you want to see a show, investing time in a show, all these things, ideally you really want to filter through a lot because it's your free time. I think it's so interesting how popular Tim Ferriss has gotten. I got another buddy, Dan. He runs his own CrossFit. It's called North Tribe, I think, or North. It's in the North Fork. He's a great guy and he loves Tim Ferriss. He's very much like this. He's (10/43)
always thinking about how do I get better? How do I improve? I think it's really interesting. On that point, let me ask you something. You've got three kids, right? Three kids. Three kids. Age group? 13, 10, and seven. What are the things that I think about, and I think I mentioned this in my interview with Heather Berlin, I think I did with her, but regardless, it has to do with discipline. I've thought about this sort of theoretically. What do I think if I had children, what would be the single most important attribute that I would want to inculcate in them? I think that in today's world with the array of distractions, it would be discipline. I wonder to you how important that is, discipline in your own life, and then how important that is for your children and how you see that. It's a great question because part of these things you'd like to think of them is that they work for everyone, but really there's individuals who, here's a good example. I'm a morning person. I really believe (11/43)
in the morning is the beginning of routine. The morning is good for everybody if you can start your day earlier and do good things earlier. But if you run across someone who just says, I'm a night person and I don't like the morning, then there's only so much you think your good advice can do for that person. So if similar interactions with my kids at varying ages for various things, but what I like to do is sort of explain on the higher level theoretically what discipline provides and say things like the more things we make routine, the more we can accomplish and talk about it in that sense so they understand where we're coming from instead of, I think the word discipline for kids can be, sound like a negative when it really can be a positive. You need discipline. You know what that's from, right? It's a horrible impression. That's kindergarten cop. I couldn't do it. You don't have a tumor. Oh man, he was amazing. God bless him. God bless him. He was so amazing. Did you hear the Tim (12/43)
Ferriss episode where he interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger? I didn't, but I will say I watched Terminator 2 and you and I both share a love of AI in the future and Skynet and what's going to happen there was pretty prescient early on. Yeah. I'm a cybernetic organism. I love it. Skynet became operational. Oh man, he was amazing. He was amazing. Listen, he was amazing. You got to hear the Tim Ferriss episode, dude. You want to talk about, let me tell you something. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a business, brilliant business mind. He was a millionaire before he- Real estate, right? Yeah. Or he goes back to real estate. Well, he was, so do you know the story? It's really great. In the 70s, he said, he's like, buck then, everything was like, everyone was into European. Right? Everything was like, so they, Kim and Franco, the Italian bodybuilder guy, the short guy, they created this brick and construction company, whatever. That year they created it, there was a huge earthquake in California at (13/43)
some point in the 70s. All these houses lost their time. They were right there to do all the work. He had this whole thing and he told Tim, you got to hear it. It was really funny. He was talking to Tim Ferriss and he's telling him what the strategy was, right? You're going to get this because you're a sales guy and you know exactly about all this stuff. You've talked to me about answers that you get and people tell you know. You have a whole system. Schwarzenegger, he said that the guy would tell Schwarzenegger how much he was willing to pay. Schwarzenegger would go back until Franco and Franco would start yelling and screaming and the guy would be like an Italian and then the guy would get really scared and he'd go, hold on, let me go back and soften the meat. I'll soften the meat. He said, you go back and convince Franco and there's this whole thing. I wish I remembered. Good cop, bad cop. Yeah, really funny man. But anyway, I always thought that Schwarzenegger, for all his (14/43)
failings, moral failings and everything else is a really fascinating, interesting guy who, and you've seen Pumping Iron, I mean for me like he really is like the manifestation of someone who wills success. Who like, you know. You can see why Tim Ferriss would be attracted to him. 100%. And you know one other comment about how you ingest this stuff from Tim Ferriss, you know one thing about his book that I think a lot of people find attractive is you don't really have to go chapter by chapter if something does, and he says right at the beginning, if something doesn't stick move on and I think that's a recipe for ingesting information in general right now. And I've all said that too in the podcast you sent me. Yeah, yeah. So don't, you know, don't feel like you have to read whole articles, don't feel like you have to read whole books, especially ones that are now being designed in a way where you can snipe what you want out of it and not have to take time on things that you don't want. (15/43)
What's that app you use that you told me about? Yeah, Blinkist. So that is a perfect example of something that I love where, so Blinkist is an app that takes nonfiction books and truncates them down to, you know, 10 to 15 sort of key points and then some further drilling down on those key points. And look, if it's in replacement of you reading Walter Isaacson's Einstein book, then that could be a bad thing. But for me, I wanted to read it and knew I was never going to read it. Like James Glakes, The Information. I read dinner. I read it. Yeah. You read through it. I read it the next day. You recommended a book at dinner and in two days, you know, I feel like I got, you know, maybe it's not 100%, but that 75% is good enough for me for the core concepts for the book. I got another question for you. And actually, I didn't structure it this way when I wrote it down, but I thought about it this way now as I'm looking at it. And it's basically about trust, about how important trust is, (16/43)
right? You know, specifically in your line of work, I mean, but I think it's a life principle because I remember Portcio told me about how you guys met. Now, you were, if I'm not mistaken, they were, you were pitching them. Why don't you tell me? Because I hear, yeah. So he was with MDC. He was with MDC and he was the person who was making the hiring decision. So David Portcio also for the audience, I've mentioned David once before, but he is now a partner with Hidden Forces and he's helping me build the company to kind of, you know, scale it out beyond just the podcast. So go ahead. So he was introduced to someone else at CB who's a great broker or a great guy, but not really a contemporaries of David. So they didn't connect in a way that gave David the comfort that he needed to say, I'm comfortable making this decision. And you know, as you said, really all of these things are ultimately about trust. You can't convince someone of anything. You can't sell someone anything. You can't (17/43)
do anything with anybody until they trust you because they won't believe anything that you're going to say if they don't trust you. So you have to start there. Do you think that people can learn to be trustworthy or are you born that way? And you just have to tap into it, maybe let go. I mean, it's interesting because I've never actually had this conversation because I'm thinking there was a point in my life where I let go of enough fear that I could be that way. And not be concerned with the ramifications being bad as long as you were being truthful. Yeah. In other words, that my deceit or my deceitfulness, I think was a function of my insecurity. And so when I kind of got into a place where I felt just safer, I wasn't worried so much. And that kind of also speaks to this other thing that I think you and I talked about before, which has to do with collaboration. And there are many people who operate in this sort of fear based mode. So they hoard everything. They hoard their ideas. (18/43)
They hoard whatever it is. Instead of just being open, just spreading it and it comes back to you because you're not afraid to share it. Yeah. That's right. Well, I would start by saying I'm a big believer in environmental theory. So if you're in a game, when I say game, let's say a profession, if you're a car salesman and someone is going lot to lot and you need to sell them on buying a car and there's no advantage for you, for them to get educated at your lot and then go to another lot, then everything that you're doing is going to be motivated towards making that sale in that moment. So the job is to do. And I always loved Charlie Munger. It's just incentives are everything. So it's hard to fight incentives. I feel fortunate, I've talked about this with my father a lot, that I'm in a profession in an industry where being good over the long term is a value for me. So I'm pushed in a way where there is no scenario where I do something that's against my client's best interest because (19/43)
at this point in my career, anything that I would do against my clients is against me and my reputation and the work that I do. So they know at this point that everything that I'm doing is with their long term best interest in mind. And that's really the most powerful thing because then when you do want to give a recommendation to them that is a little bit outside the box, they trust that it's coming from a safe place. Did you have anyone that you looked up to that wasn't, let's say, your father or a school teacher growing up? Like someone that was like a hero? Like we talk about, I'm not saying Schwarzenegger was a hero, but we talk about someone like that, someone that's outside of your immediate circle. That's a good question. I would say I didn't have anyone, certainly in any sort of a work capacity until I was at CBRE for a few years. I met a woman named Mary Ann Ty who I always say is the LeBron of real estate. I love that. It's just not fair. She's just more talented. Isn't she (20/43)
the head of the company? She's one of the heads of the tri-state region, but she's really an icon. And just someone, there's a quote by Supreme Court Justice Sonja, Saddamayor, about if you have your mentors, it's one thing to have mentors like Derek Jeter where you say, that guy really handles himself well and that's someone that I want to emulate. It is an entirely different thing than the specific goals that you are looking to accomplish. There's someone who you interact with on a day-to-day basis and get to see how they handle themselves in all the different situations ethically and business-wise, how they handle all of that and grow from that. Quite a privilege. Yeah, so I feel very fortunate and I love, I think a big part of the whole sort of Tim Ferris-Naval revolution is that you should always be learning. You should have tons of mentors. You should have tons of mentees. I'm 42. I feel like I have a lot on both sides and it's something that I don't think is age-specific. I'd (21/43)
like to think of myself as an 85-year-old trying to learn from a 20-year-old about what the new stuff is. How has that affected your hiring, the way that you hire people and also you talked about being on both sides, I assume you mean also being a mentor to someone else, right? Yeah. In fact, when was your first experience actually being a mentor to someone? What age did that come? I would say that right when I got to the second step, at the beginning of my career, it was a lot of really laborious type stuff, actually foot-walking buildings, going floor to floor in skyscrapers, writing down the names of the companies and getting the phone numbers and calling them up. It was pretty laborious at the beginning. Once I figured out how to do that and do it well, even from the second stage, I was mentoring people below me on some of the ... A lot of times you're the closest to it. If you've just accomplished something, you're the best person. I was the best person at the company to give the (22/43)
advice on what I had just done. You know, when you're in that position, right, and someone comes to you for advice, or is it sometimes also you want to give that advice, where do you think that comes from? How does that feel? Where does that come from? Well, a few things. Number one is I think part of it is who you are. Some people are shares and some people are takers. But I do think that in today's environment, just from a practical business sense in the Yuval Harari sort of theme, sharing is the key because of the increased transparency in business and the increased demands of clients to make sure that your service is absolutely a game all across the board. What that requires is more disciplines brought into the business. If someone, just as an example, if someone hires me to find them a data center in Connecticut, I have to bring in the Connecticut expert and I have to bring in the data center expert. So for everything that you want, whereas teams may have been three or four (23/43)
people, now I'll have a team that could have five or six people. It's just my industry, but I would imagine and I've seen in others that the teams are getting larger to ensure that the full offering is provided. So I still do see some people who are acting as loan agents and for whatever reason, maybe they're supremely talented, they have certain relationships to keep the business, but I'm finding it harder and harder for those people to compete in a world where other people are collaborating against them. I think the desire to mentor is one of those innate biological yearnings. I think if you're a man, it's a fathering instinct. If you're a woman, it's a mothering instinct. I think it's something that just comes inside. You care, you want to impart some knowledge, something you learned. You might have also some longing for immortality. You can get into complex sort of psychological things. Indeed. I mean, I know people that on a separate note, speaking about immortality and about (24/43)
death and death anxiety and all this stuff, people, a lot of people that work late into their lives maniacally, because I think on some level, they hope illogically, obviously, rationally that they'll be able to be too useful to die. There's a sense in which if I stop working, if my life is defined by work and I stop working, then what is my life? Which has always been my fear of working so much that you've got nothing else. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. You want to fill out the rest of it. We probably both know people like that. We've met people like that. Yes. I always remember the 30 Rock when Alec Baldwin was on his deathbed. I haven't seen that. It was great. Tina Fey comes up to him and he basically says, I thought about it. My whole life, the only thing I was ever good at, just looking back, I should have worked more. Oh, man. That's really funny. All right. You mentioned technology there. I did mention that when I introduced you at the top of the show before you were here. (25/43)
I do want to feed that a little bit, because you and I have talked about it. It's this interesting idea that particularly, it's really social networks, like LinkedIn or Facebook or anything where you can amplify the power of your network so that your reputation is able to go much further. If you have a great reputation, if you're got like Tim Ferriss who has a very good reputation, it travels far and it's really empowering. Is that kind of what you're getting at? Is that ... Yeah. You think of when I first started in 1999, if you were going to a meeting and you present your services and then you leave, what did everybody ask for? They asked for three references. At best, they're going to have some follow-up phone calls with three people that you hand selected for them to call to have a 10-minute conversation maybe a little bit longer about whether you're the right person or not or your team. Now, even before you show up for the meeting, they know exactly who you are. They've read your (26/43)
LinkedIn profile. They've seen articles or quotes that you have. They Google who you found this interview. They found this interview. Listen to this interview. You're a smart guy. Interesting. Right. I like him already. There's just so much more information that is available. What that means is in the two categories, in terms of being a good actor and in terms of the value proposition, they both really need to be there in a way that they didn't previously because it's easier for the end user to figure it out. Let me ask you something else because I want to circle back a little bit this mentoring thing because you touched on hiring. This is interesting to me because until once I started to be in a position and this started my late 20s to hire anyone, it's been an interesting process of the self-discovery for me. It's something that no one ever taught me. I unfortunately didn't have anyone a mentor besides my father as a personal. Yeah, really my personal life. I didn't have anyone a (27/43)
business and that's a shame. I would have liked to, but regardless I didn't. Some things just I had to learn on my own. I'm curious about what your approach to hiring is or interviewing is. How do you do that? Well, I'd start by agreeing that it's really difficult. It's hard to find the right person and know how they're going to fit over the long term. To find them to begin with. Yeah, just to find them to begin with. Let's talk about that a second because this is really interesting. We're talking about technology. This is one of those things. I think it's analogous to dating apps now that I'm listening. It's like dating apps. You've got the same technology. You can't find a decent date or you're not going to find your future wife very easily by going on Tinder or on any of these other apps. In the same sort of way you've got LinkedIn, you've got all these other apps. It's not like you can just find the perfect employee just by going on there. I think it's really hard. It's really (28/43)
hard. You need people around you who have a sense of what you would want so they can do the initial filtering ideally. What I would say, the number one thing I would say, at least it's worked for me, is you may not exactly have the role that fits that person perfectly, but if you think that that person is a talented, motivated person, then you should bring them on board. That's what my partner and I have done recently where the people, what we thought that we wanted and what the people then presented to us wasn't an exact fit. We said we just believe these people are of real value and we'd like to bring them aboard. Do you have a top three characteristics that you need to have for someone? Certainly, number one that jumps out is self-motivated. Nobody's got the time to motivate someone, so if you're not self-motivated, I just ... And resourceful. That kind of goes together, right? You don't need to ask me for an explanation for everything. You can figure it out yourself. That's right. (29/43)
That's right. Otherwise, it's a nightmare because then you're doing more work than you did before you hired the person. The training anyone green is you really have to make sure that your return on investment is going to be good because teaching that the low-level stuff in any profession takes the most time and is the lowest return on value. That brings us back to trust, right, in collaboration, right? Because if you train someone, there are people that are worried about training someone, giving them all this great information, and then they leave the company. You should be able to let people be free to leave, but they should want to stay, right? It seems to me that the sort of millennial contracts that they are looking to sign are much shorter term and much more ... The dream is dead of staying at a company for your entire career and retiring from there. The offering from the companies need to align in some way with the employee's long-term goals. What I've always found is you can't (30/43)
fight against incentives. You just won't win that sort of a thing. What I say to the people that work with me is I want this to go as well as it possibly can, and I want this to be of value for you. If at any point you think that this isn't working for some reason, let's make sure our values are realigned. If at that point it just doesn't make sense, you want to do something different, I will never inhibit your growth. That's happened a lot where there have been people that have left the firm. I've seen people make huge mistakes, not just in my firm, at other firms, that when someone's leaving that was of value to them, they lash out and they're upset because it hurts them selfishly. It hurts them when their right-hand person leaves or when someone of value to them leaves. That's, hey, it's not nice and it's also not smart because that person goes on to another position of prominence within the industry. They remember, hey, who was my friend, not when it was just in their self- (31/43)
interest, who was my actual friend? That brings up our friend Portzio, because he is a perfect example of someone that understands, in my view, the idea that just because someone isn't directly working with you, that they can't be part of your larger modernization engine. He has lots of people that he will do favors for or do things for me. David and I met more than a year before I started Hidden Forces. We've been in touch ever since and he was very gracious to introduce me to lots of people during that process. He was the perfect person for me to bring on as a partner in this company. That brings us back to this point of this disintermediated world, technology makes that very possible. You have all these people in your extended network and you can think of ... and that's very entrepreneurial, right? You can say, all right, I know David, I know Ben, I know this guy, I know that guy, I know this girl, I know that. I know all these people and I can make this deal happen in my head with (32/43)
all these people. I know what I need or this person over there who needs this, I know this guy, I'll bring him in touch with that guy and I'll make that work. That's a huge skill. Connecting people is hugely valuable. You have that as well, I'm sure. Your position and being an intermediary for so many very successful people makes you probably an extra fluid conduit for that. Yes, especially in a job flow. I'll know the companies that are hiring, that are firing, I'll know the good people that are out there for whatever reason. There's nothing more fun, frankly, for me than to connect someone that I think is of value and care about to a company that I think would find them of value. All I do is make the connection and they take it from there. They work, you think about the investment of my time, how long did that take me to do and that could change someone else's life and it's just amazing karma. You just feel great about it. I agree with self-motivation. I think another one for me is (33/43)
integrity. It's a pretty simple one. Another one for me, which I don't know that this applies for everyone or it needs to apply, but given the work that I do, I need to feel like the person I hire and this is very rare and so this is why it's very difficult for me to hire, needs to be very passionate about the vision that I'm sharing because it's not about me or I don't want it to be about me or about her or about him. I want it to be about this vision and this collective future that I'm moving. That also speaks to the responsibility I have as a leader to be able to have a compelling vision. They say money is a short-term motivator. If you're really trying to do great work, have great people doing great work, you have to motivate them in a way beyond money. Now, you have to start with the money just to get to base, but after that, if you really want them up at night thinking about how to make the team project better, then you really need someone who believes in the long-term vision and (34/43)
you're right, it's up to the leaders to provide that. For all the shit that Steve Jobs got after Walter Isaacson's book came out and everything at the end of the day, the one thing that Steve Jobs did for sure was motivate people with a great vision and it was backed by his own passion for that vision. That's the thing that I always respected about Steve Jobs among many other things is that in an age where there are so many people, unfortunately, who are concerned with themselves and so much of their work and whatever they do, in particular in media, and that's one of the reasons I created this show because I think so much of media is self-indulgent, is that Steve built this remarkable vision company and his focus always was on Apple. You could hear in the way he talked about it. It was palpable in everything that he was doing. That's right. Let me ask you this before we go, Ben. I want to have some fun questions for you. We talked about movies. I know you're a Matrix fan. We talked (35/43)
about that. What are your top movies? How important? There's movies, there's music, there's video games, there are books. I don't know which one is your favorite category and then from there, what are your top things? It's changed over time and even the importance of it all. I remember very clearly that I always thought that movies and music were very important to me. I used to, when CDs were what were bought, I used to take the boxes in my entire room at home with all the CD boxes on the walls. I thought it was the coolest thing at the time. I remember meeting my wife in college and she had six CDs to her collection. I remember reprogramming myself and saying, I guess that isn't one of the most important things to me. You don't need everything from all people or from all different types of medium. What I would say is I'm less movie-ish now because of, I think the best content is on series. I'm a wire fanatic, David Simon. I love you. Just breaking bad. I find a lot of commonality with (36/43)
my friends and clients in enjoying those types of shows. Everyone really has to recommend a movie to me pretty hard. I think the filter for all this is you find the 10 or so people in your life that you just trudge their judgment of your own likes. They have to know you well enough to know what you would like and what you wouldn't to recommend it to you. Otherwise, it's too hard. You need these human filters on everything to figure out what is worth spending your time on. Have you seen Gattica? I'm a massive Gattica fan. I was going to say. I was going to say. I'd also say all these movies from what I would consider my childhood or a little bit older, rewatching those. I just rewatched Shawshank with all my kids. Some might say a seven-year-old, a little young to watch the sodomy scene, but we fast forwarded that part and the rest of it was great. That was a scene. We would just watch Memento last night. I just find for kids, I was thinking about this last night, for kids, anytime (37/43)
you're sort of giving them a theory about another way of life, it is all theoretical to them. Because they're not in it. So you could say, hey, there's all these kids on this continent that have no food. Aren't we so lucky that we have food? And they can't really, just from those few sentences, they can't really envision that in an impactful way. And I was thinking about it last night as we were watching a movie. The movie is actually the best way. If you can get them a three-hour, two-and-a-half-hour block of being in a different world and wholly transported to a different place, I find that after those things are when we have the best conversations about different things. So when you watch the Matrix with your kids, right? Yeah. So I'm very curious about this. First of all, did you watch it with all three of them together? No, because I love it so much. I watched it with the eldest years ago. So what was that like for him? And what was that like for you watching his reaction? Yeah, (38/43)
so I love it. I will often pause it. So he said, what do I love about the Matrix? They have all these macro questions of life, ignorance versus bliss. Does Neo take the red pill or the blue pill? And so that kind of stuff, I will excitedly pause it and say, look at this, he's got one of life's big decisions here. He can either decide to not know what's going on and live a perfectly happy life, or he can learn the truth, but it really sucks and the life is going to suck. And there's just something like that, or does it say, Dad, stop pausing the movie? It's a mix of both. I think I really try hard to try to make this stuff as entertaining as I can for the kids. I hit it right on and I'd say that's sort of when I'm at my maximum happiness level, is I feel like I'm exposing my kids to new concepts. But there are definitely times when they're like, all right, Dad. And even by the way, Memento last night was a little slow relative to, they loved the Matrix, they loved Shawshank. That's a (39/43)
mind trip movie. That's a mind trip movie. I saw that movie for the first time when I was living and working in Italy. Sorry, it was not when I was working, it's when I was living as a student before I was working in Italy. I was a junior and I was pretty high watching it. And so I was already not in the best sort of memory state. And I remember just being really freaked out by it a little bit. And it was because it was such a good movie. And freaky, this idea that it rings true in many ways, obviously. Yeah, it was pretty powerful. Well it's become more, the whole idea that the robots are going to take over and use humans as living batteries. Yeah, that's a theme that a lot of people have picked up on. Yeah, well you know, we were talking about the episode that I did here where I mentioned Bill Joy, his Wired article, and Ted Kaczynski's Industrial Society and his future. Unbelievable the Ted Kaczynski that letter, how early on he predicted these things. Unbelievable. Yeah, and what (40/43)
he did, right? The fact that he actually tried to blow up the system. I mean, I think that's really interesting. That's what I think makes him an interesting interview subject, if I could have him on. And assuming that I don't know if and how deranged he is. I mean, I don't know ultimately if he made that decision consciously or if he made it from a different place. Because if someone made that decision consciously, I think it's very interesting. We see all these movies, right? What is the Force Awakens and all those other stuff? It's talking about the rebellion, right? The forefathers of the United States were traitors, were rebels, right? The only reason that we call the loyalists, that they were the Benedict Arnold's or whatever, is because we look at it from the framework of Americans today. But they were rebellion against the crown. What they were doing was a revolutionary act. Martin Luther and against the Catholic Church, all these. And this is a remarkable thing. Jesus Christ (41/43)
of Nazareth. Same thing. Like you're going up against the entire establishment and almost every single person that does that is going to be wiped off the map. It's a really scary thing to do. Who does that, right? And obviously I'm not comparing the Unibob and bombing a few people to Jesus of Nazareth. My point simply being that to take a step like that is assuming that you do it consciously, I think for guys like you and me, it's hard to fully appreciate that. Yeah, it takes a special personality. You're giving up everything, right? Right. Like you're giving everything else up. Right. You're saying none of that stuff matters anymore. What matters is this one act. And Kazinsky was a Harvard professor. Harvard, right? He was a Harvard graduate and he was a professor at Berkeley. Right. And he had a PhD in mathematics from Michigan. So he was giving up a lot to pursue this. It seemed like he had a lot. It's interesting. Yeah, also he had moved, like I said, he had moved up to the (42/43)
mountains of Wyoming or Colorado. I can't remember where. And it's also interesting that even up there, and there's a whole history to this, there was apparently some kind of construction happening near his cabin. And he realized basically there was no way that he could get away from all of it. They could have been you, Ben. You could have been doing construction, you had a high rise. Listen, Ben, it was great having you on. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much, Brad. I had a great time talking with you. Thank you. Yeah, all right. And that was my episode with Ben Friedland. I want to thank Ben for being on my program. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaos. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforcespod.com. And the conversation through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at hiddenforcespod or send me an email at dkat hiddenforcespod.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. (43/43)