Ben Gilbert: preference

Transcript context

…Just phenomenal. Look, the basic concept you can embrace and understand in 30 seconds, the concept of already approaching life with this feeling that everything is fixed and you just got whatever talents you were given in life and that is what it is and you have to sort of expose those but you don’t have a chance to grow, or do you believe that actually you have what you have but it’s basically irrelevant and the question is what are you going to grow towards through hard work and effort. What was fascinating by reading the book is when you describe it the way you just did, anyone who’s sort of an ambitious type A entrepreneur or like those of us on those podcast are I’m sure thinking, “Well, I’m a growth person. I’m always trying to get better. It’s great.” I read this book and it was very humbling to sort of realize that some parts of your life, you were completely growth oriented. In other ways you had intrinsically and sort of had this concept of a fixed mindset that ‘Oh, well. I have talent in that or I don’t.’ So thinking deeply about that for yourself, for your kids if you’re a parent, for your team if you’re a leader, I thought was incredibly powerful. Wow. I was having drinks with a friend the other night and he asked me, “So are you more of a routine person or are you flexible to do whatever?” It was so interesting in the work that we do at Pioneer Square Labs, we’re super flexible. If it’s like, “Hey, you got to fly down to LA in 2 days because the opportunity for this company is to meet with someone there,” doing that or if it's your marketing today or your product today, like all over the place and schedule changes all the time, but in my personal life I need to wake up at the same time and have the exact same morning routine every morning or else I’m not myself. It’s amazing how different we can be in different aspects of our lives and we think of ourselves as either a routine person or a growth person or whatever it is. It’s not necessarily unilateral across the board. That makes me think of another one which if you’re exploring all the podcasts and this one is I think literally you’re near the top of the charts but I’ve definitely been enjoying. Tim Ferriss is one and his focus on routines and the questions around morning routines and stuff, it just fascinates me because I’m probably – there’s things where I’m somewhat routine oriented but there’s a lot of things where I rebel against it and don’t want to commit to an absolutely strict routine because I kind of like the dynamic that you describe of like being ready for the most important thing and hop on the plane and go to that. It's fascinating to sort of think about how important routines and systems are to success. That’s another one. Before I turn it over, I’ll just flag the other two. This second would be Shoe Dog about Phil Knight from Nike - unbelievable entrepreneurial journey and just an incredible revealing memoir that I’ve really just found illuminating and inspiring and awesome. But it also to me, you know, for you David on the venture side, you will come away reading this book, you will feel like you’re doing God’s work. Because I think we underestimate how this concept that capital is almost available from anywhere and that you guys in the venture community and I actually I have Adobe Ventures under me as well so we do this here and there. It’s like we’re competing to be the ones who provide capital to the right businesses wherever and it's like there was this point in time where businesses that are now changing the world literally couldn’t get capital. It’s just insane. Reading the story, and I’m not talking about a short period of time. I can’t remember. Like 7, 8, almost 10 years he was on a shoestring trying to get these bank loans. It was just crazy. It blew your mind. That one was phenomenal.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.