Out of respect to the man I interviewed, I will keep his identity semi-anonymous. I don't think he cares much if I share his identity, but I never told him I'd blog about the conversation so it's purely out of respect. If you are dying to find out I'm sure with research you can guess who.
Firstly lets get the how I met him part out of the way. I joked around a lot with my mom about it because she told me every once in a while she sees one the founders of Costco around the office.
What's her position? Well she's simply an accountant like thousands of others, but luckily she works at the headquarters. Being a good CEO you can see him walk around headquarters and he greets all his employees. She saw him one day when he said hello, gave him my phone number and he told her he'd contact me. After weeks of no contact I got a call from a tired sounding secretary and I was in!
Now my meeting was with 3 other guys my age who had questions, but I didn't mind because I got my 30 minutes of one on one time in.
By the way, meeting millionaires is very possible! Hell James Woods just tweeted a smiley face at me today on twitter :) Gary Vaynerchuk and James Altucher are both on twitter and I got them both to respond to my emails (for which I am eternally grateful). I even snapchat with Gary Vaynerchuk from time to time, connect with him its easy! James Altucher even answers questions on Thursdays for twitter followers so go check those guys out...but interviewing this guy at the top of his level...a billionaire...he was at the end of where a lot of business people only dream to be on their business journeys.
I happened to write all his answers in a journal, some answers are controversial others you already know. I'll make this short, I had a 30 minute interview. If I was smarter I'd get a camera and record our interview and make it public (something you could do when meeting famous people you'll rarely see)...the problem is I doubt I'll ever see him again. He's very busy and I tried reaching out to no avail.
Now remember these answers are from memory, so all the bad stuff is mine and inexperienced interpretation, all the great stuff is his.
1) What's the answer to work/life balance?
That's a hard questions...There's never going to be a perfect answer to that question. I work 10 hours everyday and on weekends. My only tip is when you're with family make it all about family and vice versa with work. I recommend you balance your time on only 3 things in life: 1) Family 2) Work and 3) Health, everything else will take care of itself.
2) Is Mentorship important?
Mentorship is very important. I would definitely not have been where I have been today if it wasn't for Sol Price. I learned everything I know about business from him. He was the type of guy who when I said, "Look how great we're doing!" would say: "Keep your head down and get back to work". Each one of you should get a mentor. He has been pushing me to work beyond what I thought was capable.
3) I believe luck is when opportunity meets hard work, what are your thoughts?
A lot of young bright guys think they can sit there and reach the level of Gates or Jobs, but I'd be very foolish not to tell you luck had a lot to do with my success. You can only reach a certain level of success along with working 24/7 of course. If you take a look at my past I was amazingly lucky to land the jobs I landed, learn all I needed to learn, meet the right partners and be involved in just the right market during the time banks were giving out the types of loans not accessible today.
4) Amazon is killing it online, what are you guys doing in that space?
We are making more money online than consumers can fathom its just we still believe people will travel to stores to get things in quantity. Right now you don't have the buying experience you do in store, one day that may be wrong, we have people watching.
5) How do you deal with set backs?
Look we all have setbacks as a natural part of the process. You will no doubt stub your toes on the way to success, the question is will you stop like everyone else or keep moving forward. We tell our managers to make a list of everything they want to get accomplished for the week on Sunday and review each week, keep it simple.
At this point in the conversation I let the other three guys pitch him their product. My company was selling leads in real estate I told him about it, but he didn't reply and I didn't think he could help too much. I also figured I was lucky enough to get an interview so I left it at that, which may have been a mistake. I should have asked him to be a mentor, later I did in a letter, but I'm sure it was too late. Overall I'm very grateful for the opportunity.
The main two things I learned besides the lessons above is A) Everyone says they're "busy", but they're not, if a billionaire could meet with me anyone can make the time to meet with anyone. The bottom line is "I'm busy" is lying. B) Having a lot of money doesn't make you so special, his answers weren't revolutionary, but still good. A lot of his insights were great, but I thought he'd totally blow my mind with business knowledge...maybe it went above my head and looking at my notes I'll come to realize the genius...The success he attained seemed like it came from abnormal amounts of hard work, meeting the right people and luck.
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