Could the CEO of Best Buy Start That Company Today? | Real Talk

Brad Anderson was the CEO of Best Buy, who built the company from scratch, along with Dick Schultz. Over the last 10 years, I've been lucky to have him as my mentor. We've had many discussions about business, entrepreneurship, and management philosophy. I invite you to listen in on this one. America needs more entrepreneurs like Brad. Let's get inspired. Well, thanks for allowing me to turn on the cameras during this conversation. Oh, thanks so much. Here we go. So let's get into it. Let's start with just your background. How did you end up being the CEO of Best Buy? I've got to go a little bit back into my own story a little bit because I was like the fat kid in high school that was told literally by my guidance counselor not to go to college. Going to a school in Minneapolis where 95% of the kids went to college because the evidence in front of him was that I couldn't cut it. And I knew he was right. My parents, being humiliated by that, still got me into junior college. And I wound up getting through college. And then because my dad was a Lutheran pastor, he wanted one of us to be a pastor. So I went off to seminary to please him, basically. And I didn't really believe in God at that point, which is a problem when you're in seminary. But in addition to that, the professor said, you know, this is about the most important thing in somebody's life, which is what do they believe? What matters to them? What's their life about? That's the trade you're taking on. And it's very unlikely that you have one good sermon in you. Very few people do. You're very lucky if you've got one. And then he explained what it was, communication was like somebody heard you. So I took those three things in and said, I got to get out of here. There's no chance. So I quit seminary pretty much immediately and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But the thing I most loved was I had stereo. This is going back to the early 70s. And it's like sound that was music that sounded realistic was hard to get. And so I bought a stereo in college. And I so loved the stereo. I thought, well, I'll go sell those because how could I fail to sell stereos that I love to people, to other people? So I got a job that was then called Sound of Music in this little three-person store. And in the first two weeks, I sold some guitar strings. And I made $69 in 120 hours. The laws were different. 120 hours worth of work. So I went in to quit and they told me I couldn't quit. They couldn't replace me at that rate, I think. So I was so frustrated because I couldn't sell anything. The level of failure was just so massive. I thought, well, what if I would do something for a customer that no right-thinking person would do? Something truly idiotic. So I had this gentleman come in who wanted his speakers. And he wanted them installed in the ceiling in an A-frame house about 70 miles away from the store. So I told him if he'd buy the speakers from me, I would install them in his house. So I think I made maybe $7 or $8 in commission. And I drove 70 miles to his house in Red Wing, Minnesota, installed the speakers. And I don't like heights. But it was like a switch went on. Oh, business, which is an old socialist I didn't understand at all. Business is actually serving the customer. You were a socialist at that point? Yeah. Levels of stupidity are... Everything I've learned, I've come from the other way. But it was like all of a sudden I went from not being able to sell to selling very well. But it's about... It's not my lens. How do I deliver more to the customer that the customer can actually see? So that became the foundation as sort of a point of view about business or whatever. But the company we were in, Sound of Music, was failing. And Dick Schultz, who founded the company, founded it in 66. In 1977, it made its first dollar profit, which is framed from the Signal Hills Bank. And he threw it away. I still have it. Because he didn't want to acknowledge it took that long to make any profit. But by 79, it was losing... On $4 million a year in sales, it was losing $200,000 a year. So we were desperate. We had no cash. And the founder went out and was firing the managers of the store trying to turn things around. And he came out to me and said, I need somebody to turn around the company. And he wound up giving me the shot. And we turned Sound of Music into Best Buy about five years later. And then I had this incredible ride of experience with turning this tiny little company into a huge company. And all of the places that that went. What are some of the things that you have done, I guess, almost immediately to turn it around? And also, it's so hard to believe that you just didn't give up on the company, given how long it took to lift it. Yeah, but I had nothing to lose. You didn't want to go back to seminary. Literally, the other job I had was I could either take this job or I could get a job. Somebody offered me a job selling insurance. So I mean, it was like, here's an opportunity that you can't do worse, right? And we did first worse. We did things like, okay, we're losing money. What if we don't advertise? We found sales could go from very bad to zero. But the first things we tried just didn't work. But we did the opposite of what everybody else was doing. And that started to give us cash flow, and it gave us a chance to survive. And that was another profound learning. It's like, don't accept the conventional wisdom of wherever you're at. Make sure you've really thought it through. Well, the best fighting is done when you have no other choice, right? And so I believe you think about that. And you have more options when you have no other choice. Right, right. I mean, it's such an enormous advantage. Yeah. Doesn't feel like it when you're living through it. Totally. When you tell your story, I think about so many of the lessons that I've learned from you over the years. One of my favorite lessons is run against the herd. Innovators run against the herd, which is essentially what you had done with Best Buy. Let's talk a little bit about that. So we were a hobbyist store for music, basically. And we had to get many times bigger to survive. So we had to become, at that point, what was the super stores were emerging. Circuit City, companies like that. They were some of the hottest stocks on the market. What we did was we got enough money to do one of those stores that was a copycat. So we were a copycat for the rest of the industry. But the guys that were running the big stores that were already successful had this very simple strategy, which is they would come into a town they weren't in. And they would price the town below what anybody could survive with a business and just kill everybody. And so we grew very fast from the mid-'80s to late-'80s when we started facing these guys. They came in to basically put us out of business. And so we did what we then called concept two. But essentially, we figured out how to operate the business at a margin that was low enough that they really couldn't price us out of business. So we got rid of commissioned salesmen and all these things. Totally the antithesis of what the entire industry. And it's a long story. But once the opposite of what you are and your strengths works, unless you can adapt fast, you're dead. And it wound up, literally, the companies we competed with, most of them didn't survive. I did an interview with a journalist who asked me, why do I think PragerU is so successful? And my answer was, well, I kind of have no competition. I'm running against the herd. You know, it's like you have PBS, Disney, Hulu, Netflix. They all make woke content. PBS in particular makes edutainment, educational entertainment that is woke. And so I said, well, you know, I don't really even have to do that much. I do work quite hard. Everybody at PragerU works really hard. But if you think about it, if you're able to actually run against the herd, and that is a lesson that I've really learned from you, is to embrace the value of not doing what everybody else is doing. We are living in a world right now where everybody feels like they have to say the same thing, do the same thing, post the same thing. And, you know, it's so contradictory to the lessons that I've learned from you about, you know, really about business also. Yeah, but, and part of that is what they're doing, is it true? Right. So we literally, when we were doing copycat format, we would sit down with focus groups and ask a question of them. Which of these retailers do you trust? And because they ran on highly manipulative commission salespeople, people would break into laughter. So the whole industry was operating on a system that had a gigantic flaw in it. If you can destroy that flaw, you have an advantage that is phenomenal. But we thought once we did that, that as soon as people figured out we had an advantage, they would copy us. And they didn't. And it was a profound point of learning. It's like, because if you have faith that just being right means that they will adapt to the correct, it's so hard to not follow a crowd that literally you'll, it's the Luddite story, you'll follow the crowd over the cliff no matter what the consequences. But the other thing about what you're taking on is you have to have the one good sermon over and over again. Because if your premise is different, unless it can be heard, that's intimidating. Well, entrepreneurs jump from failure to failure, failure to failure. Eventually they make it to success. And so as you're describing being that misunderstood kid, I think to myself, this is so relevant to your concept of how in order to communicate well, you have to first be misunderstood so that you learn how to communicate even better. Yeah, you do. You know, I didn't understand it, but I had a huge advantage being the fat kid and being the kid that told not to go to college, right? So I believed that I had nothing to offer. And then all of a sudden I had some success. And it was like, wait a minute, if I had something to offer when I was, all the evidence was I didn't, what about everybody else? And if you look at the world from that lens and say, oh, wait a minute. So I had a talent that was going to get wasted unless I got a chance to live it. Is there anybody that doesn't have the same opportunity? And if so, what should a place they work look like? And that isn't just a little different. The pain of being left out meant you had a different perspective on what you were looking for that you would never have gotten if you weren't left out. And you also had an appreciation for if you got heard, you know, when you didn't expect to get heard, it meant more to you. And that was, it turned out to be a huge advantage, but it was not, you know, I had to discover it out of life as opposed to realize it. And I didn't sign up for it. Yeah, well, most of the important lessons we learn in life, right? If we could only read those in a book. If only college taught us anything. Yeah, yeah. All right, so it's a little off topic, but not entirely. But the third very important Brad Anderson lesson that everybody should learn is even when you're in leadership, especially when you're a leadership, you always say to me, you have to go down to the floor. And so even if you're running this massive company, Best Buy, you still go down to the floor and you sell that cell phone or stereo or whatever it is that you guys were selling. So I so believe in that concept because it's so easy to lose touch. I mean, we're seeing this with politicians, right? They so have lost touch with America. And I think it's so significant that when you're in leadership, whether of a business or representing any group of people, you have to go down to the floor and actually really interact it authentically. And so let's talk a little bit about where you got that lesson. Part of it is to not see it as doubt. Okay. I heard Louis C.K. in a comedy bit talk about that he went into a Best Buy store and he ran into this old salesperson. I think he was buying a camera. And that old salesman gave him better service than he said. The guy didn't know he was just a salesman. I differ strongly with that. I don't believe he's just a salesman, right? When I tried to go down and work in the store, it was so alien from what I'd worked in when I was the CEO of the company. And I couldn't go work in a store and do a job half as good as the person who was working in that store. I mean, it would have taken me months to catch up with what that person was able to do. So I don't think that person is down, right? And what we did find is almost every form of innovation that worked came from somebody who was directly talking to a customer. And I was 16 layers up in a bureaucracy, which probably meant I really didn't know much about what's going on inside the company. I used to go into the stores in disguise. Right. You're the secret shopper that they were all afraid of. I was. I was great. I was like, we went into a store once where we'd been at. If you get identified in one store in the market, and they don't like the CEO or something is in town, you're in trouble. So we went into one store in Milwaukee, and we was with my wife, and we wound up going into the next store. And as we walked in the store, it was frantic. I mean, the employees were moving things around. And it was like, and the management was like, get this out of here and move this. And the CEO's in town to get a scale. And I'm watching this go on in front of my eyes as they're shoving everything under the rug. Did they not know you were there? They didn't recognize me until a few minutes in. So I got to watch the whole theater of them attempting to present the artifice of what they were versus what they really were. Wow. Here again, I learned something so important for you. You have to think about the language that you use. You're right. It's not down. Like, I would not survive without my team, right? I'm like, they're my life boat, right? It's like I've become clueless on half of this stuff because you lean on your support staff or your staff in general, right? Well, and you're also open to such joy. Like, you're the first employee at Prager University. I met you when you were like- Just a baby. You looked like a kid to me that got hired out of high school. And it's like, look what you can do. And I saw that happen over and over again in terms of how people you lead can surprise you with what they can do. I don't think there's anything more fun than that. That can't get measured in a financial statement or- It's true. I call it when an employee lands a double-double. I just like sit there. I'm like, okay, am I irrelevant yet? There's a tension between the two because you don't want to be the CEO, that sits behind the desk and just says, I trust you, go build the business, right? That can't happen either. So I've kind of coined this term push buddy, which actually I borrowed from Jill Simonia, and I got to give her credit. She works in our kids department. But she would say to me, you know, Marissa, you're my push buddy. You always find a way to tell me how to do better. Really, the character of the employee becomes very obvious when they react to that moment, right? When I push them, do they fall apart and feel offended because they've been either pushed too hard or they feel like they're being criticized or they actually feel empowered by the opportunity to go beyond mediocre, right? And to accept, I know this is like a trigger word for a lot of people, but when somebody looks at an opportunity to do even better and they look at their leadership as someone who can actually push them and they don't fall apart and feel offended, that is, I think, the right tension. The CEO doesn't sit behind the desk and just, you know, wait for the reports to come in, knows how to push just enough to empower people, but is not afraid to push and say, you know what? I think you can do better. This is a little mediocre. Come back to me with your best work. So if you're leading, you're supposed to be there for a reason. I got to watch some of the most powerful leadership in maybe human history, and I'd use Steve Jobs as an example of that, which if we were employees of Steve and we'd been given the responsibility of creating something, he literally would look us in the eye and say, I will kill you if you don't do that. I will kill you. And he was so formidable that you weren't going to be really sure whether he really would, but then you had to do spectacular work, right? And we was like, and Steve had the wisdom, and he would say, I don't know how to, I'm not a designer, I'm not an engineer, I don't know how to do this, that he was basically a leader who was a representative of the consumer in that business. And he had a picture of what the consumer wanted, and he knew they were going to be doing it. And he thought the entire rest of the industry was full of fools. Talk about one of the most extreme examples I've ever seen of sailing completely against the wind. He was so committed that it was a thrilling place to work. I'm sure a lot of scar tissue and a lot of people there, but at least what they produced was absolutely astonishing because the leader was, in a sense, crazy. I guess leadership requires a little bit of craziness. It all has to be authentic, right? So I had another friend of mine who was running a big company that was, and he tried that strategy, but he's a sweetheart, and that's like, I'm sure they walk out of the room and said, right, you can't be an imposter. So it was authentically in how he was wired, and he was using how he was wired. And I don't think he was conscious of sort of the abstract nature of what he was doing as a leader. It was just naturally who he was, but incredibly effective leadership. How did you get Best Buy to come to work with Steve Jobs? And I would just love to know the story how that happened. So the last thing we did was summon a meeting with Steve Jobs. He gave me the date and time to come to see him in Cupertino. At this point, this is the late 90s, so it's a completely different world. Apple has been losing money, is basically on its knees, which is why they bring Steve Jobs back, because they brought in the best, like, great leader out of Pepsi, everything else, and the companies are going down. And they meanwhile get $150 million loan so they can stay alive, and that comes from Microsoft. Not naturally, we think, their best friend, but Microsoft's being sued in Europe as a monopoly. So if the Apple system falls out of bed, they are a monopoly, and they can't win their lawsuit. So they put money into Apple. Apple brings Steve Jobs back in to turn the company around. Meanwhile, in retail, their partner is a company called Compusay, which is a big computer retailer that was very hot for a period of time, and they're going out of business. So Steve's now got a problem, because he needs retail distributions before they do the Apple stores. And so he summons me, and I'm only allowed to come alone, to come and see him in Cupertino. And at that point, we're a much more successful company than he is, right? I was just going to say, he summons you. He summons me, too. This is where sometimes humility is really helpful. Anyway, I would have gone anyway, because I was fascinated to meet him, done anything to meet him. So he summons me. But in the morning, I've got a meeting with the CEO of HP, which is then a hugely successful company, and they wear suits. So I put on a suit and tie. So I walk into the office of Cupertino, and Steve looks at me and says, do you even know who I am? Do you know how, you see how he's in jeans and his black turtlenecks? See how I'm attired in terms of, have you ever heard of me? Do you know anything about in terms of who I am as a human being? Yeah, well, why do you look like that? So that was the start. And then he starts, launches into, everybody in this industry is stupid. And he goes on the whiteboard. He starts writing on the whiteboard. This is what a customer wants. And this whole industry does this. So the customer wants this. Everybody in this industry does this. You're all dumb. And Brad, I'm going to give you a huge opportunity, because you now can be the retailer that can sell our, that we now will sell you because you can sell our product. So then I said, you know how many people I get? So he describes how many people. And he says, well, about 400 people I got working here. They don't do anything. And I said, OK, Steve, what are you doing about that? He says, I'm hiring more. You're hiring more. Yeah, I'm hiring more. Why? Because this is right when the first intercom bubble collapses. So HP has now gone to the class at Stanford and said, we had jobs for you guys, sorry. So he doesn't have even a strategy at that point in time. He's got a point of view. But he doesn't have product or anything else. And he doesn't have anything except his borrowed money. And he takes it in and he hires the people, the next generation of engineers that the rest of the guys think they don't need or can't afford to hire at this point in time. And he flips the whole industry. And it was like, I mean, if I could somehow capture that learning experience of, you want an extreme example of completely thinking in the antithesis of all of them. And by the way, not an industry full of dumb people. And you clearly see something that nobody else sees that has that level of opportunity. And then you're willing to, and they could only do it because the reason the board let them do it is they were so desperate. They'd failed at everything else. So they bring in a messiah in the case of Steve Jobs. And they've got to let him do that because the company is going to fail anyway. It was kind of a cousin of where we were, only much bigger on a bigger scale. And so we wound up, yeah, okay, Steve will, you know. And Steve wouldn't even tell us what, at that point, he wouldn't even tell, you know, when he would go and reveal stuff on the stage in terms of, this is the new technology. That's the same time a retailer partner would find out about it. And then you scrambled to figure out. Computers, right, that you bought from him like a week ago were now completely out of date. And you'd find out with the public that, okay, now you've got to find out. In a margin, in a business that had no margin. So it was like everything about it was eccentric except it was true. He figured out that he would just simply hire the future. Yes. He figured out that we, the rest of the industry, if you design a device that we get to do something and you could digitize it, you put it on the computer or the camera or whatever. And he figured out that doesn't correlate with human behavior. You just made it impossible for the person to operate it. You're all dumb. And I'm going to take it off and charge him more for it. And that worked. I thought, how could I be this lucky to be in this room? Even if he was crazy. Yeah. Because, and his argument was compelling. And, you know, I was able to recognize the strength of the argument. And if he's right, we don't have any choice but to go with him. Because if he's right and we're on the other side, we just lose. But it's also going to be a lot of fun. And it was. I have it filed in my head to talk to you about the term mediocre. So we were walking, as we were walking into my office, I was talking to one of my team members. And just to kind of capture the whole thing, I thought the campaign they created for one of these documentaries that we're making was mediocre. And so you started laughing at me because basically what I said to them was, well, it's not horrible, but it's mediocre. And I know that the term mediocre is going to trigger the competitive spirit in your mind. And I said, well, you have two options. You can either do a better job or you can do a better job. And he thought it was funny. But you actually said something really interesting to me. And I want everybody to hear it, specifically the people who I just told that they can do a better job or do a better job. Well, I think I first said to you, I'm glad I don't work for you. Glenn Beck said the same thing. Yeah, because the first response you're going to have is that team might have given you something they either thought was really good or was the best they were capable. But then I said, you know, wow, if I got a second shot at it and if I can do it better, I'm better at what I do forever than I was before I just did this. But I got to get to that second stage where I sit there. After I get mad at you, which would be my first response, I got to get to the second stage. Normal and acceptable. Right, it's just that I've been rejected and so all of that human thing is going to be there. But she didn't tell me it's mediocre and you're done. She said it's mediocre and show me something that's not. And there's either a bit of faith or insanity in that. And then on the other end of that for you, what if they come back with something that's great? My team lands a triple-double and I'm happy. You're part of that story where they did the really great. And that goes back all the way back to the story I told you about the seminary, which is you're lucky if you got one good sermon. Wow, you do. Better life than not. So anyway, I hope they're listening. But I would also say that the first question that I ask is, do you think you could do a better job? And that's one of those things that I ask people all the time, that before they submit something to me, they really honor what it is that they submit. You know, it's so easy to just become complacent and have leadership become your crutch. What if you came into a habit where every time you submit something, you know it's the best work you could submit with no excuses? Well, there's something about human nature. This is Gallup showed me research that I kept repeating this to a point where people want to kill me at Best Buy. But if you look at human behavior, all of us have a few things that we're extraordinary at. It may or may not be valued in the market at any given time, but there's something we're extraordinary at doing. And what we know for sure based on is that the average person will not understand it because it's extraordinary. That if you're sitting there really playing in your strengths, I can only understand so much of that because I don't have the same gift that you've got. And what we do as a society, it's kind of an underpinning of this whole thing we've been talking about, is we shave off this stuff. Either the stuff you're really bad at or the stuff you're really good at. And what it leads to is a very, very boring static. And it's why when people talk about fairness and talk about how, how does Steve Jobs get all the money? Well, because he brought value that would literally not exist into the world without him being different from it. And he paid the price of being that different character from everybody else. And do we need it or not? And most of the time, most societies shave this off. So one of the things in an organization, I think, is if you can give the person the opportunity to really be out there, and maybe I can only appreciate some of what you see, but I let you find the place where it actually communicates back to me, you get this forward sense of motion instead of stasis. You talk about how our society is backwards in so many ways. And one particular example is just how people view Steve Jobs. On the one hand, we all benefit from what he has done for us, even if he had given not one dollar in philanthropy. But regardless of the successful entrepreneur's philanthropy, the gift that they give to society is the gift itself, which they created, which we benefit from, which has really increased the quality of our lives. And if it would not have been the case, then we would not be buying those things, right? And so I just think, is it important that entrepreneurs become philanthropists? Of course. But I think it's also important that society values that which we actually value and we're willing to pay for and recognize that that in itself is the gift to society. But we're living this upside down world right now, where if you make a lot of money, that means that you're a bad person. If you actually have aspirations to become wealthy, then you're a horrible human being. And how backward is that? Because if people don't have those kinds of aspirations, why would they be motivated enough to serve us with products that we're willing to pay for and therefore enrich our lives with those products, right? And so it's just, it's so crazy to me. If I got an employee that I can motivate with money, that's the easiest person to manipulate. Because I think in most cases, what we're striving for in general is meaning. And that money is a form of meaning because people look at it and say, well, it shows that I'm valuable. And there's a point where it's just practical. And then there's a point after that in which it's primarily there for status. I'm a huge believer in Christ's statement about it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. In part for the whole story we've been telling, because now the world starts saying, oh, you're smart, I'm in trouble. The minute the world comes back to me and says, you know, oh, you're of a higher order, that's not good. But it does, you know, it has this practical sense and then it has a sense of meaning. It's a useful tool, but it needs to be understood as just a tool. It's easier to get people's gifts with money than any other tool, up to a point. But it's also pretty finite. Well, you see some of it in Hollywood, right? I think there are so many folks that work in the movie industry who don't agree with the woke stuff. But with that said, they're controlled through money because they don't want to lose their careers. Yeah, that's an example of like money buys you freedom. No, it buys you the inverse of freedom. The opposite of freedom. Money buys you a cage. I can't really be who I am. And it's hard for people to look into that cage and really see the consequences. If it's a jewel cage, what if you walk into that cage? What's the consequence to everything else in life? And what's at the end of that cage? You still die. You're still finite. And you may be, it's like Marx is a materialist. He believes everything's in the material. I'm not. Right. If you had to build Best Buy today, do you think you guys would be able to do it with all these regulations and expectations and wokeism and the list goes on? It's kind of what you're doing, right? I mean, it's like, and you're doing it in LA, which even then was hardest place. California was the hardest place for Best Buy to operate because if you're in an environment in which the assumption is we're all equal and we're not, and you believe it's the antithesis, we're all unique, we're all literally unique and you got to operate it with a sense of fairness so the outcome is fair to some myth versus to exploring the talent. You'd have to do it with stealth. You'd have to fake the system. Or I guess maybe be that organization that, you know, with all the calluses, we have to still figure out how to make it work. I don't know. I love that. Yeah, because if you look at human history, we're the luckiest people on the planet in the history of man. A Best Buy can come from bankrupt to winning its particular space and then always be threatened of going the other way back past too. So it's like we have this dynamic environment where there's more freedom to have a story than other places do. But deeper than that, it's how we as people look at the world. What do we believe? Religion had a big impact on your life. Though, is it the same thing? I know you went to seminary and you were a socialist. At one point, you were no longer a socialist and you brought religion into your life. Was it seminary, that? To me, the business was the excuse to the theology journey. So it wasn't seminary that took you on a theology journey. No. It was business that took you on a theology journey. Incredible. Because it's where I got rid of the socialism. Because socialism tells you these things will happen with human beings. No, they don't. The opposite happens. So I can't stay with that theology. And that's a secular theology. And then everything was floating around in the 60s, right? You had Buddhism, Hinduism. Everything was alive. What were you doing in the 60s? I was more politically a secular socialist than anything else at that point. Of course, you were cool. Oh, I was not cool. Oh, no. Anything but cool. But I majored in sociology. Before I got the job at Sound of Music, I went down to the state of Minnesota. And I showed them I had a degree in sociology. And the guy started breaking in the laughter. And he says, I see you guys all the time. You never get jobs. But it was like a... Since I'm now in a business position where I got to turn a company around. And I didn't go to business school. I don't know anything more than the seven years experience in this little three-person store. How am I going to do that? And I had a discussion with the founder. He said, you either got one of two things. You have the golden gut, which is you know what to do, Steve Jobs, right? You believe so much in your own insight that you know what to do. Or you better believe in something else that's true. So it was a free journey into what's true. If the theology that I'm trying to deploy doesn't work, maybe it's not true. And if on the other hand, it does deploy. And what I had that I didn't know of at all is I was the kid of a pastor. So I had to sit in the upper end of the balcony, trying not to listen to him, one day a week for an hour, tell stories. And I had those stories. And those stories, you could never get to the bottom of. Not close. So when did you say to yourself, okay, you know, I have faith? Yeah, that's a good question. It was gradual. It would be like a little bit of fear and a little bit… I always was a fan of Thomas from the New Testament, and I always thought he was weak, because when Christ comes back, Thomas has to put his hand into the wound to know he's with Christ. And I heard a pastor, I heard of, I didn't actually hear the sermon, I heard of a sermon where a pastor said, Thomas was the bravest of the disciples, because if he put his hand and the wound wasn't there, he would have known what he'd spend his life on was false. And that would be the most devastating thing imaginable. I feel so similar about faith. I actually find that the bigger the company that I'm running, the more responsibilities I take on. Really, it's a greater burden. I have to make sure that, you know, more people that work for us have salaries and can feed their families. I have to make sure that I'm everybody's push buddy. I need to make sure that the decisions that we make are appropriate. There's leadership, there's strength, and it's frankly hard to do alone. And so I think that having faith in my life is really for me. It's not necessarily for God, it's for me, right? And I actually feel like stronger leaders who have more faith are able to cope with the challenges of the big responsibility of leading an organization. So I could totally see how gradually, and maybe I'm gradually coming closer to faith and walking with God more often, finding myself praying and asking whether I'm doing the right thing. Maybe that is because I need God more today than ever. It's possible, maybe I'm maturing, but I would say with certainty that having God in my life, having faith in my life has enabled me to take on the responsibility of leading the business. And whether it's PragerU or any business, I would imagine that people who run large businesses, it's hard to do it alone. Well, it's part of why we see this tremendous timidity from CEOs these days. If you are not anchored in that, and you now go out and do something where the world looks back on you and says, I'm sorry, but I'm tossing you out because you don't subscribe to the group or whatever reason is, you get tossed out. If your journey is this is what life's about, you're totally imprisoned by that, the acceptance of that community. Where on the other hand, if you go out and you do everything you got and it isn't there, but you were doing it in the pursuit of something that is not just your own aggrandizement, it's totally different where you can land on the other side of that versus how crushing the journey is if you're pursuing this path. And you can afford to learn from it because your measurement is not, I'm trying to achieve this particular badge, but I'm doing for something with so much more substance. And if I fail, I won't be the first one. Every biblical figure I can think of does. Right. One of the most powerful things I learned from Dennis early on is he said to me, we answer to God. We don't answer to anybody else. It's a powerful thing because as a non-profit, people would think, well, we answer to you guys, our donors. We answer to what we call the mob, right? The Twitter mob. Well, we're going to post the truth and everybody's going to get upset or we will post something that people don't like and people will start condemning us for this or that. Or actually, the more dangerous part is we will post things because people like those things and we become addicted to the likes and the shares and they become our new boss. And you see that, by the way, in social media all the time, how many influencers and personalities will post more of the thing that the mob wants them to post rather than the truth. And so when you pause for a moment and you ask, well, who are they answering to? Are they answering to the donors? Are they answering to the Twitter mob, the social media mob? Or are they answering to God? And so for me, leading PragerU, knowing that I don't answer to whoever is going to give us most likes. I don't answer to whoever is going to give us most money. I answer to God. What an incredibly empowering thought that is. It is. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to get God's desire correctly either, right? I can't read, you know, I don't know. The wisest people I know are always banging their head against the wall. Why couldn't I see that? Why can't I see that? But that's what makes it so. I'm 73 and I'm still beginning to learn. Right. So I mean, in that sense, life is such a joy because there's a context that gives you understanding and pushes you into the next endeavor without knowing what that next endeavor, where that next endeavor is going to go. But the minute I start defining it as built around me as opposed to the inverse, at some point I'm just literally, and I watch this with so many people I know and love, I'm just going to go over a cliff. If you could reach out to young entrepreneurs out there and give them one fundamental piece of advice, what would that be? Okay. Get really clear about what you believe. It doesn't mean you're going to be right, but get really, have in your head, why are you leading and what are you leading for? Think about that. And does that have room for the people you're going to lead? Because it goes to the, that you're going to need that anchor, particularly if you're successful, to be able to go back and say, well, this is why I started this journey. And I mean, I think I was incredibly lucky that I started without faith because I got to build it. But I also, I was searching for something and it was clear that I was searching for something. I love it. The work is in the journey as well. And every generation starts with a fresh sheet. Awesome. I love it. I love talking to you. We can do this for hours, but... These people might die. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much, Marissa. Really appreciate this. Thank you.