It’s About the Money

This episode is brought to you by:

Tegus. Tegus streamlines the investment research process so you can get up to speed and find answers to critical questions on companies faster and more efficiently. The Tegus platform surfaces the hard-to-get qualitative insights, gives instant access to critical public financial data through BamSEC, and helps you set up customized expert calls. It’s all done on a single, modern Saas platform that offers 360-degree insight into any public or private company. I’ve been so impressed by the platform that my firm, Positive Sum, recently made an investment in Tegus. We did so because we feel that Tegus will be the gold standard platform for investing research for decades to come. As a listener, you can take Tegus for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick. And until 2023 every Tegus license comes with complimentary access to BamSec by Tegus.

Brex. Brex is the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best.

[00:02:58] - [First question] - What it was like to be a very bad student in highschool

[00:04:22] - When he first realized he was unemployable

[00:05:02] - The origin story of the very first Kinko’s

[00:06:13] - What the ideal progression of an entrepreneur is in his mind 

[00:06:57] - Recognizing real customer problems and what he enjoys most about sales

[00:07:53] - Finding what has worked well in each Kinko’s and coaching managers

[00:08:54] - Something he found that a manager was doing that blew him away

[00:10:22] - Getting messages from his brain to everyone else in the Kinko’s network 

[00:11:45] - The difference of working on and not in the business

[00:13:22] - What he got better at when it came to managing people 

[00:13:57] - Why a good salesperson will sell you broke  

[00:14:41] - Disagreeableness as a positive characteristic for people in business

[00:15:08] - Whether or not candor is different from disagreeableness

[00:15:36] - Why he teaches, what he teaches, and his teaching style

[00:18:31] - Explaining the Federal Reserve in two minutes  

[00:19:47] - What students most commonly want from him  

[00:20:06] - Whether or not making yourself inaccessible as a leader is good for promoting a self-starter attitude amongst team members 

[00:21:39] - The story about tearing down a sign that was antagonistic to a customer

[00:21:58] - The role of anger in his career and something he’s worked on over time

[00:22:31] - Where Kinko’s falls on the spectrum of bad to great businesses

[00:24:09] - Characteristics he’d look for in founders to back a business early

[00:25:08] - Qualities of a business he’d cultivate more or less if he could start over

[00:26:18] - Lessons learned about using the word employee

[00:26:42] - His strategy for where to go next once he had his original concept

[00:27:21] - The most clever marketing strategy he ever deployed or designed

[00:27:45] - Learning to spread the glory instead of the money

[00:28:30] - The state of entrepreneurship today compared to when he started 

[00:29:50] - How he instilled frugality and the saving mentality in the business 

[00:30:42] - What motivated him across his career

[00:31:35] - Why being in it for the money seems odd in today’s lens

[00:32:34] - Who he most admired or most admires today 

[00:33:08] - Preserving the alignment of integrity and action 

[00:33:42] - What it felt like to sell a business he’d worked so hard on 

[00:34:57] - How good he is naturally with numbers and math being dyslexic