Andy Nulman is a businessman, author, public speaker and comedian. He co-founded Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival and Airborne Mobile, has lectured at McGill University, on the TED stage, and at C2 Montreal, and is the author of three books, including Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Element of Surprise, on the art of surprise marketing.
For more podcasts, check out https://fredpinto.com/podcast or subscribe to Fred's Substack.
Andy Nulman is a businessman, author, public speaker and comedian. He co-founded Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival and Airborne Mobile, has lectured at McGill University, on the TED stage, and at C2 Montreal, and is the author of three books, including Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Element of Surprise, on the art of surprise marketing.
For more podcasts, check out https://fredpinto.com/podcast or subscribe to Fred's Substack.
00:00:00:10 - 00:00:17:17
ANDY
What we didn't have were a bunch of pain in the ass VC’s and bankers and people telling us, "you have to scale" and "you have to do this". It just- it's scaled. You know, that's one of the beauty. As I said, we were left alone. We were left alone to fail or succeed or both.
00:00:19:02 - 00:00:40:21
FRED
Hi, everyone. What follows is my conversation with entrepreneur, author and public speaker extraordinaire, Andy Nulman. This is the first podcast interview I ever recorded, and the way it happened was kind of random and funny. Andy and I were connected on LinkedIn, and one day I came across his profile and it had this really funny by-line, he wrote, I have the guts you wish you had.
00:00:41:21 - 00:00:58:09
FRED
So I sort of chuckled and I said, screw it, I’m writing to this guy. This guy’s provoking me. So I wrote, "hey, Mr. Nulman, I have the guts you think I wish I had". I don’t even know what I was expecting honestly. I probably expected no answer. I didn’t put too much thought into it. I just felt he was being playful,
00:00:58:09 - 00:01:14:18
FRED
there was this fun vibe to it and I decided just to have some fun with it. But turns out he answered me right away. "Hi Fred, how are you?" Like super nice. And so we started joking around a bit back and forth, and I thought man, Andy's such a nice guy. And I’m sure he would be such a fun and interesting person to interview.
00:01:15:11 - 00:01:37:16
FRED
So I asked him if he’d accept to be interviewed by me. He graciously accepted. And this, literally is how my podcast started. As you’ll see, Andy has accumulated a wealth of experience in life and business. He’s the co-founder of the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, which under his leadership went from being the super small local event to becoming the largest comedy festival in the world.
00:01:38:13 - 00:02:04:02
FRED
But with Andy, you quickly realize he’s much more than just another businessman. He’s a very funny and engaging character in his own right. He’s an original thinker, and he’s just the kind of teacher you wish you had in university. He brings a wealth of experience and perspectives for all aspiring artists and entrepreneurs and anyone, really, who wants to achieve anything creative. From why you should be careful before relying too much on investor money, to why you need to make room for uncertainty and risk in your life
00:02:04:02 - 00:02:25:12
FRED
what he calls the Devil’s 10%, to why you shouldn’t trust people who don’t like balloons. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Andy Nulman.
00:02:30:20 - 00:02:32:02
FRED
Andy Nulman, welcome!
00:02:32:20 - 00:02:36:06
ANDY
Oh, hello! Welcome! Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
00:02:36:21 - 00:02:37:16
FRED
How are you doing today?
00:02:39:12 - 00:03:06:17
ANDY
Life is beautiful, sitting here, snow is falling - I am sipping Budweiser 0. I think it’s coming to you in reverse. It’s- Budweiser 0, it’s non-alcoholic beer, so it’s- not that I have a problem with alcohol, it’s just I have a problem with drinking alcohol at 3:00 in the afternoon.
00:03:07:06 - 00:03:12:04
FRED
Do you find that you get a little bit of the buzz? Just like the Pavlovian reflex when you drink the beer?
00:03:13:05 - 00:03:49:02
ANDY
You know, no. I really don’t. The problem is if I don’t get a bit of a buzz when I drink real beer. But I remember years ago, when I was at Just For Laughs, Labatt was for people to come up with, it was .5, that was the name of the beer. And they told us, they said, it’s not alcoholic and you can sell it, you know, to schools. It’s not illegal for kids to drink this, although they wouldn’t do it. They’d think it would be a bad political PR move, but totally legal.
00:03:49:02 - 00:03:59:18
ANDY
I mean, if a kid wants to drink this, no problem. But you know, I don’t think there’ll be a company that does that for the next little while, at least not to grade schools or high schools.
00:04:00:02 - 00:04:04:19
FRED
No, definitely, it’d be like advertising to children and be a big controversial thing.
00:04:05:01 - 00:04:15:10
ANDY
Lord knows how controversial advertising to children- and that doesn’t happen these days, you know, on Youtube or Roblox or places like that. But I digress. Go ahead!
00:04:15:15 - 00:04:18:17
FRED
The hypocrisy sometimes. The hypocrisy sometimes.
00:04:19:11 - 00:04:21:23
ANDY
And doing it again. Ok, I’m gonna shut up. You go.
00:04:22:01 - 00:04:35:05
FRED
No, this is good. This is great. So, for those who don’t know you, you’re one of the founders of the Just for Laughs festival, which is really, I mean, either, you read different places, people say the largest comedy festival in the world or at the very least, one of the largest comedy festivals in the world.
00:04:36:00 - 00:04:58:15
ANDY
Look, I’m far away from it from that. It’s been years since I’ve been part of it. I left. I’m retired now, but, you know, I still have a lot of feelings for it, a child of mine. And it is the largest event in the world. There’s nothing that even comes close and has many fine memories.
00:04:58:16 - 00:05:18:04
FRED
You were really instrumental in making it happen. I mean, before you came on board in the 80s, it was a small French-only two-day event. In 1985, you introduced the English version, and since then it’s absolutely top of the pyramid. I mean, the who’s who of comedy, right? Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K.,
00:05:18:04 - 00:05:19:04
FRED
the list goes on and on.
00:05:19:20 - 00:05:20:06
ANDY
Yeah.
00:05:20:07 - 00:05:22:00
FRED
How did you do it? Yeah
00:05:22:10 - 00:05:40:14
ANDY
Well, the real story is this, although it’s perhaps not politically correct to name him these days, but you have to give credit to Gilles Bar Rosen. He’s the one who started in French. He’s the one who brought me along. He’s the one who started in English and said, “I want you to go ahead and grow this. Can you grow this?”
00:05:40:16 - 00:05:58:17
ANDY
Now as a kid, I’m not going to say no, of course, I will say, "yeah, of course, I’m going to do this." But it was a different time back then. It was a different time. There was no such thing as a comedy festival, number one. Number two, life was different. So you didn’t know if you were failing or succeeding.
00:05:58:17 - 00:06:23:09
ANDY
You were just doing and there were no precedents. So anything you did set a precedent. And it was really an interesting time to be able to go ahead and be adventurous, to make mistakes, to deal with them, and to have these amazing victories that you didn’t even plan for. The other good thing was timing is everything.
00:06:23:15 - 00:06:45:21
ANDY
Timing is everything in comedy, and timing is everything in business. And with Just for Laughs. We really happened to be at the right place at the right time because the comedy boom happened. That’s because of cable television. We were there right at the I guess the dawning of cable television. Cable television needed product and stand-up comedy was a really good cable TV product because you could do a lot of it.
00:06:45:21 - 00:07:10:12
ANDY
It was not expensive to do, and we happened to be there in the right place at the right time you know. So all these things converged. And the fact that we were allowed to do what we wanted. Life is different. Life is different in so many ways in terms of the entertainment industry being such a strong industry, where before it was quite loose back then,
00:07:10:16 - 00:07:17:13
ANDY
and also the things you can get away with, even content wise back then are things you can’t get away with these days.
00:07:17:13 - 00:07:19:18
FRED
The PC thing is out of control today.
00:07:20:00 - 00:07:39:09
ANDY
I would hate to be, and I get the PC thing, I’ve got no qualms with it, but it does put a damper on comedy. A, I don’t think that’s just for laughs could be just for laughs from the start of today and B, I wouldn’t want to do it today because you have to walk too many fine lines.
00:07:39:10 - 00:07:53:03
ANDY
We walked fine lines. Things exploded. But the explosions weren’t that bad. These days explosions would put you out of business and it did basically almost did for Just for laughs. But that’s a whole other story we don’t need to get into today.
00:07:53:03 - 00:08:12:04
FRED
But, Andy, I’m hearing a lot of modesty here because I’m hearing freedom to operate and I’m hearing right place, right time. But I know that there must have been certain strategies that you followed that allowed Just For Laughs to do what no other festival did in the world, certainly in the 80s, and to build up the scale to which you did.
00:08:13:07 - 00:08:23:15
FRED
If you can share with us what were, in your estimation, some of those key tactics or strategies that you followed that worked that allowed you to build such an unbelievably successful festival?
00:08:23:21 - 00:08:45:19
ANDY
Okay. What we didn’t have were a bunch of pain-in-the-ass VCs and bankers and people telling us “You have to scale" and "you have to do this”. It’s scaled. That’s one of the beauties, as I said, we were left alone. We were left alone to fail or succeed or both. And you know what it’s like?
00:08:45:19 - 00:09:04:15
ANDY
It’s like discovering a place and you go there and discover you can build what you want there on this piece of land where nobody’s there. You can build what you want. You can take here and you put a little pond there and park here, high rise here and you can do it. And then what happens is people start moving in and it becomes a city
00:09:04:15 - 00:09:23:19
ANDY
and suddenly there’s zoning and regulations and that’s basically what happened. We got in early, we got in early and we were able to do and there was no pressure for us to do anything except the pressure we put upon ourselves. So nobody was saying, “Oh, listen, you’re going to scale and we’re looking at your numbers and we’re not seeing a fast enough growth”.
00:09:24:03 - 00:09:41:14
ANDY
It grew on its own. It grew on its own. Why? Because of the fact that there was demand for it and because we took a lot of risks. We took a lot of risks. We took a lot of shots and we were able to have a certain swagger because we were going where no one had gone before.
00:09:41:15 - 00:10:07:08
FRED
That’s an interesting combination of taking risks without an investor breathing down your neck and giving you external sort of metrics that you have to hit. That seems to be like a magical situation. I’ve seen also with a lot of entrepreneurs where, you can allow the business to grow organically, but you can also start taking risks and kind of see where it goes without having to hit certain benchmarks, which is what you often see after a round of financing that everybody sort of chases today.
00:10:08:08 - 00:10:21:17
FRED
But what you seem to be saying is that, “Look, we had all this freedom, we had all this land that we could explore, but at the same time, we could just do what we did." It wasn’t about satisfying any external sort of force.
00:10:22:11 - 00:10:42:11
ANDY
Well, I’d say yes to that, except that we had to satisfy it, if I remember my count correctly, eight external forces, but we had to satisfy them in an organic manner. And each one of them, I used to call this the spinning the octopus, because an octopus, that’s tentacles can come and strangle you and grab you like that.
00:10:42:11 - 00:11:05:13
ANDY
But if you spin an octopus, it’s tentacles, but since centrifugal force are going to go out. So, if you spin an octopus, you have eight tentacles in the air going this way, horizontal to the ground, parallel to the ground, horizontal. So, the eight tentacles of the octopus, eight people we had to go ahead and satisfy were, of course, the public,
00:11:05:13 - 00:11:30:17
ANDY
the public, first and foremost, because the public didn’t buy tickets or watch the shows, you were dead. The performers, the performers had to say, “Wow, this is great, I love it”. You have to do things for the performers. I remember performers would come to us and say, “This is incredible” because they’re used to playing some shitty comedy club with a crummy IG brick wall or a mouldy old curtain, and they come to us with this set and eight cameras and lighting.
00:11:30:17 - 00:11:45:15
ANDY
So that was cool. There was the media. You have to give the media something to talk about. I may forget some here, so you have to excuse me, but something exciting to talk about. There were the sponsors, of course, the sponsors, who put the money in and to make sure that they were satisfied and happy.
00:11:45:22 - 00:12:11:13
ANDY
There was the government, because we had government grants, that’s five. There were the TV networks, six, because you have to deliver the content for them and make sure these people were happy. And there were seven and eight. I can’t remember the 7th and 8th, they’ll come to, oh ourselves, the employees, we always make sure we have to enjoy.
00:12:11:13 - 00:12:30:07
ANDY
They have to be worth it because it wasn’t fun. Everyone thought, “Oh, you’re in the comedy, isn’t that fun?” No, it wasn’t fun at all. It was a pain in the ass. We were miserable, but we were miserable so others can have fun. And the way we used to, I still remember we used to go to the back of the audience and watch. And we would just see.
00:12:30:08 - 00:12:44:15
ANDY
we would see a whole sea of this underlying shoulders because people were laughing. And when they’re laughing, you’re watching a whole bunch of people laughing. You just see shoulders doing that. And that was amazing satisfaction for us. So that’s seven, and I can’t remember the eight, but that’s pretty good to remember seven.
00:12:44:18 - 00:12:59:09
FRED
Yeah. If you can create value. So, you saw sort of the whole balancing act that’s creating value for multiple stakeholders at the same time, right? You have to not just focus on the public or focus on the accident. You kind of have this multifaceted. All the stakeholders.
00:12:59:09 - 00:13:22:12
ANDY
Every one of them. And I’ll tell you, and what would happen. So let’s put it another way. Let’s take away the octopus analogy. Let’s use an Octagon. Let’s use a shape. And if you’re spinning the Octagon, it spins. It’s beautiful, it’s in motion. But as soon as one side gets too heavy or one side gets too light, the balance is off and it crashes.
00:13:22:17 - 00:13:46:03
ANDY
That’s what we had to make sure. So, we couldn’t do things and piss off any one of our eight stakeholders. So, yeah, it was a balancing act. But in the end, there wasn’t any one of these who are really making our lives miserable at the expense of one or the others, which happens from time to time in the VC world.
00:13:46:13 - 00:14:05:12
ANDY
Look, I sold my company, Airborne mobile. And at one point in time, I don’t want to name names here, but we had a major shareholder named Cybird who bought 85% of the company and spent over $100 million to do so. And then a lot of the people for different reasons,
00:14:05:12 - 00:14:27:05
ANDY
were, hey basically, I don’t say gang up, but they were dissatisfied with Cybird. And not that I disagree with them with why they were pissed off at Cybird. But it just got to a point where one investor is pissing off another investor, and then what happens? Nothing good for that.
00:14:27:11 - 00:14:37:06
FRED
Right. You get to a situation where your attention is diverted and you can no longer create value for all of the stakeholders. That’s tough. That takes a lot of energy.
00:14:37:13 - 00:15:00:14
ANDY
And you got to choose sides and play the political game. I don’t think it can happen these days. I don’t think it can happen anymore because people have just gotten too sophisticated, and there’s the algorithms and the financial models and nothing that didn’t exist, but nobody was looking at the entertainment business that way back then.
00:15:01:00 - 00:15:02:05
ANDY
So I don’t think it would happen.
00:15:02:05 - 00:15:14:09
FRED
But then let me put this to you. Would you feel like if a project or if a venture were self-financed, that they would have more of that same kind of freedom to operate that you guys had that would maybe recreate those conditions?
00:15:14:20 - 00:15:36:09
ANDY
Sure. Self-financing means you can say “Fuck you to anybody”. Self-financing. “Hey, you know what? It’s my money I’ll do what I want with it” and you see that. You see entrepreneurs, people who are self-financed, can say no to things. And again, I don’t want to bump anybody up nor do I want to come across as some great expert on this because I’m not.
00:15:36:20 - 00:15:56:22
ANDY
But once you start taking money from people, it’s hard to say no. The more you take, the harder to say no. And the investor says “You want to see more of this”. You can’t just go to the investor and say, “Go screw yourself” and say, “Yeah, go screw myself away, my friend. Let’s see who wins out in the end.”
00:15:57:02 - 00:16:06:09
ANDY
And then maybe you do have the power to do that. But still, it’s never going to end. It’s never going to end up good. And if you’re self-financed, you can do what the hell you want.
00:16:06:17 - 00:16:15:02
FRED
A lot of entrepreneurs just chase that next financing deal. And I mean, I’ve seen it too. The operational consequences of that. You’ve got to be careful.
00:16:15:16 - 00:16:33:00
ANDY
I’ve lived it. Yeah, you really got to be careful. Luckily, I got to say, luckily, we had some wacky investors in the early days of Airborne. It was really early in the VC world. The investors came to it. They had a little bit of a different sophistication and headspace than they do today.
00:16:33:07 - 00:16:53:06
ANDY
But I got to say I’ve been pretty lucky my career just the last minute, airborne and we started playing the future. The investors we had were pretty good people and we’re understanding and they even understood the failure when things didn’t work out. They even understood that, and they said, “You know what? It’s not my first rodeo.
00:16:53:06 - 00:17:00:12
ANDY
We understand that not everything works.” That’s unbelievable to be able to deal with people like that. But not everyone’s like that.
00:17:01:00 - 00:17:11:21
FRED
For sure. So, Andy, I have to say, you have the best tagline on LinkedIn by far. This is actually how I reached out to you. So you’re right. I have the balls that you wish you had.
00:17:12:08 - 00:17:19:04
ANDY
I’ve never put balls that will be vulgar on LinkedIn. I said I have the guts you wish you had.
00:17:19:04 - 00:17:22:22
FRED
Okay, we’ll have to fact-check that.
00:17:22:22 - 00:17:25:08
ANDY
I wrote it.
00:17:25:22 - 00:17:49:22
FRED
You also wrote a book called Pow! The Power of Surprise. And I realized that that’s kind of like what you did with that tagline, because LinkedIn is kind of like this politically correct, vanilla social network where everybody’s trying to look for professional. Nobody’s trying to say anything out of turn. Everybody’s trying to stay in line with the social trends or use the thing of the day to get a few likes.
00:17:50:15 - 00:18:10:20
FRED
And I realized, man, here’s somebody that’s coming out there with a statement like this, and it kind of hit me. And then you responded, you were super cool about it. And I’m like, okay, so it almost felt like you were playfully provoking people to have a little bit more guts, a little bit more hood spot. That’s how I read it.
00:18:11:15 - 00:18:12:06
ANDY
Yeah.
00:18:12:06 - 00:18:27:01
FRED
Do you feel that this spirit, this idea like this in your face, make things happen, is kind of lost a little bit in this generation where people grow up everything in public and kids are kind of scared of being judged and maybe being a little bit more cautious than you guys were?
00:18:28:10 - 00:18:50:18
ANDY
I have two kids who are in business, and both of them are very audacious in their own way. Very not like me. One of them is perhaps a little bit more extreme, the other one is a little more conservative. But both take the proper amount of risk and both have the proper amount of personality. I did
00:18:50:19 - 00:19:13:01
ANDY
that LinkedIn for a reason, because in essence, I have nothing to lose. Well, what’s going to happen? Someone said, I don’t need you. I’m not caught in an attitude, but I’ve done my time. I’ve spent 46 years now in the workplace. I don’t need you anymore. If you want to deal with me, the package,
00:19:13:05 - 00:19:32:15
ANDY
and also what it does, it’s one of those things. It’s like a Nigerian Internet email scam in reverse. You know anyone … The Nigerian Internet scam, they go ahead and they send you an email and there’s spelling mistakes in them and the grammar is shitty.
00:19:32:21 - 00:19:53:23
ANDY
And you say, “What intelligent person would respond to this?” That’s the point. An intelligent person wouldn’t respond to it. They’d say, “This is a scam.” What they’re looking for are people who are not that intelligent, a lot more naive, and were going to say, “Oh, this looks interesting. That is the way you spell their 'T-H-E-R-E', That’s exactly the way you spell it. And I’m going to respond to this."
00:19:54:03 - 00:20:14:13
ANDY
That’s exactly the way you spell it. And I’m going to respond to this. And they said that’s we want to respond to it. So the same thing with this is that in reverse, that if people will say, “Oh, my God, I would never work with somebody who says, I have the guts you wish you had.” Well, that’s great, because I wouldn’t want to work with you, too. I would be the last person I’d want to work with.
00:20:14:17 - 00:20:31:04
FRED
I thought it was funny, man. I thought it was funny. I’m like, this guy’s a character. What is this? And I wrote to you and I said, man, I have the gut that you think I wish I had. And then you were right away, super friendly, joking around. I’m like, this guy is playing another game here.
00:20:31:11 - 00:20:48:09
ANDY
Not a game at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not a game at all. It’s authenticity. It’s just me. I can’t hide anything. If anybody really wants to find anything out, they’ll find it out. YouTube Google search will show you basically what you need to know about somebody.
00:20:48:09 - 00:21:21:06
ANDY
If you really need to dig in deep, there are places you can go for $100. You can find out the amount of hairs I have on my back if you want, for the amount of money. So, the thing about LinkedIn, that makes me like, I actually had, I had a very standard LinkedIn tag. And actually with COVID Hit, I started
taking all types of courses.
00:21:21:06 - 00:21:22:17
ANDY
I had time, I was at home.
00:21:23:01 - 00:21:24:07
FRED
Online courses, big things. Yeah
00:21:24:10 - 00:21:40:09
ANDY
Tons of them. And one of them was on branding. And they said, “LinkedIn, be yourself, because everyone talks”. Oh, that’s great. That’s why I put that into place. I actually learned that from one of the classes I took.
00:21:40:09 - 00:21:57:00
FRED
It was really cool. And what I read also that your interest in the power of surprise, you teach entrepreneurs how to leverage the power of surprise. Like, man, that’s what Andy did. He surprised me. You spoke in a tone that nobody speaks in, in that medium, in that social network,
and that’s what drew my attention.
00:21:57:00 - 00:22:03:18
FRED
I’m like, what is this? I never sent private messages to anybody, and it worked. It just kind of drew me out. And I’m like, let me have some fun with this, right? Yeah.
00:22:05:08 - 00:22:16:09
ANDY
Most of the time you’re a unique individual because you responded to this. Most people don’t respond. Most people are afraid. That’s what-
00:22:16:09 - 00:22:31:04
FRED
That’s what I was trying to get to Andy. That’s what I was trying to get to. It was almost like you’re provoking people like, “Hey, guys, what are you guys all doing here? Everybody out here being scared, putting an image on, putting this fake.” This is like a little bit of, like old school in your face.
00:22:31:09 - 00:22:34:19
FRED
Here it is. Let's have a real conversation right.
00:22:34:19 - 00:22:53:19
ANDY
Well, there’s three things I want to bring up on this, three. One is, and I want you to remember this. It’s going to be course, it’s going to be end of book, and it’s going to be change. We’ll start with change when people always talk. And this is what makes me laugh all the time. In marketing, people talk about so much.
00:22:53:19 - 00:23:00:08
ANDY
“We want to change. We want to be innovative. We want to do things differently. We want to think outside the boxes”
00:23:00:15 - 00:23:01:03
FRED
Disruption.
00:23:01:11 - 00:23:15:02
ANDY
And you come up and hear something. “Well, I don’t want that much disruption. Can you tone it back a bit?” “Okay. What about this?” “Still a little bit nutty. Can you bring it down a bit more?” “How about this?” “Almost there.” “Okay. What about this?” “That’s great.”
00:23:15:09 - 00:23:21:18
FRED
You wrote in one of your blog posts. You wrote in one of your blog posts, everybody loves change until you change something.
00:23:21:23 - 00:23:36:09
ANDY
Yeah, exactly. They want others to change. And then they say, “Why couldn’t we do that?”
That’s the first thing. Second thing is the end of the book. So I wrote that book, The Power of Surprise. I got to say it did well, but it didn’t do as well as I thought it was going to do.
00:23:36:09 - 00:23:44:00
ANDY
Why? Because most people don’t want to do this. Most people don’t want craziness, they don’t want surprises. They want risky.
00:23:44:00 - 00:23:45:05
FRED
They don’t really want to take that risk.
00:23:45:09 - 00:24:03:11
ANDY
Well, that was a great surprise. Let’s do it again. No, you don’t do it again. It’s like a magic trick. You do a magic trick once. You do that three times, people watch your hands. “Let me see how it’s done”. The thing about a magic trick is not to know how it’s done. The thing about a magic trick is for you to be awed. For you to say, wow, it’s spectacular.
00:24:03:11 - 00:24:17:22
ANDY
And to have a sense of wonder, not to say, “Well, let me figure out how it’s done.” So what I did with the book, I had this thing, and I made it seem like, “Oh, you got a lucky book.” But every book was the same and said, oh, I cut it off in the middle of a sentence. And I said, “We’re cutting the book here.
00:24:19:12 - 00:24:39:14
ANDY
If you read this far, you got enough. Right now you have a special edition. And if you go ahead and if they really close off this book, you’re one of those few people, dial this number” and what the number would do, what the number would do. It was a 1800 number. And no matter where in the world you were, it would reach me.
00:24:39:14 - 00:24:41:12
ANDY
And I kept my phone on. My wife would kill me.
00:24:41:12 - 00:24:42:11
FRED
Are you serious?
00:24:42:11 - 00:25:08:15
ANDY
And people were floored when I would answer and they would say as soon as they would wake me up, “Hello? Who’s this? Why are you calling?” “It’s from the book.” “Oh, Hi. It’s me.” They were amazed, but they couldn’t believe it,
00:25:08:18 - 00:25:28:17
that someone would actually do this. So much fun. I met so many really great people because of that kindred spirit, so to speak. So that was two. And the third one is you talk about teaching entrepreneurs. If all goes well. If all goes well. And until I signed the contract, I never believe it. And even then, I still don’t believe until it actually starts.
00:25:29:00 - 00:25:50:21
ANDY
But I teach a lot at McGill. And I just put out a course outline for fall of this year where the MBA program. This all goes back to what I taught last year, the MBA program. And most of my students were, like, dull and scared and boring and afraid to take risks and didn’t want to do anything creative.
00:25:52:04 - 00:26:07:01
ANDY
I’d say two-thirds of them were like that. One-third were like, “Oh, my God, how do I learn?” So I said, “Okay, you all need to know this”. So I propose this course not just proposed, it’s, like, been accepted. But as I said, until this contract is. But it’s called Creativity,
00:26:07:21 - 00:26:22:22
ANDY
Curiosity, and Guts. And it’s basically teaching those three factors to faculty where basically everything is so analytical and numerically based and marks and all that.
00:26:23:18 - 00:26:34:16
FRED
Do you think that’s something that can be taught? Or are you going to sort of get into some kind of weird performance art in that course? Like just kind of prod people’s attitude and mindset a little bit, make them uncomfortable. That’s really cool.
00:26:34:23 - 00:26:58:13
ANDY
Both. Both. Of course it can be taught. But also, you don’t teach that by saying, “okay, here are” and I once, I’m going to go back to LinkedIn for a second. I want to give a speech for Rogers. Actually, I did it for Rogers. I did it for Natrell, a few other people. But it was a speech on creativity and talked about. Here are the four ways to be creative.
00:26:58:13 - 00:27:16:22
ANDY
One, do this, two, do this. Three. And then people were writing it down, “Guys, are you crazy? Are you crazy? You don’t learn how to be created by PowerPoint, by four steps. It’s not like a four-step program, like a twelve-step program to control your alcoholism. Jesus, that’s not the way you do it.”
00:27:16:22 - 00:27:18:03
ANDY
So
00:27:18:07 - 00:27:25:00
FRED
So how do you do it? What is your perspective on creativity? How do you get into that lateral thinking and outside the box and something completely fresh and curious and out of nowhere?
00:27:25:00 - 00:27:50:02
ANDY
I’m writing it now. I’m writing it now. But basically, there are steps to take their ways to look at things. One way I always like to preach is Virgin contact lenses, something I found in the book, my book way back when I wrote about it. But it’s like seeing things from a whole new way, seeing things if they never existed.
00:27:50:02 - 00:28:12:21
ANDY
When comedy. And I hate to go back to comedy, but it seems to follow me. I got a call one time from a journalist, and I said, “Look, I’m not involved just for less anymore in comedy business”, because I said, “What would you do during Covid? Like, how would you have comedy shows?” And I said, “You know, at this point in time, what I would do, what’s being done? Kudos to people.
00:28:12:21 - 00:28:31:22
ANDY
I’m so happy they’re doing it. So happy they’re doing these types of Zoom shows. Hi, how are you? Whatever they’re doing.” But what I would do is say, “Okay,” and this is the Virgin contact lens thing, “what happens if comedy there was never such a thing as a comedy club? Let’s say there never was such a thing. You never got on stage and no one ever had a mic there
00:28:32:05 - 00:28:48:08
ANDY
and this was the way to do it.” So you have Virgin territory and you have to see things differently. Don’t look at the way things were but you’re seeing things for the first time. What would comedy be like if this was the actual way that someone said hey this is how I can communicate something finding the people
00:28:48:08 - 00:29:07:11
ANDY
what would it be like and come up with it that way? So it’s seeing things for the first time and it’s tough. I had the same thing with CCM consulting clients and I discussed this with them often but I’m saying “Why are skates still look like that?”
00:29:07:18 - 00:29:23:18
ANDY
Basically, yeah, the materials are better but in essence a skate for 2021 is not that much different from a skate from 1921. It’s still a boot with laces with these things coming down the blade.
00:29:23:18 - 00:29:24:04
FRED
Like a black boot.
00:29:24:04 - 00:29:40:11
ANDY
Yeah. Why is it laces? Why is it up in the middle and why isn’t somebody reinvented a skate because a skate and it was in your mind that’s what a skate looks like. What if you don’t know what a skate looks like? What if I went to Tibet If I went to Tibet
00:29:40:11 - 00:29:55:17
ANDY
and I went to these people who had never seen an ice skates here’s what we want to do. We need people to go and go fast across a frozen ice surface. What would you have maybe they would put something a whole lot different than what an ice skate looks like.
00:29:55:20 - 00:30:23:18
FRED
So looking at things for the first time, do you feel because you span a lot of different worlds, you’re in business, you obviously had a tremendous career in comedy. You’re also in the academic world a little bit right? You teach at McGill. So do you feel like it’s like looking at things for the first time almost sometimes gets harder the more stuff you learn in a conventional way, like people who go to school and we’re taught to sort of like, do things the way they normally are done or that an authority think is the right way?
00:30:24:06 - 00:30:35:08
FRED
Do you feel like sometimes that can almost create even more challenges to that perspective of seeing things for the first time? And can you train that? Can you sort of get better at that?
00:30:35:08 - 00:30:53:14
ANDY
Yes, and yes, you can train it. And yes, of course, it makes it harder. But at least you have a reference point. At least, you know, okay, this is what everyone thinks something looks like. So I’m going to make it look like that, or I’m going to make it act like that I’m going to make it sound like that because everyone thinks it sounds like this.
00:30:54:04 - 00:30:55:12
ANDY
So-
00:30:55:17 - 00:31:12:08
FRED
Developing almost a childlike naïve I forget what I read I think in one of my online courses that I’m taking right now on Flow, they talk about being naive, like forcing yourself to be na¨ve about things, like looking at things like, “Hey, I have no idea what’s going on here.” And that’s sort of putting a different mindset.
00:31:12:08 - 00:31:36:12
ANDY
It’s exactly the point. And part of the course that again, I don’t want to give myself kinahora, which is a Jewish term for like giving yourself like a curse. But this course, part of it, it’s a word I learned called neotony N-E-O-T-O-N-Y neotony and it means like looking at things in a very childlike manner.
00:31:36:19 - 00:32:13:05
ANDY
And the whole part of the course is neotony. It’s childlike in genie I believe a lot in the genie effect, which I can go into. But I think it’s also a very important point in business that most people ignore. Because again, when I first started teaching at McGill, they wanted me to teach a course called Marketing and Society, and they gave me this book and they gave me this course outline. And I’m saying, “Holy shit” I said, “Teacher,
00:32:13:08 - 00:32:35:06
ANDY
if I had to take this course, I would be asleep in 30 minutes. I’d be dead. This is dull as shit.” The good thing was that a guy who I was to go with, Peter Todd, was actually the Dean of management at the time. I said, “Peter, look, thank you for thinking of me, but there’s no way I can do this.
00:32:35:06 - 00:32:51:00
ANDY
No matter. I can’t do it for me, it would be such a just a cash grab to say, let me just make whatever it takes Let me get through this horrific. It would be a terrible experience for everybody. But if you let me come up with a course, let me come up with a course that I think people need.”
00:32:51:00 - 00:33:14:13
ANDY
And it was still called Marketing Society, but it was totally irrelevant. It’s like having something called “Tomato”, yet it’s a barbecue . “What’s going on here?” Yeah, but that’s exactly what it was It was called Marketing Society, but the course was actually about the integration of YouTube as a business tool, which today is second nature.
00:33:14:13 - 00:33:19:05
ANDY
But when I talk this ten years ago, it was like, “Holy shit, what’s going on here?”
00:33:19:12 - 00:33:22:19
FRED
I’ve got to sign up to continuing education at McGill to take one of your courses.
00:33:23:21 - 00:33:26:06
ANDY
You got to get into the MBA program first. Good luck.
00:33:27:00 - 00:33:41:04
FRED
You also founded a media company as you mentioned, you were working with brands like CCM, but many others like Maxim, Family Guide, NFL, Taco Bell, Airborne Media, Deloitte named it as one of North America’s fastest-growing tech companies. You sold it.
00:33:42:04 - 00:33:45:06
ANDY
A couple of years ago.
00:33:45:18 - 00:33:54:01
FRED
You sold it for over $100 million. You’ve got a nine-figure exit on your resume, which is super impressive I know how rare that is.
00:33:54:01 - 00:34:00:02
ANDY
Yes, those are the days when 100 million was actually big money. These days
00:34:00:05 - 00:34:02:13
FRED
It’s still a lot.
00:34:02:16 - 00:34:05:17
ANDY
00:34:05:17 - 00:34:19:02
FRED
What I find fascinating is that you then repurchased the company. So tell us a little bit about that adventure, that whole adventure of building up that company, selling it to a company in Japan. Correct. And then repurchasing it.
00:34:20:00 - 00:34:39:02
ANDY
Well, again, what happened with Garner and myself was being right place, right time, having guts, and also some desperation . We started the Web company. It wasn’t working. And we said, “We’re either going to fool the company” or just now I’m using today’s terms for yesterday’s news. It wasn’t called it at the time.
00:34:39:09 - 00:34:56:22
ANDY
We pivoted from a Web company to a mobile company when there was no such thing as mobile media. No such thing as mobile entertainment. Phone screens were green with black dots on them. And we would go to people, to investors and others and say, “One day people are going to watch television on this.” They say, “You guys nuts. What are you saying?
00:34:56:22 - 00:35:20:19
ANDY
You’re crazy? What type of hearsay is this? is this watching television on a phone. You’re nuts.” That’s what we got. We believe it was going to happen. So we said, “Let’s try and make this happen.” But we built that company. What was the question about the accidents these days? That was big money at the time.
00:35:21:03 - 00:35:25:12
ANDY
We were the unicorn. We were like a pony, I guess we were a pony.
00:35:26:08 - 00:35:27:19
FRED
A really colourful pony.
00:35:27:20 - 00:35:31:10
ANDY
A pony with a kid’s birthday hat. That’s what we were at the time.
00:35:31:18 - 00:35:34:02
FRED
Pretty damn valuable pony, though.
00:35:34:12 - 00:35:59:08
ANDY
But what we did. But basically, you can talk about strategy and everything. It was desperation. We had to come up with something. And we saw mobile being big in Japan and Europe. And we said, “Okay, we’re a mobile company today.” I just read something the other day,
I think The Wall Street Journal. That was really what we believe and what I tell my kids all the time,
00:35:59:16 - 00:36:12:07
ANDY
if you come up with an idea and everyone says, “Oh, that’ll never work, it’s stupid. It’s ridiculous.” That’s where you go. If anyone says, “Oh, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen”, that’s where you got to turn away from. Because if people-
00:36:12:09 - 00:36:24:23
FRED
Why is that? Why is that? Is that because if everybody thinks it’s a great idea, it’s almost like already, like, too much in currency? That means everybody is thinking about it. And if everybody’s like, I don’t get it, that means it’s sort of against the grain and maybe there’s a chance there’s something special.
00:36:25:14 - 00:36:57:05
ANDY
Exactly. And I use Bitcoin as an example. And I’ll tell you why I use Bitcoin as an example. I was, when I say I was at the cusp of certain things, I was in certain things. I was at the cusp of when cable TV became big. But it just started. And that’s how, luckily, Just For Last, we gloved on and cable TV helped drive where Just For Laughs was going. I was there at the beginning of the Internet, and the Internet helped me get out of Just For Laughs and follow my dream there.
00:36:57:09 - 00:37:19:07
ANDY
But we were there a little too early. And the stuff we want to do on the Internet, which was content and humour and video, was really too early. So we went to mobile. We were really really early in mobile, but it wasn’t a bubble at the time. It was really early and not too many eyes were on it.
00:37:19:07 - 00:37:40:07
ANDY
And we were there. And when things started to happen, it pulled us. So now I go to Bitcoin. Now I was really, I took advantage of the first three, but not this one, which I still kick myself. I was on ground ground ground ground floor of Bitcoin, the less than $100 Bitcoin.
00:37:40:07 - 00:38:01:12
ANDY
Here’s what bothered me about Bitcoin. I read about it. I was reading about Satoshi, whatever his name is, all this stuff. But what bothered me were two things. One is it was tough to sell, and two, it was wacky to buy because the place I’ll tell you where I saw Bitcoin on sale-
00:38:01:19 - 00:38:09:02
FRED
With all the wallets. I remember early on it was hard. You have to sort of figure it out, how to enter that marketplace.
00:38:09:12 - 00:38:24:14
ANDY
But now you can call a couple of people. But back then, there was a place on Saint Laurent right near my office. It was down the street. It was Saint Laurent Milton. It was a store that had African carvings and masks and some wacky pictures-
00:38:24:14 - 00:38:26:01
FRED
And you can buy some Bitcoin there.
00:38:26:01 - 00:38:50:10
ANDY
Yes. And I’m saying do I want to invest in a place where you buy Bitcoin in a place where they sell African carvings and wacky masks and water bottles? It didn’t seem to make sense. And then the next place I saw Bitcoin was a machine in a cafe on the Maisonneuve and Drummond. I kicked myself because I would always say when you go to a trade show, you can go to the big booths
00:38:50:10 - 00:39:09:17
ANDY
and it’s really interesting. They have booth babes and they have stuff to give away and merch and all sorts of shit and guys in ties with clipboards and all that stuff. But the real exciting stuff at trade shows are the things on the fringes, like the ones in the back where the guy can afford the proper table and he’s near the toilet.
00:39:09:23 - 00:39:33:02
ANDY
That’s where the really cool stuff is. I remember this distinctly. I was at the CTIA conference, which is the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. That was where all the mobile people went. And when we were in the business, Verizon, Sprint and blah blah, they were all there and Airborne, we were there and a whole bunch of other mobile companies.
00:39:33:04 - 00:39:59:22
ANDY
We were teeny weenie, but we were still in the industry. But we went to CTIA and some guy had this booth and he was doing electronic cigarettes and he was showing me, this is insane. But in the end, I said, it’s kind of interesting. And again, not that I’m a non-smoker and anti-smoker, but I would have put a few dollars into electronic cigarettes at the time. It became Jull and Jull became a multi-billion dollar company.
00:40:00:05 - 00:40:01:10
ANDY
FRED
But it’s against the running
00:40:01:10 - 00:40:26:06
FRED
theme of the power of surprise. It seems like that’s a running theme in your life. Like you look for the thing that’s outside of the obvious, the thing that is hidden, the thing that is not what everybody’s doing. And that seems to be almost a contrarian thread, seems to be what you’ve been following throughout your career and developing lenses for. That seems to be something that’s really powerful.
00:40:26:06 - 00:40:32:00
ANDY
Yes, but it’s also one of the things that people are afraid of doing. And again, even myself.
00:40:32:00 - 00:40:33:19
FRED
Why, why are people so afraid of doing that?
00:40:33:23 - 00:41:02:10
ANDY
I don’t know, even myself. I’ll give you another example. If you heard of a company called Potloc? P-O-T-L-O-C. Potloc. When I was doing stuff for Montreal 375, I ran into this guy, Rudolph Barr, who’s really nice. I mean, he was a kid at the time, really nice kid. He had this company and he said, “What we’re going to do is we have a company that when there’s empty stores, we’ll go into the community and we’ll pull the community to see what type of store they would want there.”
00:41:03:04 - 00:41:28:22
ANDY
That’s one of the most stupid things I’ve ever heard. What are they going to say? I want a flower shop.
I want a Japanese restaurant. Who cares? It didn’t seem to make sense to me. Now this guy, this company is worth like $800 million and he’s on the cover of Forbes magazine.
00:41:29:08 - 00:41:51:09
ANDY
But when you hear these ideas and I want a blog post on this, every idea is born the same. Even the stupid ones. Great ideas, stupid ideas, they’re all the same at first. There’s nothing that separates a great idea from a stupid idea other than where it goes, but they’re all equal at birth. So sometimes when you hear somebody say “Oh, that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve
00:41:51:09 - 00:42:08:05
ANDY
ever heard” that, it’s perhaps a sign for you to say “I’m going to follow that” because when you look at some of the things that are basically standards today they started out as ideas that people say that’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
00:42:08:22 - 00:42:24:15
FRED
It’s amazing. Andy, I want to talk about The Devil’s 10%, something that you wrote about that’s absolutely, really, really interesting. And I want to get your thoughts on it. So I’m going to read a little bit, little chunks of your post on this okay?
00:42:24:16 - 00:42:27:20
ANDY
Go ahead. I love listening to myself. Go ahead.
00:42:28:08 - 00:42:59:04
FRED
This is what you write. “Trust me. When you close your big deal, the thing that every entrepreneur chases and people sort of fantasize about, even if we’re not entrepreneurs, when all the money is tucked away in the bank, before you even take your first step, the devil is there, smiling, hand extended to shake yours and demand his 10%. Just when you think you’re invincible invulnerable and that you finally made it big, the devil will be there with a kick-in-the-gut
00:42:59:04 - 00:43:29:21
FRED
reality check.” Then you go on and talk about self-inflicted. Right, what this means from a self-inflicted perspective- hubris, drugs, alcohol, gambling, poor decisions, wild egomania. And then you talk about sometimes it’s external- mental health issues, sickness, jealousy, family, breakups. Then you go on. “But whether you suffer personally or observe as a weakened wounded bystander, the devil is always by your side.”
00:43:29:21 - 00:43:55:23
FRED
And then you say, “Yeah, sure, all of these things can happen to anyone. But the difference with a winning entrepreneur is that they’re on such a high that they’re blindsided, they don’t see it coming.” And then this is the advice, Andy, that you give people. You say, “Be smart, put the devil in your cap table, give him his own line, Satan 10%.”
00:43:56:11 - 00:44:24:10
FRED
And then I love this. “If nothing else, at this point, it’ll at least make your investor pitches and board meetings more intriguing.” So I’m going to play this is a concept that really, again, hit me with that power of surprise. Let me play the Devil’s advocate against the devil here for a second. How does giving the devil equity, and I know you’re being sort of metaphorical with this, how is this going to help me deal with him?
00:44:24:16 - 00:44:33:22
FRED
Right? You mean like giving the devil his 10%. Can you just expound what you mean exactly by this concept of literally having a line item for the devil in your cap table?
00:44:34:19 - 00:44:52:17
ANDY
Because you know what’s going to happen. We go back to the story you mentioned. How do we buy the company back for a dollar? How do we buy the company back for a dollar? Because of the fact that there was sharehold-, there was investor rebellion, one against the other. Then they put one of the investors in a bad way.
00:44:52:17 - 00:45:10:23
ANDY
And then this one had to be this way, which all made that cyber had to go ahead. And because of some Japanese restrictions, say, we can’t continue with this company, we’re able to buy it back for a dollar. Nothing good, when you buy something good happens buying for a dollar, unless something that’s worth $0.12, profit.
00:45:12:01 - 00:45:36:15
ANDY
It happens all the time. And by putting that line item in there. You’re covered. You’re covered because you say, “When shit hits the fan, we will not only have the money to deal with it, but we’ll know that, okay? This is what we kind of expected.” And that’s why I said it. And I really believe it because I saw it happen to the Airborne.
00:45:36:15 - 00:46:04:07
ANDY
And I didn’t just make this up and say, “Okay, I’m going to just go ahead and write something because it sounds really good.” I spoke to people. I spoke to friends of mine, names, Mitch Garber, Rory Olson, Harley Finkelstein. I go on and on and on.
00:46:04:07 - 00:46:33:16
ANDY
People who have. And every time, every time, there’s always a horror story that comes along with it. And again, some of, it’s just timing. Some of it’s just a family issue or health issue. That it’s just timing. But the point there is if you say, okay, I’m ready for it, I have the money and the head space for it, great. If you don’t, suddenly you’re on this major highland suddenly somebody who you love dearly is ill.
00:46:34:03 - 00:46:56:11
ANDY
Yikes. That could be the first step of a major downfall for you. So knowing it’s there, and what’s the worst thing that happens? The worst thing that happens is, “Hey, it never happens.” And you suddenly have this big cash buffer to play with. But by and large, it always happens. And you see it. I’ll give you the example.
00:46:56:12 - 00:47:20:06
ANDY
Tony Shay of Zappos. Look at there’s a Death solar company for 900 million to Amazon, $900 million. And he ends his life burning in a shed that doesn’t make any sense. And burning in a shed. I just lost all my money and I’m homeless. No, the guy’s still worth $880,000,000 or whatever it was or 920 or whatever,
00:47:20:11 - 00:47:36:05
ANDY
and he’s burning in his shed because he’s been sniffing nitrous oxide. How did that happen? How did it go from Tony Shay being the guy writing the book and making the whole world happy to dying in a shed? It doesn’t make sense.
00:47:36:06 - 00:47:44:22
FRED
I understand it almost as an extreme uncertainty fund or like a black Swan fund or like, you never know what’s going to happen.
00:47:44:22 - 00:47:54:18
ANDY
It’s a black Swan, uncertainty, you never know what’s going to happen. But it’s also a warning. It’s a warning because, I remember, I still remember the advice of Rory Olson.
00:47:54:18 - 00:48:03:22
FRED
Is it almost like to guard against your own ego. Like you talk about egomania. It’s like when you’re super successful, you sort of get bloated and you think nothing can happen to you. And that’s when you get blindsided.
00:48:03:22 - 00:48:30:16
ANDY
And you think that, “Oh, my God, my smart. Now what I’m going to do, I sold my company,
I’m going to become an investor, and I’m going to invest in other companies because I’m so smart.”Some people are that smart and that’s great, but a lot of people aren’t, and they think they are. That’s the worst part. When you’re fooling yourself and you don’t understand your limitations, and maybe I don’t want to show you limitations, but still, you got to understand them.
00:48:31:23 - 00:48:55:09
ANDY
But really what it is saying, watching. I guess the best advice I got on this was, Rory Olson is a friend of a partner in Airborne. Garner and I brought him along to help us grow the company. And that was there for us when we sold. And Rory, when we sold, look, I had a really nice life Just For Laughs.
00:48:55:09 - 00:49:17:01
ANDY
But that was a meagre equity portion, and I didn’t know what money was, nor do I do now. Although I got to say, I learned a bit when we sold Airborne, and suddenly I was on a different plane. I remember Rory coming to me. He went to lunch and he said, “Look, you just made a whack of cash.
00:49:17:04 - 00:49:33:10
ANDY
Here’s what you do. You plant a couple of flags, you buy a couple of things and plant a couple of flags, let them fly in the wind. And then what you do after you buy a couple of things and plant a couple of flags, you go onto your life the way it was before. As usual, you’re not a different person.
00:49:33:13 - 00:49:50:04
ANDY
Your life doesn’t change. You’re not smarter, you’re not better. It just happened to have a success in business.” So what I did is I bought a watch. I bought a watch. Three suits, a convertible, and an Andy Warhol painting. That’s what I did.
00:49:50:11 - 00:49:52:15
FRED
How much was the Andy Warhol painting?
00:49:53:06 - 00:50:10:08
ANDY
I got it early. It’s $35,000 US. I know exactly what’s with now that’s it. So basically all these things together were, what, $150,000?
00:50:11:05 - 00:50:17:10
FRED
Almost like satiate yourself a little bit, have some fun, satiate yourself, but then go back to who you were. Don’t have that radical break.
00:50:17:18 - 00:50:33:09
ANDY
Yeah, I used to wear the watch. I drive the car. The watch is in a safe now. I haven’t worn it since Covid. The car is long sold. The Warhol is above the fireplace. The three suits still fit. But who wears suits these days?
00:50:33:09 - 00:50:36:11
FRED
I bet you Warhol alone is worth more than what all the items cost back then.
00:50:36:12 - 00:50:59:13
ANDY
Basically. But the point is, that’s what he said, plant some flags, let them fly. And I remember another thing. Again, people put too much emphasis on, even with Airborne. In the latter part, people talk about scale and things that affect as we were wrapping the company up for sale,
00:50:59:13 - 00:51:30:05
ANDY
but it just happened. We were in the right place at the right time, and we worked our ass off, and we had the right product and the right partners, and it all gelled, you know. So it was a wonderful experience. But in terms of really understanding the processes of scaling a company, if people don’t want to buy what you’re selling, you can have all these wonderful processes all you want. You got to make great product.
00:51:30:05 - 00:51:53:09
ANDY
But I’ll go back to what I was saying about Rory and that lesson. People think that they are special. And it happened because of them. And many times it had nothing to do with you. The Pow! book. When I did that, I wrote that book. And it was not some half-assed book for self-published or some crummy little local publisher in the basement.
00:51:53:13 - 00:52:09:08
ANDY
It was Wiley Publishing. It was one of the biggest publishing companies in the States. So you can say to yourself, “Wow, look at me. I got a marketing book there for Wiley Publishing, one of the biggest publishers in the United States”. How did I get that book? Concept is great. I must say. I think that’s a lot of fun.
00:52:09:08 - 00:52:24:18
ANDY
But basically what happened was they have a number of books, they release a quarter and they had a marketing book scheduled and the author dropped out. There was an open space. And my agent happened to know there was an open space. And he called, “I got this idea for you. Here’s this pitch.” And they say, “Okay,
00:52:24:18 - 00:52:26:15
ANDY
it fills the space”.
00:52:26:22 - 00:52:37:05
FRED
So timing again, timing, but also the ability to work and deliver. Right. Also having the great concept, also having the ability to put in the work ethic. Right. It’s that confluence.
00:52:37:12 - 00:53:20:07
ANDY
Yeah. But we were on another tangent point. You asked me a question we were talking about. I was mentioning here’s the point that I wanted to get to apply the flag. So, my wife, we live in a pretty nice home in Westmount. I don’t know where your people are watching this from, but it’s a pretty nice enclave in Montreal and pretty nice place there. As I sold the company and my wife came to me, she says, “Look, there’s this house down the street that’s for sale”. At the time, It was like $900,000 in 2005.
00:53:20:07 - 00:53:38:07
ANDY
So we’re talking 16 years ago. And she said, “We got to go in and you’ll see, the art will look great in the house” and blah, blah, blah. And I went in and it comes spectacular. It’s beautiful. Three car garage and blah, blah, blah. And I said, “What do we need this for? Both our kids have moved out.
00:53:38:07 - 00:54:00:13
ANDY
It’s you, me and the dogs. I don’t want that many. I want to entertain them and have all the people in the house”. I’m looking to downsize. Why go ahead and start mortgaging yourself? Because I have to go to the next level. I said it’s the other way around. But so many people think that this is what I got to do business
00:54:00:13 - 00:54:13:23
ANDY
and personally, and I’m going to go ahead and force myself to get to the next level. What is the next level? The next level really is not any of the shit you buy, let me tell you. I’ve heard that.
00:54:14:15 - 00:54:31:17
FRED
That’s great. So some of your lessons that you’ve shared online, I just want your quick thoughts on these. We’ve already talked about everyone loves change until you change something. I got a couple more that I would like your quick thoughts on. Number one, anything you do just for money will ultimately fail.
00:54:32:00 - 00:54:41:12
ANDY
Oh, it’s worse than that. Anything you do just for money will bite you in the ass. Because you’re not doing it for the right reason. You’re not doing the right reason.
00:54:41:12 - 00:54:42:04
FRED
What’s the right reason?
00:54:42:09 - 00:55:11:09
ANDY
The right reason of doing anything, really, is to make a mark, make somebody proud, is to say, “I want to change something and do something different”. It’s to make something better. That to me, is why you do something. And it’s to take a chance, to advance things. When you’re doing something just for the money, you’re going to not care about, go back to the spinning octopus,
00:55:11:13 - 00:55:31:14
ANDY
you’re not going to care about the product or the people. You’re just going to care about the money. And it’s a long story. I’m not going to tell it, but I have a great story of the speech. The most I ever got paid for a speech was for Century 21. And I knew I was willing to do it for the money because I said, “Nothing I can say is anything these people want to hear”.
00:55:31:14 - 00:55:45:01
ANDY
And I told them that. They said, “No, they’re not going to. I looked at what your people wanted, they want to know how to sell our house. I don’t know that.” “No, they want to hear your stories.” “Okay, great, I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” Because what I should have said is, “Look, guys, it’s not going to work. Fine”.
00:55:45:07 - 00:56:01:06
ANDY
But they were throwing this money, and I said, “Great, I’ll take it.” Anyway, I did this speech. It was a disaster. From the third minute, it ended up, not only did people, everybody basically leave, but I was so bad that the guy who ran the conference, to come take the mic out of my hand and say, “Look, this ain’t working”.
00:56:01:14 - 00:56:03:20
ANDY
What happened in the end,
00:56:03:23 - 00:56:07:06
FRED
And that’s an example of something you did for the money and you thought it was the wrong reason.
00:56:07:09 - 00:56:22:10
ANDY
Oh, totally wrong reason. I did just for the money. So not only did it bite me in the ass and
humiliate me, but I had to give them the money back because they said, speaking agents, “If you ever want to get another gig, ever, you better refund on their money.” So we’ll say, “Okay, you know what?
00:56:22:10 - 00:56:27:08
ANDY
That’s good.” So in the end, I didn’t even get the money. That’s what happened.
00:56:27:21 - 00:56:36:10
FRED
You need that emotional anchor doing it to improve things, doing it to make your Mark, doing it for a personal reason, an intrinsic reason, not just chasing the cash.
00:56:36:19 - 00:56:58:10
ANDY
100%. And no matter what it is, I mean, do something that improves something and maybe just improves you. Somebody asked me this, few weeks ago, and I said, the only real motivation I ever had in life, and not that I even wanted them to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it from their mouths,
00:56:58:10 - 00:57:11:15
ANDY
but I wanted them to talk about amongst themselves. But it’s for my family to be proud of me. That’s all I really cared about. My kids, my wife, my parents at the time when they were alive. That’s all I really cared about. Everything else is secondary.
00:57:12:09 - 00:57:20:00
FRED
That’s amazing. This is my favourite one. Nice is worse than bad. Nice is worse than bad. Why?
00:57:20:15 - 00:57:43:15
ANDY
I remember Just For Laughs, what do you think, “Oh it’s nice”. Nice is like, not like, “Wow, it was the greatest thing I ever saw. Oh, my God.” Or “Jesus Christ. How could you ever think that would work? That’s terrible. That’s awful.” So those are the ranges of emotion. Nice is not only just in the middle. It’s not even just non-committal.
00:57:43:15 - 00:57:51:02
ANDY
It’s non-committal to the point of, oh, I wish I why did I kind of waste my time doing it?
00:57:51:03 - 00:57:53:13
FRED
It’s almost just, like, polite and uninterested.
00:57:54:00 - 00:58:11:13
ANDY
I remember when you see something, “Oh, my God, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen”. Like, the Cirque du Soleil’s, Beatles Love. When I saw that show, I said, “Oh, my God, I’m a big Beatles fan.” I said, “I can’t believe to put this together.” I’ve seen shows that are horrific, but at least there’s an emotion. And you never forget the horrific shows.
00:58:11:13 - 00:58:32:21
ANDY
I remember we had a show at Just for Laughs that was so bad. People, like, literally storm the box office and they were freaking yelling. And we said, “We’ll give you your money back, then we will double your money”. And people wrote me and said, “I just want to tell you thank you for your offer, but I’m not taking you up on it because I’ve always wanted to go to a show where people got booed off the stage and I finally got to see it.
00:58:33:03 - 00:58:39:17
ANDY
It was the worst show I ever saw, but it was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be able to sit to something like that.” I said, “Wow!“
00:58:39:20 - 00:58:53:12
FRED
It created emotion. There was something. There was something to hate. It almost goes back to I’m thinking that this old saying of the only bad press is no press, right? It’s like, if there’s indifference.
00:58:53:12 - 00:59:11:10
ANDY
Well, then again, if they say you’re a pedophile, that’s bad press. I’d rather have no press. If they say that you’re an animal abuser, I’d rather have no press. So there’s a lot of bad press, but it’s just that what it is. I don’t believe in that statement at all.
00:59:11:10 - 00:59:19:03
ANDY
What I do believe in is, let somebody have an emotion. It’s like, be hot, be cold, but don’t be tepid.
00:59:19:22 - 00:59:25:08
FRED
Love it. Another one. Beware of the person who doesn’t like balloons.
00:59:25:08 - 00:59:45:13
ANDY
Because it actually happened at Just For Laughs. I don’t want to go into names and all that. There was this woman who was a real nasty piece of work, a real nasty piece of work. And we had these balloons and some of these birthday, all these balloons around. Of course, most people would see balloons. They’re playing with him. And this one went high heels, stomps them until they broke.
00:59:45:21 - 01:00:07:20
ANDY
And I’m saying, and gave her pleasure and I said, it’s just perfect. You’ve seen this person hating balloons and you said, beware of the person who will not find the joy like the childhood joy in a balloon. And I still live that to this day. I believe that there are certain things that childlike joy.
01:00:07:23 - 01:00:13:15
ANDY
Enjoy that. And when you see somebody trying to destroy child-like joy, stay away from that person. So that’s why we were the person, it’s balloons.
01:00:14:12 - 01:00:43:14
FRED
I love it. Andy, by any standard out there, you’ve had not only an uber-successful career, but a very meaningful one, because you are coherent in everything that you say, there are themes in your life. You’re always searching to create value. You’re always searching for that little nugget that’s outside the realm of what everybody thinks. Today, you can sort of look back on your realm, what motivates you and drives you today
01:00:43:21 - 01:00:47:11
FRED
when you look back at your career and looking forward at what you want to accomplish?
01:00:48:11 - 01:01:09:17
ANDY
I guess what motivates me are two things. One is when people say “It can’t be done”, and two, when it’s a challenge. Let’s go back to LinkedIn for a second. Yeah, I have that tagline on LinkedIn, but also to have on LinkedIn. The first two things you see are these two speeches. I gave both of them, which had a very strong improvisational element in them.
01:01:09:17 - 01:01:31:08
ANDY
And, you know, some of the improvisation is it could work, but it could also fail. But the point is, given that or giving something safe, standing at a podium with notes and reading or just with words and reading the words and clicking on a PowerPoint that has the same words as you’re reading, anyone can play it safe. And I’m sure there’s applause.
01:01:31:15 - 01:01:54:00
ANDY
But I would rather take that shot to say, “Wow, I did something new”. And even if it falls, but at least I did that. At least I did that. And that’s what motivates, it’s to do something that hasn’t been done. Look, I’m putting together this speech. I don’t want to give it away, but some kids asked me to be part of TEDx Marianopolis,
01:01:54:07 - 01:02:21:09
ANDY
and they said “The theme is the unknown. Would you talk about the stuff you did in business?” It’s so easy to put together a speech about all kids these days. “Here’s what you should do, and here’s nine tips on how to do this and going into the unknown.” But I’m saying that’s too easy. So I’m coming up with something completely completely different, but something I know that they may not like in the end, but I know that, hey, you know what?
01:02:22:12 - 01:02:36:09
ANDY
It’s my challenge. It’s my challenge. I want to do something that either you may fall in love with or you may detest, but at least you’re not going to say, “Okay, when’s the next person, what’s the next person?”
01:02:37:20 - 01:02:54:21
FRED
Andy, look, when I hear you speak, I think of, there’s a research that I read once that talked about the link between courage and creativity, and it almost seems like you keep going back to those two themes of do what’s creative, do something new, do something fresh, have the guts to do it.
01:02:54:21 - 01:03:04:05
FRED
Don’t just fall back on the conventional the obvious and I think it’s- do you have any moonshots that you feel inside of you that you still want to take?
01:03:05:05 - 01:03:30:10
ANDY
Plenty of moonshots but again every moonshot starts off as a firecracker. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a rocket booster right from the start. Right now. These days every shot is a moon shot. There’s nothing, I don’t do anything standard. I just did some stuff. I mentioned CCM but I wrote this
01:03:30:19 - 01:03:46:13
ANDY
ad that talks about inclusivity and not the themes of the day, but it shows that hockey can be racially sensitive and inclusive.
01:03:46:13 - 01:04:04:20
FRED
I know that’s been a real challenge in the world of hockey, right? Yeah, but the culture hasn’t been sort of adapting to just generally the diversity, the openness from a lot of instances of subtle racism. Not so subtle racism.
01:04:04:20 - 01:04:19:09
ANDY
That was a challenge. That was a challenge. The challenge was, you can do something that’s standard or you can do something that is going to make people choke up and shed tears. That’s what we tried to do. So that’s all a moonshot now because it’s not a moonshot. As I always say at this stage of the game in my life,
01:04:19:20 - 01:04:39:15
ANDY
is it more interesting than me reading a book or walking my dog? And if it’s not more interesting than me reading a book or walking my dog I’m not going to do it. I’d rather take that hour and sit with a book or go for a walk versus do something that say, “Okay, I may make a couple of dollars
01:04:39:15 - 01:04:50:04
ANDY
for it but who cares? Why am I doing this?” That’s why I evaluate anything. So that means this must be very interesting because it’s an hour. I’m not reading a book or walking my dog, I’m talking to you.
01:04:50:22 - 01:05:02:13
FRED
Let’s hope! Let’s hope! Andy. I learned a ton this was super interesting listening to you. I hope we can do it again. Thank you so much for making this time and I hope to talk to you soon.
01:05:03:04 - 01:05:11:09
ANDY
Well, let me know how this goes. Let me know that, when you show it to others, if they don’t click off or throw things at the screen.
01:05:12:13 - 01:05:15:11
FRED; All good. As long as we surprise them, as long as they feel something.
01:05:16:02 - 01:05:20:13
ANDY
Indeed. As long as they feel something. Well put, well put. Farewell, my friend.
01:05:20:19 - 01:05:21:18
FRED
Thank you, Andy. We’ll talk soon.
01:05:21:18 - 01:05:22:02
ANDY
Till then.
01:05:23:00 - 01:05:23:04
FRED
All right. Have a good one.
01:05:23:04 - 01:05:23:12
ANDY
Bye.
01:05:23:12 - 01:05:32:19
FRED
Okay, bye.