Rich Roll’s ‘crash course’ in entrepreneurship

Introduction

0:00We've all spent money on something that seemed incredible, but didn't live up to the hype. A kitchen gadget, a car. When it doesn't deliver, the disappointment is real. Marketers suffer from this too, chasing metrics that look great, but don't translate into revenue. LinkedIn calls that bull spend. Invest in what matters and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. LinkedIn ads also generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks.

0:33Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash scale. That's linkedin.com slash scale. Terms and conditions apply.

0:48The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet, when it comes to their own wealth, most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here, an estate attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, estate planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together.

1:27Proactive tax efficiency, estate strategy, investments, all under one roof. Creative planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com slash mastersofscale. AI is full of possibilities. Enterprises run on realities. That's why Pega combines the world's most powerful AI with the governance, transparency, and control enterprises demand. So you can move faster, adapt faster, and scale AI with confidence.

1:59All the power of AI, none of the uncertainty. Learn more at pega.com slash AI.

Welcoming Rich Roll

2:06I'm excited to talk to you. I think this is going to be a little bit of a different kind of conversation than I'm used to having. The idea of somebody starting their own business was like a foreign language. It's been really an amazing experience and a crash course in entrepreneurship. To garner people's attention, you're best served by trafficking in contrarianism and platforming people with maybe not so great ideas. As somebody who is trying to operate from a place of integrity, it creates a conundrum.

2:39What happened in your life that you found yourself on that farm in Hawaii thinking about putting a first podcast out? A lot happened. Welcome to Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host, and I am sitting in the Los Angeles area in the iconic studios of the iconic Rich Roll. Rich, welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you for having me, Jeff. This has been a long time in the making, and I'm excited to talk to you.

3:11I think this is going to be a little bit of a different kind of conversation than I'm used to having when I guest on podcasts. Why is it going to be different? Well, most of my appearances tend to be in the wellness arena, by and large. I mean, it's called Masters of Scale. It's a business podcast. It might be the first, quote-unquote, business podcast that I've ever been on, so I'm curious to hear what you're going to ask me.

Reaching one thousand episodes

3:36Let's start with this. When you started, could you have imagined getting to 1,000 episodes? No way. When I started, it was late 2012, and I still didn't know anybody personally other than myself who was a listener of podcasts. And I would create these playlists because I would go out all day on my bike, and it became like this parasocial friendship that I began to develop with certain podcast hosts.

4:06And I had been so positively impacted by what I had experienced. And back then, it was a completely different thing. It was almost embarrassing to say you had a podcast. But when I figured out how to get a show up on iTunes and record an episode, I was doing it for fun. And like my wife and I, we were living at that time on an organic farm on the north shore of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. And I was starting to get island fever, and I wanted a creative project.

4:38And it was just a fun thing to try, not knowing whether I would ever publish a second episode. It was really just a fun thing to try, try out. We're sitting here in a gorgeous studio complex. You've got staff, you've got infrastructure, and you're building out a network, which I want to get into. What are the biggest differences between those early days and now for you when you sit in the host chair and you engage these conversations? The intention remains the same, sitting across from somebody who inspires me in any number of different ways and trying to engage in a conversation with them where I am creating an environment to get the best out of that person.

5:23I'm not a journalist. I'm not here to challenge people necessarily. I'm here to highlight the people that I think are worthy of attention. And that has been, from day one, consistent through all of the 1,000 episodes. I have a lot of affection for those early days where the stakes were very low, and it could be very loose and free and fun. I am a grateful beneficiary of the fact that this medium has become so mainstream and so popular. Today, because our information and entertainment landscape is so algorithmically driven,

6:00if you want to garner people's attention, you're best served by trafficking in contrarianism and platforming people with maybe not so great ideas and engaging in a lot of drama, a lot of nonsense. So, as somebody who is trying to operate from a place of integrity, it creates a conundrum. I don't like that part of it. I still love it, though, and I'm still doing my best to operate from a place of integrity.

6:32How are you balancing maintaining your integrity while differentiating your episode from all the others and not chasing the algorithm and the outrage machine for the clips? Yeah, I try not to think about the algorithm at all.

6:47I know a lot of people who reverse engineer their podcasts and their questions are very specific to elicit a response so they can create a clip that will go viral. I don't think it serves the show or the audience for me to think that way. But that means I have to be at peace with the fact that I'm not creating something that is going to necessarily travel as far as it could if I would make those decisions. I think that every host brings something different. And I think my strength is trying to connect with the guest on an emotional level.

7:23I do a lot of preparation. I go into every interview very prepared, but like an athlete, like you then set the preparation aside and you have to be present for the experience because if you're caught up in your head, then you're not actually going to be able to perform. So I try to engage it more like a dinner party conversation. You don't prepare for a dinner party. I don't know. Maybe some people do. Maybe some people who listen to Masters of Scale think that way. I don't think that way. I try to be as present as possible and I have in my mind a direction of where I want to take it and things that I want to know about.

7:56But I also have to let go and allow it to be what it wants to be. You know, like I'm trying to create an environment, an intimate environment where people drop their guard and feel comfortable sharing. And if I can't expect them to open up and be vulnerable with me if I am not willing to do that myself. So I try to lead with some of that to create that environment. If we go backwards to somewhere between episodes one and 1000, was there a moment like an inflection point where a guest came on the show and they had that transformational experience?

8:33I was able to use it to launch forward where something clicked for you and you said, oh, this is different. This is going to work in a different way than I ever imagined. Yeah, I never would have imagined that would be a plausible trajectory for anybody. But I've had that experience multiple times. I mean, I was the first person to have David Goggins on a podcast. And maybe that was the first kind of truly viral experience that I had. It was pretty early on, as I recall. David is somebody that I had known, not directly, but indirectly because of my involvement in the ultra endurance community.

9:07Like everybody in the ultra running community knew who David was long before everybody else knew who David was. I had been chasing him to come on the podcast for quite a while. He wasn't interested. And then eventually he was. And he happened to be in LA and I went to his hotel and we sat on the floor of this hotel room. This was before video, you know, and recorded this audio conversation. It went nuts. Not that I'm taking responsibility for his trajectory or his career in any way. He's a very gifted orator and obviously an extremely inspirational figure.

9:43But I'm proud of the fact that, like, I found him first, kind of, you know. But then there's also people who are complete unknowns. I found a guy called Josh Lajani who was living in the rural bayou of southern Louisiana with a very heavy Cajun drawl who had been extremely obese and had come from, you know, a community of people that didn't have a relationship with eating healthy, beautiful people. But just disconnected from, you know, the kind of things that I think about and talk about.

10:14And he took it upon himself to figure out how to lose the weight and reinvented his life and became a runner. And, like, he's so endearing. And that episode really made an impact on the audience that then made an impact on him. And he would go on to be on the cover of, like, Runner's World magazine and, like, he's done all these cool and interesting things since. And so those experiences mean the most to me. I mean, it's super fun to go to Arnold Schwarzenegger's office and have him pull out the Excalibur sword.

10:45And, like, I mean, it's a life highlight. Like, who gets to do that? But when people ask me, like, who's your favorite guest? I don't really have a good answer. We were joking before we turned the microphones on. You said perhaps it's Masters of Modest Scale. Yeah. And at the same time, you've built quite a show with quite a following and, you know, super well monetized. And to your point, the space has evolved dramatically. And at the same time, you're building more.

Building a podcast network

11:10You're building out a network. Why?

11:15Good question. I mean, first, I would say that I've never considered myself a business person or an entrepreneur. I was raised in a very traditional family in Washington, D.C. I was raised to be a safety seeker, you know, to kind of pick the traditional career path. The idea of somebody starting their own business was like a foreign language. So foreign that when I went to Stanford, this is, you know, the beginning of, like, this massive tech boom.

11:51I was completely oblivious to what was going on. Everyone was taking computer science classes and I was reading literature and completely disinterested. I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur or a business person. The idea for the network grew out of noticing there were a lot of really good voices out there that weren't operating their podcast optimally and weren't being remunerated in a way that I thought was fair. And since I'd been in this for a long time and made all the mistakes and had been at this network for a while and that network for a while and had bad experiences at all of them, had decided we're going to be independent.

12:30And over many years, we built up a team with infrastructure where we were able to handle brand relationships in a really favorable way. But the infrastructure was such that we were in a position to modestly scale it. And I would get calls from podcasters who'd been doing it for a while and had built up significant audiences, but they were just baffled about how to monetize their show. Because the options were either, well, I negotiate my own deals or I'm going to have to hire somebody and then manage a business.

13:07But the podcast is one thing of many that they're doing. They don't want to run a small business. So the only option left was to sign up at one of these networks where they're a line item on a spreadsheet and they're going to get lousy CPMs. And they're going to have to do ad reads for companies they don't believe in and they're not going to have very much agency over the kind of brand landscape that they're dealing with. None of those were good options. We'd figured out a different way to go to CMOs directly and work out complex annual deals.

13:37And we had been really successful at that. So my idea was, let's make this available to a few select voices that I think are worthy of this offering because they're trying to put something out there and we're in a position to be able to not only help them, but help them get paid what I think they should be getting paid. And that's how it began. And it's been really an amazing experience and a crash course in entrepreneurship. I still am not involved in the super day-to-day.

14:09I'm more like the person who helps find the right podcasters to bring into the network. And you're sitting in this studio that we constructed, 10,000 square foot studio. There's a 60-seat movie theater. We have six studios here. And we work with podcasters that aren't just in Los Angeles, they're all over the place. All of our hosts are people who I share a sensibility with. They're doing something different than me, but I think complementary. And they're trying to do it against the incentives of the algorithm.

14:40And we're trying to find a way to reward them for that rather than them being punished for that. There must be thousands, if not millions of podcasters who would want to be part of your network. You've got 10 or so. How do you decide? How can you tell when someone is not just the right talent, but it's the right format for the network? I would say we're still figuring that out. Intuitively, I know if somebody is going to be a fit. I think it's about finding the right person who understands the value proposition first and foremost.

15:16And those tend to be people who have been podcasting for a while. So they've had the negative experiences or they had the frustrations of trying to do it on their own. And they're the ones who are so grateful to have the support and they understand the work behind the scenes that goes into trying to make sure that all of these pieces fit. When you have somebody who's new, sometimes there's expectations and entitlements that are out of balance with reality. So we've had some fits and starts that haven't worked out and we've learned along the way.

15:50So we're not in a hurry. We're not trying to enlist hundreds of hosts. We're trying to be very boutique and hands-on right now. But we just made a big hire and this year we are going to start trying to scale up a little bit more.

16:11We all know the disappointment that comes when a grand gesture falls flat. Something that seemed impressive in the moment but didn't deliver the results you expected. Marketing budgets too often fall into that trap. Aiming for big impressions, big reach, but without the revenue to back it. LinkedIn has a name for it, bull spend. LinkedIn ads generate the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. They target by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one.

16:45Just go to linkedin.com slash scale. That's linkedin.com slash scale. Terms and conditions apply. Stripe Treasury is your new financial operating system built for what's next. With Stripe Treasury, the place your business accepts payments is also where you can store balances, move funds, and pay vendors worldwide. If you're building for global scale, get a business bank account that lets your money move instantly, whenever and wherever you need it.

17:16Learn more at stripe.com slash treasury. Stripe is not a bank. Banking services provided by Fifth Third Bank National Association member FDIC. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building.

17:50Creative planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com slash mastersofscale. It strikes me listening to you talk about this, Rich, that you're taking multiple approaches that run very much counter to the moment. You're not chasing the algorithm. You are really producing an integrity. You're not chasing scale for the sake of scale. You're being very intentional about who you bring onto the network, which, what shows. So much of media broadly and podcasting specifically is driven by CPM cost per thousand impressions.

18:22It's really transactional with maybe month to month or quarter to quarter. You're doing year-long sponsorship deals or multi-year sponsorship deals more in the vein of the NFL or the NBA than how media is typically bought and sold. What is it about you that helps you see how to do things different from the way the rest of the industry seems to be going?

Thinking differently about sponsorships

18:44Well, first of all, I want to make sure everybody understands it's not just me. You know, I have partners in this business who understand business better than me. One of those partners is Jonathan Retzek, who runs RXR Sports in New York City. So, Voicing Change Media is basically a joint venture with RXR. I was represented by them as a client, and they would handle my speaking engagements and brand relationships outside of the podcast. Then they took on handling the podcast.

19:15So, they come from a sports management perspective, not an advertising perspective. And those things are very different. And so, together, we have come up with some interesting and innovative ways to work with brands that are very different from the typical way it's done in podcasting. To your point, CPM, size of audience. Like, okay, you have this many people in your audience. That means we'll give you this CPM, and you'll get paid that. And it is extremely transactional.

19:47You just do the read, and you move on, and you never think about it again. What happens is there isn't brand fit with the host often, and so a lot of that direct marketing doesn't work, which means there's a lot of churn. The advertisers back out, and then the show has to always be like onboarding new and new advertisers because the life cycle is very short. What we've done is much more like how a manager or an agent would think about representation for a professional athlete.

20:19Sure, we do some ads. It's just the ad read. That's fine. But many of our partnerships are what we call 360 deals, meaning the podcast ad buy is just one portion of a larger deal, more like an ambassador deal. So, for example, I have a few brand partnerships where they agree that they're going to run this many ads over the course of a year on the show, but also I'm committed to doing this many travel days for them and appearances and speaking fees and events, et cetera, or photo shoots or whatnot.

20:53And those are exclusive categories. So, if I'm representing one brand in that category, I can't represent, you know, I can't do anything with a competitor brand. So, it comes with a larger degree of investment of time. But what happens is that you end up with a real relationship that's meaningful. The audience knows it's meaningful and it converts much more significantly for the brand. Like our philosophy and our approach is to always be thinking ahead around what the brand needs.

21:29I think there's a lot of creators in the digital space and podcasters who have a sense of entitlement. Like, my audience is this size. You should pay me this much money. Instead, we're like, how can we help this brand? Like, what is the problem that this brand is having that we can solve? And trying to solve it in advance of them realizing they even have it because that way you become an indispensable brand partner. There's no churn. And the relationship, it's a two-way street.

21:59And I think too many creators in the digital space don't respect that or don't think about that. They're just thinking about, what is this brand going to give me where it should be the other way around? They should be thinking about how they're uniquely positioned to serve that brand.

Navigating addiction and recovery

22:14I appreciate that your legion of fans are probably pretty familiar with your personal story. I'd like to just spend a minute on how we ended up here. You and I both went to law school. I'm barely still a lawyer. You're not practicing. What happened in your life that you found yourself on that farm in Hawaii, thinking about putting a first podcast out? A lot happened. You know, I was raised pretty traditionally in a very education-first, achievement-oriented household. And so I was sort of indoctrinated into this philosophy of life that happiness is a product of climbing the corporate ladder and crafting a safe and secure career for yourself where you were well-paid and you could be kind of a respected member of society.

23:06So I was pretty good at playing that game. But things started to crack pretty early in that I developed an affinity for alcohol that took me down some dark alleyways and was essentially a functioning alcoholic for maybe 10 years and a really bad alcoholic for five years. Ultimately, I got sober at 31, but it really broke me.

23:40I ended up in a treatment center in Oregon where I spent 100 days and was introduced to new tools for living. And I think that was the first time that I began to question what I was doing with my life because I never really had before. I was just on the track, you know. How did you end up there? How did you end up in the 100-day rehab? I started drinking in college, and it was a pretty, you know, party-permissive environment, work hard, play hard.

24:12But from the get-go, it was pretty noticeable that I had a different relationship with alcohol than everyone else. Like, I was the last guy to leave the party. If the keg was tapped out, I was the guy looking for the half-empties. I was the guy who ended up doing something stupid that everyone wanted to joke about the next day. And that's all fun and games when you're 21 years old. Then I moved to New York City, and I was learning how to become a professional alcoholic there because that is the best place to do that.

24:47And I had a great time. Like, I was somebody who was living my life in dissonance with my spirit. But I was unaware of that. I was just going along my way. But something was wrong, you know. And that relationship with alcohol continued to deepen and worsen. And the consequences for my behavior started to get more and more significant to the point where I was living a double life, thinking no one knew what I was doing. But, of course, they do.

25:17I ended up getting in trouble with the law. I ended up, you know, having difficulty holding down a job. I got two DUIs in a period of about six or eight weeks, shortly after I'd moved to Los Angeles. I was facing jail time.

25:34And I was on the precipice of getting fired from my law firm job. And my parents finally said, we can't talk to you anymore. Like, we're here for you if and when you're ready to get help. But you have a big problem. And we're not available to be, like, codependent in this situation any longer. I didn't have one singular rock-bottom moment, but I did have a marriage that went sideways and ended on the honeymoon. Like, I had a series of, like, you know, pretty traumatic events for me, you know, in my privileged life that ultimately made me realize, like, I can't keep living this way.

26:15But I don't know how to live. And finally was so broken that I was willing to raise my hand and ask for help. And that's how I ended up in a treatment center. What happened in the 100 days there? Well, the first thing that happened was that I was honest about what I was doing for the first time with someone else. I started sharing stories and things that I was doing. And I remember a counselor, my counselor pulled me aside and said, you know, you, like, you have a case of alcoholism that we typically only see in veteran drink.

26:52Like, people who are in their 60s who've been doing this for a long time. And I was 31 at the time. And he said, people like you die. And if you don't get it, it's not going to work out for you. And I was able to hear that. And, you know, in my mind, I was doing a spin dry. Like, I was, you know, yeah, this was bad. But, like, I got things to do. I got to get back to my law firm job. But when they said, you should stick around, I was like, I'll do it.

27:26I never want to come back here again. Like, I have an opportunity to completely wipe the slate clean and figure some things out about myself so that I don't have to come back here again. And it was the recognition that my best thinking, like, I'm thinking, oh, I'm this smart guy. You know, I've got in all these schools. I can do all these things. My best thinking landed me in what is ostensibly, you know, an asylum for the temporary, temporarily is insane, you know.

27:57And that was very humbling, you know. So, I got humbled and I was able to not only ask for help, but receive it. Interestingly, as a lawyer, maybe you'll be interested in this. You might want to cut it out because it's kind of an aside. But I don't think I've ever told this story on a podcast.

28:16Exclusive. Exclusive first time I'm telling this. Before I went to that treatment center, I had been looking for another job and I had interviewed at a couple law firms. And Aiken Gump was opening an office in Los Angeles and I interviewed with Aiken Gump. And they gave me an offer. And then I went to rehab after they gave me the offer. And I told them that I was going to go there. So, I'm in treatment. You know, I'd been there, like, long enough that I had a clear mind.

28:50And I said to my counselor, I was like, listen, you know, I got this problem. Like, I got a job offer from this other law firm and I told them that I was going. They don't know that I'm in this treatment center. Like, what should I do? Wow. And they said, well, you got to call and tell them, you know. And so, that was just terrifying. Like, of course, they're going to rescind the job offer. So, I had the counselor sit with me while I picked up the phone and, like, called them. And I said, I know you offered me this job, but here's the situation.

29:20And the guy, it was David Allen, a lawyer named David Allen. He goes, I'm going to have to get back to you. I said, okay. They get back to me and miraculously, they're like, you still have a job here. And I was like, wow, okay. But we're assigning you to this partner who's also in the program. And so, I did a call with him. And then they said, well, we need you to get working on this case right now. We know you're in treatment, but we're going to ship you all these files and these documents, you know, and you got to start working.

29:53We need you to get going on this. And my counselor was like, no f***ing way. This is not part of the protocol. Yeah, this is not going to work. And I had to call them and say, I'm sorry, but I can't do that. I've got to get this sobriety thing sorted out. And so, the job went away then. But it was a sliding door moment. You know, I could have ended up as a lawyer. I was in D.C. recently, and I was riding a bike around, and I rode by the Aiken Gump office. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, I could have been, like, living a completely different life.

30:25But I was introduced to these new tools for living and these spiritual principles. And I returned to Los Angeles and just made sobriety my number one priority. I returned to the law firm where I was working, but really my job was creating a solid foundation of sobriety. And I immersed myself in the recovery community of Los Angeles.

Finding a new path through endurance

30:44I'm struck by how out of integrity you were at the time and how much integrity is central to your life and your work now. How did you continue on the journey to integrity and leave the law and end up on that organic farm in Hawaii? It took a very long time. I think if you Google me, it might sound like I got sober, and then I started running ultramarathons, and I had a podcast. It was not like that at all. I went back and worked at that law firm.

31:15I committed myself to – I knew I couldn't stay there. I knew emerging from treatment, I knew, like, this law firm life is not for me. I've been jamming a square peg into a round hole forever. I don't even know who I am. I've just been living my life reactively based upon a program, and I need to figure out who I am, who I want to be, what's important to me. These were questions I never asked myself until I got sober. And I didn't have immediate solutions to those programs, and I needed to pay the bills.

31:48So I stayed at this law firm for a while. Ultimately, I left because I just couldn't – I was like I couldn't even type a confirmation letter anymore. Like, some might say it was burnout, but I think it was really just I'm so out of integrity being here. Like, not that it's – there's anything wrong with being a lawyer in a law firm. It just – it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing, and I knew that to my core. I was on the precipice of turning 40, and I had a health scare, and that kind of collided with this existential crisis that I was having. And I had an experience not unlike hitting bottom with alcoholism where I realized I needed to make some lifestyle changes.

32:25And that really kind of accelerated the trajectory of rethinking my relationship with career and profession. As I understand it, you committed to an Ultraman competition before you started training. Do I have that right? Not quite that, yeah. I mean, I had started exercising again because I changed my diet, and I felt revitalized. You know, I'd been basically eating fast food and Chinese food in the law firm and had gained a bunch of weight. I started taking care of myself, and I had this resurgence of energy.

32:58And, you know, I went back to the pool, and my wife got me a bike for my birthday, and I started a little bit of running. And, you know, I'm 40 now. So what do you do when you're 40? You're like, I'm going to do an Ironman. You know, this is like the most trite, you know, kind of cliché thing possible. But I was enjoying just feeling connected to my body again. I had been a swimmer at Stanford. You know, I'm a lifelong athlete. And I had really disconnected from that part of myself. So I was sort of recapturing that just for the joy of it.

33:29But then, like, oh, like, I like this. Like, maybe I will do an Ironman. And I'd done a little short race here and there. I didn't realize all the Ironmans, like, sell out a year in advance. And I came across an article about this race called Ultraman, which is a double Ironman three-day race. And something about it spoke to me. It felt more like a spiritual odyssey than a competition. And really, that's what I was – I was on a spiritual odyssey seeking answers that I didn't – you know, I was asking myself questions that I didn't have answers to yet.

34:01And endurance – like, training for endurance events really was a way of, like, processing all of that. And this race kind of represented a way of going deeper into that exploration. And so, yeah, I signed up for Ultraman before – I've still, to this day, I've never done an Ironman. And I just went, like, right to the super long stuff.

Maintaining integrity in media

34:21Curious, Rich, as you sit here, you know, 15 or so years into this podcast journey and building this business and showing up in the world how you do for so many people, how do you stay in integrity? It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. No, it doesn't come naturally. I learned early in recovery – there's an aphorism in AA, which is you can't transmit something you haven't got. And I think about that a lot. Like, there's a lot of people pontificating on the internet.

34:54They're trying to transmit something that they don't actually have. And that's why it falls flat. Because the resonance of your voice is a function of how fully you're living it yourself. And integrity, for me, means that I'm living my life in alignment mentally, spiritually, physically, and interpersonally. How are my relationships? How am I feeling about the decisions that I'm making? Am I taking care of myself? Am I taking care of the people that I care about?

35:27Like, integrity is multifaceted. And I think on any given day, I'm probably out of – you know, you can't be in perfect integrity or alignment with everything simultaneously. But from a global perspective, like, are you in the right place doing what you're supposed to be doing? And that's really a function of your relationship with your intuition. And I think a lot of people mistake what they want to do with their intuition because they're not integrated. Like, they're too disconnected from one aspect of themselves, either their body or their mind or their spirit, to differentiate what they want from what their intuition, their heart intelligence is telling them.

36:10And that connection doesn't always come naturally. And the modern world is always trying to distract us from it or erode it or incentivize us to act in opposition to it. So, you know, it's something you're always toggling, I suppose. But it's important to me, you know. And I think there's a lot of charlatans out there who are very much out of alignment in their – and they have large profiles and they wield a tremendous amount of influence. But I think – I believe in people and I think people's antennas are getting more and more finely honed to who's worthy of their attention and who isn't.

36:50And I think as we mature into this complex media environment that we all live in, there's a need for people you can trust. People who are operating from a place of integrity who might not be the biggest but are the people that when you really want to know what to pay attention to, what not to pay attention to, who's telling you the truth and who isn't, like, that becomes a very valuable thing.

37:20And I think that's something I'm always thinking about. Like, to me, that's the ultimate commodity and it can be so easily squandered. I think people, you know, trade their trust and their integrity for pennies on the dollar all the time. And I don't understand it. Like, I play the long game, you know, and that means maybe you're not the shiniest object. But over the long haul, I know that when I'm scrolling online, I'm looking for the person that I can trust, even if my dopamine is getting hijacked by somebody I don't trust.

37:51What a perfect place to wrap, Rich. Thanks for being on Masters of Scale. Thank you. Appreciate it. Loved having you. Thanks again to Rich Roll for joining us and for having us at his stunning studio. Rich, I got to tell you, he's really something. You've probably listened to him. You've probably seen him. Being in a room with him is a whole different experience. That energy that you feel coming through your speakers or coming through your screen is like 10x in person. And seeing now how he's scaling, how he's putting to work everything that he's learned after more than a thousand podcast episodes,

38:24as he builds a whole new network of creators, it's really something. Rich is an inspiring example of what it means to truly make integrity a priority in your brand. If anyone I've interviewed for this show is living in integrity, it's Rich Roll. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Every business hits the same wall the moment your business outgrows the systems that got you here. Spreadsheets everywhere, five different logins, data scattered across entities that don't even talk to each other.

38:57If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, that's when you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI-native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven, built for businesses scaling fast without the complexity that usually comes with it. From the makers of QuickBooks, learn more at intuit.com slash ERP.

39:24Hey, listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday, we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford's CEO to NASA's administrator, to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts,

39:54and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI, and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future that is human-centered? I'm Rana Elkhayyubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

40:29Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

40:44Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Senior supervising producer is Tricia Bobita. Associate producer is Masha Makatanina. Video editor is M.G. Frederick. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by the audio boys themselves, Aaron Bestinelli and Brian Pugh, with original music by the remarkable Ryan Holiday. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode, and to subscribe to our newsletter,

41:15and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.