Netflix Co-founder Marc Randolph on Testing New Material On Stage

Marc Randolph

Marc Randolph is the author of That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.

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SHOW NOTES

As co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, Marc Randolph led the company from its inception in 1998 through its IPO in 2002. He left the company a year later to pursue other passions, which includes public speaking.
Today, Marc joins Jess to discuss the importance of experimentation on stage, the value of continuous improvement, adapting to audience feedback, and why he’s committed to supporting women in professional speaking.
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Marc Randolph is the author of That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.
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[01:30] “99% of the time, they don’t work. And those aren’t failures.”
[04:00] Marc’s standard talk and hero’s journey framework
[07:00] Why and when Marc will work for cheap
[10:30] “The most obnoxious beginning to a story ever.”
[14:00] Spotlight speaker vs Lighthouse speaker
[15:45] How can women get more placement on stages?
[20:00] Everybody has something worth sharing
[22:00] The audience – “Not only are they looking at their phone, they’re talking on their phone!”

Amplify with Jess is produced by Earfluence, and brought to you by Mic Drop Workshop.

TRANSCRIPT

Marc Randolph – 00:00:02:

I kind of realized from putting together my very first keynote that so many of the things that I learned about how to start a company, so many things I learned about how Silicon Valley innovates so rapidly. We’re not just applicable to tech startups, but we’re applicable to anybody who has some dream they would like to see if it can make it real. Whether it’s starting a company, whether it’s just changing jobs, whether it’s doing anything, that process is the same.

Jess Ekstrom – 00:00:33:

Welcome to Amplify with Jess Ekstrom, a show designed to help women get out of their head and into their zone of influence. Okay, so one of my favorite quotes from today’s guest, Marc Randolph, co-founder of a company you’ve probably heard of. It’s called Netflix. He says, as you get older, you learn two important things, what you’re good at and what you enjoy. And if you’re very lucky, those two will be the same thing. Marc is the author of an internationally bestselling memoir and host of the podcast, That Will Never Work. I’m telling you, it is one of my favorite reads. He also so generously endorsed Chasing the Bright Side, which I am forever grateful for. On his podcast, he dispenses advice, encouragement, and tough love to aspiring entrepreneurs. He also has his own entrepreneurial community. So if you’re an entrepreneur and want to actually get coached by the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, you can go to marcrandolph.com/community and apply to join. Without further ado, let’s welcome my friend, Marc Randolph.

Marc – 00:01:37:

Part of what makes an entrepreneur is their ability to throw things out there and see what happens. And the truth is that 95% of the time, 99% of the time, they don’t work. And those aren’t failures. I mean, there are failures in the definition that you did something and it didn’t work. But it’s more the process. And so, and I’ve been doing this, the startup thing, you know, ever since I probably, since I was in my mid-20s. And so by now I don’t even think about it. I’ve gotten better and better at throwing worse and worse things out into the world. I’ve completely lost any sense of shame about that this is, “oh, I can’t, this is terrible. There’s misspellings and typos or it’s broken”. It doesn’t make a difference anymore. And Netflix was the same way at the beginning. Yeah. We were just trying. It didn’t work. The book is called That Will Never Work, because that first idea, everyone told me it would never work. You know, investors and employees and my wife. And the truth is it didn’t work, that they were right. And then there comes a year and a half of struggle of trying to go, how do we find something that is right? And that is where you’re desperately trying everything, but not as failures, just as experiments.

Jess – 00:03:00:

As research.

Marc – 00:03:01:

Hopefully stumble on the thing that does work.

Jess – 00:03:03:

One of the things, though, that I find challenging, you know, as a speaker with that mentality is the sandbox is in front of everyone. And when you’re an entrepreneur, it’s like, okay, the DVD broke in the mail. Let’s find a new packaging. Or like this headband didn’t quite fit. Let’s create something else. But I find that as a speaker, you are testing and gathering data live. And sometimes I’ll add new material or crack a joke, crickets. And so, learning how to test and use that entrepreneur mindset as a speaker has been more challenging. Is that, would you find that or is that different?

Marc – 00:03:48:

That’s a really good point. And, and of course you’re right. You can’t wing it every time. And as, as you and I know, and as everyone else who’s kind of going down that path or trying to be a speaker is that you’re expected to be good and you’re expected to have your act together, which means you’ve got to know your material and all those things. So, there’s two added two things I’ve learned about it. One is the one you just brought up is that, I’d say 95% of the talk that I do, my standard talk, is going to be the same. And I don’t mean the same words, but going in the same stories, same order, because I really worked so hard to structure that in a hero’s journey framework. And to make it, the thing that I love so much about public speaking is that craft of how do you bring people on an emotional journey? I can’t just mess around with that. But every time, I am always trying something new. I’ll go, last time I’ve done that, it didn’t work as well as I’d like, I wonder if I tried starting off this way. I wonder if I end that story this way. Or I wonder if I put a small explanation in between these two sections, whether that would work better. And there’s small tweaks and big tweaks. I’m always doing that. And then you begin having a whole different dimension to it. For example, I was just in Brazil doing a keynote two weeks ago. And. It’s very different, as you probably know, when you’re doing it in front of an audience, A, who’s not North American, where the references don’t quite work the same way. But more importantly, we’re only about a third of the audience is fluent. And the one other third speaks English, but not fluently. And the last third is listening to it through a simultaneous translation, which is the worst in terms of trying to make things come off. And you’ve got to change your presentation to work in that environment. So there’s all that kind of stuff. So that’s number one. I’m constantly tweaking and I’m at the point now, and probably you are, and I hope a lot of people listening have their things nailed. Once you really know it, in essence, it’s 100% improvisatory. I mean, you are telling the same story, but you’re telling it the way you’d tell a friend, not with rehearsed words. And then you can begin to change your manner and your tone. Anyway, we all know that part of it. The other thing I did, is I do have to occasionally come up with new, entirely new material. I don’t want to be giving the same keynote every single time. I want to give audiences a chance, I mean, the clients a chance to choose. So I’ve got to develop new stuff. And I do it the same way that most comedians do it, is I will go on the road. And like, for example, this is set four or five years ago. You know, and I was trying to work up a new keynote, you know, and it’s 50 minutes of talk.

Jess – 00:06:55:

It’s a lot. Yeah.

Marc – 00:06:58:

And so I went to my speaker’s bureau and said, I’d love you to find me a group that does multiple events. And I’ll do it really cheap. I won’t talk about what that means in my context.

Jess – 00:07:13:

Yeah, yeah.

Marc – 00:07:13:

We’ll do it really quick. And I said, but here’s the deal. They got to know they’re getting a new keynote. It’s not going to be as fluent, but I’ll still, I’ll be good. And I went, in fact, at one of them, someone afterwards goes, “what are you doing here?” It’s a room with 40 people in it. It’s like, I want to know who the client is, but it’s basically, it’s a whole bunch. It might be a bunch of insurance salesmen in Milwaukee or something like that. What are you doing here?

Jess – 00:07:47:

What are you doing here?

Marc – 00:07:49:

I’m working.

Jess – 00:07:50:

Getting reps and practicing the material. Yeah, I just did the same thing in Tallahassee a couple of weeks ago. I was like, I will do this for one-fourth my rate, but it is going to be a talk that is the first time coming out of my mouth. And we don’t know how it goes. And it reminds me, when I was in college, I interned at the Today Show and Hoda did a Q&A with the interns. And one of the interns asked, is it best to try to get a job at like a Today Show or Good Morning America or some national show out of college or get a job at an affiliate station like your local NBC or ABC News? And she said, start with the local, get your mistakes out at the local level. So then when you’re at the national level, you know what works. And it reminds me of this and exactly what we’re talking about is there’s, yes, the sandbox with speaking is public, but there are ways that you can be in more forgiving environments and kind of go into it with the mindset of, hey, we’re trying stuff on. Let me know what works. Here’s a feedback form. What did you like? What did you not like? People really appreciate that, you know, when especially, someone on your level, Marc, who is like, you don’t have to do anything new. You know what works. You don’t even have to do this. What are you doing here? Why are you on the show? But. If you come at it of like, I’m just trying to get better and try something new, I feel like it also makes the audience like, what a cool experience that you are watching something be created in front of your eyes.

Marc – 00:09:23:

That’s very true. And it’s kind of great about being transparent about what’s happening. Because you’re right, then people do feel rather than feeling ripped off that, you know, but they feel, they feel honored that you’re choosing to do this here. But you know, the other part, and we should reveal this is doing new material sucks.

Jess – 00:09:42:

Oh, it’s awful. It’s awful.

Marc – 00:09:43:

It brings you back to all that stuff where you, where you’re going, oh, my God, I have to remember this. And you get nervous.

Jess – 00:09:52:

Yes. And you realize how many word packages that you already had that were just like you could just wake up and say it. And that word package isn’t there. It’s awful.

Marc – 00:10:06:

I’m having PTSD. You’re giving me a little flashback here.

Jess – 00:10:10:

So, okay, you start Netflix, blah, blah, blah. What makes you then say, I’m going to take this story and make it mean something? Because again, it’s like we’re talking about, you don’t have to do this. What made you enter into a career of thought leadership after your big exit?

Marc – 00:10:30:

It’s the most obnoxious beginning to a story ever. So bear with me. So anyway, my wife and I were invited to spend a week on Richard Branson’s private island with him.

Jess – 00:10:43:

Oh, you poor thing.

Marc – 00:10:44:

Yeah. And I said, I told my wife, I go, I said, no. Because I’m going mountain biking with some friends this weekend. And she kind of looks at me, gives that look. And then before I know it, we’re out buying sunscreen. But the scenario there was that it was an event for Richard Branson as a charity called Virgin Unite. And they do these events where basically he gives up one of his houses. This is one of his houses on Necker Island in the Caribbean. And they invite another organization to do an event there. And they charge the people who come to that event. The speakers do it pro bono. And everyone wins. And this event was for an Australian women’s organization. And the theme was basically, what next? It says these are women who have incredible success in their life. You know, they’ve all run businesses. They’ve all got all this professional success. Now they’re all wondering, now what do I do? What do I do with this? And I go, well, we’ll go, you know, I’ll do my, and they want me to speak about how to turn ideas into reality. And I go, great, I’ll go do my bit, and then we’ll go hang out on the beach. And, of course, I went. And I’ll sit to the first couple of sessions here and just get used to learn the audience a little bit so I’m better for mine. And all of a sudden, I’m drawn in. And then spend the entire conference there with these women going through these exercises and learning about how to figure-out, what’s next? And it really gave me pause. Because I was already doing some speaking at the time. And I go, I can get four or five thousand people to show up and spend an hour with me, but for what purpose. And it was a really profound week. I mean, it was fun too. Those Australian women are crazy. I came back and I spent a lot of time going, what is the point here? By that time, I had left Netflix and was going, what do I do with this? I kind of realized from putting together my very first keynote that so many of the things that I learned about how to start a company, so many things I learned about how Silicon Valley innovates so rapidly. We’re not just applicable to tech startups, but we’re applicable to anybody who has some dream they would like to see if it can make it real. Whether it’s starting a company, whether it’s just changing jobs, whether it’s doing anything, that process is the same. And I realized I actually knew something about it. And more importantly, that it was my obligation to really start spreading that word. And that has been the driving force ever since. That’s why I do the keynote speaking now. That’s why I wrote the book. That’s why I did my podcast. That’s why I do all the writing that I do. All trying to give people the confidence to take something they’ve always wanted to do and do it and give them the tools to more successfully take these dreams they have and try and make them real.

Jess – 00:14:00:

I love that you use the word obligation, you know, because a lot of times I talk about this in Mic Drop, like there’s two different ways that we can view speaking. There’s like the spotlight speaker where it’s like, how am I coming across? Will people like me? And then there’s the lighthouse speaker where it’s like shifting the light from yourself to the audience of how do I tell them what I know to best serve them? And when you think of speaking as an obligation to share what you know, it immediately shifts from a spotlight to a lighthouse where it’s not about public image or fame or any of those things that at that point in your career you didn’t need. It’s I now have an obligation to take this insane story of all of the startups that I’ve done and Netflix and share it with others. Now, you talked about this women’s conference with Richard Branson, who I’ve heard of. In Mic Drop Workshop, what we’re doing is to help more women become professional speakers. And one of the things I’ve loved about you is obviously there’s ways that you show up for women, but you also, I really appreciate it. We haven’t talked about this yet. There was a post you did. Months ago about ways that you also called out in your journey that you could have done better. And I thought that that was fantastic. I mean, none of us are perfect and we’re learning as we go. And I really appreciated that post of like calling out specific times where like, yep, I could have done more here. I could have changed this. Today, now, Marc, as you are, what are some ways that you think either women can get more placement on stages, whether that’s from like a systemic level of events or what can women do to help stand out from the crowd.

Marc – 00:15:54:

I’m hesitating. It’s dangerous for me to give my perspective since I’m not a woman. I don’t have, I can only imagine how different the challenges are in a lot of the ways. And part of the problem, which is what I was calling attention to in that blog post you read was that, it’s really easy not to see it. Because what I was really kind of doing, I was apologizing not for things that I did 25 years ago, which would have been so easy to go, oh, a different time or some bullshit like that. But I was apologizing for the fact that as recently as when I wrote the book, which was in 2019, I was still looking back at some of those incidents fondly and as humorous experiences rather than as me acting like a total pig. The one thing I can say is that I don’t think I’ve shared this stuff with you either. I’m very gender biased, which is, I prefer working with women. Most of the people, what you learn about yourself as you get older is what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. And then if you’re skilled at it, you go, I need to surround myself with people who are good at the things that I’m not good at. And it turns out that I can have a really, really strong working relationship sometimes with women better than I can with men. Who knows why, but like, you know, my second and third person at Netflix were women. My second, third person at most of the companies I’ve done have been women. It’s just a, I like building things with women. And so my only, my advice is that it’s, there’s, I’ve, I recognize that it’s not universal, but it seems, is that by having the female experience, you approach life differently and better in a lot of ways. I mean, I can’t really describe it. But my point is that I would accentuate those things. I would not get up on a stage trying to pretend to be something you’re not. I would lean into the things that make you different and make you special and how you’ve seen the world and how the experiences you’ve had have shaped who you are. And more importantly, can influence the people you’re speaking to.

Jess – 00:18:18:

I think one of the, and I don’t know if it’s still around, but I saw this website one time that I’m like, Marc, you would love it. It was called hiremymom.com. And it was exactly how it sounds. Like kids would put, you know, and adult kids would be like, hey, hire my mom for organization bookkeeping. If there is one thing I’ve learned now about my mom, who is like, if Mary Poppins and the Energizer Bunny had a baby and just having a child in general is like all of a sudden two arms turn into eight and you’re like an octopus. You’re like, I don’t even know how I’m holding all these things, but I am. And so you’re right. The things that make us women and whether you’re a mom or not, it can be so valuable as a speaker or in a working environment. And so leaning into that, sometimes can be tough because we’ve been told not to lean into it for so many years. But I think that, people like you who are hiring women, owning in places where they could have done better. It’s like, that’s how we’re going to, that’s how we’re going to get there. Now taking like women aside, advice for aspiring speakers in general, who maybe are not, don’t have a Netflix level startup or some crazy thing where they can just reach out to anyone who will answer the phone. How can you get started? Maybe when you don’t have the platform that you did when you got started as a speaker.

Marc – 00:19:54:

I’m such a firm believer that everybody has something that’s worth sharing. I think it’s the whole basis behind the whole TED Talk movement. Everyone has something they’ve learned. And I think the mistake is to think that it has to be something profound and known the world over. It’s an unbelievable gift for me that I had Netflix. And the fact that it’s still Netflix and it’s now worldwide. I mean, believe me, every time I get invited to go someplace, I know exactly what most of the reason for that is. And I acknowledge most people aren’t going to have that. But I promise when I go up there, I go up not saying I can just tell stories of Netflix. I’ve got to talk about the personal journey. I’ve got to talk about the things that I’ve learned. And I would have learned those exact same things no matter what I had done.

Jess – 00:20:46:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, your most viral post on LinkedIn was about your five o’clock rule or.

Marc – 00:20:52:

Exactly right. Exactly. That’s a great point. So again, it’s not denying the platform I get because people associate Netflix and they think they ascribe some superpowers to me because of that. But it doesn’t mean that I can just go up and walk back and forth on the stage with a cape on. I have to deliver something meaningful that people can relate to. And I’ve really thought long and hard about what are these things that are universal. And I genuinely believe everyone has those and you have to find them. I mean, we talked, I love your lighthouse analogy, you know, but the people who are just about themselves, there’s three things that I try and do in a speech. I try and entertain, which is the, it’s got to be interesting. You got to keep people off their phones. So, but you can’t just entertain.

Jess – 00:21:45:

You got to keep people off Netflix and the audience, you know, it’s double edged sword. Yeah.

Marc – 00:21:50:

God. Quick aside, I did an event in, I think it was the UAE. So it was Emiratis in the audience, not many of them. And not only are they looking at their phone, they’re talking on their phone.

Jess – 00:22:03:

No.

Marc – 00:22:04:

Yeah.

Jess – 00:22:05:

That’ll rattle you.

Marc – 00:22:06:

That’s a whole different level of, I am not holding their attention at all. It’s entertain, obviously, but then you have to inspire, which is you’ve got to change someone’s emotional state. You’ve got to have them coming at the old adage. You know, it’s not, they don’t remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel and you have to educate. And I believe everyone has some story in them that can achieve all three of those things to entertain, inspire, and educate.

Jess – 00:22:37:

Marc, thank you so much for being here. I have loved our friendship over the years and just really appreciate you. You’ve just supported me. It was definitely one of those things where I was like, okay, I’m going to meet this guy on stage and I’m never going to hear from him again. And the fact that it has been this many years, our families have met. And that just has meant the world to me. So I appreciate it.

Marc – 00:23:02:

But, just one thing I’ve learned about you is that, you do things always before I do them, and you end up doing them better than I do them. So I’m just trying to stay as close as I can.

Jess – 00:23:14:

Yeah, I’m starting my next streaming service over here. So watch out. Entering the streaming wars. Marc, thanks so much.

Marc – 00:23:22:

What a pleasure. Thanks, Jess.

Jess – 00:23:27:

Thanks for listening to Amplify. If you are a fan of the show, show us some podcast love by giving us a rating and review. And give us a follow @MicDropWorkshop and @JessEkstrom. This episode was edited and produced by Earfluence. And I’m Jess Ekstrom, your host. Remember that you deserve the biggest stage. So let’s find out how to get you there. I’ll see you again soon.