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If you looked at it from the outside in, you know, people would say, well, dropping out of college, that was a pretty big risk.
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Taking the company private, that was a pretty big risk.
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Doing the largest tech acquisition ever with 50 or 60 billion dollars in debt, you know, that was a that was a pretty big risk.
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But, you know, to me, they actually didn't see that risk.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
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Now, today's guest is someone that I was really excited to have today on the show because I think there's so many moments in his life where he's gone through experiences that we can all learn from.
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I'm talking about none other than Michael Dell, the chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies, an innovator and technology leader providing the essential infrastructure for organizations to build their digital future.
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Now, he's the author of two books, including the next upcoming book, the one that I really want you to read is Play Nice, But Win, A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader. I love the title.
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I've already loved chapters of the book that I've read, and I cannot wait for you to read it.
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Michael is an honorary member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and is an Executive Committee Member of the International Business Council.
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I welcome to the show Michael Dell.
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Michael, thank you for taking the time to do this.
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I cannot wait for people to read your book, and I'm so lucky that I get to sit down with you as the author of the book before everyone gets to.
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So, thank you so much for your energy. Yeah, thank you, Jay.
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Great to be with you and and great to be with you with your audience.
1:43
Yeah, I like I said, I love the title.
1:43
I want to dive into the book a bit later, but I want to start off with asking you a question that I've been asking a lot of people recently because I think there's something beautiful about learning about this.
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I'll I'll with you a story.
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I was uh I work with a lot of corporate clients as a a speaker or a coach.
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Uh and I was speaking with one of my clients recently, and of course, we're on Zoom, and he's got his something in his background, and I'm wondering what it is.
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And he has a paintbrush hanging on his back background wall, and and it's a real paintbrush, and it's a big paintbrush. You can't miss it.
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And I And I said to him, I said, "Look, I don't want to be creepy, but I'm just being curious.
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Why do you have a paintbrush on your wall?"
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And he said He started laughing.
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He said, "No one's ever asked me that before."
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And I was thinking, "Wow, like people must really be scared of you."
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Uh but he said that he said that the reason he has it is because his first ever job was that he used to paint fences.
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And then when he did that successfully, he painted walls.
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And then when he did that successfully, he got to paint homes.
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And he keeps that paintbrush up there to remind him of where he started.
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Today, he's a very successful executive.
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I wanted to ask you, what was your first ever ever job that you did, and is there a lesson that you learned there that you've carried with you throughout your success?
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Yeah, you know, I I I First of all, I'm a big believer in those early jobs.
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You know, my first job, I was 12 years old.
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I was a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant.
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I got promoted to water boy, and then assistant maître d.
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Uh so I was moving up pretty fast.
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And I got recruited away by another restaurant, and I've been working every day since then, pretty much.
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And I And I have to say I've I've I've loved it. That's incredible.
3:28
Do you Do you mind me asking you how much did you used to make at the time as a 12-year-old?
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I guess it was like This would have been in uh 1977.
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So What What was the minimum wage back then?
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Like a dollar or $2 or you know, something like that. It wasn't very much.
3:45
Yeah, what would you save it up for?
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Like what were you doing with that money at that time?
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What was it leading towards?
3:50
Yeah, so in the At the time I was into stamps and um I started um you know, I I was collecting stamps and then I started like buying and selling stamps. I ran a stamp auction.
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I got into uh stocks and uh you know, currencies when I when I was like uh 14, 15, started investing.
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My mom was a stockbroker, really got interested in financial markets.
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You know, around 14, 15, it was sort of the the dawn of the microprocessor age and I I happened to you know, get exposed to the origins of what what became the PC and you know, that that obviously uh you know, impacted my life in a big way.
4:37
So today, if if you were a 12-year-old today, you'd be doing NFTs and crypto and that would be a wild, I'm guessing, seeing as Probably, yeah.
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Yeah, you know, now there's so many interesting things going on um with you know, technology and you know, the intersection of of the the biological sciences and the computational sciences and you know, it used to be technology was about uh IT departments and stuff like that.
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Now it's pretty much affecting everything and every business is getting upended in some way by technology and AI and data and you know, uh networks and it's it's super exciting to see the pace that the economy is changing with technology with technology at the fulcrum of that. Absolutely.
5:30
And I know that you dropped out of college uh and a lot of successful founders have dropped out of college and I'm not at all uh recommending that or encouraging that and neither are you.
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I'm I'm intrigued to think about though, if you finished your degree how differently do you think your life would have gone?
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That's the first part of the question.
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And the second part of the question is, what gave you the courage to actually drop out and pursue something which at the time, as you said, was very new and and very uh cutting-edge and innovative, but people didn't really have a lot of certainty and surety around it?
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Yeah, you know, it it seemed like kind of an easy decision for for me.
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I mean, let me start with the first part, you know, what would have happened if I graduated? I don't know.
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I don't know that I that I would have uh gone down this path, you know, I might I might be like a you know, a doctor in Houston somewhere, you know, which is what my parents wanted me to be.
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Um but you know, when I when I started, first of all, if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, right?
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So so it's it's pretty easy decision.
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You know, the University of Texas here in Austin, you can take a semester off and come back with no academic penalty.
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So that was kind of the deal I made with my parents that I would go do this for a while, and if it worked out, I would keep doing it, and if it didn't, I'd go back to school.
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So, you know, it didn't didn't seem like an enormous risk uh to me.
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My my parents were were pretty upset with me, for sure, because, you know, in the world they came from, giving up an opportunity for an education was like the worst thing you could possibly do.
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Um but, you know, it all it all worked out. that.
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I I want to hear more about that interaction with your parents, Michael, because I feel there are so many children today and young people and young adults that go through the same experiences you did.
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They they either want to quit or they want to start something new or they're on the verge of an idea they have, but they don't have the confidence, their parents might not be into it.
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What does someone look to at that time at that early stage in their career, where they don't have the wins on their list yet?
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They they don't have the successes, but they they want to follow their dreams, follow their passion, follow their heart.
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What advice do you have for someone who's in that position right now?
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Well, it's it's difficult and and extremely emotional.
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And I I talk about this in the book and the kind of struggle that I had with that and with my parents.
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You know, ultimately, I just decided that I was going to do this um whether or not I had their approval.
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Uh you know, which which was a which was a really tough thing to do and and um you know, my my mother was was unbelievably upset with me.
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Um and I would say it took it took about a year or two, maybe three, you know, to to sort of fully fully uh get through that.
8:31
I don't know that there is universal advice here other than if you are in a situation where you can take the risk and you don't have a lot to lose and and and you can fall back on something else, um you know, look, I I I think a lot of people don't achieve uh you know, a even a small fraction of what they're capable of because they're afraid to fail.
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They're not willing to take on more risk and um you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of potential that's left on the field and never gets utilized uh because people want the perfect plan or they want to do what they're supposed to do or uh you know, they're they're just not willing to take on that risk.
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And and um you know, we we need we need uh people to to you know, take on risk.
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Not just for new companies, but you know, and for existing companies and for to to redo and rethink and reimagine our our world, you know, we can't just like do a little bit better version of what we had before.
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We have to constantly be reimagining things. Right.
9:47
You spoke a lot about risk there, Michael.
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I'm wondering, what do you think's the biggest risk you ever took?
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You said that decision was fairly easy.
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What do you think What was the time when you feel you you like, "Yeah, I took a big risk."
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And whether it paid off or not, I'd love to hear about how it panned out.
10:01
But what was the biggest risk you ever took?
10:03
If you looked at it from the outside in, you know, people would say, "Well, dropping out of college, that was a pretty big risk."
10:08
Uh taking the company private, that was a pretty big risk, you know, uh doing the largest tech uh acquisition ever with, you know, 50 or 60 billion dollars of debt, you know, that was a that was a pretty big risk.
10:24
Um but, you know, to me they actually didn't seem that risky, right?
10:27
Because because I I you know, I sort of sort of on a risk-adjusted basis, I could see my way through to the to the opportunity.
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And could it have all gone wrong?
10:39
Sure, but I didn't think it was going to.
10:41
It's also a situation where, you know, if I had sat there and said, "Gee, should I drop out of school?
10:48
Should I not drop out of school?
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Let's go talk to 10 or 100 people and ask them what they think."
10:55
Probably most of them would have told me, "You're crazy for dropping out of school, okay?"
10:58
Well, I didn't ask anybody.
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I just you know, that that wasn't that wasn't how I was thinking about it. Yeah.
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What do you What would you say would be your biggest failure till date that you feel like you were down and out where it was a really tough situation?
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Was there a moment where things really felt like they weren't working out?
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When would When would that have been?
11:20
Well, look, there've been plenty of times and you know, I think what people maybe fail to understand is that embedded in success are failures, right?
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And at the root of success, you have kind of curiosity, learning, experimenting, and failure.
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And without those things, you don't have any success, right?
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And so, uh you know, failures are are not necessarily bad, uh you know, especially if you're learning from them.
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And so, yeah, we've had all kinds of failures along the way.
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Um you know, uh uh uh along the way to uh you know, cumulative revenues of about $1. 4 trillion, right?
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Um but yeah, I mean, you know, early on, we had some super ambitious technical projects that failed.
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Um and we learned from that.
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We built a lot of capability that allowed us to create all kinds of new new products as a result.
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We had inventory planning challenges early on.
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That led us to be really world-class at at supply chain management because we had to, right?
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And uh you know, uh necessity is the mother of invention, and um the key is to learn from the failures and correct them quickly, and hopefully not make the same mistakes over and over again.
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And you know, if you can if you can learn from other people's mistakes, you know, learn from from your new mistakes that you're making, and you know, correct them quickly, you're going to be very successful.
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But you got to you got to be willing to experiment and fail.
13:07
The other thing is, you know, when you're when you're going into new areas, there's no playbook, right?
13:12
There's you can't like read a book or or talk to a you know, an expert like tell you how to do this. You just have to start. I love that. Thank you, Michael.
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No, I I I love hearing that.
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It's always it's always wonderful to hear someone who seems to be having fun and and growing continuously and enjoying life on the journey as well.
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And I want to come to your book now, you know, Play Nice but Win, a CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader.
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I I wanted to talk about the title for a bit.
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When you hear the words play play nice but win, were these words that you said a lot?
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Were these words that you heard a lot?
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How did these words take shape in your life?
13:57
Yeah, so um my my two brothers and I, uh you know, when we were little kids and we would go out in the street and play ball with our friends, that's what our parents told us.
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You know, al- almost every time they'd say, "Play nice but win."
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And so it kind of became this philosophy of of uh you know, let's not forget about the winning part, right?
14:18
But but we're going to we're going to play nice, we're going to play fair, we're going to do it, you know, kind of ethically, responsibly, but yeah, we're we're we're in it to win, right?
14:30
And uh and so, you know, that's it's kind of been a kind of been something that's just stuck with me ever since I was a little kid and and uh yeah, that's it it goes goes back to my childhood and I talk about that in the book as well.
14:46
Did you ever meet anyone along the way that tried to challenge that and tell you it wasn't possible or tell you you had to play ruthless, you had to play bad, uh and win?
14:57
Like, was there anyone who challenged that?
14:59
And not specifically, I don't need you to tell me exactly who.
15:02
I'm just saying, was there anyone who really debated and challenged that hypothesis and said, "Michael, this is not going to work.
15:09
You're going to have to play unfair."
15:10
And was there anyone in your life that you met that completely disagreed with that statement?
15:18
Well, look, I you know, I've I've been you know, running our company for 37 years.
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I mean, I believe markets are are long-term efficient, right?
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And uh you know, I think everything sort of come back comes back to you in a in a good way, you know, or or or a bad way if you if you're playing the the other you know, side uh or or or or the other way.
15:44
And um you know, I I've just I've just kind of a avoided um you know, uh the the the opposite path and it's worked for me.
15:56
Um and you know, it just feels right to me and and at the end of the day uh you know, you have to feel you know, uh right about what you're doing and uh you know, you know, when I'm 90 or 100 or hopefully older, you know, uh you know, I want to I want to be proud of everything I did and the way I did it and and uh you know, that's that's just really important to me.
16:27
So, and and look, I've I've run into plenty of people that that uh you know, didn't didn't play nice and I just tried to you know, certainly uh not have them in our company, you know, avoid avoid doing doing business with them to the extent I could.
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And um yeah, I it's that's that's what that's what's that's what's worked for me.
16:51
Yeah, was there ever a time though that you felt pressured that you might have to change your approach to win or or was it always easy to stay to that?
16:57
I just I've I've I feel like I love it by the way.
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I completely agree with you.
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Like I think my favorite way to win is to play nice and the best way to play nice is to make sure you win.
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So, I I love that approach to life.
17:10
I'm just wondering whether there were any times where you actually maybe just had a thought and you thought, "Well, maybe if I didn't play so nice, maybe I'd win more.
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Maybe I'd Maybe I would be more successful if I did this or did this thing."
17:23
Did you ever have that debate?
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Did you ever have that thought internally or were you always convinced that this was the way?
17:31
Not not not for a second.
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I mean, it wouldn't feel right to win if I had cheated or done it done it in an unscrupulous way.
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You know, and I talk about in the book some of the early formative experiences where we had people that did things that weren't exactly correct, right? In one way or another.
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And it really surprised me.
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Maybe I was naive or I think people love the clarity of of knowing what we stand for, right?
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And knowing that that, you know, we don't like change the rules depending on who it is or how important it is or anything like that.
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It's like, "Hey, we're we're we're very clear about the ethical standards that we uphold as a company."
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And, you know, um it's it's just a lot easier that way. I love hearing that.
18:23
Trust me, I'm so happy to hear that because I think value-based businesses are so needed in in the world right now.
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And when we look at things like conscious capitalism and the idea of creating wealth, creating impact through values and through purpose and through mission, uh it's beautiful to hear that you never even got, you know, you never even had a moment of doubt.
18:45
I I love hearing that because I think it shows what's possible.
18:48
I I wonder there's a lot of our listeners who may be trying to decide between entrepreneur or employee.
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And, you know, today because the entrepreneurial life mindset has become so mainstream culture and accessible, a lot more people are thinking in that direction.
19:07
I wonder what can you do to teach us about the difference between the entrepreneur mindset and the employee mindset and what differences people can see so that they can see where they're best placed.
19:19
When things get pretty heated, you I think you see more opportuners.
19:25
You know, and not necessarily the pure entrepreneurs.
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And you know, that's okay.
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You know, everybody everybody can choose their own path.
19:36
Um you know, in in my experience it's it's not for the faint of heart, right? To go start a business.
19:42
I mean, it is all in and you know, when when I started, fortunately I was 19 years old and I could work 18 hours a day and sleep at the office and had no responsibilities, you know, in terms of family or any anything like that.
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Um and and I had the kind of physical stamina to to work like a maniac, you know, for for several years, which that's sort of what it took at the beginning.
20:15
Um fortunately that didn't have to perpetuate.
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But um yeah, I mean, it's not all glamorous and and and and and success and and there are plenty of businesses that that that that don't work out and um yeah, I mean, it's easy to look at the successful businesses and say, "Wow, it was just straight up, you know, into the right forever."
20:41
It's like, "Uh not exactly that's not exactly the way it goes it really in in any in any business."
20:49
Um but but uh yeah, I mean, it's it's a very personal decision in terms of what someone's risk appetite is and you know, are they willing to take all that on and and uh you know, when you put your head down at night, you know, you're thinking about all those people that you're responsible for.
21:11
I loved how in chapter three you said you you know, you don't start a company if you're not an optimist.
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You know, that there has to be that optimism and and part of your optimism was the openness to compete with IBM and to you know, to challenge a a long established company even when you were young.
21:31
Where where did that Where did that confidence come from?
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Where did that ambition, that that desire come from that gave you so much confidence and strength in that sort of a mindset?
21:43
I guess if I was being objective looking at it, you know, now I'd say there was some naivete there for sure as well, but you know, all that mixture was was pretty powerful and you know, what what I saw when I looked at the IBM PC
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back in 1981 when it first came out, it just had the 40th anniversary, you know, a couple a month or two ago of the IBM PC was you know, it it it was this thing they sold for like $3,000, but it had $500 worth of parts in it. And none of the parts were made by IBM.
22:21
And none of the parts were made by IBM.
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So to my, you know, teenage mind, it kind of seemed like a criminal enterprise.
22:29
You know, it's like it's like why does it cost so much and why does it take so long and why can't it be faster and you know, had a ton of ideas and you know, it's hard for people to really understand right now, but back in the early 1980s IBM was not just the most successful, you know, computer company, they were like unbelievably dominant in this field unlike any other company except maybe like Standard Oil, you know, back in the day.
23:07
Uh You know, they they just dwarfed any other company in the IT date {slash} data processing field.
23:14
You know, obviously very different 30, 40 years later, but um at the time they were, you know, the the the giant uh and they were also like the most valuable company in America, right?
23:28
So, it was it was it was uh it was it was a big big uh a big business, but hey, they seemed vulnerable to me.
23:39
I I love that example of what you said, like looking at it and seeing a criminal enterprise because of the uh you know, because of the shocking difference between the parts and the and the pieces. And and you're right.
23:49
I mean, I I I grew up in a world where IBM was was still very powerful, but I know what you mean.
23:56
You you're talking about the scale of it at the time.
23:58
And you know, when you talk about you talk about in chapter seven the fight for Dell to go private.
24:08
And it's been like a long disruptive process for everyone that's involved.
24:13
And you mentioned in the book that in Dell you had this saying of failure is not an option.
24:18
Uh you know, I want to know what kept you going in that fight to make it private.
24:23
Like what was the thing that kept you consistently uh fighting?
24:27
Because sometimes we're fighting for fighting's sake, but in this situation that wasn't it.
24:30
You were fighting for something more important and more deep.
24:33
Where did that come from?
24:35
Yeah, you know, I really felt that going private would allow us to accelerate our transformation.
24:42
And it would allow us to kind of reignite the entrepreneurial risk-taking uh spirit that was the origin of the company.
24:51
And um you know, I think Winston Churchill said something to the fact of, you know, if you're going through hell, you know, keep going. Right? Right?
24:59
So, we were in the middle of it.
25:00
It's not like you It's It's It's not easy to like stop and say, "Uh we're just kidding. Never mind. Forget it, you know."
25:08
Um I guess we could have done that, but um you know, once you once you get started, it you know, it was a fight It was a fight worth worth winning.
25:18
I thought I thought we could win.
25:22
Um and um you know, I thought it was a truly believed it that it was a very important thing for the company to do at that time to um you know, inflict the the the transformation and you know, we can look look back uh 7 years later and say, "Yeah, good good thing we did that."
25:43
Yeah, everyone else can make the connections in hindsight, but you were able to make the connections uh in the process and I think that's always what's harder, but another area of your life, apart from your professional success, of course, but you're one of the few people who have this rare personal success, too, with with marrying your wife, your four children.
26:03
And And I wanted to understand You probably get asked the work-life balance question a million times.
26:07
I personally don't believe in balance. I think it's a myth.
26:10
I'm not convinced that it's real and I think that it's actually causes more pressure than creates fuel in our lives when we're constantly trying to balance.
26:19
I wanted to understand what was your journey in creating a successful professional life, an extremely successful professional life, but also managing to have a real, genuine personal life as well.
26:33
Yeah, so first of all, I think when you're starting a business, uh you know, this idea of balance, you know, for just forget about it.
26:43
You know, that's like you're you're not going to have it.
26:45
So, you know, if you're thinking, "Oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur.
26:49
I'm going to start a company and I'm a great work-life balance.
26:53
Eh, it's not going to happen, right?
26:55
If it is, I it's it's a it's a it's a foreign thing to me.
26:57
I don't understand how how you could do that.
27:02
But, you know, once you have a business kind of up and running and you're into year 10, year 15, year 20, right?
27:07
You've got uh you know um systems and processes and people and well, what you find is there's a diminishing return to the number of hours worked.
27:22
And also, you know, your happiness is impacted.
27:24
And um you don't have to do everything yourself.
27:28
And you sort of always kind of are reassessing what is the point of impact where I can make a meaningful in you know uh uh impact on the company.
27:40
And um you know, cause something great to happen.
27:45
And I'm not going to I'm not going to do that in my, you know, 90th hour or 100th hour of work in a week, right?
27:51
You know, there there there's a sweet spot there.
27:56
And so um yeah, I I also consciously wanted to have a family and children and a family life and that kind of uh grounding that that I had as a child and and uh you know, um that was something I I really desired.
28:19
And so, I sought it out and planned planned my life in that way.
28:24
Um because I also knew that, you know, if I uh you know kept working for another 10 plus years and didn't have that I would be unhappy.
28:36
Yeah, and and but I'm sure that there were those tough decisions to make like I'm sure there were moments where maybe your wife and your children wanted your time, but you had to be at an important meeting or you had to be on a plane or how did you deal with those Yeah.
28:50
challenges because they're very natural.
28:52
It doesn't, you know, it doesn't make you a bad person, but it's like you I'm sure there were moments where you felt guilty or you couldn't be somewhere with your family that you really wanted to be with.
29:01
How did you deal with that and get through that successfully when so many other people struggle with those moments?
29:07
First of all, you know, um you have to have some boundaries.
29:12
Um and and set some boundaries.
29:12
And I'll say I was pretty good about having, you know, uh boundaries.
29:21
Um you know, didn't really do a lot of uh work on on on on the weekend.
29:28
Uh you know, so that that was pretty sacred time.
29:31
When when did you stop working weekends, Michael?
29:33
Where when in the journey did that happen?
29:35
Or was that from the beginning you never worked weekends?
29:39
I'd say I'd say when when when, you know, when we started having, you know, little kids. Little kids.
29:47
Um and you know, uh I also, you know, kind of set up our our house where we had a kind of um place where people could come over for dinner.
29:58
And so, you know, um I would often have a lot of dinner still do at, you know, at at the house.
30:08
And that way, um you know, uh it it just it just saved time.
30:14
And sometimes my my kids would, you know, it's kind of funny story.
30:17
My son, uh he he figured out when he was about five or six that, you know, if he came to one of the dinners, um you know, toward the end, he could get a dessert, all right?
30:34
But but then after a while, he's like, "Hey, that's Bill Gates, you know?"
30:38
Like, "What what let's let's maybe I'll learn something, you know?"
30:40
So, he he would he would like come and sit down and participate in the in the dinners.
30:46
Um but uh yeah, it it it it it it helped a lot to to do that at home and um yeah, you got to have some boundaries.
30:59
You you can't be in you know, you you you can't make it perfect all the time.
31:03
You know, and there going to be times when I mean, when I uh we haven't been doing this lately obviously, but you know, when I would go to Europe or Asia on business trips, you're just going all out, you know, like like for for a long time from early morning to late at night and that's okay.
31:24
You know, you you can sprint for a while and and do that.
31:29
Um but also, yeah, I made time to relax and and play and exercise and think and um not be overly scheduled, too.
31:41
I think I think the dinners is a genius one.
31:43
I love that that opening up your home and having those work dinners or people over for dinner so that you're actually at home, you're with your family.
31:49
It's It's still part of family time.
31:52
I think that's that's genius and it makes so much sense as to why that's beneficial for the family, for work, for for so many other things.
31:59
So, I love you sharing that tip.
32:01
You can make story time with the kids, you know, and and still have a still have a dinner with with with your business colleagues, you know. Yeah, it's brilliant.
32:08
That that's a brilliant one.
32:09
Uh you mentioned in the book that you always kept mementos in your office, like some personal uh some about the highs and low points of the company.
32:18
Can you tell us about some of these mementos because I'm a I mean, you collected stamps obviously, so collecting is part of your your DNA.
32:25
I I love collecting mementos as well. I want some inspiration.
32:27
What were some of the things that you held on to?
32:31
Yeah, you know, I I I kept kept things that were meaningful, you know, um in the book I have I have a picture of the motherboard that Jay Bell, our first engineer, hand-wired up.
32:45
You know, that's obviously a pretty treasured, um, memento for for me about the origins of our company and and, uh, tons of stories there.
32:56
I love how one of the values of your company was to be known as a great company and a great place to work at.
33:02
You know, the first few years of my entrepreneurial journey and trying to build a team, we have a team of, you know, just shy of 50 people across the world uh, that are working on my certification school, my courses, my podcast, my videos, my my books, just the whole the whole area of my work.
33:17
And I love that you said you wanted your company, one of the values was to be known as a great company and a great place to work at.
33:25
I wanted to know what were three key ingredients in ensuring you were doing that as a leader.
33:33
First of all, you want to have an inspiring, uh, you know, mission.
33:36
And you want to have people excited, not just engaged, but you want them to believe that what they do is really important and makes a difference in the world.
33:49
And, you know, there you're basically engendering passion, which is way more powerful than just about anything else you can present as a motivational tool.
33:59
I'd say the second thing is you want people to feel like they can succeed and grow and, uh, fulfill their full potential inside the organization.
34:10
And there's nothing holding them back.
34:12
There's no limits for them.
34:16
Uh, and it, you know, you're, uh, you know, caring caring about their success.
34:21
I think a part of that is probably the third point is that you've created an environment that is inclusive and anybody can succeed.
34:30
You're not looking for people that are all the same.
34:32
You want uh you know to hear a diverse set of voices and uh you know you're you're stronger because of the you know diverse set of voices and ideas coming together and you know we we're we're all we're all focused on ultimately something that's bigger than ourselves.
34:55
And uh you know again we've got a really important reason to get up out of bed every morning.
35:01
You know what we do matters in the world. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Thank you so much.
35:06
Uh that's going to be really really useful to me as we continue to grow.
35:09
So Michael, I want to thank you for just being so generous with your time and uh giving us such great insights and I'm so excited for my audience to read uh Play Nice uh but win.
35:20
And I want to end as we always do on On Purpose with our final five.
35:26
These are our fast five questions.
35:28
You have to answer them in one word to one sentence maximum. That's it.
35:30
So uh Michael, these are your fast five.
35:34
The first question is what is the best piece of advice you've ever received?
35:39
If you find a problem uh fix it as fast as you find it. I love that. Okay, second question.
35:43
What is the worst advice you've ever received?
35:48
Nobody ever says "Boy, I'm glad you waited to make that tough decision." Right?
35:52
And so it's important to to to lean into difficult conversations and difficult decisions.
36:00
Um and you know anybody tells you otherwise uh is is just creating more problems. Got it. Yeah, absolutely.
36:06
Uh question number three.
36:08
Uh what's the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up and the last thing you do at night before you go to bed?
36:14
I spend some time every morning thinking about what do I want to accomplish during the day.
36:19
What's really important for me to get done today and be proud of it end of the day, you know.
36:28
Uh and then, you know, as as I'm going to sleep, uh you know, I I I'm I'm I'm really trying to wind down and relax and, you know, calm myself and and uh sleep is super important.
36:40
I try to go to sleep early, get up early, want to get a great night's sleep, want to get a high score in my Oura ring and my and my, you know, sleep sleep eight pod.
36:53
And, you know, um uh you know, just try to try to relax, calm myself, you know, think think grateful thoughts and uh not not be too wound up about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow. Awesome.
37:09
Question number four, what is your current purpose today?
37:13
Our purpose as a company is still enabling human potential with technology.
37:19
And, you know, I think that's a a super powerful mission that will continue for a long, long time.
37:25
Uh that that's enduring and and we're we're, you know, continue to be excited by it. Fantastic.
37:33
And fifth and final question, Michael, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
37:41
Be grateful for for for what you have and um you know, uh take responsibility for, you know, your your your own life.
37:52
Uh self-determination, you know, uh you know, don't don't blame it on other people. It's all on you.
37:59
You've got to go make it happen and it's nobody else's fault. I love it.
38:05
Michael Dell everyone and the new book is out.
38:07
It's called Play Nice, But Win, a CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader.
38:13
Uh Michael, I want to thank you again for your energy.
38:14
I hope that everyone who's been listening or watching that you're going to share your greatest insights on Instagram, on Twitter.
38:21
Make sure you tag me and Michael and let us know what resonated with you.
38:24
And again, go and grab a copy of the book.
38:26
Uh Michael, thank you for this time.
38:28
I look forward to meeting you in person one day soon.
38:29
Uh all the best with everything you're working on and I'm so happy that we got to spend this time together. Thank you so much, Jay. Great to be with you.
38:38
If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
38:42
I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklikeamonkbook. com.
38:51
Check below in the description to make sure you order today.