0077 - Losing $400M, Bouncing Back, Owning Failures and Embracing Being an Outsider ft Stacy Spikes

Ben Owden engages in a conversation with Stacy Spikes, the visionary co-founder of MoviePass and author of "Black Founder: The Hidden Power of Being an Outsider." Stacy's journey is a masterclass in turning failures into stepping stones and embracing the unique advantages of being an outsider.

From working alongside entertainment icons like Stevie Wonder, Spike Lee, and Eddie Murphy to reinventing himself from a junior executive to a tech CEO, Stacy shares how he defied expectations and disrupted the status quo. He opens up about pivotal moments—like when a personal setback forced him to "burn his Plan B" and fully commit to his dreams.

Discover how Stacy harnessed courage, ownership, and boldness to navigate the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. He delves into the founding of MoviePass, its meteoric rise and public collapse, and why he decided to reclaim and relaunch the company despite the challenges.

If you've ever felt like an outsider or faced obstacles that seemed insurmountable, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiring stories. Learn how to own your failures, embrace your unique perspective, and turn isolation into innovation.


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Stacy Spike's Website
Stacy Spike's Time Magazine Feature

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Transcript

Stacy Spikes

And sometimes the universe does that for you. It takes away the options. How many times was, you know, this relationship we were in and somebody, you know, broke up with us? Or when you had a job and you thought, okay, I'm gonna work my way up the ladder, and then you get fired, or the company goes under, and we all have these situations, but you don't see, at that time, that was the best thing that ever happened for you. It feels like the worst thing that's happened to you, but it literally is the catalyst to take you to a dimension that you were not gonna go on your own.

Ben Owden

Funny that you say that, because, you know, Gerald, I think, who was the CEO of Motown, told you, never stay anywhere more than four years unless you have an ownership stake in the company. And as I read this, I was like, would you give this advice to young people entering workforce today anywhere?

Stacy Spikes

I think it goes from being an outsider to an insider. If you're not, if you don't have some fiduciary level role in an entity, then you're just getting a check and you're funding someone else's dreams. They're not your own. Ma'am, can I put you on hold? Cause I know she's wrong.

Ben Owden

Yeah.

Stacy Spikes

And I get one of the flyers, one of the mailers, and, man, I never dialed a number so slow in my life. And I did 1800. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And I put the phone to my ear and I heard, mm, if you want it bad, come and get it. And I was like. I was like, no, I hung up and I dialed the number again.

Ben Owden

Being in the middle is challenging from balancing the demands of those above with the needs of those below. Balancing between pushing the strategy forward and investing in the developments of your teams. Stewarding what is presently working while being a change agent. We understand the tension that exists with being in the middle, where you're asked to be everything to everyone. Dear middle manager, we see you, we've heard you, and we're here to help you. WhyLead Consultancy is bringing you Thrive in the Middle, a twelve-week, cohort-based leadership program designed for those in middle management, an immersive program where leadership isn't just taught, it's horned, refined, and brought to life through a blend of expert guidance, peer collaboration, and immersive, practical learning experiences. Join thrive today and be more than just a link in your organization, be its strongest link. To learn more and enroll, email us at yoda. That is yoda@whyleadothers.com. This is Ben Owden, the leadership Mister Miyagi. My hope is that this conversation will help you find the clarity and conviction you need lead a more meaningful and impactful life. I have curated some of the best thinker practitioners from all over the world to help you get to your leadership nirvana. So sit tight and let's go on this journey together. Greetings to you. I hope you're at peace and are having a meaningful and productive day. 

Welcome to another episode of the WhyLead Podcast. I am your host, Ben Owden. Now, today we'll be exploring the terrains of pursuing your dreams, navigating the process, and how to respond to failure. And most importantly, for those who are in industries and markets where they feel like outsiders, how can you tap into the power of being an outsider? So, to have this conversation, I am joined by a man who has worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Spike Lee, Eddie Murphy, Boyz II Men, and Queen Latifa as a product manager. Defying expectations, our guest today effectively disrupted the status quo and reinvented himself from a junior executive to a CEO of a tech founder. His career has spanned from being a film studio golfer to a marketing executive for major record labels like Motown and Universal. He has founded a film festival that purpose to highlight and showcase films by people of color. But the game changer in his career was when he founded MoviePass, which is a movie theater subscription dubbed as the Netflix for movie theaters, a company that wants to save the culture of experiencing movies and cinemas in a world of increasing streaming habits. He is the author of the book Black the hidden power of being an outsider. Ladies and gentlemen, Stacey Spikes. Stacey, you're most welcome.

Stacy Spikes

Hey, Ben, thank you for having me.

Ben Owden

Now, I would like to start by playing a little game. So I will basically give you two options and you'll tell me, between the two, which one do you most prefer and why? So the first one is time versus money.

Stacy Spikes

Time.

Ben Owden

Time. What makes time important for you?

Stacy Spikes

If you have the time, you can make the money. So you get, especially in the world of an entrepreneur, time gives you cycles that you get to try something out. Imagine the Wright brothers. They had time, and they were bicycle manufacturers, but all of their competition had money. And money doesn't solve problems. You need time to be able to run through those cycles. So I'll take the time because time will ultimately make the money.

Ben Owden

People versus outcomes.

Stacy Spikes

People.

Ben Owden

People.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. Yeah. The right people. The right people will create the right outcome. The people perceive the outcome. You can't get to the outcome without the people.

Ben Owden

The means justify the end versus the end justifying the means.

Stacy Spikes

The means justify the ends.

Ben Owden

Yeah. Interesting. And I think we'll get to, I think especially when we talk about movie pass and what happened towards the end of the first run, because I know you're on the second run right now, the final one. I will tell the truth even when it's hard, versus I will tell the truth only when it's convenient to do so.

Stacy Spikes

I'll tell the truth even when it's hard.

Ben Owden

And I think after reading your book, I think there are stories of you demonstrating, actually doing what you've just picked right now. So, yeah, great for you. Now, in your story, as you shared your story through your book, you. I like how you started with the early days, because sometimes there's always that temptation to just talk about the highlights and everything winning. But I like that there was a heavy focus on what happened prior to Moviepass, which I believe is what a lot of people know you for, because that's out in the public. There's spotlight around the business. As you were telling your story, why was it important for you to tell a story of the power of being an outsider? And what contribution were you hoping to make in the lives of those who read your story?

Stacy Spikes

Yeah, so, you know, I started the story literally in high school. I think I started probably in junior high or high school, because that's when your dreams and the ideas of who you're going to be when you grow up are forming and which paths you're going to take. And so that was those years where I was reading Richard Branson's book and David Geffen's book and Sumner Redstone and Paul Newman, and I was reading all these entrepreneurs and what they were doing when I was in middle school and high school. So that's why I started there. And the outsider part, so many people think, well, I don't have what they have, therefore I can't do what they do. And the point being is the universe is abundant and the opportunities are so vast that if you go in the direction of that which you're pursuing, let the universe provide those things you can't see. And that's why I always tell people, don't use your outsiderness to give a unique perspective that comes to the table, that doesn't require money, that doesn't require power. The new thing never comes from the top. It always comes from the bottom up, and it comes from somewhere no one was paying attention to. And so those are the advantages that you have in being an outsider.

Ben Owden

Wow. Something else that you shared, which is something that resonated with me because, you know, if you speak to people who knew me maybe ten years ago, they. In terms of what my dreams and aspirations are and what I'm doing today, it would be polar opposites. And in the story you talk about, you know, wanting to be an artist and pursuing this dream and having the opportunity to work for Motown come in and the hesitation that you had, because I'm going to become a suit and this and that. And I think you, you write, you say, I was excited about the opportunity to interview for Motown, but I wasn't sure I wanted to work at the record label. I wanted to be signed to buy a record label. I still considered myself an artist and I was starting to make some inroads with my music career and I had invested a lot of time and money in my music. And then, of course, you talk about this unfortunate incident where you get robbed and people come into. You break into your house and they steal your equipment, which you've spent a lot of time and money to accumulate over the years, and how that became turning point, because now you have nothing to go back to, so you might as well just take the next step. And this particularly reminded me of a story in the Judeo Christian Bible. I think there's a story where God is calling Elisha and he tells him to burn the plow. He was, I think, a cattle herder or something like that, and he was like, burn the plow. And it's always one of those bizarre stories. But when I read your story that came to mind in terms of this idea how sometimes moving forward, you need to not have an option to go back to, because if you do, then at the first challenge, you probably go back. So why was this important in your story? And at the same time, how does this look like in other people who are trying to pursue dreams, yet they're holding on to an option that they have right now, but there's an open door. But they're refusing to enter into that open door.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah, you bring up some great points, and the Elijah story is really great. The viking equivalent is burning the ships. And I'm sure you've heard the story where when they were about to go into battle and they were seafaring people, when they would get to a land that they were about to deboat or deplane, they would actually pour tar on the deck, and from the shore they would light arrows and burn their ship, their only way home, because they knew how to build boats. There were trees and forests so they could make another boat. But if they lost the battle, there wouldn't be a way to retreat. And so they ensured that there was no way to retreat. You had to win. And sometimes the universe does that for you. It takes away the options. How many times was this relationship we were in and somebody broke up with us? Or when you had a job and you thought, okay, I'm work my way up the ladder, and then you get fired or the company goes under and we all have these situations, but you don't see, at that time, that was the best thing that ever happened for you. It feels like the worst thing that's happening to you, but it literally is the catalyst to take you to a dimension that you were not going to go on your own. And so there's this thing called the Mobius effect, where something turns completely inside of itself and changes what it was. Directionally, you still are who you were, but things change. And if you're ever going to be an entrepreneur, you have to understand, like, every 90 days, new technologies are emerging and changing. Right now, we're having conversations about AI. Not too long ago, we were having conversations about NFts, and before that, we were having conversations about crypto. So it's like, it's constantly evolving, and so you need to never be attached to anything except for the success. Just keep going towards it.

Ben Owden

I like that in the story as well. You share, I think when you were talking about him, I was like, I would really love to meet this guy. You speak about Oscar and his impact on your life as a mentor in your days at Moretown. And you write, Oscar became my first mentor, and like a surrogate father to me. He was there to teach me and I was there to learn. He would take me to lunch and he would explain everything to me, and I mean everything, not only about business, but life. And of course, you speak about, you know, how that relationship looked like in time. And as I was reading this part of your story, how. How can organizations or people who are building businesses create this culture of having a critical mass of many oscars, people who invest in passing knowledge not just about business and their particular role, but also just life overall wisdom to the next generation? And maybe how has this looked like as you set up your own businesses over time?

Stacy Spikes

I don't know that that comes through a business, to be honest, because, you know, a mentor to you, if you ever saw the movie karate kid, yes. You know, Mister Miyagi wouldn't have looked like a mentor, right? He wouldn't have he? He wouldn't have thought you might have somebody who runs the sandwich shop down at the corner, and every time you're pulling your hair out and you don't know what you're going to do next, that person may say something behind the counter handing you your sandwich that blows your mind. I remember I went to a monastery, and I was at this retreat, and I asked one of the monks a question, and he gave me this yoda like answer. He said, you must learn to be in the world, but not of the world. That, like, blew my mind. Be in the world, but not of the world. Like, yeah, move around in it. But those who are truly gifted are playing above the realm that everyone else is walking around in. And you see this happen in all of these people, whether it's Martin Luther King or JFK or Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali or. Or Mark Zuckerberg. They're places. A person in a place at a time where things changed, and they are a change agent. And it doesn't mean that there aren't brilliant people. And sometimes that person at the sandwich shop might be your mentor as much as someone in the office. So I don't know that. And I think you got to find who your mentor is because you can hear them. Where if I told. If I said, ben kim down the hall is your mentor, you'd be like, I don't. Right? So that's where I think mentors are unique. They're a fingerprint to you, but you have to. A teacher appears when we're ready to be taught, and I was ready to be taught about a new dimension of things, and Oscar was the person at the place at the time to be able to give those. So I think mentorship is organic. I don't think it's something that you can do it in a corporation. You can give somebody another person to show them the ropes. But I think mentorship is very personal.

Ben Owden

I like that because I think it speaks of this idea of being mindful. Right. They appear when we're ready, and you have to be present enough to be able to notice that. Okay. I think it's time. I think, you know, this person is gonna speak into my life and hold my hand in different ways. Of the many stories in your book, I'm a big Eddie Murphy fan. Coming to America is, like, one of my favorite movies of all time. And you talk about your experience working with him and the story, I think, in the elevator, which is. It's somehow funny because especially when you talk about Charlie Murphy and how he was cracking jokes and you talk about what happened in the moment, but also how your thoughts over time about the situation and that level of success has evolved as well. And you write about this idea that when people have reached a certain level of success, it becomes very hard to be flexible and to innovate and to try new things, you taking risks becomes harder innovating because now we're so attached to our success that anything that does not guarantee that I would be on the same level is some sort of a threat. Yet most of us are striving to achieve some success in our own lives. So how do we become successful without succumbing to this? Almost like a curse to success, where we need to define ourselves based on our most successful venture. We want to top more successful ventures. You see this mostly in the arts and sports, where you're compared to your last championship, to your last number one hit and all of those things. And I think it happens in organizations as well, especially for founders, where if somebody started a business that was successful, that was sold for x amount of money, when they start something else, is this the thing? How do we make sure that as we strive to be successful, we, we don't define ourselves based on our most successful venture and we don't allow past success to put shackles on us?

Stacy Spikes

I love that question. So for me personally, I like when Bezos said he wanted to make sure that Amazon always stayed a startup. It can be a big startup, but a startup mentality is nimble, it's fluid. I don't remember where I read this, but I heard you should always be thinking about how you can put yourself out of business. And if you're thinking like that, then you're thinking the way everyone else is thinking when they're looking at you. And how can they be better, faster, stronger than you are? Where's the bins in the curve? So if you look at Microsoft, which was a very mature software company, but now is leading with gaming and AI, that's a completely different business than what they were in before, which was we're going to sell you some software you're going to run on your computer. But Windows and the operating system no longer was new. Now you could get the same software on, on for, from Google for free. So they had to completely reimagine that business. Are they a cloud business? Are they a computing business? Are they going to follow intel? Are they in gaming when you know they create? They went into the Xbox direction so they were able to see how people were starting to spend their time and able to go in those places, and they're going there with AI. So I think it's always be young, right? In that biblical passage, Christ says, be like the children, because they can see. They actually. We unlearn our childlike mystery. We go, I gotta, like you said, we gotta pay the bills. I gotta get this done. We unlearn that natural gift of curiosity and wanting to know different. There's a quick story. Kodak was the first company to create the digital camera. And the people inside of the company voted it down because they believed they made so much money off of printing photographs and film. They believed they were in the film business, not in the digital image and memory business. And so if they realized that they were in the digital memory business, they would have thought about cloud computing and different ways of capturing. And Kodak ended up going bankrupt. So it's important to, you know, a lot of newspapers thought they were in the paper business, not in the news business, and they couldn't make the leap away from paper to digital. And so that's an example that you need to be nimble in order to stay in the game.

Ben Owden

And I like that, because I think your story is really about how nimble you've been throughout your career. And funny that you say that, because Gerald, I think, who was the CEO of Motown, told you, never stay anywhere more than four years unless you have an ownership stake in the company. And as I read this, I was like, would you give this advice to young people entering workforce today anywhere?

Stacy Spikes

I think it goes from being an outsider to an insider. If you don't have some fiduciary level role in an entity, then you're just getting a check and you're funding someone else's dreams. They're not your own. When you get to a point that you have some monetary stake and your actions or the team's actions determine whether that stock is going to go up or down, then you're playing a totally different game that you will generate money. Another great book that reinforces this point is called the e myth, the entrepreneur's myth. And it talks about this piece of this lady who bakes pies, and she her grandmother's recipe, and it reminds her of her grandmother. And she gets to this point that she doesn't want anybody else to bake the pies, but people want more of her pies, but she can't. She doesn't want the recipe to get out. And they explain that there's this entrepreneur's myth, this idea that the entrepreneur can't break out until they actually build a business that can fully run with them. And that's how a business can scale. It needs to think and be nimble and run without you. So when she does make that leap, she's able to go sit on a beach, and her pie company can make and ship pies all over the world and sell cookbooks and things. But until she broke out of that, she couldn't get there. So it's important to break out of the mindset. If not, you're really an employee, which means you're anywhere from, depending upon how much savings you're six months to 36 months of being on poverty's door. And that's the part that a lot of people don't realize.

Ben Owden

Wow. Now, speaking of being nimble, I think after more town, you go to universal, and then after that, you go to Miramax, which I think it's probably the most fascinating part of your story. One thing I love, the show entourage. And whenever they had the character for, I think, Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, I always felt it was an exaggeration of how he behaved. And I think after reading this, I was like, there sounds like they were quite close in terms of the yelling and the shouting. And this is an interesting piece because you share about the first day of actually arriving there. And I, they were previewing a trailer that was shown. And then Bob Weinstein turns to you and basically asks you, what's your thought on this trailer? And you say, I thought it was a pretty good one. And then he just proceeds to yell. And I would like to quote where he says, it sucks. It's the worst trailer I have ever seen. And then he asks you, are you an idiot? That you would think, that's a good trailer? Did we hire an idiot? And then he turns to Harvey and he asks, Harvey, Harvey, I think we hired an idiot. And, you know, he basically is like, yeah, did we hire an idiot? And there's story after story of this kind of language. But you say, the only way to ever survive in situations like this is to always know you can walk away and understand it won't kill you if you do. In fact, some days when the environment was especially toxic, I would daydream about walking away. So why was it important for you to endure this type of work environment while you were there? Whereas probably you could have had an easier time elsewhere in this journey of yours. Why was it important to endure this? And now, looking back, have you developed maybe a different take on what happened during that time?

Stacy Spikes

Wow. Why did I endure and do I have a different take on it, similar to the Eddie Murphy story? There's what you experience in that moment, and then when you get some distance from it, you almost get a bird's eye view of the experience from different perspectives. You talk to people, other people have gone through something similar. Startups and early companies are deeply, deeply stressful environments. They are, they are birthing new lands there. It's like a volcanic, you know, island that's being born. It is not the mature island with hotels and towels and people picking you up at the airport. No, this is the lava that's flowing, reestablishing a whole new land. And so it can be a very violent place. And it is. There is never enough money, there's never enough time. And different people react to that in stressful ways. You can get some bosses who won't talk to you, someone from HR just fires you. They call you in the office and say, listen, Ben, it's not working out. Bob and Harvey said, they just, thank you very much. Here's a check. Then there's the screamers, you know, and then there's the people in the middle. They may come in and say, I'm really disappointed in everyone, and we have to do better, and they may talk to you. I'd probably put myself in the middle of that herd. But people aren't at their best when pressure is great. And what I was able to learn, what I saw as an employee there, they treated people very poorly. But what I saw as a boss, you need excellence from everyone to hit the mark, because they're all going to leave and go get another job anyway if it doesn't work out. But you're going down with the ship. And so that's how my perception changed. I don't think it's right to ever mistreat anyone. But I think you should note, I, if you do not want high temper, high stress environment, you should not work at a startup, you should not start one being at odds with people with very critical decisions. You would not be at Apple, you would have not been at Amazon, you would have not been at Miramax, you would not have been at Tesla, you would not have been at SpaceX, you would not have been at intel. Like every company I can think of, when you go back to their origins, they were this little tiny spec. You would not have been at Microsoft. They were taking on giants at the time. When we were at Miramax, we were taking on Disney. We were releasing 40 films a year, and we're this tiny little company. Why? Why did I endure? I think it's like you go to the, you go into the military and that drill sergeant is in your face telling you, quit. I know you're not good enough. What are you doing in here? You're wasting my time. I know you're gonna quit. And I think there's a part of you that says, I will not quit, sir. You know?

Ben Owden

Yeah.

Stacy Spikes

And you are like, no, you're not gonna break me. I worked hard to get here. So I think that there's that aspect of it. It's a lot like joining the marines or military boot camp or special forces when you join a startup. But being a boss now, I see it differently.

Ben Owden

Wow. So after Miramax, urban world emerges as that. And it started off as a festival. And you speak of the days of building urban world and living in your own terms. I think that's the language that you use is finally it's time to live in my own terms. And you write, at that moment, I decided I never wanted another person to have control over my destiny. If I was going to fail, I wanted to fail trying to do what I wanted to do. And you talk about failure a number of times, but in this particular passage, the way you speak about failure maybe basically want to ask you this question, is failure that happens when you're living in your own terms, easier to handle versus failure that happens when, you know, I'm not living in my own terms, I probably shouldn't be here. And is it easier to handle failure when you know that I have chosen to be where I'm at right now?

Stacy Spikes

You know, when it's, when it's when you're the decision maker and it happens, you kind of see it coming. You, you did, you know, you bought these pencils for $0.35. You need to sell them for a dollar. The market's not interested in your pencils, and you're trying to do everything you can and now you're trying to get your $0.35 back and then you're selling them to some wholesaler for a 20 cent loss. Right? You saw the pieces. You saw it coming. When you work for somebody, your boss could be having a bad day because she had a fight with her husband. Come in the office and you don't answer something the right way. And you always have that guillotine feeling like, if I don't do this right, there's these side things can just have a casualty to it. And that's where, that's where I don't like that feeling. That feeling is so uncomfortable to me. I'd rather wrestle with solving a problem and clients and customers and figuring it out. And did I get it right? No. Let's do it again. Let's rebuild it. We have to. I like that more than I like that free floating. Did we hire an idiot? Are you an idiot? You know, I don't. That I don't like. I don't like that someone owns me. They own. They own my time. They own me. When you are an equity player, you are a partner. Now, you may be a small partner, you may be a big partner, but now you're a partner. And that's what I think Gerald was hinting at. If you don't own equity and have some stake that others understand in the room that you do, you're an employee, and you are an at will employee that can get fired any day for any reason. And that I don't like.

Ben Owden

And how, as you moved on to start your own businesses as an owner, looking at everybody else who's rallying around this vision that you have, what's your relationship to everybody else, knowing that this idea of ownership got you to where you are, right. Do you expect the same thing to them in terms of, are you pushing ownership? Because I sometimes see this. You see, there is. I don't know how to put it, but when people who want ownership, when they become owners, they don't want the next generation to become owners. Right. Because now it's like, okay, if they become owners, then everybody's going to leave. What happens to me? And so then things become very. But I know that you push this idea of ownership, especially within black communities, which is something that it's being pushed now by a number of people. And this idea of ownership, let's have ownership. Let's own things. Let's own assets. As an owner of multiple businesses, from when you started with urban world to where you are now, how has this affected how you lead organizations and how you communicate to the people who get behind the vision that you have for the different businesses you started?

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. So great question. I believe that. So two parts. One is I try and press ownership so anyone joining the company that there's some equity participation so that hopefully, if we all work really hard, you can have a life changing event. Right. So you want to inspire people to join your crazy mission by doing that. And I liken it to, we are going to get in a ship, and we heard about a land that has riches, and we're going to sail to that place. People, there is a high death rate on these attempts, you know, a third of people don't come back, or two thirds don't come back. And so it's very risky. It's very dangerous. But who's crazy enough and wants to go? And once you have that, then there's the mindset on the boat, so to speak. And I have a very simple analogy. I don't want any of my team to work harder than me, but I also tell my team, you really don't want your boss working harder than you do, right? So if you want to achieve and either replace me or be better or create your own thing, if you don't put in the kind of time, energy and effort that I do, it's impossible for you to climb up. So I always say, you don't want to know if I'm outpacing you. I'm older than you. I founded the company. I can maybe relax. I'm not in my twenties. And if I'm hustling harder than you're hustling, you should watch out, because that hustle is everything. If you don't have that hustle, you're never going to make anything. Because if you're the boss, you got to. You can't say, well, Jim didn't do that. So you can't blame anybody. Because if it didn't happen, it's your responsibility. The buck stops at your desk when investors invest in you. You don't get to say, susie didn't write the code. Right. You don't. They're like, negro, you are responsible. So I have to. The guy I look at in the mirror is responsible. At the end of the day, I can't say anyone else is responsible.

Ben Owden

Hmm. I like that. And there's a story about the six line, which we'll get to. That was. It was hilarious.

Stacy Spikes

Wait, wait, Ben, I can't hear you. Ben. Ben, the line is good. Oh, Ben, I'm sorry. They're calling me. I have to leave.

Ben Owden

And this is an idea that I heard before, right? This idea of, don't take yourself too seriously. And it's easier to talk about that, right? But when it's happening, you know, you're out on your own. You're building your own thing. You make this ad with a phone number. People can call in and, you know, push the flyers out there, and you realize that the number that you put there, maybe you tell this story. And my question is, why is it important not to take ourselves seriously in the pursuit of our dreams?

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. All right, so here's the story. Back in the day before, people. We all had websites, but people didn't want to do transactions on them, yet they're still. It was the early days, and so people didn't trust that. And so we used to do, this is for the film festival. We would do a mailer that would go out, and that mailer had credit card information, and people would put it in an envelope and send it back to you, and they just didn't trust putting that credit card information or a check on the website. And so we had done somewhere between 40 and 60,000 mailers that had gone out. And there's a company that you go and they print them, and they actually will pack and ship, and it will print the little address, laser print the address, put the postage, and this thing's just being automated through the machine. And so I'm so proud. Like, we just got them out on time, and we're doing great, and it's Monday morning, and I come in early, and I know we might get some early phone calls. This lady calls up, and she says, I'd like to speak to who's in charge. And I was like, well, ma'am, this is Stacey Spikes. I'm the founder of the festival, and happy to. What can I help you with? I know she's just excited. She's going to want to come to the festival, and she says, I am deeply insulted that you would put a sex line on your phone number. That is disgusting. And I'm like, ma'am, can I put you on hold? Because I know she's wrong.

Ben Owden

Yeah.

Stacy Spikes

And I get one of the flyers, one of the mailers, and, man, I never dialed a number so slow in my life. And I did 1800. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And I put the phone to my ear, and I heard, if you want it bad, come and get it. And I was like. I was like, no. And I dialed the number again, and the lady's still on hold. And I'm like. I said, ma'am, can I call you right back? She's cursing me out how insulting this is. And this is a black owned organization, and you should know better than that. And I take her number, and I'm like, I gotta call her back. And I call our publicist. I'm in tears. I'm in my office. My career is over. My life is ruined. My young, fledgling company. I'm gonna get sued. My sponsors are all gonna lead me. It's over. It's over. So I called my publicist, I called Susan, and I said, susan, this just happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I even put her on the, I conference a line and I dial it, and Susan starts laughing on the other line. She goes, I'll call you right back. I'll call you right back. I'm like, this isn't funny. This is the end of my life. And she says, she calls me back and she says, okay, here's what we're going to do. I took care of it. I go, what do you mean you took care of it? She goes, it's going to be on page six tomorrow. And I'm like, wait, page six is in the New York Post. What do you mean it's going to be on page six? She goes, this is great. Whenever something like this happens, you just use it to your advantage. I said, how? This is the end of my career. So the next day, the line reads, imagine urban world founder Stacy Spike's surprise when a typo on his mailer ended up being directed to the phone number. Ended up being directed to a phone sex. And it's in print in the paper, and there's like a picture of me. I said, susan, I'm not working with you anymore. This is, you are fired. And she's laughing. So she goes, here's what you're going to do. You're going to call the company and you're going to get them to forward that line to your number. And you forward your number to their line. It's free. Like call forwarding, you just forward it to. I was like, oh. And then she's like, you can thank me later. And hangs up. So at the film festival, right? So we forward the lines. And then it was fine. At the film festival, people were in the line, and I was walking down the line as people were waiting to get in, and I could hear people saying, well, did you get to hear the phone line? I'm like, no, I got my flyer and I called the next day. What did it say? Was it trashy? Was it? And then just like one of those things out of a movie, the version of what was on the phone line kept getting worse and worse and worse. Oh, it was nasty. You should have heard it. And it ended up being hilarious. But I learned that you had to laugh when you fall down, and if you don't take it so serious, you can see your way through it. And Susan taught me a really powerful lesson in like, okay, okay, dust yourself off and you take it light. And so there was no intentional harm. We didn't mean to do anything wrong. And it taught me a very valuable lesson in my career.

Ben Owden

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Stacy Spikes

I'm gonna get you back for having bring this up on the podcast. You just wait.

Ben Owden

And I think we all need a Susan in our lives to make sure that, you know, to get that perspective. Now, you know, you speak of this as a failure, but I think in the book, you talk about something that happened, I think later on, where suddenly you're out, somebody comes to you, trying to identify you and handing you the papers and saying, you know, you owe this much. And you talk about that as like your first real big failure, where suddenly you're in debt and you have to pay because the business wasn't doing as well as it was supposed to. And you're right. What I have learned is that the first failure is the most bitter. And I the failures that follow, in most cases, there will be more than one. The sting is a bit less. So how should founders prepare themselves to handle this first peak failure? And I think on that same note, I liked how you handled it. This idea of standing in front of the line of fire and saying, okay, I'll take it, I won't run away, and I'll make sure that this is handled the right way to have not just the ability to survive it, but also to say, I will not take the easy way out here. I will actually face what's in front of me and I'll confront it.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was the first crash and burn. So what had happened was I got. So I had the film festival, urban world, and we built a studio. I did a deal with Sony, and we were buying pictures and putting them out in theaters. And September 11 happened, and you just couldn't raise money. And we eventually ran aground. And a lot of, you know, the tech bubble had burst and there was no money if you weren't a cash flow positive company. And so we went out of business. And what had happened was at the very end, and I didn't know this because this was my 1st, 1st really big go round. So I didn't know that the lease agreement for the office, which I had signed on the dotted line for, and a bunch of the vendors agreements all had this thing that allows them to what they call pierce the corporate veil. And what pierced the corporate veil is that signature that you put said, if the company can't pay for this, I am liable. And so what that allows it to do, and you got to look for it in certain contracts. What that allows them to do is sue you personally. And so I had the company owed around $1.2 million. And I was responsible for that. And at the end of the day, I ended up owing a quarter of a million dollars. And everyone was like, you should just file for bankruptcy. And I didn't. And I walked through it, and it took me ten years to pay off all those creditors, even though the money wasn't. It didn't go in my pocket. It didn't. It was lab bills, it was, you know, vendors bills to complete the films. And. But I did it, you know, and I. And I took the bullets and I learned. And then in future contracts, I made sure that it wasn't set up, that I was liable or. And that was. That was deep. That was very, very deep. And getting up from that was hard. I didn't know how to get up from that kind of failure because I had flown so successfully. And then I just kept this fact. And I will tell any of your listeners that the average successful founder has had three business failures and is in their forties or fifties. And so if you remember that fact, it's not Mark Zuckerberg in his twenties, and writing code in his bedroom, who's an instant billionaire, or the guys at chat, GPT or OpenAI. That's not normal. Normal is you learn from experience, trials and tribulations, and you become an established, seasoned founder over what isn't failure, it's just learning. Learning what works and what doesn't work. How to lead teams through disaster, how to take a team and thin it down and get to the other side of the bridge with very little resources, but succeed. Those are qualities that a founder needs in order to make a company grow into something big. And that's. There's no way to learn it, but you got to go through it.

Ben Owden

Wow. So there's a question that we ask all of our guests. It's called the one one one. Which is, what's the one book that you've read at some point in your life that you wish there was a time machine that you. Where you can go back in time and read it maybe earlier in your life? And what is the one habit that you've developed over time that you wish I. You had started practicing earlier as well? And what's the one personal value that you will not compromise, no matter the cost? So one, one, one book, one habit, one value.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

So I'll ask this question in, you know, in a few minutes, so just let you think through that one. So, of course, after this, you know, you basically found movie pass.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

And I, you know, I love the whole concept of the business and what it promises. And, you know, from the, from an outsider's point of view, it's very straightforward in terms of the value proposition. But one specific thing that I really liked was this line that I. You said, it said, an adventure should never come with a pause button. And I love this line. How do you get to this point of clarity in terms of vision, mission as a founder? Because I think one challenge that you see with a lot of founders is when someone is trying to ask them what they do and why is it important. There's always a struggle, and there's a lot of jargon, and it's all over the place. So how does one get to this level of clarity? Because it's a simple line, but it perfectly captures moviepass and why it should exist.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. So the, I think we were, when you're being asked, why is cinema important? Why shouldn't everybody just watch movies on their phone? Why do we need theaters? And the correlation was, okay, why do we go to sporting events? No one was saying, are we now gonna just watch games on tv? Which you could, you know, you could do that. Why do people go to the game? They go to the game because they're watching adventure unfold in real time, and there's nothing anybody can do. There's 3 seconds on the stop clock. The game is evenly tied, and everybody knows in that stadium that Michael Jordan is gonna get the ball. Everybody knows it. And he's literally got two guys on him, and he's just shoving him out of the way, and he's ready to get the ball, and there's 3 seconds on the clock, and they have him cornered. There's nothing he can do. And Jordan gets the ball, turns to them, he's bouncing, does a fake, goes back on 1ft, lets it go. It goes. It's a three pointer. It goes in, the place, goes crazy, they win the championship, blah, blah, blah. Well, a movie's the same way. You can't. And that game had no pause button. No matter what you could do, it was going to unfold. And that's what cinema has. When you watch people watching movies at home. People are watching movie at home. Like this.

Ben Owden

Yeah. Texting.

Stacy Spikes

I'm texting, I'm talking, I'm looking at the tv, I got my iPad, I'm doing insta. I'm like, I'm all over the place while I'm cooking, too. And if you think a filmmaker worked for seven to ten years, which is how long the average film takes to get made for a filmmaker, if you think that person worked that hard for you to not pay attention to what they're trying to say, that's not why it's there. And it's also not as exciting. But when you're in a room where the lights go down and you do not know what's going to happen, you can't pause it. That's the same elements that live sporting events and things and true adventures have. Have you ever had anybody stop a roller coaster in mid flight and let you off?

Ben Owden

Nope.

Stacy Spikes

And when it's going up, up, up, and then it starts going down, you don't get to pause and go text, and. Right. And so that's what true adventure feels like. And so when people said, well, how or why is this different than Netflix? I said, adventure doesn't come with a pause button. It never does. True adventure. And so that's where cinema and sports and all these things have an alignment. So that line comes from explaining to people how we're different and why we're special in that, in cinema.

Ben Owden

So, yeah, and, you know, in our previous conversation, when you were talking about, you know, movie pass.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

I looked at it as a. As an entertainment company, in the same way that I would look at Netflix and say that. But you corrected me and you said, no, it's actually a fintech company. Why is it important for you, for, you know, people who work, you know, with MoviePass, for Moviepass to see themselves as a fintech organization rather than an entertainment company?

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. So there's kind of, what is your technology underneath the hood? It's a fintech play where it needs financial transactions to happen in a certain way to create that, going to the movies and make it seamless. But what we broker in is in excitement, in adventure, in time, in value exchange. These are the elements of. So when I'm having a technical conversation, I have to explain to the person, well, really, we're a fintech business underneath the hood, because we don't make movies, we don't run a theater that has them. We don't do any of those things. So that's what I mean by that. The thing that we're trading in is human attention and adventure. You have very little time, and so all apps, they help you save time or money or both. That's all they do. So how does it help you save time or money? So, in our world, I always say, who, what, when, where, how? Right. So who's your audience? What do you do for them? When do they use your app? Where do they go? Whether it's virtual reality or in the real world. And how do those transactions happen? And whenever you're doing an investor deck, you have to explain the, you know, who would, when, where, how. And so that is what we do. We ultimately are people don't, don't just use us to save money. They use us as a passport to a world of cinema, right? They get to, I'm going to go to the Dagobah system today. I'm going to go to Orion's belt tomorrow. I'm going to go back to 1930 Chicago. It's a time machine that they get to use, but we tell them where to find the portal to go to those worlds, and they get. They take their moviepass passport and say, take me back to, you know, 1932 mobster Chicago, right? And boom, they get to go back in time for 2 hours. So it. Storytelling and visual storytelling is the most powerful medium on the earth. And people go to the movies more, ten times more than all sporting events combined. So whether you're in China or Africa or Europe, it doesn't matter. We go to the movies.

Ben Owden

Wow. How much more time do you have, by the way?

Stacy Spikes

Whatever you need.

Ben Owden

Okay. Something else that you talk about as well, I think, especially in the early days of moviepass, which I loved this, because you speak about, you know, some of the early adopters that were in your life, right? People like Jack Foley, Travis Reed, people who believed immediately on, like, well, this is a great idea. This is going to work. But one significant supporter or encourager was Robert De Niro, which was, I loved this story because it started off with him and his wife being interested in investing in your business. And they invite you and your family to their, I think, home, and you travel there. You get there, and he invites you inside of, you have your own thoughts in terms of what. What is he trying to tell me or show me? And then you go in, and he's actually showing you the boxing ring from the movie raging bull, the classic movie raging bull. And you write, Bob told me how he saved up his money to buy it. I let my hand glide across the ropes and felt the smooth floor as we leaned against the ropes. Bob talked about fighting for your dreams, living in yourself, and how you must never give up. He reinforced the work ethic that I had heard from so many others. His words truly inspired me and have stayed with me to this day. And, of course, you go on to talk about the value of encouragement. So why is it important for you to continue taking the time to encourage other people who are on this journey. How do we build the kinds of relationships with people in our lives so that we do have a tribe of encouragers and supporters, especially when it matters most.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. That story always touches my heart. You know, the fact that this man is one of the most famous people on the planet and the, you know, for ages will be one of the most well known actors, that he took the time to spend with me, and it was more than money, it was more than gold. It was. There's those days that I was at my bottom after that, and I've had a lot of those that I was like, bob took the time to talk to me. He knew he was making an investment in me and putting something out in the future, and he wasn't doing it for the cameras. He wasn't, you know, I wasn't a kid in a sick ward that, you know, bring the cameras over here now. I'm gonna go give him some candy. And don't forget, get that shot. You know, it was nothing like that. This dude took his time and shared with me hope, and it was like he knew where I was on the ladder. He knew what I needed more than anything, and I've never forgotten that. And that's why I wrote it down, because you don't know. I try and remember that there's high school students or middle school students that look at me like that, and I try and always take the time with them because, I don't know. They will do great things in the future. And if I can pay forward what Oscar and what Travis and what Jack and what Bob de Niro and what those men and women did for me, that's my, that's what I'm supposed to do, is I'm supposed to give it back behind me. You can't keep it. And so your job is to, you know, help that person, and that's all there is. And so as long as you remember that you're a good person and you'll. You'll be a good person. Take that time when no one's looking. It's inconvenient. It's gonna eat up part of your weekend. You told them you were gonna go to some little high school bake off. Go do it. You know, you're gonna get more than you give, but the trick is they're gonna get a lot, too.

Ben Owden

Wow. Now, in this, you know, as you mentioned, that when you're trying to build something, especially something that has to be scalable, other people have to get behind it, right? It has to be something that functions without you. And in the journey of Moviepass, you know, a lot of people got involved. And at one point in the story, I think there was different leadership investors. And you talk about this particular point in the story where now it's clearly now the approach of saying you pay 995 and you can watch as many movies as you'd like. Certain types of individuals, the so called overeaters, emerged, and they were watching too many movies, right? Saying this like air quotes, like too many movies in a month. And there was an approach in terms of how do we curb the overeaters? How do we make sure that they don't do what they're currently doing, and how do we get rid of these people who watch too many movies in a month? But your response when this was being pushed was that these so called overreaders are actually our biggest advocates. These are our core believers. And of course, you are not ideal. You were not on board with this idea to a point where basically you were willing to resign, to walk away from a company you founded just because it was heading in this direction. Why is it important to stick to your values and what you believe to be true, even to a degree of saying, I'm jumping ship if this is heading in that direction? Because I don't believe this is where we should be heading.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah. I think it's just common sense that you can watch. If you see moneyball or the too big to fail or any of these movies, they'll talk about the housing crisis and other things that if the math doesn't make sense, there's, it's inevitable reality that it will fail. Right. And if you're, if you built the thing and you know that the pressure that the wings can handle is, you know, 25,000 pounds and someone wants to put 80,000 pounds on it, you know, the wings are going to crack and you people are going to lose a lot of money. And so it's just obvious. If you take, we knew we at this point had seven or eight years of data that we knew exactly where the vector point was for frequency of how often people were going. And so you either have to, you only have two levers. You either have to bring the cost up, which is going to create more churn, or you have to, what you charge per month per user, or you have to bring the cost of your goods down, you know, do deals and get that to come down. So it's not a lot of levers here. Right. But if you make it so cheap and you're telling them they can go 30 times in a month. But if they go once, you lose money, that's too cheap, right? And so you can't, you can't. Who are you helping if you build something that is not sustainable? So I said, guys, you have to raise the price or this thing isn't going to work. And they were like, we're growing really fast at $10 a month. And I said, make it dollar five a month, you'll grow even faster. Make it $1 a month. But the point is, it's not sustainable. And they, they fired me because I said it's not sustainable. There's no way this is going to work out. But you know the math. And you built the plane and you know what it can handle. And you've got millions of transactional data. You've got five years worth of, you know, being in a flight simulator and you understand it. So it was just like common sense. It's like, guys, this isn't going to work. So it's, and you're just calling it like it is. And then there's a certain point where if you don't get off the boat, you will be held liable when stuff goes wrong. So there's a, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to do the right thing so that they don't lose their money. And so if you're not doing that, you either need to get off that boat or join the program with what they're doing. And I was not convinced. And so I either had to resign or they had to fire me. And they fired me.

Ben Owden

Wow. You know, you go on to talk about the, some of the losses that were incurred, right, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And there is this one sort of passage, right, going from 3 million subscribers at the peak of MoviePass in the, known as the company that offered cardholders the chance to see one movie per day at a theater of their choice for just $9.95 a month. And then, like you said, common sense predictably crashed and burned when the deal proved too good to be true. Now, this is not your first failure, but I'm sure there was some significant, because it was probably your most public failure, so to speak.

Stacy Spikes

Definitely.

Ben Owden

How was this different from previous failures? And on top of that, in 2022, you relaunched MoviePass as well, after acquiring the assets. Again, why was it important to relaunch, especially knowing that now there's probably a lot of people watching to see what happens now.

Stacy Spikes

First part, yes. You know, what was different was I had failed in the past and kind of I don't even think there was any announcements that any of my past businesses went out of business. They just kind of. Right, they just kind of went away with the whimper, and people would go, how's such and such going? You know, yeah, we shifted and transitioned, but you could kind of dance around it. But with MoviePass, they ran a poll that more than 100 million moviegoers are familiar with MoviePass. Like, half of all the moviegoers and a larger percentage of the us population, like that, okay, you're a mainstream company at that point. We're worth half a billion dollars. And so this was a big Hindenburg crash. This was like, felt around the world, and there was nothing I could do. It was like, you did the best you could, you tried to tell the board, you tried to save it, and, you know, powers it be, that's how it went. But it was still a good idea. People still go to the movies, and people like saving money, and it still works. And the theaters still have a lot of upward capacity to sell only 30% of movie tickets. The actual seats go sold. So there's 70% growth opportunity there. So what we found was subscription helped alter people's behavior patterns, and it doubles their behavior. So that's where it's still a good idea. Even with competition in the marketplace, we're the only OTT player over the top that you can go wherever you want. Where if it's another theater service, you can only go to just their theaters. With ours, you can go wherever you want. So a lot of people were on TikTok and Instagram, kind of like, back in the day, it was, I want my MTV. People were like, I want my movie pass. I want it to come back. Everyone was locked up with COVID And so when we got a chance to buy it out of bankruptcy, I bought it for $140,000, and we relaunched it, and it's going pretty well. And Mark Wahlberg and HBO have a documentary coming that they're producing about the whole experience that's going to be on HBO. So there's a whole movie coming about it. It's crazy.

Ben Owden

Wow, what a story.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

Now there's the question, right? The one, one, one. Yeah. What is the one book that you read? This could be a book that came out this year.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

That you say, I wish I had access to this story, this material, you know, maybe 2030 years ago. What's the one habit that you developed over time that you wish you had started earlier as well? And what's the one personal value that you will fight to, you know, uphold.

Stacy Spikes

The. Okay, so the book, this is gonna sound weird, and I'm trying. I'm gonna try and preface it, but I learned to use it from a weird place. So let me give you the backstory. I am a person who, you know, go to church. I was raised Catholic and Baptist and Methodist and other things, and I dabbled in Buddhism and a lot of different things. And when our daughter was born, you know, you have a kid in the world, you want to give them some place, baptism. And so I started going back to church when our daughter was born. And I went episcopalian because I liked that anybody who wants to serve can serve. And the particular priest or reverend of our church was this woman. And she was a, she used to be a former McDonald's executive, and her job was she was in charge of flying all around the world and doing, setting up new franchises. And she and I got along because I could come to her as a priest, and I could always get spiritual guidance from her because she was a corporate executive. She understood corporate America, and our previous priests have retired. And so I was on the vestry of the church. And so she came in, and one day I asked if I could come and see her, and I wanted to talk to her about troubles I was having at work. And then she was like, you should read this story. I'm like, how's that going to help? And I would read it, and it would be about this person that fell down and lost everything and they needed to have faith. And then I bring her some other problem I was having. She goes, you should read this story. And finally it dawned on me. I was like, how are you connecting these things and work? And she goes, well, these are all of our problems, are all human problems, humans dealing with humans. And this book captured a lot of those original problems and how we had to deal with it and the conflict, and there's money and property and bills and can't pay and can pay, and how do you stay faithful and do the right thing? And I was like, wow, I never looked at it that way. And so she says to me, you've never read the Bible, have you? And I was like, I said, you know, I never have. Like, I never, someone would refer and I would read parts of it. This lady, she said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to start at the New Testament, and then I want to go, yes, I want you to start in the gospels, and then I want you to go back, and I want you to then read the Old Testament. So you can get where, where what that led into, right? And I started doing it, and every time I was on a plane and she said, have your book and your highlighter. And I was almost embarrassed. I'd be on a plane. I was in my hotel rooms, and the stories were crazy, and I couldn't wait to get back to them. And being in the movie industry, I could see these characters, right? And I finished it. It took me almost like a year, because when you get into deuteronomy and numbers, like, it's really taxing. And here's what happened. And if you read my book, you saw, there's several times I refer to different stories. Something would happen to me in my work life, and one of those stories would come alive, and I would think about what those characters did and how they dealt with adverse conditions. And when I got fired, the very first thing I did was I went home and I read the book of Job again. And I read how job lost everything. And I read how people walked up to him in the street and ripped the hair out of his beard and spit in his face. And, you know, there were people who were mad at me that felt like I could have prevented what happened to Moviepass. And. And there was shame around it and public humiliation. But that story kept me strong because even if these were make believe characters, even if this was Luke Skywalker, there was something in storytelling that helps you see. And Yuval Noah Harari has a great quote where he says that homo sapiens are animals that believe in storytelling, and they're storytelling animals, and that they believe the universe works like a story. And that's how we translate things. When you think of the Quran and Muhammad, it's like, you know, God had a prophet and he was Muhammad, and it's a story. That whole thing encases everything. And so if I had to say a book, I wish someone had given me that context earlier to say, don't think of it in this context. I want you to think of it like this roadmap of possibilities in your dealings with others and what you need inside of you to go through those moments. And I think it would have made me more powerful earlier if I had all of those stories inside of me. Like I had gotten after my life changed in my ability to go through adversity before reading before that and after that moment. So that would be my.

Ben Owden

That would be, oh, wow, that's a great response. And I like how you framed it because I think then it makes more sense. And I'm sure. There's somebody out there now looking for their lost Bible. Go back to the stories.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah, there's one. It's either Diana. Diana or the other one. Where there's. There's these two. And I'll give you this one quick story, and I'm sorry. It's either it's Diana or it's one of them. But anyway, there's these two warring groups.

Ben Owden

I think it's Deborah. I think she was a judge. Yeah.

Stacy Spikes

And they're going back and forth, and they are. The men are back in the camp saying, we just can't beat them. We just don't know how. And she walks over into the other camp, goes and gets the leader in the other camp drunk. He thinks he's gonna seduce her. She gets him drunk, kills him, cuts off his head, puts it in a basket, walks back over and puts the man's head on the table and go, that's how you get it done. And it was like. I was like, are you. I mean, I'm in my hotel room. I just. I was like, are you. Are you kidding me? This is in the Bible. I mean, the stories. And these are not the popular stories, right? They. But the conflict and the smarts and the audacity and the ruthlessness and the. Just the ways to move around. I was like, I got a whole different. I grew up kind of like. Like, you know, this is being forced on me. But when this executive, who. I already respected her, when she gave me this context and said, there's so much here you don't see, I was like, and seriously, those stories will come to life in ways when. When I talk about this, when they took over the first attempt, and I remember them saying, you have to sign over your company today. And I said, tell them to come and get it from me. Tell them to come. They'll have to take it from my cold, dead hands. I had remembered when Moses says to God, pharaoh's behind me and the sea is in front of me, what do you want me to do? And God says, why are you complaining to me? I gave you the power to do whatever you want. Part the sea. And it's funny. God's saying, I gave you everything you needed. What are you crying about? And he goes up to the water, and when we think of the way that it's told in the ten commandments with Charleston Heston, you don't see the doubt in that part of the conversation. And then he strikes the water, and it parts. But what I heard in that story was, I already gave you everything you need. Go get it done. You are the one who's doubting. You are the one who's believing. You can't. And what happened? I stopped doubting, and I raised the money, and I saved the company. And that story came to life at that very moment when they were saying, you need to turn over the company. And so I never thought to look at it as a, who cares if it's real or not real or happened? You weren't there when it happened, so what difference does that make? But someone chose to write these stories down for a reason, use them as lessons of how to navigate through the world. And that's when it everything changed.

Ben Owden

Oh, wow.

Stacy Spikes

Yeah.

Ben Owden

Thank you. Thank you for sharing. That was beautiful. And what's the one habit?

Stacy Spikes

The habit, I do it now. So I run every day, and for nine and a half years, I have not missed a single day. And I run outdoors, and so no matter what the weather is, and I wish I had that habit earlier, because it teaches me a discipline that nothing will prevent me from running at least a mile every day. So whether you're sick, whether you are broke, whether you just got rich, whether you have a broken heart, whether the dog just died, you're gonna go do it. And that. That rowing of the boat, that continuity is, you don't know that you can do that until you start to have a habit that you do. And so in the last nine and a half, almost ten years, I run at least a mile a day, every day.

Ben Owden

Wow. But I hope to get there because at the moment, at most, four times a week. But, yeah, I'll try, maybe challenge myself for a month and see what happens and what's the way.

Stacy Spikes

Daily is easier once you mentally set it up that I need to run ten minutes a day, it's easier to do it no matter what. And you got to figure out your clothes. So, like, I have a pair of running shoes if it's raining, that I'll run, that are water design if it's too cold and snowy, I got snow boots that have these ice cleats on the bottom. So other than wardrobe, I like because.

Ben Owden

It'S make it as easy as possible and do it consistently. And what's the one personal value?

Stacy Spikes

Give back. I would say it's give back, but I want to put that in a context. Serve something. Serve something. Be of service to some trade or craft or calling. I believe my whole calling in life is to shorten the distance between storytellers and their audience so that they can find each other. I help people go through tough times because I helped them get to movies and through that storytelling more than just what they saw while they were vacuuming the house, that they truly got to experience that those stories helped them go through tough times. And that's what I believe my role in the world is. I don't create content. I'm not a director. I'm not an actor. I don't run a movie theater, but I'm that thing in between that helps you get there, that you go, wow, I'm so glad I saw that. And someone, a whole team full of people and investors and worked really hard for you to see it. I think every movie should be seen now. Everyone's not going to be famous or popular or successful, but everyone should be seen. And that's my role in the world, and that's what my calling is. And when you know that calling serve that calling and you no longer work, you then go to a life of service and your life becomes really simple and beautiful because it's not work anymore. It's, you know, you are serving a higher calling than yourself.

Ben Owden

Wow, I love that. Now, as we're drawing to the end of our conversation, what advice would you have for so, right now, when you talk about innovation globally, the reference is always Silicon Valley and what's happening there and what's happening. But there are so many other markets all over the world, right? Whether in Latin America, in Tanzania, in Africa, as a continent, in other parts of Asia, where people, when they talk about entrepreneurship, when they talk about innovation, it's always juxtaposed next to Silicon Valley and what happens by that particular approach. Almost every other market outside of Silicon Valley, outside of the US are outsiders, so to speak. What sort of advice would you have to people who are founding businesses in different parts of the world where maybe they feel like their infrastructure is not as fully developed and built the way that it is in the US, for example, where people aren't as open to that kind of a life, sometimes people are going against family values and what the parents want and what society thinks is their I right approach. It's much more acceptable. For example, failure is romanticized in America. You know, it's a badge of honor that I've started this and I've failed. In other parts of the world, failure is the end of you. It's shame, it's ridicule. It's all of that stuff, right? So what sort of advice would you.

Stacy Spikes

Have for I think in America, America is an idea, right? And it is an idea that is, it spawns risk and reward and opportunity and its exploration. And I think, given that, I have a kinship, what excites me over the next, say, hundred to 200 years is in 2050, 25% of the people on the planet will be african, and it has the youngest population. And what I'm excited about is these technologies have leapfrog capabilities. So when you think of solar, when you think of all the natural resources, I hope to see Africa as a continent, see itself as this rising giant that it's going to become, and that it's able to harness that power and learn and start really creating engineers. And we joke about it. You read the book, there's a chapter called Wakanda in the book. And those of us who are here in the US see that as a hope for a homeland that's in our blood and in our DNA, that has been the dog forever that people have been. You know, that there's a rising of that that shows we are smart, we are intelligent, we can create technology, we can build things, and all that is this time and energy. Back to your earlier question, would you have time or money? It has the time and the patience and young people to build it into anything. And if people can come to America and it didn't have anything as far as future technologies, I think Africa has a future that can do that. And so that's the outsider advantage. Not everybody's checking for you. Not everybody's paying attention to what you're doing. That's what makes you the sleeper hit. They're not, they're not. There's not that pressure on you right now. And you can build up, send your, send kids over here, send them to Silicon Valley, let them learn how to code. And then, like you, all of that knowledge is sitting online now. So downloading that knowledge is cheap today. And then build, build, build, build, and then you're going to see a miraculous revolution happen. And I think Africa is on its way there. You know, that's, that excites me. And if I can come over and I can give and I can help and I can bring that with me and I can showcase and I can say, let me show you how to do this. And if I can be part of that solution to give back, isn't that a beautiful thing? It is, you know, and that's what I would love to be able to do, is be able to say, let me give back. You know, who knew that people were being put on boats to go get new technologies to, 200 years later, come back and help you know?

Ben Owden

Wow. Beautiful.

Stacy Spikes

It's a different way of looking at the story. You know, it's, it's a. I heard someone say, it's not what happened to you, it's your interpretation about how you want to use it.

Ben Owden

Wow, that was a beautiful way to end the conversation. Thank you so much, Stacey, for making the time to do this. This was definitely a valuable conversation, and I'm sure our listeners have found great value by the time they listen to this conversation. So I appreciate and honor your decision to agree to be a part of.