Who Is Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn Founder)?

Show Notes

If you are looking to get a product or service to market then you have to listen in to this podcast version of the Thrivetime Show as Clay Clark and Dr Z break down some Notable Quotables from the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman.

Question from a Thriver?

“Would you be interested in doing single day coaching. For example. Someone who is starting a new business can’t afford a whole month of coaching. Why not do single day coaching based on what someone like me can afford at the moment?” –  Zach S.

MENTORSHIP DEFINITION – A trusted counselor or guide. a mentor who, because he is detached and disinterested, can hold up a mirror to us.

Mentorship Equals:

  1. Teaching best-practice systems and paths
  2. Accountability
  3. Providing access to a team of skilled people to help you execute the proven path

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Now more than three hundred employees later I have built a flying machine that serves both my ministry and my entrepreneurial endeavors. The employees skills include graphic design, shipping and receiving, catering, music and film production and a variety of other areas I never imagined needing to support my work.” – TD Jakes (Televangelist, New York Times best-selling author, etc.)

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and to help them navigate a course to their destination.” — John C. Maxwell (New York Time best-selling author and renowned leadership expert)

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living—if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor.” — Denzel Washington (Award-winning actor of three Golden Globe Awards, a Tony Award and two Academy Awards)

The Reid Hoffman Timeline:

1967 – He was born on August 5th, 1967.

1979 – At age 12 he took his first paid job working as an editor at the game company called, Chaosium, which was based in Oakland and very near to his family’s home.

1981 – He attended The Putney School during high school where he was exposed to farming maple syrup, driving oxen and epistemology (PRONOUNCED – EH-PISSED-EM-OLOGY), which is the study of logic, justification and the rationale thinking.

FACT – The Putney School enrolls  approximately 225 students per year on its 500 acre hilltop campus which is filled with dormitories, classrooms and a farm on which all of the students have to actually work before graduating.

Link to Campus Tour – https://www.putneyschool.org/content/campus-map

1986 – He enrolled in Stanford University, where he graduated from in 1990. During this time at Stanford he won academic awards and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems and Cognitive Science. He went on to earn a degree in philosophy from Wolfson College.

He first wanted to be a career student and professor on college campuses before deciding that his desire to make a large impact on the world would not happen as an academic so he decided to become an entrepreneur instead.

1994 – At the age of 27, he went to work for Apple, where they assigned him to work on the eWorld project, an early Apple attempt at creating a social media network. eWorld was acquired by America Online in 1996.

1996 – He then went to work for Fujitsu, before co-founding his own business called SocialNet.com.

1997 – At the age of 28 he pours everything into building SocialNet.com, which was a website designed to be an online dating website that matched up people with similar interests who lived near each other. The famous venture capitalist has described SocialNet.com as “literally an idea before its time. It was a social network 7 or 8 years before that became a trend.”

While working on SocialNet, Hoffman was also serving as a member of the board of directors for PayPal, an electronic money transmission service. It was Hoffman’s job to keep everybody on track and to hammer out agreements with eBay, Mastercard, Wells Fargo, Visa, etc.

2000 – After having spend 4 working on SocialNet, he designed to leave the venture and the join PayPal full-time to serve as the company’s Chief Operating Officer.

2002 – At the age of 33, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. At that time, Reid Hoffman was the serving as PayPal’s Executive Vice President.

2002 – At the age of 33, Reid started LinkedIn with his friend and colleague from SocialNet (Allen Blue). Peter Thiel and other people who worked with Reid at PayPal during his tenure invested in LinkedIn. In November of 204, the company had 332 million members on the website in over 200 countries.

2011 – Reid took the company public in 2011.

2016 – Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for $26 billion in cash and joined Microsoft’s board.

2017 – And beyond, he is currently a partner with Greylock Partners, the venture capital that has invested in companies such as: AirBNB, GoFundMe, Instagram, Facebook, Pandora, etc. He also sits on the boards of several nonprofits, including Kiva, which seeks to combat poverty through microfinance.

Test Your Ideas by Actually Marketing Them

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Most people are wrong about what’s going to be great; that’s why you have to have a hypothesis, and you have to get it to the market and test it as soon as possible.” – Reid Hoffman (founder of Linkedin, which by 2011, had more than 120 million registered users)

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” – Henry Ford (The founder of Ford Automotive)

Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

The thrive time show on your business coach radio and we have dr. Z. We have a fantastic show in store. Today. We’ve got paul hood tulsa’s number one cpa in every way, joining us on the next segment. We’ve got charles colaw special guest here with cola fitness. In your back, my friend, your back you’re cute I have to tell you Something:i’ve been traveling a far and I really missed you guys. Did you go to coweta? Did you go to bartlesville? Did you go to bristol? She left, but I know it’s crazy. I wouldn’t call it cuz. Mine is blue and I went to the airport where they have airplanes play crying right now he’s so it’s and I flew somewhere and had a fabulous time, and you don’t pick up some little nugget so that I can share them on today show I’ll leave them in you know you always research and I’ll be back in 5 minutes and I waited there for a week and a half I know. I was lonely. Now discover that you left this I did leave the bathroom at unisex money. You had an accident I waited I was hiding the produce section for a while, okay and and I don’t think it was incorrect about that statement. It was longer than 5 minutes and I was told me the week and a half. That’s okay, some a few minutes off, and you can you going to be mad at me about that? We made some extra decoration. Now we added a few more z’s. We add animal chuck norris sign up there. A lot of things have changed but see one, thing remains the same. As we’re going to answer the business coach questions at the thrivers. Ask us, as soon as they come into our inbox at info at thrive time, show.Com, the name of zac who emailed us-and he says this questionnaire, he says, would you be interested in doing single day coaching, for example, someone who is starting a new business can’t afford a whole month of coaching. Why not do single day, coaching based on what someone like me can afford at the moment, so I can i, can I start with first absolutely been working on this for 3 4 years and what we’ve discovered is it the world is in need of mentorship and mentorship is really not a one-time event. Mr. Zack, it’s not I hate. Go to. This will never see again. Mentorship involves accountability, teaching you the best practice systems and see you really need a team of people to eat to help you execute these things, and so we do have our our in-person to day workshops.

But could you go to explain from your perspective why business coach mentorship is not like a let’s meet for lunch? One time and I don’t see you again why it’s more of like an ongoing process but you’re really getting I want to throat punch you right here and I’m, just going to I’m going to say what you, what you just said is not is not true. Well whoa, wow, wow fact that I have spent a few hours with the right guy been life-changing. Okay, so I guess you had the team executed. What I’m saying this is one day one day is better than 0 days is one day. Optimum know you know, in other words to to it, takes a whole village to raise. You know a new business and-and we had what we think is a perfect village to do that are in our thrive of arthritis that we have. But the answers that question on specifics on that I mean we do the 2-day workshop i, think people come down and get like their life changed on that and I would just say this when you attend our in-person workshop you’re, going to have a massive list of things to do, and charles cole all you’ve been to one of our in-person workshops. You been to multiple wrong person. Workshops. Can you explain the firehose of knowledge that zack or people like zack my experience when they attend an in-person, workshop? Well, first off for me, I’ve done I think 3 times and it’s been awesome every single time. There’s new business coach nuggets that I get in and I can say hell. Yeah I like when I read the bible I read some stuff, i, don’t get it and then all the sudden, this, like the 3rd time, I read him like yes, I’m, a knucklehead I need to do that. Hiring google, stuff reviews, search engine, optimization things that I was not at taking the full advantage of. Even though I was running a successful business. There was a whole lot of things. I still had holes and clay in the team answered a lot of awesome questions. It was great. He was funny, is a wonderful conference and by the time you’re at the end, you’re wanting more money to learn more and so I mean it’s huge and you just can’t get a whole lot. If you just want to get everything in one day. This is it’s ridiculous to implement. It is impossible, but there’s a lot of good value you can get and what you can expect. One thing it was good if you did say two Things:i’m watching you guys do at colaw. Fitness. Didn’t you tell me if you think I’m over inflating the results are getting on this bench:press and curls yeah. Obviously we talked for 265 65, 6642 60th, street yeah. That was supposed to go, see any online reputation management. Do you know making sure them people google search? Do they find real results from real making sure that were very visible there, and did you have a line of people signing up your fitness centers all the time now but yeah? We are.

We just opened in topeka kansas and for about the last month we’ve had four people at the front desk signing people up, so thousands and thousands of members in the first you sign up thousands and thousands of members to your gym in the first month. Yes, that’s incredible, and those are the kind of stories we hear all the time. People are attending the workshop so exact to wrap up your answer. Give it 2 days at least give it 2 days, come to the next in-person workshop is going to be in april, 13th and 14 to 15 hours to day workshop, and it’s really need is a dd. Workshop is being sponsored by a hood cpas right now, which means that if you want to buy your ticket, you can get those tickets right now at thrive time show.Com. If you could have a conference, but you can buy those tickets or hood cpas made it available. If you will just subscribe, the thrive time show podcast and leave us an objective business coach review. Hood cpas is picking up the tab for the ticket will take me to subscribe and we will see what that means. I got a google search. I going to itunes I’ve got a subscriber to push the stick ride, but 52nd and spring you find it. You couldn’t subscribe. Button deleted, objective review, 50 seconds are getting $500 of value, plus two copies of the boom book. Put cpas and incredible. Sponsor awesome. You guys need to do I promise, you it’s well worth it yeah. It is people say that all the time and why do I know that because we video tape them and put them on the reviews, how many 600 video reviews for itunes, google and youtube 1400 reviews from people that have attended the workshop? It’s kind of hard to fake a youtube review by the way to see the hologram technology is pretty good, but it’s harder to fake, and then you would think a video testimony green is our neighbor has been the running of that she earns. Did the little coupon for come artist farthest. Yes, we love guam. Now here is I were talking about today.

We’re talking about what, if reid hoffman the founder of linkedin, could give you some advice, the founder of linkedin, what if he were here today to give you advice? What does this 3 hoffman snapshot was born in 1967? What year were you born? 64, okay, so till he’s old he’s a gun of young, buck yeah he’s just a kid to kid. At the age of 12, he took his first paid job working as an editor at the business coach game. Company called chaosium, which is based in oakland, and we would he went to school. He went to a school called the putney school during high school and at the school it’s kind of an interesting school, or do you actually have so there’s actually a wife full functioning farm on the school’s campus at school, and so they teach you to school, focuses on teaching you logic communication:how to make practical application, how to be a productive human, it’s more of a theoretical and more about this is how life really works in one of the things they do is actually have a live farm at the putney. School is broccoli to turn 25 students that go there and it’s on a 500-acre hilltop campus that has dormitories in classrooms. Like i, said the fully functional farm sweet rolls to stanford university in 1960 or 1986 to 1986 in rolls and stanford he graduates in 1997, smart guy, and so he decides to go ahead and earn a degree in philosophy from the wolfson college and he later went on to bay cities. For the last time it’s cool, seeing you say you thought I want to become an academic, but he realized that being an academic.

You can only make so much of a mark on the planet to decide. You know what I love, studying:i, love, education, i, love learning, but I’m going to go ahead. Z I’m going to sell it I’m going to get a job at apple project to create one of the first social media networks not eat world was acquired by america online in 1996, and so we went to work at fujitsu and they decided to leave the company in startup company called social net.Com, which many people did. The believed to be. The first social media website is, it was 7 or 8 years before there was a trend of social media, and so nobody really liked it. It’s. After about four years he decided to bail out of social net. He went on to join, he wanted to join dd paypal team and at paypal he worked on the board and he helped the girl that company to make it very, very successful and when paypal was purchased, basically it with the company sold out. He decide. You don’t want me to do after taking I’m going to start my own thing. So it starts linkedin and z. He grew linkedin to the point where lincoln was sold for 26 billion dollars of cash to microsoft and now he’s on he’s a business coach partner with greylock partners, the, venture capital fund, that’s a funded airbnb in gofundme in instagram and facebook and pandora he’s doing well and z. He has these kind of a notable quotables that he he sees, legendary for giving entrepreneur advice, that’s sort of counterintuitive, so I’m going to read the first one I’d like to get your take on his notable quotable from reid hoffman, the founder of linkedin and one of the early partners and founders of paypal. He says most people are wrong about. What’s going to be great and that’s why you have to have a hypothesis and you have to get it to market and test it as soon as possible.

Lot of people don’t want to market something until to perfect, but read is saying no:no, no! No! No you’re! Probably wrong. You should start marketing it as soon as possible. Why is that for the entrepreneurial mantra to market before it’s perfect and you got to fake it before you make it to know you got up, you got to get that thing out there to prove you’re absent a hypothesis. Is you know what I think this dog will hunt I think the product will be wanted, I think the service will be accepted. I think people actually pay me money for this widget. Whenever it is right and and the quicker you find whether they want it or not, then you can help wasting time. You ain’t know the first and it’s bull in tulsa to introduce lasik surgery, I believe back in the day, my correct on the first to do it, but the doctors are. The best was a fairly early adopted to it. You what your take on this, because if you still do lasik there, the doctors I know we don’t we don’t even longer, but you guys he gave her well yeah yeah. We did it up until the kind of crash and then no one was really good elective surgery. So now you know my surgery went on to another. Another area that are state get your take on this because you ran very, very aggressive ads for lasik surgery if I remember right and everybody else, but you used to had the idea you’re going to hang around for lasik surgery, but you use sort of really were aggressive with that marketing early on today, show, who’s being kind of passive with that market. I want to get into why it’s so important. To put a bias on sales and marketing to grow a coven attend the world’s best business workshop, led by america’s number one business coats for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review.

Claim your tickets by emailing us group that you did it and your contact information to an voi, thrivetime show.Com. Welcome back to the conversation today with mr. Reid hoffman who’s reid hoffman he’s the guy who helped initial founders of paypal. You probably heard of elon musk, the guy behind spacex, the guy behind tesla. You probably heard of peter till he’s. The guy who helped launch were the first investors in to facebook will be is guy is peter teal, elon, musk and reid hoffman see they’re all part of like a dream team in silicon valley launch paypal after paypal was sold. They ended up I’ll, be known as the paypal mafia, because it all went on to have a major major level of success, all of which are billionaires. Today, I’ll read hoffman in 2016 sold linkedin for 26 billion dollars. I mean I would like that in quarters quarters +, 20, dimes equals and I want to keep large amounts of cash. I would love to get to lares. He decided he had some goal in his life to have a certain amount of cash on hand like actual cash, so I guess he would just keep putting it into like. This is the safety security of the baby safety box, the security box security box just kept putting it in there and then he had a pretty large, so I realized I can business coach live. My dream go to the place. The bank I can get out of my security box, so he goes out of there. Any pulls it out, and it’s all like with rubber bands on it needs like I started to feel like I was part of like heist I lost this duffle bag of money. It wouldn’t be worth the trade-off of how I feel how cool I feel I feel like this much gas. How much was it i? Don’t have to ask him that I don’t get it wrong? I think it was $100,000, but he had it like him cash and he just said I never had that much cash. You got to be so cool to have it in cash, but do what you had to be anxiety of having that much money in cash? That’s not what it turned out to be pretty soon so I can bust where reid hoffman. He gives us a lot of advice and I want to grab dr. Z and then paul hood and eric jump break it down.

So he says again:this is this big. He says most people are wrong. It’s going to be great, that’s why you have to have a hypothesis and you have to get it to market and test it as soon as possible, so I think back to when you were introducing tulsa to your lasik eye surgery on that you offered years ago and end in you mean you marketed that thing. Baby I mean you, you thought it was a good, but you went all in with that marketing. Can you talk to me about what it means to be all out and business coach marketing, maybe sometimes in your career, where you really gone out there with that marketing, as I’ve said before on other podcasts on the radio shows that we do know, timmy marketing is a gas pedal for your business and if your, if your car is just sitting there going nowhere you it helps it going to press on the gas pedal just a little bit. You know I mean it’s not real. Fancy car like paul, does you and let you know I’m going later on or something and it probably so technology it does. He think it go fast, but you have to have to be able to have to go to press on that gas I eat market and it breaks my heart when people like I talked to them and they started a business and say what how much do marketing like I can’t afford to do that right now and I can’t afford it.

I can’t afford to do that. And yes, you know what having having reviews and having people go out there and word-of-mouth is a very strong way to do it. A lot of people think that’s how they go build their business, but if you don’t have anybody out there with that, hasn’t been into your place, yet you don’t have any of that going on. So you have to start with marketing and buy. It was very aggressive with my lights at a billboard, I still have a load copy of it had a billboard, and this really made my competition irate and it said lasik $1 and it was a no-brainer people just couldn’t stand it I had to know what was the deal was a catch. What was going on is this for real, just a misprint that they put up the wrong business coach billboard. They leave some numbers off of it. I mean it was really really fine. I mean we almost had to be at think. We burned phone lines, I mean well henry ford. If you were here to pile on, he would say a man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time. Just think about this real, quick, paul hood with hood cpas. You are an accountant, yes, but you’re. Also, you have to be a marketer or you’re going to be unemployed. That’s who we don’t have our clients educated, who are not good at marketing about the balance of marketing, hood, cpas and then also being an accountant. You know, i, don’t know if you thought about this or not, but none of us have an expiration date, we’re all going to expire and so yeah it’s so when you have a you’re going to live forever. Well, I might, but since we lose clients and things where they move off, and so you have to continually do that and dr. Z, you know you know you guys talk about marketing in and trying to come up with new line.

You know a product review test. Your product I think that there’s no such thing as bad marketing, even if it’s a product, doesn’t work you’re still getting your name out. There’s top of mine and I was telling you play earlier today that that you had you’ve convinced me, you know we got a contact off our website from somebody in florida that wants us to do their work. I, don’t I will say this, because this is something i. Don’t i, don’t think people grass, but this I’m, going to pull it up right now. So you is a listener, can see this I want i. Want you to listen to google search this with me. Please please, google search the phrase carpet. Cleaning quotes just just go ahead and google that phrase and when you find that oxyfresh has a hundred and twenty-seven thousand reviews, the one I want you to do is i. Want you to copy that web address and go to spy foo.Com. How do you spell s p, y by dirty boyz.Com? When you go there, you can just cover. Oxyfresh has 203,000 original visitors to website every month as a result of having and I will make sure to get this. If you’re listening today and you get your business to a thousand reviews, you will get what’s called the authority link, which means that google will make you top and almost every search within your 90 mile radius at work with dr. Edwards. He is a functional medicine doctor. He is a business coach company, revolution health and I am not exaggerating. He has men and women that will travel from a 4 to 5 state area to see him because they are convinced that he has the best, because they read real reviews from his real clients and I’m telling you back in the day. Word of mouth was the biggest driver of growth. Now it’s word of review right in trouble. You see it with your clients, all the time, all of them from mechanics to chiropractors, to just any trade that you have. If you deal with strictly professionals, your attorney he’s a client of ours right, west, carter thinking that he got some start-up guys were sitting in front of me. How did you hear about his decade of experience 60 years total I hope you guys had a good google reviews he’s like I’m back from the break. Reid hoffman is really passionate about everybody surrounding them self, with smart people who believe that you will become wiser if you surround yourself with smart people, do you kind of agree with this idea? Are you going on the fence here? I will let you know after the break, I’ve got a5 very passionate about my answer, but I’m not going to get I’m going to come back

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