45: Mark Achler
Source: Poets & Quants
“They give him a standing ovation; it was a wonderful, wonderful talk. And then a couple weeks go by and all of a sudden the news erupts… the publishing company is bankrupt.”
About Mark
Mark Achler is a startup junkie, venture capitalist, professor, mentor, speaker, author and ardent champion for the entrepreneurial community.
Born to a librarian mother and an engineer father, Mark has always shown the kind of patience, curiosity,and a knack for problem-solving that you would expect from someone with such an inquisitive bloodline... and this curiosity – and flexibility – would serve him well in a career that has spanned industries and involved a near-fearless willingness to reinvent himself time and again.
Chronically unpretentious, Mark would likely attribute his tenacity to his father or his grandfather, Israel Achler, who took on the first name of his brother Morris, after Morris was killed fighting for the Russians in WWI, because the real Morris Achler had immigration papers and Israel had to get to America to start a new life.
Mark was not – in his own words – academically inclined. It just wasn’t his jam (again - his words). But, motivated by his hardworking father, who was the first person in his family to go to college, Mark stayed with it and earned a place at Purdue University.
At Purdue, Mark – a history buff who loved working with kids – pursued social studies education. The game plan was law school. However, in the first of the many twists of his life, Mark’s father, an early adopter of OG programming language Fortran, suggested they open a computer retail store. So, Mark pivoted. As the store grew, he became friends with the reps. And one day, one of these reps suggested that Mark apply for a job at Apple, which he did, becoming employee #600 in 1982.
Of his many adventures at Apple, a notable one was his attempt to book Michael Jackson for a 1983 promotional event. After scoffing at the King of Pop’s $5 million price tag, the Apple board went with Herbie Hancock – a decidedly different vibe – but the show was a success and Herbie allegedly still has his Apple II Plus to this day.
After leaving Apple, Mark would go on to found and run many organizations, among them Kinesoft, which developed the technology that allowed Sega and Nintendo games to work on Windows 95, and where, among many brilliant moves, his team sent wedding invitations to CEOs to get them to attend the E3 games conference, garnering an 88% success rate.
With too many other escapades and awards to list here, it’s worth noting that Mark loves to pass on his wisdom, teaching at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Business, mentoring at Techstars and other organizations, and publishing a book called Exit Right, which teaches founders how to sell their startups in a way that maximizes their returns and builds their legacy.
And speaking of legacy, Mark and wife Marcie continue to give back to various organizations and have instilled a sense of purpose and giving in their three girls, Emily, Sarah, and Haley, who, although now out of the house, are making their own waves in the world, with two of the three running their own companies and all of them focused on living a meaningful life.
Books
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Max Chopovsky: 0:02
This is Moral of the Story interesting people telling their favorite short stories and then breaking them down to understand what makes them so good. I'm your host, max Chepofsky. Today's guest is Mark Ackler, startup junkie, venture capitalist, professor, mentor, speaker, author, ardent champion for the entrepreneurial community. And I should also add that, in a world of sharks, mark is one of the kindest and most humble people that I've ever met. He will and does stand up for what he believes in, but the man is a living embodiment of the possible duality of ambition and kindness. Born to a librarian mother and an engineer father, mark has always shown the kind of patience, curiosity and a knack for problem solving that you would expect from someone with such an inquisitive bloodline, and this curiosity and flexibility would serve him well in a career that has spanned industries and involved a near fearless willingness to reinvent himself time and again. Chronically unpretentious, Mark would likely attribute his tenacity to his father or his grandfather, israel Ackler, who took on the first name of his brother, morris, after Morris was killed fighting for the Russians in World War One because the real Morris Ackler had immigration papers and Israel had to get to America to start a new life. Mark was not, in his own words, academically inclined. It just wasn't his jam again, his words. But motivated by his hardworking father who was the first person in his family to go to college, mark stayed with it and earned a place at Purdue University. At Purdue, mark, a history buff who loved working with kids, pursued social studies education. The game plan was law school. However, in the first of the many twists of his life, mark's father, an early adopter of OG programming language, fortran, suggested they open a computer retail store. So Mark pivoted. As the store grew he became friends with the reps. One day one of these reps suggested that Mark applied for a job at Apple, which he did, becoming employee number 600 in 1982. Of his many adventures at Apple, a notable one was his attempt to book Michael Jackson for a 1983 promotional event. After scoffing at the King of Pops $5 million price tag, the Apple board went with Herbie Hancock, a decidedly different vibe. But the show was a success and Herbie allegedly still has his Apple 2 Plus to this day. After leaving Apple, mark would go on to found and run many organizations, among them Kinesoft, which developed a technology that allowed Sega and Nintendo games to work on Windows 95 and where, among many brilliant moves. His team sent wedding invitations to CEOs to get them to attend the E3 games conference, garnering an 88% success rate. With too many other escapades and awards to list here, it's worth noting that Mark loves to pass on his wisdom, teaching at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business, mentoring at tech stars and other organizations, and publishing a book called Exit Right, which teaches founders how to sell their startups in a way that maximizes their returns and builds their legacy. And speaking of legacy, mark and wife Marcy continued to give back to various organizations and have instilled a sense of purpose and giving in their three girls, emily, sarah and Haley, who, although now out of the house, are making their own waves in the world, with two of the three running their own companies, and all of them focused on living a meaningful life. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Achler: 3:20
Wow, max. Of all the introductions, that was the nicest introduction. That almost brought a tear to my eye. Thank, you.
Max Chopovsky: 3:29
I appreciate it. You deserved it. You've done a lot in your life, so you are here to tell us a story. Is there anything we should know before we get into it?
Mark Achler: 3:40
No, just listen with an open mind and an open heart.
Max Chopovsky: 3:44
I love. It All right, let's get into it. Tell me a story, all right.
Mark Achler: 3:48
So, as you mentioned, I recently co-authored a book called Exit Right with my co-author, mayor Tashari, and my editor. And my editor turned out to be my daughter, emily, who is an incredibly fabulous writer. And so doing a book I'd never written a book before. It's a journey, yeah, and it took two years from start to finish, and we did a deep dive on this topic and, once again, with humility. You know, I thought I knew a fair amount about M&A and exits, but whoa, you know, if you spend two years of your life dedicated to a topic, you're gonna learn. I learned so much and it was a wonderful, wonderful journey. As part of that journey, I loved the relationships that came out of it. So, you know, mert and I have been friends for a long time. It was wonderful spending that time with him. I hadn't really spent time professionally with my older daughter, emily, and so, as a father, it was a joy to actually do something creative. You know, I'd write some gobbledygook, barely semi-coherent, and give it to Emily and out would come back this beautiful prose and I'd like whoa did I say that that was amazing. So as part of this experience, we got a publisher and the publisher I became friends with the CEO of the publisher and he had this idea. The idea was that books should get sponsored, just like music or sports or other forms of entertainment have sponsors that a brand would really appreciate having their name affiliated. That's a really interesting idea. You know, that's true. Books don't have sponsors. And so he said to me look, here's the deal. Why don't we try? I've got lots of contacts and relationships and whoever brings it in like if you will split at 6040, like whoever gets brings in the account, they get 60% of whatever we end up charging. I said to him you know, look, we're partners and I'd rather do this 5050. Like, I don't care if you bring the person in or if I bring the person in, we're partners, let's be partners, and that way it's really simple. So we shook hands and we papered a 5050 deal. Turns out I got an introduction to the vice chairman of UBS, who is the world's largest wealth manager and a fabulous company, and I said to them look, I just wrote a book. We were just in final drafts, we're in final galleys. We just wrote a book targeted to entrepreneurs right before they're about to have a life altering exit. Would you like to sponsor this and get your name in front of those entrepreneurs before they have an exit. I had a great visionary partner there at UBS and they said yes. So I went back to the publisher and I said to the publisher hey, guess what? We got UBS. They said they're going to do the deal and it was a six figure deal. And the publisher said great, I'm going to give you 60%. And I went no, no, no, no, no, our deal is 5050. He goes look, I know we said 5050. But you brought him in, you did all the work, I didn't do anything. I'm going to give you 60% of this deal, even though it's in writing, and I shook your hand and he didn't have to do that. What a standup guy. And that actually, you know that ended up being about $15,000 to us, which is not changing the world. But it was like a standup thing to do and over the course of time I became close with the CEO of the publisher and one day, a year goes by, the book is published, year goes by and I'm talking to him and he says you know, I just got back from Stanford, I just gave a talk and he's an inspirational, motivational speaker. And he just gave a talk and he was at MIT a few weeks before that. And I go oh really, what did you talk about? He goes Well, you know, I talk about my life story and I talk about the business I've built, this publisher, we just got this wonderful award for being one of the best places to work in America and I'm really focused on culture. And I said, huh, guess what? I'm an adjunct professor at Northwestern. At Kellogg, I teach a class called Building Innovation, teams and Culture. I'd love for you to be come in and be a guest speaker. Will you do it? Because, absolutely so. We schedule time from the common and present to my class and right before he comes to my class I notice that they're late with their royalty check. I don't say anything because, like he's a great guy, the company's successful, they're good for it, like, okay, so he comes in and he speaks to my class and he tells his life story and I'm blown away. So he tells the story. He's an African-American guy in his late 40s. His father was a pimp, oh my. God, his mother was a prostitute. His dad used to take him in the car on the rounds collecting money. The students have never heard anything like this. He tells the story when he was 12, his mom went out for a pack of cigarettes and it was him and he had three step siblings. One was six, four and two, and the mom never came back and for a month he was taken care of the six year old, four year old, two year old, and he didn't have any money, so he was stealing food from grocery stores. So you're looking at me with your mouth open right now. It was just how the students, right, the students. And then he talks about going to Juvie and he goes look, juvie, don't let anybody fool you, that's jail. He goes. I was in and out of jail three times. Finally he turns 21. He got really fortunate. He was assertive. He ended up getting a job as a salesperson and he said he goes. Look, I was incredibly motivated and I didn't care if somebody said no, because what's like I don't care if I got a thousand no's. No is nothing to me ever having lived my life. Yeah, like I could deal with a no. Yeah, like I'm just gonna keep going until I get a yes and he gets a job. He works his way. Within the first year he's the top salesperson in the company. Within five years he's the CEO of that company. He writes a book and in the publisher he comes. Buddies with the publisher, they ask him to become CEO and now he's CEO of this publishing company. Great guy, the students are on the edge of their seats. When he was done, they gave him a standing ovation. Like MBA students don't give anybody a standing ovation. They gave him a standing ovation when he was done and he was mobbed. It was a wonderful, wonderful talk and a couple of weeks go by, all of a sudden the news erupts the company is bankrupt. The publishing company's bankrupt. It's in receivership, the bank owns it. He laid off, they laid off all, but they had like 140 employees. They laid off everybody, but like a skeleton crew, and then all the stories started coming out about it was a horrible place to work. You know there was all these issues at work and so I have a decision to make. So the next day I'm teaching at Kellogg to the same class that he came and spoke two weeks before, and I say like I could have let it slide because the students wouldn't have known. But I decided, I decided that this was a great learning opportunity for the class, so I sent him the links. Next day we have the class and, wouldn't you know it, my guest speaker that day is my co-author, mert, and Mert, he's 35. Now he's 35. He's like, if you don't know him, he's like full of energy and life, incredible guy. And we start talking about the publisher and Mert is pissed. He's like that mother, like those guys owe us money and they ended up owing us like about $17,000 in unpaid royalties, back royalties. And Mert's like we're gonna sue him, we're gonna get a lawyer, we're gonna sue him. I want my money. That guy's lied to us Like he's really upset. Now, remember, I just told the earlier story about how he 60, 40, how he gave us about $15,000. In my mind I say to Mert you know, I have a different approach. And this is in front of the class and the class once again. They're just like their eyes are big, you know, like they're just like they're watching this play out real time. So let me read you a text that. So I. This is what I did with the class in front of Mert. So the night it happened, I sent the CEO of the publisher a text. I said hey, just saw the announcement. I'm so sorry to hear the news. You should hold your head up high, my friend. You built a great company. Just wanted you to know that I'm thinking of you and always around to help you, if I can. That's what I wrote. He wrote back instantly. Mark, I sincerely appreciate the kind words and message Given what you shared with me about your children and your family, and you know all the you know your issues when I was there in Chicago with you. I'm comfortable sharing the following this is the absolute darkest time of my life and you know some of my life Pains me to say that, but I'm hurting to my core. I'm literally praying for a blessing from God to rectify this. We right-sized the company to stop the money burn, but now I desperately need an investor to quickly buy us Again. I truly appreciate your message and kind words and I wrote back. I understand I do. Your family needs you Be strong. I know it's hard to believe in the moment, but this too shall pass. Here's the thing how you leave is every bit as important as how you enter an organization. Now is not the time to hide and put your head in the sand. You have plenty of time to heal, to take an honest retrospective of what you did right and what you did wrong. You don't have to pretend or hold up an image. Now is the time for brutal honesty and transparency. It's okay. Over-communicate with all your stakeholders employees, investors, authors, suppliers. Be totally honest and transparent. Tell them what is really going on. Ask for help. The biggest mistake that CEOs make in your position is not asking for help. You have built up a lot of goodwill over the years. Now is the time to call on it. Don't beat yourself up. You will have plenty of time to do that later. I believe in you. Lead with openness and integrity and hold your head up high, and I'm also around anytime if you wanna talk. So I read that text to the class and to Merd and we had this great conversation. And then one of my students asked me a wonderful question. The question she asked was Professor, given everything you've gone through in your life, are you more cynical or less cynical than when you were our age, in our late 20s, early 30s? I was like whoa, what a great question. And I immediately knew the answer to that question, but I paused and I wanted to think about it and I wanted to give it its proper due and I said, hands down, I am less cynical today than when I was your age. I go look, I am not naive, I have plenty of scar tissue. I have had bad partners, I have seen terrible behavior, I've seen people lie and cheat and steal. I've seen corporations do bad things. But here's the thing I tend to have a view of life that comes from a place of abundance and not scarcity, and I choose to give people the benefit of the doubt and look, are there bad people out there? For sure Are there bad companies out there, no question about it. But in my experience, most people are good or good-ish. Most companies try to do the right thing not always, but there's gray but most companies try to be ethical, and I'd rather live my life from a place of hope and optimism, not from a place of being naive. I'm kind of like the anti-Andy Grove. Anti-grove wrote a famous book Only the Paranoid Survive, and he might be right. I'm not saying that I'm right, there's a right or a wrong but I think it's a conscious choice, and so that's my story
Max Chopovsky: 18:28
Wow that I had no idea where that one was going. That was so good. What happened to the publisher?
Mark Achler: 18:38
I'm not sure he lost his job. He got fired or the bank took it over. It's in the company's and receivership now and I just texted him this morning because I knew I was going to tell this story and I wanted just to reach out and say hi and just check in on him. But I'm not sure I haven't spoken to him in a few months.
Max Chopovsky: 18:58
So did UBS pay the publisher and then the publisher was going to pay out from there.
Mark Achler: 19:05
This is separate things. So UBS did pay the publisher and the publisher did pay us, and then a year goes by and we have book sales and so the way it works. In publishing there's multiple places that we sell books. So when we sell a book on Amazon, we get a monthly royalty check from Amazon directly. But we also had bulk orders and those bulk orders came through the publisher and the way it worked. In our deal every publisher is different. In our deal, twice a year, once every six months, they would pay us our royalties. So they owed us six months worth of bulk sales which came out to for our take on. It was like $17,000. And the way I looked at it was we were way ahead of the game. Like we were way ahead, like it had so far exceeded our expectations that I couldn't have done without them. And so from a personal point of view, I was totally fine. It was okay. But more importantly, from a human point of view, here was somebody who was hurting. Was he an evil person? Look, he made some mistakes. He made some classic first time CEO rookie mistakes. Cash was getting tight. He thought he would throw the Hail Mary. He didn't have a board of directors who could, or he didn't have mentors to guide him. He didn't ask for help. He wasn't open and transparent. Was he a bad person? I don't know. I mean, I don't think so. I actually, you know, one of the tests of friendship is will you stand behind somebody even when they're having a bad moment? And so I choose to stand behind this guy.
Max Chopovsky: 20:58
Yeah, another test of friendship is will you take somebody to the airport at three in the morning, right, because that's indicative of are you going to do something for them that is inconvenient for you, it doesn't suit you, your needs, your priorities, you know at this stage in my career, sort of the framework that I manage my life is joyful, innovation, building communities and teaching empathy, and so that's like that's the lens of how I look through life in all the different things I do. That's right, I think that's you know. It's interesting. I feel like the older we get, the more we sort of step back and look at our life through a more philosophical lens and you know kind of what matters. So we just went to visit my family this last weekend.
Mark Achler: 21:54
Yeah, Louisville yeah.
Max Chopovsky: 21:55
Yeah, and my dad turned 70. And so we were sitting at the restaurant and I felt like I should say something, and I thought you know, the gravity of the moment is such that the something I say should be meaningful, memorable, right? Because my brother came in from California with his girlfriend, we have my grandmother there, my wife and our kids, so kind of the whole family together and I just sort of was thinking about it on the way to the restaurant and so, when I felt it was the right time, I said as we get older, we start to get a much clearer picture of what matters and what doesn't matter. Yeah, and that can only come with time, right? So it's something that you can sort of viscerally grasp when you're younger. Right, takes perspective, correct, it takes perspective and it takes hindsight. And so what I said was it turns out that actually what really matters is how we spend our time, because time is all we have, that is literally all we have. Money is just a way to buy us more time, because it frees us up from doing things that we don't want to do, but then we have to spend time to earn the money. So you just have to kind of do the math on how you should be spending your time, and it's all about how to maximize the amount of time that you have with people who matter to you. That's literally it. I mean, it's actually that simple, right. But when we're younger, we chase things that matter to us at that time, and then, once we get older, we realize, oh, that actually wasn't so important. We spent so much time thinking about what others think about us or a number of other things that fall into this massive bucket of things we have no control over, and the amount of stress that we introduce into our lives because we worry about these things is substantial. But at the same time, you can't really you can't really skip from being an immature young person to having this wisdom. Like it comes with time. It's part of the journey. It's part of the journey, right? And so what I think is interesting is how you looked at what matters. Most people would have said you know, this guy knew that his company was not doing well. When he came in and gave this talk to my class, I invited him into a sacred space, an institution that sort of is predicated on people passing down honest wisdom, integrity, integrity. This guy comes and tells me a story which is a true story. I'm not questioning his story at all, but there's also something in the back of his mind that he could have easily told me that, hey, if he told me, I would have been like I got you, okay, fine, Fair enough. But he chose not to say that, and so you had every right to react in a very different way. But what you did was you looked at his perspective, which is an underrated and probably underrepresented point of view, and you said, hey, this guy is struggling right now and, man, this is probably reminiscent of all those times when he was a child where he literally had no idea what to do next and he was panicking but there was nobody there to help him. And, as the CEO, without a board, there's kind of nobody there to help you. And so you looked at it from that perspective, and so I think that sort of underscores the fact that when that student said, are you more or less cynical? You had every right, especially in light of the most recent event, to say that, no, I'm more cynical because, given the circumstances, nine people out of 10 are going to do whatever benefits them, and so I'm going to take an appropriate approach to that Right Sure, you said no. You know what this guy's hurting and I'm going to kind of look past how it impacts me and speak to him human to human, which says a lot about you.
Mark Achler: 26:25
Yeah, look, life is short, right, and what really matters are the relationships and connections we have with one another.
Max Chopovsky: 26:35
That's it. That's it, even when those relationships cost us our time, our effort, because that means that we are being selfless in those relationships.
Mark Achler: 26:47
Yeah, yeah, what I liked about this story and this is the first time I'm telling this story what I like about the story is you think, oh, this is about business, innovation and getting a sponsor, and like, oh no, the story is about the CEO, this publisher. What a great guy. And all of a sudden it's. You know his life story, which is really interesting and unique, and you're like, oh no, wait a minute, the story is about it was a house of cards and they're like it wasn't real. Yeah, then what you really find out about this story is it's about a worldview and your values. That's why I thought this was an interesting story.
Max Chopovsky: 27:30
Totally. I mean every business story. Once you strip away the quote unquote business part of it is really just a story about humans and their emotions. Right, Exactly All the drama that we're seeing and that we've seen in every sort of global catastrophe, whether it's wars or it's the markets or whatever. It's just a story of human emotions, how our emotions get the better of us. Yeah, Right, yeah, I mean. Somebody growing up in that environment is unlike. The odds are against them to become the CEO of anything.
Mark Achler: 28:05
Oh, he had to fight to get a GED late in life. I mean, not only did he not have a college degree, his degree was at Juvi. The fact that he became a successful human being, given the circumstances of his childhood, what a huge accomplishment.
Max Chopovsky: 28:23
Yeah, he outperformed. The odds were definitely against him. So if you were to think of a moral of that story, what would that be?
Mark Achler: 28:36
The question the student asked about are you more cynical or less cynical? Actually, it made me be thoughtful and intentional and to be able to express my worldview in a concrete way that I hadn't articulated before, and so I think there's a moral of the story. It is that I know you are the center of your own universe, but the people that you interact with, for the most part, are good people. Like you know, if somebody cheats, steals, lies, whatever, you fine, write them off, right. You don't ever have to deal with them again. But for the most of us we're just, you know, we're human, the human condition, and we're all flawed in different ways. And life is hard. Life is hard Like you don't know. We really don't know what's going on behind the scenes in somebody's life, and so like, don't make assumptions and lead with kindness.
Max Chopovsky: 29:42
Yeah, we have a list of family values hanging up on our wall and the same list is hanging up in both of the older girls' rooms and the very first value on that list is kindness, and empathy is on that list, and integrity and accountability. And whenever the girls are misbehaving and they're mad at me for disciplining them, I say to them you might not like this right now, but it is my responsibility to release into the world a kind and empathetic human being. Amen, brother, Like that's Right, Because if I've done that, if your mom and I have done that, then we have we've done our work. I find it so interesting. You know your comment about you are at the center of your own universe. There's something to be said about remembering that all you have to do is zoom out, right? So the more you zoom out, the less significant you realize you are and the less significant everyone around you is. I mean, literally, you can zoom out far enough and nobody on this earth matters, right? So I'm not saying that we need to take a nihilistic approach to everything, but it is certainly the antidote to thinking that you are the most important person and that the things that matter most, the things that matter most to you, right? So humility is another value on our list.
Mark Achler: 31:12
Humility and personal accountability. Totally, I am a jaggy, so yes, humility is really important and also personal accountability. It's not somebody else's fault. You gotta own what you've done.
Max Chopovsky: 31:28
I don't remember who said this, but it was like extreme ownership. He basically wrote a book. That was like extreme ownership. You have to look to yourself before you look to anyone else for any situation that you find yourself in, because ultimately you can't control what you can't control. But if you overlook what you can control, well, then you're just doing a disservice to yourself and everybody around you.
Mark Achler: 31:52
Exactly.
Max Chopovsky: 31:53
Yeah, totally, totally. So you have had some wild adventures in your day and you have heard some incredible stories. What, in your mind, makes for a good story?
Mark Achler: 32:11
So there's an emotional arc. You know you wanna draw somebody in, you wanna get them interested. A little curiosity, a little bit of misdirection. Oh, I think you're going this way. Oh, you're not. You're really going this way, building to a climax. But I love empathy and I think really understanding your audience is a really important part of good storytelling. Totally yep, and a sense of humor, a sly sense of humor. I'll give you an example, a real quick one. Ubs was. I was doing a book tour for UBS and they asked me to come speak in Nashville a couple of months ago and I went to Nashville and they had it at a venue. The event was at an events venue and a bar and the bar had a policy of everybody had to get carded. So I walk in and the guy in the person in the front says like I see your ID. I look at him, you know I'm 65. I go, I haven't been carded in a while. I look at him, I get a smile on my face and I give him my Medicare card.
Max Chopovsky: 33:23
That's amazing. Does that card have your date of birth and everything? No, but it's my Medicare.
Mark Achler: 33:28
I don't know, but it's my Medicare, because you have to be 65 to have a Medicare. So the guy looks at me and goes smart ass.
Max Chopovsky: 33:37
I mean it answers your question, does it not? That I'm old enough to be in here, does it not? Oh, that's funny. So what do you think when you think of stories? Makes for a good storyteller.
Mark Achler: 33:50
Well, somebody who is engaging like somebody. There's the classic about your voice as an instrument and you don't wanna be monotone, you don't wanna just say, you know, just drone on. Pauses are like if, like when we had our conversation there were some moments where I paused. It's important to give the audience a chance to sort of sit and absorb and to think about it. Pacing and timing matter to a good storyteller. Yeah, Right, and a little twinkle in your eye. You know, like that you're enjoying it. When I tell this story, I'm enjoying like it's not only I'm telling it for you as the audience, I'm also enjoying the process, Like I know the story, I'm the one telling it, but I'm also a fan. I'm enjoying your reactions to the story, Right, and I have curiosity. So I always learn something new. So when I tell a story, I'm also getting feedback. There's nonverbal feedback you know people sleeping, Right, Right but there's the verbal feedback and people interact with the story and so I can see what resonates, what doesn't resonate. This is the first time for me telling this particular story and I'm going to learn from this experience and adapt to it. But I'm always learning something. So, like the questions that you ask when or when I'm teaching at Northwestern, at Kellogg, the question that that student asked it's like oh, that's a great question, Right? So I think, great storytellers. It's bi-directional, it's not just one way.
Max Chopovsky: 35:39
I love that because you're right as the teller of a story. You're taking your audience along on the ride with you and, depending on the audience, you might have to modify the story a little bit. Oh for sure, yeah, yeah, no, no, no for sure. Does every story have to have a moral?
Mark Achler: 36:00
Oh, I don't think so. In the business context, I usually tell stories because it's a teaching moment. There's a reason I'm telling a story, but not every story has to have a moral.
Max Chopovsky: 36:13
Interesting. Okay, yeah. Now, speaking of good stories, you've written a book, you've read a ton of books. So what is a book that you've read that really nails the art of storytelling?
Mark Achler: 36:32
Well, all right. So I'm a geek. I love fantasy and science fiction. So you know the Lord of the Rings or Ender's Game or like. There's all sorts of wonderful books that I just think, nail it, that I'm just in awe of. You know, one of the things you talk about getting older the first time I read Lord of the Rings I was 10 years old and I read all three books in three days. Wow, it was during the summer and I just sat on a couch and I went deep. That is insane, right. I read all three books in three days and like 12 hours a day. All I was like I was there and you know, as an adult it's very hard. It's hard to focus. You know we're always getting pinged and the email goes off and the text goes off. And when's the last time you really just lost yourself in somebody else's world? Agreed?
Max Chopovsky: 37:39
So I just I love to read. Yeah, it's a wonderful escape. So last question for you If you could have a few minutes with your 20 year old self, say one thing to your 20 year old self. What would it be?
Mark Achler: 37:54
Actually, I've given this a lot of thought. Surprisingly, relationships matter over time. So when you're in your 20s, it's not that life is transactional, but you think to yourself, oh, this person's in my life today you don't really think about, they're going to be in your life 20 years from now. And one of the things that I have very few regrets in life, I'm blessed. But one of them is there are some relationships of people that I really care about, that I let go over the years, that I didn't nurture, and I think what people really underestimate is the importance of those relationships over time. Yeah, and I'll flip that into a business context, which is when entrepreneurs come and pitch VCs, it's almost a transactional In their mind. Did the VCs say yes or no? Most of the times it's no. Yeah, I'm like, okay, fine, on to the next VC, right. And I'm like, okay, fine, I'm done. That rat bastard, he doesn't get me. But what they fail to realize is, look, I say no today for lots of reasons Maybe you're not far enough along or you don't meet our investment thesis, but a no today doesn't mean a no tomorrow. And relationships really matter. And look, we're people too, and so I love helping and mentoring and making friends. So my co-author, merit, pitched me and my partner, troy three times to invest in his business. We never did. He pitched us like 10 years ago and then five years ago and then three years ago and we just said no every time. And I love Merit and Merit. We built a relationship. We built a friendship. He started coming, we had a dinner club. We went over to each other's houses for dinner when he was selling his business. I was often, and my partner Troy we were often the phone calls to talk him off the ceiling because when things weren't going well and he ended up becoming an entrepreneur in residence at math and we co-authored a book together, that's amazing. And Troy said no three times to him. Yeah, right, and so look, it's a long life.
Max Chopovsky: 40:25
Relationships matter and your reputation really does matter Totally, and I think that's a student advice, both in the professional realm and in the personal realm, because when we're younger we kind of feel like, oh, I'll meet this person, we'll hang out, we'll be friends for a period of time, then I'll move on, I'll meet somebody else, right. And as you get older, you realize that actually you end up sort of hopefully reconnecting with some of your older friends because nothing can. You could hit it off with somebody when you're older and you meet them through your kids activities or school or whatever, and you could be friendly with them and spend time with them and have some great experiences with them. But nothing can replicate the history that you have with somebody that you've known for so many years. Right, and you can do that if you invest in those relationships and stay in touch with those people. That's exactly right, you know Well, this was awesome. That does it. Mark Ackler. Professor, mentor, speaker, author, kind human being. Thank you for being on the show. All right, max. Thanks, as always, man, it's an honor. The honor is all mine. My friend For show notes and more. Head over to MossPodorg and this one Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you get your podcast on. Thank you for listening. This was more Love the Story. I'm Max Dropofsky. Talk to you next time. Thanks, max..