Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: 100% certain. It was either I'm going to blow up, and that will be a lot better than breaking into pieces in January 15 in the Hudson River in New York and freezing in 40 seconds. If you were given those two options, I think blowing up is better. And then you have 90 seconds to say goodbye to your life with no suffering, zero suffering. And then on the other side of this, no one dies. So you can talk about it and celebrate it and understand it at a time where our country was in incredible crisis. We were coming out of the financial crisis of '08. This country was in a low place, looking for a story. So we were really lucky that we had the most incredible pilot on that seat that day that in many ways -- and we can talk about him. He'd been preparing for that moment his whole life. He was a gliding instructor. Later on, I've gotten to know him really well. And you say that you're only a pilot when you lose an engine. Otherwise, you're just managing the autopilot or whatever the inputs in the computer. In that day, it was a New York cold day. I was coming home to Charlotte. And my biggest concern was landing and coaching my son's basketball practice. And as we take off, there's a large explosion in the plane. Bang! Half asleep, as you're taking off, you realize -- I look at the flight attendant. And I'm in 1D, so I can see the flight attendant, there's nothing in their face, just like annoyance of like there's going to be whatever because we turned the plane right away, and nothing is happening. Smoke is coming in. You can hear the engine struggling, but you think we're just going to go back landing. We're not that high, probably 3,000, 4,000 feet high. And then all of a sudden, Sully gets on the microphone says, "This is your captain," so he identifies himself and he says three words. The only three words he said, and this was the moment. He says, "Brace for impact." The movie is actually very true to a lot of it and especially to this. But at that moment, I look back at the flight attendant, Patrick, and then all of a sudden there's complete terror in her eyes. She's like, holy cow, in training, this is we are not landing at an airport. I don't know that, but I can see her eyes, and I know that, that's what it means. And the great gift at that day was 90 seconds to literally say it's over.
· Ric Elias, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I am sitting there going like, oh, my goodness, it's over. Not only is it over and then some people, you may have a near-death experience of a second or two seconds. This is a minute and a half to basically sign off from life. And that's, for me, been super formative. Previous to this last year and a half, it was a real moment of kind of resignation in life. And lots of things happened from how have I dealt with spiritual beliefs from that time all the way to how it did impact my life. And I did that TED Talk not knowing that it would ever get published. But by the way, it was the greatest gift I gave myself because people talk about it. And it's a reminder of me, of a promise I made to myself that day, which is I was not going to let that experience. Someday, I want it to be a part of me, not something that happened to me. I've tried to live very hard and very consciously of the gift I got that day. [00:00:00] S0: Can you remember sequentially what went through your head in those 90 seconds?
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: Yes. When I think about it, and I think about it now more evolved, with time behind, is a lot of it had to do with -- the immediate emotion that I felt was this, oh, no, it's over. It's this sense of real regret that it's over and there were so many things I had left undone. It all changed in an instant. Life changes in an instant. We all have had friends that things have happened to in an instant. And I think in our evolution, we're unable to process that because we would have never left the cave if we felt that, right? So there's this concept called Hedonic adaptation that we will adapt to whatever situation, and that's what life is about. We have adapted this thing. And that was for me, this notion of, gosh, when the plane landed, I am going to live with intense purpose every day. I am going to ask for forgiveness the moment I do something wrong. I'm going to drink my best wines whenever the person is there. I'm going to say I love you to anybody I love. I am going to try my very best every day to try to like not regret not doing or saying something. And that was wonderful. So I live out loud, so to speak, because I know it's going to change in an instant. Tomorrow maybe that instant, and I'm not having that regret if it happens. The second thing that I thought about it was like you're going to superhuman, right? Your adrenaline is shooting, you're in survival mode, you're going to die. There was this sense of almost embarrassment of how much I had allowed my ego to be who showed up in the world, how much I had spent energy being wronged by people or being more or less than, better or worse than. How much my ego played a role in how I showed up every day. And it was this notion that, you know what, I hate it. I hate it what that meant and that I didn't realize that, that was a mask that I was putting on and that I didn't need to have that mask on. That ego started with, okay, where does that come from? And for me, Patrick, there was a lot of learning. I have this moment when the plane is going to crash. We talked about religion a bit today, and I don't share this a lot. I don't know how people take it, but I ask myself, okay, do I buy insurance? I can ask for forgiveness. I was raised Catholic. I can ask for insurance right now.
· Ric Elias
And for sure, if there is such a thing, and I was not -- I'm not a practicing Catholic or wasn't at the time a practicing Catholic. And I said to myself, "I am not because I'm not a hypocrite. I may be all flawed in many ways, but it's not that." And it just didn't feel natural to me. And what happened as a result to me after that, after just saying, "Hey, this is who I am," is I let go of all guilt. Not that I don't take responsibility, but the forgiveness happened to myself at the moment. It's like I no longer had this notion, and I think guilt drives a lot of our ego, a lot of our comparison set, a lot of this notion of having to be right versus choosing to be happy. And look, this is not a perfect journey. And at times, your ego gets caught up in this and your ego gets in the way. Trust me. Compared to when this happened, I am incredibly, incredibly lighter. I don't want to die, and I don't want the ego to be the one that shows up every day. And as a result, the problem that -- what happens when you have tremendous forgiveness for yourself. One, your conversation with yourself changes. You become incredibly kind. You become a lot more light, but you then find forgiveness in everything. I am super, super forgiving. And to me, true forgiveness, and there's many definitions, is when you forgive when the other person doesn't apologize because the forgiveness comes from love and comes from a language of accepting the humanity of all of us. That was, to me, super liberating. At the time, it was, come on, that's a regret. All of this were regrets. And maybe the last one as this plane is about to crash. And when you fly, you can count down when we're going to hit the water and you're like, okay, please blow up kind of thing. I really had this thought is, wow, I was not scared. And I thought it would be super scary, and I was certain, and the feeling was actually sadness. The feeling was somehow I had missed my opportunity to leave my mark in this world. I had not focused on whatever my purpose was meant to be. I was so busy accumulating, doing the things that society asked me to do that I have forgotten that I actually can leave this place, this world a little better than I found it for my existence. And to me, that's the only meaning of life. And that manifested itself on like my kids.
· Ric Elias, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I really justify myself being a life -- 5% of the parenting and my wife carried the load and she did an incredible job. But I felt like, oh, I'm doing this side of the equation and she does that side of the equation. And I was like, I've changed dramatically. My relationship with my kids right now is fantastic because I realized that, that to me is my purpose. But my purpose is also this business. I am here 24 years later and as engaged as I am because I believe that this place is a place of good. It's a place of good where you come here, you get invested in, you get trained, you graduate, you do go great things. And hopefully, you do it in a way that is honorable and ethical and purposeful. I believe that all this random success I've had because it's more random than not, is an opportunity to actually put it back into the system in ways -- I'm reconnecting with Puerto Rico in the most beautiful ways. A lot of privilege. It's my purpose to put it all back in. So for me, life has become really, really simple. That was kind of my last 10 years, until the last two, until the next challenge comes. That's what life is about. The contrast of our challenges is what makes our growth feel meaningful. [00:00:00] S0: You've teed me up. Please tell the entire story of turning this basketball team in Puerto Rico around.
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: Oh, that's a nutty story. Really, we're going to go there? A little bit of context. Hurricane Maria was -- I think it's seven years coming up now, six or seven years, remember. After Hurricane Maria, if you're Puerto Rican, you really love your island. And I found this really interesting. A lot of people ask me, "Oh, are you Puerto Rican or are you American?" I'm like, "I am both." I'm not a percentage. I'm 100% both, and I'm really happy to be both 100%. I get two things out of this. But like many other Puerto Ricans that were in the mainland and had some resources, you felt compelled to help. We raised a bunch of money and flew a plane full of stuff. And I took a lot of my friends, we got them 4x4s, and we got into the mountains and we were delivering baby formula and medicines and all these things and feeling really good about ourselves. Eagles were super healthy that we were saving nothing. And I got back on the plane coming back, and I'm like, "I am such a hypocrite. I literally have been looking for an opportunity to reconnect with my island. I'm here today, and I'm feeling really good because I delivered boxes. So if you're really, really going to do something, this is the moment." So I came back and organized our comms team, and they always get scared because I have an idea is code for like, oh no, because a lot of them are bad ones. But I say, I have an idea. And we made this massive pledge that we were going to move Puerto Ricans back, that we were going to create real employment in Puerto Rico, that we were going to pay U.S. salaries, that we were going to train people. And fast forward the journey, and we have five companies in Puerto Rico with hundreds of employees, disrupting banking, disrupting media, really a phenomenal and it's a movement. It's not even a company. All the CEOs, a little bit of a different org design there than we have here or in the U.K., and it's been beautiful. I've reconnected with my island, and I left Puerto Rico. I didn't go back after college because it was too small, that little island. Now, I'm fell in love with the island because it's too small and you actually can do something, right? And we're involved in like rewriting laws that are good for the island or helping entrepreneurs and investing in things. And I'm finding insane purpose on this. I love Charlotte. I love Puerto Rico. I can be both.