Hi everyone. This is such an amazing topic. It reminds me of my business and how I started. I have received several emails, suggestions and lot of questions on how to start up a business, most especially during COVID19. Some people are tired of a paying job and they feel they deserve to be self employed, some are even scared of what may happen to their jobs after the Corona virus pandemic. Some don’t just know how. Some ask questions like I have an idea but how do I convert it into a selling product that will yield massive return? How do I get started with my business? Some even get discouraged with the saying that most business fails and they wouldn’t want to risk it, this and that.

Things you need to know before starting a business:
1) Develop your income skill first to be an entrepreneur. Remember the reward of small business ownership are not instantenous, so you need to be patient and willing to make sacrifices.

Questions to ask yourself as an entrepreneur: How much does it cost for rent? What’s my population? Who are my suppliers? Who are my competitors? What is my market strategy? How much cash flow do I have to sustain the business?

2) Dont start a business if you dont understand the industry. Ask your self these questions why you and why now, for example if you want to open a restaurant why dont you work in a restaurant for a while to understand how the industry work.
Don’t start a business if you want more free time: No free time for entrepreneurs only if your company has blossom
So ask your self this question are you actually ready to be an entrepreneur.

Well. Having look at a summary of what we will be dealing with. It is important to know that everything about life is taking risk. But it is advantageous to take calculated risk. Even when you travel you are taking risk. So let’s get to the topic.

How to start a business from scratch.

1) Start with an idea: The first step is having an idea. Well someone may ask a question like I don’t know how to come up with an idea, what should I do? The simple answer is think and if you can’t dedicate time for researching or reading, read books and materials that interest you and don’t be among folks who have this believe that everything that is needed has been created by people, so why do I disturb myself.

That’s a terrible mindset which could be worked on. Ideas comes when you change your mindset by thinking as a success. Get a book on something you admire and always ask yourself is there any problem you can create solution to. Look at yourself and ask what do I wish was in this world that could of impact. Challenge yourself at all times. Idea could be in two face; Creativity and innovation. Creativity is coming up with something that isn’t in existence, while Innovation is developing what is in existence but modifying it in a better way.

Okay. So we are starting with an idea in this section. Having idea is great but not all ideas turns out to be superb or worth implementing. So you have to research about your ideas, carry out a feasibility study and see how realistic it is. Play with your idea, Google your idea to see if anyone is currently doing it. Ask yourself can I convert this idea to business. Mind you when we talk business, we lay great emphasis on value. You should be more focused on value when starting up a business and consider profit too, but most importantly focus on Value.

In summary, you should focus on the big 4, when making your idea a reality.

• Research about it?
• Is it successful?
• Is there competition?
• Is the market saturated?
• How are you going to beat your competitors.

At this point two things should be in your mind while brainstorming. If you want your business to succeed, you have to be different or to be better than the rest. Maybe you want to start a cookies business, been better means that your prices are lower or the cookies taste better. While been different means that you are unique, maybe your company has defined look and size of the cookies, but your company allows your consumer to design their own cookies and buy them afterwards.

Another point to note is how much value you bring your consumers?

Do you bring more value than your competitors? The more value your product or service offers the easier it will be further down the road. So you should analyze your idea and the market and also state how it should work.

2) Build your idea into reality. This is where most people get stuck, they just come up with idea and never act upon them. Having idea is great but it means nothing if you never make it a reality. It is so important to get started. It’s far better to try it and fail than not to try at all. Believe that you will figure it out as you go.

When you get to work on your ideas, you will face obstacles that you might have never thought of and you will be forced to come up with new solutions to overcome those obstacles. As a result, your ideas will change and modify into something very different than when you first started. Always learn new things everyday.

People get discouraged because they feel their ideas is not good and it will fail. Just like Thomas Edison said, it’s not failure, it’s just finding out different ways that don’t work.

3) Text your Ideas:.

• Get feedback.
• Adapt and change.
• Repeat the process.

A lot of people make this mistake, they build their business without testing and they think since they have spent too much time on the business people must like it. Build something as fast as possible, show it to people, get their feedback, adapt and change then repeat the process.

4) Building a business without money: Building business without money can be a little bit tough. A simple advise to get started is build your idea around your skills and knowledge. If you are good at marketing, you start drop shipping, affiliate marketing. If you are good at cooking start a cooking business. For me I am good at making natural soap that tone skin, remove stretch marks and pimples. So building my business on this was very easy.

I would like you to know that not every business can be started without money. This is no big deal actually because there are lots of opportunities to get your business started which includes; finding investors online or venture capitalist, crowd funding, getting capital or supports from friends and families. However, you need to come up with a compelling idea and an outstanding business proposal.

So after this, build your idea which is within your skills and knowledge online. You can start with YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. Simply use your skill to give your audience value. After that monetize your audience and continue to grow

It is important to note that not all business can be started without money. For business idea that requires huge capital, you need to find investors online or around you, a venture capitalist. Support from friends and families. However, you need a compelling idea and an outstanding business proposal that cover the interest of the investors and as well as the organization.

It is possible to start a business without money, the only thing holding you back is your creativity and willingness to start. The business you see around was created by a person who are in no way smarter than you. If they can do it, you can. Don’t let your mindset restrict you.

Procedures to take in order to start your business:

• Idea Generation: That is strategizing and carrying out feasibility study on how realistic your business is.
• Write a business proposal: Write a detailed proposal that would cover your vision statement, mission Statement, goals and objectives, your marketing strategy and lot more. If you have a problem up with a business proposal, you can comment below.

2) Obtain Startup Capital or leverage on your skills and knowledge.

3) Set up a legal business stature.

4) Satisfy business licensing requirements.

5) Establish a web presence.

6) Open a bank account for your business

7) Have mentors, lawyer who could get help from.

8) Follow Government rules.

I am very sure you all have an idea on what to do and how to do it. You can comment below to express your view on the topic. Stay safe guys.

As a high-performing entrepreneur, I always prided myself on pushing through anything. Long hours, tight deadlines, constant demands: I saw it all as part of the job. I built a couple of thriving businesses, including one of the largest facility management companies in the U.S. Northwest, raised children as a single mom and did everything “right.” Until one day, my body forced me to stop.

A sudden diagnosis of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), a rare and potentially fatal immune disorder, changed everything. I went from boardrooms to hospital beds, from conference calls to critical care. The timing could not have been worse, as it came just four months after launching my latest venture, Legacy Leader. It was the hardest leadership lesson I’ve ever had to learn: You cannot be a great leader if you abandon your own health.

Health was never the priority, until it had to be

As leaders, we often push our well-being to the back burner. We’re taught to be resilient, to show up no matter what. We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor. But here’s the truth: Leadership doesn’t mean sacrificing yourself for the mission. It means feeling good enough to sustain it.

In the months leading up to my diagnosis, the signs were there, but I brushed them off. Persistent fatigue, trouble focusing and digestive issues that just wouldn’t go away. I chalked it up to stress or “just a busy season.” I kept telling myself, “I’ll rest after this project,” or “I just need to push through a little longer.” But HLH doesn’t wait. And it doesn’t care about your to-do list.

That diagnosis forced me into a new kind of leadership. One that required listening to my body, honoring my limits and choosing recovery over performance. And, more than that, it forced me to confront something deeper: I had attached so much of my identity to my ability to perform that I didn’t know who I was without the hustle.

You can’t be indispensable, and that’s a good thing

One of the first fears that hit me in the hospital was, “What happens to the company if I’m not there?” Like many business leaders, I had built something that, in some ways, depended too heavily on me. That fear taught me to embrace a new truth: The best leaders build organizations that thrive in their absence.

I began putting systems in place so my team could make decisions without me. We mapped out contingency plans. I trained team leads to run key meetings, gave them real authority and practiced letting go. What I discovered surprised me: The more I empowered others, the more confident and capable they became.

That experience showed me that delegation isn’t just efficient. It’s an act of trust. And trust is one of the most powerful currencies in leadership. Your legacy isn’t what happens while you’re in the room. It’s what happens when you’re not.

Don’t come back too soon

After the worst had passed, I wanted to jump back into work. That was my default setting: show strength, bounce back, don’t miss a beat. But this time, I paused. I realized that rushing back wouldn’t help my team. It would only model unsustainable behavior. So, I chose to rest. And, when I did come back, I chose to take breaks often.

That choice wasn’t easy. I wrestled with guilt, fear and the nagging belief that I was falling behind. But I came to understand something I wish I’d known earlier: True leadership isn’t about always being “on.” It’s about making smart decisions, even when they’re uncomfortable. And, sometimes, the smartest choice is to heal.

Taking care of myself wasn’t selfish. It was strategic. It allowed me to come back stronger, clearer and more connected to my purpose. It also gave my team permission to care for themselves too.

A few things I wish I’d known earlier

If you’re a business leader reading this, let me offer a few practical things I’ve learned the hard way:

• Treat your annual checkups like board meetings. Put them on the calendar and make them nonnegotiable.
• Document how your company runs. Train someone to take over core responsibilities in case you’re out unexpectedly.
• Schedule recovery time, not just vacation. Plan actual days where you unplug, whether it’s time outdoors, time offline or time with no obligations.
• Pay close attention to physical signals. That recurring headache or chest tightness isn’t just “background noise.” Get curious.
• Set limits with intention. Saying no to one project might allow you to say yes to your long-term health.
• Create a written plan, both for your absence and for your return. Make resilience part of how you build your business.

We can no longer afford to see health as something we address only when it breaks down. Prevention isn’t a luxury. It’s leadership.

The real ROI

HLH changed my life. It stripped away the illusion that I could keep going forever and replaced it with clarity, purpose and peace. Today, I lead differently. I live differently. And I share my story in the hopes that others won’t have to learn the hard way.

In my book, Your Way Back to Happy: How to Turn the Pain of Your Past Into a Future of Freedom, Purpose, and Peace, I write about how to reevaluate what success truly means and a new way to live with intention, peace and joy.

Don’t wait for a diagnosis to start leading differently. Your health isn’t a distraction from your goals. It’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Photo courtesy of Janelle Bruland

The technology works. Employees are using it. What doesn’t work is that we’re asking leaders to drive massive change without equipping them to do it successfully. Until that gap closes, AI will remain stranded capital.

The math is brutal. MIT found that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing. Bain reports organizations spent $30 to $40 billion on generative AI in the past year. And McKinsey found fewer than 1% of companies describe their AI adoption as “mature.” Massive investment, negligible return.

I spent nine years at Salesforce leading through major transformations. The technical side of change is never the hardest part. It’s always the human side that determines whether things succeed or fail.

What nobody’s saying out loud

I keep hearing the same pattern in conversations with executives. They have AI mandates from the top, with no clarity on how to get their people ready, on top of everything else they’re already managing. And there’s this thing they’ll only say in private, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Nobody does.

In most organizations, leaders are still rewarded for looking certain, staying in control, running tight systems. Take a risk with AI and get it wrong? Most people believe they’ll be punished for failure. Those same behaviors crush the experimentation and trust AI depends on. 

Companies are essentially handing leaders technical training and telling them to figure it out. That’s hope, not strategy.

When Bret Taylor became Salesforce’s Chief Product Officer, I got 30 minutes with him as a rising product leader. I knew our approach wasn’t working and spoke from the heart about what I was seeing and how it needed to be better. He could have dismissed it, as I was several levels down. Instead, he listened. 

We created an Associate Product Manager program that taught not just technical skills but also critical leadership skills like how to challenge the status quo, navigate conflict, work across teams, and show up under pressure.

We didn’t just mandate change or add a training program. We changed the nature of the conversations teams were having by injecting new thinking and new ways of working at a grassroots level. Then we listened closely to what was working and what was standing in our way and iterated on our approach in real time. That’s how you build lasting change, not by announcing something and hoping everyone figures it out.

Most companies are doing exactly that with AI. Funding tools and training, while neglecting the systemic change needed to drive real transformation.

What the 5% actually do differently

Harvard Business Review analyzed what separates companies where AI pilots succeed from the 95% where they fail. The differentiator isn’t the technology. It’s leadership.

The winning companies do two things at once. They fund technical training and fund developing leadership capacity for transformation. Their leaders can navigate fear and resistance across teams. They create strategic clarity and alignment. They create safety for experimentation and failure. They model risk-taking in uncertainty and hold people accountable to entirely new standards.

That requires real support. Not just workshops, but individualized help for challenging situations. How to have conversations about readiness. How to create psychological safety when someone says they’re afraid of being replaced. How to navigate resistance when it inevitably shows up.

Most companies lack that leadership infrastructure. Gartner found 66% of CEOs say their executive teams lack AI confidence. The leaders who can create clarity and safety in chaos, their teams will become AI-first. The ones who can’t? Their teams will just be busy.

You can’t solve an adaptive challenge with a training program. Leaders need help applying AI to their actual work: their specific role, team, challenges. They need a place to work through fear and uncertainty without career risk. That’s fundamentally different from what most companies are funding, and the 95% failure rate proves it.

Companies are funding the wrong intervention

Companies are treating AI as a technical problem when it’s a leadership capacity problem. Your competitors are making the same calculation right now. Some of them are getting different answers.

AI is forcing us to confront something we should have fixed years ago. We’re asking leaders to navigate unprecedented complexity with the same development approach that hasn’t worked for decades.

The companies that get this right won’t just succeed with AI. They’ll build leadership capacity that outlasts whatever technology comes next.

The billions are already spent. The question is whether they turn into returns or stranded capital. That answer depends entirely on whether you’re willing to fund the leadership gap, not just the technology gap.

If there is one thing that investors need to understand about the energy sector, it is that oil and natural gas prices are inherently volatile. But there’s a somewhat counterintuitive takeaway here. Sometimes the best investment opportunities arise when business in the oil space isn’t going so well.

Which is why investors might want to buy ConocoPhillips (COP -2.80%) today. Indeed, the company’s successful business overhaul is so obvious that it is hard not to notice (at least partly because the company is so happy to point it out).

Not such a great quarter for sales and earnings

ConcoPhillips’ earnings in the second quarter of 2025 weren’t great when you compare it to the same quarter in 2024, with a drop from $1.98 per share last year down to just $1.56 this year. But that doesn’t even do justice to the energy company’s earnings decline, since pulling out a one-time gain in the second quarter of 2025 drops the total down to $1.42 per share. That’s the worst quarterly earnings outcome in over a year and down sequentially from even the first quarter.

But that’s kind of how things go in the energy sector, where oil and natural gas prices drive the top and bottom lines of the income statement. In fact, it isn’t even remotely unusual for ConocoPhillips’ earnings to be volatile from quarter to quarter. That said, the energy sector is, generally, not in the best place today relative to the highs achieved in the price rebound coming out of the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, ConocoPhillips’ share price has fallen around 25% from its late 2022 highs. For comparison, Brent Crude, a key international oil benchmark, and West Texas Intermediate Crude, a key U.S. oil benchmark, have both lost about a third of their value over the same span. This could actually be a good time for more aggressive investors to consider buying ConocoPhillips.

An obvious reason to like ConocoPhillips

Assuming you can stomach the uncertainty of a commodity-based business like ConocoPhillips, there are good things happening at the company. Notably, it has been integrating the acquisition of Marathon Oil and executing above expectations. For example, it added 25% more resources than projected when the deal was inked. Despite that, it also managed to reduce the number of rigs it was operating on the added properties by 30%. All in, it was able to double the business synergies it projected, saving $1 billion in costs annually. And management managed to set up $2.5 billion in dispositions in nine months, when it had previously been looking to shed $2 billion in assets over a two-year period.

The dispositions are a special consideration. ConocoPhillips isn’t looking to get big for the sake of getting big. It is attempting to optimize its portfolio of assets so it can focus on only its best properties. That, in turn, should help to improve profitability over the long term. To be fair, even the best properties won’t change the variability in energy prices. But wider profit margins means the company will make more money when times are good and have more downside leeway when times are bad. ConocoPhillips isn’t hiding its success, it is proudly telling investors all about what it has achieved. In other words, there are obvious improvements taking shape at the business.

This is the setup for better performance in the future

To state the obvious again, as an energy company, energy prices are going to dictate ConocoPhillips’ financial results. Conservative investors looking for consistent earnings or reliable dividends (the company pays a dividend regularly, but the amount of the dividend is highly variable) probably shouldn’t buy the stock.

But if you are looking for direct exposure to energy prices, ConocoPhillips could be a solid choice given management’s efforts to overhaul the business. When commodity prices take off again, the upgrades made to the portfolio will help supercharge ConocoPhillips’ financial results. And Wall Street will almost certainly reward the stock for that.

I’ve been in the entrepreneurship game long enough to spot when something big is coming. And I’m telling you right now: I believe biohacking isn’t just another wellness fad. It’s a legitimate business strategy that’s giving smart entrepreneurs a massive competitive edge.

The numbers don’t lie: why entrepreneurs need this now

Eighty-seven percent of entrepreneurs deal with mental health issues versus just 48% of regular people. But here’s the real kicker — it’s not just stress. I think it’s about trying to maintain peak performance while your body systematically breaks down under the demands of building something meaningful.

Meanwhile, research shows each extra hour of sleep per week bumps your earnings by 3.4%. You’re literally leaving money on the table by not getting enough sleep. Think about that for a second. Your competitors who prioritize recovery aren’t just feeling better — they’re earning more.

The market agrees with this shift. According to a recent Research and Markets Report, the Global Biohacking Market was valued at $24.5 billion in 2024 and is estimated to reach $111.3 billion by 2034. When you see numbers like that, you’re not looking at a trend. You’re looking at a complete shift in how high performers approach optimization.

Related: Tricks to Prevent Jet Lag, According to Science

What biohacking actually means for business

Biohacking isn’t some mystical wellness nonsense. It’s what happens when entrepreneurs apply the same obsessive optimization mindset they use in business to their own bodies. These are people who track every metric that matters.

Now they’re tracking HRV scores (heart rate variability) like conversion rates, experimenting with intermittent fasting like it’s a marketing campaign, and optimizing their sleep with the same intensity they bring to growth hacking. Makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you’re going to measure everything else, why not measure what actually powers your brain?

Dave Asprey figured this out when he was running a longevity nonprofit and realized he was “the only guy under 60 in the room.” All the knowledge about human optimization was stuck with older folks, while young entrepreneurs were burning themselves out. That’s when he created something entirely different.

At his 11th annual in-person Biohacking Conference (13th, including virtual events during COVID), Asprey’s approach became crystal clear. This isn’t strategic rebranding of longevity science — it’s an entirely new framework that has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry.

His definition of biohacking is laser-focused: “To change the environment outside of you and inside of you so you have full control of your biology, to allow you to upgrade your body, mind, and your life.”

Related: Is There a Superior Diet for the Entrepreneur? The ‘Father of Biohacking’ Shares What He Eats for High Energy, Low Body Fat and Optimal Output

AI is revolutionizing the biohacking game

Here’s where Asprey really got my attention. His company, 40 Years of Zen, utilizes AI to analyze brainwaves from top entrepreneurs and train your brain to match their patterns in five days, rather than spending 20 years meditating. For entrepreneurs who barely have time to eat lunch, this is a revolutionary concept.

But the real breakthrough is Upgrade Labs, his franchise that’s collecting 187 million data points from every client. They’re using AI to analyze your bloodwork, performance metrics, goals, and current state, then generating a personalized optimization plan. No more guessing about supplements, fasting schedules or treatments.

Asprey dropped $2.5 million figuring this out the expensive way. With AI, you don’t have to.

This is biohacking evolving from experimental to systematic. The data exists and the results are measurable. (Fair warning: accessible technology can still come with a price tag — the 40 Years of Zen retreat costs $16,000 for a five-day immersive neurofeedback experience. But compare that to the cost of burnout.)

An industry cross-pollination that signals massive growth

What blew me away at Asprey’s conference wasn’t just the technology — it was the crowd. I watched entertainment personalities like Ragga Ragnar (Queen Gilhund from Vikings) discussing their craft with medical professionals like Dr. Vince Padre, who is developing gut-healthy coffee. Tech veterans were swapping notes with food innovators, such as Oren Epstein from BioRaw, Canada’s leading vegan food distributor, about running sustainable businesses.

Even teenage entrepreneurs like George Zhou and Becket Kitaen from Buffs were there, soaking it all up. Their product is a “cheeto puff made of beef.”

When cultural influencers like Food Babe, who shares her most helpful resources here, and thought leaders like Martin Luther King III show up — connecting biohacking to mission-driven initiatives like Realize The Dream — you know something has staying power. When wellness meets social change, and both get backed by real money, that’s when markets explode.

The entrepreneurial trifecta is in full effect: users proving demand, investors bringing serious capital and cultural influencers amplifying the message. Game over.

Where the smart money is moving

The investment patterns tell the story. Money is flowing toward scalable, results-driven models — from recurring subscriptions to high-retention product ecosystems. In the U.S., we’re seeing a surge in biotech investments, fueled by consumers who are increasingly dissatisfied with one-size-fits-all solutions and demand personalized, data-driven health alternatives.

Companies like Denmark-based Puori are investing heavily in the US to set a new standard for product authenticity and transparency in the supplement space. Every batch is third-party tested for over 200 contaminants, with full results available via a QR code on the packaging, enabling consumers to make informed decisions in a crowded market. PureWave’s VEMI Biosynchronizing beds are being used to assist in veteran recovery. BioLight’s cutting-edge oral healthcare technology is redefining dental health.

As Dr. Mike Belkowski, founder of Biolight, explained at their booth: “Red Light Therapy is no longer a fringe modality— it’s becoming a cornerstone in the future of health optimization. As we unlock the science behind light, mitochondria, and cellular resilience, we’re entering a new era where healing and performance can be non-invasive, natural, and profoundly effective.”

The biggest wins? Brands are building recurring revenue around absolute trust and utility. Position yourself where performance, personalization, and prevention intersect, and you won’t just ride the biohacking wave — you’ll own it.

Building biohacking into your business culture

Asprey dropped some practical wisdom about integrating biohacking into your company culture, no matter what stage you’re in:

• Lead by Example: “You cannot tell your employees what to do unless you’re doing it.” Don’t mandate wellness programs. Show the value through your own transformation first.
• Invest in Real Health Data: “You have all the lab tests, or at least your employees do, and they get actionable information to improve them. The amount of money you will make from having employees who are emotionally regulated because they’re biologically healthy, holy crap, your whole culture changes overnight. It’s so big.”
• Go Dry: This might surprise you, but Asprey’s logic is bulletproof. “You should not be spending your hard-earned profits on feeding your employees alcohol. He says, give them high-quality coffee instead. Give them things that make them grounded and focused and happy and performant and healthier.”

These aren’t feel-good wellness initiatives. These are business strategies disguised as employee benefits.

The bottom line

Biohacking is no longer just about personal optimization. It’s about building better businesses and creating sustainable competitive advantages. While your competitors burn out on the old grind-it-out mentality, you’re optimizing your biology for sustained peak performance.

The only question is whether you’ll get ahead of this curve or spend the next five years playing catch-up while your competition evolves past you.

In my experience, winning entrepreneurs spot trends early and move fast. Biohacking isn’t the future of wellness — it’s the future of high-performance entrepreneurship.

In this podcast, Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross and contributor Rich Lumelleau chat with Martin Reeves about:

• The like button’s invention and implications.
• Innovation in the digital age.
• The role of imagination in business strategy.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you’re ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on August 10, 2025.

Martin Reeves: I was fascinated by the elegance and the simplicity of the Like button in terms of how could a dozen lines of JavaScript code, which is the Like button change so much about how we transact, how we communicate, how we relate?

Mac Greer: That was Martin Reeves, business strategist, advisor, and author of several books, including Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, The Imagination Machine, and his most recent, Like The Button that Changed the World. I’m Motley Fool Producer Mac Greer. Now, recently, Motley Fool contributor Rich Lumelleau and Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross caught up with Reeves and talked business, Imagination, and, yes, the Like button.

Andy Cross: Let’s just jump in with very recently, you and Bob Goodson released a book called, Like The Button that Changed the World, which looks at how digital systems have reshaped human behavior, identity, society, all catalyzed by quite simply the Like button. What sparked the idea for the book? I have to say, I love this comment from you. It was brilliant in its simplicity. Let’s talk a little bit about it.

Martin Reeves: Now you’ve answered the question. It is an unusual thing to write a book about it, I think, because it’s an apparently trivial object that we maybe don’t pay much attention to, but I was fascinated by the the elegance and the simplicity of the Like button in terms of how could a dozen lines of JavaScript code, which is the Like button change so much about how we transact, how we communicate, how we relate? Then, of course, all of the negative social side effects and the revolution in advertising and social media. It’s just incredible that such a small thing could trigger so many changes. But the more proximal reason is, I was actually getting to know Bob Goodson, my co author, who originally was a medieval literature scholar who show I ended up as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and CEO. We were just getting to know each other, and I discovered in our coffee conversation that he was a bit of an avid collector.

You couldn’t even say hoarder. He’s collected every train receipt since he was 10-years-old, and he was moving. To make conversation, I said to him, you must be finding interesting things in your boxes, Bob. He said, yes, and he pulled out a sketchbook. There was a dated sketch of the Like button that I immediately recognized was about five years before I’d known Facebook to have rolled out the button. I said to Bob, are you telling me you invented the Like button, Bob? He gave me a very strange response. He didn’t say yes or no. He said, no, of course, not. Maybe, I’m not sure. I thought how could you not be sure whether you invented for Like button or not? This 30 minute conversation we had extended to a whole day until we thrown out of the last closing restaurant in Mill Valley. Essentially, by the end of it, we had a plan to write a book about the fascinating and winding story of the invention of the Like button.

Andy Cross: It’s amazing. That’s a great background. I love how you explore how it basically flattened human nuance into binary approval, like or not like. What would you say your takeaway as you wrote the book are some of the broader consequences of this binary outcome?

Martin Reeves: Well, the actual story like, why the thumbs up and who invented the Like button is fascinating enough. Then what does it tell us about the nature of inventions like a second layer. The surface story is essentially, that it’s very hard to say, even after three years of research who invented the Like button because a whole community of pioneers and early Web 2.0 companies were looking at similar challenges at roughly the same time, and they all had different versions of things that contributed to the Like button. The essential problem was that in the nuclear winter following the dot com bust, this idea of Web 2.0 emerged, but there are a couple of problems with Web 2.0, the idea of the web where users generate the content. One of them principally being that the users were not generating any content. That was one problem to solve. The second problem to solve was that this was pre broadband. This is around the year 2000, this was pre broadband. Anything you did to communicate with anyone, like displaying a Like button or whatever, would likely trigger a page refresh.

The last thing you wanted to do in a conversation was trigger a page refresh because you would lose 20 seconds. You’d probably lose whatever person was doing, what they were doing on your website. That was a technical problem, and many businesses were facing different versions of this. Bob Goodson was one of the people that came up with this dated sketch of the Like button. The problem he was trying to solve as the employee number 1 of Yelp was that the people were not submitting restaurant reviews for Yelp’s business model. They didn’t have a lot of money. It was a start-up. What other currency? There’s a currency of recognition. What happens if we allow people to complement the reviews of others? But you couldn’t trigger a page refresh. The answer was, do the computation locally in the browser in JavaScript. But that was not why JavaScript was designed. This was like an unintended feature of JavaScript. Then other people were doing at the same time, like I’m not sure whether you remember a site called Hot or Not or rather salacious site voted on the appearance of your colleagues and your friends. It was a voting. Voting is the same problem which is, how do I display my vote? How do I vote on things and how do I get a counter on my vote and page refresh the same problem. Community of people innovated. Why the thumbs up gesture? That’s also pretty interesting. I presume you’re both American. Ask anyone American, what is the very origin of the Like button? They’re likely to say the colosseum of ancient Rome, where people voted on the fate of the fallen gladiators.

The reason that they think that that is the case is that there was a famous painting in 1870 that was very popular with the rising American middle class that displayed the vestal virgins in the colosseum giving the thumbs down gesture. But we know for a fact that this was not what the Romans did. The Romans probably did more something like the sheath thumb and the downward pointing thumb. But for dramatic effect, this French painter actually had these gestures, and then it became a linguistic fact. In fact, it was reinforced in the very year that Bob drew his sketch by the gladiator movie, Gladiator I, which Ridley Scott originally intended to turn down because he didn’t want to do what he called a sandals and toga movie. [laughs] But he was shown the very same painting that created this myth of the Romans did this and this and he was persuaded by the drama of the painting to actually make the movie. The cultural history of the Like button is also interesting. That, if you like, is some of the story of how did the Like button come about? But I think it tells us a lot also about how does innovation really work out? Does technological innovation really work?

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Andy Cross: Well, Martin, not just innovation, but creativity, just the simple design of thumbs up or thumbs down has had really second order effects in lots of different ways. When you look at the arc of history of the Like button, the extent of that, does it surprise you the second order effects of such a simple design?

Martin Reeves: Yeah, and I’ve delved into why was that the case? What are the effects of this little invention, the Like button? It’s spread like wildfire. Nobody spent a penny on promoting it. We never needed an instruction manual. It just took off. It became a universal, you could call it, linguistic standard for the Web 2.0. It spread well beyond social media. Now every shopping site every B2B site, FedEx and customer analytics, your Netflix movies, everybody.

Andy Cross: The Motley Fool, we have a button on our sites.

Martin Reeves: You have a button? No if you look really hard, you can find some people have a heart or some people have a thumbs down but, but basically, the de facto standard globally is the thumbs up. What does it tell us about these things? It tells us a number of things, I think. I’m not sure how you were educated, but at my school, when we studied science, I heard heroic stories of individual creative geniuses like Sir Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone and Sir Humphry Davy and the miner safety lamp with great foresight in a moment, a flash of inspiration inventing something. One moment we didn’t have the thing they invented, and then the next moment we had the blueprint for the invention that would solve some major social problem. It tells us that, actually, innovation is not generally like that. Because this was absolutely a community of innovators and there’s good science that shows that this is the norm rather than the exception. Also, I interviewed all of these people, or my co author, Bob did, and one characteristic of all of these pioneering interviews is that not a single one of these pioneers of the Like button actually had any great foresight over the eventual impact of the Like button. In fact, something really strange happened when we tried to talk to these pioneers about the Like button.

They’d say what day are you talking about? Because there was not such a thing in their minds as the afternoon when they invented the Like button. How they thought about this was that particular day, I was just trying to solve a tactical challenge, just like every other day. It just so happened that this tactical challenge I solved may have contributed to something bigger. Absolutely, no one would say this will create the monetization model for the social media industry. This will create enormous social side effects. This will change how we interact. We only came across one person and we looked very hard that had the foresight of the end state, and it was not a technologist. Can you guess who it was? It was a science fiction author, Gary Steiner. Gary Steiner at the very beginning of the social media revolution, was writing a novel called The True Sad Love Story. That’s a great science fiction novel, and he foresaw how all of this would play out. We asked him how he could possibly do that. It turns out that he was asking a different question. The technologists were basically asking, how do I solve my tactical problem, or what can the technology do? He asked a different question. He said, well, assuming this thing, the Like button does what it’s purported to do, what will humans do with it? Of course, the answer, using his knowledge of humanity was, they’ll lie with it, they’ll steal with it, they’ll beg, steal, borrow, imitate, flatter. They will do all of the human things. If you factor that into the equation, you can see dimly then what might become of this. You might have this world where people are evaluating other over the social web, where kids are spending too much time on screens, where there’s this strange virtualization of reality, people prefer to comment on a video of a steak and a glass of wine rather than actually consume a physical one, and he foresaw all of that.

But he was the only person, not any of the technologists. The other big thing about the Like button is that there was an interesting philosophy going on, which was a bit unconventional. A book was published in 2000 that was very influential in Silicon Valley called Don’t Make Me Think. The idea was that if you have something innovative, do not make it look new. Do not talk about the Wiz Bang features, reduce friction, make it seem ordinary. What’s more ordinary than the thumbs up gesture? I don’t need to know about the JavaScript code or the advanced functionality. It’s like, great I can already do it. This became quite an influential philosophy, and I think it applies to the Apple Watch, if you think about it. The Apple Watch is not a watch. But by making it seem like a watch, it’s like, it’s no big deal. I’ll buy one of those. If I said, would you like to buy an advanced supercomputer on your wrist with extremely interesting programming, you’d probably say, well, I don’t think I understand that.

Andy Cross: The same with our phones, I think, too. I was like, when are we going to stop calling our phones, actual phones considering the amount of time we talk on them, compared to the amount of times we hold them or I don’t know, 1%?

Martin Reeves: Well, it’s a really important issue for innovators, I think. I talk about this in one of my other books, The Imagination Machine. There is a critical moment when I call it the moment when a thing becomes a thing, the thing that didn’t have a name gets a name, the fax machine, the Apple Watch. I think you have three ways you can go in how you name things, and I think it’s very strategic how successful the invention is going to be. One of them is you can emphasize familiarity. You can say it’s not new, it’s just a watch. Or you can go functional. You can say, you will never guess what this thing is, this fax machine thing. I’m going to actually describe in the name. I call it a facsimile machine. Creates facsimiles of pieces of paper. I said, now I know what it does. Or you can go overboard in emphasizing novelty. Think about the French connection T shirt, the FCUK T shirt. You do the double take you think you read an obscene word, and there’s absolutely nothing new about a T shirt. But it grabs the attention to call it FCUK. Under what circumstances would you use one of these philosophies rather than another? That’s a really important decision. In the case of the Like button, the important thing was that it was familiar. It was quickly adoptable. It became a human linguistic currency. Compliments were given, compliments were received, and this enabled the social net. That probably didn’t even feel like a decision at the time, not an explicit decision to the innovators, but that’s what was going on.

Andy Cross: It’s interesting when you talk about how, like there was no Eureka moment where they said, that was the day I worked on the Like button. It’s like a rock band when they’re arguing should this song be on the album or not? Then it turns out, they throw it on at somebody’s insistence, and it becomes like a smash number 1 hit. They were like, really? That was the number 1 hit? It sounds a little bit like that when you describe the genesis of it. I have to ask the question. Is it possible to try to foresee that next Like button that has just such a huge impact, or is that just too good?

Martin Reeves: I’ve actually done some serious mathematical work with the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences on what I call the mathematical signature or serendipity. What is it? Is it randomness? Is it a pattern that is predictable, is it a pattern that we can understand but not predict? It seems to be a pattern that we can’t predict. It’s not randomness. If you look at how fields evolve in terms of innovations, and you can apply this to anything. You can apply this to jazz bands. What are the composition of successful rock and jazz bands? You can apply it to films. You can apply it to recipes. You can apply it to software stacks. We’ve done all of that, and it looks like innovation is mostly the recombination of existing elements. Some of those combinations turn out to have incredible utility, and some of them don’t it’s very hard to predict. We can’t predict it, I’d say, in general. But we can adopt the right mental model. If you say, I’d buy it basically, innovation is serendipitous. What can you do to promote serendipity? Serendipity is the technical definition is unanticipated favorable outcomes, unpredictable favorable outcomes. Well, you can increase the number of collisions which is the more recombinations you’ve done, the more shots on goal, the more likely one of them have a probability of going into the goal.

The trouble is that’s normally expensive. The second thing you can do is you can reduce the costs of playing around with ideas. Lego, the toy company has a philosophy of learning through play. It applies surely to its toys and its child customers or users, but it also applies actually to the management model. The idea is continuously experiment and informal experiment and discover new combinations. A third thing you can do is to go external. Is it more likely that you will invent something inside a company or outside a company? The famous Andy Grove quote, I think it was Andy Grove, wasn’t it, that said that, like most of the smart people are out there, not in here. The like story basically is a story of parallel loosely connected community of innovation. If you were entirely introverted as a company, you wouldn’t be accessing that you might call it collective intelligence. But you can do things like acqui-hire. You can look at who’s doing what, and you can hire them. There’s a lot of that going on right now with AI and the big AI players. They’re trying to steal the people with the ideas and the abilities. You can be very mentally flexible. Often the famous psychology experiment where somebody in like a gorilla suit runs across a basketball court, and because people are not expecting it, they actually don’t see it. We see what we expect to see. Some companies actually train their executives in close observation, the idea of thinking more like a novelist than an accountant to actually observe the details, because by definition, these unusual recombinations that turn out to be hit products, they’re an anomaly, they’re the needle in the haystack. Your mind has to be primed to, we may not have the best thing forever. There may be a needle in a haystack. You looking for pattern breaking and this is supported by psychological research that basically says that the human imagination is triggered by pattern breaking, by surprise. We’re extremely good at exception detection. We need to surprise ourselves, and the sure way of avoiding surprising yourself is not to look out the window to be entirely introverted, which is, by the way, what many large corporations are. They’re basically looking internally.

Mac Greer: That was Martin Reeves. The book is, Like The Button that Changed the World. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don’t buy or sell stock based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For the Motley Fool Money Team, I’m Mac Greer. Thanks for listening, and we will see you tomorrow.