-- we have three

very distinguished authors writing about big business. they are experts and i'm ford burkart with a silenced cell phone.

i hope you have the same. i have only had three sessions with phones that went off in the middle of sessions. how about you? first is mike evans, in the middle. his book is called "hangry" and that is a word you knew before you wrote the book. you said it -- >> i think everyone has felt it. [laughter] dinner is an hour and a half late. >> you didn't make up the word. it was around in your georgia days? >> that's right. >> i accused him of using an informal word in his book so he could sell it to ordinary folks in north carolina. it is about starting the powerhouse, grubhub, on his own nickel.

from just a few hundred dollars of his own, it was worth $2 billion and a lot more. he was soon at the very top of the food delivery business. he has degrees from the university of chicago -- >> m.i.t. just m.i.t. >> he's also a heck writer. his book is called "hangry" and that's a clue -- he told us his journey that he did after he sold grubhub was from the atlantic to the pacific, every inch of it. took him weeks, months. >> three months by bike.

>> it is a dramatic personal journey which makes this wonderful story about technology and resourcefulness and resilience. it is a really good raid. he is now starting a new venture called fixer.com. i hope you will tell us about that as the day goes along. our second author is jamie fiore higgins. her book is bully market. it takes us inside goldman sachs, one of the top three or four banks in the world and document its mistreatment of women and workers generally. jamie from goldman, as she was known. lives in new jersey with her husband and four children.

she coaches leadership skills, high school and college graduates getting into new careers and professionals entering the workforce. bully more -- bully market, my story of money and misogyny at goldman sachs, published by simon & schuster, last august. just an aside, if you have a daughter granddaughter, niece who is graduating from college and thinking about success on wall street, give her this book. as a roadmap and warning of the dangers in the road. third is eric conway, noted historian of science and technology. he works for the california institute of technology or caltech. something new for our audience today, he has just told me he

served as an enlisted man in the navy and rose to be an officer in the navy. to me, that says he is a smart maverick in his book says that as well. his new -- new book is the big myth -- how american business taught us to loathe government and love the free market. it is just out a few weeks ago. 550 pages -- it is a piece of history that is one of the most formidable pieces of research and writing i've seen and i was at the university here. i asked if he is the top author writing about the big myth -- the big myth is the belief business knows everything, they can just get on the way and let them solve global warming and

covid and they will just take care of it. sure they will. he said i don't know if i am the number one. i said it is the biggest book on the big myth. that is partly because there has been a lot more history. that's what the book is all about. one thing about you, your big adventure, you have managed to convince your wife to do a book tour across austria. the urge to make dramatic and wonderful journeys continues. before i move on to my other questions, i want to say the authors will proceed to a sale and signing area on the mall.

it's out the door, turn right, head south and look for the ua bookstore tent and that will be it and we will all go home happy. eric, i would like to aim a question to you. mike was kind enough to send me a starter question for his other two options. in his book, there's a strong criticism of capitalism gone rampant in a way that hurts individuals at scale. if it isn't the invisible hand of the market, what elements need to come together for a business to be a force for good?

eric, then jamie, then mike. >> that's a rough question for a historian because our job is to fundamentally explain how the world got to be the way it is and not so much telling how to fix it. and yet, we get asked this kind of futurist question all the time. what are actors did fundamentally was figure out how to change the way americans thought about the relationship between business and government and the market. through very long term strategic use of propaganda of a particular distorted and select form in order to convince americans that the government was bad, even though the government is us and in

democratic society, we choose the government, at least that is the idea. we had to explain how did it come to be when someone he americans understand the state is the enemy? how to fix it, there is this propaganda machine out there and inoculate yourself against it by reading our book and others. so you are not part of that problem and in that way, especially if people read the book and take this lesson out of it, we can return to a form of capitalism like we used to have that had more community spirit by business in which businesses saw it as part of their function to build in their community and reinvest in their community and you can get to a fairer, friendlier version of capitalism

. part of what we do is suggest to you europeans have a different form of capitalism. we almost all have great order -- greater social protections and labor protections and yet are still capitalistic and so, we will be branded as socialists and communists talking about our book, but we are not. we are pointing out there are lots of varieties of capitalism. we understand you can make a better capitalism than the one we have had today. >> let me go to jamie. what has to happen to make a business more than a profitable entity to be an actual force for good? >> when i think about the big business i worked at, goldman sachs, they do a lot of things

that are very philanthropic in terms of a sense of community, they have a huge philanthropic office to donate loads and loads of money, but the rabbit is it's not going on within the four walls. this great tagline at the top of the organization, how things get lost in translation. the c suite does all the right things about hiring people of diverse backgrounds, but yes, the actual day today is really structured that only the typical cis white man can be successful. from the outside, look at all the good they are doing. on the inside, although you are paid well, it cost you a lot personally.

>> in the book, i talk about what it is like to make an app in the app gets bigger, like very big, really scaled out of my wildest dreams. not to have to much of a spoiler but one of the conclusions i come to in the end is to be a force for good, businesses need to have intentionality built into their dna from the very beginning. in the years since grubhub, since i started my new company, i've gotten involved with impact investing. it is those businesses where the profit they create and social benefit they create cannot be divorced. for example, in the company i recently started, it is five years ago now, it is an on-demand, in person service

with a full-time workforce and benefits. it is so hard to find any person, so what if we just trained people from scratch? our competitive differentiator and training, creating a gender inclusive packed, they are the same thing and cannot be divorced. there's no way for our business to grow unless we train tradespeople. those kinds of business are emerging as ever more successful and everything from the venture capital to private equity all the way through esg investing in public markets, there is a hunger for businesses like this, even from the investment side from the societal need perspective. >> i want to say i love what you are saying about intentionality. i think that is the big difference -- from my experience, you say the right thing but there's not really an

intention action to bring it forth. that is the key to get all these goals and marry them with clear, actionable steps. so what they espouse to be becomes what they really are. >> quick question -- you train people pre-well to be on the job strike -- on the jobsite. my wife is out there hoping you will tell me something about not getting on a ladder at age 81. >> we do very thorough training and people would be shocked to learn how much training we do on ladders. ladders are the number one cause of injury in the workplace, so a 10 foot long lever arm, you can tear a rotator cuff, there are all kinds of things you can do with ladders, so yes, we have substantial training material on ladders if you would like to engage. >> no dangerous ladders.

i thought about your company and picked up the phone. what is it going to take to get your company into new cities? >> we are in phoenix now. seattle, denver -- do you have to get some management people? how do you branch out? >> we have cities in our experience willing to train and mentor new candidates. >> my wife threw in a question and said what was the secret sauce -- her father was in the food business in chicago and a lot of people failed. what was the secret sauce and why was it you that was going to

make history? >> at first, when i started, it turns out calling on the phone is terrible. nobody agreed with me. everybody is like i don't see the big problem until you realize you get put on hold, they take your credit card information and they might write something down wrong, the food shows up wrong, there is no audible history of what was ordered, there's all sorts of challenges ordering by phone. so we shifted from ordering by phone to ordering by computer and when smartphones went out, we went back to the phone, but not with the phone app. ultimately, when it came down to was restaurants create a certain level of quality and convenience on top of just going to a grocery store. so we had to do that for restaurants. we had to highlight the most

effective, the best tasting. it just came about investing in customer service. there is a big anecdote about this in the book -- it means removing the problems before there are problems, making sure the ties coffee is not high iced tea, solving that problem before it is a problem. it is a dogged focused effort on making sure the right food got there on time no matter what. that is why we became the largest delivery app. >> jamie, what is your answer? why me when so many people go to wall street and hit the rocks? >> in truth, a lot of my peers in the business experience this type of harassment, intimidation

and bullying. a lot of times, they make complaints, they get fired, they get a package or they see you and get a package and with that package comes a nondisclosure agreement. a lot of the people i'm representing, and i know i am representing them because i've heard from hundreds, have signed and nda and are not able to speak. i didn't get any goodies but i got the ability to write the book. i know i'm the only one talking but i'm not the only one with something to say. >> it really is a heck book. it is for very interesting books wrapped together. it makes a good read. it would make a good movie. >> from your lips.

>> number one, how it is a bright woman climb the wall street letter. how do you save a marriage and her huge stress -- it is inevitable and it wall street and how do you confront mean, nasty coworkers and win? and finally how do you honor an immigrant family to whom you owe a lot for getting you up to the door of goldman sachs? my book three idea -- how do you win the game against those sop's. i was in new york seven years with associated press and i saw a few. a lot of them. i was at the new york times for 11 years and they are very, very nice to you at the new york times while you exchange smiles but then something else happens.

how did you win that game against those mean, nasty coworkers? you were one of the few women to be the managing director. of the goldman sachs top five banks in the world. i have to add before i forget that jamie was ranked -- this year or last year -- ranked one of the 25 most influential women in the world. [applause] >> i think you might be my number one fan. my husband is in the audience. >> i kind of like the book. >> to enter the question how did i win, i think back to how i got my first job offer at goldman

sachs at 22. i wanted to make my family so proud. my parents grew up in poverty, they didn't even have plumbing. so to get a job at this place, i will never forget what my grandmother said. she said i know you are going to go there and make a lot of money, but what is it going to cost you? it was an interesting comment from my grandmother who was one of my best friends. the answer is i did win, but it cost me a lot. i would like to say i had an incredibly amazing work ethic. i had a good head for numbers. i had a great rapport with my clients but i also kept my mouth shut a lot and looks the other way and that i am not proud of.

so yes, i was successful but what it cost me was almost everything. it was my family, it was my marriage and, to your point, a lot of people have careers on wall street but it is really hard to walk out of that without being completely unscathed. >> we will get to your questions and just a couple of minutes. can we switch to the big broad brush question from the individual questions? why did it take everybody including business and the government so long to respond to climate change? eric's book suggests we are losing the tools we need to take on problems like climate change. your book may explain this to an

extent. the big myth the private sector is going to take care of it, let's leave it to them. why is it taking so long for the government and business to respond to change? >> in our first book, we chased down the story to those who spent their entire careers casting doubt on various kinds of sciences environmental damages, acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change. what we concluded and that gives they are market fundamentalists. they believe in the idea markets had to be free, otherwise america was on this slippery slope of totalitarianism and communism. the big myth is almost part two to that. we decided to trace down the

myth and tell the story of where that belief system came from. we start with the opposition to child labor laws and work with safety rules. we follow the story as one of the leading formulators against this idea of market fundamentalism. the national association of manufacturers begins a propaganda campaign in the 1930's. in order to forestall federal regulation. they lose and keep losing a long time but one of the things they learn out of world war ii -- our book was too short -- they learned the power of propaganda during world war ii. the roosevelt administration built an enormous engine of public propaganda and they came to realize what marketing experts would begin to

understand, you don't just have to sell specific products. the idea of marketing isn't even necessary about selling or whatever but the idea of capitalism itself, a particular brand of free-market capitalism. they begin investing after the war in a widespread propaganda apparatus, think tanks attempting to sway universities by lobbying trustees and remove books that they were disagreeable with. and economists whose economic textbook gets removed in favor of a more free-market friendly one. that, over the long stretch we covered begins shifting american culture itself because not just in marketing on radio, here in the university curriculum, we talk about that. they hear it from their churches

because there's a deliberate effort to bring aboard the seminaries and embed free-market principles, so we all hear from the public on sundays. americans are slowly, over time, we have our whole mindset shifted toward this idea that is a construct, markets should be free of government intervention, when in reality, humans have always had markets. unlike squirrels and birds and so forth, we make markets ourselves. they are social constructs, they always have regulators, whether the government were the guys that break your knees if you don't pay up. the whole notion government shouldn't regulate when government makes the markets to begin with is an absurdity. in our opinion. and yet, huge numbers of our fellow americans believe markets

are somehow states of nature and should be independent of us and they can never be. so they are saying we are losing the tools to combat climate change and i would say no, markets are a powerful tool for that but markets have to be altered in order to have that desired respect and have to be altered by public policy because it is policy that creates and shapes markets. an interesting take. just what i was hoping you would go into. this is a whale of a book. this is why i was a history major and this is one of the grandest histories i've ever read through all these decades. it is more exciting than the godfather, which we just watched a little bit ago. why would i say that? it has a lot in common with the godfather because this really

happened. it wasn't just a movie and it is still shaping our lives and our politics, sometimes for good, often for harm. for everybody, let me ask a general question -- what should big business be doing now to make a truly better world and in the marketplace on wall street, can you do good while doing really well? isn't business all about its own profits? everybody want to take one sentence? [laughter] i have to get to their questions. anyone want to tackle that? what is the main tool big business should be employing? >> from my perspective, i wish

goldman sachs and other firms like that had a yes and approach to their business. yes, we want innovative thought leaders and we want these people. so i feel like at goldman, it was not a yes and and a lot of bad actors were considered thought leaders and really strategic that their bad behavior was tolerated. there were so money smart, innovative people in this world who were decent humans. i feel like business should not only think about the work they do in terms of bottom-line but look at the character of people. that was longer than one line. >> that was terrific. >> two playoff eric's title, the big myth, what was the biggest myth you confronted at goldman sachs as a brand-new employee?

secondly, what were you led to believe that turned out to be untrue? >> the big myth at goldman sachs is that it was a meritocracy and people were going to do well. when i was interviewed at goldman sachs, their tagline was mind light -- mind wide open. bring anybody, any background, all are welcome. to me, in order to succeed, it was about assimilation, fitting in and toeing the party line. how do they do that at goldman sachs? they do it through money, power and influence. paydays and emotions were dangled in front of me in payment for my silence, whether i was assaulted by a colleague and pinned against the wall by my throat and advised not to report it and i'm embarrassed to say i didn't.

when i witnessed the mistreatment of others, time and time again, i ignored it. i became part of this culture that observed havey or, ignored it, normalized it and that behavior got escalated. to me, that was the biggest myth -- your individual qualities were going to be celebrated and that's how you are going to get motored when it was just a big group think tank. >> today, how many years out of goldman sachs now? x six. >> do you give goldman sachs higher marks today? >> i like to think my assault would not be tolerated today. i like to think that guy would have been escorted out the door. spoiler alert -- that guy is still doing very well on wall street. i think companies in the wake of social justice movements have gotten better keeping this behavior under wraps.

i feel like the death of the woman on wall street or anyone made to feel other in that predominantly white male environment, i think there is a death of careers happening, but it is the death by paper cuts rather than death by force trauma. after i wrote my book, i received hundreds of messages, personal messages. no one does a big facebook or instagram post to tell me this is very much going on. >> let's change gears a little bit. there's so much material in these books. mike, how do you sell a service or anything? your book suggests get them hooked, make a pitch, tell them what you told them, don't forget step 4 -- writing a check.

for anybody thinking about starting a business, how do you do it? >> there are three steps. they are listen, that is the first one. share how you listen, then solve them, those three things. most people start at just telling people what they can do. or they skip step three and don't ask for the money, which just makes it a friendly chat. i share in the book there is an anecdote of two different investment banks that come and pitch us during the bake-off, which is the term for when they are trying to convince you. goldman came and told us how great they were. then city came and they told us

how great we were and we picked city because they took a second to figure out who we were and took videos of our restaurants and the chief banker, the managing director said to me i rarely met a company where the companies just love them so much. you kept restaurants busy during the downturn. i believed him. i believe he did the research. the book is not a how to, it is more about if there is a theme in it. there are probably a few themes. one of the themes is the idea that go to stanford, get an nba, right a business plan, get millions of dollars from venture capitalists, skip a couple of years and you are a billionaire. very few people have access and even once you have access, it

doesn't work out. ultimately, starting a business is about saying the world is wrong in some way. nobody else can see, but i can see it. it takes an incredible amount of arrogance and you have to have the humility to listen to your customers and adapt and the areas of humility don't play well. some of it was going along and some of it was learning. you cannot sell anyone, restaurant or company about to go through an ipo unless you start with listing. >> one more for you -- one of the great scenes in the book resonated with my life, when i was told that articulate and forceful people that you are full of it and we need people who are smart and right and

correct to tell us that. that has happened a number of times. there was a chicago professor in your book -- you took a plan to him and he said this product is pure crab. -- pure crap. the next day you came back and had a brand-new pitch -- maybe it took a couple of days but i remember the story -- you came back with a better version from day one. what was wrong the first time and what was -- what did you take away from that experience? >> i've had the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes. everything from when i was first signing up a great pizza restaurant and the owner was

telling me you sure talk fast. i didn't start with the learning. i didn't go to the university of charlotte, my business partner did. we entered this competition and the professor told me you have 28 pages for a 10 minute presentation. cut out 90% of it. all the way through the day without telling anyone, i changed the default tip percentages for delivery drivers on my own and my software developer locked me out of the system the next morning, which is an infuriating moment in the book. but he was right, not because he was wrong. just starting something new, creating something from nothing takes a weird mix of arrogance and humility where you say that

you can change the world, no one else has done it but you have to adapt and listen and learn and not go in every day with a cup full. you have to be willing to learn and take these things on. there is a lot of the book where i'm making mistakes and figuring it out as i go along. hopefully someone will read it and skip some of the mistakes. >> can you remember a moment when you proudly took your proposal and you thought it was really great. they said this is junk. they said come back with something better and it was beneficial to you. >> obviously i am talking about what happened at goldman in a negative way. there were a lot of opportunities to learn and grow. what i did was in sales and you try your best. but another way you are

successful is having that resilience to say if things aren't working out, what can i do to better and improve. the people at goldman sachs are second to none in terms of their creativity and intelligence and helped me continue to improve what i'm able to offer my clients. >> either mike or jamie, was there an aha moment when you saw clearly what success requires in america and how you have to innovate and what you do on days when it's not always pretty, can you give us an actual example? >> being successful takes tenacity and being willing to quit things. i can think of an example off the top of my head which was when the company was doing

really well and yet we were getting pressure from investors who grow even faster. and it this time, we were doubling every year which is quite fast. we were trying to figure out how to go faster and said we are going to add take out in addition to delivery so you can skip the line. immediately, our sales team started selling to take out only restaurants. that wasn't our brand and not what we did. so we had to stop it dead in its tracks after spending a lot of energy and time and dollars making it work. that was an aha moment to me. everybody and life needs to have the tenacity to knock through borders and barriers that be willing to abandon something and not just keep at it simply because you have been doing it for a long time. the take-out example was the big aha moment for me.

>> anything to add? >> it rings true to me in a different way. it was hard to walk away from goldman sachs when i knew things were not working personally because i was susceptible to the lie goldman told me that said you are nothing but a little bit of arrogance. you are nothing without goldman sachs. we can replace you at any minute and you will never make a dime outside these walls. i actually believed it, i was nothing without their name, nothing without their money. so yes, i can see how when i should have walked away, it was years and years before i did. i see that clearly. >> another stunning point in your book -- you took a year and

bonus in 2003 of $11,000, which is a tiny amount of money but it was important to you. plus an $11,000 bonus from your friend. you were amazed, right? >> i'm still a little shocked. like are you seeing this? i knew i was onto something. there was a restaurant called pete pizza and just before the housing crisis in late 2006, we send them over a million dollars in pizza orders. that was one restaurant and i was like this is going to be really big. at that point, i realized i had a tiger by the tail.

my passion, one type paid off my student at, which is what i was trying to do, my passion became helping independent restaurants succeed in drive. it worked. we kept restaurants in