Sean: You mentioned the second pillar of your book is vision. I'm sure that the four pillars are interconnected together. I want to go deeper, dive into vision. Why is vision so important? How does it relate to your company's culture? And as a founder, this is one of the things that just flies over the heads of founders, right?

We're just looking for the next meal. Vision is not something that we're thinking about. If you ask a new CEO founder, He would probably say, oh, the vision is to close more deals. The vision is to make more sales. The vision is to not go bankrupt. So why is vision so important and what kind of vision are we talking about here?

Tom: Well, look, you know, vision is, yeah. If somebody tells you a vision is not to go broke, then you probably will go broke. You look, vision is your long-term "why”. Why do you want to do this? Right? And there's some great examples out there, and there's some terrible examples out there. And if you steer away from your vision maybe 15, 20, 25 years down the road like for example, Coda.

All of a sudden you're out of business because you lost the vision of where you want to be and why you want to do it. So great companies have visions that don't really change over time. So the one I use all in one, I like to use as an example is Coca-Cola and I have to be careful because some people make a distinction between what is a mission statement and what is a vision?

I try not to get too technical on that. I say, look, you're going to have a statement that defines your future, and then, so your long-term future. And it doesn't change in two years. It doesn't change in five years. It doesn't change in 20 years. So Coca-Cola is "we refresh the world." If you pick up a annual statement from 50 years ago, they'll say the same thing.

So it's really, really important because if you have a simple vision statement and I emphasize a simple and clear vision statement, your employees can buy into that, your suppliers can buy into that, your customers can buy into that. Everybody kind of understands it and say, okay, that makes sense. I'm on board or I'm not on board, you know, either way.

But I can tell you, you know, Coca Cola, if you go ever go into a boardroom and say, yeah, I got this great new product that I think we should do. And it's not refreshing. They'll probably chase you out. Right? So it's all about refreshment and, it's all about global distribution, global implications. You know, if you look at a can of Coca Cola, it doesn't matter if you're in Singapore. If you're in Saudi Arabia in Dubai, if you're in Kiev Ukraine, if you're in, you know, Chicago, it's, it looks the same.

And if you crank it open, it's going to taste the same. Right? It's refreshing. That's what they're all about. And when Elon Musk, colonizes, Mars, I guarantee you Coca-Cola is going to be up there, right? It goes it's. Now we refresh the world. What's the definition of world. Well, right now it's earth, but Hey, when we are

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