My guest on today’s podcast is my friend Joe Greenstein. Joe’s latest creation, InnerSpace, focuses on teaching founders of startups how to take care of themselves and how to build cultures in line with their passions and products. Joe’s career history seems to align perfectly with what he is creating now. He had an entrepreneurial mindset as early as high school, and while in college a paper he wrote turned into a joint business venture with his professor at the time. His early attempts at the next big thing caught the public’s interest, but never showed the promise of longevity. It wasn’t until he created Flixster and acquired Rotten Tomatoes, with his friend and business partner, that he started to move the needle towards financial prosperity. While he is happy to have experienced the chaos of Silicon Valley during his start-up experience and the ultimate sale of his company to Warner Brothers, he is passionate about the work he and his team are doing at InnerSpace, and also about his new adventure of fatherhood.

 

Key Takeaways:

[3:00] What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work mean to Joe?

[7:57] Not all of Joe’s entrepreneurial ventures were financially successful, but his ideas were always sound.

[15:00] The business world is so disconnected from what happens in education.

[19:06] Joe had an idea to create a site to share movie reviews, called Whosawwhat.com.

[27:27] Rotten Tomatoes was buried under corporate bureaucracy at the time Flixster acquired it.

[29:53] Joe explains the emotional impact of selling a company he built from scratch.

[33:27] The downsides of getting caught in the web of inauthenticity.

[40:39] Joe left Flixster to experiment with what he wanted to do with his life, which turned into Inner Space.

[44:39] The same organizations entrepreneurs create to serve them, often become enemies of their well-being.

[46:44] Success is being loving and joyful.

 

Resources:

Mike Robbins Website

Mike Robbins Podcast

Mike Robbins on Facebook

Mike Robbins on Twitter

Inner Space