Letter #89: Ian McKinnon (2018)
Founder of Sandia Holdings, Founding Partner of TEAM8, and MP at ZBI | University of New Mexico Commencement Speech
Today’s letter is a transcript of Ian McKinnon’s 2018 University of New Mexico commencement speech. In this speech, Ian shares his ties to New Mexico, two pieces of advice that are simple, easy to implement for great results, and subject to self-experimentation, and a story of and a lesson from one of his personal heroes.
Ian is the Founding Partner of Sandia Holdings and a founding partner of TEAM8, the sports management company that spearheaded the creation of the Laver Cup, and a Trustee and the Vice Chair of the Board of the Santa Fe Institute. Prior to founding Sandia, Ian spent ~20 years at Ziff Brothers Investments (ZBI) where he retired as a Managing Partner. He started his career with stints in banking and consulting at Merrill and Bain.
Relevant Resources:
Transcript
Thank you, President Stokes, for that very kind introduction. It's a real thrill to share the stage with you during your installation ceremony. I was never a good enough athlete to make it down to the floor of the pit. So It's really great and a thrill for me to be down here for this purpose. So to the members of the Class of 2018, congratulations.
It's such an honor to be here with you today. And let me say at the outset, I fully get that you aren't here to hear me speak. Instead, this day is all about you and your wonderful accomplishments. Therefore, I promise I won't take more than 15 minutes of your time. I'm even timing it on my iPhone. So let's dive right in.
As President Stokes said, I was born and raised here in Albuquerque, and I will always call New Mexico my home. I'm very proud of my New Mexico heritage. So it was only natural that I would name my firm after the Sandia Mountains. What I didn't understand though, was that almost everybody on the East Coast is incapable of pronouncing Sandia properly. Instead, they call it Sandia [son-dee-uh]. And I constantly have to correct them, and then explain to them that yes, it is, in fact true that they turn the color of watermelon at sunset. I also think I'm the only member of my business school graduating class that waved my New Mexico flag very proudly as I went up on stage, and I remember loving how that yellow Zias stood out amongst all the black gowns.
But perhaps the most important symbol of my new Mexican blood is this turquoise watch. This watch was presented to my grandfather, when he retired from the Lovelace Medical Center. And then he passed it on to my father, who wore very proudly, and my father gave it to me just before he died 15 years ago. I love this watch. And I only wear it on very, very special occasions now, such as when I have the immense honor of addressing 15,000 people in the pit. But every time I put it on, and I feel those turquoise stones on my skin, I get that jolt of New Mexico power. I know everyone here knows what I mean.
So while I didn't attend UNM, I consider myself an honorary Lobo. Since my wife Sonnet did, as did both of my parents, many of my cousins, and many, many dear friends, many of whom are in the audience today. My mother, in fact, received two degrees from UNM, and she's here watching. And my father received his undergraduate degree from here, and then loved coming back to the law school to preside over moot court competitions when he was a justice on the New Mexico Supreme Court. These are all really important connections to UNM.
But you still might be surprised to learn that we have a giant Lobo emblazoned on the center of the basketball court at our home in Greenwich, Connecticut. I'm not kidding. I also tried to have that ear splitting Lobo howl installed in the gym, but my wife wouldn't let me. And she was probably right. I have a license plate that says Lobos, I have a license plate that says a ABQ, so I hope I've established my credentials to be your graduation speaker here today.
So one of the worst things a graduation speaker can do is utter a litany of tired cliches and platitudes. So I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to give you two very specific pieces of advice, which you can put into action immediately if you choose to do so. And I've employed three criteria in trying to decide what the advice I wanted to give was. First, it had to be simple. Second, it had to promise really great benefits very quickly—in under two months. And third, you yourselves had to be able to test them—it had to be subject to self experimentation. This last point is crucial. You, all of you, you're a data point of one. Try these suggestions out and see if they work for you. If they don't, you can simply forget them. On the other hand, if you experiment, you might just stumble across new practices, which could be life changing.
Without further ado, let's get to it.
Here's my first recommendation: keep a gratitude journal.
What's a gratitude journal, you may ask. It's simply a place where you can keep a record of the people, places, things, for which you are grateful. You don't need to write in it all the time, one to three times a week is just fine. But when you do write, go into some level of detail. It can be about someone with whom you share an intimate bond, like a family member, or that high school teacher who exposed you to the indescribable beauty of Shakespeare for the first time. It doesn't really matter the who or the what, but it matters immensely that you actually take the time to write it down. This is because emerging findings in neuroscience suggest there is something profoundly important about the effect on our brains from taking the time to write about our feelings of gratitude.
I can't go into all the research today, but one study from the University of California at San Diego grabbed me, because it was perfectly consistent with the three criteria I laid out. It's simple to execute, very quick benefits, and you can test it very easily. So a group of 50 cardiology patients at UCSD's Center of Excellence for Research and Training were told to keep gratitude journals for two months. According to a Wall Street Journal summary article, some wrote only a few words, others wrote several pages a week. But everyone, everyone who kept a journal was less depressed, slept better, and had less inflammation than those who received the usual care but didn't keep a journal.
Even if you don't believe these findings, What do you have to lose from trying out this experiment for two months? It's especially important to try because research reveals we aren't very good at expressing gratitude.
A survey by the John Templeton Foundation found that only 52% of women and 44% of men express gratitude on a regular basis. And there was no note there about why the women do a lot better than the men in this, but it is what it is. Moreover, the author of the survey found that younger people—yep, like most of the people here today, express gratitude less often than any other group. So we have an especially at risk group in the audience.
It makes sense that we've been talking about gratitude today as happiness, its close cousin, is become a very hot topic. A course on happiness at Yale University is now the most popular course in the history of the university. I haven't yet had a chance to look at the course catalog, but I hope, and I expect, there is a section on keeping a gratitude journal.
I also have one additional tip to help you supercharge your two months of journaling. I don't want to overwhelm you, but this one is easy. And it will, I think, produce surprisingly great benefits for you.
I got the idea several months ago from Mo Gawdat, author of a wonderful new book, Solve for Happy. I emphatically recommend this book to you—Solve for Happy. Until very recently, Mo had what I think may be the best title I've ever heard of—Chief Business Officer at Google X. Pretty good. And I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with him right after he retired from Google.
One of his key recommendations, which I have already put into practice, goes perfectly with a gratitude journal. It's called a happy list. These are common experiences, such as a summer breeze, a doppio macchiato, that beautiful color of the Sandia Mountains at sunset, which bring you joy in the moment. Keep your list together with your gratitude journal and add to it as you experience these happy moments. It's like that spectacular union of hot fudge and vanilla ice cream—so much better together than apart.
Okay, so that's the first piece of advice, and we're right on time.
Piece of advice number two: reclaim your eyeballs from your smartphone.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. It's even up here, and I wouldn't consider doing without it. But It's time to talk turkey about how many of us are addicted to our smartphones, myself very much included. There are many estimates of American smartphone usage, but I'll use the lowest number of average daily usage I was able to find, which was based on data Apple itself collects. Based on the Apple data, the average American uses their smartphone 80 times a day. But I would bet a red chili enchilada from the shed that most of the graduates in this audience check their phones far more than 80 times a day.
So let's do a little math. Given that the average American sleeps about seven and a half hours a night, even using the low number of 80 implies that we are checking our phones about every 12 minutes when we are awake. Let that sink in. You may not realize it, but the first smartphone was launched when Apple did it in the Spring of 2007. It was only 11 years ago. And yet it's now become our constant companion, often for better, but sometimes for worse.
So be honest, don't you want to give yours a quick check right now? So maybe you think such rampant usage isn't that harmful, or that you can control yourself? But let me present little evidence, and I hope you'll at least agree with me that it's worth experimenting with reducing your usage.
One of the more alarming findings from researchers is that smartphones can adversely affect our cognitive abilities. Or, to quote the question posed by an article in Psychology Today, Are Smartphones Making Us Stupid? A comprehensive study from the Combs School of Business at the University of Texas on nearly 800 smartphone users gives a pretty disturbing answer to this question. Psychology Today provided a helpful summary of the two key experiments in the study, which I will quote here, but I encourage everyone who's interested, go online and read this in full, because the magnitude of the results is staggering.
So in the first experiment, the researchers asked all study participants to take a series of tests that required for concentration and gauged cognitive capacity while sitting at a desk. So think calculus test, reading comprehension, this kind of thing. Before the test began, all participants were instructed to put their phones in silent airplane mode. So they were being good—they turned them off, put them in airplane mode. Then, participants were randomly assigned to place their smartphones, either on the desk facedown in a pocket or personal bag, or, in another room. The researchers found that participants who left their phones in another room significantly outperform those with their phones anywhere physically close to them while taking the test. And remember, all these phones were turned off.
In the second experiment, the researchers found that participants who had been identified as extremely dependent on their smartphones, maybe that means they check 160 times a day, and found that they perform much worse on their tests than their less dependent peers. But the good news is, even for those that identified is especially dependent on their smartphones, if they put the phone in another room, their results were exactly the same as everyone else. So just when you were getting depressed, and now really, really want to check your phone, here's some great news. If you want to ace that test, or crush that assignment your boss has given to you, one of the easiest things you can do, is put your smartphone in another room. Talk about an easy experiment. You really don't have anything to lose by trying it.
So here are my two easy smartphone tips for you: put it in another room if you have to focus on a task, and turn off all notifications that aren't absolutely essential. This will allow you to begin the process of grabbing the upper hand with your smartphone. And I predict, you will find the productivity benefits to be extraordinary. I certainly have.
Now, if you want to push the smartphone experiment just one step further, here's the third tip. Put it away at meals. No more smartphones out at the restaurants. Have you ever noticed how many heads are buried in smartphones at restaurant tables? Think how sad this is. We're starting to lose the ability to look people in the eye without distraction and converse with them in total engagement with all the joy that such social interactions can engender. I can assure you, it's easier to do without the omnipresence of your phone.
Well, that's it for my two pieces of advice. I promised you they would be simple and straightforward, and I hope I've convinced you that you have nothing to lose by trying them out for two months.
As I close my comments, again, right on time, I want to recognize a hero of mine, my cousin, Frank Allen III, who grew up in the northwest valley of Albuquerque, about a mile from me. Frankie, as we all knew him, graduated magna cum laude from UNM in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in English.
Despite our relatively large age difference, I always looked up to him as a source of inspiration, as he embodied grace and class, a brilliant scholar and a varsity swimmer here at UNM. In his senior year, he was awarded perhaps the most prestigious scholarship in the world when he was named a Rhodes Scholar. He went to study at Oxford University, earning a degree in Oxford's famous program in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and serving as the captain of his swim team in all his spare time.
He then, tragically and inexplicably, was struck with a brain tumor and died when he was 32. I bring up Frankie not to dampen the marvelous spirit of joy today in the pit, but to affirm it. I hope, and I believe, that Frankie would be absolutely thrilled that I'm talking about him today, as he loved New Mexico and UNM to his core, I can feel his presence smiling upon each of you as you get ready for your next chapters. Frankie is a great reminder that we should all have heroes, whether they are family members, or people whom you meet along the path of life.
Cherish them when you find them. Take the time to heed their lessons. Follow their examples. Write about them in your gratitude journals. I've given you two pieces of advice today, but perhaps the most important message I wish to leave you with is the central lesson I learned from Frankie: the blessing of humility. Despite his absurd level of accomplishment and success, he never showed a shred of arrogance, and always took the time to help others.
Whenever I start to feel a little too proud about anything, I can feel him tapping on my shoulder, telling me to knock it off. So in the spirit of Frankie's humility, I'll conclude with the words of Columbian Nobel Laureate Gabriela Garcia Marquez: "I have learned that a person has the right and the obligation to look down on another person only, only when that person needs help to get up from the ground." Congratulation, UNM's class of 2018!
May you honor Frankie's legacy by always extending a helping hand to those who need it. May the Lord bless all of our graduates, and may the Lord bless the great state of New Mexico.
Wrap-up
If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or feedback, please drop me a line - I would love to chat! You can find me on twitter at @kevg1412 or my email at kevin@12mv2.com.
If you're a fan of business or technology in general, please check out some of my other projects!
Speedwell Research — Comprehensive research on great public companies including Copart, Constellation Software, Floor & Decor, Meta, RH, interesting new frameworks like the Consumer’s Hierarchy of Preferences (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and much more.
Cloud Valley — Easy to read, in-depth biographies that explore the defining moments, investments, and life decisions of investing, business, and tech legends like Dan Loeb, Bob Iger, Steve Jurvetson, and Cyan Banister.
DJY Research — Comprehensive research on publicly-traded Asian companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Nintendo, Sea Limited (FREE SAMPLE), Coupang (FREE SAMPLE), and more.
Compilations — “A national treasure — for every country.”
Memos — A selection of some of my favorite investor memos.
Bookshelves — Your favorite investors’/operators’ favorite books.
Just love what you are doing, thanks!