[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side by Side."

My guest today is a husband, a father, a lawyer, and an Eagle Scout who has been called a relentless giver by the Harvard Business Review.

He's a global CEO, recognized as one of the top authorities on leadership and success.

His best selling book titled "The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future" has the power to reinvent your life.

Today, you and I get to meet Skip Prichard.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Announcer] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at The Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

[energetic music] We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[energetic music] [uplifting music] ♪ - Skip, welcome to "Side by Side."

I'm fascinated by the title of your best-selling book.

It's titled "The Book Of Mistakes."

Why did you choose that title?

- "The Book Of Mistakes," and thank you for having me here, is really about looking at people's struggles.

We identify more, I think, with people's struggles than their successes.

I know I do.

I've always asked people, even growing up, "What'd you do wrong?

What didn't work?"

Because we often see all of this success.

we see it in Instagram, or we see the polished view of people and we don't see what it took to get there.

And that's the learning.

That's what you actually really can make a difference in terms of your life, your career, your business, whatever you're doing, I think is in the mistakes.

And plus I've made so many of 'em I thought I could be a master of writing "The Book of Mistakes," I'm an expert.

- You're an expert in the area, yeah.

I make the distinction between productive failures and non-productive successes.

And I think that's what you're saying.

We learn from our mistakes.

We don't replicate 'em.

We improve our way in life.

So are you suggesting therefore, in "The Book Of Mistakes," that there are a series of common mistakes that people commit?

Is that the premise?

- There are in fact, there's a lot of research, and one of the key points of the research is asking people that are dying, "What do you regret?"

And when you look at that, a lot of them say, "I wish I would've done this.

I wish I would've followed my dream."

And so the very first mistake is following someone else's dream instead of your own.

- I see.

Yeah.

So what do you suggest people do about that?

Is it about awareness?

Is it about wisdom?

Is it about relationships?

What is that about?

- Yes, it is.

It's all of those things.

It's really awakening to your purpose.

Why am I here?

What am I doing?

And we're happiest...

So we have to tune in when we find we're getting energy from something and you know the things that drain you, that's probably not your purpose.

You need to figure out how to outsource it, how to have somebody else do it.

Whereas your strength areas, the areas that give you energy, think about what your purpose is in that.

And then keep thinking bigger and bigger about your purpose, because that will inspire you to become more in order to achieve it.

- Well, what percentage of the population you think take a recess to assess things like that?

I mean, aren't most people so busily focused on earning a living, feeding their family, saving a few bucks for their retirement?

Do people have time to sit around and say, "What is my purpose?

Why am I here?

How can I improve my lot?"

- Well, we have the time often to watch TV or to binge watch Netflix or what have you.

And we often don't take time to assess our life and where we're going.

We will do it in our business.

We'll look at an annual business plan.

We'll do it in our lives, but it's very important for us to think about our purpose, where we're going, because that is really the rudder or the sail that will take you to where you want to go.

Otherwise, you're just gonna find yourself part of someone else's dream, swept in.

- And then you make bad choices and you have bad results and you lose the joy in your life and so on.

Give me another mistake, another common mistake that... - Oh, another common one is allowing other people to determine your value.

You know, you think about a nickel.

A nickel costs more than five cents to make, seven or eight cents to make it.

But why is it worth 5 cents?

Because that's the label we slap on it.

And so often in life, we allow other people to label us.

Might be in school when we're young, "Oh, you're not a speaker.

Oh, you don't know how to do mathematics."

Whatever that is, that gets into our head.

And we start to allow that to determine our value.

"Oh, you could never do that."

And the most successful people are people who take that and cast away some of those negative labels and instead think, "What am I?

Where am I going?

And I'm confident and I'm committed, and I'm entrepreneurial," or whatever it is.

And so relabeling yourself is very important because if you allow those labels to stick, we tend to remember the most negative labels.

I mean, that's what we do, right?

If you look at common- - Criticism hurts, right?

- Criticism hurts.

That's what we remember.

And we don't often think about the positive labels.

And so often you can uncover them, but people dismiss them.

But that one comment...

If your boss gives you a performance review, that one comment that's like, "You could improve on this or this," that's the one you remember.

You don't remember the 99 others that were just waxing eloquently about how great you were.

- So that's important because what?

It enhances one's confidence or detracts from it.

Is it about self-esteem?

Is it about pride?

Is it about an upward mobility in a job?

What is the outcome of doing that?

- Well, the outcome is our thoughts determine where we're going.

And so if my thoughts are around limiting labels and factors that say, "You can't do this.

You're not good at this," we tend to not try things.

We tend to just blend in.

And the most successful people work at standing out, not at blending in, and yet life teaches us to blend in.

Peer pressure, when we're young.

At work, what are the norms?

What is the culture?

And so the most successful people stand out.

Now, they don't stand out too far or else that will not work, but they really do stand out.

And one way to stand out is consistently performing with excellence.

You don't even have to be that high up over mediocre, but just a little bit better performance consistently, you'll become known as someone that is the go-to person that will get it done.

And that will change really every...

It's really a series of micro decisions and micro feelings and micro thoughts that really determine where you're headed.

- And that applies to any job, right, any function?

You could be an hourly worker.

You could be a CEO of a big corporation, right?

That's what you're saying.

You do what you gotta do and then some, stand out based on merit.

- Yeah, I started out working as a busboy in a restaurant.

I think I was too young to even legally work.

And because I was doing so much, the next thing you know, I'm doing more and I'm doing more and I'm doing more and worked there for years.

It doesn't matter where you start, but it does matter what you do.

And if you put in that little extra effort, it really does change the course.

- But, you know, Skip, in our society, we evaluate people based on function more often than we evaluate people based on their mental, intellectual, social needs and folkways.

Am I right on this?

We say, "This individual could you know, [indistinct] this benefit out of life.

They could get paid X dollars," but this job pays much less.

So people begin to see their value based on what society and employers, what categories that HR puts them in.

Where am I wrong?

- You're right.

That's one of the things about accepting a label from something else.

It may be the job.

- But how can you not accept a label if society says, "You are an entry level person.

You just graduated from college, et cetera"?

- Dream bigger.

It's not where you are.

It's not that box that you're in.

It's where am I going?

And do I believe it?

Do I have a plan for it?

Do I accept it?

Who am I around?

Another mistake is surrounding yourself with the wrong people.

And if you wanna change that box and change where you are, surround yourself with people who think bigger than you, Les Brown.

I love his quote.

He says, "If you run around with nine losers, soon you'll be the 10th loser."

So who am I around?

Because it's not about that label.

That's just temporary.

People that are very successful just think they're not defining that and saying, "I'm an entry level clerk."

They're just saying that may be what you're calling me now, but that's not who I am.

- I see, so you're talking about ambition and future view and the art of the possible, all those things.

You're a lawyer.

- Yes, I am.

- I don't meet many lawyers who talk about such, you know, life skills, right?

Lawyers tend to be more, how can I say what I need to say in 10 words in four pages?

- That's true.

[both laughing] - Where do they teach you that in law school?

That a lawyer has to write a long essay to say something maybe I could say in three lines, but the lawyer is the smarter one, right?

'Cause you're taking- - I don't know if that's true.

I think the genius is being able to communicate in a headline, not in a large text.

And in business, so I have this conflict because I've really been a leader of businesses for many, many years.

So it's very bottom line, very short thinking, quick.

Whereas lawyers do tend to be a little bit more verbose.

That is true.

- And Inc. Magazine put you in the top 100 leadership speakers, you speak around the world.

And what are some of your favorite topics to talk about?

Obviously "The Book of Mistakes" and the content therein.

But what else?

- I do talk a lot about mistakes, but servant leadership is a big area.

And then because of my background, the future of the library, the future of publishing.

- Yes.

- Books, et cetera.

That tends to be topics.

- You're running a large nonprofit now, which serves libraries all over the world.

I think it'd be fascinating to find out, what is that?

How does it work?

It is a technology-based company?

Is it not?

- It is.

It's called OCLC.

- [Nido] What does that stand for, OCLC?

- Well, now it just stands for OCLC.

It used to be- - Just O CLC?

You guys couldn't... that should be- - the Online Computer Library Center.

It was formed in 1967.

- I see.

- And it really was a visionary way for cloud-based data management at the time, before cloud exists, before collaboration at scale existed.

It said, how can we build data for the world's libraries so that when you get a new book in and you have all the data about that book, every library used to do that individually every time they got the book in.

- [Nido] I See.

- Now it's done once globally and the rest can kind of crowdsource and get in and change things, add things, et cetera.

So it's a database that really powers libraries.

- Sounds like Wikipedia in a sense.

- It's similar, way before Wikipedia, in terms of being able to put all the materials in libraries, there's a lot more than books in libraries.

- [Nido] Yes, of course.

- Farm equipment, you name it.

- Of course, of course.

Yes.

- And it's the technology also that powers inter-library loan or checking out a book or acquiring new materials in the library.

- How many libraries are you serving now?

- Tens of thousands of libraries.

- Tens of thousands.

- Tens of thousands in all countries, all over the world.

We have offices all over the world.

We're headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, but we have offices everywhere.

WorldCat.org is the world's catalog of information.

It's really the best representation of what's in the world's libraries.

And so a lot of scholars will do research based on trends that are happening in WorldCat.

- I see and do libraries subscribe to OCLC?

Is that the way it works?

- They do, and by the way, we even publish the Dewey Decimal System.

That always strikes people because they didn't realize that somebody owned it, curated it and cared for it.

- [Nido] Oh, I see.

- Libraries will subscribe and purchase services from OCLC all over the world.

Now we're a not for profit so we're a little different 'cause all of our profits get plugged back into the community in terms of library advocacy, free training, a lot of original research for information.

- So when people say, libraries are dying.

You would say, they're dead wrong.

- They're dead wrong.

Libraries are so vibrant.

It is amazing to see, transformative spaces on campuses, medical libraries.

You look at a university library now, you'll see cafes, activities.

You'll see maker spaces in public libraries, but whether it's a scientific library or a public library, here's one thing, about 4 million visits a year just in the US a day to libraries.

- 4 million- - Visits to a library.

- unique visitors?

- Yes.

And if you look at just library events, a few years ago, and you add up Major League Baseball and the National Football League and the National Basketball Association combined, there were more people attending library events than all of those events combined.

- So in your view, a physical presence of a library is not a dying phenomenon?

- It's not, but at the same time, the digital world... and of course at OCLC, we help power that, is exploding.

So in the last few years, visits have slightly declined, but usage has dramatically gone up as people are accessing materials via their library digitally.

- So why would a university build a physical structure called the library if it is accessed through technology digitally?

- Yeah, it is an important center for research, for learning, for collaboration.

It's not about books.

If you look at some of the leading libraries, you'll find they're serving coffee.

They're not... Shh, that doesn't happen anymore.

It's community.

It's gathering.

- It is what happens in a library so much so then...

There are lectures.

There are fellowships.

- Absolutely.

- Yes.

- Guests come in, collaboration spaces.

There're still quiet places in a library.

- Why is OCLC a nonprofit?

It's a large organization.

- Yeah, it's a very large organization, but it was formed that way in 1967.

And really the design was to give back to libraries and communities all over the world.

And so it's very inspiring to work in an organization that has that purpose of helping really breakthroughs happen in libraries all around the world.

- You're the chief executive officer of OCLC.

And before that you were the chief executive officer and president of Ingram Books.

What does Ingram do?

- So Ingram is a wholesaler and a printer and a distributor of mostly books.

And it is a wonderful, fascinating multi-billion dollar organization that really powers and gets books out in a lot of different places.

Sometimes you'll get that Amazon box and half of those books may have come from an Ingram warehouse.

And by the way, the other half may have been printed.

So Ingram pioneered print on demand services at Lightning Source, which allows you to print a book very, very quickly and so you can print a book... You might order a book and not realize it's not made yet.

- Amazon does that.

Do they not?

- Amazon does it, but it started at Ingram.

- Is that because the process of printing a book has been energized by technology that you could do it very readily and inexpensively?

- Exactly, technology has changed the game.

But if you look at manufacturing lines or distribution lines, there's a real magic to being able to do one book created at a time.

And we're talking hardcover jacketed books too, not just paperback.

- Yes, yes.

- It's rather a engineering marvel, technology marvel to make that.

- Today, we got 3D printers creating all kinds of objects and material.

I was in a factory the other day and I marveled at their makerspace and how they had vertical integration.

It's a furniture, the world's largest furniture company.

And they had everything.

They were independent from subcontractors.

They may buy raw materials, but they create their own machinery, their own pieces, their own stuff that goes in the robots and all that.

And I was shocked to be honest with you because I thought of furniture as an old-timey, couple of guys doing there with nails and staplers doing this stuff.

- Not so, yeah, every industry is being transformed by printing.

- So you went to the University of Baltimore Law School.

And did you practice law after that?

- No, I clerked for a judge and then I decided to work at a company called LexisNexis, which does legal and news information.

And so I went into kind of publishing world after that.

- And from there you went to Ingram and from there you went to OCLC, and maybe some other stuff in the middle.

- Some other stuff along the way.

- You're also involved in other stuff, community services and so on.

What are some of the things that tune you in, turn you up and turn you on in terms of these services?

- Well, I love to be involved obviously in anything library and educational services.

That's very important to me.

I'm also very musically oriented.

- [Nido] You are?

- I think it's really important to- - [Nido] You play an instrument?

- I play the violin and I sing.

- And you sing?

- I sing and- - We've got another five, six minutes on this program.

[Skip laughs] What would you like to sing?

Skip, do you read books?

Like I love to pick up a book and read the actual pages of the book.

Tell me how you read books.

Are you reading them on an iPad?

Are you reading them on a Notebook?

Are you reading them in hard cover?

- Well, I have every device known to man in terms of all along the years that have made digital books and I have read and do read sometimes that way, but I'm a preference for the physical book and even- - Yeah, there's a magic about that.

There's a- - There's a magic.

- There's a romantic approach to picking up a book, reading it, making those notes in the margin, underlining.

- That's how I learn.

- Yeah.

- And interesting, even the studies are showing that the students today, most of them will still prefer that physical book- - Really?

- which is surprising.

- [Nido] Really?

- Because the publishers are pushing everything digitally, but there are a lot of people who like to read.

I read a book a day and I have for years and years.

- A book a day?

- Every single day- - Basically you don't go to work.

You just stay home and read books?

- That's right.

[laughs] - I don't sleep a lot.

And so that's- - You must be a very fast reader.

- I'm a fast reader.

I read faster on non-fiction than fiction.

Fiction slows me down.

- Yes.

- But, you know, that physical environment with a book... and then you can give it to somebody.

- When do you read a book a day?

- Usually starting at about 10:00 PM.

- [Nido] Really?

- And then I'll read the book and then it'll relax me and then I'll go to bed.

- You read the entire book.

- Mm-hmm.

Very quickly.

- Are we talking about, you know, a major work or are we talking about one of those little, tiny little eight page pamphlets?

- [laughs] No, I'm not re-defining books, but books on strategy and business.

- You can read that at 10 o'clock at night?

- Yeah, that's my best time.

For me, it's my zone.

And I find that if you keep feeding new ideas into your mind- - Yes, of course.

- it just inspires you.

- Of course.

- And then I wake up in the morning with new ideas, drive my team crazy.

- Yeah, so you're a late sleeper and then what time do you get up in the morning?

- No, I get up pretty early, about 4:30.

- Oh you do?

- Yeah.

I get up, I don't sleep much, but those ideas then that next day, from whatever I've been reading, really applying them- - Inspire you and motivate you to go on.

Undoubtedly people ask you questions like, if I were to read a really great book on leadership...

There's always an unfair question, right?

Because you would name me 15 of those that you think are great.

But if you were talking to a young person who says, "Mr. Prichard, can you please tell me...

I wanna read a book on strategy, book on philosophy, a book on business."

Are you in the business of saying, "I would recommend that book"?

- For me, it's usually some of the most recent books that I've read.

On my website SkipPrichard.com I'm always sharing new books.

There are some great- - Do you summarize the books on there?

- I don't summarize them, but I usually interview authors.

I will talk to them and you'll get some key ideas.

And if it interests you, you might tune in.

Many of the people that you've had on this show are great sources, so if I see somebody on this show and see their book, I might get it and look into what they're... You know, you just wanna know a little bit more about what they were saying.

- Mm-hmm, yeah, I always thought that would be a fascinating thing to do, to just interview authors.

Not so much about what's in the book, but how did you get to that that's in the book?

I'm more fascinated by how people think than what they say.

That process of going from here to here, what is that?

Like where were you when you thought of the title, "The Book of Mistakes," were you outside?

Were you at your desk?

Were you reading a book that made you think that?

Were you in the midst of a disastrous mistake?

- Full credit goes to Qantas Airlines because I was flying to Australia and I had seen all the movies that they were showing.

- [Nido] I see.

- So I opened up my laptop and wrote most of that book on that flight.

- Is that right?

- [Skip] A big chunk of it.

- Did the title come first?

- It came first.

- That came first.

- Really I was writing a blog post and I started thinking about, what are the key mistakes?

And I started looking at research and started looking at the key mistakes and I had them down, and then I wrote the book as a story because the young generation, especially, they remember stories more than facts.

Jennifer Aaker of Stanford says you remember them 22 times more than you would a fact, if you'd have a story.

We know this, right?

- Yeah.

- A great speaker, you remember that story.

And so I wanted to make it a story that- - They stole that from Jesus Christ, you know?

- It started with the parables.

- The parables, yes.

- One of the people who influenced my life in a meaningful way was a guy called Norman Vincent Peale.

And I asked him when he wrote the forward to my first book, ironically, I was a kid and he was willing to lend his name.

You don't forget stuff like that.

And I said to him, Dr. Peale...

He wrote, of course, "The Power of Positive Thinking," which was hugely popular worldwide, translated in a hundred languages.

And I said, "Your books are very interesting.

What do you think makes a book interesting?"

And he said, "Well, a story on every page."

His sermons were you give three points, every point was wrapped with a story and you could see it in an audience.

When you give a speech, you can see how an audience all of a sudden sits up and they connect to you because of that story, that's so true.

What's next for us, Skip Prichard?

What are you gonna do next?

You gonna write another book about the book of achievements?

- [laughs] I should, the positive side.

- Yes.

[chuckles] - I agree with you on all of that, that you said.

And by the way I found Norman Vincent Peale and others in the library when I was young and that changed the direction of my life.

I'm working on some other ideas for books, but the hard part about a book is not writing a book, writing a book I find is easier.

It's all that goes on afterwards.

You need to have a lot of time.

So I have several books that I could publish right now.

And the publisher would like for me to, but I am waiting until I have the time that I can devote in order to promote and talk about the ideas.

- Yeah.

The difficult book to write is anything that's autobiographical, right?

I've written a lot of books that came easily to me.

But then when I tried to write a book about my recent work and so on, it's a very difficult book because I found myself judging everything and worrying about how others might think of it then.

And you know wanna talk about success without bragging.

You wanna talk about failures without attracting unnecessary criticism and so on.

Well, your life has been fascinating because you're an attorney who became a business person who leads now a nonprofit, who wrote a book about mistakes.

And you turned that into learnings for all of us who want to always be in anticipatory thinking about what the tomorrows of our life, how the tomorrows of our life can be better than the yesterdays.

Thank you for being with me on "Side by Side," Skip and I am gonna reread "The Book of Mistakes."

And if I see any errors in it, I'll pencil them and send them to you.

[laughs] - We'll have the 10th one.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much for being with me.

[uplifting music] - [Narrator] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Announcer] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at The Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

[energetic music] We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[energetic music]