Hsu Untied

Today, my guest is Scott Adams, the creator of the world famous Dilbert cartoon strip.  After working at Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell, Adams entertained himself during boring meetings by drawing cartoons of his coworkers and bosses and a bespectacled character named Dilbert emerged from the doodles.  Today, Adams devotes his time to Dilbert, including speaking, writing, doing interviews, designing licensed products and answering hundreds of e-mail messages per day. Dilbert is published in over 2,000 newspapers across 65 countries.

Today, my guest is Dr. Robert Cialdini*, a renowned speaker and author of the iconic book “Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion” and President & CEO of Influence at Work, which focuses on ethical influence training.  His book Influence has sold over 3 million copies, is a New York Times Bestseller and has been published in over 30 languages.  Charlie Munger has said “Robert Cialdini has had a greater impact on my thinking on this topic [Influence] than any other scientist…”  His latest book, Pre-Suasion:  A […]

Today my guest is Professor Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. Prof. Sunstein graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, after which he clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court.  From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is also the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School.  Professor Sunstein has written numerous […]

Today, my guest is John Paul DeJoria, a Greek-Italian-American billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as a co-founder of the Paul Mitchell line of hair products and The Patrón Spirits Company.  He is the founder of numerous other companies and businesses, including Aubio Life Sciences, and has appeared as a celebrity guest investor on the hit television series Shark Tank.

Today, my guest is Jay Bilas, an attorney at Moore & Van Allen who is also an Emmy nominated basketball analyst who provides courtside and studio commentary for ESPN and CBS Sports.  A four-year starter at Duke under Mike Krzyzewski, he helped lead Duke to the NCAA Final Four and National Championship Game.  After playing professional basketball, Jay went back to Duke as an assistant coach and won two National Championships while simultaneously attending Duke Law School.  Jay took time from […]

Today, my guest is Ben Stein, economist, movie actor, author, novelist, screenwriter, law school professor, television show host and comedian.  A graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School, Ben never had any aspirations to be a lawyer; but instead stumbled into a series of jobs that ultimately led to him to serving in the Nixon and Ford administrations and achieving overnight fame in the iconic movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Ben was kind enough to take time from his busy speaking […]

Today, my guest is Simon Sinek, an author, speaker, and consultant who writes on leadership and management.  He is best known for his brilliant and ground breaking TED Talk entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” which explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others and is the 3rd most viewed video on TED.  Since then, he has written 3 books: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009), Leaders Eat Last: Why Some […]

Today, my guest is Nolan Bushnell, a technology pioneer, entrepreneur and engineer who is best known as the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater.  Over the past four decades, he has founded numerous companies, including Catalyst Technologies, the first technology incubator; Etak, the first digital navigation system; ByVideo, the first online ordering system; and uWink, the first touchscreen menu ordering and entertainment system. His newest company is Brainrush, where he is devoting his talents to enhancing and […]

Today, my guest is Scott McGrew, NBC News Anchor and Host of Press:Here, a weekly roundtable featuring world class technology reporters in conversation with Silicon Valley CEOs.  Press:Here airs on NBC Bay Area Sunday mornings at 9am right after Meet the Press and joining Scott each week is a team of contributors including reporters from the BBC, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Dubbed as as “Meet the Press for Entrepreneurs,” the show is broadcast Sunday […]

Today, my guest is Will Shortz (aka the “Puzzle Master“), Editor of the New York Times Crossword Puzzles, and star of WordPlay (see trailer below), one of my favorite movies.  Some may know that he graduated from the University of Virginia Law School but probably not many know that he almost dropped out after his first semester and that his favorite class was intellectual property!  Listed as one of the 30 most famous people with law degrees, Will was gracious enough to join […]

Today, my guest is Susan Bennett, a voice-over artist who is best known for being the female American voice of Apple’s “Siri” when the service was first introduced on the iPhone 4S.  In June 2005, the software company Nuance Communications was looking for someone to be the voice for speech construction and selected Bennett, who recorded phrases and sentences which were then concatenated into the various words and sentences used in the Siri voice.  Bennett’s career began in 1974 and has recorded messages for the Delta Air Lines terminals […]

Today, my guest is Bill Gross, Caltech Trustee and fellow Caltech Alumni, Chairman and Founder of Idealab.  Bill started his first company in grade school selling candy bars at the bus stop (his version of the lemonade stand) and now starts about 8-10 new companies every year.  He comes up with new business ideas almost daily and he says the biggest limitation with starting companies is not time or money, it’s finding the right people — and having the right timing! […]

Today, my guest is Geoffrey Moore, an author, speaker, and advisor who wrote the groundbreaking book Crossing the Chasm in 1991.  Since then, Geoff’s other best selling business books include Zone to Win, Escape Velocity, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game, Living on the Faultline and Dealing with Darwin.  Geoff began his management consulting career at Regis McKenna Inc, and then started 3 firms: The Chasm Group, Chasm Institute and TCG Advisors. Today, he splits his time as a Venture Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures and […]

Today, my guest is Jason Zweig*, a personal finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of several books, including The Devil’s Financial Dictionary.  He is also the editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, the classic text that Warren Buffett has described as “by far the best book about investing ever written.”  Inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s satirical masterpiece, The Devil’s Dictionary, Jason Zweig’s The Devil’s Financial Dictionary is a glossary of the essential financial and investor terms […]

Today, my guest is Guy Kawasaki, the Chief Evangelist of Canva, an online, graphics-design service, Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, former Chief Evangelist of Apple, and the author of several best selling books on startups including The Art of the Start 2.0.  Although my guests are normally lawyers, most people do not realize that Guy actually did attend law school for about 10 days.  I first met Guy when he started Garage with the late founder of Venture Law Group, Craig […]

Today, my guest is James Stewart, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, who wrote many best selling books, including Den of Thieves and Disney War.  A graduate of Harvard Law School and former Associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, he began his writing career at the American Lawyer in 1979.  He wrote a well known book on the nation’s elite law firms called The Partners before writing his New York Times best-seller Den of Thieves on Wall Street arbitrager Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.  His 2005 book Disney War on Michael […]

Today, my guest is Gilian Zoe Segal*, author of the terrific book Getting There, a compilation of 30 incredible interviews.  Gillian originally started this project because she wanted to interview people at the top of their fields who struggled to achieve their success but what she discovered was that every success story has its challenges — there is no easy path.  An incredibly skilled interviewer and accomplished photographer in her own right, Gillian traveled across the country to interview all 30 people […]

Today my guest is Brad Meltzer, a New York Times best-selling author, host of the TV show Decoded and fellow Columbia Law School Alumni.  Brad’s first novel received 24 rejection letters before getting his next book, The Tenth Justice, published while he was still in law school.  But even with all his accomplishments, Brad never takes his success for granted and  reminds himself every day what it was like getting those rejection letters.  His latest book is The President’s Shadow.

Today, my guest is Daniel Pink.  Most people know Daniel Pink as one of the most popular TED speakers of all time (see video below), New York Times best selling author of A Whole New Mind, Drive and To Sell is Human, and host of the National Geographic TV show Crowd Control.  But what is less known is that Dan actually went to law school (attended Columbia and graduated from Yale) and he discusses how law school shaped his career, but not in […]

Today, my guest is Chris Yeh, Co-Author (along with Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha) The Alliance, a New York Times best selling book on managing talent in the networked age from the employer’s perspective. Chris is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, mentor and one of the most prolific writers I know — he once wrote a white paper in 17 minutes! During my candid discussion with him, he talked about the creative, the collaborative — and occasionally arduous — process of […]