Resilience, Risk, and Staying Curious in Leadership with Silicon Valley Veteran Jim Cook

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As you get older, you realize that age is not the real thing

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that should be biased against.

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It's curiosity.

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You can actually learn anything at any age if you're passionate

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and curious about learning it.

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And if you're passionate and curious about learning a topic such as AI,

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and you have the experience and the wisdom to know how to learn and how

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to process and curate knowledge, you can become extremely powerful.

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Was in the admin.

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may know and have heard of the Shrek team.

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our 301st episode, are inviting back one of

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Um,

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knowledge.

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I love having conversations with Jim.

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In this episode, we're probably going to speak about insights from the

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past five years, The evolving tech and leadership landscape, possible

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predictions for the next five years.

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Jim, welcome back to Seek Go Create.

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Thanks, Tim.

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This is going to be awesome.

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Excellent.

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Excellent.

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That's crazy.

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said, you know what?

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I'm kind of getting tired of doing special stuff every time we hit these.

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But.

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I think I'd like to revisit, and when I looked at the calendar, it was

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almost five years exactly, that I had

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Um,

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the most famous guest we've ever had, and

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roll, drum roll, please.

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I'm gonna, with two letters, I'm gonna tell you who it is.

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AI.

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You had, you had a.

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I did a live interview.

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Well, I've got to clarify here.

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I actually had it scheduled before I was going to talk to you.

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We haven't done it.

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Oddly enough, AI rescheduled on me.

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so that's kind of weird.

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Something about, chat GPT said Elon Musk was doing a hostile

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takeover or something like that.

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And so, but anyway, I think I'm scheduling that later.

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So later I might, I know you and I are going to talk a little bit about AI.

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So.

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So that's where we are.

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300 was AI, 301 Jim Cook, 302 Mike Baer, and I think if

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were three episodes that I wanted to package together and tell people,

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maybe even put it in a time machine or something, these would be them

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from 2025 to put a stamp on this.

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Tim, you're you're AI 300 episode where you interviewing yourself and

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doing one of those avatar things.

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Is this what's going on?

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It was just like this, but where you're sitting, Jim, was the, live

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version of ChatGPT, and we were having a conversation just like this,

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nice.

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I've got questions, you know, I didn't really train a lot.

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I've done a few tests on this.

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Again, you know, we've had it rescheduled, so this is kind of

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odd that 300 Is recorded after 301.

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So I might ask you later, if you've got a question that you want me to ask when

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I'm interviewing So, you know, so five years ago, we wouldn't even be probably

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discussing much about AI, would we?

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No, AI dropped in November of 2022.

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Yeah.

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I remember it.

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Well, at least it was released.

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they've been working on AI, otherwise known as machine learning,

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artificial intelligence for 30 years.

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it was all an offshoot of the deep mind center out of Google.

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but everything came to fruition and they finally launched it in November, 2022 and

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look at the journey we've been on since.

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Ooh, yeah.

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We, I do want to circle back.

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I want us to have an AI conversation because I think it feeds into

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leadership and business and what's going on, but before we get too

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far into this, man, catch me up.

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January of 2020 was when our last episode dropped and seems like yesterday, but

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it also seems like a long, time ago.

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what have you been up to since then?

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I mean, catch me up, you know, get a little bit of family, a

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little bit of business, just.

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I remember wanting to follow in your footsteps and get

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into the coaching business.

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I had one client who had called me up and said, I think you'd be a great coach.

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It was at a time when coaching went from being this scarlet letter.

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I call the scarlet letter like, hey, I think you need a coach because you're

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not, you're not doing so well to you.

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To kind of what I call the Oprah of coaching.

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You get a coach and you get a coach and everyone gets a coach and we're handing

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out coaches and HR, but I was starting to get all these calls in around that time.

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because I, you know, I'm a CFO.

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I've been a CFO in the Valley for 30 years.

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I was still an operator.

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I was still in a job.

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but nobody knew who to call to be a CFO coach.

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I took one and then I did your podcast in January, 2020.

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I remember about 30 days later going up to Breckenridge and we

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saw you and Gloria Breckenridge, in February, mid February of 2020.

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And we came back, you left and about three days later, listen, I

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were the most sick we've ever been.

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This is February of 2020.

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Remember COVID wasn't actually announced as, hitting the U S until March or

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late, we didn't do the shutdown.

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Sorry.

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It was announced, but we didn't shut down the US until March 13th, 2020.

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I also remember that well, but, but I'm pretty sure we had it.

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which was a Friday, by the way, it was Friday the 13th.

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I'm pretty sure we had it because I could barely breathe

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unless it can barely breathe.

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a lot has changed since then.

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we learned a lot of lessons that the world wasn't going to.

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Go away.

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Zoom came into our, our being a lot more.

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We learned how to work from home.

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We, you know, I think it showed us how resilient we can be as,

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as a people around the world.

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One of the things I was talking to someone recently and I was just

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kind of looking back and listen, there's many places we can dive.

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I'd love for you and I, especially because of your expertise in leadership

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and that part of the world that you have been in for your career.

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but I do think with COVID.

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was one of the first, what I'll call a catalytic event, you know, let's,

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Okay.

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And when I say people, I mean large groups of people.

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You know, there used to be some things like 9 11.

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You and I have memories of that, that I think people thought about things

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Silence.

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There you go.

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but what's your observation?

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I mean, is that sort of accurate because I still see people trying to figure out

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what they want to do But there's a lot of people now that are pretty strong.

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I don't want to do this.

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I'm never doing this again

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Well, I think you nailed it.

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you and I are big students of history.

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I know we've had lots of conversations about history and I'm a big

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student of history and I like to learn lessons from history.

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So it reminds me of what many of us in Silicon Valley talk about a lot,

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which is Crisis events like the dot bomb era or the savings and loan crisis

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or the 2009, mortgage crisis, COVID these points in crisis do give people

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clarity because crisis gives people what I call gives them permission

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to do what they've always wanted to do because what do I have to lose?

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The world might end.

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And so the, you know, I think crisis gives people this, well,

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it's going to be really bad.

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I may as well try what I'm going to do now because you know, the world might

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be different when I wake up tomorrow.

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And so there's a much bigger fear out there than the roommate in your head fear.

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That's what that usually holds people back from doing what they want to be

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doing because they might lose their status in society or lose their job.

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But when you've got a bigger fear, You know, people just,

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it gives them permission to try what they haven't tried before.

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And so you see this kind of Cambrian explosion of innovation

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right after crisis events, right after the dot bomb era, web 2.

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0 came on board and Facebook was developed.

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And Google launched in 2004, really.

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I mean, went public to us before, but it launched 2002, right?

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right after 2009, you know, you saw the Airbnb and the Uber and, Let's,

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let's try to just couch surf and rent people's homes and sleep on their couch,

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which was the first version of Airbnb.

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Let's, have the limousines come to you through an app on a mobile phone.

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What do we have to lose?

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These were crazy ideas at the time.

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And most, even venture capitalists, thought they were crazy.

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You know, after COVID, we saw this huge explosion of the ability to

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use Zoom and to work productively if you look at the history,

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productivity went through the roof.

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Much to people's surprise, you know, working from home was actually quite

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productive, not having to drive, not having to go and spend an hour

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on the road, in traffic each way.

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So, yeah, I think it's been pretty exciting.

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your old company, you were on one of the original six at Netflix.

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We probably won't get into that here.

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We're going to include a link back to our conversation five years ago, because

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we did a deep dive into some of your experience there then, but Netflix,

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I don't know if the word critical mass would be the right term, but.

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when COVID hit, it seems as if they were in the right place at the right time.

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I really haven't followed much since then, but, what comments do

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you have about what went on with Netflix during the COVID years?

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Well, you can look, so this is for anybody who runs a business and Netflix was

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actually, so that, by the way, so when we started Netflix for the audience's sake.

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It was 1997, 27 years ago.

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So it's a much, much different company now, but Netflix, when you peel behind

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the scenes, what was going on during COVID was actually quite worried of

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losing tremendous amounts of market share.

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Because if you look back at the history, everyone was at home

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and glued to their computer.

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Disney spent billions of dollars on their streaming platform and Apple spent

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billions, maybe a hundred billion dollars on their Apple TV streaming platform.

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You know, you had paramount plus, you had everybody and their brother saying,

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we got to get into streaming now.

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And, you know, they're fighting the big giant Netflix, but

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Netflix really was fearful.

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They were gonna become the blockbuster to Disney or to all these.

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That they were going to lose market share.

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And so that's a lesson for anybody who holds a leadership position

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and competition just rushes in.

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This has happened many times in technology.

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We, you know, when I was at Mozilla, we held the market share leadership

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position for four years before Google Chrome browser came in.

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Microsoft held many leadership positions in software before they finally got

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taken down across their categories.

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So Netflix thought they were going to be kind of the next Microsoft or the next,

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IBM but it turns out that if you lean into your business and you produce even

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more content and you just pay attention to your customers and you make customers

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happy, then it's what Intuit days that we coined a term of, this happened at

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Intuit with Quicken and QuickBooks, everyone tried to create their accounting

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software when you're the market leader.

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And, we coined a term called try the best, try the rest, and then

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you'll come back to the best.

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So I think that's what happened.

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Everyone had six or seven subscriptions.

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Some still have three or four.

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They all tried it and like, there's not a lot of content

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here, or that's kind of clunky.

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I can't find my shows.

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everyone got brought in to a streaming platform that was

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lagging up into the time.

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So now the whole universe got bigger.

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So competition is good because it creates awareness.

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So anybody who's dealing with competition in their local small town

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and someone's coming in, lean in hard because they're going to bring in

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your customers, your future customers that you haven't brought in yet.

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So that's when you have to lean in hard and actually be

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better than you've ever been.

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And that's what Netflix did.

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And then everyone started saying, well, Disney, I'm going to

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cancel that one at Paramount.

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But They're going to stay with Netflix.

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Competition is a customer generating thing if you really frame it right.

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Looking back on it, this is my observation.

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Yours might be a little different.

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I like positioning that Netflix had created to be where they were in 2020.

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And, you know, could they have guessed what was going to happen?

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No, to me, that's leadership too, is just being positioned for

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when those opportunities, I hate to say COVID is an opportunity.

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Some people would be upset by that, but it was, you know, it was what it

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was a situation, an event, whatever.

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Well, let's reframe that, Tim.

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Let's say change and crisis is always an opportunity.

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That life is about change and you can make choices of crawling in a hole when

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change hits you or crisis hits you.

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Or you can just come out fighting with your sword and shield up.

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Yeah.

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And I think one of the words I like to use now, I've been communicating it

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more and more is the word resilience.

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I think that's how I want us to talk about leadership towards

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the tail end of our conversation.

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Jim is

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Nice.

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do to be resilient?

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To be prepared for the next opportunity crisis situation, whatever.

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But I, there's a question that's rolling around in my head and I have

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to get it out before it disappears.

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You know what I mean by that?

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Oh, yeah.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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but gray hair.

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And you said, I want I want to bring someone from outside this

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culture in to be my assistant and help me do what I'm doing.

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That was a beautiful thing because it also opened the door for me to storm

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in and say, oh, hey, Jim, I'm here.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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because it is somewhat of a

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Um,

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What are some pros and cons about the way Silicon Valley functions and operates

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that you saw over the last five years?

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And some things that you observed, because I know you reach outside that bubble to

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keep a fresh mind, but not everyone does.

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if we look back now, the city of San Francisco, Has changed tremendously,

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some of the politics around that whole Region not they haven't changed

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tremendously, but it's adjusted.

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Anyway, there's been a lot of things go on.

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There's an argument that the politics have changed pretty

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tremendously in Silicon Valley.

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yeah, I mean I I listened to an interview a long form interview

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with You know, what's his name from facebook and i'm like going.

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Well, he's Bouncing around a little bit.

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Maybe he's an opportunist.

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Maybe he is changing his team But anyway, don't it doesn't have to be political

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even though that's probably part of

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Yep.

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talk about That culture over the last five years and i'd love for you to

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talk about it to people outside the culture That are going what do you mean?

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Yeah.

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so I guess I'll start with Silicon Valley.

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This is obvious as a very technical culture, but what does that mean?

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It means some of the smartest people that you went to school with who,

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and technical means computers, you know, we call ourselves the

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nerds and the geeks, we weren't.

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The sports athletes, right?

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Or the popular, people at the dance, you know, these are the

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people that we're game playing.

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I'm not, I'm trying not to be too pejorative, but

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it's not pejorative at all.

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It's just like people have their different likes.

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You know, they're a little bit more inside their own head.

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They're very technical, very smart.

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And whenever a new technology comes up like AI, they're the first to use it.

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And they're the first to figure it out.

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This has produced great things for America,

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except there's a problem is that we forget how great, you know,

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Silicon Valley has been for America.

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And because, this technical, this tech community, this community of entrepreneurs

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don't really pound their chest too much.

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They just put their heads down and work and create the Googles and the Facebooks.

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They don't really connect to real people.

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Probably up through about 2022 or 2023, you could actually feel the

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backlash outside of California against this tech community.

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You can actually, if you paid attention, you could feel like

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they are different than us.

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You know, they're, they're the elites.

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You know, it's all, it was always they, they, they, and there

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wasn't much of a realization of.

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Yeah, but look how, we brought trillions of dollars into the US

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from Google and Facebook and Apple, and these are the people in the

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mag seven of the stock market that everyone else was investing in.

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And so it was kind of a double-edged sword.

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And this is my opinion at least, because the community is still very insular, they.

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Are interested in what they're interested in.

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They try to put it out to the world and they stumble over the first three

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versions of the first three versions.

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Almost any tech.

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It takes 3 versions and we all know this because.

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The technical engineers and the technical people really, for the most part, don't

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know how to connect with regular people.

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And so they just assume people can use chat GPT.

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They assume that a white box on a screen in 2004 from Google, people are going

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to figure out what to type in that thing that we now know is a search box.

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But when we all first saw it, people were like, what do I do with this?

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We were just barely getting used to the internet.

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Right?

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And now a white box appears in this page and says we can get any answer you want.

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And we just stood there and didn't know what to type.

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And then Google tried to help, right?

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Remember when Google tried to help with their little question mark?

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And they said, Oh, all you got to do is a Boolean search.

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and we're like, if you do these characters and your search

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is better, we're like, what?

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This is the same company that said, you know, after a while we're going to

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produce a better email called Gmail.

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And then people started using it.

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And eight years later, they were still.

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Beta written across the top of this enterprise product.

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And they're like, Oh yeah, we forgot to take the beta off.

Speaker: 00:20:56

Cause these, you know, they're not out there talking to their customers a

Speaker: 00:21:00

lot, but the successful Silicon Valley companies, actually successful, any

Speaker: 00:21:04

company starts with their customer first and builds a product for them.

Speaker: 00:21:09

Silicon Valley starts with the product and then tries to find customers.

Speaker: 00:21:14

And so there's, it's a long winded way of saying there's a

Speaker: 00:21:16

mindset of not being connected to.

Speaker: 00:21:21

Anybody who's not in that kind of digging for gold all the time.

Speaker: 00:21:25

If you imagine if you were in the gold rush and everyone around you was digging

Speaker: 00:21:28

for gold, some are finding it, some weren't, but you were in this bubble

Speaker: 00:21:32

of everyone's a miner, everybody's got a pick and everybody's got an ax.

Speaker: 00:21:35

And it's like, and there's a whole country out there that is not digging for gold

Speaker: 00:21:39

is some of that?

Speaker: 00:21:39

is it jealousy?

Speaker: 00:21:42

I mean, I think

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I don't think it's jealousy.

Speaker: 00:21:46

political

Speaker: 00:21:46

as,

Speaker: 00:21:47

we

Speaker: 00:21:48

no,

Speaker: 00:21:48

maybe now

Speaker: 00:21:50

I don't think, I don't think so.

Speaker: 00:21:52

you know, I grew up in the Midwest.

Speaker: 00:21:53

I think it's just a lack of understanding when no one talks to

Speaker: 00:21:56

you and people are different, right?

Speaker: 00:21:59

When people are just viewed as different then, then a divide happens.

Speaker: 00:22:05

But what's happening now, which is really interesting to me, is people don't change.

Speaker: 00:22:11

They just kind of hide for a while.

Speaker: 00:22:13

there's stats of like 35 or 40 percent of what was considered

Speaker: 00:22:18

the blue zone of California.

Speaker: 00:22:19

San Francisco is pure blue.

Speaker: 00:22:21

Like everyone thought it was 98 percent democratic and liberal

Speaker: 00:22:27

and hippies and free love and, you know, these techies that are just

Speaker: 00:22:30

billionaires that don't get us.

Speaker: 00:22:32

It turns out about 35 or 40 percent of all the leaders and even all the techies.

Speaker: 00:22:36

Started coming out of the woodwork when Trump got elected and they're Republican,

Speaker: 00:22:40

maybe not far right Republican, but they've always been there because

Speaker: 00:22:44

that's just how statistics work.

Speaker: 00:22:45

and they were just quiet about it because they could have been

Speaker: 00:22:50

i'll i'll use the term beaten to a pulp literally or figuratively

Speaker: 00:22:54

Had they communicated about it?

Speaker: 00:22:56

Well,

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going on right now

Speaker: 00:22:59

yeah, for sure.

Speaker: 00:23:00

Because now you see for the first time ever, not to bring too much

Speaker: 00:23:03

politics and do it, but Elon Musk is being invited into the white house

Speaker: 00:23:07

and doing things and Peter Thiel and these, but so for better or for worse.

Speaker: 00:23:12

The techies and some of the smartest techies are being brought in to

Speaker: 00:23:17

hopefully fix and introduce some of these technologies in the government.

Speaker: 00:23:22

It's going to create a lot of, I mean, nobody can argue that

Speaker: 00:23:26

the government's not broken.

Speaker: 00:23:27

It's very broken, right?

Speaker: 00:23:29

There, there's no technology, no real technology to speak of.

Speaker: 00:23:32

It is probably 20 years behind.

Speaker: 00:23:34

So something good is going to come from it, but it's going to be very messy.

Speaker: 00:23:38

Silicon Valley was never really invited to a seat at the table in Washington,

Speaker: 00:23:42

So, for better or for worse, we have some really, really smart people who

Speaker: 00:23:48

understand technology introducing some of these business leading concepts.

Speaker: 00:23:52

Into this place called Washington DC.

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We're gonna see what happens from it.

Speaker: 00:23:56

I think you need to shake things up.

Speaker: 00:23:57

It's 52 card pickup and then you start sorting the deck out again.

Speaker: 00:24:00

but hopefully, that shift, that psychology shift is changing because,

Speaker: 00:24:08

you know, the same people that some people outside of California called a

Speaker: 00:24:11

leader, like now they're their heroes.

Speaker: 00:24:13

I just find it really interesting.

Speaker: 00:24:15

The same people that thought Elon Musk was evil and, driving these new cars.

Speaker: 00:24:19

And now he's a hero.

Speaker: 00:24:21

this is just human nature, right?

Speaker: 00:24:22

Yeah, and there's a weird thing since you brought this up.

Speaker: 00:24:25

I did I did think about this See one of the things that I love You

Speaker: 00:24:31

the Silicon Valley culture is speed.

Speaker: 00:24:35

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:24:36

a, you know, speed, and if it's, you know, break things fast, fix them,

Speaker: 00:24:40

move on, And one of the things that you and I can say about government

Speaker: 00:24:44

is speed is nowhere in their, DNA.

Speaker: 00:24:50

And one of the things that's fascinating to me, and I'll just mention this and

Speaker: 00:24:54

you can say something then we'll move on is at the time of recording this

Speaker: 00:24:58

Elon musk has a handful of what seem to be brilliant tech guys Literally

Speaker: 00:25:05

raking some systems over the coals and there are a lot of people that

Speaker: 00:25:09

Um,

Speaker: 00:25:28

the speed because, because I think that what we've got is a new president

Speaker: 00:25:33

that's moving at a pretty rapid pace, and I think it's because of people

Speaker: 00:25:38

around him like Musk and some others.

Speaker: 00:25:41

What, what are you seeing?

Speaker: 00:25:44

Let me reframe the word speed into something that you and I talk about,

Speaker: 00:25:48

and I talk about my clients a lot.

Speaker: 00:25:51

For me, it's less about speed and more about risk.

Speaker: 00:25:55

Willingness to take risk.

Speaker: 00:25:58

risk by going fast.

Speaker: 00:26:00

it's okay to fail.

Speaker: 00:26:01

Silicon Valley is all about high risk, high reward.

Speaker: 00:26:05

That's what the venture capital community is all about.

Speaker: 00:26:07

High risk, high reward.

Speaker: 00:26:08

Only 2 or 3 out of 10 companies, that venture capitalist funds actually

Speaker: 00:26:13

make it and 3 go out of business and 3 just barely get their money

Speaker: 00:26:17

back or lose money for the VCs.

Speaker: 00:26:19

but it's those 3 that we hear about.

Speaker: 00:26:21

We never hear about the 7.

Speaker: 00:26:22

So when you take a ton of risk.

Speaker: 00:26:25

The 10x reward you get from 1, 2, or 3 of those companies with 100x

Speaker: 00:26:30

returns far outweighs the 7 failures.

Speaker: 00:26:34

You know, when Edison created the light bulb, it was 10, 000

Speaker: 00:26:36

tries before he found one, right?

Speaker: 00:26:39

And so this, there's a level of risk associated with silicon, or

Speaker: 00:26:42

sorry, willingness to take risk.

Speaker: 00:26:45

And I've, it's really important to think about this willingness to take risk.

Speaker: 00:26:50

Reaps the more risk you're willing to take, the more

Speaker: 00:26:53

reward you're likely to get.

Speaker: 00:26:55

Well, Washington DC is, you know, yeah, it's slow.

Speaker: 00:27:00

It's slow because it's not willing, in my opinion, not willing to take risks.

Speaker: 00:27:04

So to bring all that together, the willingness and the ability to take

Speaker: 00:27:10

risks is what Washington DC is facing.

Speaker: 00:27:13

And what happens when high risk meets low risk, Is things break, right?

Speaker: 00:27:20

And so we're going to see some breakage and then when things break,

Speaker: 00:27:23

you have to rebuild them and things rebuilt, they get built better.

Speaker: 00:27:27

One example that people are talking about in Silicon Valley that I'm a

Speaker: 00:27:31

huge fan of because it's not political at all is putting lots of parts of

Speaker: 00:27:37

the government on the blockchain.

Speaker: 00:27:39

I'm not talking about Bitcoin.

Speaker: 00:27:41

I'm talking about just the technology called blockchain.

Speaker: 00:27:44

Where we put in a read only format, the transactions that

Speaker: 00:27:48

are occurring that are immutable.

Speaker: 00:27:51

They can't be changed.

Speaker: 00:27:52

it's a distributed ledger.

Speaker: 00:27:54

And if you want transparency, Elon Musk just may bring blockchain technology

Speaker: 00:28:00

to certain parts of the government and say, you want to know what's going on

Speaker: 00:28:02

the government, read the blockchain.

Speaker: 00:28:04

Now there's software that reads blockchain.

Speaker: 00:28:06

So you don't have to read the ones and zeros.

Speaker: 00:28:08

It can unpack it and put it on a webpage.

Speaker: 00:28:10

But you can actually audit along with what's going on in the government.

Speaker: 00:28:13

How far are we willing to take that?

Speaker: 00:28:15

I think a lot of people want to see, but there's technology that can help, right?

Speaker: 00:28:20

blockchain is secure.

Speaker: 00:28:23

Can't be changed.

Speaker: 00:28:24

once it's on there, it's on there forever and you can go see the history.

Speaker: 00:28:29

so I think there's a lot of very interesting things that are

Speaker: 00:28:31

going to come from taking a lot more risks than the government.

Speaker: 00:28:35

things are going to break and people are going to get upset when things break, but

Speaker: 00:28:39

then they're going to be rebuilt better.

Speaker: 00:28:42

Yeah, I'm excited about it.

Speaker: 00:28:44

And I think even if people have different, core political beliefs people that think

Speaker: 00:28:51

like you and I do, it's like, you know what, we need to be improving things.

Speaker: 00:28:54

We need to be making them better.

Speaker: 00:28:55

We need to be maybe breaking some things, adjusting, changing, et cetera.

Speaker: 00:29:01

I was on a social media platform and I was just saying, you know, whether

Speaker: 00:29:05

you're for this guy or against this guy, it doesn't matter to me, am all

Speaker: 00:29:09

for the status quo being questioned and

Speaker: 00:29:12

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:29:13

questions and poking at it a little bit.

Speaker: 00:29:14

And someone said, well, if, if, People can't eat while it's going on.

Speaker: 00:29:19

I said, listen, people can't eat today.

Speaker: 00:29:21

People that are not eating today.

Speaker: 00:29:23

We need to do better with all of that, but that's not the point.

Speaker: 00:29:26

You know, let's,

Speaker: 00:29:27

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:29:27

let's

Speaker: 00:29:27

Well, there's one thing we know about, Sam, there's one thing

Speaker: 00:29:29

we know about technology, right?

Speaker: 00:29:32

And there's one thing that's probably unarguable about technology.

Speaker: 00:29:35

It has made everyone's lives around the world much more efficient

Speaker: 00:29:40

and much more productive, right?

Speaker: 00:29:43

Just getting people on the internet.

Speaker: 00:29:45

People in Africa have a mobile phone as their phone.

Speaker: 00:29:48

before they have a car or a house.

Speaker: 00:29:51

Being connected is due to technology.

Speaker: 00:29:54

The technology is deflationary.

Speaker: 00:29:57

Prices go down.

Speaker: 00:29:58

It makes things more efficient and more productive.

Speaker: 00:30:01

And AI is just the next version of this.

Speaker: 00:30:04

Now we're going to have an influx of technology, which is going to make

Speaker: 00:30:07

things more efficient, more productive.

Speaker: 00:30:09

It's hard to argue.

Speaker: 00:30:10

the only tool the government surround the world, especially

Speaker: 00:30:13

Washington DC has had to fix anything or to try to improve anything.

Speaker: 00:30:18

There's only been one tool they've ever used.

Speaker: 00:30:19

It's money.

Speaker: 00:30:21

If there's a problem, throw money at it.

Speaker: 00:30:23

Money is a very blunt instrument that creates a lot of waste.

Speaker: 00:30:26

And so we're going to uncover a lot of waste because instead of throwing

Speaker: 00:30:30

money at the problem, We're going to throw technology at the problem and make

Speaker: 00:30:34

the inner workings of the government a lot more efficient, a lot more

Speaker: 00:30:39

productive, and a lot more transparent.

Speaker: 00:30:42

and you know what I like, I like that, that may attract different

Speaker: 00:30:48

type of leader in the future.

Speaker: 00:30:49

into that system because, and boy, I don't think I want to get off on this topic.

Speaker: 00:30:56

I think we have a leadership deficit in a lot of places.

Speaker: 00:30:59

You and I could have this

Speaker: 00:31:00

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:00

all day long.

Speaker: 00:31:01

we may want people to listen and we may not, but definitely if we are to look at

Speaker: 00:31:06

and model some of the leaders that we see, In that government system and it's because

Speaker: 00:31:12

it's such a sludge of just quagmire slow As we were talking a little bit about

Speaker: 00:31:18

earlier, you know low risk And then some people get in there and they start

Speaker: 00:31:23

profiting and then we can't get them out.

Speaker: 00:31:25

I do think it might attract some people if we get a little bit more

Speaker: 00:31:29

effective efficient More technology.

Speaker: 00:31:31

What are your thoughts?

Speaker: 00:31:34

When you were talking and leading up to this question, I was in my head

Speaker: 00:31:38

thinking that leadership is about leadership requires incentives.

Speaker: 00:31:44

So the reason why people don't go into Washington, D. C.

Speaker: 00:31:46

There's no incentive to do so.

Speaker: 00:31:48

In fact, there's a disincentive to do so.

Speaker: 00:31:52

Right.

Speaker: 00:31:53

I can have a lot more impact.

Speaker: 00:31:54

Thank you.

Speaker: 00:31:55

The minute and make money outside of Washington, DC, this is what we've seen.

Speaker: 00:31:59

The minute that you tell these young people, they can make

Speaker: 00:32:04

a difference in the world.

Speaker: 00:32:06

And this, this, you know, so people are railing, there's a 19 year old with a,

Speaker: 00:32:10

with a name, like inside of Doge, right?

Speaker: 00:32:13

It's like, there's some young people going in following along around.

Speaker: 00:32:17

We're really, really smart who are only doing it because they think

Speaker: 00:32:21

they're actually making a difference.

Speaker: 00:32:22

And they probably are.

Speaker: 00:32:24

But that's what leadership's about is like, do I have an incentive to do this?

Speaker: 00:32:27

Am I going to make a difference?

Speaker: 00:32:29

Can I make a difference?

Speaker: 00:32:30

Am I incentivized to do so?

Speaker: 00:32:32

That's how you attract leadership.

Speaker: 00:32:34

But up until now in Washington DC, it's been the opposite.

Speaker: 00:32:37

There's been no incentive for really smart business people or

Speaker: 00:32:40

technologists to go to Washington.

Speaker: 00:32:41

In fact, there's been a disincentive because there's not enough

Speaker: 00:32:45

money and there's a quagmire of you can't get anything done.

Speaker: 00:32:48

So hopefully we attract some young people who can move fast,

Speaker: 00:32:52

break things, get things done.

Speaker: 00:32:54

I mean, heck, what's the worst that can happen?

Speaker: 00:32:55

Our government gets less efficient?

Speaker: 00:32:57

to imagine what that might look like.

Speaker: 00:33:00

I don't think anybody can argue that no matter what happens, it might not get

Speaker: 00:33:04

as efficient as fast, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to get worse.

Speaker: 00:33:07

Sure.

Speaker: 00:33:14

Shouldn't people say, Oh no, no, no.

Speaker: 00:33:16

We want it anyway.

Speaker: 00:33:17

Well, let's move on.

Speaker: 00:33:18

There's something you brought up right when we started that I went, huh.

Speaker: 00:33:24

There's a question there.

Speaker: 00:33:25

And I want to, I want to dig a little bit.

Speaker: 00:33:27

You brought up.

Speaker: 00:33:28

That when you went from operator and you know, you, you were with into it,

Speaker: 00:33:35

you were with Netflix, you were with Mozilla, Firefox for a number of years

Speaker: 00:33:41

and other things that I know are in there.

Speaker: 00:33:44

But you said that when you decided to move from operator to coach, that it

Speaker: 00:33:51

may not have been looked upon by people.

Speaker: 00:33:56

Tell me more about.

Speaker: 00:33:59

How that Silicon Valley culture at coaching.

Speaker: 00:34:04

And I'm also going to throw a name out here.

Speaker: 00:34:05

The name, Bill Campbell, that you know, is one of you interact with him.

Speaker: 00:34:09

You knew him.

Speaker: 00:34:10

I only know him because the model that was shared in a book about him is who I

Speaker: 00:34:15

perceive myself to be like, not at that level trillion dollar coach, but about

Speaker: 00:34:21

coaching in a world because you almost said it like apologetically, like you

Speaker: 00:34:26

were going from to, Oh, now I'm going to.

Speaker: 00:34:31

We've got a lot of coaches listening in.

Speaker: 00:34:32

So tell

Speaker: 00:34:32

Yeah, I didn't.

Speaker: 00:34:33

Okay.

Speaker: 00:34:34

Yeah, I didn't mean to.

Speaker: 00:34:35

So Bill Campbell just for the record was my coach, but he wasn't, I

Speaker: 00:34:39

worked for him at Intuit with him at Intuit before that book was,

Speaker: 00:34:43

well before that book was written.

Speaker: 00:34:45

yeah, I didn't mean it to be, disrespectful to coaches.

Speaker: 00:34:49

It was more of how HR departments viewed it, viewed coaching,

Speaker: 00:34:53

like this person needs help.

Speaker: 00:34:54

We're going to get you a coach.

Speaker: 00:34:56

That whole mentality has now changed because if there's one

Speaker: 00:34:59

great thing about Silicon Valley, and there's a lot of great things.

Speaker: 00:35:02

But one great thing is this concept of everyone shares

Speaker: 00:35:07

their knowledge with everybody.

Speaker: 00:35:09

There's this give back culture.

Speaker: 00:35:11

There's this pay it forward culture that really I've only seen exist here.

Speaker: 00:35:16

I've had lots of conversations in people in LA, New York, in LA, in Hollywood.

Speaker: 00:35:22

I wouldn't give my idea of my movie script to anybody.

Speaker: 00:35:26

In New York, I wouldn't give my algorithm on how to add up to anybody.

Speaker: 00:35:30

It's, it's a secretly guarded secret.

Speaker: 00:35:33

Right.

Speaker: 00:35:33

In Europe, it's much of the same, but in Silicon Valley, there's something,

Speaker: 00:35:37

one thing people need to know about it.

Speaker: 00:35:39

It's a, the idea is not the hard part.

Speaker: 00:35:42

The execution is the hard part.

Speaker: 00:35:45

Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Speaker: 00:35:47

And everyone wants everyone else to, to be successful and they just want to compete

Speaker: 00:35:50

on a, on a, on an equal playing field.

Speaker: 00:35:53

And in a very interesting way, everyone who's been there for any period of

Speaker: 00:35:56

time just shares and gives back.

Speaker: 00:35:58

And if you call somebody up like Bill Campbell, he's no longer

Speaker: 00:36:01

with us, but he's passed away.

Speaker: 00:36:02

But, you know, he'd give you the time of day.

Speaker: 00:36:05

And as long as you made the effort, this is a culture in Silicon

Speaker: 00:36:09

Valley, which is ripe for coaching.

Speaker: 00:36:11

And I think zoom to bring it all back COVID brought back

Speaker: 00:36:15

this huge vacuum of loneliness.

Speaker: 00:36:18

People were in their house.

Speaker: 00:36:19

They didn't, they weren't surrounded by people who they could look up to or

Speaker: 00:36:23

talk at the expresso bar at your office.

Speaker: 00:36:26

And I think that just exploded this, I need to surround myself with

Speaker: 00:36:31

people that are smarter than me.

Speaker: 00:36:33

And so I'm going to go get a mentor, go get a coach,

Speaker: 00:36:37

company started paying for it.

Speaker: 00:36:39

but I, you know, what you and I love about coaching is, This ability to take

Speaker: 00:36:43

all the lessons that we've learned and pay it forward and to give it back.

Speaker: 00:36:46

And I write about this in my cook's playbooks about why I'm doing this, why

Speaker: 00:36:50

I'm writing, on Substack, and why I'm coaching is it really is gratifying to

Speaker: 00:36:57

pay it forward to the next generation.

Speaker: 00:36:59

and I think if you're really sincere about that as a coach, that's why you do it.

Speaker: 00:37:03

It's about impact.

Speaker: 00:37:05

It's about.

Speaker: 00:37:06

The ability to really leverage your knowledge and turn

Speaker: 00:37:11

that knowledge into wisdom.

Speaker: 00:37:12

I read a great quote, um, down here.

Speaker: 00:37:14

I'm down here in the Baha for a little while, but wisdom

Speaker: 00:37:18

is simply shared knowledge.

Speaker: 00:37:20

I think it's wisdom is simply knowledge shared.

Speaker: 00:37:23

If you think about that, wisdom is not a one person thing.

Speaker: 00:37:28

Wisdom is a community of people all sharing their knowledge together.

Speaker: 00:37:34

I love the thought of that because it's others focused.

Speaker: 00:37:39

It's not us focused, know?

Speaker: 00:37:41

and I think there's a certain degree.

Speaker: 00:37:45

in our culture of people.

Speaker: 00:37:47

I think some of this being changed, maybe COVID helped with this, that if it's,

Speaker: 00:37:51

you know, if it is to be, it's up to me.

Speaker: 00:37:52

Hustle culture, et cetera, things like that.

Speaker: 00:37:55

And one of the things that I've noticed, and I don't know if it's an age thing

Speaker: 00:38:00

or, you know, some situations I've gone through in my life and all that, but

Speaker: 00:38:05

I do think that maturity is a word I like to throw around a little bit more.

Speaker: 00:38:09

and fortunately or unfortunately, maturity really sometimes

Speaker: 00:38:12

does fit with people that are.

Speaker: 00:38:14

moving along in life, right?

Speaker: 00:38:17

think there was an article in the wall street journal recently

Speaker: 00:38:19

that said something about an investor that's focusing on 50

Speaker: 00:38:22

and 60 year old startup people.

Speaker: 00:38:25

What are you thinking?

Speaker: 00:38:27

I mean, you and I are, I think we've got a ton of years ahead of us, but no one would

Speaker: 00:38:34

confuse us for, you know, 20 somethings.

Speaker: 00:38:37

What's your thought now on people that are moving into our age bracket?

Speaker: 00:38:41

I'm at the tail end of boomers.

Speaker: 00:38:43

I think i'm a few years ahead of you, but what is your thoughts about age?

Speaker: 00:38:48

Maybe you know, what do you see even in the valley with age and what's your

Speaker: 00:38:51

thoughts when I make a comment like that?

Speaker: 00:38:56

there used to be, there's still a pocket.

Speaker: 00:38:59

And if you talk about just Silicon Valley, there's always been this

Speaker: 00:39:02

age bias, older people, age bias.

Speaker: 00:39:05

the young techies who are 22, 23, 25, 27 years old, let's just call it under 30.

Speaker: 00:39:12

that cohort definitely has an age bias because they don't trust anybody.

Speaker: 00:39:16

How could they know anything about AI if they're over 30?

Speaker: 00:39:21

as you get older, you realize that age is not the real thing

Speaker: 00:39:26

that should be biased against.

Speaker: 00:39:28

It's curiosity.

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You can actually learn anything at any age if you're passionate

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and curious about learning it.

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And if you're passionate and curious about learning a topic such as AI,

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and you have the experience and the wisdom to know how to learn and how

Speaker: 00:39:48

to process and curate knowledge, you can become extremely powerful.

Speaker: 00:39:51

for anybody who's in our age group, stay curious.

Speaker: 00:39:55

stay in learning mode, because that combined with your maturity and your

Speaker: 00:39:59

wisdom can really help the next generation who hasn't become self aware yet.

Speaker: 00:40:05

You don't become self aware until I think you're over 30, quite frankly.

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Let's, let me just say that from a, from a person way older than 30, you don't

Speaker: 00:40:13

start looking at yourself and you don't start admitting that you're vulnerable.

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You don't start it.

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You, you stop faking it until you make it, you stop trying to impress

Speaker: 00:40:21

people and you just become real.

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And when you become real, as you get older, people get

Speaker: 00:40:26

more comfortable around you.

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They're not threatened by you.

Speaker: 00:40:31

And yet you have all this wisdom and knowledge.

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As long as you stay curious and you process it and curate this knowledge

Speaker: 00:40:37

and this wisdom to actually say, you know, have you thought about this?

Speaker: 00:40:42

And you pose things in terms of questions, not statements.

Speaker: 00:40:45

You don't pound your chest as much.

Speaker: 00:40:47

Let's look at every culture in history.

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who is the age group in every culture of every historical

Speaker: 00:40:54

society that has been revered.

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And for the most part, it's been the older generation who people would go up

Speaker: 00:41:02

to the mountain and ask for their wisdom.

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Why is that?

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Because they were safe, they weren't the warriors, they weren't threatening, but

Speaker: 00:41:10

they learned a lot throughout their life.

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So, I think these things all come full circle.

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You know, for any under 30s out there, I would encourage you to definitely reach

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out to people that are older than you.

Speaker: 00:41:21

As long as they are curious and passionate.

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If they're not, they're stuck in their ways.

Speaker: 00:41:26

Yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker: 00:41:27

Discard them.

Speaker: 00:41:28

But if you can hold a conversation like this with a 40 year old, a 50

Speaker: 00:41:33

year old, a 60 year old, and they are energized, passionate, they're

Speaker: 00:41:38

curious, hook your wagon to them because they are very smart people.

Speaker: 00:41:44

Who can propel your knowledge as an under 30 year old much faster.

Speaker: 00:41:50

How does Jim Cook stay curious?

Speaker: 00:41:52

What is some practical either day to day, how are you staying curious right now?

Speaker: 00:41:59

I read a lot and I use all the tools of the trade of searching.

Speaker: 00:42:05

I scan headlines.

Speaker: 00:42:06

When I see a headline that I'm interested in, I use some of these

Speaker: 00:42:12

tools, some of these AI tools to say, bring me more, right?

Speaker: 00:42:15

It's getting easier to search.

Speaker: 00:42:18

It's getting easier to use AI to learn.

Speaker: 00:42:21

So I ask, I start with asking a ton of questions of myself.

Speaker: 00:42:25

what don't I know about this?

Speaker: 00:42:27

what do I want to know about it?

Speaker: 00:42:28

Where could this apply?

Speaker: 00:42:30

I realized I can just ask those questions of the computer instead of me

Speaker: 00:42:36

trying to figure out where it applies.

Speaker: 00:42:38

Why don't I get 80 percent of the answer done for me by asking chat

Speaker: 00:42:41

GPT and speed up my learning process.

Speaker: 00:42:44

So I'm thinking what I'm experiencing in the AI is helping me significantly

Speaker: 00:42:50

increase my own learning process.

Speaker: 00:42:53

But AI can't be curious for me.

Speaker: 00:42:56

See, AI is a answer provider.

Speaker: 00:43:00

It's not a question provider.

Speaker: 00:43:02

So if you're going to be successful in your life, stay

Speaker: 00:43:05

curious, keep asking questions.

Speaker: 00:43:08

The great stuff, the great news is, There's somebody now on the other end of

Speaker: 00:43:12

that screen or of your computer that's really, really good at giving answers.

Speaker: 00:43:16

But they're not so great at giving questions.

Speaker: 00:43:20

And questions come from curiosity, and curiosity just comes from

Speaker: 00:43:24

being interested in the subject.

Speaker: 00:43:26

You don't have to be interested in every subject, but the ones that you're

Speaker: 00:43:28

interested in, write down your next 10 questions and ask the computer.

Speaker: 00:43:32

It'll be amazing.

Speaker: 00:43:33

It'll be amazing what you learn if you just stay curious and ask questions.

Speaker: 00:43:37

The cool thing about it, and you know my life, Glory, we were sitting just

Speaker: 00:43:41

this morning with our coffee, and yesterday I spent some time AI, and

Speaker: 00:43:49

on my browser, I almost wish I could share my screen, I've got one three,

Speaker: 00:43:55

four, that one might be a semi AI.

Speaker: 00:43:59

I've got five tools, not counting the one we're recording on, that

Speaker: 00:44:04

this will then load up to later, would be in that, you know, large

Speaker: 00:44:09

language model, machine AI category.

Speaker: 00:44:12

And I told Gloria, I said, you know, I would love to just block 60 minutes a

Speaker: 00:44:18

day to sit down and just have dialogue.

Speaker: 00:44:23

Because for me, it's a brainstorming tool.

Speaker: 00:44:26

It's a writing assistant and I, you know, you and I are in the same category.

Speaker: 00:44:31

I love questions.

Speaker: 00:44:36

I love it.

Speaker: 00:44:36

Do you think we've got a deficit?

Speaker: 00:44:38

I know you wrote an article on your, playbooks recently about asking questions.

Speaker: 00:44:44

Do you think we've got a deficit?

Speaker: 00:44:46

Do we not train people well how to ask questions?

Speaker: 00:44:48

Because I,

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That's it,

Speaker: 00:44:50

I'm

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We aren't training people to ask questions first and ask for

Speaker: 00:44:53

help and that needs to change.

Speaker: 00:44:56

Hopefully these tools.

Speaker: 00:44:58

will help us train us to ask better questions.

Speaker: 00:45:00

But in school, we're asked to give answers.

Speaker: 00:45:03

We're asked to get A pluses and 1600 as our SATs.

Speaker: 00:45:06

We're asked to fill in multiple choice questions and to figure out

Speaker: 00:45:09

the answer and not ask for help.

Speaker: 00:45:12

This is a real problem.

Speaker: 00:45:14

Learning how to ask for help in the form of learning how to ask

Speaker: 00:45:17

better questions is the way out.

Speaker: 00:45:21

Now let's come back to these things that you call tools.

Speaker: 00:45:23

I would encourage everyone who's not a techie, which is most people.

Speaker: 00:45:27

It's every time you hear the word AI, which is puts a block up.

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It's like, well, I don't know anything about that to change that

Speaker: 00:45:35

word in your head to just another tool, all artificial intelligence is.

Speaker: 00:45:40

I mean, I'd rather just, we got rid of the word entirely.

Speaker: 00:45:42

It's just another piece of software.

Speaker: 00:45:45

We don't talk about, I use the PC, right?

Speaker: 00:45:48

We, in the old days, it was PC, it was Ram, it was CPUs.

Speaker: 00:45:52

And we used all this language for two.

Speaker: 00:45:54

Have technique techies make themselves seem important.

Speaker: 00:45:56

Doctors do it all the time.

Speaker: 00:45:57

They come up with Latin words for names instead of telling you what it is.

Speaker: 00:46:01

You know, all these people try to put a barrier between their knowledge by,

Speaker: 00:46:05

by separating us with language like AI.

Speaker: 00:46:09

All it is is a tool to make you more efficient.

Speaker: 00:46:11

It's just a better tool.

Speaker: 00:46:13

So don't, don't be afraid of a better tool.

Speaker: 00:46:16

I think most people, in the world, when you hand them a better tool to do

Speaker: 00:46:20

something, they're like, this is great.

Speaker: 00:46:22

I'm using it.

Speaker: 00:46:24

But when it comes to technology, it's like we put this language and we want to

Speaker: 00:46:28

like artificial intelligence and LLMs and all of this stuff to separate us from,

Speaker: 00:46:34

well, I'm never going to be that smart.

Speaker: 00:46:37

You just need to ask a question.

Speaker: 00:46:39

The software will do it for you.

Speaker: 00:46:41

Just think of AI as software.

Speaker: 00:46:43

That's all.

Speaker: 00:46:44

One of the things that's interesting and this, I love how this is coming

Speaker: 00:46:47

together because we brought up earlier.

Speaker: 00:46:50

the risk, embracing risk that occurs out of Silicon Valley.

Speaker: 00:46:56

And then you mentioned just a few minutes ago to really be curious,

Speaker: 00:47:02

you need to just kind of put aside what other people think about you.

Speaker: 00:47:06

And I'm sitting here and it's just kind of like ringing in my head as

Speaker: 00:47:09

you're talking Those go together.

Speaker: 00:47:12

I mean, I don't know if we could you and I we thinking like models Like I don't

Speaker: 00:47:16

know if that's like a you know, three things on a stool or whatever But number

Speaker: 00:47:19

one you have to take risk to open up a new tool and ask questions You have to

Speaker: 00:47:24

not really care what other people think about you Maybe not totally not care

Speaker: 00:47:28

But not let it drive you and not let it be a part of who you are and then

Speaker: 00:47:33

you just, I love that curiosity thing.

Speaker: 00:47:36

So you want to mash those together, risk, not being concerned about

Speaker: 00:47:40

other people, which are sort of related and then being curious.

Speaker: 00:47:44

Well, we'll mash them together into that word that you started

Speaker: 00:47:47

with, which is maturity.

Speaker: 00:47:50

When you're older with maturity, you realize that you have less years to

Speaker: 00:47:57

live, so why not take more risks?

Speaker: 00:48:00

You start taking a lot of risks as you're young.

Speaker: 00:48:02

You get really conservative between the ages of say 30 and 50 and believe

Speaker: 00:48:07

it or not, after 50, you actually, a lot of people start taking more

Speaker: 00:48:11

risks because what do I got to lose?

Speaker: 00:48:12

Maturity, that's risk maturity.

Speaker: 00:48:15

You brought it up.

Speaker: 00:48:17

Also gets not caring as much as what anybody thinks about you.

Speaker: 00:48:21

So if you want to bring together all the things that you've talked about,

Speaker: 00:48:25

It's your word maturity, not mine.

Speaker: 00:48:27

It's risk, not caring what people talk about and asking a lot of questions.

Speaker: 00:48:31

I just want to connect with people more.

Speaker: 00:48:35

I think being curious creates connection.

Speaker: 00:48:38

You can't be really keep being curious by yourself on a desert island.

Speaker: 00:48:42

That's great.

Speaker: 00:48:43

But what am I going to do with it?

Speaker: 00:48:44

When you're curious?

Speaker: 00:48:45

I think most people are curious because they want to share their

Speaker: 00:48:48

knowledge with somebody else.

Speaker: 00:48:50

And when you share your knowledge with others, because you're curious,

Speaker: 00:48:53

you create community wisdom, you create a wisdom across the community.

Speaker: 00:48:59

well, and you also attract people because people that are also somewhat

Speaker: 00:49:03

curious are going to be attracted.

Speaker: 00:49:05

That's I think where the age thing comes in and and man, it all

Speaker: 00:49:09

just kind of comes together here.

Speaker: 00:49:13

Agreed.

Speaker: 00:49:14

Before we finish up here in a bit, I want to ask you about your playbooks

Speaker: 00:49:18

and some of the things you're doing over on Substack and all of that.

Speaker: 00:49:22

I'd love, there's a couple of things that I want to ask and I think I'm

Speaker: 00:49:26

going to them all at once and then let you just answer it in whatever

Speaker: 00:49:30

way you want First question is how are you defining success right now?

Speaker: 00:49:36

And then I'm going to layer that into what are you looking at into the future?

Speaker: 00:49:43

And you can either do micro like, hey, here's, here's what's going

Speaker: 00:49:46

on with Jim and our family, or you can go macro and say, here's some

Speaker: 00:49:51

big picture things that I see.

Speaker: 00:49:53

So, so, so the two topics are success and the future and, just go.

Speaker: 00:50:02

Yeah, so I currently in my maturity level, I'm defining success as

Speaker: 00:50:08

my ability to make an impact.

Speaker: 00:50:11

Across larger groups of people, I'm going to use any tool possible to do that.

Speaker: 00:50:16

I'm going to take all of my curiosity, all of my stored knowledge and

Speaker: 00:50:19

try to just pay it forward without caring about what people think.

Speaker: 00:50:22

That's why I'm writing Cook's Playbooks and Substack.

Speaker: 00:50:25

If I'm curious about something, I'm going to write about it.

Speaker: 00:50:27

It's going to probably be in the lens of leadership and scaling

Speaker: 00:50:31

operations, which is what I'm good at.

Speaker: 00:50:32

But every once in a while, I'll write about AI, just because I want

Speaker: 00:50:35

to share this knowledge with others.

Speaker: 00:50:37

Making an impact across a larger and larger group of people, I'm just on a

Speaker: 00:50:41

mission to figure out how to do that.

Speaker: 00:50:43

I'm on the very beginning of that.

Speaker: 00:50:44

That's, that's what I think success is for me right now.

Speaker: 00:50:47

And, and I, you know, and in terms of, The future, your second question, and

Speaker: 00:50:54

I can go macro and macro because I've got a 23 year old and a 20 year old.

Speaker: 00:50:59

So I'll focus on them, teaching them how to ask better questions, teaching them to

Speaker: 00:51:03

stay curious, helping to remind them to stay curious so they can improve faster.

Speaker: 00:51:09

When I can improve my clients faster, when they can come back

Speaker: 00:51:13

and say, you just changed the way I approached my CEO, my board, my peers.

Speaker: 00:51:19

You know, I feel like you've just increased my, my knowledge of

Speaker: 00:51:23

how to be an executive and you've just escalated it by three years.

Speaker: 00:51:26

That's, that's making an impact.

Speaker: 00:51:28

That's speed.

Speaker: 00:51:29

so that's kind of the macro version of success, but I think

Speaker: 00:51:33

looking out three to five years,

Speaker: 00:51:38

just the way my brain works, but I'm going to encourage anybody whose brain works

Speaker: 00:51:41

this way, like mine and probably yours, Tim, I know yours, because if you could

Speaker: 00:51:46

stay curious about technology and not be.

Speaker: 00:51:50

Not think it's above you or it's smarter than you yet.

Speaker: 00:51:54

We all learned how to use a computer once upon a time.

Speaker: 00:51:57

We all learned how to use software on the computer.

Speaker: 00:52:00

We all learned this thing called the internet.

Speaker: 00:52:02

Some adopted it slower and now it's a daily part of our lives.

Speaker: 00:52:05

We all learned how to use a touch screen and an iPhone in 2007 before,

Speaker: 00:52:10

like this is never going to work.

Speaker: 00:52:11

need a keyboard.

Speaker: 00:52:13

We're learning how to talk to the computer.

Speaker: 00:52:16

Learn how to use these tools that we're talking about to make your

Speaker: 00:52:20

life better and then ask yourself what tool can make it better, right?

Speaker: 00:52:25

There's a couple that I'm looking at right now, which I'm just fascinated by.

Speaker: 00:52:30

So OpenAI has released two particular tools.

Speaker: 00:52:33

One is called Operator.

Speaker: 00:52:35

I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

Speaker: 00:52:38

And the other is called Deep Research.

Speaker: 00:52:40

Both are incredible beta versions, 0.

Speaker: 00:52:43

1, not even a, not even a release version for the consumers.

Speaker: 00:52:47

They're like, we've got something here.

Speaker: 00:52:49

We're just going to share it with the world and we can figure it out together.

Speaker: 00:52:51

It kind of works, but expect a lot of bugs.

Speaker: 00:52:54

What is Operator?

Speaker: 00:52:56

Operator, OpenAI's Operator, is simply a tool that you can attach

Speaker: 00:53:01

to a web browser that allows you to have operator, the software,

Speaker: 00:53:09

type the letters on your keyboard.

Speaker: 00:53:10

You give it one question, one prompt, and it actually starts operating your browser.

Speaker: 00:53:16

I want to research, I'm not sure which mountain bike to buy.

Speaker: 00:53:20

Can you go to five different websites and bring me back the

Speaker: 00:53:25

best prices, the best comparisons?

Speaker: 00:53:28

Okay, let's talk about that as an example for operator.

Speaker: 00:53:31

If you use that, We would sit down with our keyboards today without Operator.

Speaker: 00:53:35

We'd be on the web on a piece of software for about an hour.

Speaker: 00:53:40

We'd have done 20 different searches.

Speaker: 00:53:42

We'd click on 10 different links.

Speaker: 00:53:44

We'd open up five different tabs, get to the five things, you'd start opening up

Speaker: 00:53:49

different windows and comparing and you're probably, if you're like me, copying and

Speaker: 00:53:52

pasting into a separate notebook to kind of like compare because it's just kind of

Speaker: 00:53:57

the information is there but it's clunky.

Speaker: 00:53:59

What is operator?

Speaker: 00:54:00

One prompt.

Speaker: 00:54:01

Same thing.

Speaker: 00:54:02

I want to buy a mountain bike.

Speaker: 00:54:04

Can you, go compare five of the best sites, five of the best models, bring

Speaker: 00:54:08

me back everything you can on it.

Speaker: 00:54:10

an operator then starts on your browser and starts typing.

Speaker: 00:54:14

You can hands off keyboard, watch it typing.

Speaker: 00:54:17

And it actually gets, and it shows you what it's doing.

Speaker: 00:54:20

So anything that you're doing with the browser inside of a business, an accounts

Speaker: 00:54:24

payable clerk, somebody downloading a CSV file from their bank statement every day,

Speaker: 00:54:31

like all this inefficiency, even in tech.

Speaker: 00:54:34

I got to go to the, you know, somebody closing their books.

Speaker: 00:54:36

I'm going to bring it back to CFO has to Go to their bank.

Speaker: 00:54:39

It's a clunky thing.

Speaker: 00:54:40

They've got a would you like to download your monthly transactions and csv?

Speaker: 00:54:44

Sure, click here 10 clicks later.

Speaker: 00:54:46

I've got it in excel file.

Speaker: 00:54:48

It downloads to my download file I got to open the download.

Speaker: 00:54:51

I've got to translate the csv into a pivot table I've got to like sort it

Speaker: 00:54:56

and so I can actually close my books.

Speaker: 00:54:57

What is the operator?

Speaker: 00:54:59

Hey, go get my bank statement and put it in a pivot table.

Speaker: 00:55:03

That's one question You It then does all of those keystrokes for you.

Speaker: 00:55:10

Imagine that.

Speaker: 00:55:12

Just imagine if you can do, if you're doing something constantly,

Speaker: 00:55:16

a lot on your browser, you can ask the computer now to do it for you.

Speaker: 00:55:21

And it's just the beginning.

Speaker: 00:55:23

So that's operator.

Speaker: 00:55:24

Deep research just got announced four or five days ago.

Speaker: 00:55:28

Deep research is operator on steroids.

Speaker: 00:55:31

Doesn't necessarily use the browser, but imagine an investment banker.

Speaker: 00:55:36

A junior investment banker trying to write a research report across an industry.

Speaker: 00:55:41

Deep research is asking a question to do deep research on a subject

Speaker: 00:55:46

you know nothing about and it will produce you a professional paper

Speaker: 00:55:50

which will blow your mind out.

Speaker: 00:55:52

It'll go get every single subject and it'll keep probing and asking

Speaker: 00:55:58

questions and prompting you back would you like me to go deeper on like

Speaker: 00:56:02

now the computer's working for you you're not working for the computer.

Speaker: 00:56:07

It's asking you, would you like this in a graph?

Speaker: 00:56:10

Yes.

Speaker: 00:56:11

And it produces your research paper and I would just encourage people to try it.

Speaker: 00:56:15

It's not, it's not mystery black box science.

Speaker: 00:56:17

It's pretty cool.

Speaker: 00:56:19

Deep research.

Speaker: 00:56:20

mean, you met, you know, I love the thought of all that is, you

Speaker: 00:56:23

know, an industrial and systems engineer kind of at my roots.

Speaker: 00:56:27

like, if, if you do anything more than once, can you automate it?

Speaker: 00:56:32

How can you, you know, offload it or, or whatever?

Speaker: 00:56:36

And my mind sitting here going, okay, you know, we're pulling up

Speaker: 00:56:39

info for taxes at this time of year.

Speaker: 00:56:41

We're doing this.

Speaker: 00:56:42

It's like, And again, we're going to come back to the maturity and curiosity

Speaker: 00:56:47

that you brought up, Jim, because

Speaker: 00:56:51

who is risk averse would be going, well, I'm not going to

Speaker: 00:56:53

give my keyboard up to anybody.

Speaker: 00:56:56

I get it.

Speaker: 00:56:57

I get it.

Speaker: 00:56:57

I had Joshua, my son, you know, Joshua, he took me to the airport last week.

Speaker: 00:57:01

I had to fly to Sarasota to meet up with some business people and we're going

Speaker: 00:57:04

along and I look over and there's a Waymo beside me in Phoenix, and I'm That there's

Speaker: 00:57:09

nobody driving it and i'm like going, huh?

Speaker: 00:57:12

I said, you know what?

Speaker: 00:57:13

I haven't where i've been ridden in one of those I need to I need to get the app

Speaker: 00:57:17

because I need to ride in them and people are going Oh my gosh, you you're going

Speaker: 00:57:19

to get in a car that nobody's driving.

Speaker: 00:57:21

I go listen.

Speaker: 00:57:23

My son's awesome He's a great driver, but he's a 30 year old driver.

Speaker: 00:57:26

I'm like going, you know what?

Speaker: 00:57:27

I don't see a lot of difference between it's better really right?

Speaker: 00:57:32

So I mean I just think there's a mindset That

Speaker: 00:57:36

Yep.

Speaker: 00:57:37

Yep.

Speaker: 00:57:43

adjust Some this is this i'll say this is again I'm going to pose

Speaker: 00:57:48

this as one of my last questions for you Because I think it feeds

Speaker: 00:57:51

Okay.

Speaker: 00:57:58

on things for whatever reason with all that's gone on over the last five

Speaker: 00:58:03

years I think it's getting easier and easier to know when you and I have these

Speaker: 00:58:09

conversations we're getting excited Probably no one's listening at this

Speaker: 00:58:14

point if they're not But the people that are shutting down the people that

Speaker: 00:58:18

are not taking risks the people that are not matured i'm not talking about

Speaker: 00:58:22

age I, I think it's going to be harder and harder for us to hang out together

Speaker: 00:58:26

and I want to hang out with them.

Speaker: 00:58:27

I like to move them along.

Speaker: 00:58:28

What are your thoughts?

Speaker: 00:58:31

These cohorts of people who are high risk takers, low risk takers has always

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existed way before technology, right?

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Whether we go back the industrial revolution or airplanes or

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automobiles, there were always the earliest of adopters and there

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were always the latest of adopters.

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And this was always, this would always be.

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Displayed in, in the movies as the old, as the old guy sitting in his rocking

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chair saying, no youngsters don't know what they're doing while the youngsters

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were off driving their Ferraris, right.

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Or, or learning how to surf.

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What are these people on boards on the waves?

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There people aren't meant to be on the ocean on a board.

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These people are crazy.

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So there's always been this cohort of risk takers, early adopters, late adopters.

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But history has taught us that even the latest of adopters eventually adopt.

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They want to, they just don't know how to, their brain's not wired.

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It's okay.

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They just come along slower, right?

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How many of, how many of people that we know that are 85 and 90 years old

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are carrying off cell phone and they're touching their screen and they figured

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out how to use an app on their iPhone.

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Almost all of them.

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There's very few that are now saying to us, those iPhones are evil.

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those mobile devices, I'm never using one of those.

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There's, there'll be a small percentage of people, right?

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But for the most part, people just have their different rates of adoption.

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That's okay.

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I think you just got to meet people where they are.

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You know, tone down your excitement a little bit, because it turns

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off the latest of adopters.

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And just bring them along one step at a time, because They do actually

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appreciate you for it and they will thank you for it over time.

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But if you take the same level of excitement I've had to learn

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this to the latest of adopters, it really turns them off.

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You've got to tone it down to instead of being at level nine on

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10, you got to one or two and take what's the next step they can make.

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Always

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are you, optimistic and excited about the future?

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Sure.

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future.

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I mean, if you're not, you might as well just go live, you know, as a hermit

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somewhere, but yeah, future's great.

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I think about that some, you know, Gloria and I right now we're hanging

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out in a 55 and older community, which is kind of different for us because

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I don't, Feel like I'm old enough to be there, but Glory reminds me

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that, yep, I'm old enough to be here.

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of people, you know, their daily thing, there's nothing wrong with this, okay,

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I'm not judging this, but, you know, play a few hours of pickleball is it.

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And there's even some of them now that they're probably looking in

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at my light and all that, going, what are you, what are you doing

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on your computer and all that?

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I said, well, I've got a podcast.

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So, anyway, I I'm optimistic and excited too Jim, tell me about

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what you're doing over on substack.

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Let everybody know we're going to include links and maybe give an article

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for someone to go to first if they

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Sure.

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You know, I haven't gotten started with you yet.

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So I started in June of 2024, taking all the things that I was talking with.

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Mike, I have about 12 clients right now.

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I coach them one on one.

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They are CEOs, CFOs, VPs of finance, predominantly across Silicon

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Valley, how to scale their startups.

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So this was born out of my coaching practice.

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My practice is a bunch of lessons learned, what I call frameworks

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for going faster, playbooks inside those frameworks to go faster.

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And I realized that I can take a summary of, you know, these are, I spent three,

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four, five, six sessions at a time with clients going over one of these

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articles, but I can do a summary of this article and at least get people

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interested and want to read more.

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And hopefully start a community talking about this.

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An example would be my current series, which is leading with powerful questions.

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One of the things that you and I have talked about a lot that I really

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honed and learned at Mozilla was how not to lead with statements,

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how not to lead with answers.

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And this ties back to what we're talking about here.

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It's interesting.

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You lead with questions.

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You actually, a leadership style is asking more questions.

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Not just curiosity for yourself, but you can actually turn this

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into a leadership style, especially when you know the answer.

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we get to a leadership position and the people that are very junior, or even,

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if you're a head of finance or a head of sales or head of engineering, they're

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going to come to you for an answer.

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But what you really want them to do is not ask that question in the future.

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And if you really want that, you want them to learn.

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What you're going to talk about.

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And if you really want them to learn, you have to engage their brain by asking

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them a question, because if you give them the answer, they'll just come back

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and ask you that question again, and they'll want the answer again and again.

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And you're not helping yourself or anybody else.

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If you ask them a question to lead them down the path to enlightenment,

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you know, it, it's a very powerful.

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So this is my three part series.

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I've broken it up into three parts.

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There's several articles like this every once in a while, I'll throw in AI.

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I'll talk about operator at deep research.

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So I'll talk about other things, but I'm just trying to get a summary

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of how to think about leadership, scaling operations, differently.

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You enjoying it?

Speaker: 01:03:58

I am enjoying sharing that info.

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I will tell you it is hard to put things down in writing and, to make it to

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my own standards of professionalism.

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Are you using some of the tools to help you though?

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I've started to,

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this is a

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I've started to.

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but that's what these tools are for, right?

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Yeah, so I've started to, draft something first in my own writing.

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I ask ChatGPT to look at it and refine it.

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It does do a much better job of correcting my grammar, correcting

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my spelling, organizing my thoughts in a much more structured way.

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But what it doesn't do for me is It gives me the structure, but if I just took what

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it gave me, it would not be my voice.

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I can tell when someone's written in AI.

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Everywhere across, if, now that I've been using it for a while.

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it has to be my voice.

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It has to be how I would talk to you, how I would verbalize it.

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I have to rewrite it.

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I love the structure it gives me.

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I love how to think about it.

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I love the new ideas, but then you spend a lot of time cleaning it up.

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So it's a cycle.

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Yeah.

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And I, the clue for me, if you see the word delve in anything that I've

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created, that means I've used AI, delve, because I do not use that word.

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And Gloria says, no, that's a real word.

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I said, not for me.

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I don't use delve.

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But anyway, no, I, and I think there's times for it and times not.

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Well, I've read them and I agree with you that that three part series on asking

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questions is a great place to start.

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In fact, what we'll do down in the notes on YouTube and also on the

Speaker: 01:05:25

podcast platforms, we will include a link to that and then you can subscribe

Speaker: 01:05:31

and I actually get Jim in my inbox.

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And Jim, I gotta tell you, I don't get a lot in my inbox anymore.

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I keep it really good and clean.

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You know, I declutter that.

Speaker: 01:05:40

So Jim Cook comes into my inbox once a week with Cook's playbook.

Speaker: 01:05:44

Cool.

Speaker: 01:05:45

let's not make this an every five year thing.

Speaker: 01:05:48

We should probably do this a little more often, I think.

Speaker: 01:05:52

Maybe every 100 episodes.

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Something like that.

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You just gotta go faster, Tim.

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you know the thing I want to do, I joked with someone recently, I said, you know

Speaker: 01:06:01

what, I really do, I, I envy Joe Rogan that he gets to sit down with someone

Speaker: 01:06:07

in a studio for three and a half hours.

Speaker: 01:06:10

And just kind of talk you and I could do that for days We could

Speaker: 01:06:14

do that for days and have what I believe would be incredible content.

Speaker: 01:06:19

if you want to experiment with that, I'm in.

Speaker: 01:06:22

Like, I know Joe Rogan smokes cigars, I don't smoke cigars, but I have a

Speaker: 01:06:26

feeling that you'll sip a whiskey every once in a while, so If you feed me some

Speaker: 01:06:29

whiskey, I don't know if you do that.

Speaker: 01:06:31

Maybe you don't, but, but you know, Yeah, maybe a glass of wine, but if we have

Speaker: 01:06:35

a glass of wine, you can get me taught You won't shut me up for three hours.

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it would be fun.

Speaker: 01:06:40

Jim.

Speaker: 01:06:40

Tell the family that glory and I said hello.

Speaker: 01:06:43

I appreciate you being a part of this And we're gonna, we'll

Speaker: 01:06:47

include links down below.

Speaker: 01:06:48

we're continuing our five year, 300 episode series next week will

Speaker: 01:06:53

be episode 302 with Mike Bair.

Speaker: 01:06:55

He's one of the pioneers of business as mission.

Speaker: 01:06:58

He and I did consulting and coaching back in the nineties and he was

Speaker: 01:07:02

about our second or third guest.

Speaker: 01:07:04

make sure you listen in on that.

Speaker: 01:07:05

We're going to have a great, additional conversation, just like we did here.

Speaker: 01:07:09

When we first spoke with Mike, just like with Jim, It was in early

Speaker: 01:07:13

2020 and the world, of course, was on the verge of massive change.

Speaker: 01:07:16

He's going to talk about what's happened, how faith driven business is evolving,

Speaker: 01:07:20

and where he sees it heading next.

Speaker: 01:07:22

If you're passionate about leadership, mission, and marketplace

Speaker: 01:07:25

impact, make sure you tune in.

Speaker: 01:07:27

We will see everyone next week on Seek, Go, Create.