How to Lead Without Being a Jerk: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk & the 7 Habits of Toughness | Matt Hunter

[00:00:00] All right, Matt Hunter. Hey. We've only met once or twice, so I'm going to learn a lot about you, but we had a great initial conversation and I think this session here is going to be a third podcast, a third therapy session, and a third fashion session. You're going to teach me a little bit about all three. This is crazy. That's my wife actually. So I can't, I don't have much to say. I just wear what she picks out for me. Then I'm going to have to learn from your wife because you look good. I don't know if I can look that good like that, but that's a good look.

[00:00:30] Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Yeah. So the reason I say a third therapy session is because you just put out a new book, Tough Enough, and it says how to lead a team to greatness, which I've done before. But the second part's a little harder for me without being a jerk. Oh my gosh, it's almost like you wrote this book about my career. Let's go, man. I wish I would have had this like 30 years ago. I could have led teams to greatness and been a nice guy all at the same time. Is that really true?

[00:00:58] Not a nice guy. No, definitely not a nice guy. So why do you say not a nice guy? Well, being nice is not the thing that moves the needle. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite. Yeah, it is. I do think it is the opposite, but it's a specific kind of toughness. So I collaborated on this book with the Silicon Valley legend. His name's John Baird.

[00:01:19] And he's coached the new CEO of Apple, John Ternus, the CEO of Intel, Nike, DoorDash, Masterclass, a bunch of great companies. And he coached the first leaders of that first iPhone team at Apple. So this legendary team that came together in the mid-2000s to build that first iPhone. He was coaching most of the leaders that were reporting into Steve Jobs. And so he got to have a real up close. Eddie Q. Was Eddie Q part of that?

[00:01:48] I'm not sure. He may have. I mean, I don't know. I only mentioned that. He told me some of the names, but I don't. I just mentioned Eddie because we have places together. Oh, that's cool. I don't know if Eddie was someone he coached or not. We'll see. Anyways, he got to have this up close and personal look at Steve Jobs, who was getting these incredible results, but was also... And he was kind of a jerk, though. No, no. He was also totally a jerk. He was a complete asshole.

[00:02:18] Right? And so that was the first time that my co-author, John, really had to reckon with, well, what's the deal here? Because this guy is getting exceptional results. And then for me, I was a founder for 15 years. So I started and ran companies. Had a company that was acquired by Yelp in 2017. And I also helped run a nonprofit called Founders Pledge, which has now raised almost $14 billion in pledges from startup founders.

[00:02:48] And $2 billion of those pledges have made it into the charitable sector already. And I partnered with some real kind of hardcore jerks, if you will. In the book, what we call hardcore people is we call them... Or what we call jerks is we call hardcore people. They're in the hardcore zone. They're very intense. The mission is everything.

[00:03:10] They have a little bit less empathy than the rest of kind of most of the people or the natural distribution of the population. And I partnered with some really tough people. And then when I became a coach about five years ago, I started to notice the ones that were getting the... Before we go there, tell us what a coach is. Tell us what an executive coach is. Sure. I mean, there's many different styles of executive coaching.

[00:03:35] My style of executive coaching is to partner with a founder, a CEO, or a public company executive. Understand what their goals are, what the goals of the business is. And then try to help them in whatever ways I can. Typically through conversations and reflecting back what I'm seeing and how they're showing up. To help them achieve their goals as quickly as they can. That's my style. It's a very direct style.

[00:04:05] It's a very honest style. I'm not a therapist, but sometimes the sessions can kind of skew therapy-esque, which is something I'm excited about for us today. Maybe we can kind of go in that direction. But an executive coach kind of spans... I'm sure a lot of people watching this would love it if you took me through a deep therapy session. Yeah, let's... I mean, we'll get there. They'll get their popcorn out. Yeah, let's get there. I think that would be fun. They'll have some fun. Yeah, I will have some fun with that too.

[00:04:35] I'm not sure I'm going to have fun if we do that. So anyways, when I was coaching, I realized that a lot of the people that were having the billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar outcomes in the founders that I were coaching, they were also these jerks, these more kind of hardcore leaders. And I'll just list names because they're... Yeah. You use the word jerk, you use hardcore leader. But when we think of people who've done great, great things in the last...

[00:04:59] At least people that I would have known their personalities, not directly, but certainly through them being in current times. You start rattling them off. And most of them, if they were founders, you know, if they were founders and really successful, which I think is a key theme there. Yeah. You know, they do fit that mold. You know, you look at what you hear about an Elon Musk, what you hear about a... You know, you mentioned a Steve Jobs, but a Jeff Bezos, you know, Mark Zuckerberg.

[00:05:26] I mean, just go down the list and they all have intensity, but they're also maybe across the board have often been described as, you know, being what might be the definition of jerk. Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent. But what's interesting is that's not anywhere close to as true.

[00:05:44] If you think of very successful people who are more, who weren't founders, who kind of more went up kind of corporate ranks and ended up in the CEO suite and were successful in kind of a different career path. Yeah. There is, you don't necessarily think of them anywhere close to the same light. Yeah. There's more politicking in that world. I work, my coauthor and I do some facilitation and coaching for some fortune 50 teams and leadership teams.

[00:06:13] And it's, it is a bit of a different beast where there is politicking. There's just, it's a different kind of style, but I think generally speaking, the specific kind of toughness that we're talking about really is important. So let me just land this one point because I think it's important. So John and I became obsessed with this question of, well, is being an asshole the thing that moves the needle or is it something else? And we did a whole bunch of research and we discovered that actually it's not being a jerk.

[00:06:42] It's just being tough in these seven kind of ways. Well, you know what? You should have come to me for that because I would have told you where to first look to get at least a hypothesis. Yes. Yeah. And you may have already looked there. So one of my absolute best professor, hands down, was Steve Kaplan at University of Chicago. Does that mean anything to you? I've heard the name. Yes.

[00:07:05] So Professor Kaplan, who's known for finance, known for entrepreneurship, but he and a couple other professors got their hands on two sets of data. Okay. Two sets of data. So one set of data had everything to do with business success. So it was deep analytical data, CEOs and CFOs who were funded and you could see what their outcomes were.

[00:07:35] So objectively, if you define success as did you deliver exceptional returns to your shareholders, which is kind of the job. Uh-huh. They had a set of, you know, a data, you know, that was tracked over 20 years. I'm going to make up some of these numbers, but lots and lots and lots and lots of people. So a data set that objectively knows who entered a job and whether or not they're successful quantitatively.

[00:08:02] And then they had a different data set, and this is what made it really interesting, which was, I think, GH Smart data set. And it was data set that was how these people were rated in some sort of, like, personality test, some sort of, you know, what were their attributes? Were they, you know, were they, you know, intelligence-wise, where did they rank? You know, the jerk meter. Sure. Where did they rank?

[00:08:31] So they had, you know, some number of different sets of data. Maybe it was 30, 40 different data points about their characteristics. Mm-hmm. So then they did. And their performance. So performance, outcome, and before performance began, you know, how they rated in a, you know, in a very standardized test that a GH Smart would have given. And then they smashed those data sets together. And then they presented their findings. So objectively using statistics, what mattered most when it came to success?

[00:09:02] And what mattered least? And so, and then they published it. Have you seen this? No, I have not seen this. So I'm excited to. There is a correlation, probably a tight correlation to what your findings are. But they would always start when he would present. He would start by asking whoever the audience was the question, what do you think, you know, are the factors that make someone successful as a CEO? But he'd also ask, what about as a CFO?

[00:09:30] And a little bit of hint there, the answers were different depending on if a CEO or CFO, the characteristics were very different. But anyways, I'll maybe bring that up here and there. What were they? Well, I don't want to go there yet because I want to go. All right. Well, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Where I want to go is here. Okay. Great. That sounds awesome. But I do know that there's a strong correlation because I obviously know that one and I kind of get a sense of where this is going.

[00:09:58] Well, we, in the book, we have what's called the what about Elon conundrum, which is like I went to business school. My co-author, he taught at business school for many years. And the curriculum in a business school is way different than what an Elon or a Bezos or even you would have been doing. Right?

[00:10:16] And so why is it if we're taught in a business school to be connected, compassionate, kind, even respectful and – All factors that would make you not a jerk. Yeah, exactly. All factors that would make you not a jerk. How come these mostly guys – but it's women too. I mean there's Anna Wintour, Martha Stewart. They're not necessarily founders or CEOs but they – Martha Stewart was.

[00:10:45] Well, yeah, she was – yeah, she was – I think of – yeah, I do think of her as a founder. She was a creator of something of significance that started with nothing. Totally. Which is what I think of as founder. Totally. And ultimately this book is about how to make anything happen, right? So a group of people come together. How do you make something happen? And ultimately what we've found is it's something way different than what they teach the kids in business school.

[00:11:11] I just last week spoke at – for the lead scholars at CU, at the business school. So they're top 200 students. And it's amazing the conversation we had. We had a 90-minute conversation and the material was way different than anything they've heard in any of their classes. Yeah. You know, so this – Well, could you imagine being a professor at the Leeds Business School here in Boulder, Colorado, and get in front of their – in front of your students and declare to them that, hey, I got news for you.

[00:11:41] Being kind and compassionate and a great communicator, that's not going to make you successful unless you want to rise up the corporate ranks over 20 years. Which maybe there will help – be helpful. But if you really want to be part of the startup tech community, create something for nothing or even other kinds of creation, creation of content, creation of experiences. If you want to be a creator and do something of significance, that's not what you need. Yes. You need something else. Yes. You get, you know, booed out of your classroom. Exactly.

[00:12:11] And so – but what we are saying in the book that I think is an important point is you can do all of those same things that the hardcore leaders do, but you can do them in a way where you are respectful and good to your people. And that's ultimately what we try to showcase. There's these seven habits of toughness.

[00:12:28] We show you how to do those habits in a similar way that a quote-unquote hardcore leader would do, but also how can you do it in a way that is authentic to you, to your leadership style, and where you're good to your people. And we don't sugarcoat it. There's this spectrum of toughness, and we do – there's these five operating zones. There's the comfort zone, compassion zone, the tough enough zone, the hardcore zone, and then the danger zone.

[00:12:56] Yeah, let's talk about the danger zone because I've worked for people who got very into that danger zone. Yes. And they have similar personality traits, but then they go way too far. And, you know, I had a boss's boss and a CFO next to him who spent lots of years in jail because they're – Yes, they took it a little too far.

[00:13:19] And there were a lot of other people in my journey kind of particularly leading into the telcom boom, telcom meltdown, the big fiber boom, and the dot-com. A lot of those people went way too far and ended up spending lots of years in jail, certainly losing everything, but also losing their freedom as well.

[00:13:41] And so those same traits that make some of the people you described, we described as being successful who would fit in the category of jerk, some of them gone too far. And it's gotten the better of them. Yeah. It's a razor's edge there. The hardcore zone gets the best results. So someone who's trying to be tough enough, they're going to have a hard time competing with someone like you.

[00:14:04] Like if I care about how my words and my actions impact other people more than you do, then it is going to be harder for me to compete with you because you can just say and do everything you want in service of the mission all day long. Okay? But for most people, like I couldn't be like you. I just don't have the wiring. And I also don't have the interest. Like I don't want to live that way or kind of show like – Whoa, now you don't want to live like me?

[00:14:33] I say that with as much respect and honestly inspiration. Let's say we don't know each other either. So let me challenge you on some of that stuff. Yeah, please. Please. So first of all, I agree with you that – so first, let me go back to that other study and how they characterized it because they looked at it statistically. So they could declare that this wasn't just a theory or a hypothesis. It was what the data showed. You know, the University of Chicago variant. I think the partners were Yale or Stanford.

[00:15:03] So three kind of – Yeah, amazing. Top institutions. Yeah. And one of the things that – and so they summarized all these factors into three or four words. And I did not freshen myself on this. But one of them, one of the key factors, they just summarized as intelligence. That people who are really successful are operating at an intelligence level that most people can't understand. They just see stuff way before other people see it.

[00:15:28] But the other one, which is very, very much in line with your Tough Enough title, is just being relentless. Like they are so committed to accomplishing something that they're so – my optic, they're so focused that they don't get distracted on other stuff that other people might consider important. Like if you want other people to follow you, you've got to spend time trying to help them understand what you're doing and get them to come along with you. They don't do that. You know, they don't have time for that.

[00:15:57] They're too intense for that. They figure the right people will figure it out and follow me. And if people don't, I don't really care because I'm too busy to care about that. And that's why – and then they'll talk about a couple other things too.

[00:16:09] But that one I want to talk to you a little bit and that's why I want to challenge you is to some degree, there is kind of this – where by trying to do it in the way you're describing the book, is there a tradeoff with achieving kind of the type of success that changes people's lives forever? Okay, so when we talk about someone being a jerk, I don't know.

[00:16:34] I look at like an Elon Musk and I say Elon Musk is having a positive effect on people across the world like perhaps no one else in history. I mean Starlink alone and that's not even – that's not even what he's most known for. But Starlink alone is improving and changing the lives of people across the world. Would that have been possible, Starlink and other things he's done, if he was trying to be a little bit more attentive to the people around him? Yeah, maybe not. Maybe not. I mean who knows?

[00:17:02] We don't know because Elon – we can't run simultaneous Elons running different strategies. Well, if Elon was a lone wolf, you could say, well, maybe that's just an outlier. Maybe that's an exception to the rule. But as we said, it's most people we named who created something from nothing of enormous significance fit those kind of characteristics. Yeah, let me be absolutely crystal clear. The winning strategy right now in the world is what we identify as this hardcore strategy, which is exactly what you're talking about.

[00:17:30] I completely agree that someone like Elon has had more impact on the environment and probably humanity than any entrepreneur ever. He's, I think, arguably the go. The entire space program wouldn't be a fraction of what it is today if it wasn't free. 100%. 100%. So there's a small – like just like in the NBA, right? There's a small subset of genetically gifted people that are wired to do things in that particular way. You know who's a jerk? What's that? Who?

[00:17:59] Michael Jordan, one of my all-time favorite basketball players. Absolutely. Yeah. And his intensity is what made him the go to that sport. Michael Jordan is the epitome of someone in the hardcore zone. I'm not saying the hardcore zone is bad. I'm saying and I'm fully honest when I say this. The hardcore zone gets the best results for sure, bar none, okay? Most people can't live in the hardcore zone.

[00:18:26] And so they need a different strategy that's palatable for them, right? I agree with that. So that's one component of it. The other component that – I would also wonder if those who live in the hardcore zone, if that's the way I'm going to describe it, that the Elon Musk and the Mark Zuckerbergs, could they operate not in that zone? Yeah, exactly. Or if they tried to operate not in that zone, would they implode in a different way altogether? Totally. Because it's not like they're going out of their way to be jerks toward people, I don't think.

[00:18:55] I don't know that. So I'm going to make a hypothesis that the jerk part of what we described to them has a really strong correlation with their being myopically focused. On the mission. On the intense, on the mission, on success, on achievement, that makes a difference in the broadness sense of the word. And when you add the broadest sense of the word, you now move from selfishness, which is I'm so myopic,

[00:19:21] all I care about myself versus I care so much about the mission and what's going to be achieved by us doing what we're going to do. And that achievement, quite often, makes a gigantic difference, felt rippled across the world. So you can't really equate that to selfishness. But if you're going to exert kind of the type of energy it takes to do something that otherwise looks impossible,

[00:19:52] maybe that's what we're really describing here. Totally. I think a lot of those founders that we're talking about have lower empathy on an individual basis and larger empathy on a humanity basis. Right? So, for example, someone like Elon, who I have read a lot about, I've met before, I think he's a pretty low empathy compared to the rest of the population on a one-to-one basis, on a human relationship basis. But when he thinks about what's best for humanity,

[00:20:22] he might have some of the highest empathy we have out there. Right? He really cares about humanity on a global scale. Right? So I think that's one piece. Second piece, we don't quite know how things would be impacted if, for example, Elon did all of the things, all of the habits that he's doing, which, by the way, of the seven habits, he's, you know, maxing out pretty much all seven of them. What if he did them in a way where he was more respectful? Would that slow him down?

[00:20:51] Would it get, would he get less results? I don't know. I honestly don't know. It may, it may slow him down. I have a hypothesis there. Yeah. You think it would slow him down? Yeah, because at the scale he operates and people like him operate, I mean, there's so many, there's only so many hours a day and there's only so many calories you could expend. So you're saying if he took some of the energy he is exerting, you know, and reallocated that,

[00:21:16] you know, somehow he reallocated that to something that makes you less like a jerk, it'd have to be a pretty thoughtful way of doing that to be more productive. For sure. Rather than less productive. And that takes energy, right? So that's what we're saying in the book. Like we don't, we're not mincing words about this. The hardcore zone gets the best results because you move in the absolute direct path to pursue your mission.

[00:21:42] But like I said, most people are not interested in that because they're not saving humanity. They might have a startup that's, you know, really important to them. But they also, when they get to the end of the journey, they want to still be in their marriage. They want to not have estranged children. They want to have a team that feels proud of the journey.

[00:22:02] They don't want to have, you know, hundreds of people that are burnt out and, you know, have PTSD from how difficult and whatever it was. I'm not getting into my therapy zone. Okay, there we go. Okay, I'm hitting on. I will say this, you know, before we move on to that. So we described kind of a success kind of filter. Yeah. Right? We defined a Jeff Bezos, a Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. People who've had success building something from nothing.

[00:22:30] But those same characteristics, you know, we could have come up with names. We probably would have to work a little harder. The same characteristics have also led people to go off the deep end. So just as intense, just as kind of low empathy, just as myopically focused on whatever they were doing, but weren't accomplishing something that changed the world to positive.

[00:22:55] They did something that, you know, ended up, what was the one guy's name who had the Ponzi scheme? Oh, yes. Maybe he had the same characteristics. In New York, yes. Madoff. Madoff, yeah. So maybe Madoff had a lot of those same characteristics. Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling, Sam Bankman, Fried. Jeffrey Skilling, who was part of my journey. Yeah. Skilling was part of that. Oh, you knew him back then or did some work with him? Well, the Enron, because their biggest thing was the bandwidth. They got into bandwidth trading.

[00:23:23] So they started acquiring fiber and started, and that's what took them down as much as anything else. You know, the Enron broadband portion of their story. And the other energy company, it was the same thing. I forget their name. I cover them a little bit in my book, Bandwidth. But there's lots of examples of that. There's the Thermos. The Theranos, yeah. Elizabeth Holmes is a perfect example of the danger zone. Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:47] So saying just because you're that way is good because Elon Musk is that way doesn't also look at the other half of that data. Yeah, maybe some people get away with that, but maybe a lot of others. Yeah, let's talk about this. So toughness is on this scale where you have extreme comfort on one side, extreme toughness on the other side. Greatness only occurs if you have very high levels of toughness. Okay? You need to have very, very high levels of toughness.

[00:24:15] Are there any exceptions to that that come to mind where someone's had greatness and not very high levels of toughness? Maybe in some of the arts, but I think it's pretty rare. We could find exceptions to the rule, but it's a pretty solid rule across, I would say, most fields. Yeah. I would say there's lots of exceptions if we were measuring success as corporate CEOs. I think that's important, but creating something. We're talking about creating something and then sticking around and leading it to greatness, right?

[00:24:45] Sustain excellence over a long period of time of something that you started. That's ultimately what we're talking about. There must be some exceptions. There are some exceptions that we could identify visibly. None are coming to mind here. If they do, you let me know. But it seems to me like a rule, and there are some exceptions. Anyways, in the hardcore zone, the mission is everything.

[00:25:09] The thing that separates the hardcore zone from the danger zone is if the empathy goes from a little bit of empathy for people or humanity to no empathy, where your commitment to the mission exceeds your commitment to ethics, right? So now the ends start to justify the means, and that's where people get into a lot of trouble, right? So with Theranos, you can be as bold as you want about the future, but if we're talking about the present moment or the past, you have to be fully honest, right?

[00:25:38] And she felt like, I think, that she could kind of mix up the truth in service of this great mission, right? So that she could make something happen. And ultimately, that got her into a lot of trouble. Yeah, this brings up another aspect of the study, the Steve Kaplan study. One of the other major characteristics they described of people who achieve greatness, and this might be the differentiator between the thermos example and the other examples,

[00:26:05] is that the leaders are very decisive. They're like with a subset of information that most people would need. They quickly come to a decision, and they say, I'd like to use an example. They say, that's the hill we're going to climb. That's the hill we're going to take. Yeah. Okay. But those same people, when they start climbing the hill, the great ones, the ones who achieve remarkable success,

[00:26:33] they also have this flexibility that although they stubbornly declared that they were right and it was that mountain, they start climbing up it. They wake up the next day and say, oh, no, we're going to go back down this mountain. We're going to go up that mountain over there. And then people are like, wait, but you just told us two weeks ago that that was the mountain we needed to climb. And while those people are questioning, they're like, I don't have time to answer why I changed my mind. In fact, if you ask me again, you're not part of my team. What I want to hear people, because I don't have time for that. I don't have time to explain. I don't have time to explain.

[00:27:01] But I don't mind admitting I was wrong by my actions. I don't mind changing my mind and saying, yeah, I thought it was that one, but I learned pretty quick it's that one. They adjust it to new information. They add flexibility and the intuition and this kind of uncanny ability to not get worried about people thinking they were wrong. I don't really care if people think I was wrong the first time. We're going up that mountain who's with me. And if you're not, I don't care. Go do your own thing.

[00:27:30] So low empathy, but quick. Versus, is it thermos? Theranos. Theranos? Yeah. Versus the theranos, it was a stubbornness that that was the right thing to do. When it was probably clear to them, it was maybe they started out with good intent. I know even WorldCom, which is when I was immersed in, Bernie Evers, Scott Sullivan, you know, I think they started out thinking they were doing the right things and doing the right things and thought they were, you know, they were creating an enormously valuable company.

[00:28:01] I mean, Bernie Evers ended up on the cover of Business Week as the top CEO and on Wall Street had a legendary story. A basketball coach, high school basketball coach that turns into, you know, a hotel operator, gets into the long distance resale business, you know, without even a college degree, ends up the top CEO on Wall Street. Well, they started out thinking they were really building a real business and creating something.

[00:28:25] But when they started realizing it wasn't working, they did like Theranos did and they doubled down and said, well, we just got to keep this going long enough in the eyes of, you know, investors that we can find our exit and get our cash stay and never admit we were wrong. Even well past the point where things were way amiss. So the ability to kind of redirect and we see that multiple times with his whole mission for SpaceX was going to Mars.

[00:28:50] Now it's on the moon and he never even explained why after 20 years, Mars is no longer the goal. It's the moon's the goal or something else. And he does that and is able to do that. And most of us would have trouble admitting when we're wrong. Yeah. So let me, let me hop in here to thread this needle between Theranos and some of the leaders like Elon. And our fifth habit, habit number five is called fiercely pursue the truth. And the idea is that you always want to, to have high levels of toughness in this area.

[00:29:19] You are really trying to identify what is the truth. What is the truth of the situation? You need bad news to travel fast. You need to give and receive feedback. You need to passionately debate your ideas. And if your ideas are wrong, you need to have the psychological flexibility to say, you know what, I'm wrong. We're going to shift right away. Uh, and someone like Elon can do that really well. Someone like Steve Jobs can do that really well.

[00:29:42] Sometimes, I mean, there are examples of Steve Jobs kind of being a bit, uh, stubborn or having a hard time admitting that he was wrong, but he usually eventually would get there and say, you know what? Yep. I was wrong about this. We're going to go in this direction. There's just admitting you're wrong in words. Exactly.

[00:29:58] And there's a difference between, you know, thoroughly debating with groups of other people that, you know, that, you know, that for those kinds of leaders, a lot of times they don't, they think there's very few people that are worthy even of, you know, even bouncing ideas off of us. Yes. They have like this meter where it's like, you know, I could tell really quick when someone's not going to be helpful and I'm not going to waste my time. And it's not, it looks rude. It looks inappropriate, but they could discern, you know, if there's someone that's really worth bouncing stuff off of.

[00:30:28] But a lot of times they're just bouncing stuff, I imagine, in their heads. Absolutely. Right. You think of the counter example, you think of Elizabeth Holmes. She had some of her top researchers, her top engineers coming to her and saying, hey, this product is not working. Hey, this is, you know, we need to make shifts here and here and here because this is not working. And her and her kind of co-leader, they tried to squash those people. They tried to silence them.

[00:30:56] One of them ended up making a suicide attempt because he couldn't deal with the pressure. And then he eventually died from his suicide attempt because they had this commitment to not pursuing the truth. Right. So when you think of these seven habits, really, it's like there is very, very clear lines for how to stay in the hardcore or the tough enough zone and pursue greatness and where you tip into the danger zone. And in that fifth habit around pursuing truth. You said it's clear lines?

[00:31:27] Absolutely. Yes. Oh, I think it's a grayish zone. Okay. Say more about that. Let's hear. Like the same characteristic you described. Yeah. In the Theranos example.

[00:31:38] I imagine with people like Elon Musk, and you mentioned Steve Jobs, that although their ability to let go of their idea until they're convinced it's the wrong idea is a derailer that you could end up on the wrong side of.

[00:32:02] I mean, Elon Musk gave up on the Mars vision only very recently, whereas maybe eight or 10 years ago, it's pretty obvious that if you look hard enough, that's just not something that's going to happen in your lifetime. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe, maybe not.

[00:32:15] But when are you being stubborn because you're more likely to be right than all the other people around you might be telling you, including kind of facts versus when are you being kind of committed to that vision you have? And the fact that you could overcome, you know, all these obstacles that most people would seem to be seeing as, you know, insurmountable. Yeah.

[00:32:42] So when are you legitimately pursuing things because you're, you know, you're an Elon Musk and you're going to kind of fight your way through things versus when are you past that point where you're like, okay, now you're doing things that could cause, you know, a ripple effect and you'd be viewed completely on the wrong side of that line. Yeah. Including, you know, like some of the stuff he did with Tesla could have been his downfall. Absolutely. Right.

[00:33:09] And you have, look, I think Elon is somebody that absolutely flirts with hardcore and danger zone. Right. And I haven't seen the new, have you seen the new documentary? I haven't seen it yet on Elon. But my understanding is that they are chronicling a lot of his misadventures into the danger zone. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there was the one where I, you know, I was a public company CEO, so I totally get this one. If I was a public company, I was a public company CEO.

[00:33:34] But when I was, if I would have made a statement publicly on social media that we just agreed to sell our company for a 40% premium. Yeah, you can't do that. And a private market deal. And then it turns out it didn't happen and it wasn't really even the justification. I'm pretty certain I would have certainly been fired, but I probably would have been, you know, doing some jail time too. Somehow he did that and somehow he got through that. I don't know how. Totally. Yes.

[00:34:04] And so I think there's, but I think there's a distinction in what you were just saying a little bit earlier between having a commitment to a bold mission, which is out in the future, trying to do something amazing. And then being committed to pursuing the truth in the present, being honest about the past, and then pursuing the truth on the way to that future. Right?

[00:34:27] If you have a commitment to go to Mars and you're 20 years in on that journey, and of course we know that Elon can pull off the impossible, but you're 20 years in and you've got your engineer saying to you, hey man, like this is not adding up. Right? That's a commitment to the truth. Okay? Elizabeth Holmes was not doing that. She was doing something different.

[00:34:51] She had the same bold commitment to the future vision, but she was not committed to the facts along the way. And of course, as you say, I will totally acknowledge to you that along the way, it's a dance, right? Between, hey, let's acknowledge the facts and let's try and make something fucking crazy happen. Excuse my language. But, you know, that's a dance. But you have to be really honest about where you're currently at, right?

[00:35:17] If FSD, full self-driving, is not at the level that you say it is, driving around cities and towns, that's a problem. You can't do that. You know? It's like, of course, you want more people to adopt it, get more data, get more iteration, right? Get more... But also, these are people's lives, right? That are at stake.

[00:35:42] So, to me, I think it is, you know, I acknowledge there is a dance and also like you want to be committed to the truth of where you are at right now. Yeah. What do you think about that? I think committed to the truth, if the truth is clear, is an easier expectation. But what if the truth is, you know, a lot less clear and someone with rosy colored glasses in a leadership position goes too far. Or the fog of war. Yeah. Believe in it.

[00:36:11] Or the fog of war where it's maybe more legit. Like, let's use self-driving cars a little bit more. I mean, it wasn't that long ago where I was running Zale and we were going around Silicon Valley and other places and self-driving cars were only three years away. And that was, I don't know, 12 years ago. And self-driving cars are now starting to show up. But they weren't three years away when people were raising lots of money at very high valuations. Yeah. And some of them went bust, completely bust, and lost a ton of money for shareholders.

[00:36:42] So, at what point were people leading those companies that had a much better idea of the challenges that were being faced and the unlikeliness that that was going to happen in a time frame they were letting public and private investors believe to be true when they were still years and years and years away? Yeah. So, you know, were they doing their job by, you know, continuing to put on a good face? Right. And being hopeful?

[00:37:10] Or are they crossing a line where you were deceiving your investors and maybe selling some stock or otherwise benefiting while you had to have known that there's no way self-driving cars were three years away? Yeah. You know, the WeWorks example. The WeWorks example. That's exactly where my mind was going. And we talk about that in the book. He had this, he had a vision to elevate humanity's consciousness. That was his vision for... Kind of like the chill house at Terrell West.

[00:37:38] By the way, this is the first, I meant to say, this is the first recording in our new chill house at Terrell West. And if you don't quite know what that means, please look up chill house at Terrell West and get on the website and, you know, and take a look. It's a great space. Come on down. But, you know, he had a relatively pedestrian real estate business model where he was trying to elevate humanity's consciousness. Yes.

[00:38:06] That's, there's a disconnect there. But he was convinced and his team was convinced. In fact, I remember, you know, spending time with them because they were also a meaningful customer of ours in Zale. They'd need a band with other sites. And, you know, part of what they were doing is they were raising money at really high valuations. And then they'd buy, you know, clusters of regular commercial real estate at maybe two times what the market value otherwise would have been.

[00:38:32] And saying, well, yeah, but we're buying it with this really cheap, you know, source of capital. So we could buy them at double what other people could buy them for. But our capital was way cheaper than there. And like, okay, how long is that going to work? Yeah, totally. It's going to come collapsing down on them, which seemed pretty obvious in hindsight. But when they were smack in the middle of it, was he knowingly deceiving others? At some point he was. Well, I think, I mean, that is maybe a little less clear cut.

[00:39:01] But I think, for example, this idea of community adjusted EBITDA. Did you hear about this? No. They just came up. They came up along the way with a new financial metric. So instead of EBITDA, it was community adjusted EBITDA, which was essentially whatever they wanted it to be. Right. That to me is fraud. Right. That's a problem. That's a mystery. Well, remember EBITDA, which we used, you know, appropriately and extensively.

[00:39:30] In fact, someone even did a online video poking fun at me because of my commitment to EBITDA. But EBITDA was an invented, you know, non-accounting metric that did cause and was used to create deception. But EBITDA also is a very meaningful number because if you don't have EBITDA, you know, you can have a very distorted view of what, you know, the financials are.

[00:39:55] Like when you subtract revenue from all of your operating costs, you know, cash operating costs, you basically get to EBITDA. But if you're building out a big capital, you have a bunch of depreciation by amortization, it looks like you're losing a bunch of money. And anyone who can't differentiate those two, you know, is going to lose out on business opportunity. Yeah. But it was also used, you know, as a made up non-accounting, non-gap term that, you know, purists would say that was being used to deceive investors. Sure. Yeah.

[00:40:23] And I think, you know, okay, so you're saying that you were one of the pioneers of EBITDA or it was around, it was established before? It was around. And so I think John Malone was the pioneer of it in the cable TV industry. So we certainly harnessed what they created, but when they created it, something like that hadn't existed before. And it helped, you know, explain the cable TV industry. Yeah.

[00:40:45] The stage of building out massive networks and doing acquisitions and showing kind of what the true performance from an ongoing cash perspective would look like once you remove the clutter of depreciation and amortization that came with huge capital programs. Right. It had a purpose and it was used at times appropriately, but at times inappropriately. Sure. That makes sense. But the appropriate use I think is fine.

[00:41:08] Any, I think, person who could read a balance sheet or income statement or whatever, I think would be able to kind of suss that out pretty easily. Not at times because that was part of what led to disasters, like the whole telecom meltdown was in part, you know, because of accounting shenanigans. And part of shenanigans was coming up with ways of showing revenue and ways of showing EBITDA that weren't really revenue and weren't really EBITDA. Okay. That's fair. That's totally fair.

[00:41:37] Well, I think maybe just to kind of land this point and transition, like the, I think there, I think now, nowadays especially it's, it's totally accepted to. Oh, but you know what I did more or less invent? I think people would agree I deserve a lot of credit for this, but it's exactly what we're talking about. Adjusted EBITDA. Okay. So there you go. So we had to say our net, I forget the exact word we used, but we had to describe to our investors.

[00:42:06] And it was a key to us. I mean, at Zale, we, we invested about a billion dollars of equity through the entire life of Zale and actually for eight and a half billion and a big part. So eight, you know, eight and a half times money back on a big check. Incredible. So we had to explain along the way what we were doing, like where was value creation coming from? And I've actually published this, but had to come up with, you know, here was my big revelation.

[00:42:29] I don't think this is going too often tangent, but the revelation was if you ask any CEO kind of what their mission is, you know, big company, medium sized company, even small companies, their answer often is create value for shareholders. Right? Sure. You know, our mission is create value for our shareholders, our stakeholders. So great. So when you're operating a business and you say, what's the financial metric where we measure how much value we're creating for shareholders?

[00:42:58] Because if that's our number one goal, how do you measure that? And the answer is there isn't one. That's kind of weird. Now, if you're a public company, you say, well, that's kind of our stock price. That's a measurement of our value. And if our stock price is up versus down, we create a value. Well, what happens if your stock price is down versus up? Something's wrong with the markets. They don't understand us. The, you know, the markets are down in general. It's not us. It's like, okay, so when it's up, it's a measure of your value creation. When it's down, it's noise in the system that's not attributed to you. So that's not a measure of value creation.

[00:43:26] That's, you know, that's something that you're using. Right, something external. Yeah. So if not for your stock price or if you're not a public company, how do you measure value creation? Well, the answer was it didn't exist. So I invented one and I invented one that was called value creation. And it went through a whole series of math that we would use. At first, my investors looked at me like I had three heads. Like, what are you doing? Sure. You know, cause it was like memories back to the top of my mouth on days, but it turned

[00:43:52] out to be, I think my most important, even if not widely adapted, you know, thing I created and my investors who were in the inner table and benefit from it. They've tried to get everyone. They tell me other portfolio companies to understand and adopt the method because it was a analytically robust way of doing an objective measurement of, you know, the process of creating value for your stakeholders.

[00:44:18] But it's also an example where you go to an accounting purist, they'd be like, you can't bring that up in front of your shareholders. You know, you're going to deceive them. There's no accounting justification for that. You know, why not just talk about your accounting stuff? Like, cause that, that muddles everything. So it's kind of that, that's an example where it worked for me, but what if it didn't work? What if the company didn't do well? But I've been like, you know, trying to deceive shareholders by pointing to this thing called

[00:44:46] value creation that, you know, that didn't otherwise exist as a financial metric. Very interesting point. Yeah. Very cool. So should we get to some of the therapy components? I mean, I want to hear the parts of your journey. Oh my gosh. If you're up for it. I mean, I think that would be a lot of fun. Well, you know, I was certainly in the category of intense. Yeah. Still am. Yeah. How would you describe your leadership style? Like how would you, you know, how would you describe how you are if someone was just,

[00:45:14] you know, if someone on your team was going to say, Hey, here's what Dan's like. FYI. Let me put people, let me put people into three categories. Okay. People have been successful as part of my journey. Okay. They would say very similar things to one another. In fact, one of them, you know, I had dinner at Jack's and he was like, yeah, when everyone brings you up, says, well, it was like Dan, like, you know what? I got to tell you what, you know, so many people have had very successful careers.

[00:45:41] A lot of people work for me to this day are running significant companies. They started them, they're running them, dozens and dozens. There's been hundreds of people who work with me who are worth, you know, millions and dozens who are worth more than 10 million. So, so if that's a sign of success, having left a legacy of leaders who have gone out and doing their own things and built teams around them that consisted of a lot of people in our teams, there's dozens and dozens, dozens of examples of that. That's awesome.

[00:46:11] So they got forged in the fire of the intensity kind of being with you. And they would describe. And they benefited from it. You know, it was hard. It was tough. It was not always comfortable. It was always intense. But the benefits that accrued to their journeys, you know, both as business people, but also as providers of wealth for their, you know, for their long-term benefit of their families, that they were huge beneficiaries. That's one extreme.

[00:46:40] And there was other extreme people just think I'm freaking a bad person and crazy and, and don't care about, you know, so. Right. Like lower empathy. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it didn't explain to them enough or it didn't like, I was stubborn or I didn't understand. I didn't, you know, I didn't do this. I didn't do that. I'm sure there's a whole kind of, for every one person in this category, there's probably four in that category. And there's a lot of people who probably just, you know, are humored, you know, by. Learn some stuff.

[00:47:10] Wasn't really my cup of tea, whatever. A lot of people just made a good, I mean, cause there were thousands and thousands of people who were part of my journey who kind of did well somewhere in the middle and, and, you know, maybe it worked well for them at times, maybe it didn't for other times, but kind of a big middle. So the, got it, the two extremes. So if you want to talk to this extreme, they would describe me one way. This extreme would describe me like as if it was two different people altogether. Yeah. And then just, you know, got it. A lot of people just are still wondering. That's awesome, man. And how do you feel, how do you feel now?

[00:47:40] I mean, you've had extraordinary business success in the world, right? You've had a lot of impact. You're now focused on really impacting the ecosystem here. How, like looking back on your journey and the intensity and kind of the way that you showed up, how do you feel about it? Do you have regrets? Do you, do you have no regrets? I mean, I'm just curious to kind of hear from you. Well, when you reflect back, you, you know, for at least a person like me, you focus on things you would have done differently, not the things that were successful, like those

[00:48:08] cringy moments, those like, Ooh, did that really have to be part of my journey? Couldn't have handled that differently. Why did I behave the way I behaved? And those are the things you got to like, you know, you wish you could just erase those, but those just aren't easy to erase. So you got like, you know, I never had an executive coach by the way. I think I would have benefited. I don't know if there were executive coaches during the period of time I was going through my journey. While my co-author, John was kind of just starting out. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:35] So, but had there been those kinds of executive coaches, I think I would have been more successful, not less successful and maybe would have felt better about that journey, but that's not even a given because maybe the time I would be spending with the executive coach and trying to work on, you know, roughness around the edges. Maybe that would have taken away my ability to do so many things I did. Yeah. But it also could have perhaps saved me from some of the moments that I kind of crossed certain lines in terms of like, you know, behavior that in hindsight, you know, maybe

[00:49:04] it was destructive to, you know, to the situation and me and the people around me. So, I don't know. I don't know. But, you know. Can I say something about that? Sure. Because I think that's important. You asked a question earlier about, you know, do any of these hardcore leaders actually want to get a little less tough or move into the tough enough zone from hardcore? And when I work with a hardcore leader, I'm not trying to dull or dim their intensity at

[00:49:31] all because their intensity is what leads to the results. But we're just trying to mitigate the damaging pieces of how they show up, right? So, if you think of someone like Elon or it sounds like you're mentioning this with yourself, the brilliance and the kind of the damaging stuff, it's all kind of like a package deal with someone like Elon, right? If you got rid of the ways that he was showing up that were kind of damaging or…

[00:50:01] And use a Michael Jordan example. Sure. Michael Jordan is a great… Sometimes we use a sports example. I think it's easier for more people to relate to. Sure. Could Michael Jordan have been the greatest of all time? Could Tom Brady have been the greatest of all time if they were working with a coach and the coach was trying to take the edge out of how they… So, that's the thing is… At the peak of their career when they were having their true greatness. Yeah. Because afterwards, it's different. You know, afterwards, it's like you got time to reflect back. You got time to kind of maybe work on some things. Yeah.

[00:50:31] You know, things are slower. Achieving greatness, you know, could a Michael Jordan working with the executive coach? Could a Tom Brady working with the executive coach? Could a Elon Musk? Or it would have been like, dudes, I got to win the NBA championship. Totally. I got to go work out. I got to give shit to my teammates because I need them to work out harder. Yeah. I don't really care what people think about me. That's not the point. I hope they like me.

[00:51:01] If they don't, that's their business. Yeah. I'm too busy being the GOAT of NBA. Yeah. Great question. I don't… So, I think a lot of executive coaches would try and coach the edge out of a person. I don't do that. I don't coach the edge out of a person because I think the edge is what really matters, right? The edge is another synonym for toughness. But if you could show… I mean, did you watch The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan… Yeah. It's an incredible documentary, right?

[00:51:32] You have someone like Scottie Pippen, who's the number two on that journey, who came… It was kind of sad, but he came out with… I had to stop reading the book, but he came out with a book that was just him being… This is my words, my assessment of it, being incredibly disgruntled with the experience of working with Michael and the Bulls, right? And so, I think you see that a decent amount. Well, let's talk about Scottie Pippen because I… Yeah.

[00:52:02] Again, I grew up in Chicago in that era. Oh, you grew up in Chicago. Yeah. Okay. Great. Let's do it. Was there at a Game 7 when… There were two Game 7s. One with Steve Kerr and one with John Paxton, but both ended with them hitting a three-pointer. At least I think that's true. Maybe I got the facts. One I think was the foul line one, maybe? The crossover. Was that a Game 7 or was that a different one? That was a different one? No, no. I just remember that legendary crossover. The crossover? With… Yeah. With the… Is that the Jazz?

[00:52:31] No, I think you're thinking about the one with Cleveland with Elo, Craig Elo. Okay, maybe. Well, we'll have to pull it out later. It's worth watching over and over again. And I think I actually saw that one live on TV when it actually happened because it was like… Incredible. What just happened there? It just seemed to be physically… But anyways, I was there with one of the threes at… You know, the one that was in Chicago and the series. Maybe it was Game 6, but the three-pointer from either Paxton or Steve Kerr ended the series.

[00:53:00] But with Scottie… So, I was a Scottie Pippen huge fan the whole time he was there. You know, when he arrived, when he was there, when Jordan wasn't there, when Jordan came back. I always… And Scottie Pippen is viewed as certainly a top 50 NBA player of all time. Sure. And at times, you may be even top 25 list. Would Scottie Pippen been a top 100? Would he have been a top 200 if it wasn't for Michael Jordan? I don't think we can know the answer to that question.

[00:53:29] Now, if you went to Scottie Pippen, who might feel disgruntled now, and some power bigger than any of us could come down and say, hey, by the way, we had a choice with you. We could have not… Had you not play with Michael Jordan. By the way, in that scenario, you would have made the NBA. You would have started for a few years. No championships. No championships. Yeah. You would have come and gone. Yeah. You know, but you played with Michael Jordan. I know that wasn't easy on you, but we chose that path for you.

[00:53:56] And that's why, you know, you had… You're known as one of the top 25, top 50 basketball players of all time. If that was knowable, you know, how would Scottie Pippen view it? Sure. I don't know, because it couldn't have been easy playing with Michael Jordan. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this is… It could be the same question you could ask many of the engineers that work with Elon, right? Hey, it's going to be a grind. Hey, you might burn out after five or 10 years.

[00:54:24] You might get fired on the spot after grinding aggressively and sacrificing everything, you know, your family, whatever. And… But, by the way, you could be a part of history and you could make game-changing money for your family. I mean, Scottie Pippen would probably take that trade, you know? He probably would. But anyways, this is… It's a very interesting debate, you know?

[00:54:49] Would any of these people be willing to sit down with a coach to help them mitigate the damaging parts of how they're showing up? Michael is the example of like, okay, Michael, here's the good news. You're going to be a great basketball player, you know? And one form of greatness is you're going to be super well-liked by all your teammates, by your coaches. You're going to be popular. That's not greatness, though. Maybe you'll win one championship and you'll have a good career. You won't get into gambling problems.

[00:55:19] You won't have to go play for the White Sox for a couple of years. But you'll be really liked and as a nice person. But maybe you crack the top 100 basketball players all the time. Or you could be the Michael Jordan scenario that played out. You know, which of those two buttons… I mean, that's an obvious… He would obviously choose that, right? That's not… We know how insanely competitive he is, right? All of these people, they're insanely… They're like psychopathically competitive, right?

[00:55:47] Now that I think about it, though, you had, for example, Bill Belichick. You had Phil Jackson. You know, you have… Like, Phil Jackson, although he presents as a more kind of softer, compassionate, that dude has high levels of toughness, right? There were many times where he would get really upset or kind of bring down the hammer. Yeah, I don't think you could put him in the same category. You could arguably say he was one of the best NBA coaches.

[00:56:15] But the word arguably, because his journey as a great coach is so intertwined with MJ and with… Shaq and Kobe. And the Lakers. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, you can't easily say, you know, it was his intensity that made Michael Jordan successful. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, if you look at… So that's more like the corporate CEO example. Sure. More of like a… You're kind of like a shepherd is kind of what you're saying, right? You still have to be excellent.

[00:56:45] You still have to be Jamie Dimon. Yeah. Jamie Dimon is one of the best CEOs, I think it's fair to say. You know, he could be Jamie Dimon and Michael Jordan could never be Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk could never be Jamie Dimon, but it's a different… It's a different skill set, but I think it still requires a very high level of toughness, right? If you don't… If you're not able to, for example… It's more the jerk side of it. It definitely requires the toughness. Yeah. But the jerkness probably plays against you in those other settings. Or like a Steve Kerr would be a perfect example.

[00:57:15] Or a Popovich, right? These people are maybe… Maybe they can be jerks behind the scene, but they present not as jerks. Yeah. Right? But the thing is, though, is if you get into a passionate debate with Michael Jordan, right? Michael is going to get pissed about something, and you've got to be able to hang in that conversation with him. And you've got to be able to show up as a legitimate sparring partner in that conversation, or he's not going to respect you. The whole thing is going to break down, right? So you do…

[00:57:44] Those guys needed a requisite level of toughness. Yeah. It's almost like a lot of the… Oh, I forgot to tell you about the other part of the study. Yeah, please. Steve Kerr, one. So as I… When I described it, I said he had data. You know, data, people taking tests, data of outcomes, but then they classified the people CEO versus CFO. Remember I mentioned CFO? Yes, of course. Yeah. Well, when they ran against CFO, it wasn't the same characteristics. Yes. It was nowhere close. The CFO was much more like the non-jerk factor.

[00:58:14] They're much more consensus builders, much more on, you know, we've got to make sure we follow the rules. We've got to make sure that, you know, we communicate really well. Well, you know, the CFO… What made great CFOs successful were very different than what made great CEOs. And some of what you're describing right now, which is, well, what about the people around the person who achieved kind of the crazy type of greatness? You know, are they the same personalities? It's like, no, they're not. Definitely not. They were. They probably wouldn't be working for that person. They'd be doing, for good or for bad, they'd be doing their own crazy thing.

[00:58:43] It's the people around them have to, you know, they have to… If they're successful, they have different type of traits. They have to still be intelligent enough to hold their own, but they have to be a little bit more followers and leaders. They have to be a little more analytical. They have to do what the leader doesn't do, which is, okay, we're going to have to compensate for that. We're going to have to be one who keeps the team together. You know, I'm a Steve Kerr. I'm a Phil Jackson. You know, I've got to be the one that's more liked by the teammates. I've got to be one that is listening to what people are saying.

[00:59:13] I've got to find a way to communicate with that stubborn jerk of a leader. It's a different dynamic altogether. And my guess is, you know, a very high-end executive coach probably could help those people even more than they could help the centric leader. No, it does. I do some of that. And so when you have… So we have the third habit in the book is called assemble a cult of incredibles.

[00:59:35] And so this is a team of highly talented mission converts, people that are fired up about the mission. They're working around a strong singular leader, right? So most of these great companies are dictatorships, right? So they're working around a strong singular leader, but they're playing these complementary skill set roles. So they still need to have very high levels of toughness, but they're playing complementary roles.

[01:00:04] Yeah, because the great… You know, the ones who've achieved greatness as these eccentric leaders have not achieved that on their own. They've played their role. Yeah. They've played their role, which is a unique role and kind of, you know, a role that, you know, that someone else couldn't have stepped in and it played out the same way. But they were far from alone in achieving the outcome. Absolutely. And I think an important point to recognize here is most of these prolific hardcore leaders are actually…

[01:00:32] They can be in a way cultural detractors because you actually need all these other people around. And this is part of my job when I work with hardcore leaders to mitigate the damage and keep people in. And so my co-author on that first iPhone team, he regularly had to coach his people to stay in the game. Hang in there. I know you, you know, hate Steve right now. And… But, you know, let's… What can we do to stay in there? How can we stay in there?

[01:01:02] Because they were buttheads aggressively, right? Same thing with Michael Jordan. I'm sure there were plenty of people that were like, oh, F this. I want out of here, right? Well, how do we kind of keep everyone on the team? Same thing with Kobe, right? Kobe was in a way a kind of lone wolf who would just kind of attack that, you know, he would attack people. But he wasn't there kind of building the camaraderie or building the connective tissue. What do you think about that? Yeah, absolutely.

[01:01:30] No, there's no question about that. And the counterbalance to the derailers of the leader has to be the team around them. You have to be able to, you know, find the right people that can help in the journey, you know, keep them on board. But those… The right people play a different role.

[01:01:51] A lot of the best number twos or number threes in those situations are the ones who have to overcompensate and be the ones who keep the culture kind of together, keep the team together, you know, talk people down from a ledge at times. Kind of, you know, I mean, when Elon's bouncing from here to there to some other spot, the companies just don't stop and wait for them to show up again. And someone is keeping those balls moving forward, you know, and in significant ways.

[01:02:20] And a lot of times those people have to tolerate not feeling like they're getting the recognition that they deserve, that they're not being treated appropriately at times. But, you know, you look at the reverse, you know, in the case of like in, you know, I mean, Elon, we talk about him a lot because it's the best example. Yeah. But, you know, Elon doesn't have time if he's doing all these different things all at the same time to kind of, you know, take that extra 10 minutes and communicate or listen. No, he's on to the next thing. Yeah.

[01:02:48] He's like, okay, you know, and I've got, you know, and you got to find people are willing to, you know, be effective. For sure. Willing and able to be effective in those situations, which… Kind of picking up the pieces on those people, right? We actually opened the book with a story of a guy who uprooted his family from the East Coast to move to Silicon Valley to join this first iPhone team. And he gets to work. He's, you know, he's brilliant. He's hardworking.

[01:03:17] He's, you know, he's all the things you would kind of want in someone to work on this team. And a handful of months in on the journey, his area of the product is not progressing as expected. And he's got a meeting coming up, a group meeting that is going to involve Steve Jobs. And he's, you know, feeling anxious, sipping his coffee. He knows that Steve Jobs is going to hold him accountable, right? So he's getting all his details ready to have a conversation.

[01:03:40] And Steve Jobs walks into that group meeting, locks eyes with him, and just starts to roast him, just yells at him, personally attacks him, just totally lambasts him in front of the group. And this guy just felt like a complete piece of shit. I mean, he just felt so down and embarrassed. And that moment was actually the beginning of the end for him. He actually quit the team, you know?

[01:04:10] And so a couple months later, he was like, I can't fucking deal with this, man. I'm out. He didn't have the toughness to hang in that situation. And it would be really interesting to see, yeah, all these years later, if we went back to him now. Hey, do you regret that? You know, do you, would you have stuck around in there? Because my co-author was coaching so many of these people, and some of them were in this guy's position, where they were like, fuck, this is just too crazy. I'm out of here.

[01:04:40] And others, like John Rubenstein and Tony Fidel and Tim Cook and some of these people, they had what it took to hang in there, you know? And as a result, they're all kind of legends. Yep. You know? So it's very interesting, right? Yeah. Yeah. For certain. So let's talk about someone else. Okay. Donald Trump. Okay. Yes. Great.

[01:05:09] Because some of these characteristics we're describing, you know, you could attribute to him. I mean, he's the classic example of makes up his mind really quick, is very decisive, says we have to do this, and then two weeks later he's like, no, we're going to do something else. But you said this, and we're going to hold you accountable. You said this, and now you're saying that. You just change your mind all the time. And he just keeps doing it. And that's somewhat of the characteristic of, you know, they're both very decisive, and they want people super loyal around them who are going to do what they say. You know, sometimes they don't have time to explain it.

[01:05:40] They want to cut to the chase. They've got a million things going on at once, and they're willing to change their mind if they start down a certain path and think it's wrong. And, you know, as a president of the United States, if you operate in that same mode, it's, you know, what she's doing. I don't know if we've ever seen someone in the presidency behave with those characteristics. And obviously it's about as divisive of an outcome as you get. You know, some people think he walks on water, and some people think he's, you know, the second coming of Hitler.

[01:06:09] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I'm just curious, you as a, you know, very experienced and accomplished operator, what's your take? Because I feel like you get a lot of kind of insider info. And, you know, what's your take on him as a leader? If you want, you don't have to answer this question, but I'm just curious to kind of get your sense. And then I'm happy to hop in. Yeah, no, it's a good conversation. The first thing I observe is this company was in a crazy, crazy situation very recently.

[01:06:38] This country was, you know, was suppressing social media and pretending it wasn't doing so. It was shutting everything down with COVID and not admitting that COVID came from, you know, probably came from a lab in China. No, it came from this other one. We were supposed to believe it. They were declaring that, you know, Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian conspiracy, you know, that the border was secure when it was anything but secure.

[01:07:03] So, you know, Trump comes along and has to behave in a way that, you know, called bullshit on a lot of that stuff. Well, anyone who was willing to do that was committing, like, it was the example of, you know, if you do that, everyone's going to hate you and despise you and think you're horrible and criticize you for everything you say and blast off our social media and make fun of

[01:07:28] your marriage with your wife and your kids and, you know, and even try to, like, you know, put criminal charges against you and throw you in jail. They're going to do all those things. He's like, yeah, I'm going to do it anyways. Well, who does that? I mean, what kind of personality is willing to behave that way? Someone who has a personality of someone like Elon Musk, someone who will say, I don't really give a shit, you know? Yeah. Yeah, they're going to try to put me in jail. I'm going to fight them when they do. And I'm, yeah, they're going to tell me I'm full of shit, but I believe in what I'm doing, I'm going to do it anyways.

[01:07:58] And they're going to tell me I'm corrupt. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyways. I mean, so no other type of leader that I know of, whether you admire that or hate that, no other type of leader could have been sitting there four years ago and what this country was going to and all the pressure from nearly all the media, from all the social pundits, from all of Hollywood, even all of his own party, the Republican Party, for God's sake, it wasn't like his Republican Party was backing him until it became obvious he was going to win the election.

[01:08:28] Yet, you know, so for someone to behave that way took an enormously eccentric person. Yeah. Then you got to ask yourself, okay, if you had to be that way, does that make it right or not right? I don't think people spend enough time saying someone had to be that way to kind of change like the craziness that was going on. Now, was he the right person? Did he take it too far? Do you think, you know, I think too many people who are critical of Trump are the same

[01:08:58] people who won't acknowledge the craziness of the situation, the destruction we did for the next generation of Americans. And this was even brought in America by how we behaved around COVID. I mean, keeping our kids isolated from one another and wearing masks and parked in their homes and at times not even being allowed to go outside. I mean, you know, it took someone to come in and say, I'm going to call bullshit, bullshit, and I don't care what you're going to do.

[01:09:25] So I look with some level of, I think, honesty about that because nothing I said there, I think, fits in the category of having an opinion. Sure. It fits in category of, you know, other than I think it's a safe opinion to say we were in a really screwed up situation. Yeah, totally. And we weren't admitting it. We weren't being honest. The press wasn't being honest. Our political leaders weren't being honest. Even the Republican Party was like, you know, I think in a ridiculous state themselves. Yeah. And here comes someone who like calls bullshit on all that.

[01:09:55] And then he does things that's, you know, I think some of the things he does, has done, I think we needed to do and we should appreciate that he brought, I mean, the, you know, let's re-level the playing field to bring more jobs back here. I mean, people can't even admit that that's what kind of is happening. It was an unlevel playing field, you know, for various reasons historically. And he called that and most people said, oh, you're trying to create all these trade barriers. Like, is that what we're doing?

[01:10:22] Or are we trying to bring jobs that rightfully belong here in the U.S. back to the U.S.? I don't know. So I go from that, but I also cringe at how he behaves at times. Sure. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I appreciate that assessment. That's awesome. So I'd love to map him. Don't tell anyone in Boulder I said that. Yeah, don't tell anyone in Boulder, exactly. Because if people in Boulder find out I said that, I'm going to be like in deep trouble. Oh, you're going to be in deep doo-doo. Well, yeah, we have these seven habits of toughness, right? And I do think Donald Trump is very much in the hardcore zone.

[01:10:51] He's an incredibly tough individual. And if we look at the seven habits, there are certain habits that he does better. Let's look at all seven. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it because the very first habit, which is to live your manifesto, to have a clear vision, mission, values, standards for how you want to do things, and then literally then live it with so much conviction, with the highest levels of conviction that you're almost bending everyone to your reality.

[01:11:19] He's probably the best we've ever seen at that. Maybe Elon could compete with him on that. But he might be the greatest of all time at that particular habit. But habit number two, make your pursuit role. Yeah. You can also say that around Hitler. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, Hitler is up there. Yeah. Can I go on a slight tangent? Sure. And then we'll come back back to this. Yeah, please. So do you know who Dan Carlin is? Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. I love Dan Carlin. Oh, listen, I'll shut up. Well, I'm three quarters the way through Alexander the Great.

[01:11:49] Oh, yeah. It's amazing. I'm somewhat familiar with the story, too. And he, on one of his other, I haven't listened to this one, but one of the points he makes, and he did a podcast on this, is comparing kind of how we view Alexander the Great from a historical vantage point versus how we view Hitler from a historical vantage point. And he makes the case that, you know, if you judged Alexander the Great based on how we judge Hitler, would we view him as Alexander the Great or Alexander the Horrible? Right.

[01:12:17] Because he did, you know, the kinds of things Hitler was doing. A lot of similar things, yeah. And if Hitler was successful and a lot of the world was speaking German, would we be talking about Hitler the way we talk about Alexander the Great as someone who's changed the world and progressed it? And, you know, we'd be saying this not in English, but in German, how would we view him? He's like, you know, so some of it is based on, you know, at least the point he's making is how much is based on, you know, how much time has gone by since it happened. And we start remembering kind of the positive accomplishments and looking past the fact that

[01:12:47] the destruction, the utter destruction that lives lost and how much was because he was successful versus unsuccessful. But anyways, that side, go back to Trump. It's an amazing point. I wholeheartedly recommend people check out Dan Carlin. I love his stuff. So habit number two is to make your pursuit relentless. This is all about, it's not a work-life balance anymore at the high levels of greatness. It's an endurance event, right? How hard and how fast can you push for how long? And that man has incredible endurance, right?

[01:13:17] It's insane. Well, it's his 80s. Right. It's insane. So that, so he has, he's a 10 out of 10 on that one too. Now there's a few habits where he really breaks down and I want to get into those. Yeah, let's go with number three. Okay. So habit number three is to assemble a cult of Incredibles. So this is where you have your highly talented group of mission converts. And I think the way that he assembles teams, sometimes he gets really talented, very smart, competent people.

[01:13:45] And other times it almost baffles me, the incompetence of the people that he hires, right? So I don't, I think that he's probably not great in this particular habit in terms of hiring. Let me challenge you on that one. Yeah, please, please go for it. So you would be, you would honestly be much more educated on this than me. Yeah. Well, let's compare it to the last X number of presidents. Sure. Who has had a more competent vice president than Donald Trump? Sure. Yeah. I can't remember one in a long time. Yeah.

[01:14:14] I'm sure you go back to many, many presidents. You could come up with examples. Yeah, he's very impressive how he shows up in meetings. What about the Secretary of State? Who's had a more competent Secretary of State? Sure. You know, Henry Kissinger, maybe you go back to him. Maybe there's been another one. Maybe that's a little easier one. So there's some that are key. And I thought is the press secretary that just, just retired, not the one who lasted a week, which is the other example. Yeah.

[01:14:39] But the original one, she was way, at a very young age, very, very, very good at what she did. Yeah. So there are lots of examples of like, you know, of superior choices that people are putting all those characteristics. And then there's ones that, and I'm going to focus on the most recent press secretary, which last handfuls of days. Yeah. Is that an example of, all right, that was a mistake. I'm going to move on really quick. Next one. Yeah. So does he also. He's willing to fire fast.

[01:15:08] Yeah, fire fast, admit a mistake, not apologize for it, not then get gun shy about the next one. Yeah. Because when he's made mistakes, he's like, okay, I'm going to move on to that person and bring on something else. So I don't know. I don't know how I would score him on that, but I recognize there are some really strong. I also recognize a lot of people just by going to work for him, you know, were taking on a career suicide. If political was their future. Yeah.

[01:15:34] You have to be willing to go work for him and sacrifice your entire political future, you know, as the price you would pay. Totally. And it happened many, many, many times over. You have to be willing to accept the fact that you might be sued over and over again and made bankrupt through lawsuits. Yeah. So the price in the political world that you'd have to pay to go work for Donald Trump was like nothing we've seen in our entire lifetime. Yeah. I completely agree with that. I don't want to debate you on the hires.

[01:16:03] I think I'd rather just kind of move through the list. But, you know. I'm just saying it's more. Sure. It's not nearly as black and white as saying a bunch of doofuses work for him. And that's not what I said, right? I did say that there were a lot of really talented, smart people. And then I, yeah. So anyways, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Habit number four is to harness emotional thunder. I can't stop by saying, you know, who did our last president pick for some of the key positions and who was the president before that?

[01:16:31] Some of those were like, okay, compared to what? You know, because there's a lot of incompetent people being selected by presidents. Yeah. Wouldn't it be refreshing if we could have just like great executors running the country, right? Yes. I mean, I think that would be awesome for all of us. Habit number four is to harness emotional thunder. So this is where leaders constructively share negative emotion. Okay. This one we haven't talked about. We have not. Yeah. So let's talk about that first before we try to. Sure.

[01:17:00] So the idea is that if you look at sports coaches, you look at famous business leaders, you look at famous military leaders, there's always these moments, these important crucial moments where they bring strong, quote unquote, negative emotion, right? So a lot of anger, disappointment, frustration. Give some examples of that. Sure. I mean, there was a, well, just we could keep going on Elon Musk.

[01:17:28] You know, there was a, in the early days of SpaceX, they were down to their fourth and final rocket. And Tesla was on life support. He needed this rocket to get into orbit or the company was going to fail. He was basically, you know, teetering on financial ruin. He was going through a nasty divorce at the time. They had 30 days of cash left as they were shuttling the rocket to Quaj Island.

[01:17:57] And there was a problem in the airplane as they were shuttling the rocket and the whole rocket crumpled. Some guy had to go in there mid-flight and kind of, I guess, expand it back out. They land the plane in Hawaii and they call back to the head office. And they say, hey, here's the situation. You know, it's going to be probably a couple months. We've got to fly it back to LA and kind of rebuild. They had 30 days of cash.

[01:18:28] Elon absolutely fucking loses it. And then Chris Buzza, who's one of his kind of deputies, goes back to them. And I'm going to paraphrase, but he says, you know, shut the fuck up and listen to what I'm about to fucking tell you. You are going to disassemble that fucking rocket in six days. And it better be fucking ready to go when I'm out there in six or seven days from now.

[01:18:55] And that organization, that small team of engineers had the most incredible kind of impossible week of innovation and hard work where they worked around the clock. And they actually got the rocket ready in time. And then the rest is history. They flew it to Quadge. And that rocket made it into orbit. Okay, so there's these moments where you share really intense negative emotion because you're trying to shift behavior. Can you give like another example or two?

[01:19:25] Yeah, I'll give you another great. I'll give you another clear example. Berkeley. This is a newer thing. Okay. To me coming in a conversation that I want to make sure I'm understanding. Absolutely. So let's talk about a sport that you and I know very well, basketball. Berkeley studied 200 basketball teams, high school and college. And what they were studying was that moment that we all know, the halftime speech. So they're studying coaches giving a halftime speech.

[01:19:54] And what they found is that if a coach goes absolutely berserk or if the coach, you know, is kind of positive or neutral, performance actually declines. But if the coach shares a moderate level of intensity, it actually increases the team's performance. Excuse me. It increases their likelihood of winning the game. There's also a study on technological product teams, so tech companies.

[01:20:25] If the team is willing to share negative emotions, there's better budget adherence. They do the work faster. They perform better. Okay. I'm happy to kind of dig that study up and share it later. The thing that I'm a little confused about. Yeah, please. Is definitely agree with the point you're making. Yeah. But if you apply that point to this book. Yes. Which is about these really intense leaders who've created something from nothing.

[01:20:55] Is that on that list of seven for those kind of leaders? Absolutely. Or is that something that, you know, because I think of like Winston Churchill's great speeches and JFK's great speeches. You know, FDR's great speeches, Ronald Reagan. And that's what I was thinking of when you were reminding me like, you know, hey, we're going to be in a really tough spot here. We've got to rally. And I've got to be really honest with you.

[01:21:23] And I've got to express this in a way that brings out true emotion because we need people to understand what we're up against and rally behind it. But that strikes me as, I mean, crucially important, but not something that Michael Jordan's ever going to do. Oh, Michael Jordan. Let me be clear with you. Michael Jordan's doing that all day long. This is Michael Jordan getting absolutely fucking pissed at somebody missing a pass or missing an assignment. Yeah, but that's different than what you described. No, is it? How is it different?

[01:21:52] Because you were saying they tap into it just enough, but if they do too much of it, it's destructive. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Okay. But most of those examples are on the borderline. Yes, exactly. Okay, so what we're saying, and I want to be super clear about what we're saying. I mean, Michael Jordan punched Steve Kerr. Yes, he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't like, hey, I need to emote you out of this. Yeah, so what we found is that our thesis in that chapter is that a calibrated amount of negative emotion, right?

[01:22:20] So you're pretty fired up, but you're delivering it in a way that doesn't skew into abusive. Yeah. Then performance increases. Because some of these situations, right? Like with an Elon, with a Michael Jordan. I mean, the stories with them and Steve Jobs. Sure. It's not that they just did enough. No, exactly, right?

[01:22:42] And the question that is unanswered is how much of that actually helped performance and how much of that hindered performance. In fact, it's interesting. The example you gave with SpaceX was not delivered by Elon Musk. No, it wasn't. It was delivered by his deputy. By his deputy who was able to strike. Yeah. But Elon also went berserk before, right? Yeah. But he didn't do it with balance. That's right. He did it with someone that could handle it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[01:23:10] So, look, what we're saying is if you're in the hardcore zone, you just get as fucking pissed as you want and it doesn't matter, right? Because that's going to be the thing that jolts the team out of complacency or jolts the individual out of complacency. Yeah, I challenge you there a little bit too. Please. Because it's a very important point, right? I mean, you know, and there are plenty of examples where it would be harder for us to cite them, but easy for us to manage it at a higher volume of people who do that. And it is destructive.

[01:23:38] It doesn't lead to, in fact, it leads to an absolute disaster. Yeah, abuse. Abuse and really bad things. Bad outcomes. Bad outcomes, whether you're managing. Bad outcomes, bad outcomes, bad outcomes. Yeah, so certainly that behavior that we're describing, even if done by, you know, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or someone who's achieved success, you know, is that, you know, is that something they just happened to get away with? But it was waived on the wrong side of the line.

[01:24:07] It just never, somehow they skirted the, you know. Yeah, the danger zone. Yeah, the danger zone. Yeah. But most people wouldn't have at the extremes they took it to. Yeah. Or was there some difference between them doing it, which I'm sure wasn't with a lot of forethought. It was just reacting to situations. But it was something about the way they did it that was an important ingredient of the ultimate success they had, whereas other people, if they were playing the same card, they would have busted their hand in a big way. Yeah. Gone bankrupt.

[01:24:36] I mean, there's some, there's certainly... It's something in their personal life and their professional life. Totally. For better or worse, there are, there are special privileges that we assign to some of these quote unquote geniuses. And we allow them to get away with bad behavior. We allow them to be a bit more abusive because it's all in service of this amazing thing that we're doing. Right. So if they weren't generating the results, they would have a lot harder time getting away with that kind of behavior. I really do believe that.

[01:25:06] Or they just got lucky because maybe they just, you know, maybe they crossed the line many times and when it was time to pay the piper, they just somehow never had to pay up on the debt. Totally. But a lot of those leaders, they have, you know, they have dozens and dozens of lawsuits of disgruntled, you know, employees that are not happy with how they were treated. Right. Right. So look, at the end of the day, the point and the, if you want to go deeper into this chapter, I think it's a fascinating one.

[01:25:34] Get into the, get into this chapter. We thread the needle in there. But at the end of the day, we're using a motion to rally people, to shift course. Right. Whether it's a president urging a populist to, you know, change direction or it's a... So let's get back to Trump. How would you characterize? Yeah. I think Trump is incredible at this. Right. But he also uses it in a very bullying way. Right. So he also has no problem bullying people. Which is also true with the other tech examples.

[01:26:04] Sure. Yeah. Some of them are bullies too. Michael Jordan was a... Absolutely. I mean, bully and Tom Brady was a bully. And so here's the thing that we don't know. We can only speculate. Right. But what could be possible if they weren't bullies? Right. What would be possible if Trump didn't get on social media and just start bullying people? Right. I mean, I would be interested to see what that world would look like. Yeah. When he does that. Yeah. No question about it. And he does it maybe even more blunt.

[01:26:34] Yeah. He does. He does. He's pretty overt. Yeah. He does. Exactly. Yeah. But bullying is such a negative word, right? Yeah. And jerk is such a negative word. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So in some ways, are we ascribing kind of a really negative word to a certain type of behavior, uh, you know, that deserves a really negative word associated with it? You know, or is there some subjectivity of characterizing the behavior of, you know, of being a change agent? Yeah.

[01:27:04] That is, you know, pulling certain levels that make people uncomfortable. You know, is it how we're ascribing that characteristic? I mean, at what times is that, hey, if you're going to be a massive change agent and be successful, you know, you're going to have to behave in certain ways. And if you choose not to behave in those ways, you're not going to be as much of a change agent. Yeah. I mean, these- Not just about Trump, but about all these examples. It's kind of like a fine line between us passing judgment by the choice of word versus us maybe

[01:27:32] failing to fully appreciate that, hey, if you want to be Alexander the Great, yeah, you have to go up to, you know, there was one example in the early poverty journey where he went up to a certain town and he gave him a choice. You either give me everything I want. Uh, you got three days to make up your mind. If you don't say yes within three days, I promise you one thing, you know, this town will no longer exist and those of you who don't die will be sold into slavery. Yeah. And he did it. Yeah. So he does it. And then every other time, the word spreads, every other town, uh, according to Dan Carlin,

[01:28:02] you know, got the message and then they kind of worked with him, gave him what he wanted. And maybe a lot of lives were saved because he only had to do that once. Yeah. Does that make it right or wrong? Does that make him a genius like we think of him? Or does that make him, you know, a jerk and all these other bad words you can say about him? I don't know. There's a distinction between, I mean, if you're a military leader or you're a conqueror. Well, he's a conqueror. He's a conqueror. He was a military leader because he was a conqueror. Yes. He wasn't a military leader because, you know. Totally.

[01:28:29] Because Hitler attacked England and England had to defend itself. He was a conqueror. He made a choice to be a conqueror. Right. That's what he wanted to do. He just went out of it. Yeah. And there was nothing that was going to stop him from conquering. Totally. I think being aggressive as a conqueror is a little different than getting on social media and, you know, making fun of a pedo guy or whatever. Right. But I think that these individuals have. I know. I do want to acknowledge that I'm agreeing with you on that. Yes.

[01:28:58] That I've seen behaviors from Trump and behaviors from Musk. Yes, of course. When you're like. Yeah, come on, man. There's no way you could convince me. Yeah, of course. That that was appropriate or necessary. Yeah. Or something you could just. Totally. You know, justify. Should we land the plan on the last three habits? Yes. To close us out here. So. So habit number five, to fiercely pursue the truth. I think that he's he's mixed in this area. Right. As you pointed out earlier, there's many things that he had the courage or the cojones to say,

[01:29:27] to talk about where other people kind of ridiculed him for a while. How could you possibly think this, that, whatever? The Wuhan lab, et cetera. So he he had the the courage to say those things. But then there's so many other things where he's clearly lying and not committed to pursuing the truth. Right. So I think I think he's. Yeah, I think there's a not committed person to the truth. And then there's where lying. Right. Yeah.

[01:29:55] And that's where like lying is like you call someone a liar. It's one of the worst things you could say about them. Yeah. Well, do you think he's a liar? I think lots and lots and lots and lots of politics, politicians say stuff that is absolutely. Right. It's kind of part of the job. Yeah. OK. So are we judging him by the same standard? Or and if answer is yes, you know, we're judging by the same standards. Is he doing stuff that others aren't doing? Yeah. That's where it becomes a little more murky for me.

[01:30:25] Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's call it murky and let's move on. Yeah. Habit number six is to build your accountability stack. So this is all about taking your intention, taking your mission, taking your work and ensuring that you actually follow through on the work. Right. So there's kind of six steps to every good accountability stack. You can read about them in the book. In Trump's case, you know, I also think it's once again, another mixed bag. You called out some things that he did well.

[01:30:56] There's several promises that he ran for this, you know, for for for reelection here that have just been totally different than what he promised. Right. And maybe that's yeah. Maybe that's every maybe that's every politician. By the way. Right. I want to look at the camera. I see this. Yeah. I'm not defending Trump. That's our point. It's it's you. Trump is what a person we talk about more than anyone else. Absolutely.

[01:31:17] He is definitely a a leader where there is a wide standard deviation of how he is viewed and hence is a very interesting lens to put this through. And yes, I do like to play the role of devil's advocate, you know, in general, but certainly when it comes to Trump, because I think so many people, you know, have such strong opinions

[01:31:43] of them and when you probe with them, yeah, you know, they don't justify their opinions usually by acknowledging what is kind of the factual context around their opinions. They just distort the facts so much that they can't even see like through things like like he hasn't come through with all the things he promised as a politician. Really? Yeah. Some of the stuff he says isn't true as a politician. Really? Like, yeah. So let's acknowledge that's, you know, very common behavior as politicians.

[01:32:12] And then let's put Trump through the lens of, you know, does he cross lines that he shouldn't cross? Sure. Because you still could, you know, take those to extreme. And that's where I think there's more thoughtful discussion that people should be having before they just get on one bandwagon of other, either blindly support him or blindly oppose him. I love that, man. I, yeah, I love that intention. And I'm really hopeful that we can get to a level of discourse where we can just talk honestly about the facts.

[01:32:39] And I haven't actually watched the interview yet, but I'm excited about Steve Ballmer's new thing. Have you been following this? He's got this thing. I haven't even watched it yet, but it looks really cool. It's called USA Facts. And he has two debaters, one on the left, one on the right. The first one, I think, is Ben Shapiro and Scott Galloway. And they pre-agree on the facts. So they're agreeing, going into the debate, what the facts are. Then Ballmer reads out the facts.

[01:33:08] And then they have a debate on top of those facts, which I think is a really cool concept. Yeah. I mean, I could be sharing this and the debate could suck. I don't know. But I'm excited to check it out. And I'm hopeful that we can have those combos. Because when people spend time together, we just had an event at my house that had 50 people. And we broke into groups of 12 in a series of sessions. And the politics was the topic. And it was amazing that if you took the time to see where you have agreement, you find that you're agreeing on a lot more.

[01:33:39] But if you don't do that, people start going down tangents. It sounds like they're arguing with each other. And maybe they are at the edge. But a lot of what they're arguing about each other is not that they disagree with kind of the core foundation. They're starting to disagree with, okay, how do you handle it? And if you take the time to say, okay, what are you really saying? Let me make sure I understand you and vice versa. All of a sudden you realize, like, okay, we're 80% in agreement on this one. I just think a better path to solution might look more like this. And you think it might look more like that.

[01:34:07] But it's not like at the core we're talking different languages. But it sure sounds like that when people just start spotting out. Totally. Yeah. That's awesome. And then final habit here. Wait, what was six? Six was the accountability stack. So it was the follow through. Habit five was pursuing the truth. Yeah. The final one, habit seven, is to adopt warfare tactics. So can you take the best tools that have been honed and iterated on for thousands of years from warfare to bring to your project, your business, to meet these

[01:34:37] really intense moments? And the... The art of war. Yeah. And there's, you know, we feature four or five in the book. The one kind of main one that we feature is a war room. Most leaders are just operating in the day to day. They're not meeting their biggest opportunities or crises with the requisite energy that's needed. And so can you assemble a kind of SWAT team of highly talented people to go and attack those problems, to go and attack those opportunities?

[01:35:06] I don't know too much about Trump on this one. I suspect he does this pretty well. I suspect this is what a lot of presidents do is they have these war rooms and they, you know, get in there and try to attack these problems quickly. But I can't really comment on that behind the scenes. Yeah. I mean, war room is certainly a good one, but when you generalize point seven, there's a lot of things people do in war that are effective in the context of war. If your goal is, you know, domination. Sure.

[01:35:33] That I wouldn't ascribe to, you know, appropriateness on how people... I mean, what made Rome successful? I mean, think of Rome. It's lasting for... And I'm Italian, so with pride, you know, it lasted for over a thousand years. But, you know, you break down what they were doing in order to get their empire to work. It was a pretty bad shit, you know? Totally. I mean, how do you feel about what Bill Gates was doing in the 80s and 90s? Yeah. You know, that dude was hell-bent on absolutely dominating any competitor. He would...

[01:36:02] He was seen at a conference studying a photo of one of his competitor CEOs. He would have meetings about how can I get rid of this guy? By the way, these people, these companies were less than a tenth of the size of Microsoft, and he was just hell-bent on hiring away all their talent, giving them multi-million dollar bonuses, just absolutely... Like Genghis Khan dressed as Mr. Rogers, basically. You know?

[01:36:29] So I do think that is part of the business world, you know? And we just need to acknowledge that this exists. And of course, Bill Gates nowadays... Nowadays, well, in the last year or so, his reputation hasn't been going quite well. But he has presented himself in the last, let's say, 20, 25 years as more of a genteel, kind of smart, genius, kind person. But if you study his history, it's anything but that. All right, good. Well, we have been on a long time here.

[01:36:59] We could go another hour and a half, and maybe we will at some point. But let's wrap this one up. This has been a fun journey, both a little bit on the personal side. First one here at the Chill House at Pearl West, and got to understand you a lot better, and your book, which sounds really interesting. I can't wait to dive into it. But so we didn't get really into your background of how you got here. We'll do that some other time, but we covered a lot of ground. So thank you very much. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Dan. This was a pleasure.

[01:37:27] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Bear Roars. Check out Stretch, the new song from Dan Caruso with music by Jason Mendelsohn, available now on all streaming services. If you enjoyed the episode, please like and subscribe on your listening platform. This podcast was produced by Loud Bear Productions and edited by Hannah Schmetzer, with support from Kendall Weinberg, Alex Kim, and Gibson Seagert.