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Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. Number nicotine or maybe long Nick Hern and he says she buried on a he says she Buju that means long time no see basically in Japanese, but we're an audio here. So I can't say for instance and that phrase long time. No see is taken from Mandarin. I think how Djibouti and I'd have to say something like how you're melting down either shanyna something like that. Anyway back to the
So damn a little slap-happy haven't had a lot of sleep, but I've had a lot of caffeine. My guest is Tony fadell. I'm really excited about this one. This was a conversation. I've been looking forward to for years. Tony has been called the father of the iPod and for many many good reasons, but let's go to the current stuff first. He's an active investor an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of history of founding companies and designing products a profoundly improve people's lives and certainly products that have fundamentally changed.
Aged the world he is a principal at Future shape, which you can find at Future shape llc.com and investment and advisory firm coaching deep Tech startups. We do talk about that currently future shape is coaching more than 200 startups innovating game-changing Technologies. He is the founder and former CEO of Nest the company that pioneered The Internet of Things Tony was the SVP of Apple's iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone throughout his career.
Tony has filed more than 300 patents for his work in May 2016 time named The Nest learning thermostat the iPod and the iPhone is three of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time, and we recorded video for this episode. Even before we started recording. I had learned something because I noticed that Tony had blurred the background in his video is very surreal. And that is a feature that is built into Skype. You just click on the three dots for
more features and you can blur your background who knew so you can check that out by going to Tim dot blog forward slash Fidel fa deall or you can just go to youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss either one of those will have the video of this conversation. If you want to check that out. You can say hello to Tony on Twitter at T Fidel TFA deall and we talked about a lot it is wide-ranging tools tricks route.
Dean's rebooting yourself seeking boredom for insights all sorts of stuff. So without further Ado, please enjoy this conversation with Tony fadell.
Tony welcome to the show.
Hi Tim great to be here. I am
so thrilled to finally be having this conversation. We have a bunch of mutual friends. And of course the the good man Scott belsky is one of them. So thanks to Scott for making the introduction
great guy great guy
and I have I've some suggested topics from him that we'll get to
at some point, but I thought that
we could begin with something that came up.
Before we started recording I mentioned that I needed to open up my caffeine. I have some yerba mate here sitting in front of me. And you said that you don't do caffeine and one of the questions I plan on asking you is about alcohol because my understanding is that you don't do alcohol either. Could you describe or explain why that is in both
cases? Well, the caffeine thing in the alcohol are obviously
my daily habits or lack thereof, but they happened at different times. And so for me, the alcohol was really an out pouring of when I went to Saudi Arabia for for two weeks to be with a friend there and I stopped drinking and it was just before I was 44 years old and so I was there for two weeks and not drinking and all of a sudden I started feeling completely better. I was sleeping better. I was you know,
Was waking up better. You know, you're like, oh I'm not in this fog at didn't take until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock to you know to actually be you know present and so for me, it was really about that feeling much better. And then I was thinking wait a second. So if I drink alcohol, well, there's the calories from the alcohol then it's what it makes me do which is usually eat too much dessert or any dessert at all. Definitely like you have less you have less control there and you're like and then wake up in the middle of the night because I get happy heart because
I can't process the alcohol sugars since like and then I feel like crap the next morning. I'm like, why am I doing this to myself when I feel so much better and I'm like, I'm getting older it's not getting any better. So let's just cut it out. And literally it was overnight just cut it out. Wow.
So that was the alcohol piece right was triggered by these the trip to Saudi Arabia and what about the caffeine?
Well the caffeine, you know, I basically overdosed on
You know on sugar water or should aspartame water back in my 20s when I was at a company called General magic and so I was probably drinking between 8 and 12 Diet Cokes a day right loaded with caffeine. And that was just before the times of those crazy drinks with all the extra caffeine and everything, but that's what kept me going. But it was it was killing me. And so I just then in there just said I'm stopping the caffeine and I'm
Topping the sodas whether they were sugared or not and just just went cold turkey on it and you know and that helped a whole process that was the beginning of a whole process of life changes that I made from the time of 2425 to can get to this point
today so we won't dwell on this too long, but I have a feeling there's some some good stuff to unpack here. So the the cold turkey with caffeine has some repercussions right? There are some generally some
School withdrawal symptoms even even at very very low daily doses of caffeine. So two things that pop to mind number one is why that particular day right? What was what made that day different from the days before and what was the Catalyst and then number two is how did you handle the the detox period or re-acclimating period
afterwards well
Well, and we can get into this more later. But the impetus the reason why I did that was I basically press reset on my whole life when I was I think about 25 when a company that I was working at eighty a hundred a hundred and twenty hours a week at called General magic totally failed. It became my entire life. I didn't I shunned even you know my family to a certain extent. I just wanted to make this company general magic happen and so when it
An utter failure and a disaster I kind of went away on my journey and then I started rethinking all kinds of things in my life. So that was that was one big thing. But the the withdrawal the withdrawal was literally three weeks of insane headaches. It was continual headaches you had to pop the Advil or the Thailand or whatever it was but it was continual headaches and it just made me realize how much it was affecting.
Me and that I'm glad I got through it. But yeah, it was it was it was painful. I'm sure it wasn't not as hard as a typical drug addiction, but caffeine is a you know is a
drug but caffeine is a powerful powerful drug and I
never drank coffee either. I probably had two cups three cups of my life. That's
it. And if we rewind the clock and go way back to Childhood, of course in prepping for this have done a fair amount of reading and I've
I've read that from the tinkering perspective from the building perspective, which we could get into your grandfather comes up a lot. I'm curious where you developed or how you developed your ability to to sell to Market to present to present because you're not only a good Builder. You're also very good at presenting ideas in very persuasive ways. So where does that come from?
Well
great question. So my dad was a Salesman for Levi Strauss. He was a headsails guide. We were he was selling jeans for 33 or 34 years. He was with the company and so he started there just I think when I was two years old and so I watched him all the time going and selling, you know clothes and he gave me little tips along the way sometimes I'd actually go with him to a
Sales, you know a sales meeting where he would be talking to a retailer and telling about the latest line or what have you or about gold sales goals or what have you so I got to watch him do his work and ask him questions about that and he gave me some really big tips on that. That was the first one which is it just it's must be built into my DNA because that's you know, my dad has that skill, but then over time it was really after General magic phase.
Then and then, you know starting to understand other peoples languages, you know, the language of marketing language of Finance business and trying to really understand those languages Beyond engineering and and blending those together and saying wait a second every single thing is about communicating and other peoples languages, right? How would they understand? And then the other one is then coming from a place in the heart. That's really meaningful when you are talking.
The other person's language about what you're doing and then ultimately over time through failures and all these other things is really understanding talking to them about what they need and what their problems are and how you're trying to solve them. And so the more you put their selves in their shoes. So I think it was like a continual thing and then, you know being being, you know mentored by Steve Jobs, you know, just kind of drilled it all home right to watch him the absolute Master do it. Then I picked up more tips and techniques and
find and refined after
that. Okay, so we'll probably come back to the as it relates to Attitudes to specific projects. General magic has come up a couple times and I have heard it described as the most important company to come out of Silicon Valley that no one's ever heard of now. It's not quite true that no one's ever heard of it, but it's not as recognizable as a lot of other names. Of course, how did you end up General magic and in explaining that
What was General magic and you can tackle that however, you like
sure sure. Well first there's a there's a movie out now called the general Magic movie so you can see it. It has the filmmakers told my story of how to get to how I got there. But beyond beyond that for me, it was really I was I was a passionate geek since the 70s with an apple. Well first with a, you know a computer that was a paper it had a paper display and it had punched card.
That's right. So I started there and then an apple to and what have you and so I was always an Apple fan. It was a fan since I think a 79 or 80 and and then the Mac came and so then I was a fan of the mac and I started to learn more and more because I was really diving in deep. It wasn't just using it was learning about it learning about the craft and learning who's behind it. And that was all about the you know, the Mac team because before that before Apple before the Mac
Apple was really you know, it was just about the product. It wasn't even about Steve Jobs at that time. It was really just about Apple to when the Mac came. It was a whole set of the product Steve Jobs as well as the team behind it and that you were able to read all kinds of articles about the team and that's when I started to really just go. Whoo, who are these people? What are they all about? And so I kept tracking them and watching where they went some some stated applesauce.
I'm left some went back to Apple and back and forth. And when I was getting out of school, there was a in the back of Mac Week Magazine. There was a little column that was always about the rumor mill. It was the rumor mill and I would read that and it said founding team from the Mac has gone off to do this project and this company called General magic called pocket Crystal and I was like, what is that and so every week, you know, you'd look for
Little nuggets and that week I found it. And so after that when I when I read that because there was no internet back in the day, right? I read that I was like, okay now it was tunnel vision, whatever it does. I need to go figure out what this company is doing and I need to see if I could go work there because I was I was graduating at a start-up at the time. It was like this. It wasn't working. I was I was a it was a tiny pond. I was in Michigan at the time because it wasn't the mobile Revolution we have today so I had to get to Silicon Valley. I had to go see that team.
Team and and then ultimately, you know knock down the door. I should say. Yo kicked in the door to get to work there
and to add some color to that. So I did watch the documentary. Oh cool and you basically I don't know how to put this harassed I think is probably not too far off the the head of HR and just called and called and and pestered and pestered until they finally paid.
Shannon is that can you can you add a little bit of detail?
Sure. Well first it was pestering the people inside Silicon Valley to find the people at General magic to talk to so first was okay. I'm was determined to find a person that at the company I could talk to so I had to talk to various people. I wrote letters I literally type letters and sent them to various VCS and various people saying who do you know at blah blah blah, who do you know it so I had to find find
the person and so then I ultimately found that person which was DD young and and started, you know, stalking both the company from sitting at the doorstep trying to get in in the mornings to meet somebody as well as placing calls to D to you know, to to get that interview to get you no response from the interview all those things. He took it took probably six. Let's see I started in I think April that year and then I landed the
Hisham in November that year and that was 1991 the my 1991 my
recollection of the film which is really all I know of General magic is that you are not the only person who was say sleeping outside or trying to get a position at this company. What did they say? What did they see in you? What were the elements in your approach or resume that got you a job?
Do you
think well, I you know, I can't I can speculate only speculate but it was so well first I had already, you know at that time. I had a startup company in in high school with another guy. We're doing educational to doing selling Apple to peripherals and writing software for the Apple to for those peripherals that was called quality computer. Joe Gleason was a great guy and you know
He was just 2 years my senior and we were it was the two of us doing that and then after that in school and college, I created a chip firm with another guy and we reverse engineered and made a new version of the 65 816 processor in school for the Apple 2 GS. Literally a 16-bit version of the Apple to because we loved it so much. So we made a processor and actually had it fabricated and then we also I also
so had that a software startup called constructive instruments with my professor Elliot soloway at the University of Michigan, and we were doing educational multimedia software at the time. So, I think those few entrepreneurial Endeavors, you know chips and software and and sales and Retail, you know, mail-order not even e-tail mail order and customer support I think gave me a little leg up ABC and plus my passion for just please let me
And they were like, oh, who's this kid? He's fresh out of school while he's got all this. You know, he's got all this experience. Okay, let's hire him for a pittance which it was and will give them a try.
Why did General magic with this All-Star team? I mean just the the superstars of the time and soon to be or I would say. Yeah sure soon to be superstars of the later times
fail. Why did it not what were
they doing?
Doing and why didn't it work?
Well, General magic was trying to create what was in essence the iPhone about 15 years too soon. Okay, so, you know, we know the iPhone today but back then there were no digital telephone networks or mobile networks. They were all analog there was no internet there. There was almost no multimedia, and there's the most people didn't even use email yet.
Right, they and so what we were creating was this iPhone too early, but it was it was a picture of what was to come so we were too early for the technology. Even the processors weren't fast enough and battery life was too short. It just so many elements. We were well ahead of are well ahead of the future. Let's put it that way. And so so that was one piece, but then the other piece that really really cut
Gentle magic down was I would think it was a lack of discipline a lack of discipline about who our customer was what the product was we were making what the the timeline was and how we were going to get it to Market. It was literally as an amazing sandbox to create this next Generation platform with almost. No bounce. We created everything from scratch. We didn't leverage almost anything in the in the that was already built at the time we decided
Did that make our own you know chips and everything
and from that point. Well, I shouldn't say from that point, but could you describe your first contact with Steve Jobs
my from very very first content. Yes was at Andy hertzfeld his birthday Andy hertzfeld had his birthday. I don't remember which one it was for
nothing and for people listening or watching. Could you could you sure sure just Define define who that figure
is?
Andy hertzfeld was one of the principal software developers of the Macintosh. So he and Bill Atkinson and Susan care and a bunch of other people created the Macintosh and they were all at General magic. And so Andy, you know, he was having his birthday and so he invited the team from General magic to come to his birthday at his house and lo and behold who shows up. I think he was riding his bicycle at time with Steve who was literally I think like living
Five or six blocks away. And so he just, you know rolled up on his on his on his bike and he there he was and we were all gathered around because Steve was obviously, you know busy at next at the time and Andy and Andy and Steve had a really close connection and they would always talk about, you know, different Technologies and things and that that was the time when I first got to meet him, you know meet Steve was
that what were your impressions at the time?
You know, you're Starstruck. We're absolutely Starstruck. Oh, that's Steve. Oh my God are you know and I'm you know, I wasn't think I was 22 at the time something like that. So I was just you know, you know, it's like when you go up to your you know, favorite rock stars something you just don't know what to say. You're bad. You know, you're like, he probably just looked at me weird instead of this crazy kid, but that was it he was but the impression was he was he was
He was very definitive in the way. He spoke. You know, he made sure like this is my opinion and that's what it is. And then you could argue with him or whatever and was great. It was a great banter. That was fun. But I also you have to remember at General magic. I would hear Steve stories every day every day you'd hear about something that happened on the Apple 2 or something that happened apple or on the Macintosh team. And so I had this vision of
Steve and the stories of Steve from the people who are with him in the most intense times in the most celebratory times or what have you so and I'm sure a lot of those stories where you know larger than they really were and you know, and what have you but so I had this picture and in times you were like, oh my God absolute genius and other times you're like absolute Madness and you're like should I cower in fear? You know what I mean? So like so you don't really know what to make of it because you have this incredible impression of a person
Before you really met them
and I can imagine, you know, the fish was this big type stories and all the all the elaboration that comes in with dramatic storytelling, especially when you have such good raw material to begin with
is exactly Insignia. So I will
ask you more about Steve but before we get there, I want to talk about your reboot share post supposes post General magic. So your
let's go ahead Jesse just at the end.
And just you know, and then about a year and a half after year and a half hours after that. Yeah,
so what what were the elements of your reboot and and and and and then the consequences of the reboot? If you look then say a few years after that, what's your yeah.
Sure. Well, look it started, you know, and I know you've interviewed Jim Collins and it was kind of this I started on the you know, I'm still on the I'm still on the good journey. Hopefully one day I might get
Great journey,
but you know it first started with you know, individual contribution, right? So I was like, oh, I mean, it's your contribute. I'm doing well, you know, I think I'm performing at the team and then went the bottom filled out a general magic right the just everything happened and you are working night and day and all you have is this tunnel vision and you're like, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life and you know every time you talked to your parents or I talked
my parents I'd be like I got to go. I got to work on this boom, you know, it was just it was always just shutting everything down for one sole purpose and then when that time happened and it's very dark and lonely time you say
And I had luckily a friend who actually worked at General magic. She came Sandra Sandra card and she came and just sat there and talk to me and just help me try to get through it and it was just you know know this is valuable in this was an all just you and don't worry about that and you know, and just hey let's and get me out of that element and let me see beyond because when I was in Silicon Valley at that moment, it was probably four years and I literally probably did not
not go further than a couple of Miles radius away from General magic and where I lived, you know, I didn't go to San Francisco. I didn't go out to the ocean. I was just it was it was a sole purpose in life was just that and so she helped to help me, you know kind of take the blinders off and see more and then as I saw more I started saying well, wait a second. What's the right thing for General magic? Where would the product go? What's the you know in his so I started thinking about that and then I also saw it.
Where does my life go where do I need I can't I have to start to understand balance and I started reading and I started, you know, designing and thinking about the customer and thinking about marketing. So you start to see all of these things that we're breaking down at General magic you go. Oh I should have been involved in that. I should have learned about those things. And so so during that time was all about redesigning a product for General magic that I thought was a success and so I did that.
I was learning more about myself through that and at that moment when I thought I had something I took it to the general magic, you know powers that be and I said, hey, this is what I think is really great and they said that's nice Tony but we have other priorities and I was like and then of course it hit me and I'm like, oh this thing I'm working on. I can't get these they have different things they want to do I can't make this thing real. So on the Journey of good to great I decided
To go to be a manager / leader. And so I went and took that design and I went to different ones of the licensees of General magic. We had many many big companies who were working with General magic to create this device in the service and it was Sony and Panasonic and another one was Phillips who was working closely with so I went and pitched my device to CEO of Philips at the time. I said, this is what we can do with this General magic investment you made
And they were like, that's great. We let's do this. Okay. Now you're going to come on and do it for us. I was like, whoa, ho ho ho what and so literally I was 24 or 25 at the time and now, you know through a whole set of things was I was now the lead of this project and this new team that I had to build from scratch in Silicon Valley for Philips to create this device. And so so there
Failure of General magic and now all of a sudden be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. And so I I will I've never managed people I'd ever do anything. So I started hiring people people I knew and started building this team and then I was probably the worst manager Under the Sun for the first six months, you know, you're just like do it this way do it that way blah blah blah. You don't know what you're doing. And so I had to go back and I'm failing miserably, you know, and I'm in this big company with these dark offices. It's old.
It's not a start-up. It's nowhere near like gentle magic. So I left everything I knew to go to this big company to do this thing. I had no clue what I was doing and I was failing at it. And so then I had to go on another journey of like, okay. What am I? Who am I what's what what's a great manager? What's a great leader? How do I learn about these things? How do I reflect and see what I'm doing? How do I get feedback? And so that was another set right and then all through that time was also a physical.
Journey because if you saw the movie you probably saw me in the movie, I don't look quite like I look like the different
very different.
So I'm playing the long game. I wanted to look as horrible as I could in my 20s so I can only look better as I got older. So so there is that mental journey and emotional Journey, but then there was a physical journey of healing in Every Which Way of moving up through that pyramid of trying
too kind of right the ship and get whole again, but then move well beyond it and take the left take all those really negative experiences and turning them into something
positive. Let's let's explore your process for a second maybe more than a second as it relates to these these these what you might call sort of phase shifts or chapter changes when you're asking yourself. What's a great manager? How do I get feedback?
What does the actual process look like when you did that? I mean, are you going to the book store and buying 10 books and reading 10 books? Are you trying to pin people down to grill them about how they manage? What what did you actually do? What was the process? Well, you hit it on the
head nail on the head there was but books or a lot of reading another one was talking to people who I trusted who could give me feedback and then I started.
Kind of going to a couple of classes, you know and and and and just doing that and then
sorry to interrupt what type of
classes. Oh, they were just kind of like management classes or you know doing little like questionnaires of your management style. And what's working. What's not and then I as I got deeper and deeper. I was like wait a second. I need to get deeper into myself. I need to learn much much more about myself. And so how do you do that?
You know athletes go off and get a trainer and they start working on the training and they you know, like you you don't work on their their their their food, you know, what they eat how they sleep how they work out all that stuff, maybe even their mental abilities. And so I was like, well if I'm going to do this, I got to know myself really well and I'm and given a lot of the stuff that happened growing up because I went to 12 schools in 15 years. I was you know, you know a transient kid in a way.
and so I didn't so there was all these social interactions that I had or I did not have because I wasn't with a group for very long right sometimes Sports gives out to kids because they learn how to work on teams, but I never had that because I was always moving and so I decided
That what's the best thing to do is I'm going to ask you because I was reading all these books about psychology, you know, The Road Less Traveled. I was reading, you know, I was also a philosophy minor in in in college. So I was also going back to some of that going back to some psychology and things that I said, okay. I'm just going to go find a person I can go and talk to about everything. So I went to a psychologist. I just I was I wasn't crazy. I just decided I'm going to go talk to.
But who's should know something about this, so I literally went to one-and-a-half to two hour sessions.
Twice a week for almost a year and a half and literally just diving deep into everything and said I had this and I had this experience today. I had bad experience today and it gave me the time for me to process it myself, right and just you know, the person would ask me questions that the doctor would ask me different questions, but then and then I was like, oh
I didn't think about it that way I didn't see it from that angle. Oh, okay. And so I got to go really deep into so many pieces of my life that that was just wow. It was just like a huge lights were, you know flashing and you're like, oh my God and all of a sudden, you know, the changes started occurring it wasn't just doing but it was learning the fundamentals and learning not just by reading a book but actually seeing it in your day-to-day.
So I could bring examples from everyday into the sessions. I just talked about.
Zap that makes it
it does make sense. How did you find the psychologist? How did you pick this person? Oh, jeez.
Wow, how did I do
that?
Or how hot it could be.
I think it was just a recommendation from from something friend from a friend. Yeah, it was a recommendation.
What were some of the results that you saw outside of the sessions some of the some of the outcomes for you?
I think it was, you know, empathy. There was a lot of empathy putting yourself in other people's shoes and understanding what they were thinking how they're acting how they might be reacting to certain words.
You're saying different approaches to Leading and motivating certain things about the decisions. I made every day and how I could go about making different decisions.
How about just really enabling social interactions again? Like I said, I was the geeky kid in the corner. I was the new kid all the time, right? And you know, if you're the new kid all the time, you're going to have certain Tendencies and you're going to fit in very fast, but you're also not going to make deep connections. So it's those kinds of things that you had to Grapple with and and really tease apart and learn about yourself. And so that was like an A and so that was where you know the physical
Is the mental change the leadership changed to allow me to really Propel Beyond and not just you know, learn through lots of mistakes and I learn through mistakes, but you were it was a quick iteration because you could learn the it wasn't you were you're not learning about the symptom but you're learning about the root cause when it's are trying to fix the root cause or at least manage
it why did you go through 12 schools in 15
years? Well because of
my dad's
show because right you - ah,
yeah my dick so he was wherever the business that Levi's because it was taking off you remember in the 70s Levi's or you're too young. You don't know this Levi's was was literally like was a precious precious commodity like they were trading Levi's jeans as currency and Russia on the black market it was that sought-after thing. Maybe like Supreme is a
Was you know, it was that kind of thing. And so my dad would always go to various places where they were either starting and rolling out Levi's because it wasn't everywhere. It was just in certain places. So starting up new territories or propping them up or or fixing them in some way so we would move from place to place because my dad was ambitious and he was really good at sales. And and so they kept promoting him and moving them up the ranks.
And giving them harder and harder work, you know, that's what happens right when you're successful. They only give you more and harder
as a friend of mine put it. He said your reward for winning. The pie-eating contest is more pie what I know that we're going a little Memento nonlinear with the way that I'm asking questions, but I wanted to ask this earlier. What what made your dad so good at sales. What are some of the things that made your dad so good. Well,
he's a very personable guy so he gets along
And you can see it in his face. He is not a guy can lie. All right, and he neither am I and I got that from him as well. And he said to me one day after the meeting I there was some meeting he was in a sales meeting. I was there and I saw him and he laid out the whole line of clothes and showed this. I think it was I don't remember it was Bloomingdale's or Macy's at the time something and he said okay these
Are the hot sellers in our line? These aren't so good. I wouldn't recommend you buying these blah blah blah and I was like Dad. What are you doing? You're supposed to sit everything and he goes no, I'm not supposed to sell everything. I'm supposed to sell the things to the what the customer really should have and they're going to be successful with and if I don't have what they're going to be successful with I'm going to recommend my competitor and tell him that they should go there instead of this piece of apparel or whatever because I'm going to earn the trust and respect and
It's not about a transaction. It's about a relationship and they will come back to me every day every week and know that I'm the person they want to talk to and I'll be first and if I have the best stuff I'm going to get the biggest orders. But if I always sold all the stuff that was dog, you know it just to make my quarter to quarter whatever nut it was to crack. I am going to lose that relationship and everything in life is about your relationships and how you treat them and how you you know, whether the times are down or whether times
Are good or times are bad. And so that was a key piece that I took away from that day and net will never
forget. That is a great story. What a great story. What a great lesson to land. What a gift it was. When you later in your career were giving advice on managing we have because we talked about developing empathy you talked about this personal transformation later on when people would come
You as novice managers who were kind of trying to build the plane while they're mid-flight. What what type of advice do you give to new managers who are maybe good product people who have somehow been promoted into a management role but never prepared for it what type of advice or training or recommendations to give those
folks? Well, the what always inevitably happens with all new managers is they have a difference with another manager?
Somewhere whether customer their supplier, whatever it is, they have a difference with a manager that's inside the team and usually they'll come and complain to me about that person or whoever they're having a problem with that team and then use the other team will member will come up and I always would say them. I'm like, look I can sit here and I'll give you some advice but at the end of the day, I am not going to rule on this. I'm not going to sit here and take a side I said because whatever side I take you won't be happy or the other person won't be happy.
We'll never go. Well I said the best thing you can do is whenever you have these issues is you to get in a room and speak like adults instead of complaining, you know, why need children and you get in a room and you hash it out and you try to speak like adults to each other and try to work it out and if you still can't work it out come get me but don't what most people do is they ran over here and they ran over here, but they never try to make a bond with that other person to try to find common.
Common ground and work from that kind of like the polarization of our politics today, right and you got to get in the room you got to get and that's the biggest step for conflict resolution and to build your relationships inside the organization so that you can go further because you're going to always you all need to work together. This is it's not a zero-sum game, maybe some companies are but in the ones that I had was never Zero Sum game we needed each other and we need to work each other and you can't always get your manager.
Involved to do that and so I was always about sure I'm always about learning by doing and then doing the education on the back end. In other words have the failure moments work through work through it and try to figure it out yourself and then go read about it and go. Oh now I get it. So it kind of locks it in. So a lot of people learn than do. I like to do fail then learn
are there any
A particular books that you have found useful or recommended to people related to management or communication anything like that
management and communication. Yeah, yeah
or communication. I'm just wondering if somebody came to you hypothetically in there and they said Tony I want to Hash it out with this guy. But you know, I'm a miniature version of you. I'm running red hot. I'm in 6th Gear and I think I'm just gonna not have the tools to
You say have this conversation without getting really excited or or managing it in a way that they won't be as productive as it should be. So how should I prepare for it? Right sure. What where might you point them or what might you say to them?
Well, I think that there's one book which is really does apply. There's two there's two books actually one book, which is getting to yes, if you've ever read that book getting to yes.
Yeah, well young Gary and other guys. Yep, right getting to yes is 1 and that's all about telling a story right and I'm being there and telling a really great story for why people should say yes to whatever you're proposing so building that the other one is who Moved My Cheese? Yeah, right. That's another really simple book is you don't have to go through all of this psychological kind of you know, you know heavy books to get to very simple lessons, right?
And so who Moved My Cheese is when you know, basically something's changed and you don't like it anymore and it's out of your control and then you know getting to yes was all about trying to find the common ground and getting someone to see your side and hopefully getting them to say yes. So those two things are very simple books, but there are good starter place to get people to work together.
Thank you. So I'm looking I'm looking at normally I would apologize for this. I'm looking at this is going to get metaphor.
A second. I'm so looking at looking at my iPhone, which normally I would apologize for but it seems very appropriate here and I'm going to look at my notes because there's a text from our mutual friend Scott belsky with a few suggestions and this is going to be the return to Steve in a way. So he mentioned I'll just read a few things. So he's one of the rare people I know who can work across atoms and bits as he describes it and then he said he has a ton of ton of Steve stories from early days of iPhone and
I'd have decisions were made counterintuitive bets taken at the time. So could you tell a story about any decision or counterintuitive bet from The Steve
days counterintuitive bet. Well, you know Apple was fighting for its life at on the iPod base, right? So that was pre iPod. So a counterintuitive bat was specifically Steve saying we are going to build
Build, you know iPod that was called dulcimer. Literally the company at that time frame was 200 and I think it had 500 million dollars in debt and 250 million dollars in the bank and it was break. Even quarter-to-quarter. Right and Steve was like we need to do this thing. It was a code name called dulcimer which ultimately came iPod but we need to do this project and
He said okay. I was I was a consultant whipping this thing up and then he was like, okay, you're going to come on board and you're going to make this happen and the people in that room. He said look this is going to happen. And if anyone gets in your way have them call either someone in this room or call me and we're going to take care of it. And so literally there were people who put roadblocks and you know, we say it's the corporate antibodies that said in and say wait a second we're struggling for life,
right we're
struggling for
Our life for the Mac. We got to put all of our resources in the Mac. We can't be, you know going in a different direction. We have to like I'll be you know, and you're just you're a consultant. Who are you kid, you know, and I'm like I need these, you know, I need some people to help and they're like no no no and then literally I'd call in the air cover. Hey, I need some help whoever that was and then you know that person and that person whoever was in the way, you know after about four or five calls it got around the company like if I ask you I need help.
just say yes, don't because you don't wanna know what's going to come your what you know, what a bomb is going to come in hit you otherwise and so that was a very Connor intuitive thing and it was totally, you know guarded by Steve and that and the the management or part of the management team that the time
what what gave him the confidence to make that type of decision
- or maybe confidence is the wrong label to apply to it. I'm not sure but but if whether you have to speculate or if we're if you know what what gives or gave him the ability to make that type of commitment and decision.
Well, you know, I saw a lot of decisions and a lot of stuff after the first iPod, you know, kind of green light to start to keep going right so I so I'm going to speculate based on those.
You know 10 years of decisions. I saw what I think happened at the iPod thing which was literally almost every time we had a make a big bet a very big decision that would be you know, kind of high-risk put the company a higher risk. It was always because we were under threat. Yeah. Okay. So the iPod was because they tried everything to get the Mac to go over three years and it wasn't going and it was
we have to try something different. We tried everything on the Mac. No one wants to move off Windows PCS. What are we going to do differently? And so this look like the first thing Could Happen MP3s, we're taking off all the MP3 players of the time were just horrible and iTunes at the time after Apple bought iTunes from with Jeff Robin basically started gaining traction and Max were just starting to sell as multimedia.
Machines, you know you could do your music on them and he's like, okay now if we get an iPod maybe will cause more people to want to because it's differentiate. It's not just burning CDs or something people will buy more max because this iPod will allow them to do something that nobody else can do not especially definitely not on the PC side. So we were under threat right at right Michael Dell said to the world like, oh Apple should you know pack up and go home.
Of all the money left over to the shareholders and stop right? So that's the situation it was and he didn't want that to happen. So he was looking for anything that could possibly break out and he's a lover of Music we were all lovers of music or are a livers and music and so I think he made that bet and it wasn't too expensive to go off and do
yeah. What what is the timing for just as one piece of it iTunes within Apple when it's first being
Prototyped and and developed inside of Apple. What would have the timing been on that in terms of year? But I'd like 2000
2001. Yeah. It's so so iTunes I believe was bought in late 2000. It might have been no, no, you know middle of too early to middle of 2000 it was bought and and then it was it was quickly rejected to be at Apple product to be iTunes and then they started seeing it taking off.
And they wanted it to work with MP3 players and that's when it all that's when Apple said. Oh we need a device and that's when I got the call and you know, everything came together. So it was early 2000 and then we had the discussion about the iPod. I was brought in in late January 2001 and then I would see signed off on it in the third or fourth week of March of 2001 and then we shipped it in.
The first week of October Us in November that year in 2001. So it was that fast built the whole team built the whole thing it was you know was crazy crazy crazy
schedule. This just does a small world story of sorts. So mm. I had just moved to Silicon Valley and I was working in San Jose living in Mountain View and I had this tiny tiny tiny bedroom, which cost like five million dollars a month in rent.
I was driving my mom's hand me down piece of shit. Minivan. This thing was a disaster and in my apartment complex. There's this guy at a sort of a cross the way there's a little concrete Pond. I mean it was it was really pretty pretty hilarious but perfectly comfortable place and this guy, I don't want to get anybody in trouble. So I won't mention where he's from but he would always be smoking late at night and I was a night owl so I'd be
Like 2:00 3:00 in the morning working on this first company and be like, hey, how's it going? And we talked for a few minutes and was sort of our nightly chat and I saw this guy get he worked at Apple and he got progressively more and more Haggard looking and and it turned out at the time. He didn't give me any name or anything, but he's like look my I can't even make sense of this anymore. Can you come over here and give me your thoughts on this interface? Because I'm just been looking at it for like 20 hours straight and
It was an i later realized a very early sort of mock up of iTunes and is so wild to look back but this guy he was working so hard. He was a good employee. I mean, he probably I'm sure wasn't supposed to show me but he needed a second opinion and it's just reflecting back on what that has become. Does it still hit you your Ted Talk is wonderful talks a lot about habituation, but when you see people
But walking around with one of these devices right and iPhone or some of these products Nest that you've been so critically involved with does it ever still just kind of stop you or is it so you are these these things so ubiquitous that it's become invisible to you.
Well, you know what it becomes everywhere and it becomes mundane basically, you know, just like whatever and then you kind of look back and go. Oh,
Oh, yeah, I forgot. I was involved in that because you're just using it everyday it wasn't like so so to me, you know in our business whatever you did was ancient history. It's always about what you're doing or what you're planning to do. Right so we could never you know, as we said on the team we'd only celebrate for a nanosecond and move on and if you look at iPod we were fighting for our life with every generation iPod wasn't successful this third-generation, right? So,
The first one was like cool and then it was nobody bought it second one cool for a little while. Then a few more people bought it the third one is where they started happening and then when iPhone happened, you know, we had a lot of success underneath our wings at that point, but then it was like we're taking on these monster companies just like we took on Sonia's like yeah, and this is really hard. Can we do this and like and we did it and then but we're like but that's not enough. We got to do the next one the next one and so it's
A breathless Journey that you have and then finally when you're there you're like, oh, yeah, we did all that and then you go and try to like write down the history and like wow, we sure did a shit ton of stuff, you know, but, you know, it's after having that General magic experience and 10 years of failure for me in the valley. It was always a hope we would be successful but never a it's going to be because I already went through that and I went through that physical and emotional pain. So I
I got to that point where yes, and oh my God and all we campion's like that left my body. It was always about climbing the next part of that hill or that mountain to then ultimately get to you know, making something that's really great. And you know, those things today are still evolving and it's great to see we're going to
talk about a lot of your post Apple experiences. But before we get there, you mentioned early in the conversation that you learned a lot from from Steve.
What what are some of the things that you learned from Steve or picked up from Steve
anything? Yeah anything at all.
The the
biggest one was storytelling storytelling storytelling always whatever you're doing have great stories and great analogies because you need to relate to people on their level and if you can give them great analogies, so if you're trying to whether it's a product story or software story, but even
You try to change the way, you know, you're doing a process at work or who are the right vendors we should be working with you need a great story behind that so you can get people on board and understand the facts through a fun way of learning about the facts if you know what I mean, we went through this and here's the step one of why our journey Step 2 of our journey. This is what we learned and now we're at this decision today. Here are the things that we want to make sure we avoid and
from the past but we need these things that future it's going to be risky but telling those stories and then and if you can find the analogies by which everyone can relate and it makes it really just drop dead
simple. Do you have any examples of analogies whether from Steve or from your own Journey later that that you could use to illustrate sure,
you know like it Steve had this perfect one. He did with Walt Mossberg.
Sprague on stage which was like, you know, the Mac was like bringing, you know a glass of ice water to somebody in hell. Yeah right here like oh, yeah, of course, you're like, oh it's so refreshing. I need this. I've been dying for so long you've now saved my life in a way. And so that was one just a classic example of of that but we you know, we try to do that all the time in our marketing, you know when we were at nest in our marketing.
We try to do that in at iPod iPhone, but I you know this sometimes you don't even need an analogy though. If you can really get it crisp and that is the first tag line for the iPod which was a thousand songs in your pocket, right? It is probably the shortest most concise most dramatic tagline of any product ever in existence, right? And when you hear that you like we always use that we hold that up is kind of the measuring stick for everything we do.
That like how do we get to that point with our marketing or how do we get to that point with whatever we're trying to say to get it so crisp. So understandable for everyone that it's like oh my God, duh.
Yeah that it's such. It's such a beautiful elegant example of the benefits versus features, right and instead of what you saw a lot of the time which was the specs right the megabytes or the the feeds and speeds the feeds and speeds exactly and man.
It's also the type of tag line that hits that sweet spot of a perfectly understandable and shareable. Right which is its. It really did just thread that needle perfectly after
apple and a one other thing of analogies. Yeah, one other thing that I now G's is if you can have a great analogy for someone.
They will continue to repeat that to everyone else. So even if they didn't get all the details and everything else and they can't articulate exactly the story or all the you know, the house wise and what's they can tell the analogy and everyone goes. Oh now I get it, right? Yeah told her the most part and so that's another thing is trying to give give the people your listeners or the people you're trying to persuade a superpower give them that he lying to me.
Them feel like they really know what's going on and then they can reiterate and then like yes, I'm in the know and it's
cool totally and that that single analogy or that single line that one memorable phrase least in my experience also often acts as an anchor for other pieces of information, right, but they need that first anchor in order to access that chain of recall that gives them the other details
exactly just go they go. Oh now I'm listening I get it now.
Now I'm listening. Tell me more. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, it all the
videos that I've watched of you and certainly just having this conversation. You you seem like a guy is very comfortable at high RPMs and I read and certainly you can't believe everything you read on the internet. So feel free to start check, but I read that upon leaving Apple your goal was to get bored and they put it in quotation marks. This is from the guardian and then he traveled around the world with his young family for a year and a half put his shoulder and in French preschools cetera.
What is the goal to get bored and if so, could you explain what that means?
So getting bored and a lot of people who come to me for career advice? So people who worked for me work with me, whatever they come and say Tony I'm thinking about doing the next thing and you know, you get a point in your career where you have the ability to take time to make decisions. Most people very early on their career, you know, you have to you have to eat, you know, you have to jump from Jeff.
a jump from lily pad to lily pad and you have to make sure it's going to be solid stable and everything else because you're worried about it worried about your life or your perhaps your family you get a certain point your career where you can actually take a pause you can breathe and you can think again and you can get inspired and you can and so when I say get bored which is get out of the process, you're in the day-to-day grind and it ended it and just saying, okay I've taken as much
Formation as I can in this week or these two weeks of figuring out where I'm jumping to and I'm just going to jump to it. I'll you know damn the torpedoes. It's just going to make it work kind of a thing. And so what I say to people is no don't you know, they're like, oh I have this great position now and title if I stop I'm going to have if I stop now and I don't take a job over there. I'm going to lose it all and I'm going to have to start from zero again, and I'm like, no you don't what you need to do is if you do your career.
Right between every 8 to 10 years. You're going to have a different chapter of your life of your career. If you want to do anything substantial, it's probably between 8 and 10 years. Some people think it's four to five. I don't think that if you're doing something that's really important and different and so when you win those pauses come up or when those big transitions happen, you need to think very clearly because you are about to get married for 10 years or eight years.
Is something else that you're going to put your heart and soul into it's going to if you're if you're choosing correctly, right? It's not about the money. It's about the mission and what you want to learn and what you want to challenge yourself with and deliver to the world and whatever that is. And so you should take the time out get bored. Get out of the Rat Race get out of that and I got, you know a sliver of time to think about the future I think about you know, I've made my future is
Today two weeks to months maybe after that. It's a blur. It's you maybe holidays. But other than that, it's like okay. I don't even know what's out there get the time to get bored spend three six months. If you can or at least two or three weeks outside of that get bored. Just put away all of your things. Maybe go clean up the garage or whatever it is, right and through that you're going to start to think differently you're
To act on slightly differently and your mind might open up to other sources of inspiration other problems other things where you start to go. Oh now I see differently. I'm not just going to go and make go to run to the competitor because I understand the space and run to the competitor and go work for them because they're going to give me a better job, but I want to go to a whole different thing that I want to learn about that's going to challenge me. So I'm not just checking in every day and doing my work but I'm actually growing through that.
This is great. I have I'm going to I'm going to
keep keep going with this. Keep it going this theme. Could you give me an example personal example from your life of of doing this? Whether its current day passed anything that that comes to mind that you think is makes for makes for a good
illustration. Well, you brought it up already which was you know, the time that we went around the world for a year and a half and traveled. Okay the whole goal there was to get out of the same place at that.
And my I had been for let's see 12 18 years 19 years with Silicon Valley,
you know
was to get out see the world with our kids who are one and two at the time and they were we didn't see them very much because my wife also work for Steve Wright my wife our first Dave I work for Steve so we were busy busy busy helping apple. And so when we had kids we came home one day and we weren't with them.
Them, you know we learned that we weren't with them. They were like running to the nanny when they had a problem instead of us because they didn't know who we were so we're like this is not working. So we said we're going to change everything and go out and understand other things in life and try to be as with a family and through that we went to many different countries and lived in different houses lived in you know in Spain and France in Hawaii and different parts of California with anyways moved all around
And through that journey and going to different art museums and talking to people living in different houses. That's where the idea for nest came up was literally we're living in all these homes around the world with all the same problems. So you're living in spade and you're living in friends. Are you live in Hawaii than your living and you're likely sick and they all have the same fundamental problems with their home controls and things and at the very same time. I was designing a
house in remotely in Lake Tahoe. So between Lake Tahoe designing, you know, I was that was a great way to like distraction, right? It was it was something I always wanted to do. So I was working on that and then living in these different places and experiencing the same problems in that design here and understanding that I saw different ways of living all around. I was like, wait a second. I think we can fix this problem and step by step and Nest was
Created over, you know kind of a nine-month gestation thinking reading learning experiencing to then come up with that solution that if I was still in Silicon Valley, I would have never came up with
where are you now
right now? I'm in Paris in
Paris. And where do you spend most of your time these days is it in and exposed along with that? Why Paris
so Paris happened during that trip that
at that that year-and-a-half travel Paris was only supposed to be a two-week kind of quick adult. We're going to come here be in Paris. It's going to be a great parents experience, but the kids not so much and we got here and then we started looking around and really living, you know, in those two weeks just go into the various genre dance and things of that nature was like wait a second. This is great kids, especially in their age and I was like, oh this is
If my wife's like this is great. Let's just stay and we just because we had that ability. We just stayed we just continue to stay in Paris and and and then through that we met all kinds of very interesting people learned about the culture learned about the language and just fell more and more in love and I was going to you know, various museums and learning about those artists and learning about their periods in time. So like oh certain parade, you know Picasso
I so had his blue period and is next period is an expert and each time. They take these breaks. I was like, oh wait a second. We're on those brakes getting inspiration just like they did was like, this is cool. And so Paris just became part of us and then the other piece of the puzzle was we're like well, wait a second we can go back to something about but what our kids really going to learn we're like, they could learn a language. It was always my dream to learn a second language growing up in the midwest growing up in the US, you know, you don't really think a second language at least in the 70s and 80s was
Today obviously, it's more and more important especially in California and other states, Texas and those things but I always want to do that. I was like, well, we could give that to our kids they could learn that they're going to learn socialization of course, but they can't learn math and history and science but they could learn a language. Let's do that and let's give that gift to our kids that I always wish I had and so that was the Paris connection and then we kept coming back every summer our kids always stayed in French programs and became fluent in French and and then ultimately,
Italy we bought here and then after I got done with Google Nest, my wife just said, hey, we have a place in Paris. Let's just move them. Like let's do it done. And that's that's how it all. That's all it happened. But since then since that happened in 2016 yet 2016. We've also decided to Branch out further and now we spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia and in Paris and we go back and forth and put our kids in school there. Have you no home.
Is that help our kids when we're in different places and those things just because as you've said so many times experiences are incredibly powerful things to learn from so it's it's knocking the parents off the foundation just like the kids are learning for the first time and we learn as a family unit and we figure out things like when you're in Indonesia, what what what's the currency? Why do they act this way? Why is it this way? Oh my God. That's really cool. Why don't we do that in the developed World? Why do we do this?
All of these different things just it just helped to build, you know, I think our family and the way our kids see the world.
It's such an incredible gift that you're giving of course yourselves but your kids as well as an entirely different lens through which to view not just the physical world, but these of constructs and Concepts and labels and language that make up our realities. It's it's
The exciting makes me
excited some of you in some of your episodes you talk a lot about language and I think you also had that in one of your papers you wrote in school or something about language and you know when I was listening to some of your pockets, I'm like, yes, you are. Absolutely right. There's these containers is called language and when you see how differently they speak in a different language and what words are meaningful and what words they don't even have in that language. You're like, oh that shapes the culture in a dramatic way and that's the kind of things where
You go, you know, it's like brain food at least for me where you're like, oh my god. I've never thought of that problem that way before Oh Embrace such Clarity or bring such, you know resolution to how you see the world in many ways in different respects. So it's cool.
So this might seem like a 90 degree turn. I don't I don't think it is, but I want to bring it up and I was planning on bringing it up. Anyway Plastics Plastics Plastics
Why are
you so interested in
Plastics Plastics? Well, when you live in Southeast Asia, you start to really understand Plastics because they're all around you in on the ground in the water even in the air and you see it everywhere and you start saying why do they have this problem? And in other parts of the world? We don't seem to have that problem. And so
As over the Journey of the past year and a half. I've come to realize a lot of interesting pieces about Plastics and so for me Plastics are a problem that we all have it just is hidden in many parts of the world from us because there is waste management management and quotes it's taken away and we don't see it any longer but it is still an incredible problem and
It's in some ways a blessing that there is not waste management in many of these places so you can see the damage we're doing to the environment firsthand and it's not just about Gathering it up and it's not just about recycling which everyone tells you about. It's really a problem with our usage and the material itself and how we use it how we design with it that we are burying our future Generations in this toxic mess. We talk about CO2 all the time. We talk about coal plants we talked about
At climate change we have all kinds of things behind climate change that are going to be problems for future Generations that we also have to pay attention to and in some cases some of these other things just like Plastics is actually contributing to our climate change issue as much as its environmental damage if for 500 years and so being in Indonesia, you know, you really you really feel it viscerally and you're just like where there's a big problem. This is what I love.
This
is when I get like my brain turns I was like this is a big problem. How can we solve it? And this is not a problem with like a societal problem. This is truly a design problem. This is we designed this mess. We got a design ourselves out of it just like we have to do with climate change. So I'm like that was a it. It hit me so hard that I'm like, okay, how are we going to design our way out of it? And so I spent the last year and a half learning about it.
Okay, so
so I can get yeah that's needing know.
Yeah, though it's a great dot dot dot I want to I want to I want to pursue that dot dot dot sure I want to talk about possible solutions or directions for Solutions. But before we get there because I'm so interested in how your mind approaches something like this. How do you begin to dissect a problem that that could have such a broad umbrella, right? There's so many possible directions to go. How do you even begin as someone who knows how to build from a design perspective or
Their perspectives. How do you begin to deconstruct that
well? Let's just laugh. I'm going to just go back through the plastic thing. You know, I'm not a Plastics expert by any means or at least I wasn't I'm trying to get there even though the products that I helped to create had Plastics in them. I really didn't know a lot about the end of life of plastics on this stuff. So I was like, okay, there's all this waste everywhere Indonesia.
Well, why don't we just do what we do in the US will just recycle it right? We'll just make sure there's good collection and then you kind of dig in and you start learning about that and you go so you try to just model saying oh, we're just going to fix it by doing what we do there. And then you start asking more questions like so where does that go? Exactly? And so you just kind of dig deeper and you just dig deeper and you just keep saying, you know, I always say, you know, you can usually get to a great answer or a really great question by asking why about five times y this
Why that why this and so literally the process for me about Plastics was yyyy, and you just kept and you never just took anybody at face value for the answer. You just kept digging and so for me, it's been all research and then I got to the point where I was like, wait a second. This all logic does not apply here. Wait a second who's someone's giving us a you know, a selling us a story about how how Plastics are really you how
How Plastics are really treated at the end of life, that's not what happens what really happens and you keep diving deeper and deeper. So for me, it's really about that you start to apply things and just never give up till you find the real root cause and then unwind right don't just try to patch. So that's that's how that's how I got to you know, and I'm still asking a lot of wise, but I got to a really I think a good point at least on some pieces of the plastic issue that we have. Can
you talk about
Where you are now in your
secret absolutely. So if first started with collection waste management and let's just collect it all and make sure it just doesn't get there and then we'll recycle it then and so what I'm mostly talking about now is there's two types of plastics. There's Plastics that are durable things things like, you know, your car bumpers and they last for five or 10 years and you know, and there they serve a purpose and there and the material is really good for that. Okay, then there's
another purpose which is we call a femoral or single-use or very low use Plastics where we're using this product once or a couple of times and then we discard it. Okay, so there's still a lot of things that need to be done on the durable side and it's not perfect by any means, but if you look at what's growing exponentially is packaging and single-use and these ephemeral applications that are going wild and in fact many of the petrochemical
Companies like the petroleum companies, right? They're actually not worried about electric vehicles taking away all the gas because they see these petrochemicals all these Plastics in these things being consuming oil over time. And so you're like wait a second the petrochemical gauze aren't scared because we're using so much plastic this in packaging and it's growing crazy. So let's talk about that. So is it really recycling? So I'm talking about packaging and recycling.
And I'm like, okay, so I dig deeper and I you know, I started recycling University of Michigan back in the 80s, you know, like doing and so when you start to learn about you find out that just because it has the recyclable label on it. It's not recycled. It's literally buried or burned setting off toxic ashes literally it's buried or burned or it ends up in the environment like we see, you know as literal or in the oceans and you're like
Second just because it has a recycling label doesn't means it recycle and very very few of them are actually recycled and you're like, okay, this is a problem and it's growing exponentially and even the best countries in the world with all these resources cannot afford to recycle like because it doesn't make any economic sense. So I can't
wait a second. So what
happens to all this stuff once it's burned or buried then you find out it turns into micro and Nano Plastics that remain in the environment for
Hundred years and then you learn it's in think everything. We drink. It's in the air. We breathe. It's in the soil that it's in the soil. It's in the the water. It's in snow. It's it's falling down as rain or snow in the on the polar caps. You're like wait a second. This plastic is everywhere. It's going to it's going to be everywhere for 500 years and it's these time Nano plastic just because it goes away. It's still there and you're like, well, what does that do it?
Into our body and typically those Nano Plastics pick up bioaccumulative toxins and those toxins literally latch onto it and then they go into our bodies and then they go into our bloodstreams. And so we have very very early research. It isn't publish it. But I've talked a lot of researchers that when those Nano Plastics get into us, it's like Asbestos and it causes inflammation in the body and the body attacks it and it could cause all kinds of things we still have to do the correlation. So people like oh, yeah, it's Nano Plastics. Don't worry about it's in your water.
Sir, but it's small parts per million. But look, I think it's just a lot of people telling us these things don't matter just like they said cigarettes don't matter or other. It's sugar doesn't matter it matters and it's in us in a center of Iron Man and we're polluting for Generations. So, okay. So now we have this Nano Plastics problem. It's going to be there for 500 years packaging is going crazy. It can't be recycled. So what do we do? So we have to come up with new materials and new designs for all this packaging to allow.
Us to live like they do in this is a great thing in Southeast Asia when you order something we get takeout or you get anything it comes on a Banana Leaf or it's wrapped in a banana leaf. And you're like, oh cool and you take the Banana Leaf and you can just Chuck it you should you know, obviously you're putting a compost bin, but if you don't and it just ends up on the street it goes away and you know Thirty forty five a hundred days. So we need to get to that type of packaging. So guess what there are packages like that out there that are
Cost-effective from different materials some of its called PHA there's other ones out there that can come from waste product by a waste to create this whether it's a film a bottle cap a bottle these different things that can then be consumer compostable. So literally you can just drop it. If you literate it goes away. If you put it in the ocean it goes away in 45 a hundred twenty days. No Nano Plastics. No microplastics just goes away.
And that is the Holy Grail and there are companies that are doing that today and we're trying to find them and help them and try to get people to design with them. And that's what we need to do. And in the meantime, we need to stop all this single-use stuff. We need to literally ban it because we are creating a huge mess on this planet and we just don't realize it. Thank you for
that description. No, that's great. Yeah, I want to add
one more thing. You can add you can add 3 if you'd like, so
So recycling just because it's recyclable doesn't means it's recycled. Okay, so don't trust your recycling labels. If you do recycle you should still recycle, but for the most part, it's probably not going anywhere to be reused recycled Plastics, even if they are recycled are only good for two to three uses and then they become bad Plastics because they're mechanically recycled the long chains of plastic becomes short chains, and they can't make things with and they become too brittle. So literally you
We recycle them a few times unlike aluminum and glass and paper. The next thing is is that people say, oh if you don't recycle you can compost it. You immediately saw these boxed water thing, you know, like boxed water now, it's right. They say that you can recycle it. You have to go to a special facility in the middle of nowhere. Like it doesn't really get recycled. You hear things about compostable things what that means? It has two goes into an industrial compostable facility and it needs to get
a special heat treatment and are treatment and all this stuff to be able to break down that doesn't work either. So we have been greenwashing recycling compostable. All of these different languages used to say Plastics are green or their bio-based wrong wrong wrong. The only thing that really matters now is biowaste based Plastics that are consumer compostable. That's the only thing that we should be selecting and if we can select that pick a different material
Do not use Plastics. Okay. I know that was a diatribe is long-winded but I'm trying to get that message out to people. That's why I really important.
That's why we have long-form conversations. So we we get so we can we can unpack some of this stuff. So to speak and the you mentioned finding companies helping companies is is that done through future shape or is that done through different vehicle? And for people who don't know?
No future shape. Could you describe what it
is? So future ship future shape is a investment vehicle from our family to find great entrepreneurs and companies trying to do really hard hard developments create deep Technologies to help fix our planet fix our societies fix our communities and get us forward in a Green Way in some way green or to enable enable.
Small and medium business medium sized business owners to then be able to flourish and get from out from underneath the system in some way that they've been subject to for a long time. So we try to find these things and we go and we don't call ourselves venture capitalist. We don't call ourselves angels. We call ourselves mentors with money. We are mentors first and we come and we put our money where our mouth is to help these entrepreneurs to help these companies to realize these
these goals these dreams these Technologies to help our world and they take time to build right they take they take time effort and belief and what's going on. So that's what we do. We invested in over 200 companies around the world and we and we Mentor them at certain parts of their life cycle and and just try to be that team that can help them with the confidence when they're down when they're doing the right thing or help them find whatever resources they need or help them when they're trying to learn leadership.
you know how to do leadership or find the right person or do the hiring all those kinds of real, you know things that if you haven't done in a long time, you know for many years you may not feel confident about and so, you know, it's that nudge to help the maybe we act like big brother or big sister sometimes
and is is future shape where you're putting most of your energy these days or what are you personally spending most of your energy on so future
shape has been
now for about eight years, maybe 10 depending on how you count and I spend almost all of my time on future shape and my team, you know our team together we all we all work on these companies because what we've learned on a learned over the time as we could do one thing but in start another company, but we take all of the experience the knowledge the resources that we can bring to bear.
Anywhere in the world and help these other two hundred companies to thrive and really make the change that they want to make in this world. And so we wanted use leverage model. So we're really trying to leverage it and for us it's incredibly fun and our curiosity is piqued all the time when they're going after tough problems and we get to dive in and be it to be beginners with them in a way or get to learn from them and then we get to take our expertise and then, you know combined it with their expertise and so it's incredibly rewarding
Boarding and you know, if people didn't Mentor me when I was growing up and going through the thing I would never be here today and so at some point I looked around I go wait a second. I guess that's me. Now. It's time to you know, try to live up to what the mentors taught me try a live to that ideal and pass the Baton now and and instill this art this craft with these other people that we try to help because it's really important that we try to pass the stuff down to try to make it better for
Generations that's
important work and you mentioned you mentioned being beginners and that's that's something I came up in your Ted Talk within the context of Steve and looking at things with beginners eyes. Are there any particular skills that you're currently focused on personally or new behaviors either ending or starting behaviors within the personal realm or I should say individual probably better way to put it.
Is there anything that you're currently working
on? Well, I think you know from a beginner standpoint in many ways. I mean the Plastics right? I'm little. I'm just this I'm little guy calling up researchers say can you help me? I'm trying to get this one. Why does it work this way, you know and reading research papers and and really going back to school and you know being an undergrad in a way and learning hopefully from the best so I try to put myself in a position where I'm incredibly curious and I don't I have
Skills of an analytical skills to understand maybe what they're doing but I don't really have the data to really understand it to that level. And so for me, I'm always trying to put myself in an uncomfortable position to make big decisions. Like should we invest should we do whatever because that kind of tension makes things? I think really really fun and really exciting for me. I call it brain food. So I try to do that every day with the companies and the you know, we're doing
We help to invest in impossible Foods. I didn't own anything about food science know anything about that. So go learn about that or we're doing you know modern metal, which is leather without a cow, right? How do you grow skin out without an organism, you know without a you know, a larger organism. What does that mean? How what so all of these things are just putting yourself in that point where you're like, I got to learn this thing and I got to be success, you know, I gotta try to be successful and keep up with these experts.
The field and so every day is like that.
So for people who are listening or watching by any objective measure, it meets certainly people would consider you successful and what I like to do in these conversations and fortunately in your bio, it's very clear that it wasn't a linear path from kind of bottom left to top right? I mean you followed a very Jagged path in
In a sense, what do you struggle with? What are things that you struggle with that you find difficult
difficult for me difficult for me. I think is you know, just heavy duty analytics just anything. That's very analytical. I just I gotta I gotta feel it. I gotta I gotta see I got to feel it. I can't just sit there and stare at numbers. You know. Another thing that's really hard for me is any kind of long form writing, you know any kind of
Just oh no, I can't you know that that's really hard. I'm be a bit I struggle with impatience, you know, these things take longer than you'd like and you know, you just you can see it. You can feel it you can grasp it but you got to go. No, I can't no no, come on. Let's just get there and you're like no. Okay you and you just got to be in the you know in the passenger seat waiting for things to happen. And so, you know, I try to augment obviously the things I don't like to do with people who like to do that.
No, likely Mike on our team is an amazing legal got in. This is what he loves to do. And so I'm like Mike just go do it like, you know, that's not my thing. So we make sure we do that but then when it comes to the real kind of emotional stuff of like I want the future to be here now that I struggle with all the time. Like I just don't want to wait. Why should we wait especially when we know now is the time, you know what I mean? There was a general magic it wasn't the time. It was way too early and all that.
But when you see it when you cat you and you can see it perfectly. You see the moment, it's your like let's go. We gotta get this done take the he'll come on, you know, that's that's the most frustrating thing. You know, there's always science fiction and future stuff, but when you see it and you can feel it, you know, yes go for it. Let's get it
done. Let's let's dig into and patients a bit because in patients has been I would you know, I would like to think maybe this delusional but one of my greatest assets and also in a my greatest
It's handicaps. How do you and maybe this isn't the right question but how do you think about your impatience or work on your own patients so that you get the benefits of feeling a sense of urgency and pushing when those pushes are helpful without being just an insufferable pain in the ass who leaves scorched Earth everywhere because I've certainly been the ladder at points where
People just like lies God. Damn. It. Tim like shit doesn't happen that fast and you're pissing everybody off. How have you thought about finding the middle path with that? If there is
one I struggle with it every day, you know, it's you know, there's times when you're working on things and working with people when you know, you've been there and it should go faster, you know, like, you know, like okay, why aren't we doing blah faster? It's just like get the stuff out the door. It's not like
searching and trying to engineer and find the right correct, you know widget for XYZ. It's really just the process of getting it done. It's like come on guys, you know, I understand you don't want it. This is a big risk and your tentative about it, but we just gotta move on right so you don't want to have this way to say analysis paralysis, right? So you got a bucket it you got to say, okay. This is just their mental state. Okay. We got a Coke some through it and give them a help them or
Myself to get through that phase and educating that we got to get faster. Then there's the other phase which is you know, we're just trying it's a the process of discovery the process of getting to incite those kinds of things and yet those always take longer and then there's another one which is out of control is, you know, working with other external teams that you can't really push. All right, and you just have to kind of grin and bear and you keep reassessing the partnership and should we be doing with them and and all those things.
Things and communicating them in a very positive but very direct way. Like let me tell you what we're grappling with now it isn't all Rosy and these are the kind of decisions we have to make because you are delaying or this is happening with this is what's happening or business, you know, those kinds of things and you have to be really upfront just like I was talking about the two managers or the two people who had to get along and figured out we got to be upfront and honest about our partnership and how it's not working and going what are we going to do to get over it?
Right. And so I think it's those types of betting and then also just taking a step back and you know, I you know, you tense up your your neck like and you just go breathe. Make sure I get my yoga done, you know, make sure you know do what have you to say just to try to calm down in certain instances.
My next question was going to be related to self care so that yoga is a perfect segue. So what are some of your self care practices whether
Either on a daily or weekly
basis. Well the diet's the first one the diet is the most important right? So that's that. What is your diet? Okay. Well, you know, it's will vegetarian without caffeine without alcohol and you know, it's it's an absolute. It's the hardest thing in the world, you know, it's is refined sugars right trying to just Stave off that beast is just it
It's you know, I'm I like it too much. You know, it just is what it is. You try to do what you can minimize that as much as out. So that's that eating healthy eating Whole Foods that kind of stuff then there's exercise. So exercising it least an hour a day six days, maybe seven days a week, right? So maybe two hours or three hours are breaking it up with a hike and this or whatever but always exercising. So whether that's you know, I've always I've been doing yoga, I think
25 years now that was also part of my reboot yoga for 25 years and it is I hope the I hope it will be the only exercise I will be doing when i'm 75 or older because I think it's the right balance of mental and strength and and toning and those kinds of things so, you know graphic here
a particular type of yoga what what are the characteristics of your yoga?
I'll do basically I just have to I have to do something whether it's Hatha Ashtanga.
Bikram you name it? I'm not going to be I'm not religious in that way because I always think there's more things to learn about and do try different things right and and work with different instructors. And that's tough. Then there's you know weight training right weight training and stretching which I should be doing more and more stretching not doing enough but weight training for sure. I love to run so, you know, just my best way of exploring a new city is whenever
ER I go to a city, you know for the five or six in the morning getting up putting on the shoes and just running and just seeing what the city's really like biking. So Road biking for long distances or even short distances altitude as well skiing. So doing that a hiking so those kinds of basic Sports is you know, what I it's I called Tony time.
Don't have any music with me. I won't have music with me. It's almost moving meditation for me. Right? I it's not just sitting there but it's moving meditation. So I think start coming in my brain and start, you know, flowing over it and all of a sudden problems that had gone unresolved for a day's all of a sudden seemed to like because I'm not ruminating over them anymore. Just they all of a sudden the answers come to you, which is great. So that's another thing and then there's sleep.
And on the Sleep side, you know, I've I think you've talked about it as well. But you know, I have this device called the Euler which is I think the Next Generation Chilly Pad,
right? Oh my God. Oh my God, it is a
lifesaver. And so now I swear by it. Now I buy him his gifts for friends and have them try mine and I got to try this but you know, you got to try to get good sleep and and that's that's also important as much as
possible. I
To sort of bookend what up? We're not totally done yet, but to sort of book and something you mentioned in the very beginning alcohol and sleep. I've been astonished looking at heart rate variability and resting heart rate and so on which I've tracked with different devices or a ring and a number of others to drinks are more and my sleep is garbage. It is such a binary change
and what time and what time in the early morning does it happen to you? You
know, I
II have I've looked at this Spike, there are a number of different spikes. I have to go back and look at the data. I think they're also making some algorithm changes with aura specifically that I was using another number of sleep devices concurrently because I wanted to compare data and try to try to correlate a few different things. So I don't remember the exact time. Do you recall when
yeah, it was around it. Well depend on when you went to sleep and when you had your last drink, but it was always saving it to be about four.
A four and a half hours after that last drink and you went to sleep when at least for me my heart would race. Yep, and then you would wake up and then you and then because you're you're you know, you're just a type A personality you start thinking and you can't go back to sleep and you're sweating and then you have a horrible night sleep and then you know, yeah, but that was it for
me. So you mentioned that you you buy the Euler as gifts for friends. Are there any other devices or books?
That you regularly that you regularly gift to other people.
I regularly gift the book called In Praise of Shadows. Ha ha. Oh
man. You're the first person. Yes. I know this book. Okay. This is very very very small book. It's like 80 Pages. Yeah,
but it is an Insight when you when we talk about staying beginner and looking at details and seeing it through other people's eyes when you read that little book again you want you don't want these
Tom's you give your friend something and they're like, oh this feels like a obligation but they go. Oh, it's so small. Okay, I'll read that and they can do it in an hour and then they go home. So if I so the book is you could explain the book If you are go for it. Well, no, no. No, I want to know I mean I
can give some some egg some examples from the book. There's one that especially stuck with me, but why is what's more interesting to me? Because I get bored hearing myself talk. Why do you find this book
interesting? I find it.
It's absolutely fascinating because I only grew up. So the book is all about, you know, Japan before pre-industrial era and how they lived at home and how they lived when Western technology entered the home afterwards and he was comparing his life before and after and I I was never able to do that because I only lived in this world, you know in this post-industrial world and so he was explaining things like we had wooden spoon.
There's before metal spoons and the end we had wooden bowls before we had porcelain bowls and just the sound of the of the spoon hitting the bowl when it was wood on Wood versus Metal on porcelain and how that would be grading to your ear and how soothing it was when it was wood on wood or artificial light versus natural light and diffuse light and how your eyes and how your mental state would be very different under these two conditions. So,
It was it was literally comparing this pre industrial and post-industrial life through a through an incredible writer who could encapsulate it and you start to go wait a second. I never considered those details in my life to this level and you're like, that's about staying beginner. Right? It's the
oh my god. I've never even thought about that
and this makes me three think of so many things that I never thought of and it takes to a whole nother
world yet the the piece of it that stuck with me most
Concretely was the place to live I lived in Japan for a year in high school as an exchange student and live with three family. So I got to see different rooms in the house and different styles of home. And there's a there's a short portion in In Praise of Shadows where he talks about how gaudy certain types of you could consider them sort of Chinese influenced Japanese say bowls and Furniture are because they're there.
Are covered in gold plating or painted to look very bright and gold lacquered lacquered exactly. And what am I? What am I gifts to myself for my after my finishing my second book, which is definitely not short and is more of a homework assignment was a lacquered Japanese saddle actually which which kind of typifies this and the point in the book was that it looks gaudy because things were lacking
In
those types of materials due to dim lighting they were intended to be looked at in very dim lighting and as soon as you put incandescent modern Lighting on it looks terrible and I was like, wow, I've never even considered the source and strength of lighting and then it just totally changes how you look around at different objects different historical objects, right? It's you kind of take as a given
That the lighting is a constant, but of course, it's not a constant in retrospect exactly.
Exactly. And and now that we've gone to LED and Beyond its you know, it's even more so, you know that kind of brilliant stuff. So now it's great. I'm glad that you know, we share that love of that book. That's
that's awesome. Yeah. This is the first time at this first definitely the first time that this book has ever come up on the on the podcast how cool I'm gum really glad you brought that up. It's a weird little book to I mean it is
it is it is a
strange it is a strange strange.
Book that I actually for that author. I destroy all kinds of novels and everything. It was just like a little weekend project it seemed for him.
Do you have any other books that you recommend often or have reread yourself?
So yeah, there's a I think I always go back to it because it makes me think about the ideas in the book, but also makes me think about my life which is thinking fast and slow by Daniel.
Daniel Kahneman and and he and you know, you know a Nobel Laureate amazing amazing guy. And you know when you read that you really get to understand how your brain works and then you also if you can relate it to yourself and how you make decisions and out of it is about you know, the pressing the emotional part of your body and about your decision making for the more logical rational port and then I also go. Well that's good for some decisions, but not all decisions.
Because he really is advocating for taking getting rid of one of the cyst the emotional system and I'm like, I like it because the book because I can really choose which one I want to use because sometimes there's fact-based decisions and other times there are opinion based decisions, which are emotional based decisions and you have to really understand which type of decision you're making for that given that given that given point in time
thinking.
Fast and slow. I was believe it or not a subject as an undergrad in some of Danny condiments experiments. We got paid whatever four dollars an hour to press space bars for various experiments on that Thinking Fast thinking slow separation. If we look at the emotion based decisions, whether that's what I want to say impulsive but very quick decisions that are sort of
Made with a few million years of evolutionary input like free pro/con list.
Well, whether to retweet something very quickly without reading it. Yeah, right. Are there any examples
that come to mind from your life where you've made very very good snap decisions where if you had tried to analyze it you would have made the wrong decision. Yeah. Yeah.
Well one of the best decisions I ever made
my life was to ask my wife to marry me and I didn't know literally 15 minutes 10 minutes before I was going to do it that I did it. Wow. I didn't even know I had no I had no clue. It was an amazing week and that was after 11 weeks of dating and then literally it was in a span of 15 minutes from the time. I said, I'm going to 10 minutes from the time I said, I'm gonna do it till I get it. I wasn't prepared. I didn't even know that I didn't wasn't prepared for her to say no.
Ha ha ha. Okay.
So walk model walk with their go there to
walk me through this a bit. So yeah, what happened? I mean in the sense that we did it just randomly pop into your head or was there more to it on that day. Well if
they had there was a you know, it was actually a Monday morning of all things real romantic,
right?
No it was so what had happened was I had some very very close. I have some very very
we close friends and they came down I said, oh I met this wonderful woman, you know and and and they were coming in times to gay. I would love to get you guys to meet her and you know, I'd love to just see if we can all hang out because the worst thing that ever happens. I don't know if you've had any friends like this is you know, you have a girl or guy friend or something and they're the really great friends of years and then they meet somebody and they fall in love and then all of a sudden you're like and then you try to meet that person that they love so much and you're like
I just don't click with them and it's like oh I almost lost a friend. Oh, no. No, no, you know whatever. You know how that go. It's happened. Yeah, right. It's happened and it's heart-wrenching. So you just go. Okay. I wanted my friends to like because I use 11 weeks in we're having a great time and I'm like am I in some crazy fog? You know, and I was older at the time so I had a lot of and they saw some of my other relationships they you know, they gave me feedback on them. So it's like, okay so come on over and so we hung out the whole weekend together and we had an amazing.
Amazing time and so that morning I was driving. I was driving them to you know, they said goodbye to Danny's my wife and they said goodbye to her and then I was going to drive them to the airport and all night long. It was pouring rain. It was crazy rain and it's raining all the time till I take him to the thing and on the in the car Sandy and an old my friends they said oh my God, she's amazing. Oh God, you guys are so in love. It's so amazing, you know, do you head and shoulders over hips?
Any woman you've ever dated before blah blah like oh my God. Yeah. And so I was like, yeah, that's how I feel and I was on cloud nine and so I drop them off and then I turn around to come back because I was going to pick up my wife we're going to go to work or not. My wife my girlfriend and son who is going to come and and drive to work together with her and so I come back and as I'm coming back the clouds open up a rainbow opens up.
Up and literally This brilliant sky comes into view and I'm like and I'm thinking the whole time like well, when's the right time how do you know? When do you know? It's the right time that this is the right person given my 15 years of dating history at the time or whatever. I'm like and I'm like, it's never felt like this before, you know, and I can work through all the rational arguments and all that stuff. But you're like at some point you're like screw that so I'm driving home then all of a sudden one of my favorite songs comes on the radio.
Like oh my God, this is
amazing and the rainbow and everything else and I drive up and I had a rose bush in the front of the house and there are great roses often, but the it was raining so hard that night. I looked at the Rose and I always clipped one and gave it to her and you know, and so I looked at that and I was like that survived a night. It was the most beautiful rose I've ever seen and all this stuff and I took off the Thorns I clipped and I was going to just give it to her. So I walk in the door and I'm like and she's coming down the stairs with a basket of laundry.
Andre literally a basket of my laundry 11 weeks and she's coming over like what's going on and I was going to take her to work. She's coming downstairs and I'm looking at it and I go here's a rose honey. And then I took the you know, and so that's very nice and I said, well, you ain't no give me the basket give me the rose and I got down on one knee while she's on the stairs. And I said will you marry me and it was like literally like that was I was blind I just said will you marry me right there? And that was that was a Monday morning with a rose. I had no ring. I had nothing. Wow.
Wow, that's an incredible story. That is just
incredible. Well, that's the that's the kind of craziness, you know that, you know when you know, you know, yeah and the same thing happened in different parts of my life like that like taking the job at Apple was just like that as well is crazy crazy
when you know, you know amazing Tony. I want to I want to let you get back to your day, but this has been so fun. I really appreciate you taking the time and I certainly hope it's not the last time that we get to have a conversation.
And perhaps we'll meet sometime in the
future. It's your anywhere. I let you know. I'm in different places the world. I will be sure to stay in contact and you know, thanks. This has been a lot of fun and we went to all kinds of interesting questions that no one ever asks. Oh, thank you. Oh
my pleasure and people can find Future shape at Future shape llc.com. Is that the right URL? That's correct. And what is your best your best social is on Twitter? Is that the best
player at T Fidel as he bade e.l.f ad?
LL and I'll link to all of that and everything else that we discussed in the in the show notes for people so they'll be able to find you very easily. Is
there anything that you'd like to say
recommend conclude with suggest any any parting comments or anything at all before we wrap
up? You know, I think the biggest thing is that we all go through all of these changes in our lives we go through failure if you just are open to learning and you're open.
To the failure and pushing hard, you know, I didn't have the best start, you know, I tried really hard but I didn't have the best start but it can end up happening. If you really keep pushing whether it's a failure or a success keep pushing even Beyond success and keep staying a beginner trying to stay humble and trying to work with others because you know, that's that's your superpower at the end of the day.
Yeah for sure and you know in your
Ted Talk you talked about seeing the invisible problems instead of just the obvious problems and it strikes me that you've done that looking out at the world, but also looking inward at your own subjective experience as in working with that psychologists to become more aware of your internal processes, and it's just such an incredible and inspiring story and I mean for the purposes of helping people, I think
It's so wonderful. I'm sure it was difficult at the time that you had so many challenges at various points in the road. It's
yeah, absolutely there was and there's always challenges and I'm still learning and I'm still growing and all those things but you're going to go through them to everyone's got to go through them and just embrace them and and you know, and just because you see success doesn't mean they didn't go through them as well. They they they most likely did or if they have it they will at some point everyone
does.
For Sharia, you're going he's going everyone's fighting or has fought battles that you know, nothing about everybody's got their own stuff. Thank you so much. Tony good.
Thanks Tim. Thanks. Have a great day. Looking forward to staying in touch.
Likewise. All right, my man. Cheers, man. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email for me? And what do you enjoy getting?
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