EP 51: Matt Mochary (Founder, The Mochary Method) - The Coach Behind Sam Altman, Naval, Brian Armstrong Shares the Mistakes That All CEOs Make

In episode 51 of the Logan Bartlett Show, CEO coach Matt Mochary who coached a number of the most prominent investors and CEOs in Silicon Valley including: Sam Altman from OpenAI Brian Armstrong from Coinbase Vlad from Robinhood Naval from AngelList Ivan from Notion Peter Fenton from Benchmark Alfred Lin and Pat Grady from Sequoia Parker Conrad from Rippling Steve Huffman from Reddit Max Rohdes from Faire Mamoon Hamid from Kleiner Matt and Logan discuss what led to him becoming a CEO coach, his philosophies and tactics for running a company, and what makes him resonate with such a diverse set of CEO personalities. Matt is also the author of the book, The Great CEO Within written with Alex Macaw. (0:00) Intro (1:48) Welcome Matt Mochary (9:52) Resonating with people of such diverse personality types (22:08) Fear leads to people making the wrong decision (24:36) Matt’s Process (30:30) 4 Zones of Genius (40:09) CEO Tactics (46:27) Philosophies (57:04) Offboarding (1:10:19) Having a hard conversation (1:14:16) Boards are the death of every great investor (1:22:20) Quick hitters Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the 51st episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. I am your host, Logan Bartlett, a partner at Redpoint Ventures. And what you're going to hear on this episode is a conversation that I had with Matt Moshi. Matt is a CEO coach, an advisor to a number of the most prominent people in Silicon Valley, including Sam Altman from OpenAI, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, Naval from AngelList, Vlad from Robinhood, as well as a number of investors, Peter Fenton from Benchmark, Alfred Lin and Pat Grady from Sequoia, Mamu and Hamid from Kleiner. He is one of those people that is behind who is who in Silicon Valley. And so definitely an interesting conversation. We go into how he actually got this job, what it's like

• 0:47Logan Bartlett?

  working with all those different people, how he actually operates with them on a day-to-day basis, as well as tactics and methods that he has around hiring, around firing, around building an executive team, among a bunch of different things. So a really fun conversation with Matt. I appreciate him coming on and trust everyone will enjoy that. Before we get to the episode itself, we don't do advertising on this podcast, as people hopefully know. And so my only request, rather than making you suffer through an Athletic Greens advertisement or a mattress advertisement, or whatever it is, is just a request to like, subscribe, share, follow, all of that stuff. If you're on YouTube, please do subscribe to the channel. We don't ask for much. We don't make you suffer through advertising at all. So please do go

• 1:32Logan Bartlett?

  and do that. It's the way that we kind of monitor that we should keep on keeping on and that we're making good progress in what we're doing here. So really appreciate everyone making the time to do that now. But what you're about to hear is that episode with Matt, and trust you'll enjoy it. All right. Well, Matt Moshi, thanks for joining me today. So for people that don't know, Matt is a full-time CEO coach and has coached a number of the most prominent, both investors and CEOs in Silicon Valley, including Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong, Vlad from Robinhood, Naval from AngelList, Avon from Notion, Peter Fenton, Alfred Lin, and Pat Grady, Parker Conrad, the list goes on and on. Matt is also the

• 2:17Logan Bartlett?

  Author of the book, The Great CEO Within, written with my friend Alex McCaw, formerly the CEO of Clearbit, and now he has his new business reflect up and running. But Matt, thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. It's fun to be here.

• 2:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. So, so maybe, uh, from the start, as I sort of went through prep of all this, that is a laundry list of people that are very prominent in Silicon Valley. How, how did you start coaching them? How did you get networked into this group? Maybe give us a little bit of a primer on how that actually came to be.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It was very accidental. So, um, I never intended to be a coach, never thought of myself as a coach. And then about 10 years ago, uh, Stanford CS undergrad named Chris Barber. I met him at a conference and he was couch surfing for the summer. And I thought, well, I've got a couch, why come couch surf on my couch for a week? So he did and got to know him, you know, someone who lives in your house and your living room for a week and become pretty good friends with him. And, uh, he said, Matt, you should come coach my roommates. I've got five roommates, each of whom have started a company, but they can't get into YC because they're still students at Stanford, uh, but they need coaching because they've never run a business before. And these are real operating businesses. So I thought, okay, I'll try it. Went to Stanford, went there like once a week in the evenings, coached these guys, YC style.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  And after about three months, they all just started crushing it and it was really fun. And then they started recommending me to alumni, friends of theirs who were older, who had already graduated and had bigger companies, started coaching them. And then one day, so one introduced me to Naval. And Naval sat down with me and at the end of the first session, he says, Matt, I know all the coaches in the world and you're the best. I thought, that's crazy. But all right, if that's true, then I should be able to coach whoever I want. So I made a list of the 20 people that I'd want to coach, you know, dream scenario. Like Zuckerberg was on that list. Elon Musk was on that list. And then I handed the list to Naval and I said, do you know anyone on this list? He says, yeah, I know Brian Armstrong from Coinbase. So Naval introduced me and I started coaching Brian.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  And after about three, four months, I showed the list to Brian. I said, Brian, do you know anyone on this list? He said, yeah, I know Sam Altman. So I, he introduced me to Sam and Sam's reaction was, I don't believe in coaches, but Brian Armstrong gives you such a huge recommendation, I'll take you one time. So we talked once and at the end of the call, he's like, you know what? That was pretty good. I'll talk to you one more time. So each call was like that. Each meeting was like that. And eventually I, you know, we created a lot of value together. And then I pulled out the list and showed it to Sam and said, Sam, do you know anyone on this list? He said, yeah, I know them all. I said, great. Can you please introduce me? And he did. He introduced me to all of them. Now, about half of them said, no, thanks. But the others half said, sure. And that's how it all started.

• 5:07Logan Bartlett?

  I have a long running theory that Sam Altman is the center of Silicon Valley. So clearly now you're one degree removed from that. But it's no surprise to me that he was able to loop you in with pretty much everyone there. So maybe just to back up.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  I agree with your conclusion, by the way.

• 5:20Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I think Sam is the most.

• 5:22Logan Bartlett?

  This has been like a long running joke, like, you know, like him and the Collisons, maybe. But it's been something I've thought for a long time, but now it's like kind of obvious with the OpenAI stuff and all that. And so I'll double back to some of that in a second. But so 2012, you're doing what? Like at the time, you had an interesting, you moved out, you're from New Jersey originally. So am I. Where, where in New Jersey are you?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Montclair.

• 5:47Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, Montclair. Okay, Summit. So, yeah, nearby.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Nearby.

• 5:51Logan Bartlett?

  I knew Kindred Spirits in the Garden State.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:55Logan Bartlett?

  So from New Jersey, how did you end up in Silicon Valley?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I had always wanted to be in the tech world. And obviously, if you want to be in the tech world, you migrate out to Silicon Valley. It started at an investment firm that was a hybrid private equity venture firm. And this was in Internet 1.0. And I pretty quickly realized that being an investor was the wrong side of the cap table. At that point, so I wanted to become a founder and I did and started a company that ended up being sort of the precursor to AWS. That was a good financial outcome. It was a terrible, like, running of a company. I did it, me and my co-founder, we did a terrible job running the company. We, we hired 280 people in the first 18 months, raised $130 million, spent most of it.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  I mean, it was just crazy. 280 people in 18, you know, from start to 18 months is just absolute madhouse. And it was, it was madness. Like, no one knew what they were doing ever. It was just complete chaos. And so, but again, good financial outcome, good enough that I didn't need to work again. And then I just went and surfed and after a while I went made movies and after a while I went and helped ex-cons get jobs, the living wage jobs. And so dabbled in all these things, but eventually came back to Silicon Valley to to raise a family. And while I was, when I came back to Silicon Valley, I realized I wanted to be part of the mix, but I didn't want to start a company again because that just produced more money and I didn't need more money.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  And it's also really hard work. I wanted to be involved sort of socially, frankly, in the tech world, but not have to do much work. And so I thought, hmm, when Chris Barber said about the coaching, I was like, whoa, this might be the answer.

• 7:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. And you wanted to be an investor, which is normally the role of people that don't want to be involved and do, actually do the work, right?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

• 7:46Logan Bartlett?

  So was the outcome of the, the business you sold successful enough that made you kind of financially independent?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:55Logan Bartlett?

  Got it. And so, so that was AWS and you know, Omsware and Blade Logic and all that stuff, kind of in that world-ish right back in the day for

• 8:04Speaker 01

  That's right. It was a company called Totality and we sold it, eventually sold it to Verizon. Now it's called Verizon Business.

• 8:09Logan Bartlett?

  Got it. And the operations, it sounds like probably some of the stuff you're coaching now, much in the same way with parents, you know, you either do exactly what your parents did or the exact opposite. It sounds like maybe some of the coaching lessons you've passed on to CEOs is more elements of not doing what you did from a ceiling.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and so what happened was one, when we were running it, there was no time to go read books or study. And so, but now, you know, 10 years after the fact, I sat down, thought, you know, is there, is there a way I could have done this better? So I just picked up one book. I picked up the Andy Grove book, The High Output Management and I opened it, read it and I was shocked. It's like, oh my God, here's the answer. This, this is exactly what we needed. And then I read Ben Horowitz's book, Hard Thing About Hard Things. I'm like, oh my God, yeah, I've been in all those situations and wow, here are the answers. And then I started reading more and more and more books and each book that I read had a fantastic answer. Of course, they were all 350 pages and each one of them could have been three.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  So what I did was I just started summarizing each of them into three pages. And then I had read like 10 of them and I was just eager to try these things out because they all sounded great. But I want to see what they would be in real life. But again, I didn't want to start another company. So when I was coaching these folks, I started using these techniques and they all worked. And that's how it evolved. And then I just, and frankly, the book, Great CEO Within, there's very little original content in that book, maybe zero. It's just basically little summaries of what other people have already written about. But you don't have to read, instead of having to read 3,000 pages, you get to read 100 and you get all the same content. That's really what it is. It's a, it's a collection of summaries.

• 9:52Logan Bartlett?

  I'm going to ask you to psychoanalyze a little bit and I spoke to a few people and so I have, I have at least their answer on this stuff. And you know, I, I think Naval maybe did part of the book. He did a, an insert or something in a recommendation. But what do you think, these are a bunch of different personalities, right? Like Sam Altman versus Naval versus Pat Grady, Alfred Lin, Max Affair, right? Like, these are all very different people that you work with, but in some way you've been able to resonate with, with all of them. What do you think it is at a personality level that, that you have that, that obviously you summarized all this stuff. But I assume you're not giving yourself enough credit in that regard.

• 10:36Logan Bartlett?

  What, what do you think's allowed you to resonate with people of such diverse personality types, big egos, all that stuff?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  A big thing was that for many years I did this for zero financial transaction. There was no investment, no equity grant, no cash. And the reason was I wanted to make sure that I was loving every moment and loving every person that I was with. And if there was no money being transferred in any way, then it would just be insanity for me to spend any time doing something that I didn't like or being with someone that I didn't like. So I quickly didn't. So everyone I'm with, I literally love and everything I do with them, I love. And that was a great filter for me. That really got, it, it cut the wheat from the chaff very quickly.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And I think that comes through. I mean, I'm very close friends with everybody that I coach or have coached. Um, and they come to Kauai and I go visit them and stay at their house. I mean, we're. We're friends. And so, and that's really why I did this because I love that connection. And they're also really interesting people, so really fun to be friends with. So that's one element that I think is probably different than most or any other coach.

• 11:50Logan Bartlett?

  And by the way, not charging, like, did you have to overcome obstacles with, with people that were like, I mean, it almost sounds too good to be true when you, when you say that, like, hey, there, I'm actually in this just for the relationships and the development and I get my own personal satisfaction of that. Like, uh, to some extent, we, we encourage our companies to make sure they monetize early in their journey because, uh, people won't value it to the same extent or not trust you if you're not charging something for it. Did you have any of that pushback from people?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely did. People were definitely skeptical. And, but then after a while, they realized, oh, no, I, I can see that he really means this. He's, he's really showing up. He's, he's on it. I think Zach Bray from Plaid said to me, Matt, I have this suspicion that you're just a, uh, investigative reporter and three years from now, you're going to come out with a tell-all book about Silicon Valley, but that was many years ago.

• 12:42Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I guess so. It will be very salacious.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:48Logan Bartlett?

  The OpenAI chapter, I'm very excited for, but so the tactics of it, uh, you're not charging anything. And two,

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't, I wasn't until the point where I knew absolutely this, I just love doing this. And then what happened was Brian Armstrong from Coinbase and Steve Huffman from Reddit, they, and all of them frankly, said, Matt, this is an incredible system. Basically, it's a management system. And so what I do is I become the person's manager. And after three meetings, if they are more successful, more engaged, more productive, then they realize that my system works and they can then just copy and paste and use it with their, their team. That's the whole process. And I guess it resonates with lots of people because they do become more engaged, but it's very simple. I, again, I'm, you think I'm being overly humble. I'm not.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  All I'm really doing is a good manager will say, what are your goals? What are you trying to do? Boom. What are your, you know, three priorities? Boom, boom, boom. Great. What's one next action you can take towards each of those? Great. Write it down. All right. Now, the next time we meet, I'm going to check, did you actually do that? And if you didn't, we're going to dig into why, what blocked you? And then we're going to figure out what you can do to make sure you don't get blocked that way again. Boom, done. I mean, that's like 80% of it right there. The second level is, okay, now you've run into some legitimate problems. Let's unpack those. But I think most coaches will just ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. But I've seen so many of the same problems and I've seen what people have done to solve them.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  So I've just written up answers for those. So I'm like, okay, it sounds like this is what's going on. Is that right? Person's like, yeah, that's what's going on. Great, read this. And they read it. It's a one-page summary and they go, that's it. That's the answer. So I guess I have quick,

• 14:42Speaker 01

  very clear instructions and solutions in evidence of where it's worked in other companies.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And then the last thing is, and this may be the magic pill. I just say at the end of each meeting, whether it's a one-on-one or a team meeting, I say, I can do better. But I'll only do better if you tell me what would make this better for you. And so they say, here's what will make it better. I go, great, thanks, I'll do that. And then I do. So asking for feedback and then actually changing what I do according to what they request. And that makes people feel really connected to me, like they actually have the, they're invited to share what they think and I actually adjust to it. I, I think that's, it's an easy thing to do. I don't think hardly anybody else does it. So that's it.

• 15:32Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting. Those are, those are a lot of the like tactics of it, maybe less so on the, like, that makes it sound very replicable. The one, I guess what I got.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  It is. No, Logan, it is replicable. I've got six coaches that work with me, frankly, that are, that are better than I am. And they've replicated it and improved upon it.

• 15:53Logan Bartlett?

  So maybe let's talk about that.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  You're gonna push back on that, but.

• 15:57Logan Bartlett?

  I'm just gonna tell you what Alex said. I'm curious as to what, uh, what makes you tick. But I am interested in the business as well. So, so let's go down the business path here for a second. So, so take us to what.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And then I forgot to talk about the pricing now. Because that so so Brian and Steve, they said, Matt, this system is amazing. I want to use it throughout the entire company. I want to use it throughout Coinbase, throughout Reddit. And they said, but it was all in Google Docs and and I don't want to. They both said, I don't want to have to go teach each person and have them teach. I want like a piece of software that just boom. Makes everyone follow the process. And for many years, I was like, I'm not an engineer. And you know, you guys have hundreds, if not thousands of engineers on staff. Why don't you guys build it? And they were like, no, no, we can't, you know, you know, core mission. And so finally, about two years ago, I said, okay, I'll hire someone. So I started hiring a development team and to go build the software. The software is now

• 16:53Speaker 01

  launched and companies are starting to use it. And and we're just doing the companies that we coach. That's it. Uh, for now, like the Slack model, we're trying to get the software in a small beta group until it can't get any better and then launch it to the world. But I had to pay money to these developers. So I didn't like, I didn't want, I didn't know, I didn't need to get money from coaching. But I didn't want to pay money in order to coach.

• 17:16Logan Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  And so I said to everyone, all right, you guys each have to pay your fair share. So now I do charge, but it all goes towards the development team. I don't take any.

• 17:25Logan Bartlett?

  So what is the business called today? And how much of the business is the the software versus the consulting services?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  So it's called Moshi Method. Um, and the percentage of revenue, I mean, it's all, I don't think anyone thinks they're paying for the software yet. Um, and so I think everyone would say they're paying for the coaching. Um, but hopefully soon that will change.

• 17:47Logan Bartlett?

  Got it. And so the the software can be implemented and then scaled. And it's the vision that, hey, Sam Altman or Brian Armstrong wants to deploy this within their company. And so they'll know the methodology and the inputs to it, but they can impart this lesson and make it more scalable within their their business so that other managers can actually implement it themselves.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  That's it. Exactly. It's a replacement for Workday.

• 18:10Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  It's just a better version of that.

• 18:12Logan Bartlett?

  So how many people are on staff for the business now? I think I saw somewhere you guys are, I think you published, you're doing three million plus. I don't know what date that was and and revenue with good gross profit and all that. But how many people are working on the company full time?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  With this company, there's also, I'd like to create the example of what can be done. And so I think there's a lot of knee jerk reactions of, we need lots of people. We need. To raise money from outside sources. We need to pay huge salaries.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  These things I think are all myths that have become accepted. But I don't think that they're true. So I'm trying to build a company, but also counter those. So I don't think you need many people. I don't think you need to raise outside capital. I don't think you need to pay exaggerated compensation. So we don't, we don't do any of those three things. It's 20 people right now. Again, six number coaches, most of them are developers. There's three, I think. Operations folks inside. I don't think we'll ever get bigger than that. We are profitable. We have been from day one. And but profitable also, I think, is important because it shows that your customer actually,

• 19:28Speaker 01

  as you said before, values the solution to their, the problem that you're providing. And how can, so why wouldn't you charge to be profitable from, from minute one?

• 19:39Logan Bartlett?

  What you're saying is very bad for my business, venture capital. So I, I, you succeed, but I hope it doesn't manifest itself in a bunch of different directions. I hope it stays very narrowly defined.

• 19:50Logan Bartlett?

  What Alex McCaw said was, he said, it's your logical thinking combined with being an empath. And it sounds like a lot of the, the methodology and tactics and all that are rolled up into how to actually implement it. But I guess on a personal side, that was what he said for a characteristic of how you actually go about and resonate with people.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Fair enough. I mean, the underlying philosophy behind all the coaching is that outside of the structure of how to run meetings, how to create accountability, there is how to make decisions. And almost all, almost always, when we feel fear or feel anger, our brain activity goes into our amygdala and our thoughts become very simplistic. They become either fight or flight. Either I'm going to kill this thing or I'm going to, I basically sense a threat. I'm either going to attack or I'm going to run away. Those are pretty.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Uncreative thoughts, but when we're in that moment, that's really what we think is the best answer. And so the key is to recognize that fear and anger give bad advice and not act in those moments, or outsource our thinking to someone else who isn't in fear and anger. And if I can show someone that this is the case, then they're sold. And so what I'll do is, when I come across a situation where I sense they feel fear, I make a bet with them. And I say, okay, you, let's predict, you think if you do this action, then this outcome A will occur. And they say, yes. I go, great. I disagree with you. I think if you do this action, then outcome B will occur, which is vastly different. And they say, okay. And I say, I'll make a bet

• 21:29Speaker 01

  with you. Let's have you do this action and let's see what actually happens. If you win, you get to, you know, you're in control from now on. If I win, from now on, when you're in fear, you got to do what I say. And I've made this bet hundreds of times, and I've never lost, not because I'm a genius, but because they're in fear and I'm not. A five-year-old could do it. A 95-year-old could do it. And so, but once they see one time, oh my God, my prediction, or their prediction, actually came out wrong, then they are sold that fear actually does give bad advice.

• 22:08Logan Bartlett?

  Does fear, uh, because it sounds like fear is one of the, the commonalities across all CEOs and figuring out how to manage that, maybe not all, but at least the vast majority and figuring out how to manage that is a big input into what you're able to help people with. Does fear, like you've won this bet every time. Does fear always lend itself to making the wrong decision in the vast majority of the time? Or are you picking the situation that you know fear is leading them to make the wrong decision?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  No, fear is is almost always leading people to make the wrong decision. And it's it's not that fear is completely irrational. There is something going on here, which is, hey, red flag warning. There's something new here, something unknown, something potentially a little dicey, a little spicy. Okay, pay attention, that's valid. But then the amygdala goes far further. And it starts making predictions that if you tell this person that they're not performing, then they will be outraged and rage quit. And you can't afford to lose this person because there's no one else can do this job. And and then you'll be screwed. And so they're so what they do is they don't give feedback.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  They don't tell the person, hey, this isn't working for me. And they just hold back. And then, of course, the person continues to do. And you can see that that's insanity. The only way that the person can improve is if you let them know, hey, what you're doing over here needs to change. Now, of course, there's a way to share that with them in a positive manner. Hey, I want you to succeed. I want the company to succeed. In order to do that, you need to do X, Y, and Z. That's positive. Instead of, ah, you're an idiot. Like, of course, no, they'll react badly if you say that. But most people just won't say anything at all. Or this person's not performing, letting them go. That's the big issue.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  The big issue that almost everybody has is the difficult conversation around someone's performance and either telling them that they need to change or actually letting them go. And usually it's some key member for some reason. And but once they do it once, and they let that person go, and then afterwards, everything's fine, then they're like, oh, my God. Now, they can see all the places where they're holding back from doing the thing that they know is the right thing to do. But they're afraid of the implementation. The decision is easy. It's the implementation that's hard.

• 24:36Logan Bartlett?

  When you're starting with a client and getting up and going, maybe I don't want to talk about the specific examples, but you referenced the Sam one of getting him, Sam Altman, to keep going and the incremental meetings and all that. Now, I'm sure you're busy with the slate of people that you're already working with, but what's the actual process at a coaching level to get up and going with you today? How many meetings is it? Like, do I give you access to my calendar or not? Like, how does that actually work?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yes, three meetings. So first, we meet one time for like 50 minutes and see if we can actually solve your biggest issue right then and there in that first 50 minute meeting. If we can, then you know that this is going to work.

• 25:21Logan Bartlett?

  And am I coming to you for the most part with something specific that's on my mind? Or are you pulling that out of me? How does that work?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm going to ask you. I mean, usually what happens is we're, our sweet spot is you've got, you're either a remote company or you're in person and more than 20 people because that's when you start to have people problems. In fact, I really like it better when you're like 40 or 50 people. So you're in a lot of pain and you're hiring great people, but they're just not performing and you don't know why. That's a sweet spot. And you know, from there on up, 100, 150, 200, 2,000, 5,000, whatever, as it goes further and further up. The reason is, is because with this, so we'll meet first. Well, you'll see that this, we can help you get to a solution that you couldn't

• 26:10Speaker 01

  get to otherwise. And then we'll have three meetings, but each time it's, the ROI has to be positive. If it isn't, we'd stop. And meeting one, we're going to go through this structure that I said before, your goals, what actions are you going to take, what problems have you encountered? And then, and we're going to come up with solutions for each, and we're going to create an action list. We're going to take, we will not stop until you have concrete actions for every goal and every issue that you brought up. That's it. Then we'll meet a second time, probably two weeks later. And at that time, either you've done all the actions or you haven't. If you've done all the actions, I'll say, did it work? And almost always I'll say, yes, that was amazing.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Let's do it again. Great. Sometimes, person didn't do all the actions. This is key.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  At that point, as we shared before, we dig into why not, there's some mental block, and we fix those mental blocks. Then we get to meeting three. And one of two things happens. Either you've done all the actions and the results have been mind blowing and you're like, this is amazing. I'm totally hooked. I love this. I love this process. Like, great, now you're done. You don't need me anymore. Now you can copy this and go do this with your company. Now, of course, that rarely happens. People are like, no, man, I'd love this. Let's keep meeting. And, you know, we mostly just to hold them accountable to run through the process, to create that, that protected space for them not to be assaulted by other requests from the outside world.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Uh, but really, it's not actually needed. Like, once after the third meeting, they got it. Uh, now, sometimes I then, they then say, can you please show me how to do this in my company? With my team, with my exec team? Sure. So I'll do three meetings with the exec team. And again, after the third meeting, either the company's performing better or it's not. And if it is, then they know, they just keep following that same structure. And there's some nuances that are different about teams than individual meetings. Um, that's it. That's the whole process.

• 28:12Logan Bartlett?

  Are you finding that CEOs or whoever you're coaching, they, they innately know the answer? And, uh, you're serving as a reflection of, uh, helping them think through to get to the answer? Or are you giving them recommendations based on what you've seen otherwise? Cause to get to the end of a meeting and have a direct action path to getting something done to unlock your biggest problem. Uh, it feels, it feels like that would be a big challenge. If someone's really been ruminating on this for a long time, that you would be able to unpack that in a 50 minute session and ultimately have them give the, the, get to the right answer over that period of time? How does that actually work?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  We can do it right here, right now, if you want to see it. Right now, but it does work. It works in that, yes, we unpack. I cause you to unpack a lot, simply by you'll tell me what the problem is. I'll reflect it back to you. I think I heard you say, you'll say, yeah, that's it. And I'll say, okay, there's more. Now your brain is freed up to think about the next layer because you've already clarified the first layer. And and my reflecting it back proves to you that you've clarified it. Now your brain starts to think, oh, yeah, there is more. And then you go further. Then I reflect that back and I say, there's more. Then you go further. It's almost like you're allowing your mind to go to the next level because the first level has been confirmed.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  It's almost like you wrote it down in a journal. And now you don't need to to keep thinking about that because it's stored. You can go to the next depth. And eventually you'll come to, oh, my God, now I see it. Or you don't. And if you don't come to the, oh, my God, now I see it. I actually do have answers from other people who've been in the same situation. And then I share them with you. So either way, we're getting to an answer. And of course, I'm not going to impose it on you. I'm going to say, hey, will you read this? Does this resonate? People read it and go, yeah, or no, that doesn't really feel like me. But almost always it's, wow, that makes so much sense. I never thought about that before, but

• 30:23Speaker 01

  it's so applicable here and it sounds like it's going to work. I'm going to try it. So yes,

• 30:29Speaker 01

  we are getting answers.

• 30:30Logan Bartlett?

  The most successful, you've seen so many of these successful CEOs and particularly vulnerable times, right? Uh, I would imagine last year has been difficult for a lot of the people that you've worked with. As you reflect on the shared traits that great founders have, are there any commonalities or things that are consistent across the basket of CEOs that you work with, or is it fairly market dependent of, hey, you know, Elon Musk couldn't run Airbnb and Brian Chesky couldn't run Tesla or whatever it is?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  No, it's not market dependent at all. It's, um,

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Almost everyone I coach is a great product visionary. They really understand their customers' problem well. And they are passionate about solving it for the customer, which also means most of them are not passionate about operating a 5,000 person company. And oftentimes, or even a 500 person company, or even a 50 person company. So, but they find themselves in the role of having to operate. So that's actually one thing we get through pretty quickly. If they're not passionate about something, they're actually not going to be good at it. And so we quickly see if it makes sense for them to find someone who is passionate about that role.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Have them operate the company so that the founder as CEO can go back to being the product visionary. Because there's always more product to build because your competitors are doing it. And so that's what Zuckerberg did at Facebook with Sheryl Sandberg. That's what Brian did at Coinbase with Emily Joy. So Brian can now go back to being the product visionary, which he loves and is much better for the company. Because pretty much only he can really do that.

• 32:21Logan Bartlett?

  And it's still cases, by the way, that CEOs decide to opt out, right? And I think Naval has talked publicly about deciding, hey, maybe this isn't something I, I want to do long term. This actually doesn't bring me joy as well, right?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

• 32:35Logan Bartlett?

  Maybe, maybe touch on the zone of genius and how that relates to this and sort of finding as a methodology that you talk about.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Well, that's it. The thing is the zone of genius, there's four zones. There's a zone of incompetence, which things that you're not good at, you should outsource to someone else, like fixing your car. You probably don't know how to do that, should have a mechanic do that. There's a zone of competence, things you could do, but you don't love them and someone else can do them just as well as you can, like cleaning your bathroom. Zone of excellence, now this is a dangerous one. This is where you're really good at it. You don't like it, but you're really good at it and people value it a lot and they're willing to pay you a lot of money for it. And they also really want you to keep doing it because they're dependent on you to get it done. That's the dangerous one. You're getting lots of praise and lots of accolades and lots of compensation to do it, but you actually don't like it.

• 33:25Logan Bartlett?

  Probably a lot of lawyers and bankers exist in that bucket, right?

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And there's a lot of actions that CEOs are taking that are in that zone because they think that it's their responsibility to do these things, when in reality, it's the responsibility of CEO to make sure these things get done, not that the CEO has to do them herself. And then the fourth zone is your zone of genius. This is the things that you do that you are uniquely good at in the world and you love them so much, you don't even notice that you're doing them. You may not even be aware of what these things are because time and space just disappears. You don't even value it. So those things you actually have to ask other people, what do I do that you, you think adds unique value, but you, but, and I seem to be loving it.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And they'll list all kinds of things for you and you'll be amazed, like, really? Like when I sit and have long chats with, with you and with others, like that's adding value, like I'm just doing that for fun. That's the kind of, that's zone of genius. And if you then start to only do the things that are in your zone of genius, and so you spend more and more time on those and take all the things that are in your zone of excellence and start giving those to other people, or you say, listen, the Monday meeting, I've gotta be in the Monday meeting on the seat, like I can't not be in it. Okay, well then what would make that super fun for you? Well, it'd be super fun and really valuable for me if everybody came with pre-written updates that we read ahead of the meeting and commented on.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  So in the meeting itself, all we had to do was like the last five minutes of any issue. Great, make that happen. Person does, all of a sudden the Monday meeting becomes fun. Uh, or it'd be really great if everyone, you know, said one minute on the fun things they were doing at home, so we could feel like we're buddies. Great, make that happen. And all of a sudden the meeting becomes fun. So that's the zone of genius idea, that you either do the things, you eliminate all the things that are de-energizing, because the fact is, is that you're not good at them if you're doing them, or the meeting itself is not fun for anybody, if it's not fun for you. And if it's not fun, it's not productive.

• 35:37Logan Bartlett?

  When you're working, as you're getting up and running with a, with a founder or an investor, a client, I guess, you, one of the important components is getting feedback and the ability to take feedback or listen to feedback. And I've heard you talk about the tyranny of the feedback giver. Can you talk a little bit about like, actually, I think you said, Brian is Armstrong from Coinbase is actually fantastic at taking feedback and receiving it. But how do you go about like, when people have a bunch of direct reports and at the end of the day, if the company's doing well, the CEO or the investor effectively has no boss, right? That they have a board and sure, they could theoretically be fired, but if

• 36:21Logan Bartlett?

  the business is going well, that person probably isn't used to getting tons of negative feedback about what they're doing from especially direct reports. How do you go about soliciting that and making a comfortable environment for direct reports to share things they like or don't like about individuals?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. I mean, the, the CEO can ask for this feedback in every one-on-one and might even get some, but is very rarely going to get the real hard feedback because the person who's the direct report has, makes a calculation in their mind. They say, if I give this feedback, which is really brutal, and my CEO reacts, well, okay, she'll improve a little bit. But if she reacts badly, she'll fire me and make sure I never work again in Silicon Valley. And that's like a minus 100.

• 37:12Logan Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  So the person says-

• 37:13Logan Bartlett?

  Downside. It's a-

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:16Logan Bartlett?

  Venture capital. The ball can go very, very far negative.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. So they just say, I'm not going to do it. It's not worth it. So it's up to the CEO to create that safe environment and to- Pull it out any way they can at first and then really and then appreciate it dramatically. But I do something even further. Once I get someone to pull, I say, listen, tell me anything. Because until I hear, if I, as long as I hear you haven't said anything, then there's one of two possibilities. Either you think I'm God and I'm perfect, which I know isn't the case, or you're withholding. And if you're withholding, I can't really fully trust you. So please share something with me. So they do, they share something, but I know whatever they're sharing is like very much the surface.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  So what I do is I say, hey, what I think I'm hearing you say is, I repeat it back, but I make it so much bigger. I make it like, I hear you feeling anger and frustration. And, and you see me doing this crap and this other terrible thing and this other terrible thing. And you wish I would just stop. Is that close? And they say, maybe that's a little more than I would have said, but really it's exactly what they were thinking. And they said, but yeah, that's kind of the direction. And that's, and then from that moment, but they see that I say this, but I'm not getting angry. I'm not getting vindictive. I'm just like, I say it and I'm like, yeah, great. Makes sense to me.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  And um, I accept that feedback and I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna do it differently from now on. They're like amazed, like I actually was able to process. And I include swear words and just make it so brutal. And they're like, now they realize they can actually say it the way they would say it. And I can accept it, no problem. That's how I create a safe space.

• 39:08Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  So when I work with CEOs, we usually take the exec team, we do a feedback session where I, I go first. I repeat back what I heard the person say first and I make it big before the CEO does it. We have like a little competition, who can make the person feel more heard? And uh, And unless, and almost always, if I go big and the CEO doesn't, the person says, yeah, Matt, Matt did it better. And then the CEO learns, the CEO has to go big as well.

• 39:33Logan Bartlett?

  It's one of the things that if you put the puck on the ice or say something factually, then people are forced to either correct it or agree with you, right? If I ask, hey, Matt, how are you feeling about this conversation? You're given a blank slate, the pain in every direction. But if I say, hey, Matt, this is, this has got to be one of the worst interviews you've ever been a part of, then you're forced to react to that. And you're like, no, actually, this is a great interview, right? And immediately, you're in defensive mode about, or you're, you're in agreement with someone. And so, yeah, throwing it out there, just seeing how people react is actually effective way of getting to the truth, it sounds like.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:09Logan Bartlett?

  Now, on the CEO side, is there one thing that, anyone that listens to this, we have a lot of CEOs and executives that listen, is there one thing from a tactic standpoint or philosophy standpoint, other than, you know, implementing the, the Mosheri method and, and going to look at all your Google Docs and buying your book and all, all of those things. But anything on a specific tactical level that you would have CEOs across the board or executives across the board implement?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every, every report does better theoretically because they have a manager. And the reason is, is because that manager is really an accountability partner, the thought partner. They're saying, what are your priorities? What are you going to do? And then later checks, did you actually do them? And the CEO is the only person that doesn't have a manager. And therefore, they usually don't perform as well as if they did. So I would say to every CEO, go get yourself a manager. Now, it could be someone who works in the company, but they've really got to hold you accountable. It could be a board member, but then it got, really got to sit down with you, you know, every two weeks and, and meet with you. And you have to be willing

• 41:17Speaker 01

  to tell them everything, like all the worst things, which most CEOs do not want to tell their board members, because they want their board members to invest in the next round, because otherwise, it's a really bad signal if existing investors don't participate in the next round. So they don't feel Safe sharing the worst of the worst. So then you got to find someone else and that's the role that a coach plays. It's person who is is not deriving a paycheck from the CEO. So they're not afraid to really hold the CEO accountable and they're not an investor in the in the company. So it doesn't matter if they won't invest in the next round because no one's thinking about them as an investor anyway. So that's what I think the value of

• 42:02Speaker 01

  a coach is. And as you can see, it doesn't require, it really just requires someone who has a system will show you that system and not let you get away with taking the easy path or not doing the difficult things that you have already stated you need to do. That's it. That's my advice.

• 42:25Logan Bartlett?

  Interesting. So what about what about on the investor side? Like you coach a number of world-class investors. What are some of the differences between coaching a CEO versus coaching a managing partner at a venture firm?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  The only difference is, is that in an investment firm, there's a desire to not have a CEO. There's a desire, at least in the venture and private equity world, in the hedge fund world, no problem. CEO, no problem. But in the where they're partners, there's a desire to have shared decision-making. That's it. That's the only difference.

• 43:04Logan Bartlett?

  Philosophically, do you think that's just rooted in the concept of a partnership and kind of the outgrowth of this cottage industry? And sure, there's examples of the senior steward that Sequoia has and Robert Smith and Orlando Bravo that started their firm with Vista and and Toma respectively. And I'm sure Jeff Horing and Devin at Insight or whatever, we can come up with a list of people that kind of run their firms. But is that what it's

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Which makes it easier, by the way.

• 43:30Logan Bartlett?

  100%. Yeah, it's much easier when there's direct accountability. Honestly, that's really the only format outside of Sequoia that I can think of where there's, there's a single decision maker who is not a founder. I guess General Catalyst has that a little bit with Amant now, but it's unusual, right? It's not a normal thing within venture or even private equity to have a non-founder singular leader.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's very unusual. And those who move towards it. Operate, I think, more effectively. Sequoia was very conscious about this, but here's another thing is that Sequoia also has partners that are coming in who are big people who have run big entities or have big, you know, careers. And so therefore, the effort is to try to make them not feel like an employee. And it's a difficult dance to, to, to manage.

• 44:28Logan Bartlett?

  Are we a little too precious about that in the venture industry? And we should, I mean, hedge funds have made their bed with this. Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:35Logan Bartlett?

  What do you think? Is it just rooted in the, the historical nature of this being a cottage industry and just wanting people to feel like they're all included in this and it's group decisioning?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 44:46Logan Bartlett?

  Does that manifest itself in weird ways? Like when you're coaching someone? Cause a benchmark famously is 100% a partnership, right?

• 44:56Speaker 01

  100%. Six equal partners.

• 44:58Logan Bartlett?

  And, you know, we've had Peter on the show. I have a big fan of his, but ultimately, the ability to enact direct action involves much more consensus building than it does singular decisioning. So does that, is that the biggest like difference in working with some of those people? Is that they need to then go talk to a bunch of other people to get to the consensus answer?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yes. And Benchmark recognizes this problem and therefore puts real time and effort towards solving it. There is a partner dinner that occurs once a week that lasts three hours. Wow, that's a, and that's not like, it's not a business meeting. It's like a social hangout, let's be friends gathering. And because that trust and like is required to make decisions as a group effectively. Beyond, there's the tactics of let's make an actual decision here. And so if you're going to go with that format, you also need to make the commensurate investment and Benchmark does.

• 46:00Logan Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  I don't know any other firm that does that.

• 46:03Logan Bartlett?

  I can't think of any off the top of my head either. I mean, it's one of those things that doesn't scale. Right. Like the CEO model and the founder model actually scales very well. It's a good way of managing large amounts of money and having decisioning that that runs through, you know, at least you know where the answer is going to come from. The

• 46:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:21Logan Bartlett?

  The partnership model really doesn't scale to the same extent. You know, it's probably makes it harder. Now, can we go through some of the philosophies and stuff that you've you've talked about and and just where they came from? And why you think this is important and a handful of the things that that I've picked up?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:38Logan Bartlett?

  I'm going to push back on some of them. So Chief of Staff, I've heard you say that that's one of the conditional things to to working with you now is having a Chief of Staff. I have found oftentimes Chief of Staff to be something of a crutch for CEOs that that don't want to empower the the executives on their team to make decisions. And ultimately, it's something of a Band-Aid that hides either a CEO's own weakness in a certain area and also a need to augment executive and management capabilities to do specific tactical things. Now, I know you don't agree with that in totality because

• 47:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, I I don't not agree with that.

• 47:24Logan Bartlett?

  You've said, though, I would be interested because it seems like the Chief of Staff in some ways is a means to an end as well in terms of how you think about it, rather than in a functional role that exists at a moment in time. So how do you think about like what success for a Chief of Staff is, what the purpose of it is, why it's so important that you won't take on clients without it?

• 47:45Speaker 01

  So it was very selfish about not taking on clients because what I found was I was having meeting one, two, three with the CEO. By meeting three, they're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. My life is so much better. This is great. And I said, okay, great. Now you can implement it with your team and you can implement it in your team meetings. And they're like, uh, wait a second, I'm not a process person. I'm a product visionary. Like I

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Would hate implementing this. I want it implemented, but I'd hate doing it myself. Can you now, please, let's get this person over here. Can you please do three meetings with them and show them how to do it? And then they can implement it. I was like, no, I, I don't want to do that. And so that's when I shifted to, we need that other person in the room from meeting one. And then they would be like, well, wait a second, but we're like opening up all kinds of secrets and like, I'm not sure I want my, you know, VP of operations and know everything. And so like, okay, we'll bring someone else in that you will bring in the, in the circle of trust. And that's where the chief of staff was born. And so a very process oriented person, like a McKinsey consultant type, that's just a type, doesn't have to be that.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  And yes, it was a Band-Aid. Yes, it was a crutch because also many of the CEOs I coached were, again, they're in this moment where they've gone from product market fit where, you know, but before that they had just a few people on the team. They didn't really need a, a management system. Everyone knew what was going on because there's so few people to all of a sudden now they got product market fit. Now they're scaling, they're hiring more and more and more people. And now they're like having to answer everybody's questions and like, and, and, and all of a sudden the CEO's time doesn't scale. And there, they haven't empowered anybody. They haven't given enough context for people to make good decisions on their own. So the CEO has to make more and more and more and more and more decisions. And now they're working a hundred hours a week.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  And now in our coaching, the things we come up with, they literally don't have time to do them, even though they're the most important actions. So I have to free up time in some way. And the easiest way is just to have someone sitting there. 12 hours a day, sitting with the CEO, watching them, watching them, watching them. And saying, hey, wait a second, that thing right there, you going to like the store to get groceries? I can do that for you. That thing right there, you like drafting an email, I can do that for you. You know, you hit the send button, but I'll draft it for you. That thing, so I can just start taking activities off of the CEO's list, especially once they start to see how the CEO does those activities themselves.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Like they watch the CEO do it once, do it twice, do it three times. They say, yep, I see it. I got it. I'll do it the fourth time. So they just start taking tasks off and starts to free the CEO up. And now we can start implementing some of the things that we're doing in the coaching session. And now we can start creating context for the team. And now we can start allowing the team to make these decisions because they have the context. And now things start to free up. So yes, it's a Band-Aid. It's a Band-Aid to, to take a chunk of tasks off the CEO's plate in the very beginning. But you're right, there are a lot of dangers to it. And probably the principal danger is the name, chief. We gotta change that. I should, I should go change my write-up on it right now. We should call it something other than chief.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Because there are chief of staffs who start to think of themselves as a C-level exec. And they are not, they are an assistant to the CEO. Period. End of story. And they need to recognize that they are an assistant. They, they should not be communicating on behalf of the CEO. They can write drafts of communications, but the CEO must be sending them directly. Because otherwise, they become a gatekeeper. And everybody's offended by a gatekeeper. Just, that's universal. So I agree, there are problems, and there are more problems on that. But that's a, that's a big one. But yes, it was a Band-Aid.

• 51:41Logan Bartlett?

  I've heard Sam Altman rail against it, but also I think he's had, he's had it as well. So it's a, it's interesting. I mean, it popped up all over, all over the valley. But another interesting thing that I've heard you say, which is, I hadn't heard before, is the success rate of that person then moving into other roles within the company because of the mind meld. And I guess at a personal level, my fiance was a chief of staff. And now she's had a bunch of different executive roles within her business. And it's been an interesting sort of. Thing that I witnessed, you know, as during the pandemic, we're sort of living together and on top of each other from a work standpoint.

• 52:19Logan Bartlett?

  And so it's been interesting to witness that level of of trust and also like understanding of how the CEO operates and then pursuing other roles. So it sounds like this is something you've seen a lot before.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's exactly what happened. We started, I started seeing each chief of staff that came on. We had like 40 of them, you know, and then they were all doing great. And then one day, I think it was Ryan at Flexport, I asked him like, Ryan, how many of your executive hires have worked out? He thought about it and he said, 50%. I went, whoa. And then I asked a few more at a pretty similar rate for most people. I said, Ryan, what's the commonality of the ones that have worked out well? He said, hmm, you know what? I've never thought about it before, but now I think about it, it's the ones that I liked. The ones that I considered that I wanted to be friends with. I said, Ryan, that makes sense.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  You spent, because you liked them, you spent more time with them, because you spent more time with them, they got more information. They got more context, they understood what your priorities were, and then they started to follow those priorities. So of course they were performing as you wanted them to. And then I realized, well, wait a second. We've got 40 chief of staffs, basically 100% success rate at the time. Now there's one or two that didn't work out, but because now it's like, now the pool is like 100. But still, two out of 100 is like a 98% success rate. And but executives is a 50% success rate. And the chief of staffs were like anywhere between 25 and 35 years old.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  And these executives are anywhere between 35 and 50 years old with tons of incredible experience. And yet the chief of staffs are 100% success rate and then moving into these roles of running marketing, running people and succeeding there. And so whoa, what's going on here? This is crazy that these inexperienced, these less experienced people are having so much greater success than the more experienced. And the one thought I had was is that, well, wait a second. The less experienced, these chief of staffs have been shadowing the CEO for one, two, three months, creating this mind meld, really creating trust. And the executives have not. So then I said to one person, I think it was, I can't remember who the first one was. I said, would you be willing to experiment?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  The CEO, because I can't do this myself. I've got to get people to experiment with these things. And I said to CEO, would you please be willing to, the next executive you hire? Don't ask them to do any work for 60 days. Instead, have them come on board. Shadow. 50% of the time, the person they're replacing. And 50% of the time, shadow you as CEO. So you get to, they get to see how you operate and you build trust with them. And they get to see how the function operates that they're taking over. And I forget who it was, but they were game and they tried it. And it worked. And so then we got another CEO to do it and another CEO and another CEO.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  And now that's what we do. And the success rate for executives that do that 60 days of shadowing before they start.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Is also near 100%.

• 55:29Logan Bartlett?

  What are the other things that people spend so much time on is the recruiting process, but the onboarding process isn't invested in to the same extent, right? So as, as people are now thinking about onboarding, is this something that you encourage? Like this shadow and mind meld and all of that for executives? Does this sort of become standard practice?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yes, that's exactly what it is because either you're doing that or you're going to spend, I mean, Todd McKinnon at Okta, he spends one hour per day for the first 30 days with each new report because he realizes how important it is to how expensive that hire is. And therefore how important it is for them to onboard well. Well, that's one way. Or sit there and have them shadow you for those 30 or 60 days. That's a much less expensive way. And frankly, I think gives them way more information. But either way. You gotta do one or the other. Because if you think they're going to onboard and day one, start making good decisions about their department.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  When they have no idea about your customer and the problems that that customer has, they have no idea about your solution. They have no idea how, what your internal behavioral, cultural norms are, none of that. They have no idea how good the people are who are on their team. Who to trust, who not to trust, who to let go. They have no idea. And you're asking them to make decisions day one? Guaranteed, those decisions are going to be shots in the dark. And so, yeah, this is standard onboarding for the people I coach now.

• 57:04Logan Bartlett?

  Now, the opposite of onboarding is offboarding, right? And letting people go, layoffs, firing, all that has been in the news lately. I, I, I know you have opinions about how best to handle that. But one of the things that I, that I also heard you say is that ultimately 100% of the people that get let go, nearly 100%, end up, no one regrets it at the time that they're actually letting them go. Right? And so that means-

• 57:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not at the time, it's later.

• 57:37Logan Bartlett?

  Later, sorry.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 57:38Logan Bartlett?

  At the time they agonize over it, but just so statistically for that to be the case, that means that you're waiting far too long, right? It just has to be that, and that you almost need some false, uh, you need some, uh, some examples of misfiring someone for you to actually be doing it preemptively enough and being, acting as decisively as, as you can. So can, can you maybe unpack that a little bit in terms of how you've thought about that? And then also empathetic ways of letting people go, like how to actually handle that?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, this is sort of the brutal reality is that I've asked that question now of quite a few people, have you ever regretted letting someone go? And I've never had any other answer, but no. And as I think about it myself, have I ever regretted? And I think, no, oh no, what does that mean? That means I'm letting go of people who are performing at this level, but really the level

• 58:38Speaker 01

  to let go at is all the way up here. And I remember, I'm, I'm in the coach, I, I have to be on the cutting edge of experimenting with new techniques to see whether or not they work so I can share them with the people that I coach. If I'm not experimenting, I'm not innovating, what good am I? And so I thought, oh no, I've got to let someone go on my team, but- We've already done talent density a long time ago. We've already, you know, I believe very much and you only keep outperformers. So on our team, let's say we use a scale of one to five or three is meeting expectation. We only have fours and fives. That's it. We let threes go a long time ago.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  So now I've got to look at my team and I've got to let go of an outperformer. And so I looked around and there was one guy, I mean, just an amazing guy, could do anything. Super positive attitude, so much fun to be around. And I thought, but there's this other person over here and she could probably do what she's doing, plus what he's doing. And I asked her and she said, yep, I can. And so I let him go and of course, I'll share the empathetic way, but I let him go. And, and after about 30 days, it's like, oh, I miss him so much. But after 90 days, her eyes, no, that was actually the right thing to do.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Because it turns out that not only is a company way better off with just better performers, just the outperformers, it's also way better off with fewer people. Because each additional person, they just require time and overhead. Time to get informed about the issue, time to be heard about their opinions, time to share the problems that they're experiencing and feel cared about. Just time. And the fewer people you have, the fewer, the less consensus you need, the less, it just goes quicker. If someone says, I'm responsible for this whole thing, they'll get it done.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  But if like, I'm responsible for this piece and this other person's responsible for that, and I've got to wait on them, it'll just go slower. And so that's the big aha, is that it's not letting go of people aren't performing. It's letting go of people who are performing and your company will do better. Now, there's a way to do it. Humanely and there's a way to do it inhumanely.

• 1:01:04Logan Bartlett?

  I want to hear the tactics of it, but just to interject, how do you actually operationalize that? Like, or do you believe the Jack Welch GE thing of like, you gotta let go of the bottom 10% every, every year to make sure you're keeping the quality bar high? Or if I'm a CEO listening to this right now and saying, okay, I think I can internalize what that, that means conceptually, how do you actually actionableize it to, to go do it tomorrow?

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's obviously two ways. One is layoff and the other is performance management. The challenge with forced performance management is that you actually then create internal competition where people are trying to throw each other under the bus. So that was in for the Jack Welch's methodology was actually very successful. The company performs, performed for many years incredibly well, but it was a very unpleasant place to work because people were trying to make each other look bad. The better way, of course, is not to have an actual target percentage, just to be for each and every manager to be held accountable

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  to if this person isn't a keeper in the keeper test in Netflix, you let them go. And I almost think that that is, I don't think that any manager can be a good manager until they've proven they have the ability to let someone go. Because before they've done it once, there's just so much fear. And once they've done it once and they're like, oh yeah, now I see, it's actually fine. But the key is, again, to do it humanely. Because we almost all know what the right decision is, but the implementation is going to hurt somebody and we don't want to hurt anybody. So great, let's figure out who's going to get hurt.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Let's figure out what it is that that person really wants and let's help that person get that thing. So if you're going to let someone go, the person you're letting go gets hurt, they just lost their job, they just lost their, their, their social community, they just lost their confidence and self-esteem. What they want is they want a job that they love in a community of people that they really enjoy, and they want their confidence back. Great, let's help them get that. Now, you can say, hey, you know, I'll give you references and I'm happy to write your reference. Like, no, that's not helpful. The person is crushed. They are, they're, they go into depression. They maybe can't even get out of bed in the morning. So you're gonna ask that person, I'm gonna go look for a job and try to advocate for themselves.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  They'll be terrible and they feel humiliated and they just, they don't even know what they want. So instead, what you do is you say, I'm going to become your agent. I'm going to become your external recruiter. I'm going to interview you. I'm going to find out what it is that you're passionate about. And I already know what you can and can't do, so we'll find a role that you both are passionate about and will do really well at. And then I'm going to go advocate for you. I'm basically going to find a job for you because if I, as CEO, say, hey, this person's great at this, you should hire him, that's way more powerful than then coming to you and applying to that same job directly. So that's it. You become their agent.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  And what I also do is, there is a therapy component that's required. I just have a therapist immediately for the person who's let go. It's inexpensive and incredibly effective. Or I let them hire, but I reimburse. And I do that for three months.

• 1:04:42Logan Bartlett?

  Do you put that on for each manager themselves? Because ultimately, that's not the most scalable thing in the world.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  No, each manager, each manager does it for, yeah.

• 1:04:49Logan Bartlett?

  For each individual that they're letting go?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:04:51Logan Bartlett?

  In the actual conversation, how do you go about delivering that message in a humane way?

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's another key thing. The very first moment that someone receives the information that they have lost their job, there's two ways they can receive it. Either they receive it by some asynchronous group, either an email that they get, or a text, or there's a group meeting and everyone's informed at the same time. It's not one-on-one live. Or it is one-on-one live. And there's a massive difference between the two. If it's not one-on-one live, it's like, I just got broken up with over a message.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Horrific. I I'm treated like a a piece of cattle. Or I got the message one on one live. I didn't like it. It was painful. But at least the person had the decency to tell me live. And the key is, and was willing to listen to me when I shared how angry I was. That's it. That's the humane way. It's it's humiliating to receive it through an email or through a group meeting. It's painful, but not humiliating to receive it one on one live or one on two. Like you can have the manager plus someone from the HR department. That's okay, too. That's the key. And so you're thinking, well, logistically, how do I do that?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  If I got a layoff and each manager has like five people that they're letting go. How do you do one on one meetings?

• 1:06:23Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, like you just like go of seventeen hundred people today. I imagine that's a very big complexity to deal with. Now, this is a moment in time thing, but I'm interested in how how you actually go about it at large scale to deal with that.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  It's actually not complex at all. Each manager, but people don't manage more than ten, twelve people or fifteen people. And they're not going to be letting go all of them. But even if they did. These are the initial conversations just need to be fifteen minutes. Now, there's a follow up conversation that's longer. That's, hey, let's sit down and actually talk about what it is that you want to do. I want to help you. But in that first delivery of we're letting you go, that's fifteen minutes. So you simply make a team, a company wide announcement. Hey, Tuesday morning, please clear all meetings. We we're going to be reaching out. Your manager is going to be reaching out and to you to ask for a one on one meeting. Please make yourself available.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And on that morning, the manager starts slacking or texting and saying, hey, are you available to chat for fifteen minutes now? Person said, sure. They call in. We let them know. You can let go of.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Eight, twelve people in a morning. Then in the afternoon, there's already a pre-scheduled all-team, all-hands meeting of the stay team, explaining to them what happened and that everyone has been let go. The people are on the call now. You are all the stay team. We've cut deep so that we never have to do this again. These are, look to your left, look to your right, these are your teammates. Then, this is key, in the next one, two, three days, each manager has a one-on-one meeting with the people who stay, because the people who stay now feel fear and sadness. And it's not, and they don't get to release it in this team meeting. And the fear and sadness they feel, the sadness is, hey, I've just lost my friends,

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  the people I used to go to lunch with, the people I work with. I'm going to miss them. I feel sad about that. And I feel fear, wait a second, these people just all got let go. Is the company failing? Am I going to be let go? And the, these emotions need to be addressed. Otherwise, they'll continue. So in that one-on-one, sometime in the next day or two, here's what I do. I just listen. I don't try to make an excuse. I don't try to make them feel better. I just say, can you please tell me how you're feeling, what your emotions are, what your thoughts are? And they say, yeah, I'm feeling sadness. Yeah, I'm feeling fear. And they state what their thoughts are. And I just repeat back what they say. And I say, is that right? And they go, yeah, that's it. I go, okay, great.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  And now, if there's a way I can answer it, I will, but I don't need to. And just having their thoughts and emotions reflected back to them makes them feel heard, makes them feel understood, and it allows them to bleed off just a little bit of that emotion. Enough that, well, I've seen the difference between if you lay off or let go in the bad way, like Elon Musk did it the worst possible way. Sixty days later, morale is now back, higher than it was before the layoff. But if you do it the humane way, two weeks later, morale is now back and higher than it was before. So the sad reality is...

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  You're even if you do it, you completely and utterly screw it up. All you really did was lose a month and a half of productivity in the company. The company will come back and will perform because the company is going to perform better because there are less people there. And less people means it's easier to get things done. So everyone predicted that, you know, Elon was going to destroy Twitter.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  I I still use Twitter, still operating just fine as far as I can tell. And so that's the reality. Elon knows that Elon knows that less people equals more productivity, more production. It's not a relative, it's an absolute thing.

• 1:10:19Logan Bartlett?

  When you're calling someone into your office for this, and I've I've heard this before from from other people in sales in particular, where you end up managing people out quite a bit. But is telling them that you're going to have a hard conversation? And I've heard you say that as well, like this is going to be a difficult conversation. And then you just cut right to the chase. Why is leading with with that an empathetic thing that they're now braced for? What's what's going to come after that?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a weird thing. It's all about surprise. So when something happens that startles me, my amygdala reacts so quickly, it's like a visor that shuts over my face, that I don't even notice that it happened. And I'm already in that emotion. Let's say it's fear or it's anger. It happens instantaneously. And now, as far as I'm concerned, I'm just having thoughts.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Whereas if someone says, hey, you're about to feel fear, you're about to feel anger, get ready. Like, and they give you three seconds and you go, oh, okay, now I'm sort of seeing that this thing might be coming. And then when it comes, you go, oh, now I sort of sense the emotion. Okay, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna buy into it. I can, I can see the fear coming like it makes it much easier to handle and much less likely that they'll actually go into full anger or full fear. And they'll notice what amount of anger and fear they do go into. That's it. It's just about, do they get surprised or not surprised?

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  And three seconds is all they need to prepare.

• 1:12:09Logan Bartlett?

  What are the other things that you brought up earlier in this when you were listening to the executives or the people that stayed behind talking about hearing them out from their feelings? But it sounds like one of the tactics that you really use in the methodology and some of the empathy that you're able to communicate is also repeating back to the people what was said to them. And why is that?

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  That is huge.

• 1:12:37Logan Bartlett?

  It seems like it's this human nature thing that you really utilize in your methodology of, hey, I'm listening to you. I understand. Did I get this right? Why is that so effective?

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it's shocking. First of all, it's shocking how effective it is. It's shocking that someone will say, I don't know if I want to say that to somebody. That feels like it's going to be really patronizing. And I go, okay. Before you make a decision, let me do it to you. See how it feels to you. I think what I heard you say is that feels really awkward and it's going to be really, the person is going to think it's really patronizing. Is that right? And they go, yeah. And then they say, oh, that actually felt really good. It makes me feel like you really get me. Like, there you go. That's what it is. People want to be understood. And we have so much experience of going through life where people don't understand us. They'll say things like, yeah, I got you.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  I understand. I understand what you're saying. But then they go do something completely different. So we all have the experience of not being understood. So when someone proves to us that they actually understand our thoughts and even more our emotion, it's such a welcome relief. That's why it works. And frankly, it works everywhere. It works with customers. It works with investors. It works with recruits. It works with teammates. It works with spouses. It works with children. It works. It works everywhere.

• 1:14:09Logan Bartlett?

  What I'm hearing you say is this actually works everywhere.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 1:14:16Logan Bartlett?

  You said on a podcast I was listening to, I think it was with Harry Stebbings, that that boards are the death of every great investor. And as someone that has accumulated a handful of boards, why do you think that's the case? And is it something that you actually recommend BCS don't take board seats so that they can stay good at the investing job? Or do you view it as a distraction from the actual soft diplomacy that can go without the formal governance?

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  So the reasons of death of a great investor is just logistics. Each board meeting, you know, let's say you do a board meeting once a quarter and each board meeting is, if it's remote, it's three hours. But if it's not remote, it's half a day or a whole day. And then there's the flying to and from. And if you start adding those up, once you get to 15, 16, 17 boards, which mostly great investors get to, then all of a sudden, the person spending about a third of their time on boards, about a third of their time internal, there's always a third of the time doing like internal management of the firm itself. And there's kind of like a third of your time, which is just dealing with like

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  personal life. So now you just lost the, you used to have a third of your time that you were meeting with new companies and looking for deals and finding them. Now that third has been entirely replaced by going to board meetings. You literally have no more time left to meet new companies and make a new investment. Therefore, very practically, you're done. You're done as an investor. And there's only one way to recapture that time. You're not going to get away from the internal management meetings in the firm. You can make them more efficient, but it's kind of difficult. You're not going to get away from stopping the stuff that's going on in your personal life. If you have kids and family and whatever, I guess

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  you maybe could. But again, if you just keep adding more boards, eventually you're going to fill yourself. And so there's only one way to get out of it. And that's to get off those boards. Now, can you be on the board of an investment initially? Sure. But

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  The key is letting go of the ones that are no longer serving you. And these are the companies that aren't making it. Now, I've heard from so many investors, but Matt, that's my reputation and I make a commitment to be with a founder for life. And whether it goes well or doesn't go well, I still make that commitment. If I reneg on that commitment, then why would anyone ever want to choose me to be on their board? And I say, don't make that commitment. And make it a one-time thing. And by the way, plenty of investors that I've coached have now gotten off off of most of their boards, and I don't think any of them have taken a reputation hit for it.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  So, sorry, the next founder that wants you on their board doesn't think that they're going to fail. And if they do think that they might fail, doesn't need for you to be, continue to be on the board if they fail. What they all think is they're going to succeed and they want you to be there to help them succeed. That's it. So it's inapplicable that you're, there's a reputation hit for getting off of the board of a company that's not succeeding. And that's it. You're just reclaiming time. That's all you're doing. Now, is it a good model to never sit on boards? Yes, I think that's the best model. But if you really want to sit on a board, that's okay. Do it in the first one or two years of the company. But if they're not succeeding after that, then you get off.

• 1:17:51Logan Bartlett?

  What about hiring and interviewing is something that the volume, as these companies are ramping in such a meaningful way, being really good at that is something that can often make or break the company. In the actual processes that you're asking these questions, what, what do you tell people to look for? Do you have a prescriptive way of approaching the interview?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Yes, very much so. So again, this is one where I just summarize someone else's work. There's an author who wrote a book called WHO, W H O, which I think is the best recruiting book ever written. And I just, you know, say, do what he says, but people don't want to read the book. So I summarize it and, and I, you know, takes 10 minutes to read my summary. And it has all the things to do. And the key thing is, is that there are people who are really good in interviews. And they're terrible performers. And this is very often in sales because they're just really good relationship people. So interviews are very unindicative of someone's performance. What's very indicative is how they've performed in the past. So when I do an interview, and this is what the book who says is, there's a thing called a top grading interview where you sit down with a person.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  And you say, we're just going to go through your, where you've worked from college till now, we're just going to talk, you're just going to tell me who you worked. Who's your manager and who are your teammates or I just at this point, just do who's your manager? Okay. They say the name, great. How do you spell it? Boom. Great. Next job manager, next job manager, next job manager. And then at the end, I say, you know, you seem really amazing and I'd like to make you an offer pending reference interviews. Can you please connect me with this person, that person and that person? So I'm the one choosing who I talk to, not them, because if they choose, they're only going to choose the people they get along with. And then two, these are all very relevant people. These are all people who were their managers who saw exactly how they performed from a manager's perspective.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  As opposed to what a lot of people do is they try to do like back channel references. Well, so they know someone at the company, but that person didn't work with them directly. That person wasn't their manager. That person doesn't know. So back channel references are almost always irrelevant. This is the only way that I better discovered that you get real perspective, but from the people that I choose, not the report chooses. And I've gotten fantastic information that way. And that's what I recommend to all my CEOs and they follow it and they all, they all love the process. That's a little bit involved.

• 1:20:17Logan Bartlett?

  No, it's, it's super interesting because I, I've, I've struggled with helping my portfolio companies through the interview process at times. Because there are people that are really good interviewers, right? And there, there are people that ultimately aren't particularly good at doing the job. So trying to assess out those, those two things from one another is a, is a challenge.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  That's right. But there's another thing that's also important here is that you want to spend as little time as possible with people that you're not going to hire so that you have a lot of time to spend with the person you are going to hire because you need to sell that person. And what I found about selling is two things really work. One, speed, like from the moment that I meet you until the moment that I make you an offer is incredibly short. That makes you feel a lot of, that makes you feel like I was confident in my passion about you from the start. But in order to do that, I've got to have time available. So what I do is I set up 15 minute. First time conversations with each candidate that I talk to because the reality is all I'm looking for in interviews is do I feel like this

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  chemical pull to somebody and I know that is in the first five minutes. And if I have a 15 minute interview set, then at the end of 15 minutes, I said, great, that was our time. Thank you very much. Now, if I really love the person, no one has ever scheduled 15 minute meetings back to back. So I know they have their next 15 minutes free. So if I love them, I just say, hey, you know what? I am loving this call. You seem amazing. I'm betting you've got questions about me and about our company. Let me, can we take the next 15 minutes that you can ask your questions? And then I, they say, yeah, that'd be great. And then I start the sales process already and sales is just a matter of

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  acknowledging people's concerns and sharing the answer to those concerns. And that's it. So that process begins immediately and then because I do it so short, I've got plenty of time to now spend with this person in the rest of the interview process.

• 1:22:19Logan Bartlett?

  Super helpful. All right. I'm going to give you some quick hitters here before we hop. Just because it's relevant today to the news and we touched on it earlier and you, you're friends with him. What do you think makes Sam Altman so special and the ability to kind of see that this AI trend was on its way?

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sam is special. Let's, let's make that clear from the very beginning. He is actually absolutely unique. And he's amazing and he's amazing because he operates, talk about first principles, talk about like what makes sense, let me do that. He's probably the, he lives first principles and let me give you an example. Sam's the only person I know, and I'm now starting to do this more because I see how effective it is for him. And Naval is also starting to do, has been doing this for quite a few years as well. So Sam and Naval are the only two people I know who do this. And that is they do not have regularly scheduled meetings.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Now, Sam does have the exec team meeting at OpenAI. That's right, but that's it. Other than that, no regular scheduled meetings. Now, what's the effect of that? The effect of that is Sam is able to respond to inbound messages instantly. Because he's not in a meeting. And therefore, if people get blocked in some way or need some information from him, he's able to get it to them immediately. In addition, the people in his network that he wants to feel them to feel connected absolutely do. Because when they ask Ping him from the app, so people inside the company get information unblocked instantly. The people outside the company feel totally loved.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  So Goldman Sachs partners learned this a long time ago that, and they respond to a message, you know, Saturday night at 8:00 PM, they'll still respond within an hour. Well, Sam doesn't better than that. Sam will respond within two minutes. You send, now, again, he doesn't do this to everybody. He does this to the people that are in his circle of, I want you to feel loved. And, but if you're in that circle, unless he's asleep, he's going to respond to you in a few minutes and faster than anyone else on the freaking planet.

• 1:24:27Logan Bartlett?

  I've only emailed him a few times, but every time he's responded within seven minutes max. It's, it's actually fit. That's a subtle way of saying that I'm, I'm important enough for him to respond quickly. But, but it is really amazing.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  And how freaking good does that feel?

• 1:24:42Logan Bartlett?

  It was the most mind blowing thing. I, I, I figured there was someone on the other side, some GPT-4 response bot firing back at me.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Nope, that is Sam. That's what makes him unique. There are more people on this planet who love Sam, maybe than any other person I know.

• 1:25:00Logan Bartlett?

  Last one before you hop. Do you really buy all your clothes at Costco?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Uh, this is Costco underwear. No, underwear is Amazon, shorts are Amazon. So, no, Costco and Amazon.

• 1:25:14Logan Bartlett?

  When did that start? And, uh, how, how has that impacted your, your life? I mean, clearly this started after you got married because I can't imagine this was on the way into getting married. That's someone will feel like.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Well, I now live in Kauai. There really is only one store in this island. It's Costco. And so that's it. Either I'm ordering online or buying there. And it turns out they have really high quality stuff. Like it's a, I think Costco figured out a long time ago. They figured out that they could both do quality and price. I don't want to give an advertisement for Costco. You all know what Costco is. Yeah, I just, it's good stuff.

• 1:25:52Logan Bartlett?

  It's amazing. Well, Matt, great.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 1:26:02Logan Bartlett?

  So that'll do it for the 51st episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. Thank you to Matt Moshi for coming on. Thank you to Rashad and Justin for their efforts with this. And thank you to everyone that is listening. And a special thanks to all the people that like, share, subscribe, all of that. It is really helpful in trying to grow the listenership of what we're doing here. We will spare you the, the advertisement for a supplement or a mattress that you don't need, but please do continue to share and spread the word and all that good stuff. Hope everyone has a nice weekend and look forward to seeing you here again next week on the 52nd episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. Have a good weekend.