#392: Ben Horowitz — What You Do Is Who You Are >> Lessons from Silicon Valley, Andy Grove, Genghis Khan, Slave Revolutions, and More

"One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions." — Ben Horowitz Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz https://twitter.com/bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz https://a16z.com/. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=b0117bc2901c2b6a7955c004f208021c&language=en_US, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Do-Who-Are/dp/0062871331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=cfe52936c74807a656ec0c1fc90e5cfd&language=en_US, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund https://a16z.com/2018/08/22/introducing-the-cultural-leadership-fund/ to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry. Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively. This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, "If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?" My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you'll get a free 20-count travel pack (valued at $79) with your first order at athleticgreens.com/tim http://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. This episode is also brought to you by Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hello-monday/id1453893304?mt=2, LinkedIn's podcast now in its second season, and it is full of advice you can start using today. Each week, Jessi sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in our lives, and how to make it work for us. This season, one of the first episodes I recommend checking out is with Jerry Colonna. I've worked with Jerry in the past, and he is one of the start-up world's most in-demand executive coaches. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling. Whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hello-monday/id1453893304?mt=2 helps you tackle Monday — and the rest of the workweek — with tactics and strategies you can use. Find Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hello-monday/id1453893304?mt=2 on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The Four Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick, or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day. And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first-time buyer, you now get, for a limited time, an extra $79 in free product. So check out the details at athleticgreens.com/tim. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim for your free travel pack with any purchase.

• 1:34Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn's Hello Monday. Hello Monday is a podcast. Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel is back for season two, and the show is full of advice, practical, tactical advice that you can start using today. Each week, Jesse sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in their lives, how it can be integrated into your life, and how to make work work for you better. This season, one of the first episodes is with Jerry Colonna, who's been called the CEO Whisperer. I've actually done quite a bit of work with Jerry, and he's one of the world's most influential entrepreneurs. In-demand executive coaches amongst the startup ecosystem. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good, open-ended

• 2:18Tim Ferriss?

  questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling, among other things. Journaling can really create an incredible competitive advantage and also act as an emotional rebalancing tool of sorts. So I recommend taking a look at it, giving a listen, more accurately. So whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday and the rest of the work week with tactics and strategies that you can use. So check it out. Find Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel. That's J-E-S-S-I-H-E-M-P-E-L. You can just look up Hello Monday on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job every episode to attempt to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the routines, favorite books, habits, and so on, that you may apply to your own life. My guest this episode is Ben Horowitz. You can find him on Twitter, @BHorowitz. Ben is a co-founder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the brand-new Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are.

• 3:40Tim Ferriss?

  He also created the A16Z Cultural Leadership Fund. If you are wondering what A16Z stands for, just count the number of letters between the beginning and the end of Andreessen Horowitz. So he created the A16Z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies and enable more young African-Americans to enter the technology industry. Prior to A16Z, that's Andreessen Horowitz, Ben was co-founder and CEO of Opsware, formerly known as LoudCloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line.

• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  He has an MS MBA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with the one and only Ben Horowitz.

• 4:40Tim Ferriss?

  Ben, welcome to the show.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim. Very excited to be here.

• 4:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I have so many questions. I have pages and pages of questions. We'll try to get to as many as possible. I thought I would start with a name that I know you're familiar with, and that is Andy Grove. That may not be a name that all people know, but could you please describe who Andy is, why he's interesting to you?

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Andy was kind of one of the founders of Intel, which is kind of the foundational company of Silicon Valley, if there was any. And foundational, not only technologically, but also culturally, I think importantly, and just an amazing guy. Probably, you know, for my money, the best CEO we ever had out here. But, you know, he started his life, he was a refugee from Hungary, from World War II. And, you know, he had to escape the Nazis and then the communists, and kind of came over on a boat, and with, I forgot,

• 5:44Speaker 03

  they gave him like $27 when he got to New York. And he taught himself English, and he kind of went to school at CCNY and became a physicist. And then, you know, eventually met up with Bob Noyce. He actually told me a very funny story towards the end of his life, where Gordon Moore, who was, you know, the famous Moore's Law and the founder, also a co-founder of Intel, when they brought Andy in to Fairchild Semiconductor, the way they picked him out, and Andy told me this very lightly, he said, he finished his PhD at Berkeley in two and a half years. And Gordon Moore had found that people who finished

• 6:29Speaker 03

  their PhD quickly correlate with high performers. So that's how he got the job.

• 6:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's a perfect jumping off point for about a half a dozen things that I was meaning to get to anyway, but let's, I'll try to ratchet back my caffeine enthusiasm and focus on Andy for a bit longer. High Output Management. You wrote the foreword to reprint of that book, which when I lived in Silicon Valley, I was able to observe the rebirth of, sort of the resurgence of this book and its popularity. And I know some incredible founders who have stacks of this book in their offices to give away. Why did you agree or offer to write the foreword?

• 7:21Tim Ferriss?

  And what are some of the takeaways that people might find in that book or that you found of particular value?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, it was my favorite management book by far. In fact, I think it might have been the only management book that I ever read that I liked. So it was, you know, quite a thing for me when Andy called me and he said, Ben, you know, I was watching you give this talk at Stanford. And, you know, in the talk, I was talking about my book, my first book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. And somebody asked me why I wrote it. And I said, well, you know, when I was a kid, I read this book, High Output Management. And like, it was amazing because it was the CEO of Intel, which is like the most important company in technology. And he wrote this book and it wasn't to like, you know, say how great he was or like, you know, like all these books that these guys write who, you know, run big companies and

• 8:11Speaker 03

  how like they, here's when I learned the value of a dollar and then this is when I built a great big company and all this kind of thing they say. But it was a book to teach like young people like myself how to manage. So it was just a complete contribution back to the environment with really, you know, in a way, nothing in it for him. And, you know, I always, when I, you know, reading that book, I said, well, if I ever make it, if I ever kind of become anybody that anybody wants to listen to, I'm gonna write the sequel to High Output Management. And that was, I tried to do with The Hard Thing About Hard Things. When he called me, you know, there was no question. I was like, 100%, I'll write the foreword. But the reason it was such a great book is it was kind of the original Hard Thing About

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Hard Things in that most management books are like, here's all the obvious, easy stuff. And here's like eight, like... Random steps to do the most easiest thing in the world that anybody could figure out, like who, you know, wasn't like an idiot. But Andy Grove, it was like he went all the way, like right to the worst, hardest, most messed up things that you'd have to do. So like, you know, one of the things I remember from the book is he goes, well, hey, look, you're writing performance review and the rule of thumb is you never put anything in a performance review that you haven't already told the employee, right? And you're reading, like, yep, that's the rule, that's what we do. And he's like, okay, so now you're at the performance review and there's something

• 9:37Speaker 03

  that the employee needs to improve that you haven't told them, what do you do? And it's like, okay, that's a, that's a real like thing. And he's like, do you put it in the review or do you not put it in the review? And, uh, you know, his thing is you gotta put it in the review and like, it's bad that you didn't tell him, but it's worse to not tell him now. And, you know, and those kinds of difficult decisions, like, you know, how you really do that, or like, you know, he's like, okay, you know, people are late to meetings, you know, they're wasting everybody's time, so stealing money from the company, like, but like, it's very awkward to deal with them. And so how do you deal with them on that and that kind of thing, which is really what you need to know to put any of these management techniques into effect is like, how do you do it when there's real conflict?

• 10:22Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know, that's why it's such a, just, just an amazing book.

• 10:26Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned the, the coming to meetings late. And in, in one of your blog posts, you have some, you have some fantastic blog posts, an excellent writing, both of course on the web in this case, and then in the books. But you, you share an anecdote that begins with, for example, we could talk about sort of wartime versus peacetime CEOs, but a basic principle in most management books is that you should never embarrass an employee in a public setting. But Andy Grove, in the situation that you just mentioned, once said to an employee who entered a meeting late, quote, "All I have in this role is time and you're wasting my time," end quote.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's one of my favorite things.

• 11:07Tim Ferriss?

  And, and well, well, almost.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  And you have to realize when he said that, like, he was like God. So it was like God, so you know, he's God of Intel and like you're walking into an Intel meeting. So it's like God telling you that you're wasting his time.

• 11:18Tim Ferriss?

  So I suppose the first question that I'd like to ask, and we may end up getting into the wartime versus peacetime CEO differentiation, but what occurs to me is that he has a scientific background, he's an engineering and physics background, you also have a computer science background. How do you think about management? And I know this is a very broad question, but do you think about management differently than many people? It would seem to be that the answer is yes. Also, just based on the observation you had about most management books, which I would agree with, how has your experience, your life experience, maybe

• 12:01Tim Ferriss?

  including computer science, informed how you approach or think about management?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's, you know, it's an interesting combination because there's a part of an engineering background that's extremely helpful, which is, you know, can you think about systems? And can you think about like how like broad scale systems interactions occur and like what the implications are? And then there's a different part, which is a very kind of, I would say, high EQ component, which is in order to make that system work, you have to be able to see the company through the eyes of the people who are doing the work, which are usually the people who are not in the room when you're making the decision. And you have to understand how it's going to affect them, how it's going

• 12:52Speaker 03

  to change their behavior and so forth. You know, just so as an example of that, like, you know, it's easy, like if somebody comes to you and they say, you know, Ben, I really deserve a raise. And you could go, okay, well, you know, like I like you and I want you to like me, so I'll give you that raise. But you have to think about, you know, if you're at it at all, you go, okay, well, like, How will it look to the people who are not here? Is that fair? Have they gotten a chance at it? Is this person just getting the raise because he came into my office? Or like, you know, does he really deserve it? So do I have a systematic process to evaluate talent? And allocate the money that we have? Or do I run it like that?

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Because I'm not really thinking about it from everybody else's perspective. And so you kind of end up needing both to be good at it. And I think, you know, kind of going back to Andy screaming at that employee, that that's kind of a little bit in the balance, right? Because, you know, that employee is definitely going to be like ashamed and horrified and maybe demotivated by him publicly embarrassing him. But in that instance, what he was doing was something different, which was he was setting the culture and saying, look, culturally, fundamentally, like, I'm going to teach everybody in this company a lesson by saying something that's so powerful and so colorful that it's going to spread like wildfire through my company.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  And everybody's going to know that it's not okay to waste people's time by being late for a meeting. And that's more important in this case than the individual. So it gets, you know, it's kind of a Confucian approach. The good of the individual must be sacrificed for the good of the whole. And you have to do that as CEO from time to time. Now, you don't want to do it gratuitously because that is definitely going to hurt somebody's feelings. So, you know, and maybe that's a great employee or whatever. But you do, you know, particularly if the culture is in place and they're kind of willfully ignoring the culture, which I, you know, I believe is the case in this case. Then you have to kind of value the system and value that above that person's feelings.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And these are kind of the trade offs that you make in management. And that's why it is complicated to get it right. And why like it's not, you know, it's always like broken down and management books are often, it's like you're talking to one person at a time. And that's never the case. You're always talking to everybody.

• 15:19Tim Ferriss?

  If this is a useful distinction, I'd love for you to define the two terms for us or the differences between two terms, that is management and leadership. How do you? How do you distinguish between those two? I know it seems like a stupid question, maybe, but I

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:37Tim Ferriss?

  If I'd love for you to, if you're able to just comment on that for a second, or if it's a bad question, we can move on.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of leadership is, or the way I think about it, and, you know, then they're kind of, you know, we're, you know, my own dictionary of it is, you know, leadership, there's kind of a, is a lot of getting, is the art of kind of getting people to follow you. And as Colin Powell said, you know, if only out of curiosity. And I think so that that involves kind of, you know, having a vision, being able to articulate it, being inspiring, making, you know, creating a feeling among people that you, that you care about them in a way, and you care about, you know, their goals and objectives and,

• 16:28Speaker 03

  and, you know, what they want out of life. And people want to follow people who have, you know, some number of those attributes. Management gets more into, okay, you have this great vision, you've articulated, everybody likes it, but like, how do you operationalize it? How do you kind of break it down into its steps? How do you make sure that people who need to communicate are communicating in these kinds of things? So it's kind of, you know, leader, a lot of leadership is, you know, knowing what to do, getting people to follow you. And then, you know, management involves getting people to do what you know. And that's a kind of, a little bit of different part of your brain.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  It's, you know, leadership's a little more on the creative side. Management's, you know, requires a little more discipline and systematization.

• 17:20Tim Ferriss?

  So on the, on the, on the former, in the case of leadership, getting people to follow you, if only out of curiosity, and this may

• 17:30Tim Ferriss?

  May not be a fit, but in the course of doing research for this conversation, I came across mention of a paper called Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  I wrote that when I was a little kid.

• 17:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and it seems like, at least the way it was phrased in this Fortune piece, it quote, "became a bible for the startups," in this case referring to Netscape, "for the startups' unpolished young executives." So could you describe that paper and what impact it had on you and/or the people around you when it came out?

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, it's funny, it was a piece I wrote out of pure frustration. So turns out like product manager is a weird job in Silicon Valley in that in every single company, it means something different. You know, and so like what you do is not, doesn't really translate well from one company to the next, and many companies have just bad product management functions. And so, you know, the people that I kind of inherited when I got the job to run the team all had these like different and differing and weird views on what the job was. And I, you know, I always found myself like yelling at them going like,

• 18:53Speaker 03

  "Does that make any sense to you?" That kind of thing, you know, like I was like at that level of frustration. And then, you know, one day I was just like, you know, I have to train like the team on what I want. And I was like, but I don't have time to put a training program together. So I sat down, I just wrote this document, Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager. And then the thing I had in my, you know, head was like, and it's a bad thought, but it was like, this is gonna be like dog training, you know, like bad, bad dog. Good dog, bad dog. And so that's where the name came from. But it was really just, you know, like, like this is what good product managers do, and this is what bad product managers do. And just like, let's just be clear on that.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  So like you'll know, you can anticipate what I'm gonna say if you do something bad and we don't have to have that conversation all the time. And so that's all it started out to be. And then what happened was kind of as, you know, as you said, is like, people value just getting that information so much that not only did...

• 19:58Speaker 03

  My team used it, but then everybody at Netscape started using it and then like, you know, a huge number of people, you know, product managers in Silicon Valley still like refer to that thing which I wrote in 1995. And what it taught me was like, everybody, no matter how smart they are, no matter like if they went to Stanford or Harvard or whatever, they can always use training in the job that you want them to do because the job that you need them to do is one, these jobs are very complex and they, you know, and they're different. And a lot of it is what do you expect as a manager? And so if you're a manager who doesn't train your people, you probably, I can't imagine

• 20:40Speaker 03

  you're good at your job. Just because there's no way they're going to be able to read your mind on everything.

• 20:46Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd like to talk about more lessons learned and then I'm going to segue from that into how you might teach others, because in a lot of ways you do teach others. Let's chat about Bill Campbell. And Bill Campbell has come up once before on this podcast when I had a conversation with Eric Schmidt, legendary figure known throughout the valley as coach, has advised people like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and so on. Could you share what your relationship was like with Bill and what some of the things or any of the things

• 21:30Tim Ferriss?

  that you that you really absorbed from Bill?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, I mean, he was just such a great help to me as CEO. And a lot of it was just, you know, being able to have a conversation with somebody who knew what I was talking about and who knew what they were talking about, you know, at the same time, which is when you're CEO, it's just very difficult to have those in a way, you know, that's kind of confidential and like not with like somebody who could like remove you and that kind of thing. And so he was just invaluable to me in that sense. And a lot of what was so great about him is, you know, we could

• 22:21Speaker 03

  So on the one hand, like, we could argue about whatever and like, he would have input and like, maybe I would, you know, listen to it, maybe I wouldn't, but it would never, whatever I did never affected the relationship, you know, it was, it was just that kind of thing with him. But the thing that he did better than anybody that I've worked with is he could really see the company through the employee, like, through the eyes of every single employee. He, he knew how people would react to every single decision. And, you know, and he wasn't even running the company, he would just come in once in a while and so forth, he'd know enough people in it, he would, but he had just like this incredible sense about that.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  And, and, you know, and that just proved to be very valuable, so I'll give you an example. So, you know, we had done this giant deal with EDS to sell them, kind of our old, we had this business that was gonna kind of basically make us bankrupt. And by doing the transaction with EDS, we kind of escaped bankruptcy and then kind of launched into this other business, the software business, which eventually became like worth like 1.6 billion dollars, or I think that was it. And, you know, so it was like the, probably the most important deal we'd ever done as a company, and, you know, we do the deal, and I go, "Bill, like, you know, we got the deal done, I can't even believe it, you know, we're gonna announce it, you know, I gotta go to New York on Monday and we're gonna announce it," and he's like, "No, no, no, you

• 23:48Speaker 03

  can't go." And I was like, "Well, why can't I go?" And he's like, "Well, like, when you do the deal right, like, this deal's gonna involve selling some employees, to them, laying some people off and so forth, as soon as that news hits, you gotta be in person, in the company, talking to the employees and letting everybody know where they stand as quickly as possible." And I was like, "Oh, of course," he's right, you know, I hadn't even, like, thought that through, and...

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Had I not done that, um, you know, I, so I did that. I sent Mark to New York to do the announcement. But had I not done that, had I not kind of stayed back and had that conversation, I don't think we would have made it as a company because that day ended up being pivotal, you know, to reconstructing the trust that I needed to kind of run the company going forward. And, you know, that, that, that's the kind of value that Bill added. Um, but I, you know, I, if you want to like know who he is, the, the only person I've ever met who's like, could do the thing that Bill could do, uh, is Oprah Winfrey.

• 24:47Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Um, and I know that sounds probably weird in a way, but like Oprah Winfrey can like meet you and talk to you for five minutes and she can know you as well as somebody's known you 10 years. And Bill could do that, too.

• 25:02Tim Ferriss?

  That's so wild.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Uh, and yeah. And then you may have run into somebody like that, but it is amazing.

• 25:08Tim Ferriss?

  What, what do you think is behind that? Is it an ability to see behind the words and just deeply empathically sense more about your core personality and what's shaped it than other people? What allows an Oprah, for instance, to do that? Do you give, do you have any, any theories?

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, it's definitely a combination of things that I don't possess. Um, so it's a little hard to read it, but you know, yeah, she kind of can read in every signal you're sending. So like the tone of your voice, the expression on your face, like the way you're holding your hands, everything like is complete high fidelity information to her. And then she knows the exact right question to ask to get to the deeper level of what's going on. Um, and I, you know, like I've seen her do it. I've seen Bill do it. I learned from it, but like I, I like literally don't have the capacity to do it anywhere near their

• 26:13Speaker 03

  level. Um, but yeah, it's some combination of like, they're able to just process way, way more information about a person much, much faster. And then great retention on like the thousand people they've met before that might match to that. And it is, it's super impressive though.

• 26:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there is, uh, it's, it's, I enjoy trying to deconstruct the secret sauce, but sometimes it is just impossible to do.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're magic.

• 26:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's certain people who are hardwired for a different spectrum of, of perception. Uh, on the other hand, there are a lot of coachable or teachable skills. And if we're, if we're looking at management, I'd like to shift from, in some respect, uh, student of Bill or advice receiver of Bill Campbell to advice giver. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has said that you are the management guru to all of the young entrepreneurs in the valley. And I wanna, I wanna dig into that for a second because of course you have much vaster experience than I do, but having spent almost 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving,

• 27:25Tim Ferriss?

  spent a lot of time with first time startup founders who in some cases have a real tiger by the tail. And many of these CEOs are really great product people with no real management experience to speak of, who have never had this type of, uh, game to lose, if that makes sense. Uh, what would you teach or what do you teach or advise someone like that if you have, say, a first afternoon meeting with them or a few hours, they're a new portfolio company in walks this bewildered CEO who's entering deep waters?

• 28:09Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, how, how do you, how do you begin to cultivate them or advise them as a manager in training, so to speak, or a CEO in training?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, they're all different, but there's things that are similar about them, you know, and some of them are good at some things and others about others. So I, I don't know that there's a, uh, kind of thing that I would say to any of them. But, you know, one thing they all struggle with is...

• 28:38Speaker 03

  How to build their team, particularly their management team. And kind of what you're speaking about, okay, like it's different if they're not succeeding or whatever, but if they're succeeding and like the company's kind of degenerating because they don't know how to run it, then that usually kind of gets into this whole executive hiring, integrating, managing problem. And this is, first of all, none of them are good at it. Like, we've never had a first-time CEO who's good at this, and I know I wasn't good at it when I started. And the problem is, okay, your board goes, hey, you need to hire like a CFO, like, you know, somebody's got to keep track of this place. It's going crazy. Like, what are you doing?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  You go, okay, I'm going to hire a CFO. And you go, okay, hi, and you go, well, I'm the CEO, so I must know how to do that. But you don't know how to do that. And not only that, like, you've never worked in a finance organization, you don't even know what the CFO job is. Like, I always ask my, it's like, you know, what's a good control structure? How do you distinguish a good one from a bad one? You know, like, and they have no idea. And so, like, how are they going to interview a CFO? It's sort of like interviewing a Japanese interpreter, if you don't know Japanese. They all sound wonderful, right?

• 29:55Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I'm going to plead ignorance before we get too deep into the weeds. What is a control structure in this context?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, just how does money get spent? You know, like, do you know every dollar that's getting spent? You know, when money comes in, like, do you account for it properly? These kinds of things. And how do you do that systematically as the company grows? And, you know, people have budgets and all these kinds of things. So you get, you know, so it's just something that they don't know how to do, and they don't know how to ask, say that they don't know how to do it, and they don't know how to kind of learn how to do it. And so, I always like to just start with... Okay, like, let's talk about a process for learning how to, you know, possibly at

• 30:43Speaker 03

  least get a criteria for your company for this position, not like a general, like, you know, the platonic form of a CFO, because that doesn't exist. But like, a CFO for this company right now, like, what do we need? And then we, you know, how do we do that? Well, maybe we should talk to some CFOs, see what they would hire for, see if that matches us, you know, see how they would test for it in an interview, and then, you know, kind of get deeper into it. But even as you go through all that, like, you know, then you, okay, once that CFO gets signed, how do you teach them about your company? You know, what does day one look like? How do you integrate them? These kinds of things.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  So it's, you know, it really is, kind of has to be a hand over hand, um, instruction. And then, like, you know, once they're in there, if you hire somebody, you know, a lot of times, the CEOs will hire somebody who's so senior and so aggressive, you know, because they went for the biggest resume they could find, and the person wants, doesn't want to be CFO, they want to be CEO. Uh, and then, you know, that person will start, um, you know, trying to grab territory from the CEO and all these kinds of things, and you've got politics you've got to handle. And, and so, you know, it's just a long, I would say, it's not a quick manual, it's a kind of ongoing conversation to understand where they are, what they have to do, how to retain their mojo, all that kind of thing.

• 32:08Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm. And, uh, well, I'll, I'll start with saying that the hard thing about Hard Things, your book, uh, one of your books, I should say, is, uh, one of the most recommended, uh, books that has come up in the last handful of years on this podcast.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  By what I would consider certainly high performing founders and CEOs. Uh, you, you mentioned, or we mentioned, high output management earlier. Are there any other books that you would give to a first time founder who does have a tiger by the tail, who's, who's doing well, but clearly out of their depth in this, in a, in a new level of complexity with, with running what, what is turning into a, a company, as opposed to just a, a, a good product?

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, it's funny, people always ask for like, what are the management books you'd recommend? And I'd be like, I don't know. So, you know, I think that, you know, and it depends a little on the leader. You know, one of the books that I have been recommending for years is a book written by C.L.R. James in 1937 called The Black Jacobins, which is the story of the Haitian Revolution. And you go, okay, what kind of leadership book

• 33:37Speaker 03

  is that? But it turns out that the, you know, that the Toussaint Louverture, who kind of led that revolution, was a, basically, a management and cultural genius, like, better than anybody that I've ever kind of read about or learned from. And, you know, it just ends up being a great leadership book. I think Colin Powell's book, his autobiography, is very, very interesting on leadership. And, you know, there's a bunch of, I think, you know, like, if it's a little company, Eric Ries's book is great, you know, The Lean Startup. The Lean Startup.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, amazing at teaching you things that, you know, particularly if you've not built a new company before, are just really fundamental lessons. And we see, I mean, you know, there have been some things in the news, you know, lately that, you know, about, kind of, with fat startups, which were kind of all the ones from my era. But, you know, The Dangers of a Fat Startup, I think he really articulates amazingly well in that book. And that is one of the early traps you can fall into, particularly in an environment like this, where there's a lot of venture capital money running around.

• 35:02Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the job of CEO, I've enjoyed a lot of your writing and in one of your blog posts, I think, I think the title is making yourself a CEO, at least that's, you talk about how the, the job of CEO is a very unnatural job and that, and I'm cherry picking here a couple of lines, but to be a good CEO in order to be liked in the long run, you must do many things that will upset people in the short run, unnatural things. How have you cultivated that ability in yourself or helped others to cultivate a willingness

• 35:43Tim Ferriss?

  to be unpopular in the short run? I think this at least strikes me as a real critical differentiator. Could you speak to that?

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. So no, no, that is, you know, you've hit on probably one of the most important kind of leadership skills. And, you know, the easiest way, way to think about is like, if you make decisions that everybody likes all the time, then those are the decisions they would have made without you. So you're not actually adding any value. So almost by definition, you know, a lot of the most important decisions end up being ones that, you know, people don't agree with and don't like and are difficult and cause people not to like you at least for a while. And, you know, the way I generally work with CEOs on this is, because it's very difficult because, you know, they're, there's so much emotional,

• 36:39Speaker 03

  psychological force pushing them to make kind of the wrong decision, the easy decision, the one that is going to be the people pleasing decision. And a lot of it is just pointing out what's going to happen, letting them make it. And then when the pain comes, go, you remember, we talked about this and this is what happens. And You know, a lot of it is just you have to go through making those mistakes to train yourself to, you know, it's kind of like it's running towards the darkness, you know, like there's this pain and dark area where you know like people aren't gonna like you, you know it's gonna suck, you know, you like maybe you have to fire somebody, maybe you

• 37:20Speaker 03

  have to lay them off, maybe you have to make a very unpopular decision to cancel a project or whatever. But if you run away from that, because and you always know you have to do it, like you can sense it when you run a company, if you run away from that, that's, you know, that's when you really get a huge raging fire and that, you know, will potentially burn down your company.

• 37:44Tim Ferriss?

  And it seems to me, and I've never run a large company, but just in my interactions with various CEOs and founders, that coming back to the CEO position is a very unnatural job, that there are, there are certain maybe technical abilities or procedural abilities maybe that are pretty easily trained or relatively straightforward, and then there are others that are perhaps less explicitly taught. And one that you've written about before is the ability to manage your own psychology.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:25Tim Ferriss?

  What, what tools or techniques have you personally found, or routines, anything at all really, to be useful for cultivating an ability to manage your own psychology? And maybe you could just describe what that means.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, I mean, you know, like it's, it is certainly the hardest part of the job, because what happens is, and you don't think about this when you're starting a company, it's like one of these, and I always talk to entrepreneurs about this, I'm like, you know, if you knew what was involved when you started, you would never would have started. And they're like, absolutely right, there's no way I would have done this. Yeah, so it's kind of a blessing that you don't know, because if you did know, then, you know, nothing would ever happen.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  But like the kind of thing that happens is, okay, you have this idea to start a company. And then if you just think about that socially, you know, like, okay, so then you've got a lot of friends and relatives and like, some of them are excited for you. Some of them say that's never gonna work and you da-da-da-da and you wanna prove them wrong and all that. But then you gotta go out and you've gotta sell people on the idea. So you've gotta hire people into this kind of vision that you have. And then you've gotta raise money behind it. And like, often like, some of that money might even come from like, your relatives or that kind of thing. So you've got this money that people have entrusted you with. You've got careers that people have entrusted you with. And you start going

• 39:50Speaker 03

  and then something goes wrong. It looks like, like the company may not work. And so, you know, what's the consequence of that? Well, like, every relationship you have, you're gonna violate if it all goes down. And that is super scary. Like, it couldn't be more scary. And, you know, to not let that thought or that set of thoughts paralyze you is, you know, can be really difficult at times. And a lot of it, you know, first, you know, one of the most important things, which I wrote about is, first thing is, you can't think and probab-, you know, you gotta not think the way investors think and probabilities.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  You have to just think in terms of, how do I do this? Like, if there was a way out, like, which way is out? And train your mind in that direction as opposed to, well, there's a 90% chance that like, we're not gonna get this deal. And if we don't get this deal, we're gonna whip the quarter. If we whip the quarter, we won't be able to raise money. If we won't be able to raise money, then I'm gonna have to lay everybody off. Like, once you start thinking like that, you know, you, you literally can't function. And so, kinda getting around to, okay, I've got one bullet in the gun. I have got to hit the target. So I'm gonna get, do whatever I can to get as close as possible. And then like, we're gonna shoot our best shot. And there's gonna be no contingency plan and no way out

• 41:16Speaker 03

  and no, you know, like, if somehow we don't make it, we don't make it. But like, we're gonna die trying. And that, you know, getting to that mentality is really the key to being an effective entrepreneur, I think.

• 41:27Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. What, what have you?

• 41:33Tim Ferriss?

  Found to be helpful for managing the stress of that type of sort of existential threat level, one-shot, one-kill. Psychology. Are there any particular habits or types of self-talk or anything that you use or encourage that allow people to perform better under those types of circumstances?

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Well, you know, like I don't want to exaggerate how good I was at it because, you know, like I was up at two o'clock in the morning, like in a cold sweat with my guts boiling, like all that stuff. Like, it's not like I didn't have that.

• 42:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  You know, I wasn't that great at it in terms of kind of managing it in that way. But I think, I mean, the things that helped me were, one, just always focusing on what I could do. Like, there were so many things I couldn't do, so many things out of my control, so many things that, you know, I mean, like I was in the middle of the greatest technology equity meltdown in the history of the world. So, like, there was nothing I could do about that.

• 42:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Although it was hurting me, but it just didn't make any sense to think about those things. So, just, you know, really thinking about the things that you can do. And then, you know, Bill Campbell was very, is just very helpful to just be able to talk to him and, you know, it wasn't like he had any answers either, but just to have somebody that, you know, I could at least get it off my chest. I was like, look, you know, we're in a spiral, like, and he's like, yep, you're in a spiral. And I was like, okay. I was like, you know, and then here are the, I think we have like two shots to get out, and here they are, or, and, you know, and that, just, just at least talking it through and not feeling like I was missing anything.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  But, you know, I think a lot of people now, they meditate and do other kinds of things and so forth, and I, you know, I would rep to that, but, you know, that's, you know, that's not what I did at the time, so. Just like sweated it out like and cut yours off from my life and all that kind of thing.

• 43:51Tim Ferriss?

  It strikes me that one of your superpowers may be running towards the scary things and not away from the scary things, which might result in a lot of acute, short-term duress, but it may ultimately result in less long-term duress. Could you explain the line, sharpen your, sharpen the contradictions?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Ah, so yes, this is a line. I think this was from, actually originally Karl Marx, and he was speaking of the, you know, sharpen the contradictions between capital and labor, to basically accelerate the revolution. And, you know, I definitely think Lenin used it because, you know, Lenin was like amazing with rhetoric and that kind of thing. He was definitely a rhetorical genius. Also, kind of wrong about everything and had a horrible impact on the world, but like, that's a different story. But I like to use it in management

• 45:01Speaker 03

  because it's a great kind of cue for the CEO, because what happens in an organization is like you'll see like little disagreements between people and like a lot of your inclination is to like smooth things over. But the right answer is usually to sharpen the contradictions. And the reason you want to sharpen the contradictions is because that's, there's information in that contradiction. There's information about like how you're not communicating, how the objectives are not aligned, how the strategy might be wrong. And like, you've got to get that because that's where the truth is. And so when you smooth that over, if you don't

• 45:41Speaker 03

  like bring it to a head and resolve it, then, you know, you miss an opportunity. So it really is, you know, it's one of the most important techniques, I think. And anytime, like in a board meeting, anytime like I hear like a little bit of disagreement or I see like, you know, an inconsistency in the strategy, that's always my cue to myself. I want to, you know, that's when you get the answer. Now, it's also a good way to start a revolution, so you got to be careful.

• 46:13Tim Ferriss?

  So you are not a fan of the default?

• 46:16Speaker 03

  False pick revolution?

• 46:17Tim Ferriss?

  No. Well, maybe that too, but I was gonna say you're not, you're not a fan of the default backpedaling, oh, no, it's a miscommunication, that type of?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Oh, no, that's, you know, like that is, it may be, but like, it's probably a systemic miscommunication. You know what I mean? And as opposed to like, oh, yeah, like you meant this and you meant that and like, so now we're all happy. Eh, that's not what happened. That's almost never what happened.

• 46:41Tim Ferriss?

  Very rarely. You, uh, you have a new book. Why, why write a new book? I mean, you're a gifted writer, but why, why write a new book? And why this book? And could, could you describe, uh, could you describe what it is?

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah. So, and that's a great question, because after I wrote the last one, I was like, I'm never writing another one. Like, that was enough.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  So it surprised me, but, you know, it's interesting, because when I was kind of first, uh, learning to be a CEO, um, one of the, you know, and I asked, I asked Bill and I asked a lot of kind of others mentors, like, you know, what should I focus on? And, you know, a lot of them said, you know, you should focus on culture.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  But then I said, well, how do I do that? And nobody really had any kind of, like, it was all these weird abstract ideas that didn't, uh, they weren't compelling, you know, they weren't well articulated.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  And I never, you know, and it was always like a grope in the dark for me to try and understand, like, how to set the culture, how to change it.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  And so I really kind of became obsessed with this question for myself.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  And, you know, I did a lot of, even in my life, I've kind of been interesting about, like, culture in the broader sense. And so, you know, I just really, really, really spent a lot of time kind of going through, you know, history, going through, kind of trying to understand how people did it, like, what were the components? And it turns out to be, you know, I think, one of the most central parts of management in that, if you think about like, management tools, you know, there's submission statement, and there's the OKRs and KPIs, and you've got, you know, whatever your objectives, and you've got, you know, all these kinds of things, but

• 48:46Speaker 03

  none of them really dictate the things that really define who you are, right? Like, do you show up on time for meetings? Do you stay at the Four Seasons? Do you stay at the Red Roof Inn? Do people go home at five, or do they go home at eight? You know, like, what kind of company is this? What are all those behaviors? Do you get back to people like, right away, or do you never get back to them, or you get back to them in three days? And like, all of those behaviors, like, are your culture, but they're how people are behaving when you're not looking. So like, what do you do about that? And, you know, how do you set that? And how do you make that go? Because that ultimately is really going to speak not only to the quality of your company, but like, what impression

• 49:30Speaker 03

  it makes on the world, right? Like, is it a good company to do business with? Is it a bad company? Is it a place where people work and their life becomes better? Is it a place they work and their life becomes worse? You know, like, what are all these things? And they're all a result of this, like, weird, abstract thing called culture. And so, you know, as I started working with CEOs, like, of course, none of them know really how to deal with it at all. Like, they have ideas, but, you know, most of the ideas are like, half-baked, and like, mostly wrong. So I thought, you know, I should really go back and re-study this problem, and see if I can articulate it. And that's what the book's about. And it's called, "What You Do Is Who You Are," because it's not what

• 50:14Speaker 03

  you believe, it's not your values, it's not what you tweet, it's not like, your social signal, it's like, what you actually do, that's who you are. And, once you get your head around that, you realize that's a big task.

• 50:27Tim Ferriss?

  And the subtitle is "How to Create Your Business Culture," and you, I think, alluded to at least one big component of this. But is culture, then...

• 50:39Tim Ferriss?

  As you define it here, a shared set of behaviors and beliefs? Or how would you suggest people who are listening to this perhaps change how they think about culture? Or ask themselves questions that'll help to refine their thinking if they're CEOs or founders of a company, for instance?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the, and the, one of the greatest, most longest lasting kind of cultures in history is this way of the warrior, the culture of the samurai. You know, and you can like that culture or not, but you have to give the credit for the fact that it lasted like over a thousand years. And to hold a culture for that long is amazing. And one of the key insights from Bushido is a culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions. And that's really what the culture is. And this is why I think people miss it so much because they think it's a shared set of beliefs, but it's not.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  It's a shared set of behaviors. And you don't even have to believe it, but if you behave that way, that's a culture. And this is, and you know, what you have to ask yourself is, okay, like, what are the behaviors that show like for real that we're doing what we believe? And I'll just give you an example in venture capital. Every venture capital firm says they have great respect for entrepreneurs.

• 52:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Very few treat entrepreneurs with any kind of respect at all. And so you go like, well, how do you have that disconnect? And it's because they haven't defined like, what are the actions that translate into that being a real thing and a real part of the culture? And so, you know, this is one of the, like, the problems we had to solve when we started the firm. And one of the things I, you know, one of the things I put in place very early on was like, if you're late for a meeting with an entrepreneur, and I collected $50 today on this, you know, it's $10 a minute. And people are like, well, what if I had to go to the bathroom? I don't care. You know, what if you had to make a phone call? I don't care. And the reason I have it that way is because I want them to ask me, well, why?

• 53:02Speaker 03

  And when they say why, I say because like building a company is really, really hard. And you know, if an entrepreneur takes time out of their day to come see us, like we're going to respect the fact that that's how hard it is and we're always going to be on time. No excuses. Plan your day. Finish that phone call five minutes before you have to meet with the entrepreneur. Go to the bathroom earlier or don't drink that eighth cup of coffee, you know, like, but you need to do what you're supposed to do. And you know, you have to set these kinds of things in place if you're really going to live up to your ideals. And, and that has to be across every dimension of the culture. You have to kind of program it in. Um, or you're just not going to have it. You know, you're, you're going to talk it.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  And then if you talk it and don't do it, then your culture becomes, you're a hypocrisy.

• 53:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Is it, is, is culture something that you really have to get right at the get go? Or is it possible to do a rehaul and make it work without replacing all of the employees at a company?

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, you definitely can change culture. You definitely can change culture. My, actually, two, two of my favorite examples in the book are one, the Haitian Revolution, where, you know, uh, Loretur reprogrammed slave culture into a military culture, which is almost unfathomable in that like not only did he have a slave culture, but it was, uh, one of the most difficult slave culture. It was significantly more brutal kind of slave environment than, um, than even like the US slave environment. So if you, from, uh, the beginning of kind of the transatlantic slave trade to the Haitian

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Revolution, I think 900,000 slaves were brought to Haiti. At the end, there were 465,000 left at the start of the revolution. Um, in the US, 500,000, uh, slaves were brought in that same period and there were 700,000 left. So like, it was like that much quantitatively, that much more brutal. So a very difficult environment of low trust to build like a military force. And, you know, he built in, he built a culture that, you know, created an army that defeated the, you know, probably at least two of the.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Strongest military, European military powers in history, you know, France under Napoleon and the British Empire. And so you gotta say, absolutely, you can change a culture. And, you know, he used the same guys, the same guys who were kind of slaves, didn't even have clothes, that kind of thing, um, to, you know, to that kind of army. And then the other one that, that I found very interesting is, uh, Shaka Sengor, who was running, you know, a prison gang, a very violent prison gang, and just changed the culture to be like remarkably, you know, empathetic for, you know, it's still a prison gang. So like, it wasn't all friendly, uh, but it was a really significant change.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  And those guys, you know, I, I've met some of his guys, you know, that he had there as they've gotten out of prison. And it's just remarkable, the effect it had on them, not only in that organization, but, but coming out. So a hundred percent it's possible.

• 56:28Tim Ferriss?

  And, and in either case, uh, in, in the former, that is, is at least based on my very limited understanding, was if not the only, one of the only successful slave revolutions.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's actually the only, the only slave revolt in human history that ever, uh, resulted in an independent state.

• 56:50Tim Ferriss?

  What were any of the things that he did that helped with that transformation from, uh, slave culture to sort of organized military culture?

• 57:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it, you know, he's quite a remarkable guy along these lines in that, um, he was born a slave, so Toussaint was born a slave, uh, but he was so smart that the plantation owner, um, basically made Toussaint, not only, he, he let him read, so he learned to read, uh, and where he read things like Caesar's Commentaries, where he learned a lot of his military strategy and some economics books and so forth. But he also made him his driver. And so Toussaint was able to go to all these meetings, you know, on the island.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  So he learned French colonial culture, um, kind of Roman military culture, and then he also knew slave culture. So he had this. Really comprehensive cultural understanding. So he knew the elements of kind of the various things that that he wanted. And so one of the one of the techniques he used, which I refer to as kind of create a shocking rule, was he had to solve this problem that trust was super low. I mean, the most difficult part of slave culture is it lacks trust. And the reason is trust is really like a long term commodity in that I'm gonna do something for you today

• 58:29Speaker 03

  because I trust that over time, like it's gonna pay off for me. But if you're a slave, there's no tomorrow, right? They they you have no possessions. They could take your family at any point. They can kill you at any point. You don't own your own life. So to build trust in that environment is almost impossible. The way Toussaint did it is, you know, or one of the ways he did is created this rule, which was basically officers can't cheat on their wives. And you think about that and you go, okay, well, maybe that's not that big a deal. But like you're talking about an environment where like basically soldiers were paid in like raping and pillaging.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Like that that was like a fundamental kind of thing that everybody did outside of Toussaint's army. But he said, no, look, I need to be able like your word like is everything. And he had a great line about, you know, he'd rather relinquish his command than break his word. That's how much emphasis he put on it. And like, if I can't trust you to keep that one promise, then you can't be an officer in the army. And so everybody wanted to know why that rule was in place. And so that kind of starts to build up. Okay, here's how much we value you keeping your word. And so that was, you know, kind of one like little aspect that he did to reset the culture.

• 59:54Speaker 03

  You know, another thing was he He really elevated ethics. And you go, well, like, why is that important? Well, you know, you live with a higher code. And you have a stronger bond because it gives you a feeling about yourself and a feeling about the people who you're working with that like, we're doing something important. And, you know, one thing, and he outlined that, and he outlawed raping and pillaging in the army. And he said, look, we're after something more important, and that's liberty. And so we're not going to rape and pillage. And it became so powerful that the white women in Haiti referred to Toussaint as father.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Like, this is a slave who's running an army. They liked him better than the troops from Spain, or Britain, or France. They liked, like, the slave army better because they treated them so much better. And, and there's a great story around this, which, and it's a legend, so, you know, it's one of those ones where you don't know it's true. But the name Toussaint Louverture, he wasn't born, he was born Toussaint, because slaves only had a first name. It was part of the dehumanization process. And Louverture came later, and nobody knows for sure why, but the, the story is, you know, Napoleon hated him, like, he drove Napoleon crazy. Napoleon suffered more casualties in Haiti than in Waterloo, and he wanted to get him

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  so badly. And he got his generals around, and he said, like, how can you not defeat this slave? And the general said, well, we get him backed up, we surround him, but every time we think we have him, there is an opening. And so his name is Toussaint Louverture, Toussaint the Opening.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  And, you know, I, at least, I, my belief is that, you know, those people, those, those women in the town, you know, they helped him in a way that, like, Napoleon could never understand because he had elevated the culture to that degree. So, you know, those are a couple of the things. I may go on for, obviously, hours and hours and hours on the Haitian Revolution.

• 1:02:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, fascinating. I mean, this, this is something I knew nothing about before doing some homework for this conversation. And I'm excited for, hopefully, the clarity.

• 1:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  And with that precise action that the book will bring to something that, like you said, culture in quotation marks is often thrown around as a collection of very high altitude abstract concepts, but without any real plausible next steps. But this really makes the abstract concrete, or it seems that way, that you're both giving examples, historical and current day of how to install these shared and in some cases rewarded behaviors.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Yes, definitely, definitely. That's, you know, that's why I'm so excited about the book. I mean, I just feel particularly now, and you know, you see all these criticisms of high tech culture and like, you know, this CEO, how could he run a company like this and so forth. And whenever I see that, I'm like, well, it's really hard. It's really hard to get, you know, 10,000 people to behave the way you want them to. And, you know, like, the default is everybody's culture is screwed up. And it takes a lot of effort to make it good.

• 1:03:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It makes me think of the, there's a Ram Dass quote, which I'll paraphrase, but it's something along the lines of if you think you're enlightened, to go spend a week with your family. And it's like, okay, like, like, everybody should reflect on that when they're criticizing a, especially, I would say, a relatively unseasoned or new to the job CEO's ability to get 10,000 people to behave well. It's very difficult. It's very, very, very, very, very challenging. What would you consider success for this book? What type of outcomes would you like to see in the world?

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  That's a great question. It's funny, because when I wrote the first one, my goal was that the CEOs in the portfolio would read it. And that turned out to be a good goal, because it was so narrow that I think it forced me to write a specific book, which I think a lot more people like.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  You know, on this one, I would, you know, I think that anybody who, who kind of cares about their imprint on the world, you know, this is kind of the book for that in that. And I always tell the people, to firm this, like, you know, when we're all retired, like, we're not going to remember, like, every deal that we did that was good, or that we did that was bad, or that we won, or that we lost, or, you know, how much money we made, or any of that, but we're going to remember, like, what it felt like to work there, and what it felt like for the people who interacted with us, and, like, we're going to know if we were proud of it, or, like, it's something we want to forget. And,

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  you know, that's what culture is really about. It's like, who are you? Like, what do you do? Like, you know, what does it mean to know you? And that, you know, I, I think it's such an important thing, but people don't have the mechanics for that, or, you know, I hadn't been able to find anything that I could read on that. So that, that's kind of the purpose of the book.

• 1:05:34Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, I really like that it also, I would imagine, and I haven't yet read the book, but I'm very excited to, that it, that it provides examples that allow people to see principles in action and sort of deduce how those might apply to, to their own decisions, whether that's, say, you know, read Hastings, read at Netflix, or Netflix, or rewinding the clock and going all the, all the way back to Genghis Khan, who's, of course, I shouldn't say of course, but someone that I've been really fascinated with for the last few years.

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:06:14Tim Ferriss?

  For many, many reasons, and has been really portrayed in a lot of the coverage.

• 1:06:23Tim Ferriss?

  In a one-sided, sort of one-dimensional way. Very unfairly. But the sort of, the scale and scope.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  It's underrated.

• 1:06:31Tim Ferriss?

  Very underrated. And the vision of cultural inclusiveness that you talk about in the book as it relates to that. I think it will be really eye-opening to people and I'm excited about it for that reason. I know we're coming up on time. Be fun to, to, you know, grab a coffee and a round two some other time. I still have a long list of questions, which, which, which we can get to some other time. But let me, let me ask just a couple of really quick closing questions and then bring this to a wrap. But the, this question is, is sometimes one that is difficult to answer, but I'll lob it out there and see what we get.

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  And that is, if you had a billboard, this is a metaphor, of course, but a billboard on which you could put a, anything you want, an image, a question, a word, a quote, but it allows you to get a, convey something to billions of people.

• 1:07:33Tim Ferriss?

  Not, non-commercial. What, can you, can you think of anything that you might put on such a billboard?

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  So this is just really off the top of my head because I was listening to this song this morning. But my friend Nas has this great line, which is, I know you think I'm rich because of my diamond piece, but I've been rich since I started finding peace. And I think that's, that's my, that's my vibe today.

• 1:08:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that, that could be a podcast in and of itself, just digging into that.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  I think he said, "Life is good." Maybe life is good. I think my life is good because I've been, because of my diamond piece, but.

• 1:08:17Tim Ferriss?

  All right, well, finding peace, that will be part of our, of our round two. Is there anything else in terms of closing comments, suggestions, recommendations, asks of the audience that, that you'd like to add before we, before we close up this, this first installment at least?

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that what I would just say is the book is really, you know, to enable you to do what you need to do kind of as a leader in this organization to be who you want to be. And as a leader, I think that's the most important thing.

• 1:08:59Tim Ferriss?

  Wonderful. That is, "What You Do Is Who You Are." You can find that anywhere books are sold. People can wave hello on the internet, on Twitter, @BHorowitz, and we'll link to that and everything else in the show notes, including everything that we mentioned. So people listening can find that at tim.blog/podcast. Ben, this has really been a lot of fun and very enlightening and enlivening, and I have all sorts of notes to follow up on for my own research and reading. So, thank you so much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate it.

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  All right, and I thank you, and I'm looking forward to round two and a cup of coffee.

• 1:09:45Tim Ferriss?

  Deal. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

• 1:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn's Hello Monday. Hello Monday is a podcast. Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel is back for season two and the show is full of advice, practical tactical advice that you can start using today. Each week Jesse sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in their lives, how it can be integrated into your life, and how to make work work for you better.

• 1:11:12Tim Ferriss?

  This season, one of the first episodes is with Jerry Colonna, who has been called the CEO Whisperer. I've actually done quite a bit of work with Jerry and he's one of the world's most in-demand executive coaches amongst the startup ecosystem. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling, among other things. Journaling can really create an incredible competitive advantage and also act as an emotional rebalancing tool of sorts. So I recommend taking a look at it, giving a listen more accurately. So whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday and the rest of the work week with tactics and strategies that you can use. So check it out.

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  Find Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel, that's J E S S I H E M P E L. You can just look up Hello Monday on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The Four Hour Body and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick.

• 1:12:38Tim Ferriss?

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