Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
Speaker 1: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 1: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 1: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 1: I am delighted to welcome Eric Rest to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: Eric is the creator of the Lean Startup method. He
Speaker 1: is also the author of The Lean Startup and the
Speaker 1: brand new book Incorruptible. So, Eric, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. So why don't
Speaker 1: you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, I was one of those people that grew
Speaker 2: up programming computers. I couldn't believe it when I found
Speaker 2: out you could get paid for computer programming, like it
Speaker 2: was a job you could have. I was so excited
Speaker 2: as a kid, and I thought technology was the most
Speaker 2: powerful force in the universe, so I wanted to learn
Speaker 2: to harness it. And my career is basically a series
Speaker 2: of me realizing that there's something more and powerful than
Speaker 2: whatever I previously thought was the most powerful force in
Speaker 2: the universe. So when I found out that technology is
Speaker 2: created by human beings, I realized that actually management is
Speaker 2: a more powerful force. And lately I've been helping so
Speaker 2: many companies develop these incredible management systems, only to watch
Speaker 2: at the board level once they get dismantled. And I've reize,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, governance is even more powerful than management.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of been like digging, digging down into
Speaker 2: the substrate layers that power our modern world. That's kind
Speaker 2: of how it's a felt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of people hear the word governance,
Speaker 1: governance and their eyes kind of glaze over.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it's so boring.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the worst thing ever. And since I mean,
Speaker 1: you're kind of known for talking about companies in the
Speaker 1: startup stage, like the early stages, it seems like this
Speaker 1: new book is about how not to fall apart as
Speaker 1: you become a grown up, right that you can actually
Speaker 1: transition into middle age and maybe even a ripe old
Speaker 1: age as a company. I'm curious what did lead you
Speaker 1: in that direction of making that pivot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, I've actually helped I don't know how many
Speaker 2: companies now start and have success. I've personally helped people
Speaker 2: create billions of dollars in personal wealth, you know, Like
Speaker 2: I've been around Silicon and it's incredible engine of wealth
Speaker 2: creation for a long time. So I'm very proud of
Speaker 2: that work, and I think it's amazing and very proud
Speaker 2: of the people who have who have done that successfully.
Speaker 2: And yet I have also been keenly aware of the
Speaker 2: dark underside of this whole thing, the human costs. And
Speaker 2: when we say that, people instantly think they know what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, and it really depends on what their
Speaker 2: background is. What I'm talking about. Is it the like
Speaker 2: the mistreatment of employees and the burnout. Is it the
Speaker 2: loss that those founders feel themselves when the creation that
Speaker 2: they made they lose control of it, it becomes something
Speaker 2: that they come to hate. Is it about the environmental
Speaker 2: or community effects of our Like there's so many things
Speaker 2: that was funny I say, the negative effects. Everyone thinks
Speaker 2: they know what I'm talking about. And my thesis in
Speaker 2: this new book is that all these different downsides are related. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not many different things, but one central error that we
Speaker 2: have made that we need to undo.
Speaker 1: And the book is called Incorruptible. I mean, the word
Speaker 1: corruption sounds like kind of a hard word. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think of, you know, people passing money in a
Speaker 1: dark alley. Why did you choose corruption?
Speaker 2: As I struggled this a lot, because I think part
Speaker 2: of the problem in our modern world is we've lost
Speaker 2: the ability to name things properly because we're so afraid
Speaker 2: of saying anything that might offend anybody else. And I
Speaker 2: just felt like, this, this is what our great grandparents
Speaker 2: would have called it. If they could see all the
Speaker 2: different ways we have invented in our modern world of
Speaker 2: making money without creating any value at all, many of
Speaker 2: those practices they would have seen not just as morally dubious,
Speaker 2: but like quite a few of them would literally have
Speaker 2: been crimes in our grandparents' time. So I feel like
Speaker 2: one of the changes over that period of time is
Speaker 2: we have just narrowed our sense of the word corruption.
Speaker 2: Now we think it only means embezzlement or fraud, but
Speaker 2: I think it should be we should embrace an older,
Speaker 2: more thorough understanding that it really involves any behavior in
Speaker 2: which people are making money without creating value.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's a lot of it. We could
Speaker 1: all point to our least favorite industries that may be
Speaker 1: making money without adding a huge amount of value to
Speaker 1: our lives. But the thing with this, I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: almost every company would claim to be mission driven. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe if running a running a scam front.
Speaker 1: I just got a scam call right before we so sorry,
Speaker 1: So it was the worst. It was somebody claiming to
Speaker 1: be from our sheriff's office, like saying that there was
Speaker 1: like a bench warrant out for my arrest. So there
Speaker 1: is not I looked.
Speaker 2: But so I'm so glad to hear it. But no, listen,
Speaker 2: we're seeing an epidemic of that stuff because AI tools
Speaker 2: make fraud and.
Speaker 1: Scar's so easy. But you know, that's clearly not adding value.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that company is claiming to be
Speaker 1: a mission driven company, but most normal ones probably are.
Speaker 1: So what what's the difference between you know, any random
Speaker 1: company claiming I am mission driven, you know, that is
Speaker 1: our central thing, and and those that really are incorruptible
Speaker 1: because they are so focused on that mission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I call them in the book mission hopeful, because
Speaker 2: I don't think you have to You don't have to
Speaker 2: assume any ill intent on the part of people that
Speaker 2: are saying this, and in fact, in the book, I
Speaker 2: say something that a lot of test readers had a
Speaker 2: hard time with because the look if someone tells you
Speaker 2: that their mission driven, tells you that you can trust them,
Speaker 2: but they haven't made the corresponding investments in an apparatus
Speaker 2: to keep those promises, then they are lying to you.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people are like, you can't say
Speaker 2: that about my boss. It's not fair. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a good guy, always a good guy. But like I
Speaker 2: was like, well, what's unfair about it. He doesn't mean
Speaker 2: to be lying. He sincerely believes he I'm like, that's
Speaker 2: not what I'm saying. He said you can trust him
Speaker 2: in the future, but he's lying because he doesn't even
Speaker 2: know if he's going to be there in the future.
Speaker 2: And I think that again, it's like we've lost our
Speaker 2: ability to say this with any kind of clarity. I
Speaker 2: tell a story in the book of I read dozens,
Speaker 2: I mean literally dozens of essays that people have written
Speaker 2: after leaving Google, longtime Google employees ten plus years, every
Speaker 2: single one of them talking about the loss of the
Speaker 2: don't be evil ethos at Google, one of the things
Speaker 2: we love the most. Anyone who was around for the
Speaker 2: Google IPO remembers the moral clarity of a slogan that's
Speaker 2: so simple, don't be evil, really simple words that that's
Speaker 2: something that can be lost. And listen, Google's a great company,
Speaker 2: I mean to say, at Google's like they're not even
Speaker 2: the close to the worst of the worst, Okay, But
Speaker 2: the fact that it's so publicly documented that despite every
Speaker 2: apparent best intention that I can find, they nonetheless felt
Speaker 2: this loss. You can see in these essays people write
Speaker 2: about this feeling that something mysterious was going on, that
Speaker 2: something vital was being lost, but they couldn't even say
Speaker 2: who was causing the loss. And that feeling of helplessness,
Speaker 2: of confusion, of mystery characterizes almost everyone I know who's
Speaker 2: trying to do anything good in business today, employees, customers.
Speaker 2: I mean, I keep telling this story about the economist
Speaker 2: John Kay I think is the one I had first
Speaker 2: heard it from, who went into a restaurant one of
Speaker 2: his favorite restaurants, took one bite and told his friend,
Speaker 2: I bet this restaurant's been taken over by private equity.
Speaker 2: I can taste it. And he looked, and so many people.
Speaker 2: I probably had a dozen people come up to me
Speaker 2: after giving this saying the story and telling me they
Speaker 2: know what restaurant I'm talking about, and it's twelve restaurants
Speaker 2: can be twelve different rests, which.
Speaker 1: We also So it's just private equity right now, I said,
Speaker 1: any you know you write in the book that profit
Speaker 1: attracts predators. Yes, but it's like, you want to make
Speaker 1: a profit, and I'm sure a great many founders would
Speaker 1: like to have some exit or otherwise, you know, get
Speaker 1: the financial benefits. So I mean, is there an actual
Speaker 1: governance structure that allows you to keep the original mission
Speaker 1: in the face of wanting to get good returns for
Speaker 1: everybody who put their money in at the beginning.
Speaker 2: The simple answer is yes, and most people don't believe it.
Speaker 2: Like we're so cynical and we're so been told that
Speaker 2: the way things are is the way they things have
Speaker 2: to be for natural law reasons that we actually often
Speaker 2: ignore the evidence that this is true. That's like staring
Speaker 2: us in the face. One of my favorite examples is Costcokay,
Speaker 2: everyone knows Costco, and yet most people don't understand the
Speaker 2: magic of how Costco has made So Costco's one of
Speaker 2: these companies. I call them the exceptions that prove the rule. So,
Speaker 2: like I was watching a video the other day economist
Speaker 2: I think, was talking about how only family run businesses
Speaker 2: can truly maintain brand integrity over generations, because if you
Speaker 2: want to have you want to have a brand promise
Speaker 2: that endures for more than ten years, you have to
Speaker 2: resist all the temptation of the ROI stuff and the
Speaker 2: spreadsheets and the quarterly targets and blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Bah's going and he's listing off the companies for Toyota Mars.
Speaker 2: You know, there's some family run companies. And then at
Speaker 2: the end of the video it's like, oh, and also
Speaker 2: Costco for some reason, Costco's not family run. They're not
Speaker 2: family run at all, but they're actually able to do
Speaker 2: this like kind of by magic, Like we treat it
Speaker 2: like this magic trick. And yet Costco is not alone.
Speaker 2: You know, anyone listening you have a Vanguard Mutual fund,
Speaker 2: do you ever buy everybody a Patagonia fleece? You ever
Speaker 2: drake Carlsberg beer and taken ozempic, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ever run for the Green Bay Packers, if you've ever
Speaker 2: watched Wallace and Grommet, like there's all these companies. Practically
Speaker 2: in every industry there's one that has some kind of
Speaker 2: unusual long term commitment to some higher value than just
Speaker 2: making money for itself. And if you study those exceptions,
Speaker 2: not a single one of them follows what I would
Speaker 2: call today's practices for corporate governance. So when people say
Speaker 2: that this is impossible, and you're like, okay, but if
Speaker 2: it's impossible, how come we have these exceptions, They'll be like, well,
Speaker 2: those exceptions are idiosyncratic, but they're like, but then how
Speaker 2: come they all follow this pattern? Like then you say, well,
Speaker 2: it's probably a coincidence. But then I'm like, oh no, actually,
Speaker 2: this pattern is old enough and we have enough examples
Speaker 2: that there's extensive academic evidence that this is a better way.
Speaker 1: And it's that they are not what are they not doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't want to be simplistic about it,
Speaker 2: because of course, this whole book is my attempt to
Speaker 2: put down the blueprint of how this works. And in
Speaker 2: order for this to work, people like to focus on
Speaker 2: the structures, of course, because they're very interesting. But first,
Speaker 2: before you can adopt any alternative structure, you first have
Speaker 2: to build something worth protecting. So the thing that makes
Speaker 2: these structures work is the internal alignment, the coherence that
Speaker 2: having a strong, purpose driven mission that is aligned with
Speaker 2: human flourishing makes possible. If you don't have that, you
Speaker 2: will not be able to achieve institutional longevity, and if
Speaker 2: you do, you will not sleep well at night by
Speaker 2: on when it came comes. So it's just like disclaimer,
Speaker 2: please don't skip over that. But yeah, if you look
Speaker 2: at these companies that I just named, they all have
Speaker 2: rejected the most important business idea of the twentieth and
Speaker 2: twenty first century, which is called shareholder privacy, which holds
Speaker 2: that the purpose of a corporation, the purpose of an
Speaker 2: organization really, because this is metastasized out of the public
Speaker 2: markets and into nonprofits and governments, you see it everywhere now.
Speaker 2: Its purpose is to create financial prosperity, to create financial
Speaker 2: returns for its investors or donors or for whoever. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we can't even say who it's for, which is like
Speaker 2: what we have to grow, we have to get bigger,
Speaker 2: we have to have more money. A lot of nonprofits
Speaker 2: schools fall into this trap all the time, and the
Speaker 2: desperation to make money first of all, makes you very
Speaker 2: weak because it makes you vulnerable to anyone who can threaten,
Speaker 2: credibly threatened to take your money away or offer you
Speaker 2: more money. So these companies are easy to tempt. They're
Speaker 2: basically addicts do anything for a hit, which is really
Speaker 2: quite sad. But worse than that, they have a governance
Speaker 2: structure that allows anybody who wants to take them over.
Speaker 2: And what's so interesting is if you do the first
Speaker 2: thing I talked about, build a company that accumulates this
Speaker 2: incredibly valuable asset. I call it the most underrated asset
Speaker 2: in the world today, trustworthiness. When people can trust you,
Speaker 2: you're going to make more money, You're going to have
Speaker 2: these huge competitive advantages. You're going to have higher employe morale,
Speaker 2: can have longer customer attention. There's amazing data about this.
Speaker 2: Companies that are trusted can raise money cheaper, Customers were
Speaker 2: more likely to stick with you if you make a mistake,
Speaker 2: Customers more likely to try your new products. I mean,
Speaker 2: just the benefits of trust. It's a compounding asset, and
Speaker 2: yet most leaders today are horribly naive about this. It's
Speaker 2: as if we've taught them how to create this vault
Speaker 2: full of this incredibly valuable asset. The most valuable asset
Speaker 2: in the world, and we're like, just leave it unlocked.
Speaker 2: Someone someone tries to steal it from you. Act shocked.
Speaker 2: It's like, what wilely shocked? It's valuable. Of course people
Speaker 2: are going to try to steal it from you, So
Speaker 2: you need to learn to build organizations that are strong
Speaker 2: enough to resist. And we see some of these structures
Speaker 2: like employee ownership, like having an industrial foundation of perpetual
Speaker 2: purpose trust, you know, being a public Pedican corp. Are
Speaker 2: our structural mechanisms. They're just locks on the door to
Speaker 2: prevent outsiders from taking what you've done.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
Speaker 1: I'll be back with more from Eric Reese. Well, I
Speaker 1: am back talking with Eric Reese, who is known as
Speaker 1: the founder of the lean startup method. He's also the
Speaker 1: author of the brand new book Incorruptible. You have a
Speaker 1: different definition for profit in your book, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about We've had other guests talk about this concept of
Speaker 1: flourishing on this show in the past. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could talk a little bit about your definition of
Speaker 1: profit and what you mean by that.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's going to sound radical at first to people
Speaker 2: who are not used to rethinking what profit is. But
Speaker 2: I assure you it's backed by really good evidence, and
Speaker 2: we'll walk you through the logic of why I think
Speaker 2: it's right. So I think to make a profit is
Speaker 2: simply to maximize human flourishing. That's literally what it means
Speaker 2: to be a for profit company. So already you can
Speaker 2: see that our current labels of for profit and nonprofit
Speaker 2: make no sense because you know, the Smithsonian Institute technically
Speaker 2: a nonprofit from a tax status perspective, but it creates
Speaker 2: lots of human flourishing and makes pretty good net income too.
Speaker 2: Philip Morris is a merchant of death, so although it
Speaker 2: has a lot of net income, it's not actually making profit.
Speaker 2: It's extracting money value out of the bodies, the human
Speaker 2: bodies that it destroys. So that's that's just a statement
Speaker 2: of fact. Like I don't think that's actually that radical
Speaker 2: when you think about it. But people say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: but if that's true, then we need to have like
Speaker 2: a new term we can't use. We can't redefine profit.
Speaker 2: We have to have double bottom line, triple bottom line.
Speaker 2: Fred Reikeld, who I really admire, has a concept be
Speaker 2: called good profits and bad profits and it's basically like,
Speaker 2: good profits are the profits that like create long term
Speaker 2: sustainability and allow customers to trust you and build your brand.
Speaker 2: Bad profits are any anything else. But I actually really
Speaker 2: want to push back on that. I don't understand why
Speaker 2: we have to say that bad profits are profits because
Speaker 2: these terms, we can define them however we want. And
Speaker 2: the most important thing I learned while writing this book
Speaker 2: was I really studied, like, how did we wind up
Speaker 2: in this shareholder primacy situation in the first place. And
Speaker 2: if you look at Milton Friedman and the other thinkers
Speaker 2: who really advanced this idea that the responsibility of a
Speaker 2: corporation is just to maximize its profits, it was a
Speaker 2: relatively small cabal of academics, judges, board members, lawyers who
Speaker 2: became enamored with this idea starting in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: and it only really became like real judge made law
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties. So it's not even that old
Speaker 2: of an idea. If you can see a tree right now,
Speaker 2: probably you're seeing something older than this idea. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: not some bedrock principle of capitalism. It's a new idea.
Speaker 2: And the key if you study all the stuff that
Speaker 2: they did. They never said, Look, we think it's better
Speaker 2: to have ruthlessly exploitative companies, So we should have two
Speaker 2: kinds of companies, the old kind, the purposeful based companies,
Speaker 2: and the new exploitave companies. And therefore we're going to
Speaker 2: have a double bottom line. We're not going to have two.
Speaker 2: They didn't do any of that. They never did that.
Speaker 2: They just said, the purpose of business is to do
Speaker 2: this thing. The definition of profit is this narrow thing.
Speaker 2: They just created a new business orthodoxy that we mostly
Speaker 2: have inherited unchallenged. So I think it doesn't make sense
Speaker 2: for us to go around creating all this new vocabulary
Speaker 2: when we could just define things properly in the first place.
Speaker 2: And if you take an economics class you will learn
Speaker 2: that the way we define profit today most people might say,
Speaker 2: what is a profit? They say, Oh, it's simple, it's
Speaker 2: just how much money do I have left over after
Speaker 2: I pay for all my expenses has these catastrophic conceptual
Speaker 2: flaws in it, because if you create massive deferred liabilities,
Speaker 2: like in the case of a Ponzi scheme, you can
Speaker 2: appear to be profitable when you're really not. If you
Speaker 2: don't account for your negative externalities, like if you do tobacco,
Speaker 2: smoke or pollution, and somebody else has to pay for
Speaker 2: the cleanup of the thing that you do. And most importantly,
Speaker 2: if you profit from the destruction of human lives. We
Speaker 2: don't have a good way to account for that as
Speaker 2: an input factor of production. So the costs of this
Speaker 2: behavior are not properly accounted for, so are we have.
Speaker 2: So we have to come up with a new definitive profits.
Speaker 2: Our conventional want is superflawed.
Speaker 1: Well, you talk about the idea of creating more value
Speaker 1: than you capture. I guess as a way to think
Speaker 1: about then the excess on top of the yeah, okay profit. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know it has business ramifications too. I imagine
Speaker 1: that people are more likely to stay with an organization
Speaker 1: that seems to be creating more valuable Oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's so much evidence. I mean, the book is
Speaker 2: just low. The citations of this book are almost as
Speaker 2: long as the book itself, because we're just I was like,
Speaker 2: I got to show you they have people are skeptical,
Speaker 2: so I got to show the evidence. I showed my work.
Speaker 2: You can reread the citationcy for yours that we have
Speaker 2: massive amounts of evidence that companies that have as their
Speaker 2: explicit intention to create more value than you capture, instead
Speaker 2: of just make as much money as they can by
Speaker 2: whatever means necessary, just reap all these counterintuitive benefits, including
Speaker 2: being more competitively advantageous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Eric, I want to pivot from that to
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about your schedule, since this is
Speaker 1: a show where we talktivity this the time. What does
Speaker 1: your schedule look like on a usual day.
Speaker 2: Boy, I have three young kids and twenty different jobs,
Speaker 2: so it's actually very very very chaotic. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm especially since my kids, you know, have gotten
Speaker 2: to three kids now, Like I'm very family oriented and
Speaker 2: very like a very local Whereas I used to travel
Speaker 2: all around and give lots of lectures and stuff, and
Speaker 2: now now I tend to mostly do stuff, uh work
Speaker 2: from home, And you know, it's so different when I'm writing.
Speaker 2: That's I try to do that all day, and I
Speaker 2: try to carve out as much time as i can
Speaker 2: for when i'm writing. You know, when I'm promoting and
Speaker 2: I'm doing a lot of interviews and I'm out there
Speaker 2: talking about the book. So you know, when companies call
Speaker 2: me for advice, which they do almost every day. Then
Speaker 2: I'm in the trenches with them. Like while while we're
Speaker 2: talking to someone, a founder is raising a Series A
Speaker 2: and he's texting me for term sheet, you know, tips,
Speaker 2: and what do they say to this investor, like literally
Speaker 2: as we talk. So yeah, I feel like the privilege
Speaker 2: of what I do is just it's endlessly intellectually stimulating,
Speaker 2: and it has so much variety to it. It doesn't
Speaker 2: tend to stay stable from day one day to the next.
Speaker 1: But do you have any routines that you think make
Speaker 1: you more productive?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I'm very I'm very clear about my priorities.
Speaker 2: So I'm willing to tolerate a lot of schedule chaos
Speaker 2: because it's just like, look this, this is these are
Speaker 2: the priorities. These are the ways in which I need
Speaker 2: to I need to schedule. I you know, I'm up
Speaker 2: very lucky to have a long time and very trusted
Speaker 2: assistant who can help me manage manage my time, and
Speaker 2: I just try really hard not to spend time on
Speaker 2: logistics and scheduling and the meadow work about work, and
Speaker 2: as much as possible delegate that so that like my
Speaker 2: time is spent on the actual substance whatever that substance
Speaker 2: may be all right.
Speaker 1: We're going to take one more quick ad break, then
Speaker 1: I'll be born back with more from Eric Reees. Well,
Speaker 1: I am back talking with Eric Reese is the author
Speaker 1: of the brand new book Incorruptible. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: his schedule now with three young kids. Is your morning?
Speaker 1: So this is a show called Before Breakfast. So people
Speaker 1: are always curious about the mornings. Is the morning sort
Speaker 1: of when they wake up or totally yeah, No, no
Speaker 1: hour long thing of green juice and meditation.
Speaker 2: Those days are long, long since over. I mean, the
Speaker 2: most meditative thing I do in the morning most mornings
Speaker 2: is I take my three year old downstairs and you know,
Speaker 2: we sit on the couch and we read a book.
Speaker 2: She's in a Thomas the Train mode now, So I'm
Speaker 2: like rereading these old Thomas the Train books that I
Speaker 2: know that I read with my other kids when they
Speaker 2: were really young. So yes, I can. I can recite
Speaker 2: many lines of verse from Thomas the Train, you know,
Speaker 2: and from these from these younger posts. So like I
Speaker 2: kind of like, yes, it's a little bit difficult because
Speaker 2: you know, I might I don't set my own schedule
Speaker 2: in that way. You know, I'm holding to their to
Speaker 2: their schedule, and we have to make that transition every
Speaker 2: morning as they like get used to the fact that
Speaker 2: you know, they're to now reconnect with the wider world.
Speaker 2: It can be challenging, but I feel like it's also
Speaker 2: I just I start every day with this like dose
Speaker 2: of gratitude, like here as these incredible beings that they
Speaker 2: still want me in their life enough that this is
Speaker 2: how they want to start their day. So I try
Speaker 2: to keep it in perspective. But yes, from a from
Speaker 2: a work logistics perspective, it is a little bit complicated too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, for sure, I'm curious you kind of
Speaker 1: have a bit of a lean startup mindset with your
Speaker 1: own life. I mean, are you are you trying things
Speaker 1: out as you figuring out what your next big thing
Speaker 1: is going to be at any given point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm very experimental in my own work. And
Speaker 2: it's not so much that I'm like explicitly trying to
Speaker 2: apply the startup. It's just that I'm very scientific in
Speaker 2: like that I like to applied so many method whenever possible,
Speaker 2: and I'm also very willing to try new things. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe that makes me. I mean, we're just
Speaker 2: used to the uncertainty of being around startups all the time.
Speaker 2: So most of the time when someone proposes something to me,
Speaker 2: if it has any merit at all, I'll be like, well,
Speaker 2: let's try, you know, and I won't be like will
Speaker 2: be like, hey, Like I get all the calls these days,
Speaker 2: like hey, can we digitize your entire all your writing
Speaker 2: and train an AI on it? And you know, have
Speaker 2: people talk to you and I talking to the AI
Speaker 2: instead of talking to you. And I'm like, that doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like too good of an idea. That doesn't really
Speaker 2: appeal to me. That's actually taking out the most interesting
Speaker 2: part of my job and getting rid of it. That's
Speaker 2: not really a good idea. But like, but even with that,
Speaker 2: I'll be like, well, you're all going to try it. Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a good idea, It doesn't sound
Speaker 2: great to me. But if you want to run an experiment, like,
Speaker 2: I'm open to it. And I try to be super
Speaker 2: open to the serendipity that that happens when you put
Speaker 2: ideas out into the world and just and see what
Speaker 2: comes back to you.
Speaker 1: And then are you quick to sort of kill things
Speaker 1: if they're not working? I mean, is that how you
Speaker 1: get you have.
Speaker 2: To do a lot of experiments. You have to just
Speaker 2: be like, you know what this is, it's not working,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna let it go and then and
Speaker 2: it's tricky because letting it go when it at first
Speaker 2: doesn't work is super easy. The hard part is like
Speaker 2: when you've been involved with something for a while and
Speaker 2: you nonetheless have to let it go. And as a founder,
Speaker 2: this is a huge issue because my experience, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe other founders are different, Like I know some founders
Speaker 2: who've been able to stay with one company their whole life,
Speaker 2: which which job, which I totally admire, but that hasn't
Speaker 2: been my experience. My experience has been that like when
Speaker 2: when I'm doing the magic trick of being a founder,
Speaker 2: like something comes over me, like I have access all
Speaker 2: of a sudden to this incredible persuasive power I have
Speaker 2: access to, you know, people come out of that would
Speaker 2: work to help me and to provide resources. Like it's
Speaker 2: a really i feel like I'm channeling something way bigger
Speaker 2: than myself, and when it's time for me to do
Speaker 2: something else, it goes away. And the people it's hard.
Speaker 2: I recognize how hard it is for the people around me,
Speaker 2: because they're like, hey, can you do the magic trick
Speaker 2: for me? And then then I say no, I can't
Speaker 2: do it anymore, and they think I'm withholding, you know,
Speaker 2: They're like, well, come on, if you really love me,
Speaker 2: you do it. And it's like I hear you, I said,
Speaker 2: I totally hear you. It's amazing how far we got.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful that you come on this journey with me,
Speaker 2: but like, actually, it's time now for you to do
Speaker 2: the magic trick. You've got to take it over from me.
Speaker 2: You got to take it on. And that has been
Speaker 2: has been a recurring source of tremendous challenge and stress
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, trying lots of different things is always is
Speaker 1: always good. I always ask my guests, what is something
Speaker 1: you have done recently to take a day from great
Speaker 1: to awesome?
Speaker 2: M oh Man, from great to awesome? I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm so blessed. I have so many stories like that.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that really blew my mind. So,
Speaker 2: just to paint the picture for you, when I was
Speaker 2: writing this book, I basically realized at a certain point I've
Speaker 2: been working on for several years that I was like
Speaker 2: headed for a true disaster because the book had basically
Speaker 2: gotten twice or three times as long as it needed
Speaker 2: to be because there's so much detail to these techniques
Speaker 2: that people desperately need to know, and I had to
Speaker 2: find a way to cut. I actually had to cut
Speaker 2: a whole book out of this book to get it
Speaker 2: to the length and the thing. And I just like
Speaker 2: I was extremely, extremely daunted and unlike as I was
Speaker 2: really struggling with this. One of the companies that I
Speaker 2: had helped found is an AI research lab called answer AI,
Speaker 2: and we have a very contrariant thesis about AI. We
Speaker 2: don't think that you should ever use AI to replace
Speaker 2: human creativity. You should only use it to amplify human creativity.
Speaker 2: And mostly at the time we had used the technology
Speaker 2: that we've developed for programming as everybody's doing. So we've
Speaker 2: built these really cool tools. People can go to answer
Speaker 2: I and learn all about it. I think it's super cool,
Speaker 2: But we had always said at the beginning we were
Speaker 2: going to try to use it for non technical tasks.
Speaker 2: Also had helped start a law firm. We'd start done
Speaker 2: a legal work with it, and a certain point I
Speaker 2: was like, I wonder if this can help me with
Speaker 2: writing and editing and researching. And I was very nervous
Speaker 2: because you know, if you tell people that you used
Speaker 2: AI these days to help you write a book, people
Speaker 2: get super super agitated about it, which I completely understand,
Speaker 2: and I have very mixed feelings about it. My work
Speaker 2: was illegally used without my consent to train these models
Speaker 2: in the first place. If you ask them to imitate
Speaker 2: my voice, they do a really good job because my
Speaker 2: data is all I'm all over the training data. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I had real ambivalents about it. But I had several
Speaker 2: moments where I just as once I started to build
Speaker 2: out this really highly customized rig for myself where I
Speaker 2: wasn't asking it to write for me, but just to
Speaker 2: help me like overcome my my natural adhd overcome like
Speaker 2: that feeling of like I'm at a blank page, I
Speaker 2: don't even know what to do today, or like help
Speaker 2: me organize my thought. I had a bunch of days
Speaker 2: where I was like really in the writing flow, had
Speaker 2: this awesome feeling about it, which normally, when you're an
Speaker 2: author you get that, you get that only so rarely.
Speaker 2: This is an extremely rare experience, and it was incredible
Speaker 2: to feel like, wait, am I have I done something
Speaker 2: that's going to allow me to have that sensation more often?
Speaker 2: Which just was incredible, So like, yeah, that was that
Speaker 2: was something that took a whole bunch of days from
Speaker 2: from great to awesome for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, it's always good to be in the flow,
Speaker 1: and toil can make that happen, then it's then it's good.
Speaker 1: So Eric, where can people find you?
Speaker 2: I'm very easy to get a hold of if you
Speaker 2: want to learn more about the new book, Incorruptible. We
Speaker 2: have a website called incorruptible dot co where people can
Speaker 2: get bonus content. There's actually one of the secret chapters
Speaker 2: that I I was just mentioning that I had to
Speaker 2: cut out of the book is only available to those
Speaker 2: who pre order and or order the book right when
Speaker 2: it comes out. It's not going to be available long term,
Speaker 2: as well as a whole bunch of implementation guides for
Speaker 2: people that want to the really meaty, detailed work of this.
Speaker 2: You can also find me on all the normal social
Speaker 2: media places. I'm most active on Blue Sky, but I
Speaker 2: have a lot of following on LinkedIn, and people can
Speaker 2: buy the book in any format you want Okay, you
Speaker 2: can get it in hardcover, you can get it in an ebook.
Speaker 2: You can I just finished recording the audiobook, which has
Speaker 2: a bunch of cool bonus content and also audiobook is
Speaker 2: super cool, very excited about it. But the other thing
Speaker 2: you can do, this book is going to be carried
Speaker 2: in lots and lots and lots of local independent bookstores.
Speaker 2: We actually have a huge list of books of bookstores
Speaker 2: that are carrying the book on the website. If you
Speaker 2: go to in Cruble dot co. You really want to
Speaker 2: do me a favor and do your community a favor,
Speaker 2: buy the book at local bookstore, support these important local
Speaker 2: community institutions, or of course, you can buy it wherever
Speaker 2: it's most convenient for you. I'm so grateful to those
Speaker 2: who want to do that. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Eric, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
Speaker 1: about this or any other episode, you can always reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
Speaker 1: to making them of our time. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, You
Speaker 1: can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
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