May 27, 2026 • 26 mins
Eric Ries, author of Incorruptible, talks about how to stay focused on a mission
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
(00:23):
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Eric Rest to Before Breakfast.
Eric is the creator of the Lean Startup method. He
is also the author of The Lean Startup and the
brand new book Incorruptible. So, Eric, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. So why don't
you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Sure? Yeah, I was one of those people that grew
up programming computers. I couldn't believe it when I found
out you could get paid for computer programming, like it
was a job you could have. I was so excited
as a kid, and I thought technology was the most
powerful force in the universe, so I wanted to learn
to harness it. And my career is basically a series
of me realizing that there's something more and powerful than
whatever I previously thought was the most powerful force in
(01:02):
the universe. So when I found out that technology is
created by human beings, I realized that actually management is
a more powerful force. And lately I've been helping so
many companies develop these incredible management systems, only to watch
at the board level once they get dismantled. And I've reize,
wait a minute, governance is even more powerful than management.
So it's kind of been like digging, digging down into
the substrate layers that power our modern world. That's kind
(01:23):
of how it's a felt.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I think a lot of people hear the word governance,
governance and their eyes kind of glaze over.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh god, it's so boring.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
It sounds like the worst thing ever. And since I mean,
you're kind of known for talking about companies in the
startup stage, like the early stages, it seems like this
new book is about how not to fall apart as
you become a grown up, right that you can actually
transition into middle age and maybe even a ripe old
age as a company. I'm curious what did lead you
in that direction of making that pivot.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, listen, I've actually helped I don't know how many
companies now start and have success. I've personally helped people
create billions of dollars in personal wealth, you know, Like
I've been around Silicon and it's incredible engine of wealth
creation for a long time. So I'm very proud of
that work, and I think it's amazing and very proud
of the people who have who have done that successfully.
And yet I have also been keenly aware of the
dark underside of this whole thing, the human costs. And
(02:14):
when we say that, people instantly think they know what
I'm talking about, and it really depends on what their
background is. What I'm talking about. Is it the like
the mistreatment of employees and the burnout. Is it the
loss that those founders feel themselves when the creation that
they made they lose control of it, it becomes something
that they come to hate. Is it about the environmental
or community effects of our Like there's so many things
(02:35):
that was funny I say, the negative effects. Everyone thinks
they know what I'm talking about. And my thesis in
this new book is that all these different downsides are related. Yeah,
not many different things, but one central error that we
have made that we need to undo.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And the book is called Incorruptible. I mean, the word
corruption sounds like kind of a hard word. I mean,
I think of, you know, people passing money in a
dark alley. Why did you choose corruption?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
As I struggled this a lot, because I think part
of the problem in our modern world is we've lost
the ability to name things properly because we're so afraid
of saying anything that might offend anybody else. And I
just felt like, this, this is what our great grandparents
would have called it. If they could see all the
different ways we have invented in our modern world of
making money without creating any value at all, many of
(03:21):
those practices they would have seen not just as morally dubious,
but like quite a few of them would literally have
been crimes in our grandparents' time. So I feel like
one of the changes over that period of time is
we have just narrowed our sense of the word corruption.
Now we think it only means embezzlement or fraud, but
I think it should be we should embrace an older,
(03:41):
more thorough understanding that it really involves any behavior in
which people are making money without creating value.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And I'm sure there's a lot of it. We could
all point to our least favorite industries that may be
making money without adding a huge amount of value to
our lives. But the thing with this, I mean, I imagine
almost every company would claim to be mission driven. I mean,
you know, maybe if running a running a scam front.
I just got a scam call right before we so sorry,
(04:10):
So it was the worst. It was somebody claiming to
be from our sheriff's office, like saying that there was
like a bench warrant out for my arrest. So there
is not I looked.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But so I'm so glad to hear it. But no, listen,
we're seeing an epidemic of that stuff because AI tools
make fraud and.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Scar's so easy. But you know, that's clearly not adding value.
And I don't think that company is claiming to be
a mission driven company, but most normal ones probably are.
So what what's the difference between you know, any random
company claiming I am mission driven, you know, that is
our central thing, and and those that really are incorruptible
(04:46):
because they are so focused on that mission.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, I call them in the book mission hopeful, because
I don't think you have to You don't have to
assume any ill intent on the part of people that
are saying this, and in fact, in the book, I
say something that a lot of test readers had a
hard time with because the look if someone tells you
that their mission driven, tells you that you can trust them,
but they haven't made the corresponding investments in an apparatus
to keep those promises, then they are lying to you.
(05:10):
And a lot of people are like, you can't say
that about my boss. It's not fair. You know, he's
a good guy, always a good guy. But like I
was like, well, what's unfair about it. He doesn't mean
to be lying. He sincerely believes he I'm like, that's
not what I'm saying. He said you can trust him
in the future, but he's lying because he doesn't even
know if he's going to be there in the future.
(05:31):
And I think that again, it's like we've lost our
ability to say this with any kind of clarity. I
tell a story in the book of I read dozens,
I mean literally dozens of essays that people have written
after leaving Google, longtime Google employees ten plus years, every
single one of them talking about the loss of the
don't be evil ethos at Google, one of the things
(05:52):
we love the most. Anyone who was around for the
Google IPO remembers the moral clarity of a slogan that's
so simple, don't be evil, really simple words that that's
something that can be lost. And listen, Google's a great company,
I mean to say, at Google's like they're not even
the close to the worst of the worst, Okay, But
the fact that it's so publicly documented that despite every
apparent best intention that I can find, they nonetheless felt
(06:14):
this loss. You can see in these essays people write
about this feeling that something mysterious was going on, that
something vital was being lost, but they couldn't even say
who was causing the loss. And that feeling of helplessness,
of confusion, of mystery characterizes almost everyone I know who's
trying to do anything good in business today, employees, customers.
(06:35):
I mean, I keep telling this story about the economist
John Kay I think is the one I had first
heard it from, who went into a restaurant one of
his favorite restaurants, took one bite and told his friend,
I bet this restaurant's been taken over by private equity.
I can taste it. And he looked, and so many people.
I probably had a dozen people come up to me
after giving this saying the story and telling me they
know what restaurant I'm talking about, and it's twelve restaurants
(06:58):
can be twelve different rests, which.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We also So it's just private equity right now, I said,
any you know you write in the book that profit
attracts predators. Yes, but it's like, you want to make
a profit, and I'm sure a great many founders would
like to have some exit or otherwise, you know, get
the financial benefits. So I mean, is there an actual
governance structure that allows you to keep the original mission
(07:26):
in the face of wanting to get good returns for
everybody who put their money in at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
The simple answer is yes, and most people don't believe it.
Like we're so cynical and we're so been told that
the way things are is the way they things have
to be for natural law reasons that we actually often
ignore the evidence that this is true. That's like staring
us in the face. One of my favorite examples is Costcokay,
everyone knows Costco, and yet most people don't understand the
(07:52):
magic of how Costco has made So Costco's one of
these companies. I call them the exceptions that prove the rule. So,
like I was watching a video the other day economist
I think, was talking about how only family run businesses
can truly maintain brand integrity over generations, because if you
want to have you want to have a brand promise
that endures for more than ten years, you have to
resist all the temptation of the ROI stuff and the
(08:14):
spreadsheets and the quarterly targets and blah blah blah blah.
Bah's going and he's listing off the companies for Toyota Mars.
You know, there's some family run companies. And then at
the end of the video it's like, oh, and also
Costco for some reason, Costco's not family run. They're not
family run at all, but they're actually able to do
this like kind of by magic, Like we treat it
like this magic trick. And yet Costco is not alone.
You know, anyone listening you have a Vanguard Mutual fund,
(08:35):
do you ever buy everybody a Patagonia fleece? You ever
drake Carlsberg beer and taken ozempic, you know, if you
ever run for the Green Bay Packers, if you've ever
watched Wallace and Grommet, like there's all these companies. Practically
in every industry there's one that has some kind of
unusual long term commitment to some higher value than just
making money for itself. And if you study those exceptions,
(08:56):
not a single one of them follows what I would
call today's practices for corporate governance. So when people say
that this is impossible, and you're like, okay, but if
it's impossible, how come we have these exceptions, They'll be like, well,
those exceptions are idiosyncratic, but they're like, but then how
come they all follow this pattern? Like then you say, well,
it's probably a coincidence. But then I'm like, oh no, actually,
this pattern is old enough and we have enough examples
(09:18):
that there's extensive academic evidence that this is a better way.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And it's that they are not what are they not doing?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, So I don't want to be simplistic about it,
because of course, this whole book is my attempt to
put down the blueprint of how this works. And in
order for this to work, people like to focus on
the structures, of course, because they're very interesting. But first,
before you can adopt any alternative structure, you first have
to build something worth protecting. So the thing that makes
these structures work is the internal alignment, the coherence that
(09:48):
having a strong, purpose driven mission that is aligned with
human flourishing makes possible. If you don't have that, you
will not be able to achieve institutional longevity, and if
you do, you will not sleep well at night by
on when it came comes. So it's just like disclaimer,
please don't skip over that. But yeah, if you look
at these companies that I just named, they all have
rejected the most important business idea of the twentieth and
twenty first century, which is called shareholder privacy, which holds
(10:11):
that the purpose of a corporation, the purpose of an
organization really, because this is metastasized out of the public
markets and into nonprofits and governments, you see it everywhere now.
Its purpose is to create financial prosperity, to create financial
returns for its investors or donors or for whoever. Sometimes
we can't even say who it's for, which is like
what we have to grow, we have to get bigger,
we have to have more money. A lot of nonprofits
(10:33):
schools fall into this trap all the time, and the
desperation to make money first of all, makes you very
weak because it makes you vulnerable to anyone who can threaten,
credibly threatened to take your money away or offer you
more money. So these companies are easy to tempt. They're
basically addicts do anything for a hit, which is really
quite sad. But worse than that, they have a governance
(10:53):
structure that allows anybody who wants to take them over.
And what's so interesting is if you do the first
thing I talked about, build a company that accumulates this
incredibly valuable asset. I call it the most underrated asset
in the world today, trustworthiness. When people can trust you,
you're going to make more money, You're going to have
these huge competitive advantages. You're going to have higher employe morale,
can have longer customer attention. There's amazing data about this.
(11:14):
Companies that are trusted can raise money cheaper, Customers were
more likely to stick with you if you make a mistake,
Customers more likely to try your new products. I mean,
just the benefits of trust. It's a compounding asset, and
yet most leaders today are horribly naive about this. It's
as if we've taught them how to create this vault
full of this incredibly valuable asset. The most valuable asset
(11:35):
in the world, and we're like, just leave it unlocked.
Someone someone tries to steal it from you. Act shocked.
It's like, what wilely shocked? It's valuable. Of course people
are going to try to steal it from you, So
you need to learn to build organizations that are strong
enough to resist. And we see some of these structures
like employee ownership, like having an industrial foundation of perpetual
purpose trust, you know, being a public Pedican corp. Are
our structural mechanisms. They're just locks on the door to
(11:58):
prevent outsiders from taking what you've done.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
I'll be back with more from Eric Reese. Well, I
am back talking with Eric Reese, who is known as
the founder of the lean startup method. He's also the
author of the brand new book Incorruptible. You have a
(12:21):
different definition for profit in your book, and we've talked
about We've had other guests talk about this concept of
flourishing on this show in the past. I wonder if
you could talk a little bit about your definition of
profit and what you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Okay, it's going to sound radical at first to people
who are not used to rethinking what profit is. But
I assure you it's backed by really good evidence, and
we'll walk you through the logic of why I think
it's right. So I think to make a profit is
simply to maximize human flourishing. That's literally what it means
to be a for profit company. So already you can
see that our current labels of for profit and nonprofit
(12:56):
make no sense because you know, the Smithsonian Institute technically
a nonprofit from a tax status perspective, but it creates
lots of human flourishing and makes pretty good net income too.
Philip Morris is a merchant of death, so although it
has a lot of net income, it's not actually making profit.
It's extracting money value out of the bodies, the human
(13:17):
bodies that it destroys. So that's that's just a statement
of fact. Like I don't think that's actually that radical
when you think about it. But people say, well, okay,
but if that's true, then we need to have like
a new term we can't use. We can't redefine profit.
We have to have double bottom line, triple bottom line.
Fred Reikeld, who I really admire, has a concept be
called good profits and bad profits and it's basically like,
good profits are the profits that like create long term
(13:37):
sustainability and allow customers to trust you and build your brand.
Bad profits are any anything else. But I actually really
want to push back on that. I don't understand why
we have to say that bad profits are profits because
these terms, we can define them however we want. And
the most important thing I learned while writing this book
was I really studied, like, how did we wind up
in this shareholder primacy situation in the first place. And
(13:59):
if you look at Milton Friedman and the other thinkers
who really advanced this idea that the responsibility of a
corporation is just to maximize its profits, it was a
relatively small cabal of academics, judges, board members, lawyers who
became enamored with this idea starting in the sixties and seventies,
and it only really became like real judge made law
in the nineteen eighties. So it's not even that old
(14:20):
of an idea. If you can see a tree right now,
probably you're seeing something older than this idea. Okay, it's
not some bedrock principle of capitalism. It's a new idea.
And the key if you study all the stuff that
they did. They never said, Look, we think it's better
to have ruthlessly exploitative companies, So we should have two
kinds of companies, the old kind, the purposeful based companies,
and the new exploitave companies. And therefore we're going to
have a double bottom line. We're not going to have two.
(14:42):
They didn't do any of that. They never did that.
They just said, the purpose of business is to do
this thing. The definition of profit is this narrow thing.
They just created a new business orthodoxy that we mostly
have inherited unchallenged. So I think it doesn't make sense
for us to go around creating all this new vocabulary
when we could just define things properly in the first place.
And if you take an economics class you will learn
(15:03):
that the way we define profit today most people might say,
what is a profit? They say, Oh, it's simple, it's
just how much money do I have left over after
I pay for all my expenses has these catastrophic conceptual
flaws in it, because if you create massive deferred liabilities,
like in the case of a Ponzi scheme, you can
appear to be profitable when you're really not. If you
don't account for your negative externalities, like if you do tobacco,
(15:23):
smoke or pollution, and somebody else has to pay for
the cleanup of the thing that you do. And most importantly,
if you profit from the destruction of human lives. We
don't have a good way to account for that as
an input factor of production. So the costs of this
behavior are not properly accounted for, so are we have.
So we have to come up with a new definitive profits.
Our conventional want is superflawed.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well, you talk about the idea of creating more value
than you capture. I guess as a way to think
about then the excess on top of the yeah, okay profit. Well,
and you know it has business ramifications too. I imagine
that people are more likely to stay with an organization
that seems to be creating more valuable Oh.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yes, there's so much evidence. I mean, the book is
just low. The citations of this book are almost as
long as the book itself, because we're just I was like,
I got to show you they have people are skeptical,
so I got to show the evidence. I showed my work.
You can reread the citationcy for yours that we have
massive amounts of evidence that companies that have as their
explicit intention to create more value than you capture, instead
of just make as much money as they can by
(16:22):
whatever means necessary, just reap all these counterintuitive benefits, including
being more competitively advantageous.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, so, Eric, I want to pivot from that to
talking a little bit about your schedule, since this is
a show where we talktivity this the time. What does
your schedule look like on a usual day.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Boy, I have three young kids and twenty different jobs,
so it's actually very very very chaotic. Yeah, you know,
I'm I'm especially since my kids, you know, have gotten
to three kids now, Like I'm very family oriented and
very like a very local Whereas I used to travel
all around and give lots of lectures and stuff, and
now now I tend to mostly do stuff, uh work
(17:01):
from home, And you know, it's so different when I'm writing.
That's I try to do that all day, and I
try to carve out as much time as i can
for when i'm writing. You know, when I'm promoting and
I'm doing a lot of interviews and I'm out there
talking about the book. So you know, when companies call
me for advice, which they do almost every day. Then
I'm in the trenches with them. Like while while we're
talking to someone, a founder is raising a Series A
(17:22):
and he's texting me for term sheet, you know, tips,
and what do they say to this investor, like literally
as we talk. So yeah, I feel like the privilege
of what I do is just it's endlessly intellectually stimulating,
and it has so much variety to it. It doesn't
tend to stay stable from day one day to the next.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But do you have any routines that you think make
you more productive?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah? I mean, I'm very I'm very clear about my priorities.
So I'm willing to tolerate a lot of schedule chaos
because it's just like, look this, this is these are
the priorities. These are the ways in which I need
to I need to schedule. I you know, I'm up
very lucky to have a long time and very trusted
assistant who can help me manage manage my time, and
I just try really hard not to spend time on
(18:02):
logistics and scheduling and the meadow work about work, and
as much as possible delegate that so that like my
time is spent on the actual substance whatever that substance
may be all right.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We're going to take one more quick ad break, then
I'll be born back with more from Eric Reees. Well,
I am back talking with Eric Reese is the author
of the brand new book Incorruptible. We've been talking about
his schedule now with three young kids. Is your morning?
So this is a show called Before Breakfast. So people
(18:33):
are always curious about the mornings. Is the morning sort
of when they wake up or totally yeah, No, no
hour long thing of green juice and meditation.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Those days are long, long since over. I mean, the
most meditative thing I do in the morning most mornings
is I take my three year old downstairs and you know,
we sit on the couch and we read a book.
She's in a Thomas the Train mode now, So I'm
like rereading these old Thomas the Train books that I
know that I read with my other kids when they
were really young. So yes, I can. I can recite
(19:04):
many lines of verse from Thomas the Train, you know,
and from these from these younger posts. So like I
kind of like, yes, it's a little bit difficult because
you know, I might I don't set my own schedule
in that way. You know, I'm holding to their to
their schedule, and we have to make that transition every
morning as they like get used to the fact that
you know, they're to now reconnect with the wider world.
It can be challenging, but I feel like it's also
(19:26):
I just I start every day with this like dose
of gratitude, like here as these incredible beings that they
still want me in their life enough that this is
how they want to start their day. So I try
to keep it in perspective. But yes, from a from
a work logistics perspective, it is a little bit complicated too.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, of course, for sure, I'm curious you kind of
have a bit of a lean startup mindset with your
own life. I mean, are you are you trying things
out as you figuring out what your next big thing
is going to be at any given point.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm very experimental in my own work. And
it's not so much that I'm like explicitly trying to
apply the startup. It's just that I'm very scientific in
like that I like to applied so many method whenever possible,
and I'm also very willing to try new things. I
don't know, maybe that makes me. I mean, we're just
used to the uncertainty of being around startups all the time.
So most of the time when someone proposes something to me,
if it has any merit at all, I'll be like, well,
(20:13):
let's try, you know, and I won't be like will
be like, hey, Like I get all the calls these days,
like hey, can we digitize your entire all your writing
and train an AI on it? And you know, have
people talk to you and I talking to the AI
instead of talking to you. And I'm like, that doesn't
sound like too good of an idea. That doesn't really
appeal to me. That's actually taking out the most interesting
part of my job and getting rid of it. That's
not really a good idea. But like, but even with that,
I'll be like, well, you're all going to try it. Like,
(20:35):
I don't think it's a good idea, It doesn't sound
great to me. But if you want to run an experiment, like,
I'm open to it. And I try to be super
open to the serendipity that that happens when you put
ideas out into the world and just and see what
comes back to you.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And then are you quick to sort of kill things
if they're not working? I mean, is that how you
get you have.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
To do a lot of experiments. You have to just
be like, you know what this is, it's not working,
I'm gonna I'm gonna let it go and then and
it's tricky because letting it go when it at first
doesn't work is super easy. The hard part is like
when you've been involved with something for a while and
you nonetheless have to let it go. And as a founder,
this is a huge issue because my experience, I don't know,
maybe other founders are different, Like I know some founders
(21:10):
who've been able to stay with one company their whole life,
which which job, which I totally admire, but that hasn't
been my experience. My experience has been that like when
when I'm doing the magic trick of being a founder,
like something comes over me, like I have access all
of a sudden to this incredible persuasive power I have
access to, you know, people come out of that would
work to help me and to provide resources. Like it's
(21:31):
a really i feel like I'm channeling something way bigger
than myself, and when it's time for me to do
something else, it goes away. And the people it's hard.
I recognize how hard it is for the people around me,
because they're like, hey, can you do the magic trick
for me? And then then I say no, I can't
do it anymore, and they think I'm withholding, you know,
They're like, well, come on, if you really love me,
you do it. And it's like I hear you, I said,
I totally hear you. It's amazing how far we got.
(21:53):
I'm so grateful that you come on this journey with me,
but like, actually, it's time now for you to do
the magic trick. You've got to take it over from me.
You got to take it on. And that has been
has been a recurring source of tremendous challenge and stress
in my life.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Well, trying lots of different things is always is
always good. I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
M oh Man, from great to awesome? I feel like
I'm so blessed. I have so many stories like that.
I think one of the things that really blew my mind. So,
just to paint the picture for you, when I was
writing this book, I basically realized at a certain point I've
(22:34):
been working on for several years that I was like
headed for a true disaster because the book had basically
gotten twice or three times as long as it needed
to be because there's so much detail to these techniques
that people desperately need to know, and I had to
find a way to cut. I actually had to cut
a whole book out of this book to get it
to the length and the thing. And I just like
(22:56):
I was extremely, extremely daunted and unlike as I was
really struggling with this. One of the companies that I
had helped found is an AI research lab called answer AI,
and we have a very contrariant thesis about AI. We
don't think that you should ever use AI to replace
human creativity. You should only use it to amplify human creativity.
And mostly at the time we had used the technology
that we've developed for programming as everybody's doing. So we've
(23:17):
built these really cool tools. People can go to answer
I and learn all about it. I think it's super cool,
But we had always said at the beginning we were
going to try to use it for non technical tasks.
Also had helped start a law firm. We'd start done
a legal work with it, and a certain point I
was like, I wonder if this can help me with
writing and editing and researching. And I was very nervous
because you know, if you tell people that you used
AI these days to help you write a book, people
(23:37):
get super super agitated about it, which I completely understand,
and I have very mixed feelings about it. My work
was illegally used without my consent to train these models
in the first place. If you ask them to imitate
my voice, they do a really good job because my
data is all I'm all over the training data. So anyway,
I had real ambivalents about it. But I had several
moments where I just as once I started to build
out this really highly customized rig for myself where I
(24:01):
wasn't asking it to write for me, but just to
help me like overcome my my natural adhd overcome like
that feeling of like I'm at a blank page, I
don't even know what to do today, or like help
me organize my thought. I had a bunch of days
where I was like really in the writing flow, had
this awesome feeling about it, which normally, when you're an
author you get that, you get that only so rarely.
This is an extremely rare experience, and it was incredible
(24:23):
to feel like, wait, am I have I done something
that's going to allow me to have that sensation more often?
Which just was incredible, So like, yeah, that was that
was something that took a whole bunch of days from
from great to awesome for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Well, hey, it's always good to be in the flow,
and toil can make that happen, then it's then it's good.
So Eric, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I'm very easy to get a hold of if you
want to learn more about the new book, Incorruptible. We
have a website called incorruptible dot co where people can
get bonus content. There's actually one of the secret chapters
that I I was just mentioning that I had to
cut out of the book is only available to those
who pre order and or order the book right when
it comes out. It's not going to be available long term,
as well as a whole bunch of implementation guides for
people that want to the really meaty, detailed work of this.
(25:03):
You can also find me on all the normal social
media places. I'm most active on Blue Sky, but I
have a lot of following on LinkedIn, and people can
buy the book in any format you want Okay, you
can get it in hardcover, you can get it in an ebook.
You can I just finished recording the audiobook, which has
a bunch of cool bonus content and also audiobook is
super cool, very excited about it. But the other thing
(25:23):
you can do, this book is going to be carried
in lots and lots and lots of local independent bookstores.
We actually have a huge list of books of bookstores
that are carrying the book on the website. If you
go to in Cruble dot co. You really want to
do me a favor and do your community a favor,
buy the book at local bookstore, support these important local
community institutions, or of course, you can buy it wherever
it's most convenient for you. I'm so grateful to those
who want to do that. Well.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Thank you so much, Eric, thank you for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making them of our time. Thanks for listening to
(26:08):
Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, You
can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(26:31):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
(00:23):
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Eric Rest to Before Breakfast.
Eric is the creator of the Lean Startup method. He
is also the author of The Lean Startup and the
brand new book Incorruptible. So, Eric, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. So why don't
you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Sure? Yeah, I was one of those people that grew
up programming computers. I couldn't believe it when I found
out you could get paid for computer programming, like it
was a job you could have. I was so excited
as a kid, and I thought technology was the most
powerful force in the universe, so I wanted to learn
to harness it. And my career is basically a series
of me realizing that there's something more and powerful than
whatever I previously thought was the most powerful force in
(01:02):
the universe. So when I found out that technology is
created by human beings, I realized that actually management is
a more powerful force. And lately I've been helping so
many companies develop these incredible management systems, only to watch
at the board level once they get dismantled. And I've reize,
wait a minute, governance is even more powerful than management.
So it's kind of been like digging, digging down into
the substrate layers that power our modern world. That's kind
(01:23):
of how it's a felt.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I think a lot of people hear the word governance,
governance and their eyes kind of glaze over.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh god, it's so boring.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
It sounds like the worst thing ever. And since I mean,
you're kind of known for talking about companies in the
startup stage, like the early stages, it seems like this
new book is about how not to fall apart as
you become a grown up, right that you can actually
transition into middle age and maybe even a ripe old
age as a company. I'm curious what did lead you
in that direction of making that pivot.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, listen, I've actually helped I don't know how many
companies now start and have success. I've personally helped people
create billions of dollars in personal wealth, you know, Like
I've been around Silicon and it's incredible engine of wealth
creation for a long time. So I'm very proud of
that work, and I think it's amazing and very proud
of the people who have who have done that successfully.
And yet I have also been keenly aware of the
dark underside of this whole thing, the human costs. And
(02:14):
when we say that, people instantly think they know what
I'm talking about, and it really depends on what their
background is. What I'm talking about. Is it the like
the mistreatment of employees and the burnout. Is it the
loss that those founders feel themselves when the creation that
they made they lose control of it, it becomes something
that they come to hate. Is it about the environmental
or community effects of our Like there's so many things
(02:35):
that was funny I say, the negative effects. Everyone thinks
they know what I'm talking about. And my thesis in
this new book is that all these different downsides are related. Yeah,
not many different things, but one central error that we
have made that we need to undo.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And the book is called Incorruptible. I mean, the word
corruption sounds like kind of a hard word. I mean,
I think of, you know, people passing money in a
dark alley. Why did you choose corruption?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
As I struggled this a lot, because I think part
of the problem in our modern world is we've lost
the ability to name things properly because we're so afraid
of saying anything that might offend anybody else. And I
just felt like, this, this is what our great grandparents
would have called it. If they could see all the
different ways we have invented in our modern world of
making money without creating any value at all, many of
(03:21):
those practices they would have seen not just as morally dubious,
but like quite a few of them would literally have
been crimes in our grandparents' time. So I feel like
one of the changes over that period of time is
we have just narrowed our sense of the word corruption.
Now we think it only means embezzlement or fraud, but
I think it should be we should embrace an older,
(03:41):
more thorough understanding that it really involves any behavior in
which people are making money without creating value.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And I'm sure there's a lot of it. We could
all point to our least favorite industries that may be
making money without adding a huge amount of value to
our lives. But the thing with this, I mean, I imagine
almost every company would claim to be mission driven. I mean,
you know, maybe if running a running a scam front.
I just got a scam call right before we so sorry,
(04:10):
So it was the worst. It was somebody claiming to
be from our sheriff's office, like saying that there was
like a bench warrant out for my arrest. So there
is not I looked.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But so I'm so glad to hear it. But no, listen,
we're seeing an epidemic of that stuff because AI tools
make fraud and.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Scar's so easy. But you know, that's clearly not adding value.
And I don't think that company is claiming to be
a mission driven company, but most normal ones probably are.
So what what's the difference between you know, any random
company claiming I am mission driven, you know, that is
our central thing, and and those that really are incorruptible
(04:46):
because they are so focused on that mission.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, I call them in the book mission hopeful, because
I don't think you have to You don't have to
assume any ill intent on the part of people that
are saying this, and in fact, in the book, I
say something that a lot of test readers had a
hard time with because the look if someone tells you
that their mission driven, tells you that you can trust them,
but they haven't made the corresponding investments in an apparatus
to keep those promises, then they are lying to you.
(05:10):
And a lot of people are like, you can't say
that about my boss. It's not fair. You know, he's
a good guy, always a good guy. But like I
was like, well, what's unfair about it. He doesn't mean
to be lying. He sincerely believes he I'm like, that's
not what I'm saying. He said you can trust him
in the future, but he's lying because he doesn't even
know if he's going to be there in the future.
(05:31):
And I think that again, it's like we've lost our
ability to say this with any kind of clarity. I
tell a story in the book of I read dozens,
I mean literally dozens of essays that people have written
after leaving Google, longtime Google employees ten plus years, every
single one of them talking about the loss of the
don't be evil ethos at Google, one of the things
(05:52):
we love the most. Anyone who was around for the
Google IPO remembers the moral clarity of a slogan that's
so simple, don't be evil, really simple words that that's
something that can be lost. And listen, Google's a great company,
I mean to say, at Google's like they're not even
the close to the worst of the worst, Okay, But
the fact that it's so publicly documented that despite every
apparent best intention that I can find, they nonetheless felt
(06:14):
this loss. You can see in these essays people write
about this feeling that something mysterious was going on, that
something vital was being lost, but they couldn't even say
who was causing the loss. And that feeling of helplessness,
of confusion, of mystery characterizes almost everyone I know who's
trying to do anything good in business today, employees, customers.
(06:35):
I mean, I keep telling this story about the economist
John Kay I think is the one I had first
heard it from, who went into a restaurant one of
his favorite restaurants, took one bite and told his friend,
I bet this restaurant's been taken over by private equity.
I can taste it. And he looked, and so many people.
I probably had a dozen people come up to me
after giving this saying the story and telling me they
know what restaurant I'm talking about, and it's twelve restaurants
(06:58):
can be twelve different rests, which.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We also So it's just private equity right now, I said,
any you know you write in the book that profit
attracts predators. Yes, but it's like, you want to make
a profit, and I'm sure a great many founders would
like to have some exit or otherwise, you know, get
the financial benefits. So I mean, is there an actual
governance structure that allows you to keep the original mission
(07:26):
in the face of wanting to get good returns for
everybody who put their money in at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
The simple answer is yes, and most people don't believe it.
Like we're so cynical and we're so been told that
the way things are is the way they things have
to be for natural law reasons that we actually often
ignore the evidence that this is true. That's like staring
us in the face. One of my favorite examples is Costcokay,
everyone knows Costco, and yet most people don't understand the
(07:52):
magic of how Costco has made So Costco's one of
these companies. I call them the exceptions that prove the rule. So,
like I was watching a video the other day economist
I think, was talking about how only family run businesses
can truly maintain brand integrity over generations, because if you
want to have you want to have a brand promise
that endures for more than ten years, you have to
resist all the temptation of the ROI stuff and the
(08:14):
spreadsheets and the quarterly targets and blah blah blah blah.
Bah's going and he's listing off the companies for Toyota Mars.
You know, there's some family run companies. And then at
the end of the video it's like, oh, and also
Costco for some reason, Costco's not family run. They're not
family run at all, but they're actually able to do
this like kind of by magic, Like we treat it
like this magic trick. And yet Costco is not alone.
You know, anyone listening you have a Vanguard Mutual fund,
(08:35):
do you ever buy everybody a Patagonia fleece? You ever
drake Carlsberg beer and taken ozempic, you know, if you
ever run for the Green Bay Packers, if you've ever
watched Wallace and Grommet, like there's all these companies. Practically
in every industry there's one that has some kind of
unusual long term commitment to some higher value than just
making money for itself. And if you study those exceptions,
(08:56):
not a single one of them follows what I would
call today's practices for corporate governance. So when people say
that this is impossible, and you're like, okay, but if
it's impossible, how come we have these exceptions, They'll be like, well,
those exceptions are idiosyncratic, but they're like, but then how
come they all follow this pattern? Like then you say, well,
it's probably a coincidence. But then I'm like, oh no, actually,
this pattern is old enough and we have enough examples
(09:18):
that there's extensive academic evidence that this is a better way.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And it's that they are not what are they not doing?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, So I don't want to be simplistic about it,
because of course, this whole book is my attempt to
put down the blueprint of how this works. And in
order for this to work, people like to focus on
the structures, of course, because they're very interesting. But first,
before you can adopt any alternative structure, you first have
to build something worth protecting. So the thing that makes
these structures work is the internal alignment, the coherence that
(09:48):
having a strong, purpose driven mission that is aligned with
human flourishing makes possible. If you don't have that, you
will not be able to achieve institutional longevity, and if
you do, you will not sleep well at night by
on when it came comes. So it's just like disclaimer,
please don't skip over that. But yeah, if you look
at these companies that I just named, they all have
rejected the most important business idea of the twentieth and
twenty first century, which is called shareholder privacy, which holds
(10:11):
that the purpose of a corporation, the purpose of an
organization really, because this is metastasized out of the public
markets and into nonprofits and governments, you see it everywhere now.
Its purpose is to create financial prosperity, to create financial
returns for its investors or donors or for whoever. Sometimes
we can't even say who it's for, which is like
what we have to grow, we have to get bigger,
we have to have more money. A lot of nonprofits
(10:33):
schools fall into this trap all the time, and the
desperation to make money first of all, makes you very
weak because it makes you vulnerable to anyone who can threaten,
credibly threatened to take your money away or offer you
more money. So these companies are easy to tempt. They're
basically addicts do anything for a hit, which is really
quite sad. But worse than that, they have a governance
(10:53):
structure that allows anybody who wants to take them over.
And what's so interesting is if you do the first
thing I talked about, build a company that accumulates this
incredibly valuable asset. I call it the most underrated asset
in the world today, trustworthiness. When people can trust you,
you're going to make more money, You're going to have
these huge competitive advantages. You're going to have higher employe morale,
can have longer customer attention. There's amazing data about this.
(11:14):
Companies that are trusted can raise money cheaper, Customers were
more likely to stick with you if you make a mistake,
Customers more likely to try your new products. I mean,
just the benefits of trust. It's a compounding asset, and
yet most leaders today are horribly naive about this. It's
as if we've taught them how to create this vault
full of this incredibly valuable asset. The most valuable asset
(11:35):
in the world, and we're like, just leave it unlocked.
Someone someone tries to steal it from you. Act shocked.
It's like, what wilely shocked? It's valuable. Of course people
are going to try to steal it from you, So
you need to learn to build organizations that are strong
enough to resist. And we see some of these structures
like employee ownership, like having an industrial foundation of perpetual
purpose trust, you know, being a public Pedican corp. Are
our structural mechanisms. They're just locks on the door to
(11:58):
prevent outsiders from taking what you've done.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
I'll be back with more from Eric Reese. Well, I
am back talking with Eric Reese, who is known as
the founder of the lean startup method. He's also the
author of the brand new book Incorruptible. You have a
(12:21):
different definition for profit in your book, and we've talked
about We've had other guests talk about this concept of
flourishing on this show in the past. I wonder if
you could talk a little bit about your definition of
profit and what you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Okay, it's going to sound radical at first to people
who are not used to rethinking what profit is. But
I assure you it's backed by really good evidence, and
we'll walk you through the logic of why I think
it's right. So I think to make a profit is
simply to maximize human flourishing. That's literally what it means
to be a for profit company. So already you can
see that our current labels of for profit and nonprofit
(12:56):
make no sense because you know, the Smithsonian Institute technically
a nonprofit from a tax status perspective, but it creates
lots of human flourishing and makes pretty good net income too.
Philip Morris is a merchant of death, so although it
has a lot of net income, it's not actually making profit.
It's extracting money value out of the bodies, the human
(13:17):
bodies that it destroys. So that's that's just a statement
of fact. Like I don't think that's actually that radical
when you think about it. But people say, well, okay,
but if that's true, then we need to have like
a new term we can't use. We can't redefine profit.
We have to have double bottom line, triple bottom line.
Fred Reikeld, who I really admire, has a concept be
called good profits and bad profits and it's basically like,
good profits are the profits that like create long term
(13:37):
sustainability and allow customers to trust you and build your brand.
Bad profits are any anything else. But I actually really
want to push back on that. I don't understand why
we have to say that bad profits are profits because
these terms, we can define them however we want. And
the most important thing I learned while writing this book
was I really studied, like, how did we wind up
in this shareholder primacy situation in the first place. And
(13:59):
if you look at Milton Friedman and the other thinkers
who really advanced this idea that the responsibility of a
corporation is just to maximize its profits, it was a
relatively small cabal of academics, judges, board members, lawyers who
became enamored with this idea starting in the sixties and seventies,
and it only really became like real judge made law
in the nineteen eighties. So it's not even that old
(14:20):
of an idea. If you can see a tree right now,
probably you're seeing something older than this idea. Okay, it's
not some bedrock principle of capitalism. It's a new idea.
And the key if you study all the stuff that
they did. They never said, Look, we think it's better
to have ruthlessly exploitative companies, So we should have two
kinds of companies, the old kind, the purposeful based companies,
and the new exploitave companies. And therefore we're going to
have a double bottom line. We're not going to have two.
(14:42):
They didn't do any of that. They never did that.
They just said, the purpose of business is to do
this thing. The definition of profit is this narrow thing.
They just created a new business orthodoxy that we mostly
have inherited unchallenged. So I think it doesn't make sense
for us to go around creating all this new vocabulary
when we could just define things properly in the first place.
And if you take an economics class you will learn
(15:03):
that the way we define profit today most people might say,
what is a profit? They say, Oh, it's simple, it's
just how much money do I have left over after
I pay for all my expenses has these catastrophic conceptual
flaws in it, because if you create massive deferred liabilities,
like in the case of a Ponzi scheme, you can
appear to be profitable when you're really not. If you
don't account for your negative externalities, like if you do tobacco,
(15:23):
smoke or pollution, and somebody else has to pay for
the cleanup of the thing that you do. And most importantly,
if you profit from the destruction of human lives. We
don't have a good way to account for that as
an input factor of production. So the costs of this
behavior are not properly accounted for, so are we have.
So we have to come up with a new definitive profits.
Our conventional want is superflawed.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well, you talk about the idea of creating more value
than you capture. I guess as a way to think
about then the excess on top of the yeah, okay profit. Well,
and you know it has business ramifications too. I imagine
that people are more likely to stay with an organization
that seems to be creating more valuable Oh.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yes, there's so much evidence. I mean, the book is
just low. The citations of this book are almost as
long as the book itself, because we're just I was like,
I got to show you they have people are skeptical,
so I got to show the evidence. I showed my work.
You can reread the citationcy for yours that we have
massive amounts of evidence that companies that have as their
explicit intention to create more value than you capture, instead
of just make as much money as they can by
(16:22):
whatever means necessary, just reap all these counterintuitive benefits, including
being more competitively advantageous.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, so, Eric, I want to pivot from that to
talking a little bit about your schedule, since this is
a show where we talktivity this the time. What does
your schedule look like on a usual day.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Boy, I have three young kids and twenty different jobs,
so it's actually very very very chaotic. Yeah, you know,
I'm I'm especially since my kids, you know, have gotten
to three kids now, Like I'm very family oriented and
very like a very local Whereas I used to travel
all around and give lots of lectures and stuff, and
now now I tend to mostly do stuff, uh work
(17:01):
from home, And you know, it's so different when I'm writing.
That's I try to do that all day, and I
try to carve out as much time as i can
for when i'm writing. You know, when I'm promoting and
I'm doing a lot of interviews and I'm out there
talking about the book. So you know, when companies call
me for advice, which they do almost every day. Then
I'm in the trenches with them. Like while while we're
talking to someone, a founder is raising a Series A
(17:22):
and he's texting me for term sheet, you know, tips,
and what do they say to this investor, like literally
as we talk. So yeah, I feel like the privilege
of what I do is just it's endlessly intellectually stimulating,
and it has so much variety to it. It doesn't
tend to stay stable from day one day to the next.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But do you have any routines that you think make
you more productive?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah? I mean, I'm very I'm very clear about my priorities.
So I'm willing to tolerate a lot of schedule chaos
because it's just like, look this, this is these are
the priorities. These are the ways in which I need
to I need to schedule. I you know, I'm up
very lucky to have a long time and very trusted
assistant who can help me manage manage my time, and
I just try really hard not to spend time on
(18:02):
logistics and scheduling and the meadow work about work, and
as much as possible delegate that so that like my
time is spent on the actual substance whatever that substance
may be all right.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We're going to take one more quick ad break, then
I'll be born back with more from Eric Reees. Well,
I am back talking with Eric Reese is the author
of the brand new book Incorruptible. We've been talking about
his schedule now with three young kids. Is your morning?
So this is a show called Before Breakfast. So people
(18:33):
are always curious about the mornings. Is the morning sort
of when they wake up or totally yeah, No, no
hour long thing of green juice and meditation.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Those days are long, long since over. I mean, the
most meditative thing I do in the morning most mornings
is I take my three year old downstairs and you know,
we sit on the couch and we read a book.
She's in a Thomas the Train mode now, So I'm
like rereading these old Thomas the Train books that I
know that I read with my other kids when they
were really young. So yes, I can. I can recite
(19:04):
many lines of verse from Thomas the Train, you know,
and from these from these younger posts. So like I
kind of like, yes, it's a little bit difficult because
you know, I might I don't set my own schedule
in that way. You know, I'm holding to their to
their schedule, and we have to make that transition every
morning as they like get used to the fact that
you know, they're to now reconnect with the wider world.
It can be challenging, but I feel like it's also
(19:26):
I just I start every day with this like dose
of gratitude, like here as these incredible beings that they
still want me in their life enough that this is
how they want to start their day. So I try
to keep it in perspective. But yes, from a from
a work logistics perspective, it is a little bit complicated too.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, of course, for sure, I'm curious you kind of
have a bit of a lean startup mindset with your
own life. I mean, are you are you trying things
out as you figuring out what your next big thing
is going to be at any given point.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm very experimental in my own work. And
it's not so much that I'm like explicitly trying to
apply the startup. It's just that I'm very scientific in
like that I like to applied so many method whenever possible,
and I'm also very willing to try new things. I
don't know, maybe that makes me. I mean, we're just
used to the uncertainty of being around startups all the time.
So most of the time when someone proposes something to me,
if it has any merit at all, I'll be like, well,
(20:13):
let's try, you know, and I won't be like will
be like, hey, Like I get all the calls these days,
like hey, can we digitize your entire all your writing
and train an AI on it? And you know, have
people talk to you and I talking to the AI
instead of talking to you. And I'm like, that doesn't
sound like too good of an idea. That doesn't really
appeal to me. That's actually taking out the most interesting
part of my job and getting rid of it. That's
not really a good idea. But like, but even with that,
I'll be like, well, you're all going to try it. Like,
(20:35):
I don't think it's a good idea, It doesn't sound
great to me. But if you want to run an experiment, like,
I'm open to it. And I try to be super
open to the serendipity that that happens when you put
ideas out into the world and just and see what
comes back to you.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And then are you quick to sort of kill things
if they're not working? I mean, is that how you
get you have.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
To do a lot of experiments. You have to just
be like, you know what this is, it's not working,
I'm gonna I'm gonna let it go and then and
it's tricky because letting it go when it at first
doesn't work is super easy. The hard part is like
when you've been involved with something for a while and
you nonetheless have to let it go. And as a founder,
this is a huge issue because my experience, I don't know,
maybe other founders are different, Like I know some founders
(21:10):
who've been able to stay with one company their whole life,
which which job, which I totally admire, but that hasn't
been my experience. My experience has been that like when
when I'm doing the magic trick of being a founder,
like something comes over me, like I have access all
of a sudden to this incredible persuasive power I have
access to, you know, people come out of that would
work to help me and to provide resources. Like it's
(21:31):
a really i feel like I'm channeling something way bigger
than myself, and when it's time for me to do
something else, it goes away. And the people it's hard.
I recognize how hard it is for the people around me,
because they're like, hey, can you do the magic trick
for me? And then then I say no, I can't
do it anymore, and they think I'm withholding, you know,
They're like, well, come on, if you really love me,
you do it. And it's like I hear you, I said,
I totally hear you. It's amazing how far we got.
(21:53):
I'm so grateful that you come on this journey with me,
but like, actually, it's time now for you to do
the magic trick. You've got to take it over from me.
You got to take it on. And that has been
has been a recurring source of tremendous challenge and stress
in my life.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Well, trying lots of different things is always is
always good. I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
M oh Man, from great to awesome? I feel like
I'm so blessed. I have so many stories like that.
I think one of the things that really blew my mind. So,
just to paint the picture for you, when I was
writing this book, I basically realized at a certain point I've
(22:34):
been working on for several years that I was like
headed for a true disaster because the book had basically
gotten twice or three times as long as it needed
to be because there's so much detail to these techniques
that people desperately need to know, and I had to
find a way to cut. I actually had to cut
a whole book out of this book to get it
to the length and the thing. And I just like
(22:56):
I was extremely, extremely daunted and unlike as I was
really struggling with this. One of the companies that I
had helped found is an AI research lab called answer AI,
and we have a very contrariant thesis about AI. We
don't think that you should ever use AI to replace
human creativity. You should only use it to amplify human creativity.
And mostly at the time we had used the technology
that we've developed for programming as everybody's doing. So we've
(23:17):
built these really cool tools. People can go to answer
I and learn all about it. I think it's super cool,
But we had always said at the beginning we were
going to try to use it for non technical tasks.
Also had helped start a law firm. We'd start done
a legal work with it, and a certain point I
was like, I wonder if this can help me with
writing and editing and researching. And I was very nervous
because you know, if you tell people that you used
AI these days to help you write a book, people
(23:37):
get super super agitated about it, which I completely understand,
and I have very mixed feelings about it. My work
was illegally used without my consent to train these models
in the first place. If you ask them to imitate
my voice, they do a really good job because my
data is all I'm all over the training data. So anyway,
I had real ambivalents about it. But I had several
moments where I just as once I started to build
out this really highly customized rig for myself where I
(24:01):
wasn't asking it to write for me, but just to
help me like overcome my my natural adhd overcome like
that feeling of like I'm at a blank page, I
don't even know what to do today, or like help
me organize my thought. I had a bunch of days
where I was like really in the writing flow, had
this awesome feeling about it, which normally, when you're an
author you get that, you get that only so rarely.
This is an extremely rare experience, and it was incredible
(24:23):
to feel like, wait, am I have I done something
that's going to allow me to have that sensation more often?
Which just was incredible, So like, yeah, that was that
was something that took a whole bunch of days from
from great to awesome for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Well, hey, it's always good to be in the flow,
and toil can make that happen, then it's then it's good.
So Eric, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I'm very easy to get a hold of if you
want to learn more about the new book, Incorruptible. We
have a website called incorruptible dot co where people can
get bonus content. There's actually one of the secret chapters
that I I was just mentioning that I had to
cut out of the book is only available to those
who pre order and or order the book right when
it comes out. It's not going to be available long term,
as well as a whole bunch of implementation guides for
people that want to the really meaty, detailed work of this.
(25:03):
You can also find me on all the normal social
media places. I'm most active on Blue Sky, but I
have a lot of following on LinkedIn, and people can
buy the book in any format you want Okay, you
can get it in hardcover, you can get it in an ebook.
You can I just finished recording the audiobook, which has
a bunch of cool bonus content and also audiobook is
super cool, very excited about it. But the other thing
(25:23):
you can do, this book is going to be carried
in lots and lots and lots of local independent bookstores.
We actually have a huge list of books of bookstores
that are carrying the book on the website. If you
go to in Cruble dot co. You really want to
do me a favor and do your community a favor,
buy the book at local bookstore, support these important local
community institutions, or of course, you can buy it wherever
it's most convenient for you. I'm so grateful to those
who want to do that. Well.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Thank you so much, Eric, thank you for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making them of our time. Thanks for listening to
(26:08):
Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, You
can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(26:31):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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