June 20, 2024 • 57 mins
In this episode, we sit down with Tony Aghazarian, co-founder of Lighthouse Insight, who shares his unique journey from a diverse upbringing in Pinole, California, to an influential career in tech. Tony’s story is a testament to how a challenging childhood filled with diverse perspectives can ignite adaptability and a deep understanding of the world around you.
Tony's professional journey is nothing short of exhilarating. From his early days at Sony, where he navigated the decline of CRT technology, to his pivotal role at Apple, where he contributed to the emergence of iconic products like the iMac and iPhone, Tony's career is marked by innovation and leadership.
Tony also reflects on his transition from a high-profile tech career to impactful geopolitical work, including humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. His story is a never ending evolving journey of the eternal problem solver.
https://www.lighthouseinsight.com
www.slightlyprod.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tony Aghazarian (00:01):
Fortunately for me, the company was absolutely
crazy and you know Steve was notinterested in the normal way,
and so we would get all mannerof crazy requests and crazy
things to go do.
It wasn't like me saying I'mgoing to keep my head down and
do what the company needs.
It was I'm going to wait untilthe company asks for crazy and
(00:24):
then I'm going to step up.
Jennifer Coronado (00:26):
Hello and welcome to Everyone Is I am your
host, jennifer Coronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all types of people
and build an understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success has achieved thatsuccess because they are a
creative thinker.
So, whether you are an artistor a cook, or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
(00:46):
human conversation.
And now, as they say, on withthe show.
Tony Aghazarian (00:53):
Thank you very much for coming.
To Everyone Is.
Jennifer Coronado (00:56):
If you could take a second to, for the record
, state your name and what yourrole is, that would be great.
Tony Aghazarian (01:02):
Hi.
Yeah, thanks for inviting me.
My name is Tony Aghazarian andI have had a tough time
describing what I am.
I don't like to be defined somuch, but I guess recently we
started a company calledLighthouse Insight
lighthouseinsightcom and somepeople would consider it a
(01:22):
consulting company.
Jennifer Coronado (01:24):
One of the reasons we have you here today,
Tony, is because a friend ofours said you got to talk to
this guy.
He's so interesting, and so Iwant to talk to you about where
you started.
So where were you born?
Where'd you grow up?
Tony Aghazarian (01:38):
In the East Bay , California, a little town
called Pinole, which is closerto Berkeley, I guess is what
most people would know.
Jennifer Coronado (01:46):
What did your parents do for a living?
Tony Aghazarian (01:48):
Father was an engineer with a private company,
a large private company calledBechtel, and later worked for
FEMA, and my mother was amusician and a teacher, special
eds teacher.
Jennifer Coronado (02:03):
Your dad worked for Bechtel and then
worked for FEMA, so one istechnology and one is
mission-driven government work.
What made him transition thatway and what impact did that
have on you as you were lookingat that?
Tony Aghazarian (02:17):
So that happened after I became an adult
and he wanted to stop workingso many hours and and slowed
down a little bit but didn'twant to.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople end up going, you know,
60 hours a week until I hit abrick wall and then go to zero.
I actually did learn from himto maybe you know something less
(02:38):
than 60 hours is a good thingto transition into at some stage
in your life.
And he started working for FEMA, but in very much the same way
where there's a disaster andthey need to rebuild a hospital,
and so he would use the samecivil engineering, electrical
engineering type of skill setsbut to help rebuild after a
disaster.
But he could come in onprojects and leave as he needed.
Jennifer Coronado (02:59):
Yeah, and you said your mom was a teacher and
a musician.
What sort of impact did thathave on you?
Tony Aghazarian (03:05):
Yeah, she is by far the most unusual thinker
I've ever met.
She's very unusual and probablyon some sort of dysfunctional
psychological issue kind ofunusual, but amazing in terms of
all the things she had taughtme.
(03:25):
She would raise, she became afoster parent and so, but she
was so good with special needsthat we would end up getting so
many brothers and sisters I havehad over 150 foster brothers
and sisters and they would showup with still blood on their
shoes because the whole familylost except for them, and the
(03:46):
police would just drive them toour house and so they would be
short term until somegrandmother or some aunt would
come over and help.
But some of them would lastfour or six months if it was an
abuse situation and there's justno one available because these
(04:06):
children were, you know, sooften disturbed that they needed
not just a normal foster family.
I grew up with just all mannerof insanity around the house of,
you know, kids running aroundthat are just not normal and
difficult, struggling, and thatwas normal for me.
Jennifer Coronado (04:19):
And what did so?
It was normal, and are you anonly child or do you have
siblings?
What did so?
It was normal, and are you anonly child or do you have
siblings?
Tony Aghazarian (04:24):
I'm the youngest of five, so I have two,
two brothers, two sisters, anduh and and so, yeah, that was um
, and because my mother was busywith, at least sometimes, five
other foster brothers andsisters, so a family of 10,
oftentimes I was just, you know,following along and so I, in
(04:44):
effect, had the rules of myoldest brother, you know, seven
years older than me, which youknow served me disruptively in
my teenage years, when there'sno curfews and no rules that
your mom brought in, and didthat help you learn to deal with
(05:05):
different types of people, ordid it make you want to behave
differently?
Jennifer Coronado (05:11):
Or how did you engage with your friends who
didn't have that similar setupLike how did that work for you?
Tony Aghazarian (05:17):
I tended to, and still tend to, believe that
they were all correct.
I mean meaning, they all had amindset, and so I was.
I was the youngest, so I alwaysassumed that everyone else had
the right ideas and the rightmindsets.
And so when I saw two differentmindsets, I got to work at, you
(05:39):
know, disentangling it so thatit made sense to me, and so I
could get to the point where Igo.
Well, I understand why thatperson feels that way, and I
understand why that person feelsthat way.
And so now the world makessense to me, and so I didn't
have to necessarily make themagree, I just had to understand,
you know, where they werecoming from.
So, and so I ended up gettingpretty good at seeing the
(06:00):
perspective of wildly differentpeople, from damaged and
disturbed to highly functional.
Jennifer Coronado (06:06):
And you ended up going to Cal Poly, right.
Tony Aghazarian (06:08):
Yeah yeah, I studied physics at Cal Poly.
It was the major that I didn'tthink I wanted to study, but it
was the hardest one and I wantedrigor mostly, and so I just
wanted to learn how to learn,and so I figured I could learn
about business or other thingsin kind of the school of hard
knocks.
And you know, become anentrepreneur or something was my
(06:28):
idea at the moment.
But I thought I'm never goingto learn physics in the school
of hard knocks.
I'm going to need to, you know,buckle down and learn the math
and learn the scientificbackground and rigor.
That really helped at thatpoint pivot my career towards
STEM that really helped at thatpoint, pivot my career towards
STEM.
Jennifer Coronado (06:47):
Now explain to me why was the rigor
important to you when it came toapproaching what you wanted to
do in university.
Tony Aghazarian (06:51):
Remember, you're talking to a teenager.
And so I was a horrible highschool student.
It didn't show up very much, Iwas just out goofing around with
my friends.
And once I graduated I went offto college, because that's what
a successful person would doand so.
But I couldn't get into a goodcollege because I had, like the,
(07:12):
you know, c, d average, and soI decided to go to a community
college and I started screwingaround there and I realized
suddenly that no one cares Ifyou don't show up to class in
junior college.
You're just paying money for noreason and no one cares at all.
So I got a reality dose of likewhat am I doing?
(07:32):
This is for me, it's not foranyone else.
And so that kind of pivoted tome.
It's like so what am I doinghere?
Why am I doing this?
And so then I became a prettydecent student and got my
two-year degree moved up toSouth Lake Tahoe, actually,
because I thought I'd ski whileI went to school, which worked
out well, and I ended up pickingcolleges that were in pleasant
(07:54):
places to be, like San LuisObispo, and I chose the major.
At that point I decided thatbeing a student was what I was
going to do, and I'm going to doit well.
And so I became a good studentand I decided to go take on the
hardest classes I could take.
Once I got to Cal Poly, I nolonger was the best student, but
I did take the hardest classes.
Jennifer Coronado (08:16):
Was there anyone who helped you along the
way?
Was there like did you have amentor or someone who pointed
you in the right direction, orwas it all self-discovery?
Tony Aghazarian (08:23):
I think at that point it was all self-discovery
.
You know friends, family, lotsof influences, but no mentor per
se or somebody you know pushingme along.
Jennifer Coronado (08:32):
You're majoring in physics.
You're coming to the end ofyour senior year, Tony, and
we're approaching life.
So what were you thinking asyou were getting towards the end
of that and thinking about?
All right, here's what my nextsteps are, because it sounds
like you're starting to giveyourself parameters to follow.
So were you defining anadditional step for yourself at
that point, or was it still moreloose?
Tony Aghazarian (08:53):
I wanted a job and I felt a little bit ashamed
at the moment because if you'rea undergraduate physics student
in the nineties, you would neverget a job.
You would go to academia andbecome a teacher or go into
research somewhere, but workingin industry was, for you know,
was so frowned upon and all theexamples you had of physicists
(09:16):
were your teachers.
So I was kind of skulking abouttrying to get a job without
letting anyone know about it.
And one of my internships wassuper interesting.
It was cloud seeding, and Idon't know if you've heard of
cloud seeding, but it'sbasically, you know, putting
silver iodide into clouds andmaking it rain.
And this industry was actuallyreally for the power industry,
(09:37):
so they were running gigs out ofCosta Rica trying to increase
rainfall over reservoirs thathad hydroelectric dams and would
be able to increase energyflows with more rainfall.
I was working the radar andthere was a pilot who would go
up and fly through the clouds,and what was nice about that was
that if it was sunny outsideyou could go to the beach, and
if it was rainy and cloudy yougo to work.
And my teachers were prettyunderstanding that if it was
(09:59):
raining cloudy, I might have toskip a class or something.
So it was a good internship andI thought to myself, maybe I'll
do that for a career, becausethat involves that was kind of
fun.
And uh, but my wife, elena umwho at that time was my
girlfriend Elena um said hey, uh, just go to the career center
and look at those boards and,you know, see what else is out
(10:19):
there and just interview.
And so I ended up interviewingfor Sony Electronics, who
accidentally included physics inthe list of majors that they
were going to interview.
Jennifer Coronado (10:29):
Accidentally.
How did they do that?
Did you ever find out how thathappened or what?
Tony Aghazarian (10:33):
I don't.
I don't understand the CareerCenter, how it worked and how
they were applying.
And you know, I think when youshow up to interview you tell
them which majors you'reinterested in, and so somehow
they got physics in the list,which majors you're interested
in, and so somehow they gotphysics in the list, which ended
up being fantastic.
It was a great first job for mebecause we were working on
something called a CRT andnowadays people don't know what
(10:56):
that is.
But what a great collection ofphysics in one little glass box.
It's got an, you know, it's gotan electric electron gun, and
it's got phosphorescence andit's got, you know, high voltage
and it's just wonderful.
Jennifer Coronado (11:09):
When I first started in visual effects, that
was the monitor everybody wasusing, and the one that you had
to pry out of there called DeadHands, as the new monitors were
coming.
Tony Aghazarian (11:19):
Yeah, the Trinitron was the best of the
best, and so I became a CRTprocess engineer and so having
to tune magnetic fields to getthe electron beams to go right
between the wires and land onthe phosphors, and it was a
wonderful experience for me.
Jennifer Coronado (11:41):
How long were you at Sony?
Tony Aghazarian (11:52):
About five years I worked in San Diego at
their design technology center,and then how long were you at?
Sony, ultimately helped themoutsource to a Korean company
called LG, which was a littleless known then, and and then
after that I I knew that it wastime to transition back out of
(12:16):
Tijuana, and so I poked my headaround and I started to get
worried about the CRT industryas flat panels were starting to
come into existence and it waspretty obvious that I would be
in the unemployment line withthe eight track tape engineers
and the vinyl record engineersif I wasn't careful.
So you know the.
So I started looking around andthis company you know Apple
(12:37):
computer had a iMac factorywhich had a CRT inside of it,
those old blueberry, bulbousiMacs, which is one of the first
computers where predominantlywomen bought actually it's a
beautiful machine.
And the factory had burned downin Mexico and so they were
starting a factory in Sacramentoand they knew everything but
how to make CRTs, and so I wasable to pivot out of the CRT
(13:00):
industry and into the computerindustry without taking kind of
a sub-lateral change in career.
So that was like for me, alifeline.
Jennifer Coronado (13:10):
When you did the Apple thing, did you have a
connection there and that's howyou got in?
Or did you just hold apply,send a resume in, as we did in
the past, or how did that workfor you?
Tony Aghazarian (13:20):
No, just a fantastic engineer named Chris
Mortensen was there and justresearched and looked around and
found me and asked me to comeup for an interview, and the
interview just went really long.
I showed up and the next thingI know they didn't know anything
about CRT.
So they're trying to quiz me,but they don't know what to ask,
and so the fun part was theyjust took me to the factory
(13:42):
floor and started walking aroundand I spent a few hours fixing
things on the line and they'relike okay, this is right, and so
that was a perfect fit for me.
Jennifer Coronado (13:52):
You fix things on the line for them.
Tony Aghazarian (13:54):
Yeah, in the interview they were having
troubles with magnetic fieldsand things like that and they
didn't understand the impact ofmagnetic fields on, on, on TVs.
And you know, at the early daysof TVs you had to actually
position your TV, you know,carefully in the in your house
even to get it to work correctly.
Uh, but because of what we wereable to do in a factory to make
(14:15):
it tuned for all directions,you don't have a problem when
you bring it home, but if youdon't have the magnetic field
right in the factory, you'regoing to have a problem if
somebody turns their monitorfacing north in their living
room.
And so you know, we had to bevery conscientious of what was
the magnetic fields like in thefactory.
So you have to actually developa series of magnetic coils,
(14:36):
like you know, two meters indiameter, to control magnetic
fields around your factory.
And so again, a wonderfulapplication of physics to you
know, to figure all this out.
Jennifer Coronado (14:48):
I just want to point out to you that I've
interviewed a lot of people overthe years and not many of them
come in and actually solveproblems in their interviews, so
that that's that's prettyunusual and that's pretty
amazing that you did.
Tony Aghazarian (15:00):
Yeah, it was, it was.
It was actually quite a bit offun and and, uh, I tend to uh be
comfortable with kind of uh,you know, let's if.
If you're not sure, if you, ifI'm the right person for you,
then let's just solve someproblems together and we'll see
how it goes and that works outwell.
Jennifer Coronado (15:20):
Um is fun a big big thing that you need in
your job Is fun a big big thingthat you need in your job?
Tony Aghazarian (15:24):
Oh, absolutely.
I have been an adrenalinejunkie through my teenage years
and college years, but at thispoint fun is solving problems or
talking to you, but in generalI look for laughter and fun in
most of the things I do.
Jennifer Coronado (15:42):
You said adrenaline junkie.
What were some things that youengaged in?
Tony Aghazarian (15:46):
Well, in high school it was always kind of the
rebel and you know, not so muchsports, but mostly down the
pathway of, you know, going outand driving your car a little
too fast or teeping the highschool or something like that.
And that got a little old.
But then when I moved off tocollege I went to South Lake
Tahoe and that became a seriesof hobbies of oh, I guess I'll
(16:09):
ski, and then I'll ski fasterand I'll do ski jumps, and then
I'll oh, let's do snowboarding,let's learn about that.
And then there's water sports,and then there's rock climbing,
and then there's cliff jumping,and then there's skydiving, and
then you just start adding tothe list of things you do to the
point of where it's.
At some point you're.
You're always looking forsomething that gives you a
little bit of a scare and thentraining yourself to be highly
(16:32):
functional while being a littleout of your comfort.
Jennifer Coronado (16:37):
That's so interesting you say that because
I think you know your frontalcortex develops I've been
reading about this lately whenyou're around 25, right, but if
you can keep engaging in thingsin that way, it sort of keeps
your frontal cortex a little bitalive and open and creative as
you get older.
Learning to function is veryimportant, but sometimes you can
(17:00):
lose some of that creativejuice if you're not careful to
keep engaging yourself in newideas and new things.
Tony Aghazarian (17:08):
Yeah, that was.
That ended up being reallyfantastic for me to keep moving
in that direction.
At one point I was going to agymnastics school in Lake Tahoe.
There's an adult night and youcould go there and you could
bounce on the trampoline withyour skis on so you could
practice helicopters anddifferent ski jumps without
(17:29):
actually crashing, because youwould put a harness on and then
do that and they had a rockclimbing wall there and you
could climb indoors and so thenyou'd also tumble and do the
backhand springs and the ringsand the high bar and things.
So we were just goofing aroundreally.
And at one point the owner ofthe gym also owned a gym near
San Luis Obispo, in five citiesdown there, and so he called me
(17:51):
up one day and said hey, wouldyou like to coach gymnastics?
His name is George.
I said, george, you know Idon't know how to coach
gymnastics, right, and he says,yeah, but I'm desperate.
So you know how to entertainpeople with.
Entertain people with goodtimes bouncing down the pads.
Go down there and just have agood time with the kids.
And so I went down there andfound out that I was actually
going to be coaching the boyscompetitive team and uh, and so
(18:15):
I was like what is going on here?
But you know, again, it was afun job and so I spent a lot of
my college years actuallycoaching gymnastics, and so I
spent a lot of my college yearsactually coaching gymnastics and
so that kept me thinking aboutlike how to, how the body moves
and how to, how to have, uh,have fun and how to make it
interesting.
And so, uh, and they did reallywell at the, you know, at the
(18:35):
state level, um, a lot of youknow, mostly most age groups,
they would mostly get the thehighest levels of gold and
things like that.
And the funny part of it wasthat we'd all just be screwing
around and a lot of the othergym coaches were like Cobra Kai
and so they had a little bit ofdisdain for me not taking the
sport seriously, and then theywere pretty disappointed when we
(18:57):
would win the gold medals.
So it was kind of just a lot offun bouncing around and having
fun wherever we were going.
Jennifer Coronado (19:09):
That's so interesting because I do think
sometimes people forget therecan be joy in competition, right
In the winning and the losing,and I, philosophically, am
someone who's like I'd ratherbelieve things are going to work
out okay and be happy on thepath to it, and if it doesn't
work out okay, I'm disappointedfor a couple minutes or a couple
days, but I didn't spend theentire time thinking it wasn't
going to work out, because thatseems like a terrible way to
(19:31):
live your life if you're instressful situations all the
time.
Tony Aghazarian (19:35):
Yeah, one of the boys was way flirty for an
eight-year-old and he was doinghis highest.
He was at the championship andhe was the best of these
eight-year-olds he's reallydecent and he was doing his high
bar routine and he was doinghis highest.
He was at the championship andhe was the best of these
eight-year-olds.
He was really decent and he wasdoing his high bar routine and
he was at the top of his routine.
He was kind of smiling andtwinkling his eyes at somebody
in the stands and then lost hisspot on his routine for about
(19:59):
two seconds, which was like aneternity, and then he finished
his routine and he only got abronze on that performance and
he was down in the mats justcrying his eyes out because he,
you know, screwed up.
And his parents come stormingdown the bleachers and they're
they just look mad as hell.
And they come over to him andI'm just going bracing for it.
(20:21):
I'm going, oh man, we are justbeen screwing off, not taking
this seriously, and we're aboutto get lit up by his parents and
his parents come down to himand they go, cameron, they said,
uh, do you think we'd likedriving up to San Jose from San
Luis Obispo and staying in youknow hotels and sitting all day
in these gyms.
Do you think this is?
We're doing this because welike this?
And he's like, uh, no, he'slike, uh, no, he's like we're
(20:44):
here for you.
So either you get to screwingaround and bouncing around in
the pads and laughing again, orcan we just go home and and he
was like, oh, and off, he wentand started bouncing around.
I'm going.
Oh, I dodged a bullet on thatone that is really awesome yeah,
well, you know, I think all the, all the kids that didn't, that
wanted to take it seriously,probably left, left the school.
Jennifer Coronado (21:08):
Well, I took you away from your your days at
Apple and and your beginning atApple, but you worked there for
what?
23 years.
Tony Aghazarian (21:14):
Yeah, yeah, from 2000 on until just a year
ago.
Jennifer Coronado (21:18):
Yeah, and so tell me after you got in there
and you're uh, fixing everythingon your first interview like
what, what were like next stepsand things that were super
exciting for you to work onwhile you were.
Tony Aghazarian (21:31):
Well, the so we were doing the iMac, and I
think the the interesting thingwas that we were learning to
introduce new products.
You know, and I think if youwent today around Silicon Valley
to all the companies, they'retrying to make new products,
like Google or Microsoft,facebook or Apple.
They're following a new productintroduction process that we
(21:54):
were creating and, and a lot ofthat has to start with what we
do at prototyping, and that wasall happening at this factory in
Sacramento, and so the you knowthe, the way these companies
work is it's really a the teamsport of new product
introduction is prototyping, andso if you think about how you
design an iPhone, you wouldimagine people would go off in
(22:20):
their corners and they wouldwrite software over here and
they would do an electricalschematic over here and they do
a mechanical CAD drawing overthere.
But they're pretty muchparallel play.
The first time all that comestogether is when they try and
build one, and so the designteams were working in their
desks and then they'd all cometogether for these prototyping
events, and that's whereeverything gets really crazy,
(22:41):
and you're never sure what'sgoing to happen next, if it's
going to even boot or functionor what have you, you learn
about what works and doesn'twork at that moment, and so
there's a huge intensity andchaos and unpredictability, and
so that's the environment that Ireally thrived in and that's
what I was doing at Sony andthat's what I really honed at
(23:02):
Apple, and starting at thefactory and then moving into
headquarters and moving from,you know, imac to servers, to
RAID systems, to the firstiPhone, to the iPad, to the
watch, to every iOS device upthrough the Vision Pro, it's
been just a nonstop thrill rideof new products introduction.
(23:22):
So I really don't care so muchabout the products themselves as
much as I care about thecompany and the ability to
introduce products.
Jennifer Coronado (23:29):
And how does failure play into development
and do you see it as a positiveor a negative, and how do you
work teams through that?
Tony Aghazarian (23:40):
If you're learning about the product then
you know that's great.
There's always these peoplethat fail avoidably and you come
down pretty hard on theavoidable failures.
And that's really what happensat the beginning is you start
out and you go to.
You go to some things happeningand you're trying to get
something done and it doesn'twork and you realize it because
(24:01):
somebody just didn't do theirhomework, they didn't practice
in advance, or you know theydidn't write the code at all and
that you really can't tolerate.
So you do want to hit hard onfailure to execute.
But if the thing just you justdidn't think about it right.
You know the unit, I was tryingto boot it up this way, you were
trying to wire it that way andwe didn't and our pathways
(24:21):
crossed.
You know then that's exactlythe whole point of new product
introductions.
And so you of course that cantotally throw off your business
model as you delay things.
But that's the risk and that'sthe game.
And so if you're not intofailures, hardware introductions
is a bad game to play.
They pay a lot more attentionto crossing your T's and dotting
(24:43):
your I's in the chip world thanyou do in the system world.
In the system world you canrecover in a few weeks, whereas
chips you can be down for a yearif you screw yourself up.
So I was in the system side ofthings, and so it allowed for a
little bit more cowboy and alittle bit more ease about
failure.
Jennifer Coronado (24:59):
That's great, and when you left Apple, you
were a senior director.
Tony Aghazarian (25:02):
Right.
Jennifer Coronado (25:05):
We didn't start as the senior director, so
how do you find your way intothese different roles to get up
to that level?
Tony Aghazarian (25:09):
I think pretty quickly.
I was managing a team inSacramento and then transitioned
into headquarters to leadprojects, and what I realize now
is that a huge portion of theproblem ends up being
organizational behavior and theway people interact.
You know, they're all just likemy 150 foster brothers and
(25:32):
sisters right.
They're all differentperspectives, different
dysfunctions, different problemsand inevitably you see what
they're thinking and then yousee what's real and you talk
about what's real and everyonecan understand that.
But and I think few people areactually compelled to do the
wrong thing, they're just have akink in their think and so if
(25:53):
you just talk a little bit aboutwhat's going, what's real, they
usually can move forward as aresult of that.
You know you're.
They say, why don't you managethis team of five people?
And then, oh, that was workingwell, we'll reward you with
managing.
You know more people and morethings and you just slowly step
up the ladder, so to speak.
Originally I was in operations,and so probably the more unusual
(26:15):
step is to step from operationsinto engineering.
You know, that's a.
That's another big step,because operations teams tend to
think about process andengineering teams tend to think
about research or development orboth.
I had developed somemethodologies for how we would
do test elimination forsomething called burn-in, and I
think the engineering teamsappreciated the approach, which
(26:36):
was pretty rigorousmathematically, and so I was
able to step naturally into aengineering function and start
managing from there and thennever really tried to grow or
get another promotion orsomething like that.
I just ended up taking on newroles that as they came forward.
Jennifer Coronado (27:00):
You know.
Going back to what we weretalking about, when you were in
college and in school, did youhave any mentors or people you
looked up to in how theyfunctioned?
Or did you find that you were?
Because, honestly, because youhad a zillion foster brothers
and sisters you know howdifferent people think in very
different ways Did you just findfind forging your own path was
(27:23):
the best way for you to?
Tony Aghazarian (27:24):
do it.
Yeah, I had my first manager atApple.
A guy named Greg Larson was areally good man and a good
manager, and he was the lastgood manager I had at Apple.
The thing that he told me isthat that was really helpful for
me and it took me a lot ofyears to get better at.
This was that I terrified himand I have a very unusual way of
(27:50):
thinking and a very strong mind, and so when I come at things,
I'm continuously disrupting theprocess and disrupting the cart.
It'd be very easy to have amanager who just wants to, you
know, slow your roll and youknow not move so fast, not
change things.
He certainly had an inclination, but he just turned out to be a
pretty wise man and so he justdecided to confide in me.
(28:12):
That.
You know that I was scaring theheck out of him, but it's kind
of like one of those things ifyou bring somebody in who's very
talented and is because I had alot of Sony experience right,
so I was coming in with theexact skill set that they needed
.
We developed a friendship thatallowed me to take some risks
and, at the same time, himdisclosing that to me made me
(28:33):
very again sympathetic to himand I was kind of like, oh, I
get it.
And so that helped me and him,you know, move along.
And so from that point on, helpme and him, you know, move
along.
And so from that point on Itried my best to tamp down my
craziest you know plans and justtry and stay a little bit color
, a little bit more within thelines and understand what the
(28:55):
company needs as opposed to whatI thought it needed.
Fortunately for me, the companywas absolutely crazy, and so
from time to time they wouldcome along and have a problem
and Steve was not interested inthe normal way.
If he wanted something, gofigure it out.
Jennifer Coronado (29:17):
When we say Steve, we're talking about Steve
Jobs, of course.
Tony Aghazarian (29:20):
Yes, and so we would get all manner of crazy
requests and crazy things to godo.
It wasn't like me saying I'mgoing to just keep my head down
and do what the company needs.
It was I'm going to wait untilthe company asks for crazy and
then I'm going to step up.
That's going to be my time andthat just happened over and over
and over again throughout mycareer and over and over again
(29:42):
throughout my career.
And so you know, I find thatwhen people are, when there's
the biggest pressure and thescariest moments and the
craziest thing has to happen, alot of people step to the side.
A lot of people that normallyare trying to put themselves
forward and be ambitious, theyget a little scared when things
are scary, and so you know, thatgives gives people who actually
(30:07):
want to go do hard work achance to run, you know, so they
can just move forward in those,in those critical moments.
And so over time, uh, I, Ireally enjoyed the the craziest
of moments.
Jennifer Coronado (30:20):
Can you define what would be a crazy
moment for you, like somethingthat was you're like I don't
know how we're going to do thisand yeah, I mean just as just,
for the most recent example thateveryone has is COVID.
Tony Aghazarian (30:34):
You know you, you come in one day and say
everything's shut down.
You know how do we run a buildin China?
How are we going to execute toa hardware schedule when
everyone's in their at theirhomes and a lot of people are
like I don't know what we'regoing to do?
You know, I'm like I know whatwe're going to do and so
everyone gets.
All the normal people who areup there trying to control
things just didn't know what tosay.
(30:56):
They all got out of the way andwe just were able to go
implement, um, a whole newproduct introduction process
that survives COVID, and youprobably noticed that we didn't
miss any beats in terms ofintroducing products.
And what I think is fascinatingis that, if you look back over
time, uh, each time the rest ofthe world was suffering, whether
(31:17):
it's a 2007,.
You know financial crisis, andwe come out with an iPhone or
thecom crisis and we come outwith an iPod, or you know COVID,
and we're and we're workinghard at the vision pro.
All of these moments wherethere's huge layoffs, there's
huge uncertainty and there'shuge fear Uh, we were the
contrary contrarians of themarket, where we were just
(31:37):
doubling down on something truly, you know, magnificent.
And you know I think, uh, steveand Tim, you know I think they
went through some hard timesfinancially, but they saved up a
lot of money and enabled us togo and do things you know at
those moments, and so I wassuper lucky to have been able to
be on those first teams to togo do those things when, you
(32:01):
know, everything else was inchaos.
Jennifer Coronado (32:03):
But do you hire team members that scare you
.
Is that your philosophy, or?
Tony Aghazarian (32:09):
No, absolutely.
I had a friend of mine one ofmy best friends is likes to make
fun of me and he would.
And somebody would come up tome and go, wow, tony, you're
just so smart.
And he was in front of him andhe's like, and he said something
to him like, tony's not thatsmart, he just surrounds himself
with smart people.
And the other guy says, well,that sounds smart.
But I had to think about it, Iwent.
That's probably true.
(32:32):
Most people on my team are quitea bit smarter than me and very
unusual in their skill sets.
You know.
You take, for example, ourmutual friend, you know, wayne,
who's.
He's just got a series of skillsets that I can't even approach
and so can be intimidatingthird parties.
That who basically ostensiblythought they worked a hundred
(33:06):
percent of their time for me wasabout 5,000 people and my staff
was divided in half.
I had half my staff my directstaff were leaders, managing
team members, and half my staffwere individual contributors who
just sat and thought aboutthings and, you know, would go
through things and just analyzewhat we're doing and that would
(33:27):
be.
I had like the smartestsoftware engineer I'd ever met
and a one of the best systemdesigners and humble,
aspirational leaders,aspirational examples to every
other engineer that they'd everwant that role and paid them the
same as the directors.
And so, at the end of the day,you end up with two career paths
for every person.
They could either be a leaderor they could be the person
(33:47):
who's really influencing thingsby deep diving.
And I called that my you know,my technical staff, and they
would influence me all the time.
I remember one time, at thebeginning days of COVID, I was
like, okay, let's go solve thisproblem.
And I was like we have somehard work to go do.
(34:09):
And I started describing what Ithink we needed to go do, and
it was my technical staff, notmy management staff who came to
me and said you know, you can'tdo that right.
And I was like what are youtalking about?
People are scared and they'reat their homes and they're
trying to take care of theirkids, and so just pause for a
moment before you start beatingthe drum too hard.
And so I, you know, went outand deleted my sort of Slack
(34:32):
message or whatever I wasthinking about saying and, and
you know, reined it in a littlebit and balanced my perspective
over what we needed to do withthe team and and how we were
going to make the companysuccessful.
Also, because I have so manyideas that don't work.
You have to have people thattell you they don't work.
Jennifer Coronado (34:48):
That's important because sometimes
people, particularly who aresuccessful like yourself, they
get to a point in their careerwhere they don't want to hear
the no anymore.
Right, they don't want to hearthat's not going to work, which
you sounded like you were thatperson early in your career, and
they get.
I think they become lesser intheir roles because they can't
(35:12):
admit when they're wrong.
So I think it's great that yousound like that, that's you're
able to know.
All right, maybe this personhas the better idea.
I love the idea, tony, of thethe two paths, because sometimes
I think in a lot of companiesyou go well management's the
only way you can really make abetter salary.
But not everybody's equipped tobe a manager.
(35:33):
Some people are, just as yousaid, good individual
contributors and big picturethinkers, and so when you try to
fit people into a box wherethey're suddenly they need to
shift towards management butthey don't necessarily have that
skillset.
It frustrates people.
Tony Aghazarian (35:49):
The people that were my technical staff really
were horrible at management Atsome points.
I tried to have them managepeople, and it just turns out
that that level of geniusdoesn't blend well with you know
, managing people who are notquite as good, because either
they're overly conflict-orientedor they're passive, and you
(36:09):
know too passive.
And so you've got to have thestriking, that balance of you
know what to what to do with anemployee and so, and so they're
hard, very hard to manage thesetechnical staff members, and so
you have to realize that the,the difficulty of managing them,
is worth the, the output.
You know, the, the, the, theone-off earth changing idea, or
(36:30):
how to really simplify a problem, you know, or the credibility
of your organization really atwhole.
Jennifer Coronado (36:36):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think
sometimes people too, when theysee like a leader title or
whatever they're like, well, Iwant to do that because that's
the best job.
Well, to be honest, the leadertitle is not the best job, it's.
Your job as a leader is to makeeverybody else around you do a
good job, and so sometimes thatmeans you giving up the cooler
sort of sexier stuff that mightcome with what you think is cool
(36:58):
about it?
Tony Aghazarian (36:59):
Yeah, absolutely I'm.
I'm very well known as theprobably one of the best
delegators at Apple.
I got really good at givingaway work, Um, but you have to
give away autonomy and authorityat the same time to get it to
work.
Jennifer Coronado (37:16):
Yeah, Now why do you think delegation is
important?
Tony Aghazarian (37:19):
Well, you remember, I was running a very
large organization, but even atmy first management
responsibility, I was sofrustrated with how management
wouldn't listen and I had ideasof how we could solve things,
and they just wouldn't listen tome.
It was actually one of thehardest things I did.
So when I'm the first manager,I'm going okay.
(37:40):
The first thing I'm gonna do isstart letting people other
people have their ideas.
I finally had my moment ofpower where I could roll out all
of my ideas unchallenged, andthe first thing I did was to
surrender that to my employees,and so that was pretty hard for
me to do, actually, but becauseI had that frustration, I
decided that I wasn't going tobe that, and so, pretty early, I
(38:03):
surrendered judgment and, ingeneral, I still had my
thumbprint on a lot of things.
I think the key there is youjust can't hold people.
You can't be prescriptive andhold people accountable at the
same time.
You have to choose Either I'mgonna tell you what to do, in
which case if it works, it's mycredit, if it fails, it's my
(38:24):
fault, or I hold you accountableand let you use your tools and
methods, and so that ends upbeing the better model.
So I would just hold peopleaccountable.
And then they would come to meand eventually realize they're
going to get grilled for failurebecause they don't have a good
enough strategy.
And so then they come up andsay well, what are your ideas?
And then I could still share myideas and then they could
(38:45):
choose which one was best.
And that was basically thebirth of the technical staff
approach, which is having agroup of people standing around
here really helps you, becauseif you're accountable, you'd
rather get the answer right thanto get your way.
You know, when you'reaccountable, you better get the
answer right, and I do thinkthat Apple doesn't care about
(39:08):
you getting your way or yourideas, they just care about
getting it right.
I think that model workedreally well there.
Jennifer Coronado (39:14):
It's so great that you it sounds like you
found the perfect culture foryourself.
Curious why you retired fromApple, yeah, and now you worked
with the Stimson group as well,which you're sort of a board
member on that, and that's athink tank out of DC right.
Tony Aghazarian (39:31):
Yeah, my son went off to college and we had
an empty nest, and so it was agood time for us to celebrate
life, and so I knew I was goingto be taking some time off, and
that's really an employeemindset, isn't it?
I'm going to take a year off,and so now I've realized that I
wasn't taking a year off.
I was actually just leaving theboss-having industry.
I started reaching out andstarted to understand, because
(39:54):
one downside to being part of acompany like Apple is that you
become very insular.
You live and breathe and thinkabout Apple products, and that
has a huge impact.
I'm really happy about the workthat I've done there.
However, I didn't know anythingelse that was going on outside.
Jennifer Coronado (40:14):
Right, it becomes your identity.
Tony Aghazarian (40:16):
Oh, my goodness , I can't tell you how right you
are.
Is that?
You know my brothers andsisters would introduce me?
This is my brother.
He works at Apple, his name isTony, like my identity is, my
name is third on the list andand so, yeah it was.
It was really a problem for meto you know think about leaving
that identity behind Ended updoing a mushroom trip with a
(40:39):
guide to help me get throughthat, and it was like a light
switch fix, and so that wentaway really quick, so that was
solved fast.
The idea of reaching out andlooking around was really the
most important element of mytransition, because then I
started paying attention to whatwas happening, and at that time
(40:59):
we were having, you know,ukraine war had broken out, and
so I was trying to help withtechnologists there and started
getting a little bit moreinvolved, and so somebody would
introduce me about.
The other geopolitical issuesare popping up, and before I
know it, I'm talking to theStimson Center, who works on
geopolitical issues, and there's, you know, 6000 or so think
tanks in the United States, andmost of them are in DC.
(41:22):
But you know, most of them arejust places where angry people
who aren't in power.
You know when the Democrats arein power in the White House,
the Republicans all join thinktanks and write, you know, hate
pieces and and vice versa, andso I didn't understand any of
this when I was getting involved.
But this one center isapolitical and and they don't
(41:43):
just publish white papers, theyactually do stuff.
Jennifer Coronado (41:45):
They go and they're on the ground in a lot
of areas.
Tony Aghazarian (41:48):
Yeah.
So I started getting involvedand I'm going oh, this is fun,
because you know I dig in alittle deeper to their chemical
nonproliferation effort or I,you know, study what they're
doing with, you know, rhinocerospreserves in Africa, and so
they just go through and try andsolve a problem that no one
else has been able to solve andthen prototype it, and then they
(42:09):
just try and get rid of it asfast as possible.
Somebody else will take it andrun with it.
That's their mission, and so Icouldn't be happier to be
involved with that type of thing, because you just gotta, you
know, learn about what'shappening in the world, and
through that process of solvingand working with different
people, then other people startto get an idea of who I am.
Jennifer Coronado (42:28):
And out of the woodwork, I start getting
all these people coming to findme to help with other things.
You worked at Apple and thenyou start reaching out to people
and suddenly you're involved ingeopolitical engagement.
And who do you reach out to tostart being involved in that?
Like, how does that happen?
And how do you end up at thecenter that's named after the
(42:50):
former secretary of war from youknow, the Roosevelt
administration?
Like, how did that happen?
Tony Aghazarian (42:57):
Yeah, sometimes you just have a conversation
with people, and so I was at a,you know, for example.
I was at a resort and met thiswoman who worked at the World
Bank and I'm curious, I'm likethe World Bank Last enough.
I've heard that before.
I have no idea what the WorldBank is, and so I just like the
World Bank.
That's not.
I've heard that before.
I have no idea what the WorldBank is, and so I just like what
are you doing?
What does that mean?
(43:18):
What happens?
And I just try and understandthat.
So I just spent hours listeningto her talk about what happens
at the World Bank, and then shewould ask me like what are you
doing?
And I'm like, I'm thinkingabout what's next for me and I'm
trying to understand a littlemore about you know where, how I
can help.
And I'm not going to.
My next game is not going to bebigger than Apple, you know,
let's be clear, right?
And so I'm like so I want to dosomething that has some sort of
(43:39):
impact, and so I thought maybeI'll help with industrial policy
.
Uh, is what my thought was, andthe reason why I thought it
would be useful is because Ispent 20 years dealing with
industrial policy, and so whenyou tell me what the US and
China are going to do with theircurrency or their import or
their trade laws or what haveyou, I will tell you what Apple
or Google or anyone else isgoing to do about it and how
(44:01):
they're going to work aroundyour policy so they can still
make the rest of the world work.
It turned out to be a veryuseful input for the DC belt,
right.
So I'm an unusual personbecause for the DC belt right,
so I'm I'm an unusual personbecause anyone in government and
and military or would love toget out of it and get into tech
where they can make more money,and so there's not much going
the other direction.
And so for me to be able to goover there and say I know a
(44:24):
little bit about what industrywill do when you, that that
industrial policy ended up beinga useful thing to them and so
got me more introductions.
And so once I started talkingto somebody at the World Bank
and I told her what I waslooking for, she said, oh, you
should talk to this person, andthat person was working on
humanitarian shelters in Ukraine, and so I started helping him
(44:45):
with some shelter work and Iwent to Ukraine to work on some
shelter work.
Jennifer Coronado (44:49):
You went to Ukraine.
Tony Aghazarian (44:51):
Yeah, during the war I actually discovered
that I don't really likecharities.
I don't trust charities.
I feel like you give them abunch of money and where does it
go, I don't know.
I don't mind giving money aslong as I trust that it's going
to be used for good.
And I know there's a lot ofcorruption in Ukraine.
So I went out to actually like,let's go take a look and see how
(45:11):
we can help, and I found someof the best you know ways to
help from a humanitarianperspective, because this
gentleman, eric, had developed,you know, a shelter that you
could build for about $3,000 ontop of rubble.
And, you know, get a familythrough the winter.
That's a big problem with thesedisplaced people.
And so I went out and I lookedat places and, for example, one
(45:33):
place we were working on uh had.
They were retrofitting an olddorm and so the government had
given the real estate over.
We were.
It cost us about $3,000 perhome to retrofit the electricals
and get new kitchens and newshowers and things.
And the government realizedthat if we put displaced persons
in there, that they couldn'teven afford the energy because
(45:59):
of the war, and so thesebuildings had free rent and the
government paid for their energyand they knew that when they
moved in, there was not likethey get to move back after the
war because there is nothing togo back to, it's all rubble.
The deal is you get a free homeforever, free rent and free
energy, and it costs.
You know, our move Ukraine isthe name of the organization I
was working with that cost them$3,000 to provide it and I'm
(46:21):
going okay if there's corruption.
I can't figure out how they'rethe worst crooks I've ever met,
because for $3,000, you give ahome for forever.
You know, like that's a deal,and so I was super happy to
participate.
While I was there, word gotaround that there's some you
know silicon valley guy, and soa bunch of uh you know uh
(46:43):
technologists started crawlingout of the woodwork to talk
about drones and how they canreduce their radar cross
sections and how they can dothings, and so we ended up just
helping you know technologistsand then I would bridge my
Western coalition oftechnologists together and we
would just solve problems thatare interesting to solve, which
is crazy to me that the militarycouldn't do that, but the
(47:05):
military in Ukraine was verymuch kind of a Soviet area
leadership and attitude, and sothey were very traditional.
And so it's all the 20somethings that were, you know,
climbing in their cars anddriving to the front lines to
disrupt that.
Really, you know, stop theimmediate rollover of Kiev, and
things like that.
So it just ends up being abunch of technologists who are
(47:27):
all trying to solve a problem.
Jennifer Coronado (47:29):
Sounds to me, Tony, like you went to another
interview and then you went downto the assembly line and you
started fixing things again.
Tony Aghazarian (47:36):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It was a lot of fun just tosolve problems that they were
trying to solve and how tointegrate technology, and I
think that through some of thatwork, ukraine's going to become
one of the epicenters of dronetechnology and manufacturing as
we go forward, because that'swhat they've built out.
Jennifer Coronado (47:58):
So, tony, you've done this, you have your
consultancy, You've started.
Now what's your next big ideafor you and what you want to do?
Tony Aghazarian (48:06):
It's kind of funny is that we are starting a
company and I do the opposite ofevery book you could ever
imagine on how to start acompany, because their ideas are
you know, hey, you got to focusand I'm like or I could just do
like 12 different projects andthey're like, and you got to be
all in 80 hours a week and I'mvery much on the pathway of uh,
I'm going to go spend a month inAustralia with my wife and you
(48:29):
know, getting on a, on a sleepertrain, and have a good time,
and so I have no ambition togrow it.
I have an ambition to stay busyand because of the things that
I do that are problem solving innature, people come find me and
(48:49):
so I end up just having peopleknock on my door, you know, once
every couple weeks with kind ofa new thing that they're trying
to do, and I try and help them.
And if it's a pro bono make theworld a better place, cause and
they're all working for free,then I'll work for free, and if
they're out there to make a buck, then they need to pay me.
And then the other part of thatis that people who want to live
(49:11):
a different life than whateveryone else has been doing in
the grind.
They're coming to find me to gohow can I do more of that?
And so I get a lot of careercoaching conversations that
popping up where people arewanting to do exactly what I'm
doing, which is, you know, floataround and get involved with
some things, but not take lifetoo seriously.
I'm in really enjoying, and Iwant to bring more people on
(49:32):
board that actually want to havea good time and want to have
fun and solve problems, and sothat's kind of what I'm doing
right now, and so I do a littlebit of some training on how new
product introductions work, orI'll work on some startups or,
you know, work with teachers,helping them buy homes or start
nonprofits, things like that,and so I don't have a plan of
(49:54):
where this goes.
I just know.
I just know where it came from.
So I think the next thing isjust to is to keep helping
people, and what I like aboutthis is that there's no, there's
no one coming to me thatdoesn't want to solve a problem,
and so you know, my methodworks very well when everyone
(50:16):
wants to solve a problem andworks really badly when there's
a particular interest thatdoesn't want the problem solved
and so, for example, I don'tthink I could probably help out
with renovating the, you know,rethinking the healthcare
industry.
You know there's just too manypeople who want it to stay
broken.
It's just maddening, right.
And so you end up with, likeyou know, that kind of thing is
(50:36):
probably not my best fit, butthere's lots of people who are
at a point where they are all inon solving a problem and that
they they ask around and youknow my name pops up and I come
over and I'll help people, youknow, work backwards through
their problem and and figure outhow to, you know, unblock all
the things that are preventingthem from rethinking this.
Jennifer Coronado (50:59):
Education.
You talked about beingpassionate about helping with
education.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat your help, what you're
doing in that space and whythat's important to you?
Tony Aghazarian (51:10):
I tend to adopt purpose, meaning that I like
solving problems, and so, uh, I,I tend to not be so passionate
about one particular cause oranother, but my wife likes the
climate to be solved, she likes,uh, civil liberties for women,
she likes education, and sothose are now things that I'd
like to help out with.
(51:31):
And so, you know, I'm not fromUkraine, but no one likes a
bully, so I'll help out there.
And, you know, any place I cango, help is good for me.
And so, with education, youknow, it's an interesting thing
is that I'll tackle any varietyof things.
And so, for example, I have afriend of mine that's a teacher
that can't buy a home.
(51:51):
Why not?
You realize that there's a lotof reasons why teachers can't
buy homes, and none of them areblocking.
They're all just stacking andit just seems insurmountable.
You know, what I've learnedover time is that 30
non-blocking issues don't add upto a block, and so you just
have to work through one at atime.
(52:12):
And so I would say somethinglike why can't you buy a house?
And the answer is, well, can'tafford a house.
And I'm like, well, that's whywe'll get financing for a house,
and what have you and I,obviously I have enough money to
go help them buy a house, butthey're not interested in
charity, they want to, you knowown their home.
And so we would do somethinglike I, would then create an LLC
(52:34):
and we'd be 50-50 partners inan LLC.
And so I said, okay, this LLCis going to go buy a house and I
put no money into this LLC.
They put no money into the LLC.
And so we go find a house andwe say we're going to buy this
house and we're going to beequal partners in this.
It's unilateral exit, whichmeans, if I get tired of this, I
push a button and the housegets sold.
(52:55):
If they get tired of it, theypush a button, the house gets
sold and they have the right tobuy me out at any point in time.
And so and I hope they do andso then we need to go get money.
Of course, there's no downpayment available.
In fact, we need more than ahundred percent financing
because we have to be able topay for a roof or something like
that.
And so you work backwards fromthere and you say, okay, well,
(53:19):
we have to get a loan.
So, um, let's go see if we canget a loan.
And it turns out the, the bankof Tony and Elena are willing to
give a private loan, uh, tothis LLC.
And so, uh, and you know, theseplaces are around the United
States are not.
We're not talking aboutmultimillion dollar places,
we're talking about a $200,000home.
I can give a private loan tothis LLC, which is a good win
(53:41):
for me because, you know, backat that time, there's no
interest coming from anywhere.
Right, a loan is a goodbusiness for me.
And they got a loan that theycouldn't otherwise get, and they
actually.
So we give a loan for like 101%or 105%, depending on whether
how much money we need in thebank to cover, you know,
incidental or urgent causes.
(54:03):
Next point, which is well, whatinterest rate do you give them?
And the answer is I gave them agood rate because the risk is
very low.
And so if you went to a bankand said you know this is 100%
low and you have to give, youknow it would be extortion level
rates to get that, and butthat's because they don't have
the ability to sell the home andI'm I'm the decision maker on
(54:23):
whether this home gets sold ornot.
And so if I don't like what'shappening, as either the member
of the LLC or as the bank, I canjust push a button and the home
gets sold, and so this is avery low risk loan because I
know the person who bought thehouse me and I know the property
.
I've reviewed it carefully andso at the end of the day, it's a
(54:45):
low risk loan.
So I give a competitive rate,which means even the interest
rate is so much lower than theteacher could get by themselves,
and probably even I could getby myself if I wanted 100% loan.
And so now they have a homethat they otherwise couldn't get
.
I'm making money as a lender andI also get 50% of the profit of
(55:06):
this home, but I do nothing.
They do the property management, and so lots of investors might
say, well, why don't you justbuy the whole house yourself?
And the answer is I have to pay10 or 15% in property
management fees or I have to go,you know, unclog toilets, and
so the teacher has a home,everyone's winning, and they
don't feel like there's anycharity in this.
In fact, if you, if you thinkabout this issue right now, you
(55:26):
probably think yourself who gotthe better deal?
You know?
And the answer is you.
Who got the better deal?
You know?
And the answer is you, you.
It's not easy.
It's not easy to figure out whogot the better deal, which is
exactly what I was looking for,which is you know us all to win.
And so now I did that again,and I did that again.
And so now there's you know,three teachers in their homes
and, and so it's a way that Ihelp you know with.
(55:49):
You know education, andsometimes I'll work with Icon
Academy or other people toideate on how they can, you know
, help democratize education sothat you can learn online and
maybe get credentials.
It may not be as good as abrick and mortar school, but you
know, if you can get freeeducation and get free
credentials, then the driven canachieve something.
(56:12):
It makes a better society and soyou know I I'll approach
whatever problem I can find.
Uh, I'll go down to cal polyand I I help, you know, talk to
students and connect them tojobs and things like that, and
give, give little speeches.
You know, mostly around stem.
Because the same thing, I knowthat teachers, all they can see
is academia, they can't seeindustry.
(56:33):
When I show up there, you knowthe, the, the Apple guy who
introduced their first iPhone,who was a physics student.
It's sexy enough that it cancompete with I'm going to, I'm
going to go into research or I'mgoing to be a professor, and so
they can see that as anindustry option and they don't
have to go on to a PhD programif they don't want to.
Jennifer Coronado (56:52):
You give them options, you know of what they
can do with their life.
Well, Tony, I'm so glad that wefound you and that you were
willing to talk to us today.
We appreciate that.
Tony Aghazarian (57:03):
Thank you, it's been a lot of fun.
Jennifer Coronado (57:07):
Thank you for listening to Everyone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson,
executive producer is AaronDussault, music by Doug Infinite
.
Our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker and I am Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a slightlydisappointed productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review,
(57:29):
and maybe even like andsubscribe.
Thank you for listening.
Fortunately for me, the company was absolutely
crazy and you know Steve was notinterested in the normal way,
and so we would get all mannerof crazy requests and crazy
things to go do.
It wasn't like me saying I'mgoing to keep my head down and
do what the company needs.
It was I'm going to wait untilthe company asks for crazy and
(00:24):
then I'm going to step up.
Jennifer Coronado (00:26):
Hello and welcome to Everyone Is I am your
host, jennifer Coronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all types of people
and build an understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success has achieved thatsuccess because they are a
creative thinker.
So, whether you are an artistor a cook, or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
(00:46):
human conversation.
And now, as they say, on withthe show.
Tony Aghazarian (00:53):
Thank you very much for coming.
To Everyone Is.
Jennifer Coronado (00:56):
If you could take a second to, for the record
, state your name and what yourrole is, that would be great.
Tony Aghazarian (01:02):
Hi.
Yeah, thanks for inviting me.
My name is Tony Aghazarian andI have had a tough time
describing what I am.
I don't like to be defined somuch, but I guess recently we
started a company calledLighthouse Insight
lighthouseinsightcom and somepeople would consider it a
(01:22):
consulting company.
Jennifer Coronado (01:24):
One of the reasons we have you here today,
Tony, is because a friend ofours said you got to talk to
this guy.
He's so interesting, and so Iwant to talk to you about where
you started.
So where were you born?
Where'd you grow up?
Tony Aghazarian (01:38):
In the East Bay , California, a little town
called Pinole, which is closerto Berkeley, I guess is what
most people would know.
Jennifer Coronado (01:46):
What did your parents do for a living?
Tony Aghazarian (01:48):
Father was an engineer with a private company,
a large private company calledBechtel, and later worked for
FEMA, and my mother was amusician and a teacher, special
eds teacher.
Jennifer Coronado (02:03):
Your dad worked for Bechtel and then
worked for FEMA, so one istechnology and one is
mission-driven government work.
What made him transition thatway and what impact did that
have on you as you were lookingat that?
Tony Aghazarian (02:17):
So that happened after I became an adult
and he wanted to stop workingso many hours and and slowed
down a little bit but didn'twant to.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople end up going, you know,
60 hours a week until I hit abrick wall and then go to zero.
I actually did learn from himto maybe you know something less
(02:38):
than 60 hours is a good thingto transition into at some stage
in your life.
And he started working for FEMA, but in very much the same way
where there's a disaster andthey need to rebuild a hospital,
and so he would use the samecivil engineering, electrical
engineering type of skill setsbut to help rebuild after a
disaster.
But he could come in onprojects and leave as he needed.
Jennifer Coronado (02:59):
Yeah, and you said your mom was a teacher and
a musician.
What sort of impact did thathave on you?
Tony Aghazarian (03:05):
Yeah, she is by far the most unusual thinker
I've ever met.
She's very unusual and probablyon some sort of dysfunctional
psychological issue kind ofunusual, but amazing in terms of
all the things she had taughtme.
(03:25):
She would raise, she became afoster parent and so, but she
was so good with special needsthat we would end up getting so
many brothers and sisters I havehad over 150 foster brothers
and sisters and they would showup with still blood on their
shoes because the whole familylost except for them, and the
(03:46):
police would just drive them toour house and so they would be
short term until somegrandmother or some aunt would
come over and help.
But some of them would lastfour or six months if it was an
abuse situation and there's justno one available because these
(04:06):
children were, you know, sooften disturbed that they needed
not just a normal foster family.
I grew up with just all mannerof insanity around the house of,
you know, kids running aroundthat are just not normal and
difficult, struggling, and thatwas normal for me.
Jennifer Coronado (04:19):
And what did so?
It was normal, and are you anonly child or do you have
siblings?
What did so?
It was normal, and are you anonly child or do you have
siblings?
Tony Aghazarian (04:24):
I'm the youngest of five, so I have two,
two brothers, two sisters, anduh and and so, yeah, that was um
, and because my mother was busywith, at least sometimes, five
other foster brothers andsisters, so a family of 10,
oftentimes I was just, you know,following along and so I, in
(04:44):
effect, had the rules of myoldest brother, you know, seven
years older than me, which youknow served me disruptively in
my teenage years, when there'sno curfews and no rules that
your mom brought in, and didthat help you learn to deal with
(05:05):
different types of people, ordid it make you want to behave
differently?
Jennifer Coronado (05:11):
Or how did you engage with your friends who
didn't have that similar setupLike how did that work for you?
Tony Aghazarian (05:17):
I tended to, and still tend to, believe that
they were all correct.
I mean meaning, they all had amindset, and so I was.
I was the youngest, so I alwaysassumed that everyone else had
the right ideas and the rightmindsets.
And so when I saw two differentmindsets, I got to work at, you
(05:39):
know, disentangling it so thatit made sense to me, and so I
could get to the point where Igo.
Well, I understand why thatperson feels that way, and I
understand why that person feelsthat way.
And so now the world makessense to me, and so I didn't
have to necessarily make themagree, I just had to understand,
you know, where they werecoming from.
So, and so I ended up gettingpretty good at seeing the
(06:00):
perspective of wildly differentpeople, from damaged and
disturbed to highly functional.
Jennifer Coronado (06:06):
And you ended up going to Cal Poly, right.
Tony Aghazarian (06:08):
Yeah yeah, I studied physics at Cal Poly.
It was the major that I didn'tthink I wanted to study, but it
was the hardest one and I wantedrigor mostly, and so I just
wanted to learn how to learn,and so I figured I could learn
about business or other thingsin kind of the school of hard
knocks.
And you know, become anentrepreneur or something was my
(06:28):
idea at the moment.
But I thought I'm never goingto learn physics in the school
of hard knocks.
I'm going to need to, you know,buckle down and learn the math
and learn the scientificbackground and rigor.
That really helped at thatpoint pivot my career towards
STEM that really helped at thatpoint, pivot my career towards
STEM.
Jennifer Coronado (06:47):
Now explain to me why was the rigor
important to you when it came toapproaching what you wanted to
do in university.
Tony Aghazarian (06:51):
Remember, you're talking to a teenager.
And so I was a horrible highschool student.
It didn't show up very much, Iwas just out goofing around with
my friends.
And once I graduated I went offto college, because that's what
a successful person would doand so.
But I couldn't get into a goodcollege because I had, like the,
(07:12):
you know, c, d average, and soI decided to go to a community
college and I started screwingaround there and I realized
suddenly that no one cares Ifyou don't show up to class in
junior college.
You're just paying money for noreason and no one cares at all.
So I got a reality dose of likewhat am I doing?
(07:32):
This is for me, it's not foranyone else.
And so that kind of pivoted tome.
It's like so what am I doinghere?
Why am I doing this?
And so then I became a prettydecent student and got my
two-year degree moved up toSouth Lake Tahoe, actually,
because I thought I'd ski whileI went to school, which worked
out well, and I ended up pickingcolleges that were in pleasant
(07:54):
places to be, like San LuisObispo, and I chose the major.
At that point I decided thatbeing a student was what I was
going to do, and I'm going to doit well.
And so I became a good studentand I decided to go take on the
hardest classes I could take.
Once I got to Cal Poly, I nolonger was the best student, but
I did take the hardest classes.
Jennifer Coronado (08:16):
Was there anyone who helped you along the
way?
Was there like did you have amentor or someone who pointed
you in the right direction, orwas it all self-discovery?
Tony Aghazarian (08:23):
I think at that point it was all self-discovery
.
You know friends, family, lotsof influences, but no mentor per
se or somebody you know pushingme along.
Jennifer Coronado (08:32):
You're majoring in physics.
You're coming to the end ofyour senior year, Tony, and
we're approaching life.
So what were you thinking asyou were getting towards the end
of that and thinking about?
All right, here's what my nextsteps are, because it sounds
like you're starting to giveyourself parameters to follow.
So were you defining anadditional step for yourself at
that point, or was it still moreloose?
Tony Aghazarian (08:53):
I wanted a job and I felt a little bit ashamed
at the moment because if you'rea undergraduate physics student
in the nineties, you would neverget a job.
You would go to academia andbecome a teacher or go into
research somewhere, but workingin industry was, for you know,
was so frowned upon and all theexamples you had of physicists
(09:16):
were your teachers.
So I was kind of skulking abouttrying to get a job without
letting anyone know about it.
And one of my internships wassuper interesting.
It was cloud seeding, and Idon't know if you've heard of
cloud seeding, but it'sbasically, you know, putting
silver iodide into clouds andmaking it rain.
And this industry was actuallyreally for the power industry,
(09:37):
so they were running gigs out ofCosta Rica trying to increase
rainfall over reservoirs thathad hydroelectric dams and would
be able to increase energyflows with more rainfall.
I was working the radar andthere was a pilot who would go
up and fly through the clouds,and what was nice about that was
that if it was sunny outsideyou could go to the beach, and
if it was rainy and cloudy yougo to work.
And my teachers were prettyunderstanding that if it was
(09:59):
raining cloudy, I might have toskip a class or something.
So it was a good internship andI thought to myself, maybe I'll
do that for a career, becausethat involves that was kind of
fun.
And uh, but my wife, elena umwho at that time was my
girlfriend Elena um said hey, uh, just go to the career center
and look at those boards and,you know, see what else is out
(10:19):
there and just interview.
And so I ended up interviewingfor Sony Electronics, who
accidentally included physics inthe list of majors that they
were going to interview.
Jennifer Coronado (10:29):
Accidentally.
How did they do that?
Did you ever find out how thathappened or what?
Tony Aghazarian (10:33):
I don't.
I don't understand the CareerCenter, how it worked and how
they were applying.
And you know, I think when youshow up to interview you tell
them which majors you'reinterested in, and so somehow
they got physics in the list,which majors you're interested
in, and so somehow they gotphysics in the list, which ended
up being fantastic.
It was a great first job for mebecause we were working on
something called a CRT andnowadays people don't know what
(10:56):
that is.
But what a great collection ofphysics in one little glass box.
It's got an, you know, it's gotan electric electron gun, and
it's got phosphorescence andit's got, you know, high voltage
and it's just wonderful.
Jennifer Coronado (11:09):
When I first started in visual effects, that
was the monitor everybody wasusing, and the one that you had
to pry out of there called DeadHands, as the new monitors were
coming.
Tony Aghazarian (11:19):
Yeah, the Trinitron was the best of the
best, and so I became a CRTprocess engineer and so having
to tune magnetic fields to getthe electron beams to go right
between the wires and land onthe phosphors, and it was a
wonderful experience for me.
Jennifer Coronado (11:41):
How long were you at Sony?
Tony Aghazarian (11:52):
About five years I worked in San Diego at
their design technology center,and then how long were you at?
Sony, ultimately helped themoutsource to a Korean company
called LG, which was a littleless known then, and and then
after that I I knew that it wastime to transition back out of
(12:16):
Tijuana, and so I poked my headaround and I started to get
worried about the CRT industryas flat panels were starting to
come into existence and it waspretty obvious that I would be
in the unemployment line withthe eight track tape engineers
and the vinyl record engineersif I wasn't careful.
So you know the.
So I started looking around andthis company you know Apple
(12:37):
computer had a iMac factorywhich had a CRT inside of it,
those old blueberry, bulbousiMacs, which is one of the first
computers where predominantlywomen bought actually it's a
beautiful machine.
And the factory had burned downin Mexico and so they were
starting a factory in Sacramentoand they knew everything but
how to make CRTs, and so I wasable to pivot out of the CRT
(13:00):
industry and into the computerindustry without taking kind of
a sub-lateral change in career.
So that was like for me, alifeline.
Jennifer Coronado (13:10):
When you did the Apple thing, did you have a
connection there and that's howyou got in?
Or did you just hold apply,send a resume in, as we did in
the past, or how did that workfor you?
Tony Aghazarian (13:20):
No, just a fantastic engineer named Chris
Mortensen was there and justresearched and looked around and
found me and asked me to comeup for an interview, and the
interview just went really long.
I showed up and the next thingI know they didn't know anything
about CRT.
So they're trying to quiz me,but they don't know what to ask,
and so the fun part was theyjust took me to the factory
(13:42):
floor and started walking aroundand I spent a few hours fixing
things on the line and they'relike okay, this is right, and so
that was a perfect fit for me.
Jennifer Coronado (13:52):
You fix things on the line for them.
Tony Aghazarian (13:54):
Yeah, in the interview they were having
troubles with magnetic fieldsand things like that and they
didn't understand the impact ofmagnetic fields on, on, on TVs.
And you know, at the early daysof TVs you had to actually
position your TV, you know,carefully in the in your house
even to get it to work correctly.
Uh, but because of what we wereable to do in a factory to make
(14:15):
it tuned for all directions,you don't have a problem when
you bring it home, but if youdon't have the magnetic field
right in the factory, you'regoing to have a problem if
somebody turns their monitorfacing north in their living
room.
And so you know, we had to bevery conscientious of what was
the magnetic fields like in thefactory.
So you have to actually developa series of magnetic coils,
(14:36):
like you know, two meters indiameter, to control magnetic
fields around your factory.
And so again, a wonderfulapplication of physics to you
know, to figure all this out.
Jennifer Coronado (14:48):
I just want to point out to you that I've
interviewed a lot of people overthe years and not many of them
come in and actually solveproblems in their interviews, so
that that's that's prettyunusual and that's pretty
amazing that you did.
Tony Aghazarian (15:00):
Yeah, it was, it was.
It was actually quite a bit offun and and, uh, I tend to uh be
comfortable with kind of uh,you know, let's if.
If you're not sure, if you, ifI'm the right person for you,
then let's just solve someproblems together and we'll see
how it goes and that works outwell.
Jennifer Coronado (15:20):
Um is fun a big big thing that you need in
your job Is fun a big big thingthat you need in your job?
Tony Aghazarian (15:24):
Oh, absolutely.
I have been an adrenalinejunkie through my teenage years
and college years, but at thispoint fun is solving problems or
talking to you, but in generalI look for laughter and fun in
most of the things I do.
Jennifer Coronado (15:42):
You said adrenaline junkie.
What were some things that youengaged in?
Tony Aghazarian (15:46):
Well, in high school it was always kind of the
rebel and you know, not so muchsports, but mostly down the
pathway of, you know, going outand driving your car a little
too fast or teeping the highschool or something like that.
And that got a little old.
But then when I moved off tocollege I went to South Lake
Tahoe and that became a seriesof hobbies of oh, I guess I'll
(16:09):
ski, and then I'll ski fasterand I'll do ski jumps, and then
I'll oh, let's do snowboarding,let's learn about that.
And then there's water sports,and then there's rock climbing,
and then there's cliff jumping,and then there's skydiving, and
then you just start adding tothe list of things you do to the
point of where it's.
At some point you're.
You're always looking forsomething that gives you a
little bit of a scare and thentraining yourself to be highly
(16:32):
functional while being a littleout of your comfort.
Jennifer Coronado (16:37):
That's so interesting you say that because
I think you know your frontalcortex develops I've been
reading about this lately whenyou're around 25, right, but if
you can keep engaging in thingsin that way, it sort of keeps
your frontal cortex a little bitalive and open and creative as
you get older.
Learning to function is veryimportant, but sometimes you can
(17:00):
lose some of that creativejuice if you're not careful to
keep engaging yourself in newideas and new things.
Tony Aghazarian (17:08):
Yeah, that was.
That ended up being reallyfantastic for me to keep moving
in that direction.
At one point I was going to agymnastics school in Lake Tahoe.
There's an adult night and youcould go there and you could
bounce on the trampoline withyour skis on so you could
practice helicopters anddifferent ski jumps without
(17:29):
actually crashing, because youwould put a harness on and then
do that and they had a rockclimbing wall there and you
could climb indoors and so thenyou'd also tumble and do the
backhand springs and the ringsand the high bar and things.
So we were just goofing aroundreally.
And at one point the owner ofthe gym also owned a gym near
San Luis Obispo, in five citiesdown there, and so he called me
(17:51):
up one day and said hey, wouldyou like to coach gymnastics?
His name is George.
I said, george, you know Idon't know how to coach
gymnastics, right, and he says,yeah, but I'm desperate.
So you know how to entertainpeople with.
Entertain people with goodtimes bouncing down the pads.
Go down there and just have agood time with the kids.
And so I went down there andfound out that I was actually
going to be coaching the boyscompetitive team and uh, and so
(18:15):
I was like what is going on here?
But you know, again, it was afun job and so I spent a lot of
my college years actuallycoaching gymnastics, and so I
spent a lot of my college yearsactually coaching gymnastics and
so that kept me thinking aboutlike how to, how the body moves
and how to, how to have, uh,have fun and how to make it
interesting.
And so, uh, and they did reallywell at the, you know, at the
(18:35):
state level, um, a lot of youknow, mostly most age groups,
they would mostly get the thehighest levels of gold and
things like that.
And the funny part of it wasthat we'd all just be screwing
around and a lot of the othergym coaches were like Cobra Kai
and so they had a little bit ofdisdain for me not taking the
sport seriously, and then theywere pretty disappointed when we
(18:57):
would win the gold medals.
So it was kind of just a lot offun bouncing around and having
fun wherever we were going.
Jennifer Coronado (19:09):
That's so interesting because I do think
sometimes people forget therecan be joy in competition, right
In the winning and the losing,and I, philosophically, am
someone who's like I'd ratherbelieve things are going to work
out okay and be happy on thepath to it, and if it doesn't
work out okay, I'm disappointedfor a couple minutes or a couple
days, but I didn't spend theentire time thinking it wasn't
going to work out, because thatseems like a terrible way to
(19:31):
live your life if you're instressful situations all the
time.
Tony Aghazarian (19:35):
Yeah, one of the boys was way flirty for an
eight-year-old and he was doinghis highest.
He was at the championship andhe was the best of these
eight-year-olds he's reallydecent and he was doing his high
bar routine and he was doinghis highest.
He was at the championship andhe was the best of these
eight-year-olds.
He was really decent and he wasdoing his high bar routine and
he was at the top of his routine.
He was kind of smiling andtwinkling his eyes at somebody
in the stands and then lost hisspot on his routine for about
(19:59):
two seconds, which was like aneternity, and then he finished
his routine and he only got abronze on that performance and
he was down in the mats justcrying his eyes out because he,
you know, screwed up.
And his parents come stormingdown the bleachers and they're
they just look mad as hell.
And they come over to him andI'm just going bracing for it.
(20:21):
I'm going, oh man, we are justbeen screwing off, not taking
this seriously, and we're aboutto get lit up by his parents and
his parents come down to himand they go, cameron, they said,
uh, do you think we'd likedriving up to San Jose from San
Luis Obispo and staying in youknow hotels and sitting all day
in these gyms.
Do you think this is?
We're doing this because welike this?
And he's like, uh, no, he'slike, uh, no, he's like we're
(20:44):
here for you.
So either you get to screwingaround and bouncing around in
the pads and laughing again, orcan we just go home and and he
was like, oh, and off, he wentand started bouncing around.
I'm going.
Oh, I dodged a bullet on thatone that is really awesome yeah,
well, you know, I think all the, all the kids that didn't, that
wanted to take it seriously,probably left, left the school.
Jennifer Coronado (21:08):
Well, I took you away from your your days at
Apple and and your beginning atApple, but you worked there for
what?
23 years.
Tony Aghazarian (21:14):
Yeah, yeah, from 2000 on until just a year
ago.
Jennifer Coronado (21:18):
Yeah, and so tell me after you got in there
and you're uh, fixing everythingon your first interview like
what, what were like next stepsand things that were super
exciting for you to work onwhile you were.
Tony Aghazarian (21:31):
Well, the so we were doing the iMac, and I
think the the interesting thingwas that we were learning to
introduce new products.
You know, and I think if youwent today around Silicon Valley
to all the companies, they'retrying to make new products,
like Google or Microsoft,facebook or Apple.
They're following a new productintroduction process that we
(21:54):
were creating and, and a lot ofthat has to start with what we
do at prototyping, and that wasall happening at this factory in
Sacramento, and so the you knowthe, the way these companies
work is it's really a the teamsport of new product
introduction is prototyping, andso if you think about how you
design an iPhone, you wouldimagine people would go off in
(22:20):
their corners and they wouldwrite software over here and
they would do an electricalschematic over here and they do
a mechanical CAD drawing overthere.
But they're pretty muchparallel play.
The first time all that comestogether is when they try and
build one, and so the designteams were working in their
desks and then they'd all cometogether for these prototyping
events, and that's whereeverything gets really crazy,
(22:41):
and you're never sure what'sgoing to happen next, if it's
going to even boot or functionor what have you, you learn
about what works and doesn'twork at that moment, and so
there's a huge intensity andchaos and unpredictability, and
so that's the environment that Ireally thrived in and that's
what I was doing at Sony andthat's what I really honed at
(23:02):
Apple, and starting at thefactory and then moving into
headquarters and moving from,you know, imac to servers, to
RAID systems, to the firstiPhone, to the iPad, to the
watch, to every iOS device upthrough the Vision Pro, it's
been just a nonstop thrill rideof new products introduction.
(23:22):
So I really don't care so muchabout the products themselves as
much as I care about thecompany and the ability to
introduce products.
Jennifer Coronado (23:29):
And how does failure play into development
and do you see it as a positiveor a negative, and how do you
work teams through that?
Tony Aghazarian (23:40):
If you're learning about the product then
you know that's great.
There's always these peoplethat fail avoidably and you come
down pretty hard on theavoidable failures.
And that's really what happensat the beginning is you start
out and you go to.
You go to some things happeningand you're trying to get
something done and it doesn'twork and you realize it because
(24:01):
somebody just didn't do theirhomework, they didn't practice
in advance, or you know theydidn't write the code at all and
that you really can't tolerate.
So you do want to hit hard onfailure to execute.
But if the thing just you justdidn't think about it right.
You know the unit, I was tryingto boot it up this way, you were
trying to wire it that way andwe didn't and our pathways
(24:21):
crossed.
You know then that's exactlythe whole point of new product
introductions.
And so you of course that cantotally throw off your business
model as you delay things.
But that's the risk and that'sthe game.
And so if you're not intofailures, hardware introductions
is a bad game to play.
They pay a lot more attentionto crossing your T's and dotting
(24:43):
your I's in the chip world thanyou do in the system world.
In the system world you canrecover in a few weeks, whereas
chips you can be down for a yearif you screw yourself up.
So I was in the system side ofthings, and so it allowed for a
little bit more cowboy and alittle bit more ease about
failure.
Jennifer Coronado (24:59):
That's great, and when you left Apple, you
were a senior director.
Tony Aghazarian (25:02):
Right.
Jennifer Coronado (25:05):
We didn't start as the senior director, so
how do you find your way intothese different roles to get up
to that level?
Tony Aghazarian (25:09):
I think pretty quickly.
I was managing a team inSacramento and then transitioned
into headquarters to leadprojects, and what I realize now
is that a huge portion of theproblem ends up being
organizational behavior and theway people interact.
You know, they're all just likemy 150 foster brothers and
(25:32):
sisters right.
They're all differentperspectives, different
dysfunctions, different problemsand inevitably you see what
they're thinking and then yousee what's real and you talk
about what's real and everyonecan understand that.
But and I think few people areactually compelled to do the
wrong thing, they're just have akink in their think and so if
(25:53):
you just talk a little bit aboutwhat's going, what's real, they
usually can move forward as aresult of that.
You know you're.
They say, why don't you managethis team of five people?
And then, oh, that was workingwell, we'll reward you with
managing.
You know more people and morethings and you just slowly step
up the ladder, so to speak.
Originally I was in operations,and so probably the more unusual
(26:15):
step is to step from operationsinto engineering.
You know, that's a.
That's another big step,because operations teams tend to
think about process andengineering teams tend to think
about research or development orboth.
I had developed somemethodologies for how we would
do test elimination forsomething called burn-in, and I
think the engineering teamsappreciated the approach, which
(26:36):
was pretty rigorousmathematically, and so I was
able to step naturally into aengineering function and start
managing from there and thennever really tried to grow or
get another promotion orsomething like that.
I just ended up taking on newroles that as they came forward.
Jennifer Coronado (27:00):
You know.
Going back to what we weretalking about, when you were in
college and in school, did youhave any mentors or people you
looked up to in how theyfunctioned?
Or did you find that you were?
Because, honestly, because youhad a zillion foster brothers
and sisters you know howdifferent people think in very
different ways Did you just findfind forging your own path was
(27:23):
the best way for you to?
Tony Aghazarian (27:24):
do it.
Yeah, I had my first manager atApple.
A guy named Greg Larson was areally good man and a good
manager, and he was the lastgood manager I had at Apple.
The thing that he told me isthat that was really helpful for
me and it took me a lot ofyears to get better at.
This was that I terrified himand I have a very unusual way of
(27:50):
thinking and a very strong mind, and so when I come at things,
I'm continuously disrupting theprocess and disrupting the cart.
It'd be very easy to have amanager who just wants to, you
know, slow your roll and youknow not move so fast, not
change things.
He certainly had an inclination, but he just turned out to be a
pretty wise man and so he justdecided to confide in me.
(28:12):
That.
You know that I was scaring theheck out of him, but it's kind
of like one of those things ifyou bring somebody in who's very
talented and is because I had alot of Sony experience right,
so I was coming in with theexact skill set that they needed
.
We developed a friendship thatallowed me to take some risks
and, at the same time, himdisclosing that to me made me
(28:33):
very again sympathetic to himand I was kind of like, oh, I
get it.
And so that helped me and him,you know, move along.
And so from that point on, helpme and him, you know, move
along.
And so from that point on Itried my best to tamp down my
craziest you know plans and justtry and stay a little bit color
, a little bit more within thelines and understand what the
(28:55):
company needs as opposed to whatI thought it needed.
Fortunately for me, the companywas absolutely crazy, and so
from time to time they wouldcome along and have a problem
and Steve was not interested inthe normal way.
If he wanted something, gofigure it out.
Jennifer Coronado (29:17):
When we say Steve, we're talking about Steve
Jobs, of course.
Tony Aghazarian (29:20):
Yes, and so we would get all manner of crazy
requests and crazy things to godo.
It wasn't like me saying I'mgoing to just keep my head down
and do what the company needs.
It was I'm going to wait untilthe company asks for crazy and
then I'm going to step up.
That's going to be my time andthat just happened over and over
and over again throughout mycareer and over and over again
(29:42):
throughout my career.
And so you know, I find thatwhen people are, when there's
the biggest pressure and thescariest moments and the
craziest thing has to happen, alot of people step to the side.
A lot of people that normallyare trying to put themselves
forward and be ambitious, theyget a little scared when things
are scary, and so you know, thatgives gives people who actually
(30:07):
want to go do hard work achance to run, you know, so they
can just move forward in those,in those critical moments.
And so over time, uh, I, Ireally enjoyed the the craziest
of moments.
Jennifer Coronado (30:20):
Can you define what would be a crazy
moment for you, like somethingthat was you're like I don't
know how we're going to do thisand yeah, I mean just as just,
for the most recent example thateveryone has is COVID.
Tony Aghazarian (30:34):
You know you, you come in one day and say
everything's shut down.
You know how do we run a buildin China?
How are we going to execute toa hardware schedule when
everyone's in their at theirhomes and a lot of people are
like I don't know what we'regoing to do?
You know, I'm like I know whatwe're going to do and so
everyone gets.
All the normal people who areup there trying to control
things just didn't know what tosay.
(30:56):
They all got out of the way andwe just were able to go
implement, um, a whole newproduct introduction process
that survives COVID, and youprobably noticed that we didn't
miss any beats in terms ofintroducing products.
And what I think is fascinatingis that, if you look back over
time, uh, each time the rest ofthe world was suffering, whether
(31:17):
it's a 2007,.
You know financial crisis, andwe come out with an iPhone or
thecom crisis and we come outwith an iPod, or you know COVID,
and we're and we're workinghard at the vision pro.
All of these moments wherethere's huge layoffs, there's
huge uncertainty and there'shuge fear Uh, we were the
contrary contrarians of themarket, where we were just
(31:37):
doubling down on something truly, you know, magnificent.
And you know I think, uh, steveand Tim, you know I think they
went through some hard timesfinancially, but they saved up a
lot of money and enabled us togo and do things you know at
those moments, and so I wassuper lucky to have been able to
be on those first teams to togo do those things when, you
(32:01):
know, everything else was inchaos.
Jennifer Coronado (32:03):
But do you hire team members that scare you
.
Is that your philosophy, or?
Tony Aghazarian (32:09):
No, absolutely.
I had a friend of mine one ofmy best friends is likes to make
fun of me and he would.
And somebody would come up tome and go, wow, tony, you're
just so smart.
And he was in front of him andhe's like, and he said something
to him like, tony's not thatsmart, he just surrounds himself
with smart people.
And the other guy says, well,that sounds smart.
But I had to think about it, Iwent.
That's probably true.
(32:32):
Most people on my team are quitea bit smarter than me and very
unusual in their skill sets.
You know.
You take, for example, ourmutual friend, you know, wayne,
who's.
He's just got a series of skillsets that I can't even approach
and so can be intimidatingthird parties.
That who basically ostensiblythought they worked a hundred
(33:06):
percent of their time for me wasabout 5,000 people and my staff
was divided in half.
I had half my staff my directstaff were leaders, managing
team members, and half my staffwere individual contributors who
just sat and thought aboutthings and, you know, would go
through things and just analyzewhat we're doing and that would
(33:27):
be.
I had like the smartestsoftware engineer I'd ever met
and a one of the best systemdesigners and humble,
aspirational leaders,aspirational examples to every
other engineer that they'd everwant that role and paid them the
same as the directors.
And so, at the end of the day,you end up with two career paths
for every person.
They could either be a leaderor they could be the person
(33:47):
who's really influencing thingsby deep diving.
And I called that my you know,my technical staff, and they
would influence me all the time.
I remember one time, at thebeginning days of COVID, I was
like, okay, let's go solve thisproblem.
And I was like we have somehard work to go do.
(34:09):
And I started describing what Ithink we needed to go do, and
it was my technical staff, notmy management staff who came to
me and said you know, you can'tdo that right.
And I was like what are youtalking about?
People are scared and they'reat their homes and they're
trying to take care of theirkids, and so just pause for a
moment before you start beatingthe drum too hard.
And so I, you know, went outand deleted my sort of Slack
(34:32):
message or whatever I wasthinking about saying and, and
you know, reined it in a littlebit and balanced my perspective
over what we needed to do withthe team and and how we were
going to make the companysuccessful.
Also, because I have so manyideas that don't work.
You have to have people thattell you they don't work.
Jennifer Coronado (34:48):
That's important because sometimes
people, particularly who aresuccessful like yourself, they
get to a point in their careerwhere they don't want to hear
the no anymore.
Right, they don't want to hearthat's not going to work, which
you sounded like you were thatperson early in your career, and
they get.
I think they become lesser intheir roles because they can't
(35:12):
admit when they're wrong.
So I think it's great that yousound like that, that's you're
able to know.
All right, maybe this personhas the better idea.
I love the idea, tony, of thethe two paths, because sometimes
I think in a lot of companiesyou go well management's the
only way you can really make abetter salary.
But not everybody's equipped tobe a manager.
(35:33):
Some people are, just as yousaid, good individual
contributors and big picturethinkers, and so when you try to
fit people into a box wherethey're suddenly they need to
shift towards management butthey don't necessarily have that
skillset.
It frustrates people.
Tony Aghazarian (35:49):
The people that were my technical staff really
were horrible at management Atsome points.
I tried to have them managepeople, and it just turns out
that that level of geniusdoesn't blend well with you know
, managing people who are notquite as good, because either
they're overly conflict-orientedor they're passive, and you
(36:09):
know too passive.
And so you've got to have thestriking, that balance of you
know what to what to do with anemployee and so, and so they're
hard, very hard to manage thesetechnical staff members, and so
you have to realize that the,the difficulty of managing them,
is worth the, the output.
You know, the, the, the, theone-off earth changing idea, or
(36:30):
how to really simplify a problem, you know, or the credibility
of your organization really atwhole.
Jennifer Coronado (36:36):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think
sometimes people too, when theysee like a leader title or
whatever they're like, well, Iwant to do that because that's
the best job.
Well, to be honest, the leadertitle is not the best job, it's.
Your job as a leader is to makeeverybody else around you do a
good job, and so sometimes thatmeans you giving up the cooler
sort of sexier stuff that mightcome with what you think is cool
(36:58):
about it?
Tony Aghazarian (36:59):
Yeah, absolutely I'm.
I'm very well known as theprobably one of the best
delegators at Apple.
I got really good at givingaway work, Um, but you have to
give away autonomy and authorityat the same time to get it to
work.
Jennifer Coronado (37:16):
Yeah, Now why do you think delegation is
important?
Tony Aghazarian (37:19):
Well, you remember, I was running a very
large organization, but even atmy first management
responsibility, I was sofrustrated with how management
wouldn't listen and I had ideasof how we could solve things,
and they just wouldn't listen tome.
It was actually one of thehardest things I did.
So when I'm the first manager,I'm going okay.
(37:40):
The first thing I'm gonna do isstart letting people other
people have their ideas.
I finally had my moment ofpower where I could roll out all
of my ideas unchallenged, andthe first thing I did was to
surrender that to my employees,and so that was pretty hard for
me to do, actually, but becauseI had that frustration, I
decided that I wasn't going tobe that, and so, pretty early, I
(38:03):
surrendered judgment and, ingeneral, I still had my
thumbprint on a lot of things.
I think the key there is youjust can't hold people.
You can't be prescriptive andhold people accountable at the
same time.
You have to choose Either I'mgonna tell you what to do, in
which case if it works, it's mycredit, if it fails, it's my
(38:24):
fault, or I hold you accountableand let you use your tools and
methods, and so that ends upbeing the better model.
So I would just hold peopleaccountable.
And then they would come to meand eventually realize they're
going to get grilled for failurebecause they don't have a good
enough strategy.
And so then they come up andsay well, what are your ideas?
And then I could still share myideas and then they could
(38:45):
choose which one was best.
And that was basically thebirth of the technical staff
approach, which is having agroup of people standing around
here really helps you, becauseif you're accountable, you'd
rather get the answer right thanto get your way.
You know, when you'reaccountable, you better get the
answer right, and I do thinkthat Apple doesn't care about
(39:08):
you getting your way or yourideas, they just care about
getting it right.
I think that model workedreally well there.
Jennifer Coronado (39:14):
It's so great that you it sounds like you
found the perfect culture foryourself.
Curious why you retired fromApple, yeah, and now you worked
with the Stimson group as well,which you're sort of a board
member on that, and that's athink tank out of DC right.
Tony Aghazarian (39:31):
Yeah, my son went off to college and we had
an empty nest, and so it was agood time for us to celebrate
life, and so I knew I was goingto be taking some time off, and
that's really an employeemindset, isn't it?
I'm going to take a year off,and so now I've realized that I
wasn't taking a year off.
I was actually just leaving theboss-having industry.
I started reaching out andstarted to understand, because
(39:54):
one downside to being part of acompany like Apple is that you
become very insular.
You live and breathe and thinkabout Apple products, and that
has a huge impact.
I'm really happy about the workthat I've done there.
However, I didn't know anythingelse that was going on outside.
Jennifer Coronado (40:14):
Right, it becomes your identity.
Tony Aghazarian (40:16):
Oh, my goodness , I can't tell you how right you
are.
Is that?
You know my brothers andsisters would introduce me?
This is my brother.
He works at Apple, his name isTony, like my identity is, my
name is third on the list andand so, yeah it was.
It was really a problem for meto you know think about leaving
that identity behind Ended updoing a mushroom trip with a
(40:39):
guide to help me get throughthat, and it was like a light
switch fix, and so that wentaway really quick, so that was
solved fast.
The idea of reaching out andlooking around was really the
most important element of mytransition, because then I
started paying attention to whatwas happening, and at that time
(40:59):
we were having, you know,ukraine war had broken out, and
so I was trying to help withtechnologists there and started
getting a little bit moreinvolved, and so somebody would
introduce me about.
The other geopolitical issuesare popping up, and before I
know it, I'm talking to theStimson Center, who works on
geopolitical issues, and there's, you know, 6000 or so think
tanks in the United States, andmost of them are in DC.
(41:22):
But you know, most of them arejust places where angry people
who aren't in power.
You know when the Democrats arein power in the White House,
the Republicans all join thinktanks and write, you know, hate
pieces and and vice versa, andso I didn't understand any of
this when I was getting involved.
But this one center isapolitical and and they don't
(41:43):
just publish white papers, theyactually do stuff.
Jennifer Coronado (41:45):
They go and they're on the ground in a lot
of areas.
Tony Aghazarian (41:48):
Yeah.
So I started getting involvedand I'm going oh, this is fun,
because you know I dig in alittle deeper to their chemical
nonproliferation effort or I,you know, study what they're
doing with, you know, rhinocerospreserves in Africa, and so
they just go through and try andsolve a problem that no one
else has been able to solve andthen prototype it, and then they
(42:09):
just try and get rid of it asfast as possible.
Somebody else will take it andrun with it.
That's their mission, and so Icouldn't be happier to be
involved with that type of thing, because you just gotta, you
know, learn about what'shappening in the world, and
through that process of solvingand working with different
people, then other people startto get an idea of who I am.
Jennifer Coronado (42:28):
And out of the woodwork, I start getting
all these people coming to findme to help with other things.
You worked at Apple and thenyou start reaching out to people
and suddenly you're involved ingeopolitical engagement.
And who do you reach out to tostart being involved in that?
Like, how does that happen?
And how do you end up at thecenter that's named after the
(42:50):
former secretary of war from youknow, the Roosevelt
administration?
Like, how did that happen?
Tony Aghazarian (42:57):
Yeah, sometimes you just have a conversation
with people, and so I was at a,you know, for example.
I was at a resort and met thiswoman who worked at the World
Bank and I'm curious, I'm likethe World Bank Last enough.
I've heard that before.
I have no idea what the WorldBank is, and so I just like the
World Bank.
That's not.
I've heard that before.
I have no idea what the WorldBank is, and so I just like what
are you doing?
What does that mean?
(43:18):
What happens?
And I just try and understandthat.
So I just spent hours listeningto her talk about what happens
at the World Bank, and then shewould ask me like what are you
doing?
And I'm like, I'm thinkingabout what's next for me and I'm
trying to understand a littlemore about you know where, how I
can help.
And I'm not going to.
My next game is not going to bebigger than Apple, you know,
let's be clear, right?
And so I'm like so I want to dosomething that has some sort of
(43:39):
impact, and so I thought maybeI'll help with industrial policy
.
Uh, is what my thought was, andthe reason why I thought it
would be useful is because Ispent 20 years dealing with
industrial policy, and so whenyou tell me what the US and
China are going to do with theircurrency or their import or
their trade laws or what haveyou, I will tell you what Apple
or Google or anyone else isgoing to do about it and how
(44:01):
they're going to work aroundyour policy so they can still
make the rest of the world work.
It turned out to be a veryuseful input for the DC belt,
right.
So I'm an unusual personbecause for the DC belt right,
so I'm I'm an unusual personbecause anyone in government and
and military or would love toget out of it and get into tech
where they can make more money,and so there's not much going
the other direction.
And so for me to be able to goover there and say I know a
(44:24):
little bit about what industrywill do when you, that that
industrial policy ended up beinga useful thing to them and so
got me more introductions.
And so once I started talkingto somebody at the World Bank
and I told her what I waslooking for, she said, oh, you
should talk to this person, andthat person was working on
humanitarian shelters in Ukraine, and so I started helping him
(44:45):
with some shelter work and Iwent to Ukraine to work on some
shelter work.
Jennifer Coronado (44:49):
You went to Ukraine.
Tony Aghazarian (44:51):
Yeah, during the war I actually discovered
that I don't really likecharities.
I don't trust charities.
I feel like you give them abunch of money and where does it
go, I don't know.
I don't mind giving money aslong as I trust that it's going
to be used for good.
And I know there's a lot ofcorruption in Ukraine.
So I went out to actually like,let's go take a look and see how
(45:11):
we can help, and I found someof the best you know ways to
help from a humanitarianperspective, because this
gentleman, eric, had developed,you know, a shelter that you
could build for about $3,000 ontop of rubble.
And, you know, get a familythrough the winter.
That's a big problem with thesedisplaced people.
And so I went out and I lookedat places and, for example, one
(45:33):
place we were working on uh had.
They were retrofitting an olddorm and so the government had
given the real estate over.
We were.
It cost us about $3,000 perhome to retrofit the electricals
and get new kitchens and newshowers and things.
And the government realizedthat if we put displaced persons
in there, that they couldn'teven afford the energy because
(45:59):
of the war, and so thesebuildings had free rent and the
government paid for their energyand they knew that when they
moved in, there was not likethey get to move back after the
war because there is nothing togo back to, it's all rubble.
The deal is you get a free homeforever, free rent and free
energy, and it costs.
You know, our move Ukraine isthe name of the organization I
was working with that cost them$3,000 to provide it and I'm
(46:21):
going okay if there's corruption.
I can't figure out how they'rethe worst crooks I've ever met,
because for $3,000, you give ahome for forever.
You know, like that's a deal,and so I was super happy to
participate.
While I was there, word gotaround that there's some you
know silicon valley guy, and soa bunch of uh you know uh
(46:43):
technologists started crawlingout of the woodwork to talk
about drones and how they canreduce their radar cross
sections and how they can dothings, and so we ended up just
helping you know technologistsand then I would bridge my
Western coalition oftechnologists together and we
would just solve problems thatare interesting to solve, which
is crazy to me that the militarycouldn't do that, but the
(47:05):
military in Ukraine was verymuch kind of a Soviet area
leadership and attitude, and sothey were very traditional.
And so it's all the 20somethings that were, you know,
climbing in their cars anddriving to the front lines to
disrupt that.
Really, you know, stop theimmediate rollover of Kiev, and
things like that.
So it just ends up being abunch of technologists who are
(47:27):
all trying to solve a problem.
Jennifer Coronado (47:29):
Sounds to me, Tony, like you went to another
interview and then you went downto the assembly line and you
started fixing things again.
Tony Aghazarian (47:36):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It was a lot of fun just tosolve problems that they were
trying to solve and how tointegrate technology, and I
think that through some of thatwork, ukraine's going to become
one of the epicenters of dronetechnology and manufacturing as
we go forward, because that'swhat they've built out.
Jennifer Coronado (47:58):
So, tony, you've done this, you have your
consultancy, You've started.
Now what's your next big ideafor you and what you want to do?
Tony Aghazarian (48:06):
It's kind of funny is that we are starting a
company and I do the opposite ofevery book you could ever
imagine on how to start acompany, because their ideas are
you know, hey, you got to focusand I'm like or I could just do
like 12 different projects andthey're like, and you got to be
all in 80 hours a week and I'mvery much on the pathway of uh,
I'm going to go spend a month inAustralia with my wife and you
(48:29):
know, getting on a, on a sleepertrain, and have a good time,
and so I have no ambition togrow it.
I have an ambition to stay busyand because of the things that
I do that are problem solving innature, people come find me and
(48:49):
so I end up just having peopleknock on my door, you know, once
every couple weeks with kind ofa new thing that they're trying
to do, and I try and help them.
And if it's a pro bono make theworld a better place, cause and
they're all working for free,then I'll work for free, and if
they're out there to make a buck, then they need to pay me.
And then the other part of thatis that people who want to live
(49:11):
a different life than whateveryone else has been doing in
the grind.
They're coming to find me to gohow can I do more of that?
And so I get a lot of careercoaching conversations that
popping up where people arewanting to do exactly what I'm
doing, which is, you know, floataround and get involved with
some things, but not take lifetoo seriously.
I'm in really enjoying, and Iwant to bring more people on
(49:32):
board that actually want to havea good time and want to have
fun and solve problems, and sothat's kind of what I'm doing
right now, and so I do a littlebit of some training on how new
product introductions work, orI'll work on some startups or,
you know, work with teachers,helping them buy homes or start
nonprofits, things like that,and so I don't have a plan of
(49:54):
where this goes.
I just know.
I just know where it came from.
So I think the next thing isjust to is to keep helping
people, and what I like aboutthis is that there's no, there's
no one coming to me thatdoesn't want to solve a problem,
and so you know, my methodworks very well when everyone
(50:16):
wants to solve a problem andworks really badly when there's
a particular interest thatdoesn't want the problem solved
and so, for example, I don'tthink I could probably help out
with renovating the, you know,rethinking the healthcare
industry.
You know there's just too manypeople who want it to stay
broken.
It's just maddening, right.
And so you end up with, likeyou know, that kind of thing is
(50:36):
probably not my best fit, butthere's lots of people who are
at a point where they are all inon solving a problem and that
they they ask around and youknow my name pops up and I come
over and I'll help people, youknow, work backwards through
their problem and and figure outhow to, you know, unblock all
the things that are preventingthem from rethinking this.
Jennifer Coronado (50:59):
Education.
You talked about beingpassionate about helping with
education.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat your help, what you're
doing in that space and whythat's important to you?
Tony Aghazarian (51:10):
I tend to adopt purpose, meaning that I like
solving problems, and so, uh, I,I tend to not be so passionate
about one particular cause oranother, but my wife likes the
climate to be solved, she likes,uh, civil liberties for women,
she likes education, and sothose are now things that I'd
like to help out with.
(51:31):
And so, you know, I'm not fromUkraine, but no one likes a
bully, so I'll help out there.
And, you know, any place I cango, help is good for me.
And so, with education, youknow, it's an interesting thing
is that I'll tackle any varietyof things.
And so, for example, I have afriend of mine that's a teacher
that can't buy a home.
(51:51):
Why not?
You realize that there's a lotof reasons why teachers can't
buy homes, and none of them areblocking.
They're all just stacking andit just seems insurmountable.
You know, what I've learnedover time is that 30
non-blocking issues don't add upto a block, and so you just
have to work through one at atime.
(52:12):
And so I would say somethinglike why can't you buy a house?
And the answer is, well, can'tafford a house.
And I'm like, well, that's whywe'll get financing for a house,
and what have you and I,obviously I have enough money to
go help them buy a house, butthey're not interested in
charity, they want to, you knowown their home.
And so we would do somethinglike I, would then create an LLC
(52:34):
and we'd be 50-50 partners inan LLC.
And so I said, okay, this LLCis going to go buy a house and I
put no money into this LLC.
They put no money into the LLC.
And so we go find a house andwe say we're going to buy this
house and we're going to beequal partners in this.
It's unilateral exit, whichmeans, if I get tired of this, I
push a button and the housegets sold.
(52:55):
If they get tired of it, theypush a button, the house gets
sold and they have the right tobuy me out at any point in time.
And so and I hope they do andso then we need to go get money.
Of course, there's no downpayment available.
In fact, we need more than ahundred percent financing
because we have to be able topay for a roof or something like
that.
And so you work backwards fromthere and you say, okay, well,
(53:19):
we have to get a loan.
So, um, let's go see if we canget a loan.
And it turns out the, the bankof Tony and Elena are willing to
give a private loan, uh, tothis LLC.
And so, uh, and you know, theseplaces are around the United
States are not.
We're not talking aboutmultimillion dollar places,
we're talking about a $200,000home.
I can give a private loan tothis LLC, which is a good win
(53:41):
for me because, you know, backat that time, there's no
interest coming from anywhere.
Right, a loan is a goodbusiness for me.
And they got a loan that theycouldn't otherwise get, and they
actually.
So we give a loan for like 101%or 105%, depending on whether
how much money we need in thebank to cover, you know,
incidental or urgent causes.
(54:03):
Next point, which is well, whatinterest rate do you give them?
And the answer is I gave them agood rate because the risk is
very low.
And so if you went to a bankand said you know this is 100%
low and you have to give, youknow it would be extortion level
rates to get that, and butthat's because they don't have
the ability to sell the home andI'm I'm the decision maker on
(54:23):
whether this home gets sold ornot.
And so if I don't like what'shappening, as either the member
of the LLC or as the bank, I canjust push a button and the home
gets sold, and so this is avery low risk loan because I
know the person who bought thehouse me and I know the property
.
I've reviewed it carefully andso at the end of the day, it's a
(54:45):
low risk loan.
So I give a competitive rate,which means even the interest
rate is so much lower than theteacher could get by themselves,
and probably even I could getby myself if I wanted 100% loan.
And so now they have a homethat they otherwise couldn't get
.
I'm making money as a lender andI also get 50% of the profit of
(55:06):
this home, but I do nothing.
They do the property management, and so lots of investors might
say, well, why don't you justbuy the whole house yourself?
And the answer is I have to pay10 or 15% in property
management fees or I have to go,you know, unclog toilets, and
so the teacher has a home,everyone's winning, and they
don't feel like there's anycharity in this.
In fact, if you, if you thinkabout this issue right now, you
(55:26):
probably think yourself who gotthe better deal?
You know?
And the answer is you.
Who got the better deal?
You know?
And the answer is you, you.
It's not easy.
It's not easy to figure out whogot the better deal, which is
exactly what I was looking for,which is you know us all to win.
And so now I did that again,and I did that again.
And so now there's you know,three teachers in their homes
and, and so it's a way that Ihelp you know with.
(55:49):
You know education, andsometimes I'll work with Icon
Academy or other people toideate on how they can, you know
, help democratize education sothat you can learn online and
maybe get credentials.
It may not be as good as abrick and mortar school, but you
know, if you can get freeeducation and get free
credentials, then the driven canachieve something.
(56:12):
It makes a better society and soyou know I I'll approach
whatever problem I can find.
Uh, I'll go down to cal polyand I I help, you know, talk to
students and connect them tojobs and things like that, and
give, give little speeches.
You know, mostly around stem.
Because the same thing, I knowthat teachers, all they can see
is academia, they can't seeindustry.
(56:33):
When I show up there, you knowthe, the, the Apple guy who
introduced their first iPhone,who was a physics student.
It's sexy enough that it cancompete with I'm going to, I'm
going to go into research or I'mgoing to be a professor, and so
they can see that as anindustry option and they don't
have to go on to a PhD programif they don't want to.
Jennifer Coronado (56:52):
You give them options, you know of what they
can do with their life.
Well, Tony, I'm so glad that wefound you and that you were
willing to talk to us today.
We appreciate that.
Tony Aghazarian (57:03):
Thank you, it's been a lot of fun.
Jennifer Coronado (57:07):
Thank you for listening to Everyone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson,
executive producer is AaronDussault, music by Doug Infinite
.
Our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker and I am Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a slightlydisappointed productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review,
(57:29):
and maybe even like andsubscribe.
Thank you for listening.
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