Resilience, Risk, and Staying Curious in Leadership with Silicon Valley Veteran Jim Cook

Silicon Valley's culture and the rapid rise of AI are reshaping leadership and business landscapes. In this episode of Seek Go Create, we welcome back Silicon Valley veteran, Netflix cofounder, and executive coach Jim Cook. With over thirty years of experience, Jim dives into the seismic shifts over the past five years, discussing the implications of AI, the evolution of leadership, and his insights on the intersection of technology and human curiosity. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a leader seeking inspiration, or someone curious about the future of work, this conversation is a must-listen.

"Maturity isn't an age—it’s the ability to take risks, stay curious, and not worry about what others think." - Jim Cook

Access all show and episode resources HERE

About Our Guest:

Jim Cook is a seasoned Silicon Valley veteran and co-founder of Netflix, known for his strategic acumen in bridging the gap between vision and execution in tech startups. With over thirty years of experience, Jim has demonstrated exceptional leadership as a founder, CEO of BenchBoard Executive Coaching, and director of the Alliance of CEOs. His extensive background includes pivotal roles at Intuit, Mozilla Firefox, and other renowned organizations, making him a well-respected figure in tech leadership and innovation. Jim continues to share his wealth of knowledge through coaching, helping to mold the next generation of leaders.

Reasons to Listen:

1. Insights from a Silicon Valley Veteran: Discover the unique perspectives of Jim Cook, Netflix cofounder, as he shares lessons from over 30 years in tech and leadership innovation, with a special focus on the evolution of AI and its impact on the industry.
2. Navigating Crisis and Opportunity: Learn how the dynamic landscape of Silicon Valley adapted during major events like COVID-19 and how it continues to innovate in response to global challenges, providing valuable lessons in resilience and adaptability.
3. The Future of Leadership and Technology: Engage with the forward-thinking discussion on the integration of AI in business and government, and explore how curiosity, risk-taking, and maturity are crucial for future leaders in an ever-evolving digital world.

Episode Resources & Action Steps:

Resources Mentioned:

1. Cook's PlayBooks on Substack: Jim Cook writes a series on leadership and scaling operations. A specific series mentioned is "Leading with Powerful Questions." This is a great resource for those interested in leadership development and effective questioning techniques.
2. Jim Cook on Seek Go Create - Episode from January 27, 2020.
3. Deep Research and Operator by OpenAI: These are AI tools mentioned by Jim Cook that can aid in research and automation tasks. They offer functionalities like conducting deep research on topics and automating repetitive browser tasks, which can significantly increase productivity.

Action Steps:

1. Stay Curious and Ask Questions: Jim Cook emphasizes the importance of curiosity and asking questions in both personal and professional growth. Listeners are encouraged to cultivate a mindset of curiosity and engage in continuous learning.
2. Explore AI Tools: Experiment with AI tools like Deep Research and Operator to see how they can enhance productivity and efficiency in daily tasks or professional workflows....

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
As you get older, you realizethat age is not the real thing

(00:05):
that should be biased against.
It's curiosity.
You can actually learn anythingat any age if you're passionate
and curious about learning it.
And if you're passionate and curiousabout learning a topic such as AI,
and you have the experience and thewisdom to know how to learn and how

(00:26):
to process and curate knowledge,you can become extremely powerful.
Was in the admin.
may know and have heard of the Shrek team.
our 301st episode, areinviting back one of

(00:51):
Um,

(01:21):
knowledge.
I love having conversations with Jim.
In this episode, we're probably goingto speak about insights from the
past five years, The evolving techand leadership landscape, possible
predictions for the next five years.
Jim, welcome back to Seek Go Create.
Thanks, Tim.
This is going to be awesome.
Excellent.

(01:42):
Excellent.
That's crazy.
said, you know what?
I'm kind of getting tired of doingspecial stuff every time we hit these.
But.
I think I'd like to revisit, andwhen I looked at the calendar, it was
almost five years exactly, that I had

(02:02):
Um,

(02:27):
the most famous guest we've ever had, and
roll, drum roll, please.
I'm gonna, with two letters,I'm gonna tell you who it is.
AI.
You had, you had a.
I did a live interview.
Well, I've got to clarify here.

(02:49):
I actually had it scheduledbefore I was going to talk to you.
We haven't done it.
Oddly enough, AI rescheduled on me.
so that's kind of weird.
Something about, chat GPT saidElon Musk was doing a hostile
takeover or something like that.
And so, but anyway, I thinkI'm scheduling that later.
So later I might, I know you and I aregoing to talk a little bit about AI.

(03:10):
So.
So that's where we are.
300 was AI, 301 Jim Cook,302 Mike Baer, and I think if
were three episodes that I wantedto package together and tell people,
maybe even put it in a time machineor something, these would be them
from 2025 to put a stamp on this.

(03:31):
Tim, you're you're AI 300 episodewhere you interviewing yourself and
doing one of those avatar things.
Is this what's going on?
It was just like this, but whereyou're sitting, Jim, was the, live
version of ChatGPT, and we werehaving a conversation just like this,
nice.
I've got questions, you know,I didn't really train a lot.

(03:54):
I've done a few tests on this.
Again, you know, we've had itrescheduled, so this is kind of
odd that 300 Is recorded after 301.
So I might ask you later, if you've gota question that you want me to ask when
I'm interviewing So, you know, so fiveyears ago, we wouldn't even be probably

(04:15):
discussing much about AI, would we?
No, AI dropped in November of 2022.
Yeah.
I remember it.
Well, at least it was released.
they've been working on AI,otherwise known as machine learning,
artificial intelligence for 30 years.

(04:36):
it was all an offshoot of thedeep mind center out of Google.
but everything came to fruition and theyfinally launched it in November, 2022 and
look at the journey we've been on since.
Ooh, yeah.
We, I do want to circle back.
I want us to have an AI conversationbecause I think it feeds into
leadership and business and what'sgoing on, but before we get too
far into this, man, catch me up.

(04:58):
January of 2020 was when our last episodedropped and seems like yesterday, but
it also seems like a long, time ago.
what have you been up to since then?
I mean, catch me up, you know,get a little bit of family, a
little bit of business, just.
I remember wanting to followin your footsteps and get

(05:22):
into the coaching business.
I had one client who had called me upand said, I think you'd be a great coach.
It was at a time when coaching wentfrom being this scarlet letter.
I call the scarlet letter like, hey, Ithink you need a coach because you're
not, you're not doing so well to you.
To kind of what I callthe Oprah of coaching.

(05:42):
You get a coach and you get a coach andeveryone gets a coach and we're handing
out coaches and HR, but I was starting toget all these calls in around that time.
because I, you know, I'm a CFO.
I've been a CFO in theValley for 30 years.
I was still an operator.
I was still in a job.
but nobody knew who tocall to be a CFO coach.
I took one and then I didyour podcast in January, 2020.

(06:06):
I remember about 30 days latergoing up to Breckenridge and we
saw you and Gloria Breckenridge,in February, mid February of 2020.
And we came back, you left andabout three days later, listen, I
were the most sick we've ever been.
This is February of 2020.
Remember COVID wasn't actually announcedas, hitting the U S until March or

(06:26):
late, we didn't do the shutdown.
Sorry.
It was announced, but we didn't shutdown the US until March 13th, 2020.
I also remember that well, but,but I'm pretty sure we had it.
which was a Friday, by theway, it was Friday the 13th.
I'm pretty sure we had itbecause I could barely breathe
unless it can barely breathe.
a lot has changed since then.

(06:47):
we learned a lot of lessonsthat the world wasn't going to.
Go away.
Zoom came into our, our being a lot more.
We learned how to work from home.
We, you know, I think it showedus how resilient we can be as,
as a people around the world.
One of the things I was talkingto someone recently and I was just
kind of looking back and listen,there's many places we can dive.

(07:11):
I'd love for you and I, especiallybecause of your expertise in leadership
and that part of the world thatyou have been in for your career.
but I do think with COVID.
was one of the first, what I'll calla catalytic event, you know, let's,
Okay.

(07:49):
And when I say people, Imean large groups of people.
You know, there used tobe some things like 9 11.
You and I have memories of that, thatI think people thought about things
Silence.
There you go.

(08:21):
but what's your observation?
I mean, is that sort of accurate becauseI still see people trying to figure out
what they want to do But there's a lotof people now that are pretty strong.
I don't want to do this.
I'm never doing this again
Well, I think you nailed it.
you and I are big students of history.
I know we've had lots of conversationsabout history and I'm a big
student of history and I liketo learn lessons from history.

(08:43):
So it reminds me of what many of usin Silicon Valley talk about a lot,
which is Crisis events like the dotbomb era or the savings and loan crisis
or the 2009, mortgage crisis, COVIDthese points in crisis do give people

(09:04):
clarity because crisis gives peoplewhat I call gives them permission
to do what they've always wanted todo because what do I have to lose?
The world might end.
And so the, you know, I thinkcrisis gives people this, well,
it's going to be really bad.
I may as well try what I'm going to donow because you know, the world might

(09:26):
be different when I wake up tomorrow.
And so there's a much bigger fear outthere than the roommate in your head fear.
That's what that usually holds peopleback from doing what they want to be
doing because they might lose theirstatus in society or lose their job.
But when you've got a biggerfear, You know, people just,

(09:47):
it gives them permission to trywhat they haven't tried before.
And so you see this kind ofCambrian explosion of innovation
right after crisis events, rightafter the dot bomb era, web 2.
0 came on board andFacebook was developed.
And Google launched in 2004, really.
I mean, went public to us before,but it launched 2002, right?

(10:08):
right after 2009, you know, you sawthe Airbnb and the Uber and, Let's,
let's try to just couch surf and rentpeople's homes and sleep on their couch,
which was the first version of Airbnb.
Let's, have the limousines come toyou through an app on a mobile phone.
What do we have to lose?
These were crazy ideas at the time.
And most, even venture capitalists,thought they were crazy.

(10:32):
You know, after COVID, we saw thishuge explosion of the ability to
use Zoom and to work productivelyif you look at the history,
productivity went through the roof.
Much to people's surprise, you know,working from home was actually quite
productive, not having to drive,not having to go and spend an hour

(10:54):
on the road, in traffic each way.
So, yeah, I think it'sbeen pretty exciting.
your old company, you were on oneof the original six at Netflix.
We probably won't get into that here.
We're going to include a link back toour conversation five years ago, because
we did a deep dive into some of yourexperience there then, but Netflix,
I don't know if the word criticalmass would be the right term, but.

(11:18):
when COVID hit, it seems as if they werein the right place at the right time.
I really haven't followed muchsince then, but, what comments do
you have about what went on withNetflix during the COVID years?
Well, you can look, so this is for anybodywho runs a business and Netflix was
actually, so that, by the way, so when westarted Netflix for the audience's sake.

(11:42):
It was 1997, 27 years ago.
So it's a much, much different companynow, but Netflix, when you peel behind
the scenes, what was going on duringCOVID was actually quite worried of
losing tremendous amounts of market share.
Because if you look back at thehistory, everyone was at home
and glued to their computer.
Disney spent billions of dollars ontheir streaming platform and Apple spent

(12:07):
billions, maybe a hundred billion dollarson their Apple TV streaming platform.
You know, you had paramount plus, youhad everybody and their brother saying,
we got to get into streaming now.
And, you know, they're fightingthe big giant Netflix, but
Netflix really was fearful.
They were gonna become theblockbuster to Disney or to all these.

(12:31):
That they were going to lose market share.
And so that's a lesson for anybodywho holds a leadership position
and competition just rushes in.
This has happened manytimes in technology.
We, you know, when I was at Mozilla,we held the market share leadership
position for four years beforeGoogle Chrome browser came in.
Microsoft held many leadership positionsin software before they finally got

(12:54):
taken down across their categories.
So Netflix thought they were going to bekind of the next Microsoft or the next,
IBM but it turns out that if you leaninto your business and you produce even
more content and you just pay attentionto your customers and you make customers
happy, then it's what Intuit days thatwe coined a term of, this happened at

(13:18):
Intuit with Quicken and QuickBooks,everyone tried to create their accounting
software when you're the market leader.
And, we coined a term called trythe best, try the rest, and then
you'll come back to the best.
So I think that's what happened.
Everyone had six or seven subscriptions.
Some still have three or four.
They all tried it and like,there's not a lot of content

(13:39):
here, or that's kind of clunky.
I can't find my shows.
everyone got brought in to astreaming platform that was
lagging up into the time.
So now the whole universe got bigger.
So competition is goodbecause it creates awareness.
So anybody who's dealing withcompetition in their local small town
and someone's coming in, lean in hardbecause they're going to bring in

(14:00):
your customers, your future customersthat you haven't brought in yet.
So that's when you have tolean in hard and actually be
better than you've ever been.
And that's what Netflix did.
And then everyone started saying,well, Disney, I'm going to
cancel that one at Paramount.
But They're going to stay with Netflix.
Competition is a customer generatingthing if you really frame it right.

(14:22):
Looking back on it,this is my observation.
Yours might be a little different.
I like positioning that Netflix hadcreated to be where they were in 2020.
And, you know, could they haveguessed what was going to happen?
No, to me, that's leadershiptoo, is just being positioned for

(14:42):
when those opportunities, I hateto say COVID is an opportunity.
Some people would be upset by that,but it was, you know, it was what it
was a situation, an event, whatever.
Well, let's reframe that, Tim.
Let's say change and crisisis always an opportunity.
That life is about change and you canmake choices of crawling in a hole when

(15:05):
change hits you or crisis hits you.
Or you can just come out fightingwith your sword and shield up.
Yeah.
And I think one of the words I liketo use now, I've been communicating it
more and more is the word resilience.
I think that's how I want us totalk about leadership towards
the tail end of our conversation.
Jim is

(15:25):
Nice.
do to be resilient?
To be prepared for the nextopportunity crisis situation, whatever.
But I, there's a question that'srolling around in my head and I have
to get it out before it disappears.
You know what I mean by that?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.

(15:47):
Okay.
Okay.
but gray hair.
And you said, I want I want tobring someone from outside this
culture in to be my assistantand help me do what I'm doing.

(16:11):
That was a beautiful thing because italso opened the door for me to storm
in and say, oh, hey, Jim, I'm here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
because it is somewhat of a
Um,

(16:32):
What are some pros and cons about theway Silicon Valley functions and operates
that you saw over the last five years?
And some things that you observed, becauseI know you reach outside that bubble to
keep a fresh mind, but not everyone does.
if we look back now, the city of SanFrancisco, Has changed tremendously,

(16:57):
some of the politics around thatwhole Region not they haven't changed
tremendously, but it's adjusted.
Anyway, there's beena lot of things go on.
There's an argument that thepolitics have changed pretty
tremendously in Silicon Valley.
yeah, I mean I I listened to aninterview a long form interview
with You know, what's his namefrom facebook and i'm like going.
Well, he's Bouncing around a little bit.

(17:19):
Maybe he's an opportunist.
Maybe he is changing his team But anyway,don't it doesn't have to be political
even though that's probably part of
Yep.
talk about That culture over the lastfive years and i'd love for you to
talk about it to people outside theculture That are going what do you mean?
Yeah.
so I guess I'll start with Silicon Valley.

(17:41):
This is obvious as a very technicalculture, but what does that mean?
It means some of the smartest peoplethat you went to school with who,
and technical means computers,you know, we call ourselves the
nerds and the geeks, we weren't.
The sports athletes, right?
Or the popular, people at thedance, you know, these are the

(18:03):
people that we're game playing.
I'm not, I'm trying notto be too pejorative, but
it's not pejorative at all.
It's just like people havetheir different likes.
You know, they're a little bitmore inside their own head.
They're very technical, very smart.
And whenever a new technology comes uplike AI, they're the first to use it.
And they're the first to figure it out.

(18:24):
This has produced greatthings for America,
except there's a problem is thatwe forget how great, you know,
Silicon Valley has been for America.
And because, this technical, this techcommunity, this community of entrepreneurs

(18:45):
don't really pound their chest too much.
They just put their heads down and workand create the Googles and the Facebooks.
They don't really connect to real people.
Probably up through about 2022 or2023, you could actually feel the
backlash outside of Californiaagainst this tech community.
You can actually, if you paidattention, you could feel like

(19:07):
they are different than us.
You know, they're, they're the elites.
You know, it's all, it was alwaysthey, they, they, and there
wasn't much of a realization of.
Yeah, but look how, we broughttrillions of dollars into the US
from Google and Facebook and Apple,and these are the people in the
mag seven of the stock market thateveryone else was investing in.

(19:30):
And so it was kind ofa double-edged sword.
And this is my opinion at least, becausethe community is still very insular, they.
Are interested in whatthey're interested in.
They try to put it out to the worldand they stumble over the first three
versions of the first three versions.
Almost any tech.

(19:52):
It takes 3 versions andwe all know this because.
The technical engineers and the technicalpeople really, for the most part, don't
know how to connect with regular people.
And so they just assumepeople can use chat GPT.
They assume that a white box on a screenin 2004 from Google, people are going
to figure out what to type in thatthing that we now know is a search box.

(20:12):
But when we all first saw it, peoplewere like, what do I do with this?
We were just barely gettingused to the internet.
Right?
And now a white box appears in this pageand says we can get any answer you want.
And we just stood there anddidn't know what to type.
And then Google tried to help, right?
Remember when Google tried to helpwith their little question mark?
And they said, Oh, all yougot to do is a Boolean search.

(20:32):
and we're like, if you do thesecharacters and your search
is better, we're like, what?
This is the same company that said,you know, after a while we're going to
produce a better email called Gmail.
And then people started using it.
And eight years later, they were still.
Beta written across the topof this enterprise product.

(20:53):
And they're like, Oh yeah, weforgot to take the beta off.
Cause these, you know, they're notout there talking to their customers a
lot, but the successful Silicon Valleycompanies, actually successful, any
company starts with their customerfirst and builds a product for them.
Silicon Valley starts with the productand then tries to find customers.

(21:14):
And so there's, it's a longwinded way of saying there's a
mindset of not being connected to.
Anybody who's not in that kindof digging for gold all the time.
If you imagine if you were in the goldrush and everyone around you was digging
for gold, some are finding it, someweren't, but you were in this bubble
of everyone's a miner, everybody'sgot a pick and everybody's got an ax.

(21:35):
And it's like, and there's a whole countryout there that is not digging for gold
is some of that?
is it jealousy?
I mean, I think
I don't think it's jealousy.
political
as,
we
no,
maybe now
I don't think, I don't think so.
you know, I grew up in the Midwest.
I think it's just a lack ofunderstanding when no one talks to

(21:56):
you and people are different, right?
When people are just viewed asdifferent then, then a divide happens.
But what's happening now, which is reallyinteresting to me, is people don't change.
They just kind of hide for a while.
there's stats of like 35 or 40percent of what was considered

(22:18):
the blue zone of California.
San Francisco is pure blue.
Like everyone thought it was 98percent democratic and liberal
and hippies and free love and, youknow, these techies that are just
billionaires that don't get us.
It turns out about 35 or 40 percent ofall the leaders and even all the techies.
Started coming out of the woodwork whenTrump got elected and they're Republican,

(22:40):
maybe not far right Republican, butthey've always been there because
that's just how statistics work.
and they were just quiet aboutit because they could have been
i'll i'll use the term beaten toa pulp literally or figuratively
Had they communicated about it?
Well,
going on right now
yeah, for sure.
Because now you see for the firsttime ever, not to bring too much

(23:03):
politics and do it, but Elon Musk isbeing invited into the white house
and doing things and Peter Thiel andthese, but so for better or for worse.
The techies and some of the smartesttechies are being brought in to
hopefully fix and introduce some ofthese technologies in the government.
It's going to create a lot of,I mean, nobody can argue that

(23:26):
the government's not broken.
It's very broken, right?
There, there's no technology,no real technology to speak of.
It is probably 20 years behind.
So something good is going to come fromit, but it's going to be very messy.
Silicon Valley was never really invitedto a seat at the table in Washington,
So, for better or for worse, we havesome really, really smart people who

(23:48):
understand technology introducing someof these business leading concepts.
Into this place called Washington DC.
We're gonna see what happens from it.
I think you need to shake things up.
It's 52 card pickup and then youstart sorting the deck out again.
but hopefully, that shift, thatpsychology shift is changing because,
you know, the same people that somepeople outside of California called a

(24:11):
leader, like now they're their heroes.
I just find it really interesting.
The same people that thought Elon Muskwas evil and, driving these new cars.
And now he's a hero.
this is just human nature, right?
Yeah, and there's a weird thingsince you brought this up.
I did I did think about this Seeone of the things that I love You

(24:31):
the Silicon Valley culture is speed.
Yeah.
a, you know, speed, and if it's, youknow, break things fast, fix them,
move on, And one of the things thatyou and I can say about government
is speed is nowhere in their, DNA.
And one of the things that's fascinatingto me, and I'll just mention this and

(24:54):
you can say something then we'll moveon is at the time of recording this
Elon musk has a handful of what seemto be brilliant tech guys Literally
raking some systems over the coalsand there are a lot of people that
Um,

(25:28):
the speed because, because I thinkthat what we've got is a new president
that's moving at a pretty rapid pace,and I think it's because of people
around him like Musk and some others.
What, what are you seeing?
Let me reframe the word speed intosomething that you and I talk about,
and I talk about my clients a lot.

(25:51):
For me, it's less aboutspeed and more about risk.
Willingness to take risk.
risk by going fast.
it's okay to fail.
Silicon Valley is all abouthigh risk, high reward.
That's what the venturecapital community is all about.
High risk, high reward.
Only 2 or 3 out of 10 companies, thatventure capitalist funds actually

(26:13):
make it and 3 go out of businessand 3 just barely get their money
back or lose money for the VCs.
but it's those 3 that we hear about.
We never hear about the 7.
So when you take a ton of risk.
The 10x reward you get from 1, 2,or 3 of those companies with 100x
returns far outweighs the 7 failures.

(26:34):
You know, when Edison createdthe light bulb, it was 10, 000
tries before he found one, right?
And so this, there's a level ofrisk associated with silicon, or
sorry, willingness to take risk.
And I've, it's really important to thinkabout this willingness to take risk.
Reaps the more risk you'rewilling to take, the more
reward you're likely to get.

(26:55):
Well, Washington DC is,you know, yeah, it's slow.
It's slow because it's not willing, inmy opinion, not willing to take risks.
So to bring all that together, thewillingness and the ability to take
risks is what Washington DC is facing.
And what happens when high risk meetslow risk, Is things break, right?

(27:20):
And so we're going to see somebreakage and then when things break,
you have to rebuild them and thingsrebuilt, they get built better.
One example that people are talkingabout in Silicon Valley that I'm a
huge fan of because it's not politicalat all is putting lots of parts of
the government on the blockchain.
I'm not talking about Bitcoin.

(27:41):
I'm talking about just thetechnology called blockchain.
Where we put in a read onlyformat, the transactions that
are occurring that are immutable.
They can't be changed.
it's a distributed ledger.
And if you want transparency, Elon Muskjust may bring blockchain technology
to certain parts of the government andsay, you want to know what's going on

(28:02):
the government, read the blockchain.
Now there's softwarethat reads blockchain.
So you don't have toread the ones and zeros.
It can unpack it and put it on a webpage.
But you can actually audit along withwhat's going on in the government.
How far are we willing to take that?
I think a lot of people want to see, butthere's technology that can help, right?
blockchain is secure.

(28:23):
Can't be changed.
once it's on there, it's on thereforever and you can go see the history.
so I think there's a lot ofvery interesting things that are
going to come from taking a lotmore risks than the government.
things are going to break and people aregoing to get upset when things break, but
then they're going to be rebuilt better.
Yeah, I'm excited about it.

(28:44):
And I think even if people have different,core political beliefs people that think
like you and I do, it's like, you knowwhat, we need to be improving things.
We need to be making them better.
We need to be maybe breaking somethings, adjusting, changing, et cetera.
I was on a social media platform andI was just saying, you know, whether

(29:05):
you're for this guy or against thisguy, it doesn't matter to me, am all
for the status quo being questioned and
Yeah.
questions and poking at it a little bit.
And someone said, well, if, if,People can't eat while it's going on.
I said, listen, people can't eat today.
People that are not eating today.
We need to do better with all ofthat, but that's not the point.

(29:26):
You know, let's,
Yeah.
let's
Well, there's one thing we knowabout, Sam, there's one thing
we know about technology, right?
And there's one thing that'sprobably unarguable about technology.
It has made everyone's lives aroundthe world much more efficient
and much more productive, right?
Just getting people on the internet.
People in Africa have amobile phone as their phone.

(29:48):
before they have a car or a house.
Being connected is due to technology.
The technology is deflationary.
Prices go down.
It makes things moreefficient and more productive.
And AI is just the next version of this.
Now we're going to have an influx oftechnology, which is going to make
things more efficient, more productive.

(30:09):
It's hard to argue.
the only tool the governmentsurround the world, especially
Washington DC has had to fix anythingor to try to improve anything.
There's only been onetool they've ever used.
It's money.
If there's a problem, throw money at it.
Money is a very blunt instrumentthat creates a lot of waste.
And so we're going to uncover a lotof waste because instead of throwing

(30:30):
money at the problem, We're going tothrow technology at the problem and make
the inner workings of the governmenta lot more efficient, a lot more
productive, and a lot more transparent.
and you know what I like, I likethat, that may attract different
type of leader in the future.
into that system because, and boy, I don'tthink I want to get off on this topic.

(30:56):
I think we have a leadershipdeficit in a lot of places.
You and I could have this
Yeah.
all day long.
we may want people to listen and we maynot, but definitely if we are to look at
and model some of the leaders that we see,In that government system and it's because
it's such a sludge of just quagmire slowAs we were talking a little bit about

(31:18):
earlier, you know low risk And thensome people get in there and they start
profiting and then we can't get them out.
I do think it might attract somepeople if we get a little bit more
effective efficient More technology.
What are your thoughts?
When you were talking and leading upto this question, I was in my head
thinking that leadership is aboutleadership requires incentives.

(31:44):
So the reason why people don'tgo into Washington, D. C.
There's no incentive to do so.
In fact, there's a disincentive to do so.
Right.
I can have a lot more impact.
Thank you.
The minute and make money outside ofWashington, DC, this is what we've seen.
The minute that you tell theseyoung people, they can make

(32:04):
a difference in the world.
And this, this, you know, so people arerailing, there's a 19 year old with a,
with a name, like inside of Doge, right?
It's like, there's some young peoplegoing in following along around.
We're really, really smart who areonly doing it because they think
they're actually making a difference.
And they probably are.
But that's what leadership's about islike, do I have an incentive to do this?

(32:27):
Am I going to make a difference?
Can I make a difference?
Am I incentivized to do so?
That's how you attract leadership.
But up until now in WashingtonDC, it's been the opposite.
There's been no incentive forreally smart business people or
technologists to go to Washington.
In fact, there's been a disincentivebecause there's not enough
money and there's a quagmireof you can't get anything done.

(32:48):
So hopefully we attract someyoung people who can move fast,
break things, get things done.
I mean, heck, what's theworst that can happen?
Our government gets less efficient?
to imagine what that might look like.
I don't think anybody can argue that nomatter what happens, it might not get
as efficient as fast, but I'm prettysure it's not going to get worse.
Sure.

(33:14):
Shouldn't people say, Oh no, no, no.
We want it anyway.
Well, let's move on.
There's something you brought up rightwhen we started that I went, huh.
There's a question there.
And I want to, I want to dig a little bit.
You brought up.
That when you went from operator andyou know, you, you were with into it,

(33:35):
you were with Netflix, you were withMozilla, Firefox for a number of years
and other things that I know are in there.
But you said that when you decided tomove from operator to coach, that it
may not have been looked upon by people.

(33:56):
Tell me more about.
How that Silicon Valleyculture at coaching.
And I'm also going tothrow a name out here.
The name, Bill Campbell, that youknow, is one of you interact with him.
You knew him.
I only know him because the model thatwas shared in a book about him is who I
perceive myself to be like, not at thatlevel trillion dollar coach, but about

(34:21):
coaching in a world because you almostsaid it like apologetically, like you
were going from to, Oh, now I'm going to.
We've got a lot of coaches listening in.
So tell
Yeah, I didn't.
Okay.
Yeah, I didn't mean to.
So Bill Campbell just for the recordwas my coach, but he wasn't, I
worked for him at Intuit with himat Intuit before that book was,

(34:43):
well before that book was written.
yeah, I didn't mean it tobe, disrespectful to coaches.
It was more of how HR departmentsviewed it, viewed coaching,
like this person needs help.
We're going to get you a coach.
That whole mentality has nowchanged because if there's one
great thing about Silicon Valley,and there's a lot of great things.
But one great thing is thisconcept of everyone shares

(35:07):
their knowledge with everybody.
There's this give back culture.
There's this pay it forward culturethat really I've only seen exist here.
I've had lots of conversations in peoplein LA, New York, in LA, in Hollywood.
I wouldn't give my idea ofmy movie script to anybody.
In New York, I wouldn't give myalgorithm on how to add up to anybody.

(35:30):
It's, it's a secretly guarded secret.
Right.
In Europe, it's much of the same, butin Silicon Valley, there's something,
one thing people need to know about it.
It's a, the idea is not the hard part.
The execution is the hard part.
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
And everyone wants everyone else to, to besuccessful and they just want to compete

(35:50):
on a, on a, on an equal playing field.
And in a very interesting way, everyonewho's been there for any period of
time just shares and gives back.
And if you call somebody up likeBill Campbell, he's no longer
with us, but he's passed away.
But, you know, he'd giveyou the time of day.
And as long as you made the effort,this is a culture in Silicon
Valley, which is ripe for coaching.

(36:11):
And I think zoom to bring itall back COVID brought back
this huge vacuum of loneliness.
People were in their house.
They didn't, they weren't surroundedby people who they could look up to or
talk at the expresso bar at your office.
And I think that just explodedthis, I need to surround myself with
people that are smarter than me.

(36:33):
And so I'm going to go geta mentor, go get a coach,
company started paying for it.
but I, you know, what you and I loveabout coaching is, This ability to take
all the lessons that we've learned andpay it forward and to give it back.
And I write about this in my cook'splaybooks about why I'm doing this, why
I'm writing, on Substack, and why I'mcoaching is it really is gratifying to

(36:57):
pay it forward to the next generation.
and I think if you're really sincere aboutthat as a coach, that's why you do it.
It's about impact.
It's about.
The ability to really leverageyour knowledge and turn
that knowledge into wisdom.
I read a great quote, um, down here.
I'm down here in the Baha fora little while, but wisdom

(37:18):
is simply shared knowledge.
I think it's wisdom issimply knowledge shared.
If you think about that, wisdomis not a one person thing.
Wisdom is a community of people allsharing their knowledge together.
I love the thought of thatbecause it's others focused.

(37:39):
It's not us focused, know?
and I think there's a certain degree.
in our culture of people.
I think some of this being changed, maybeCOVID helped with this, that if it's,
you know, if it is to be, it's up to me.
Hustle culture, etcetera, things like that.
And one of the things that I've noticed,and I don't know if it's an age thing

(38:00):
or, you know, some situations I've gonethrough in my life and all that, but
I do think that maturity is a word Ilike to throw around a little bit more.
and fortunately or unfortunately,maturity really sometimes
does fit with people that are.
moving along in life, right?
think there was an article inthe wall street journal recently
that said something about aninvestor that's focusing on 50

(38:22):
and 60 year old startup people.
What are you thinking?
I mean, you and I are, I think we've got aton of years ahead of us, but no one would
confuse us for, you know, 20 somethings.
What's your thought now on peoplethat are moving into our age bracket?
I'm at the tail end of boomers.

(38:43):
I think i'm a few years ahead of you,but what is your thoughts about age?
Maybe you know, what do you see evenin the valley with age and what's your
thoughts when I make a comment like that?
there used to be, there's still a pocket.
And if you talk about just SiliconValley, there's always been this
age bias, older people, age bias.

(39:05):
the young techies who are 22, 23, 25, 27years old, let's just call it under 30.
that cohort definitely has an agebias because they don't trust anybody.
How could they know anythingabout AI if they're over 30?
as you get older, you realizethat age is not the real thing

(39:26):
that should be biased against.
It's curiosity.
You can actually learn anythingat any age if you're passionate
and curious about learning it.
And if you're passionate and curiousabout learning a topic such as AI,
and you have the experience and thewisdom to know how to learn and how

(39:48):
to process and curate knowledge,you can become extremely powerful.
for anybody who's in ourage group, stay curious.
stay in learning mode, because thatcombined with your maturity and your
wisdom can really help the next generationwho hasn't become self aware yet.
You don't become self aware until Ithink you're over 30, quite frankly.

(40:08):
Let's, let me just say that from a, froma person way older than 30, you don't
start looking at yourself and you don'tstart admitting that you're vulnerable.
You don't start it.
You, you stop faking it until youmake it, you stop trying to impress
people and you just become real.
And when you become real,as you get older, people get
more comfortable around you.

(40:29):
They're not threatened by you.
And yet you have all thiswisdom and knowledge.
As long as you stay curious and youprocess it and curate this knowledge
and this wisdom to actually say, youknow, have you thought about this?
And you pose things in termsof questions, not statements.
You don't pound your chest as much.
Let's look at every culture in history.

(40:50):
who is the age group in everyculture of every historical
society that has been revered.
And for the most part, it's been theolder generation who people would go up
to the mountain and ask for their wisdom.
Why is that?
Because they were safe, they weren't thewarriors, they weren't threatening, but

(41:10):
they learned a lot throughout their life.
So, I think these thingsall come full circle.
You know, for any under 30s out there, Iwould encourage you to definitely reach
out to people that are older than you.
As long as they arecurious and passionate.
If they're not, they'restuck in their ways.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Discard them.
But if you can hold a conversationlike this with a 40 year old, a 50

(41:33):
year old, a 60 year old, and theyare energized, passionate, they're
curious, hook your wagon to thembecause they are very smart people.
Who can propel your knowledge asan under 30 year old much faster.
How does Jim Cook stay curious?
What is some practical either day to day,how are you staying curious right now?

(41:59):
I read a lot and I use all thetools of the trade of searching.
I scan headlines.
When I see a headline that I'minterested in, I use some of these
tools, some of these AI toolsto say, bring me more, right?
It's getting easier to search.
It's getting easier to use AI to learn.

(42:21):
So I ask, I start with askinga ton of questions of myself.
what don't I know about this?
what do I want to know about it?
Where could this apply?
I realized I can just ask thosequestions of the computer instead of me
trying to figure out where it applies.
Why don't I get 80 percent of theanswer done for me by asking chat

(42:41):
GPT and speed up my learning process.
So I'm thinking what I'm experiencingin the AI is helping me significantly
increase my own learning process.
But AI can't be curious for me.
See, AI is a answer provider.
It's not a question provider.

(43:02):
So if you're going to besuccessful in your life, stay
curious, keep asking questions.
The great stuff, the great news is,There's somebody now on the other end of
that screen or of your computer that'sreally, really good at giving answers.
But they're not so greatat giving questions.
And questions come from curiosity,and curiosity just comes from

(43:24):
being interested in the subject.
You don't have to be interested inevery subject, but the ones that you're
interested in, write down your next10 questions and ask the computer.
It'll be amazing.
It'll be amazing what you learn if youjust stay curious and ask questions.
The cool thing about it, and you knowmy life, Glory, we were sitting just
this morning with our coffee, andyesterday I spent some time AI, and

(43:49):
on my browser, I almost wish I couldshare my screen, I've got one three,
four, that one might be a semi AI.
I've got five tools, not countingthe one we're recording on, that
this will then load up to later,would be in that, you know, large
language model, machine AI category.

(44:12):
And I told Gloria, I said, you know, Iwould love to just block 60 minutes a
day to sit down and just have dialogue.
Because for me, it's a brainstorming tool.
It's a writing assistant and I, youknow, you and I are in the same category.
I love questions.

(44:36):
I love it.
Do you think we've got a deficit?
I know you wrote an article on your,playbooks recently about asking questions.
Do you think we've got a deficit?
Do we not train peoplewell how to ask questions?
Because I,
That's it,
I'm
We aren't training people toask questions first and ask for
help and that needs to change.
Hopefully these tools.

(44:58):
will help us train usto ask better questions.
But in school, we'reasked to give answers.
We're asked to get A plusesand 1600 as our SATs.
We're asked to fill in multiplechoice questions and to figure out
the answer and not ask for help.
This is a real problem.
Learning how to ask for help inthe form of learning how to ask
better questions is the way out.

(45:21):
Now let's come back to thesethings that you call tools.
I would encourage everyone who'snot a techie, which is most people.
It's every time you hear the wordAI, which is puts a block up.
It's like, well, I don't knowanything about that to change that
word in your head to just anothertool, all artificial intelligence is.
I mean, I'd rather just, wegot rid of the word entirely.

(45:42):
It's just another piece of software.
We don't talk about, I use the PC, right?
We, in the old days, it wasPC, it was Ram, it was CPUs.
And we used all this language for two.
Have technique techies makethemselves seem important.
Doctors do it all the time.
They come up with Latin words for namesinstead of telling you what it is.
You know, all these people try to puta barrier between their knowledge by,

(46:05):
by separating us with language like AI.
All it is is a tool tomake you more efficient.
It's just a better tool.
So don't, don't beafraid of a better tool.
I think most people, in the world,when you hand them a better tool to do
something, they're like, this is great.
I'm using it.
But when it comes to technology, it'slike we put this language and we want to

(46:28):
like artificial intelligence and LLMs andall of this stuff to separate us from,
well, I'm never going to be that smart.
You just need to ask a question.
The software will do it for you.
Just think of AI as software.
That's all.
One of the things that's interestingand this, I love how this is coming
together because we brought up earlier.

(46:50):
the risk, embracing risk thatoccurs out of Silicon Valley.
And then you mentioned just a fewminutes ago to really be curious,
you need to just kind of put asidewhat other people think about you.
And I'm sitting here and it's justkind of like ringing in my head as
you're talking Those go together.

(47:12):
I mean, I don't know if we could you andI we thinking like models Like I don't
know if that's like a you know, threethings on a stool or whatever But number
one you have to take risk to open up anew tool and ask questions You have to
not really care what other people thinkabout you Maybe not totally not care
But not let it drive you and not letit be a part of who you are and then

(47:33):
you just, I love that curiosity thing.
So you want to mash those together,risk, not being concerned about
other people, which are sort ofrelated and then being curious.
Well, we'll mash them togetherinto that word that you started
with, which is maturity.
When you're older with maturity, yourealize that you have less years to

(47:57):
live, so why not take more risks?
You start taking a lotof risks as you're young.
You get really conservative betweenthe ages of say 30 and 50 and believe
it or not, after 50, you actually,a lot of people start taking more
risks because what do I got to lose?
Maturity, that's risk maturity.
You brought it up.

(48:17):
Also gets not caring as much aswhat anybody thinks about you.
So if you want to bring together allthe things that you've talked about,
It's your word maturity, not mine.
It's risk, not caring what people talkabout and asking a lot of questions.
I just want to connect with people more.
I think being curious creates connection.

(48:38):
You can't be really keep being curiousby yourself on a desert island.
That's great.
But what am I going to do with it?
When you're curious?
I think most people are curiousbecause they want to share their
knowledge with somebody else.
And when you share your knowledgewith others, because you're curious,
you create community wisdom, youcreate a wisdom across the community.

(48:59):
well, and you also attract peoplebecause people that are also somewhat
curious are going to be attracted.
That's I think where the agething comes in and and man, it all
just kind of comes together here.
Agreed.
Before we finish up here in a bit, Iwant to ask you about your playbooks
and some of the things you're doingover on Substack and all of that.

(49:22):
I'd love, there's a couple of thingsthat I want to ask and I think I'm
going to them all at once and thenlet you just answer it in whatever
way you want First question is howare you defining success right now?
And then I'm going to layer that intowhat are you looking at into the future?

(49:43):
And you can either do micro like,hey, here's, here's what's going
on with Jim and our family, or youcan go macro and say, here's some
big picture things that I see.
So, so, so the two topics aresuccess and the future and, just go.
Yeah, so I currently in my maturitylevel, I'm defining success as

(50:08):
my ability to make an impact.
Across larger groups of people, I'm goingto use any tool possible to do that.
I'm going to take all of my curiosity,all of my stored knowledge and
try to just pay it forward withoutcaring about what people think.
That's why I'm writing Cook'sPlaybooks and Substack.
If I'm curious about something,I'm going to write about it.
It's going to probably be in thelens of leadership and scaling

(50:31):
operations, which is what I'm good at.
But every once in a while, I'llwrite about AI, just because I want
to share this knowledge with others.
Making an impact across a larger andlarger group of people, I'm just on a
mission to figure out how to do that.
I'm on the very beginning of that.
That's, that's what I thinksuccess is for me right now.
And, and I, you know, and in terms of,The future, your second question, and

(50:54):
I can go macro and macro because I'vegot a 23 year old and a 20 year old.
So I'll focus on them, teaching them howto ask better questions, teaching them to
stay curious, helping to remind them tostay curious so they can improve faster.
When I can improve my clientsfaster, when they can come back
and say, you just changed the way Iapproached my CEO, my board, my peers.

(51:19):
You know, I feel like you've justincreased my, my knowledge of
how to be an executive and you'vejust escalated it by three years.
That's, that's making an impact.
That's speed.
so that's kind of the macroversion of success, but I think
looking out three to five years,
just the way my brain works, but I'm goingto encourage anybody whose brain works

(51:41):
this way, like mine and probably yours,Tim, I know yours, because if you could
stay curious about technology and not be.
Not think it's above you orit's smarter than you yet.
We all learned how to use acomputer once upon a time.
We all learned how to usesoftware on the computer.
We all learned this thingcalled the internet.

(52:02):
Some adopted it slower and nowit's a daily part of our lives.
We all learned how to use a touchscreen and an iPhone in 2007 before,
like this is never going to work.
need a keyboard.
We're learning how totalk to the computer.
Learn how to use these tools thatwe're talking about to make your
life better and then ask yourselfwhat tool can make it better, right?

(52:25):
There's a couple that I'm looking atright now, which I'm just fascinated by.
So OpenAI has releasedtwo particular tools.
One is called Operator.
I wrote about this a few weeks ago.
And the other is called Deep Research.
Both are incredible beta versions, 0.
1, not even a, not even a releaseversion for the consumers.

(52:47):
They're like, we've got something here.
We're just going to share it with theworld and we can figure it out together.
It kind of works, butexpect a lot of bugs.
What is Operator?
Operator, OpenAI's Operator, issimply a tool that you can attach
to a web browser that allows youto have operator, the software,

(53:09):
type the letters on your keyboard.
You give it one question, one prompt, andit actually starts operating your browser.
I want to research, I'm notsure which mountain bike to buy.
Can you go to five differentwebsites and bring me back the
best prices, the best comparisons?
Okay, let's talk about thatas an example for operator.

(53:31):
If you use that, We would sit down withour keyboards today without Operator.
We'd be on the web on a pieceof software for about an hour.
We'd have done 20 different searches.
We'd click on 10 different links.
We'd open up five different tabs, get tothe five things, you'd start opening up
different windows and comparing and you'reprobably, if you're like me, copying and

(53:52):
pasting into a separate notebook to kindof like compare because it's just kind of
the information is there but it's clunky.
What is operator?
One prompt.
Same thing.
I want to buy a mountain bike.
Can you, go compare five of the bestsites, five of the best models, bring
me back everything you can on it.
an operator then starts onyour browser and starts typing.

(54:14):
You can hands offkeyboard, watch it typing.
And it actually gets, and itshows you what it's doing.
So anything that you're doing with thebrowser inside of a business, an accounts
payable clerk, somebody downloading a CSVfile from their bank statement every day,
like all this inefficiency, even in tech.

(54:34):
I got to go to the, you know,somebody closing their books.
I'm going to bring it back toCFO has to Go to their bank.
It's a clunky thing.
They've got a would you like to downloadyour monthly transactions and csv?
Sure, click here 10 clicks later.
I've got it in excel file.
It downloads to my downloadfile I got to open the download.
I've got to translate the csv into apivot table I've got to like sort it

(54:56):
and so I can actually close my books.
What is the operator?
Hey, go get my bank statementand put it in a pivot table.
That's one question You It then doesall of those keystrokes for you.
Imagine that.
Just imagine if you can do, ifyou're doing something constantly,

(55:16):
a lot on your browser, you can askthe computer now to do it for you.
And it's just the beginning.
So that's operator.
Deep research just gotannounced four or five days ago.
Deep research is operator on steroids.
Doesn't necessarily use the browser,but imagine an investment banker.
A junior investment banker trying to writea research report across an industry.

(55:41):
Deep research is asking a questionto do deep research on a subject
you know nothing about and it willproduce you a professional paper
which will blow your mind out.
It'll go get every single subjectand it'll keep probing and asking
questions and prompting you backwould you like me to go deeper on like

(56:02):
now the computer's working for youyou're not working for the computer.
It's asking you, wouldyou like this in a graph?
Yes.
And it produces your research paper andI would just encourage people to try it.
It's not, it's notmystery black box science.
It's pretty cool.
Deep research.
mean, you met, you know, I lovethe thought of all that is, you

(56:23):
know, an industrial and systemsengineer kind of at my roots.
like, if, if you do anything morethan once, can you automate it?
How can you, you know,offload it or, or whatever?
And my mind sitting here going,okay, you know, we're pulling up
info for taxes at this time of year.
We're doing this.
It's like, And again, we're going tocome back to the maturity and curiosity

(56:47):
that you brought up, Jim, because
who is risk averse would begoing, well, I'm not going to
give my keyboard up to anybody.
I get it.
I get it.
I had Joshua, my son, you know, Joshua,he took me to the airport last week.
I had to fly to Sarasota to meet up withsome business people and we're going
along and I look over and there's a Waymobeside me in Phoenix, and I'm That there's

(57:09):
nobody driving it and i'm like going, huh?
I said, you know what?
I haven't where i've been ridden in oneof those I need to I need to get the app
because I need to ride in them and peopleare going Oh my gosh, you you're going
to get in a car that nobody's driving.
I go listen.
My son's awesome He's a great driver,but he's a 30 year old driver.
I'm like going, you know what?
I don't see a lot of differencebetween it's better really right?

(57:32):
So I mean I just thinkthere's a mindset That
Yep.
Yep.
adjust Some this is this i'll saythis is again I'm going to pose
this as one of my last questionsfor you Because I think it feeds
Okay.

(57:58):
on things for whatever reason withall that's gone on over the last five
years I think it's getting easier andeasier to know when you and I have these
conversations we're getting excitedProbably no one's listening at this
point if they're not But the peoplethat are shutting down the people that

(58:18):
are not taking risks the people thatare not matured i'm not talking about
age I, I think it's going to be harderand harder for us to hang out together
and I want to hang out with them.
I like to move them along.
What are your thoughts?
These cohorts of people who are highrisk takers, low risk takers has always
existed way before technology, right?

(58:40):
Whether we go back the industrialrevolution or airplanes or
automobiles, there were alwaysthe earliest of adopters and there
were always the latest of adopters.
And this was always, this would always be.
Displayed in, in the movies as the old,as the old guy sitting in his rocking
chair saying, no youngsters don't knowwhat they're doing while the youngsters

(59:03):
were off driving their Ferraris, right.
Or, or learning how to surf.
What are these peopleon boards on the waves?
There people aren't meant tobe on the ocean on a board.
These people are crazy.
So there's always been this cohort of risktakers, early adopters, late adopters.
But history has taught us that even thelatest of adopters eventually adopt.

(59:24):
They want to, they just don't knowhow to, their brain's not wired.
It's okay.
They just come along slower, right?
How many of, how many of people thatwe know that are 85 and 90 years old
are carrying off cell phone and they'retouching their screen and they figured
out how to use an app on their iPhone.
Almost all of them.
There's very few that are now sayingto us, those iPhones are evil.

(59:48):
those mobile devices, I'mnever using one of those.
There's, there'll be a smallpercentage of people, right?
But for the most part, people justhave their different rates of adoption.
That's okay.
I think you just got tomeet people where they are.
You know, tone down your excitementa little bit, because it turns
off the latest of adopters.
And just bring them along one stepat a time, because They do actually

(01:00:11):
appreciate you for it and theywill thank you for it over time.
But if you take the same levelof excitement I've had to learn
this to the latest of adopters,it really turns them off.
You've got to tone it down toinstead of being at level nine on
10, you got to one or two and takewhat's the next step they can make.
Always

(01:00:32):
are you, optimistic andexcited about the future?
Sure.
future.
I mean, if you're not, you might aswell just go live, you know, as a hermit
somewhere, but yeah, future's great.
I think about that some, you know,Gloria and I right now we're hanging
out in a 55 and older community, whichis kind of different for us because

(01:00:53):
I don't, Feel like I'm old enoughto be there, but Glory reminds me
that, yep, I'm old enough to be here.
of people, you know, their daily thing,there's nothing wrong with this, okay,
I'm not judging this, but, you know,play a few hours of pickleball is it.
And there's even some of them nowthat they're probably looking in
at my light and all that, going,what are you, what are you doing
on your computer and all that?

(01:01:13):
I said, well, I've got a podcast.
So, anyway, I I'm optimistic andexcited too Jim, tell me about
what you're doing over on substack.
Let everybody know we're going toinclude links and maybe give an article
for someone to go to first if they

(01:01:33):
Sure.
You know, I haven't gottenstarted with you yet.
So I started in June of 2024, takingall the things that I was talking with.
Mike, I have about 12 clients right now.
I coach them one on one.
They are CEOs, CFOs, VPs of finance,predominantly across Silicon
Valley, how to scale their startups.

(01:01:54):
So this was born out ofmy coaching practice.
My practice is a bunch of lessonslearned, what I call frameworks
for going faster, playbooks insidethose frameworks to go faster.
And I realized that I can take a summaryof, you know, these are, I spent three,
four, five, six sessions at a timewith clients going over one of these

(01:02:15):
articles, but I can do a summary ofthis article and at least get people
interested and want to read more.
And hopefully start acommunity talking about this.
An example would be my current series,which is leading with powerful questions.
One of the things that you and Ihave talked about a lot that I really
honed and learned at Mozilla washow not to lead with statements,

(01:02:36):
how not to lead with answers.
And this ties back to whatwe're talking about here.
It's interesting.
You lead with questions.
You actually, a leadershipstyle is asking more questions.
Not just curiosity for yourself,but you can actually turn this
into a leadership style, especiallywhen you know the answer.
we get to a leadership position and thepeople that are very junior, or even,

(01:03:01):
if you're a head of finance or a headof sales or head of engineering, they're
going to come to you for an answer.
But what you really want them to do isnot ask that question in the future.
And if you really want that,you want them to learn.
What you're going to talk about.
And if you really want them to learn,you have to engage their brain by asking
them a question, because if you givethem the answer, they'll just come back
and ask you that question again, andthey'll want the answer again and again.

(01:03:25):
And you're not helpingyourself or anybody else.
If you ask them a question to leadthem down the path to enlightenment,
you know, it, it's a very powerful.
So this is my three part series.
I've broken it up into three parts.
There's several articles like thisevery once in a while, I'll throw in AI.
I'll talk about operator at deep research.
So I'll talk about other things,but I'm just trying to get a summary

(01:03:48):
of how to think about leadership,scaling operations, differently.
You enjoying it?
I am enjoying sharing that info.
I will tell you it is hard to put thingsdown in writing and, to make it to
my own standards of professionalism.

(01:04:09):
Are you using some of thetools to help you though?
I've started to,
this is a
I've started to.
but that's what thesetools are for, right?
Yeah, so I've started to, draftsomething first in my own writing.
I ask ChatGPT to look at it and refine it.
It does do a much better job ofcorrecting my grammar, correcting
my spelling, organizing my thoughtsin a much more structured way.

(01:04:30):
But what it doesn't do for me is It givesme the structure, but if I just took what
it gave me, it would not be my voice.
I can tell when someone's written in AI.
Everywhere across, if, now thatI've been using it for a while.
it has to be my voice.
It has to be how I would talk toyou, how I would verbalize it.
I have to rewrite it.
I love the structure it gives me.

(01:04:52):
I love how to think about it.
I love the new ideas, but then youspend a lot of time cleaning it up.
So it's a cycle.
Yeah.
And I, the clue for me, if you seethe word delve in anything that I've
created, that means I've used AI,delve, because I do not use that word.
And Gloria says, no, that's a real word.
I said, not for me.
I don't use delve.
But anyway, no, I, and I thinkthere's times for it and times not.

(01:05:14):
Well, I've read them and I agree withyou that that three part series on asking
questions is a great place to start.
In fact, what we'll do down in thenotes on YouTube and also on the
podcast platforms, we will include alink to that and then you can subscribe
and I actually get Jim in my inbox.
And Jim, I gotta tell you, I don'tget a lot in my inbox anymore.

(01:05:37):
I keep it really good and clean.
You know, I declutter that.
So Jim Cook comes into my inboxonce a week with Cook's playbook.
Cool.
let's not make this anevery five year thing.
We should probably do this alittle more often, I think.
Maybe every 100 episodes.
Something like that.

(01:05:57):
You just gotta go faster, Tim.
you know the thing I want to do, I jokedwith someone recently, I said, you know
what, I really do, I, I envy Joe Roganthat he gets to sit down with someone
in a studio for three and a half hours.
And just kind of talk you and Icould do that for days We could
do that for days and have what Ibelieve would be incredible content.

(01:06:19):
if you want to experimentwith that, I'm in.
Like, I know Joe Rogan smokes cigars,I don't smoke cigars, but I have a
feeling that you'll sip a whiskey everyonce in a while, so If you feed me some
whiskey, I don't know if you do that.
Maybe you don't, but, but you know, Yeah,maybe a glass of wine, but if we have
a glass of wine, you can get me taughtYou won't shut me up for three hours.
it would be fun.

(01:06:40):
Jim.
Tell the family thatglory and I said hello.
I appreciate you being a partof this And we're gonna, we'll
include links down below.
we're continuing our five year,300 episode series next week will
be episode 302 with Mike Bair.
He's one of the pioneersof business as mission.
He and I did consulting and coachingback in the nineties and he was

(01:07:02):
about our second or third guest.
make sure you listen in on that.
We're going to have a great, additionalconversation, just like we did here.
When we first spoke with Mike,just like with Jim, It was in early
2020 and the world, of course, wason the verge of massive change.
He's going to talk about what's happened,how faith driven business is evolving,
and where he sees it heading next.

(01:07:22):
If you're passionate aboutleadership, mission, and marketplace
impact, make sure you tune in.
We will see everyone nextweek on Seek, Go, Create.