December 2, 2023 • 57 mins
Gabe Peterson, an accomplished ultra runner and a high-level IT leader, shares his journey in both worlds in this episode of Titans of Transition. Gabe constantly seeks out new challenges, whether it's running a 200-mile race or launching a major business project. Gabe's approach centers around setting lofty long-term goals and then breaking them down into manageable, bite-sized objectives. He discusses how these strategic actions and mindset translated into his successful career in IT management. While sharing his insights, Gabe emphasizes the importance of enjoying the journey, staying humble, and always committing to a growth mindset. Gabe's story is both inspiring and instructive, offering valuable advice for achieving success in any field.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gabe Peterson (00:05):
They did this really human superpower that
we're born to run.
I say this a lot and people arevery skeptical.
I wasn't a collegiate runner.
I ran recreationally, mostly tostay kind of fit, and I don't
think I'm a particularlytalented runner.
Just lots of hard work andsetting small goals.
So he starts off doing this 50Kcalled Anilope Island.
(00:26):
50k which is Anilope Island isan island in the middle of Salt
Lake.
It's pretty amazing.
It has bison, it looks likethis prehistoric pile.
It's like a 50K lap.
And again I finished I thoughtthat'll be it.
I'll never need to do an ultraagain.
I thought that was fun.
Maybe I could do a 50-miler.
So the next year do a 50-milerand then 100-miles sounded
(00:47):
pretty insane to me.
But eventually you're like well, I'll do it once.
Tell you what.
It's kind of a drill, I'll justdo it once.
So I ended up doing this race inUtah called the Bear 100, which
goes through kind of theWasatch Mount.
It's just amazing, beautifulrace, although it's one that
most people consider one of thehardest hundreds in the world.
(01:07):
This is my first 100.
Usually people start off with avery easy 100.
I didn't know that, so I juststarted with one of the hardest
hundreds out there Next.
That was fun, so I'll do theWasatch 100 the next year.
And I heard of these 200-mileraces, which is how fast forward
2019 and me starting doingthese runs for the Juvenile
(01:30):
Diabetes Research Foundation.
I was like all right, moab, Ilove Moab.
I lived in Utah.
That was my favorite place.
Joe Miller (01:37):
And.
Gabe Peterson (01:37):
I said this will be like running through paradise
, but I'm only going to do itonce, and this week.
Along the way, I read aboutthis race Badwater, which is 135
miles.
That starts at Badwater Basinin Death Valley in July, so the
hottest place on the earth atthe hottest time of the year,
and you finish at Whitney Portal.
(01:58):
I remember reading about that,people like Scott Jerk doing it
and I thought no way, those guysare super, super human.
And then, next thing, you knowI did that.
Yeah, you're in Italy runningthrough the Alps.
It was progression over many,many years.
I would always have a smallergoal and a lot of times I
thought that was the goal andthen I realized maybe it's like
(02:18):
the idea of using that mount topanalogy A lot of times, the
mountains frustrating it's ballsummits.
You're like I'm at the summit.
I'm like, oh no, this isn't thesummit, it's actually over
there.
And then you get there and oh,this is another fall summit.
So it looks like those smallergoals were ball summits and I
don't know, Baby tortoise wasthe actual summit.
It's hard to imagine doinganything more challenging than
(02:40):
that.
Joe Miller (02:47):
Dave Peterson, welcome to Titans of Transition.
Gabe Peterson (02:50):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe.
This is going to be a good move.
Joe Miller (02:54):
Yeah, this is one of the things I do on this side.
You and I are in the same CIOChief Information Officers
network.
I do recall recently youmentioning on this side that you
had done some extreme sportevents and we'll get to that.
But I just want to ask you alittle bit about your background
(03:21):
.
So you were in the Navy, isn'tthat right?
Gabe Peterson (03:25):
Yeah, so straight out of high school I enlisted
in the US Navy.
So I grew up in a small town inNorthern California and it was
very intriguing by the NavyRecreation Post and joined the
Navy to see the world.
So I thought it was a good wayfor me to get some good life
experience.
Also came from a pretty modestbackground, so my parents were
(03:45):
like if you want to go tocollege, good luck.
Joe Miller (03:48):
Yeah, I do.
Gabe Peterson (03:50):
So the GI Bill was also really compelling.
So they lived up to theRecreation Post or by the time
I'd been in the Navy a year, Ihad circumnavigated the globe.
Wow, I was in the tail end ofthe Persian Gulf War.
It was actually kind of funny.
When I came back I was in E2,which is like the second lowest
ranked in the military, but Ihad like three rows of ribbons,
(04:14):
and at the time people who hadbeen in the Navy 20 years didn't
have three rows of ribbons.
So, he's like old crusty chiefwho'd been in it 20 years, and
he's like sailor.
How did you get three rows ofribbons?
Joe Miller (04:26):
They sent me the bread and dough, and you had
such a safe job too.
Right, tell us about what youwere doing on that.
Gabe Peterson (04:34):
Yeah, I was in the F-18 Hornet Squadron F-18's,
the jet the Blue Angels fly.
So I worked on the flight deckit was what's called a crew
chief or plane captain when Ibasically had one plane that I
was responsible for themaintenance on, and so I
actually had my name on the sideof the airplane.
It was much lower than where thepilots was.
(04:54):
I was following it.
The nose gear is on the doorthat opened up.
It said you know AirmanPeterson from Ferndale,
california, there you go.
Very cool.
Not many places you know an18-year-old can be responsible
for a $25 million jet, makinglife and death decisions.
Joe Miller (05:12):
Oh man, so I had to bring back so many memories of
visions of Top God Tom Cruisemovie yeah, that was it.
Did you oversee the group ofguys that went out there did the
little dancing action on theflight deck?
Gabe Peterson (05:27):
I don't remember A lot of dancing, but definitely
like the hand signals.
It's so loud you can'tcommunicate verbally, you can't
hear it all, so you communicatewith hand signals.
And when I was in Top Band itactually come out and there
weren't a lot of movies on theboat.
But you know there's a 5,000person ship the boat so they go
(05:50):
to the cruise for six months andthey bring like 20 movies so
they play the same movies overand over.
You get through where you canmemorize the movies and Top Gun
was one of them.
But we know it lacked becausethe hand signals are totally out
of context and wrong in themovie.
Oh are they?
They're correct signaled butthey're given the wrong time.
Joe Miller (06:09):
Well, some producer probably thought they looked
cool it looked cool.
Gabe Peterson (06:12):
It's a great shot we're going.
You never do with that.
Joe Miller (06:17):
Well, we'll swing back to that probably a little
bit later, but I want to jumpright in and kind of in the back
of everyone's minds as you'relistening.
I know there's question howdoes a guy that rose to being in
the C-suite of VP ofInformation Technology have that
(06:37):
as part of their life?
It's kind of you envision that,a sort of buttoned up,
professional, corporate guy.
And then, like I said, we werehaving this meeting, actually
over Zoom.
We were having this meeting andI mentioned that this book I
was reading by Dave Goggins andyou went, oh yeah, I've raised
with him and which is this crazyexceal out of control, extreme
(07:04):
accomplishments, physically typeguys.
And yeah, I raised with him.
Gabe Peterson (07:08):
I actually finished a race that he did not
finish.
Joe Miller (07:12):
Oh, was it one of the ones where he was like
running on broken legs and stuff.
Gabe Peterson (07:16):
I don't think I broke in legs, he just kind of
had other issues.
Joe Miller (07:22):
Altitude issues, I think what he said Gotcha, so I
went to the same altitude Didn'thave those issues.
Yeah, so let's talk about yourlast one, which is like it's
like the mother of all events.
It's Tour de Ligeants, Is thathow you say?
Gabe Peterson (07:35):
it Tour de Jants.
Joe Miller (07:36):
Tour de Jants.
Gabe Peterson (07:38):
Italian for the Tour of Giants.
So it's a approximately 220mile loop through the Italian
Alps.
It starts in Cormeier, which isjust if you've been to Mont
Blanc.
There's the Mont Blanc Tunnelas soon as you pop out of the
Mont Blanc Tunnel.
On the Italian side, that'sCormeier.
(07:59):
It's just a very scenic Lookslike, yeah, you're in a postcard
.
When you get there it almostdoesn't seem real, right in the
middle of the Alps.
A lot of people consider it thetoughest mountain race in the
world because it has about86,000 feet of vertical gain and
loss, or about three Everests.
If you went up Everest from sealevel, it came down three times
(08:22):
.
Joe Miller (08:23):
And how many miles long or kilometers long is it?
Gabe Peterson (08:26):
It's.
They built us 330 kilometers,but I actually got 227 miles, so
it's a little longer thanadvertised, wow.
Joe Miller (08:36):
And five days, is that what it took you?
Gabe Peterson (08:39):
to complete.
It took you five days.
So the race started on Sundayand I finished Friday night.
So it was 135 hours and inthose 135 hours I slept about a
total of seven hours.
Joe Miller (08:53):
I watched that blog video that you put on your
channel.
I got to know you a little bit.
I mean, I know youprofessionally, but I got to
know you a little bit morebecause of your self-talk
through the whole process.
I'm just curious when youwatched it back, did you notice
anything in what you said as younarrated that that surprised
(09:15):
you, or was it pretty much theway you remember?
Or yeah, just kind of curious,because sometimes when you're in
the middle of going throughsomething you have one thought
in mind, but then when you lookback at it you go, oh, I guess I
was.
I'm just going to say I was inbetter shape than I thought I
was, or I was struggling morethan I thought I was.
Gabe Peterson (09:32):
It was probably the opposite.
I probably generally thought Iwas in better shape than I was.
Like, did you see on the video?
You know, I think at one pointhe would talk about it feeling
strong, but I looked like.
I just like, like I justcrawled out of a grave and I'm
like I feel really good.
Well, I don't look good forthat video.
Joe Miller (09:53):
Well, what I noticed was you were like coaching
yourself because you would sayall right, wow, okay, well, that
was interesting, okay, so nowthe next one.
Yeah, we can do this.
I mean, you were kind ofkeeping yourself encouraged and
I'm just that's just sort of I'mgoing to park that.
Thought we can swing back tothat, but that might be the mode
(10:15):
you operate in in a lot ofdifferent spheres of your life.
Gabe Peterson (10:19):
Yeah, then there's definitely a lot of
transferable lessons to life,the work world, I think.
And in the movie I tried to,you know a lot of people film
like the Epic Mountains, whichis there, you see it, I tried to
kind of narrate my internalmonologue, so you're hearing
generally what I'm thinking.
(10:40):
You know the more like PG-13,what I'm thinking.
Joe Miller (10:45):
Did you cut some things out in post, did you?
Gabe Peterson (10:49):
There were things that were like oh, that's yeah,
that's no.
I could put that in there,which is great.
That's the real few months ofthe 18 year old sailor.
Joe Miller (11:01):
So this was pretty much the most extreme thing
you've done at this to thispoint.
Gabe Peterson (11:05):
Yeah, I would definitely say this was the most
extreme thing I've done.
And I would say you know that'ssaying a lot, because I've done
some pretty extreme things.
Yeah, a lot of times I lookback and I'm surprised Like, oh,
I did that, because if wentback 10 plus years I would have
(11:25):
a hard time believing me.
From 10 years ago that's doing,has done this stuff.
What started that?
Because it wasn't somethingthat started very early in life.
Joe Miller (11:34):
I do want to point out pretty early on that, in
addition to just doing thispassion of yours, you also have
a personal mission involved inthis too.
You're raising funds for acharity, and why don't you tell
us about that?
Gabe Peterson (11:47):
Yeah, I have to tell.
So.
2019, my oldest daughter, sky,was diagnosed with type one
diabetes, which you know she'svery young and it's just nothing
a kid should have to go through, because usually the way
they're diagnosed is she endedup in the pediatric ICU and it's
a medical mystery.
(12:07):
You know why?
She's basically passed out andthrowing up.
It did take the doctor's log todiagnose that she had type one
diabetes.
The upside is, as you get intoit, the technology has really
improved the quality of life.
But when you're in the hospital, they want you to know all the
low tech stuff, because what ifthe technology doesn't work?
So they're giving you like thevial and a syringe this is going
(12:29):
to be the rest of our life likemeasuring doses, and then as we
leave the hospital they go oh,there's a pen where you just
dial the dose and give it to her, and then at six months, once
you guys are approved, you'reconfident that you can get an
insulin pump where you wouldpunch in the numbers and it'll
automatically do the dosage.
But I read the first few weekswere tough, where before every
(12:51):
meal she'd have to get a shot,and so it's very complex.
We have to calculate, like, thenumber of carbs which actually
turned out the endurance sportsthing.
You know, I knew how to likecount carbs because that's
really important you have tofuel.
So I guess one of mysuperpowers I can look at a
plate of food and go that'sabout 40 carbs and I'll usually
be within like 10% accurate.
(13:11):
Wow, my wife was like Google itand how much is this?
And I'm like, oh, that's about40 carbs.
And she's like wow, it was 43.
You're really close.
The first few months they comeup and show me a plate of food
like how many carbs is this?
Yeah, and then you have to dothe injection, which my daughter
really, you know, is usually alot of crying.
So her strategy was she wouldjust not eat.
Joe Miller (13:36):
And she didn't do the injection.
Good idea.
Gabe Peterson (13:38):
Yeah, and then she goes forward.
Now it's she's got an insulinpod.
It uses technology where it'staking her, basically blood
sugar reading and adapting.
I mean, technology is amazing.
That's why you know part of whyI'm in this career.
But at the same time, in 2019,I was doing the Moab 240.
(14:00):
This is a race where I beatGoggins.
Yes, as you would think I tookhis soul.
Joe Miller (14:05):
Let's see if we can hook him into this video to
comment against this Go viral.
I know you got into it with DanCrenshaw there for a while too,
so that was kind of interesting.
Gabe Peterson (14:15):
Yeah, I was definitely.
I'd read his book and I wasaware.
When he was showed up at theregistration I was like that's
Goggins, that's cool.
I was in the Navy.
People in the Navy are calledsquids.
I was catching up to him and somy plan was, when I caught up
to him, I was going to say hey,it's two squids, let's have a
push-up contest, see who wins.
Joe Miller (14:33):
I didn't expect that to win, but I thought that'd be
funny.
Gabe Peterson (14:36):
But he ended up dropping out due to some medical
issues.
But anyway, I thought maybepeople would donate to a
fundraiser, I don't know.
So I set a pretty modest goal.
I think it's 240 miles.
So I said, yeah, $2,400.
If I can hit that, that'd bereally amazing.
And again, the power oftechnology.
(14:58):
I just put this out on socialmedia.
Hey, I'm going to go do thisrun for my daughter.
It'd be great if you donated.
And I think in a day we blewthrough $2,400.
I can't remember how much weended up raising for Moab, but
it was like $4,000 or $5,000.
Since then, every year I pickone race that I dedicate as a
(15:18):
fundraiser for the JuvenileDiabetes Research Foundation.
So their mission is a worldwithout type 1 diabetes, with me
doing this crazy, stupid epicstuff, and help in some way.
I'm happy to do that and Ifound that the more insane the
event, the more people arewilling to contribute.
(15:41):
And it helped me out therebecause I know I can't quit.
All those people contributed.
I can't quit for them, I can'tquit for my daughter.
So those are usually raceswhere I really need that extra
boost of mental resolve that I'mnot going to quit, because a
lot of these races are 40% or50% of the people don't finish.
Like Tour de Chauds, about 50%of the people who started did
(16:05):
not finish, and these are thebest ultra runners from the
entire world.
No one shows up lightly to doTour de Chauds.
Everyone there, like when Italked to them, they had a very,
very serious resume.
So just failure is a very realpossibility, which makes things
(16:26):
exciting.
Joe Miller (16:28):
You see, in a lot of these events you know it's
going to thin out, but it wasreally interesting watching your
video because in the verybeginning there was so crowded
going through those narrowstreets that you really couldn't
run or just maybe walk yousometimes had to stop.
And then, probably about halfwayin, you noticed that reading
(16:49):
less than that you wereseparating on the skinny trails
and then, I think probably twothirds in or three quarters in,
it was like, hey, I actuallycould find a place to sleep
tonight.
I didn't have to sleep on thefloor or the ground.
Gabe Peterson (17:04):
It was really unusual to say.
Ultra running is a sport thathas a lot of popularity in
Europe and you see in the movielike people were lined in the
streets, ringing bells, yeah,shouting the others, which one
of the things at times it showsis die, which means go, which
like on day three or four wheresomeone's shouting, hey, you got
(17:27):
to go, wait a minute.
And then something realizedlike oh, he's an American that
debate and they would know itwould be like don't say that to
him.
Joe Miller (17:34):
Oh gosh, that's hilarious Wow.
Gabe Peterson (17:37):
But yeah, so you don't have ultras like that.
Where it starts with you knowthat was there was two waves in
each wave was about 500 runnerslike the biggest ultras in the
US are 500 runners and that's acap of tortoise nods and you
don't get that kind of crowdmojo at an ultra.
It's more like if you're doingBoston marathon or something
(17:58):
like that.
Yeah, yeah, so that was reallycool.
Joe Miller (18:02):
So one of the things that I want to bring out is
this incremental improvementconcept.
But before we tie that intothis extreme events that you've
been doing, let's pivot back.
You were talking about thetechnical aspects of helping
your daughter manage yourdiabetes and doing the manual
injections, and I make insulinpump and the feedback with the
(18:25):
monitoring.
You have a scientificbackground, which I found out
also.
I come, I have a degree inchemistry and a minor in physics
.
You do as well.
So let's pivot to your initialcareer.
This is supposed to be abouttransitions this podcast and
talk a little bit about yourtransitions and how they came up
.
You graduated from Berkeleywith that degree, is that right?
Gabe Peterson (18:47):
Yeah, no, that's right.
So got out of the Navy, whichis in some ways a hard decision.
So I actually enjoyed the Navyin a lot of ways as an adventure
and I could have seen myselfbeing a career Navy guy.
Sometimes I wonder what wouldhave happened, but life's turned
out pretty good for me.
So I used the GI Bill.
I started up in a small collegein Northern California where I
(19:09):
grew up and then I transferredinto Berkeley and so a couple of
transitions there just go fromthe military back to school and
I had this very exciting,dangerous job and then all of a
sudden life's kind of boringagain.
You're studying.
I was responsible.
I ended up responsible for ateam on the flight deck and as
(19:29):
responsible for myself, it'skind of like for me it was
almost for a while better word,relaxing and enjoyable, like
going to college.
I'm just responsible for myself.
Everyone else there is superstressed, especially when I got
to Berkeley.
It's a very competitiveenvironment.
You know you do the orientationand they're like how many of
(19:50):
you are the slewditorian orvaledictorian in your high
school and like half the peopleraise their hands and like why
isn't high school?
I didn't even know I was gonnago college.
Wow, if you talk to a lot of thestudents there and they're like
they'd been groomed from thetime they were 12, that they
were gonna go to Berkeley.
And I'm like huh, I decided Iwas gonna go to college on my
21st birthday when we justpulled out of Hong Kong and I
(20:11):
said, you know, if I don't takemy shot now, that might not come
again.
So I'm gonna get out of theNavy and use the GI Bill.
It's a just GI Bill and a lotof hustle.
I was able to put myselfthrough Berkeley.
Joe Miller (20:25):
So just real quick interrupting you.
I'm sorry, but when you saidsomething there, how did you
come to the point where you feltlike you had to make that
decision?
At that point in time, you weregetting close to the end of
your initial commitment.
Is that what it was?
Gabe Peterson (20:38):
Yeah, it was kind of either reenlist for another
four years and I had orders.
I wanted to be an air trafficcontroller, which can be a
lucrative civilian career too.
It's hard to get into thatschool and I had orders to go to
air traffic controller school.
So on the one hand I had a verysure thing like this sets me up
for a nice life.
(20:59):
But for me I felt like I coulddo more.
I could take my shot because Iworked with the pilots and I
knew them pretty well.
You see, I'm off the boat, havea beer and thought what's the
difference between me turningthe wrench on the airplane?
(21:19):
It's hard to imagine now, but Iused to have mechanics hands.
You know we have the grease andthe crevices of your hands.
What's the difference betweenme with the greasy hands and
this pilot?
And it's like, well, that guygot a philosophy degree from
Ohio State, so he gets to fallinto the airplane and I try to
get that.
I go.
I'm at least as smart as theseguys.
(21:40):
I need to take my shot.
So I figured, worst case, Icould always reenlist back in
the Navy.
But I would kick myself if Ididn't take my shot.
So it was kind of a big leap tojust like I'm gonna give up
this sure thing.
That would give me a prettygood life.
Then go back to college and whoknows what happens there.
Joe Miller (21:58):
Okay, so your life changed.
You're on the Berkeley campus,which is kind of an elite.
I'll just say I don't know ifit was the same timeframe, but I
did have a CIO IT leadershippost in Berkeley, so I visited
that campus a number of timesfor meetings and my nephew went
there as well, so I'm prettyfamiliar with it and that's a
(22:19):
big shift, you know, culturally.
Gabe Peterson (22:22):
Yeah, from the Navy to Berkeley.
Joe Miller (22:24):
Yes, yes.
So I imagine you just put yourhead down and just focused and
grounded out for the remainingtwo years or whatever.
Gabe Peterson (22:34):
however many years, yeah for the junior and
senior year.
Yeah, I mean, I always try tomake time also to enjoy the
experience as an older student.
By the time I was there, I wasin my mid-20s and, like I said,
I had an appreciation for itthat, hey, life's not really
like this where you're justresponsible for yourself, where
your job is to enrich yourselfand take tests.
(22:56):
A lot of the students were verystressed about it.
I'm like no one's gonna die.
Joe Miller (23:02):
I had a job where I could actually die if I made the
wrong decision.
Gabe Peterson (23:07):
So yeah, I definitely worked hard.
The usual pattern was all theproblem sets for physics and
chemistry were due on Fridays,so I would stay up all night
Thursday get those done and handthem in, like let's do it in
noon, so like 11.58, I'm there.
But then I was like, oh well,you know the weekend I have some
time to go enjoy.
The Bay Area.
(23:27):
So I wanna go, I wanna go.
Just huge value in Berkeley isall the people you meet there.
I consider myself kind of anextrovert, so I just meeting
people, learning their storiesand having a really unusual
background there.
They grew up kind of poor inthe small town in Northern
California that I've been in theNavy.
That was the usual story.
Joe Miller (23:47):
Unique, definitely unique.
Gabe Peterson (23:49):
They were not many older students.
It was usually like the age ofthe grad students.
Usually people thought I was agrad student.
Joe Miller (23:58):
Ah, so the next transition came when you had to
get a real job right.
Gabe Peterson (24:03):
Yeah, when I graduated I did some research.
I did an internship at theStanford Lateral Accelerator,
which again was another kind ofpinch yourself moment, when I
had my old 1960 Volkswagen bugthat I bought saving up from a
cruise in the Navy and I driveonto the Stanford campus and it
was like something I'd neverimagined for myself.
(24:25):
It was just like going on theBerkeley campus Like I can't
believe this is my life.
But the thing I realized wasresearch was not my passion.
I enjoyed I definitely enjoyedscience, but the actual research
turns out all the interestingchemistry seems to happen at
like three in the morning insome sort of concrete bunker by
(24:46):
yourself, and I like working.
Joe Miller (24:47):
By yourself, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (24:49):
I didn't get energized by doing it and it was
kind of the tail end of the dotcom era, you know late 90s.
So I thought I could maybe moveinto technology.
But I still want to stayinvolved in science because,
yeah, it's important for me.
So I did a plight of job at asoftware company, make
scientific software for thepharmaceutical industry, which
can put me on this whole path oflife sciences, informatics and
(25:13):
IT.
Joe Miller (25:15):
Were you a developer .
Gabe Peterson (25:16):
Kind of worked in professional services.
I guess the way I got the jobwas.
They were trying to make achemistry based product and
found they couldn't teach theprogrammers chemistry, and so
they wanted to see if they couldteach, you know, chemists
programming and sure not anysuper useful programming
languages like Fortran, but theyhad treatment transmission
though, as I basically walked inand they're like hey, our
(25:37):
product uses Oracle database.
And I'm like what's an Oracledatabase?
I've never heard of it.
It's fine.
Here's the book.
Read the book and then startprogramming next week.
Ok, so a great experience forlearning.
Yeah, they're like OK, we havean engagement where this
(25:58):
customer wants a chemistry datawarehouse and you're flying out
there on Monday OK, I guess I'dbetter read that book.
So you have the playbook andthen you have to present
yourself as the expert andyou're in a lurch and you're
making a lot of mistakes.
So that's one lesson I'vepicked up for my life is being
(26:18):
willing to fail.
Like I mentioned, a lot ofthese races is a very high
probability of actually failing,but I think that makes it more
exciting.
Joe Miller (26:27):
Not everyone is like that.
There's a lot of people in thisworld who have fabulous
contributions to whateverendeavor they're in, but I
wouldn't call them risk takers.
I would say that certainly theycan move into other areas I'll
say, grow into other areas butjumping into something that they
don't have structure and theydon't have a base competency in
(26:51):
it is something they aren'twilling to do.
And I think, thematically, hereI'm starting to see a thread
that this is one attribute youhave in your wiring and your
natural or gifting or wiringthat has played out in multiple
different areas of your careerand your life.
Is that, like you said earlieron, when you're making the
(27:14):
decision to go to Berkeley, itwas like, well, I figured I
would take my shot at it.
Or, as we'll probably learnlater on, how you got into your
endurance sports is you justwent for it.
And so the length of thatstretch for that kind of a
transition, people havedifferent tolerance levels for
(27:35):
that.
Gabe Peterson (27:36):
Yeah, I don't know if that's intrinsic or
that's maybe something thathaving that early experience in
the Navy where you learn how totake risks and maybe even learn
how to even enjoy taking risksyou used to take your risks, or
maybe you're born with it, I'mnot sure, but it's definitely
there and I think for the mostpart, it's led to a lot of
(27:58):
interesting what I callmisadventures, you know my.
Youtube channel called Gabe'sMisadventures.
Joe Miller (28:03):
Misadventures yeah.
Gabe Peterson (28:05):
They're not always adventure and sometimes
they're misadventures.
So often they're misadventures,but just be willing to accept.
This isn't going to go the way.
The movie's playing out on myhead.
Joe Miller (28:15):
Right.
So then you were at thatcompany and then you went
forward.
The next transition came.
When, or how?
How did you actually get intoIT management?
Gabe Peterson (28:26):
It was kind of a long and indirect road, Like
I've said, my life's kind ofseries of happy accidents.
So I was more on the softwaredevelopment, informatics side.
I worked in early discovery,pharmaceutical discovery at
Pfizer the one now would becalled data science and kind of
progress, so that I worked.
(28:47):
I ended up working in everyphase of pharmaceutical R&D over
a series of years.
It sounds really short, I needto say it Worked in discovery at
Pfizer, preclinical at Amgen,and then started the clinical
informatics team at City of Pope, which is one of the top cancer
research hospitals in the world, and so each of those is a big
(29:08):
transition.
People generally wouldspecialize in one of those areas
and make that their wholecareer.
For me it was kind of likewhat's the new challenge After
that?
I was kind of like well, I'veworked in every phase of R&D,
what's next?
And so I like to joke that Iwent to the dark side of IT.
I figured, yeah, I'd learn alot and everyone was kind of
(29:29):
jobless, you could do itanywhere, whereas our industry
is largely based in a handful oflocations.
You're committed to living inone of those.
Luckily for me.
Now one of those locations isSan Diego, which is San Diego,
does not suck.
Is that a T-shirt?
Sure, yeah, I'd make that themarketing slogan.
Oh you've probably heard that alot on the on my movie.
(29:50):
Some of my friends joke that itshould be a drinking game.
Every time I say something likethis view does not suck and you
have to drink.
So I ended up heading upinformation systems at a medical
device company that wasactually based in Utah and it
was a spin off from a muchlarger company.
So it was kind of a new areadoing something that most
(30:15):
companies would take 18 monthsto do a spin off like that and I
think we had about half thattime so had to build up the
entire IS team, implement allthe systems.
The new company would needeverything from an ERP with SAP
to HR system, workday customerrelationship management, sales
(30:36):
horse.
These are things I'd never donebefore.
I do kind of what they did, butit was kind of like.
Joe Miller (30:41):
I'm sure there's not a theme here.
I'm still seeing there beingsort of a theme.
Gabe Peterson (30:44):
Yeah.
Okay, it's something I haven'tdone.
I made a lot of mistakes alongthe way, but I'm generally
trying to learn.
I'm trying to learn from themand not repeat them.
So that was a good learningexperience, just working a lot
of different areas of thebusiness.
The company was heavily basedin GMP or good manufacturing
practices and I'd never donethat.
So I learned all about theplant and just doing things like
(31:07):
Gembo walks and was able tobreak kind of the flavor that I
learned of Agile by the capitalA yeah.
Introduce Agile to theorganization, and so, by the
time I left, a lot of themanufacturing teams were having
daily standups when they had ascrum board.
Joe Miller (31:21):
People are not in the industry.
That's a big shift, becausetypically in these highly
regulated fields, things moveslowly when it comes to
development.
You're in what they call theold waterfall method.
Gabe Peterson (31:37):
I was kind of early adopter way back in the
early 2000s as a softwaredeveloper and there were some of
the early flavors of Agile likeextreme programming that
eventually scrum kind of tookover and for me that's something
I brought to every company.
So I said, well, this works inthe software world.
We're making hardware, medicaldevice products.
(31:58):
There's no reason it shouldn'twork.
You've got a lot of resistancethat well.
I understand why they work foryou software guys, but that's
not going to work for hardware.
But it's all about people.
It's not really about what theproduct you're delivering.
It's about how humans worktogether in teams to be highly
productive.
And so I said, okay, well,let's try the experiment.
(32:18):
You have a product developmentteam, I have a scrum master.
He'll take you through onesprint, one two week sprint, and
we'll see what happens.
And I got one of the VP's ofR&D to agree to that.
I think probably expected it tofail.
And two weeks later he saidthat team got more done in two
weeks than they would usuallyget done in two months and they
(32:41):
were sold.
Joe Miller (32:41):
That's why I sell people.
Gabe Peterson (32:45):
It's how I ended up doing a lot more beyond the
classic IT role, whereas reallyhelping a lot with the business
transformation, and end upleading business projects that
really had almost nothing to dowith technology, because I was
thinking you guys want a toolproblem or a tool solution, but
(33:05):
you have a process problem.
Let's fix that and then we'llgive you the technology you need
.
There's a lot of just usingAgilent and digging into it.
What's the problem?
How do we solve it?
In bite-sized chunks.
So one of the analogies I usebetween mountain running and the
work world is we're going tothe mountaintop, so the classic
(33:28):
waterfall approach would be Ican tell you we will be at the
mountaintop at 842 AM on thisdate and it will look exactly
like the.
Joe Miller (33:40):
It never happens?
Gabe Peterson (33:41):
It never happens.
I have a Gantt chart that showsyou on this exact moment, we
will land on the mountaintop.
Joe Miller (33:47):
And it doesn't matter how many tiny tick marks
you have on your Gantt chart, itdoesn't make it any more
accurate.
Gabe Peterson (33:54):
None of the Gantt charts are ever reality.
So it's like, hey, we knowwe're going to get to the
mountaintop, but the first stepis we got to get to the base of
the mountain and then we findthe trail.
And then we know there's atrail there.
We don't know much about thetrail, but then the next
milestone is we're going to getto the stream that's up the
mountain and while we learn,this trail is really different
than we expected.
It's a lot steeper, so we needto adapt our approach.
(34:16):
That same approach, I think, isreally what kind of the agile
philosophy of small, bite-sizedchunks, big goals.
But if I focused on the finishof Tour de Gence, I don't think
I would make it.
So I'd just be mentallyoverwhelming to know I've got
five more days of being outthere in the mountains running.
It was always like what's thenext thing?
Joe Miller (34:38):
When I coach leaders , I often pick up on a problem.
When people get stuck justbecause of that one comment you
made, it becomes overwhelmingbecause they're so focused on
the long range of the outcomethat they want.
It's good to have a vision,it's good to have a directional,
a vector I'm talking physicsnow towards where you want to go
(35:01):
.
But the problem is your visionis just not that great.
When you start things out andif you overanalyze and think
about the destination, itbecomes extremely discouraging
along the way and you find outthat the journey, the way you
plotted it out, is not at alllike the journey that you have
(35:21):
to take and it's a lot likeclimbing a mountain or going up
a mountain where, if you're wayback on the valley floor, you
can see the ultimate destinationthat's your long range outcome
planned the peak.
But when you get up close, yougo up to base camp and you go up
to the first shoulder, youcan't even see the peak.
There's like three or fourother lower peaks in the way,
(35:44):
other shoulders that you have togo across, and your vantage
point from the floor of thevalley doesn't appreciate the
journey along the way.
It's a mindset thing that Ithink is illustrated in your
journey, both on the corporateside and also in the athletic
achievements you've made.
This comes up a lot and it'svery helpful for people to
(36:07):
reframe things, to say, yeah, Istill have that long range goal
for today.
And this came out of your videobecause you kept saying, today,
this is my goal.
Or even like if I could justmake it down this hill in the
dark without falling off thecliff and dropping my poles,
then I'll be good.
And we'll go and then we'll see.
Gabe Peterson (36:29):
Yeah, focus on the next milestone.
That ultra mindset is verytransferable because in the
ultra there's definitely timeswhere you want to focus on what
is that goal?
Like your motivation is low,right, like, why am I doing this
?
I think about, like, mydaughter, the mola, like why am
I doing this to myself?
And I ask myself that a lot intortoise odds, I think why am I
(36:50):
doing this to myself?
And then you focus on the why,the big picture, but mostly it
was like I just need to focus onI'm getting to the next town
where there is an age stationand I'll get to have a bowl of
pasta or something.
I'm not thinking any fartherthan that because if I think
like, oh God, 200 more miles togo, that is just overwhelming.
(37:12):
I would just you can't eat thatelephant all one bite.
Joe Miller (37:16):
Right, and I think of people when they think about
their careers.
Sometimes they can be the sameway.
They're like oh, I have thislong, I have this goal that I
want to get to a certain level,but for the past six months I
haven't moved an inch.
Well, that's six months, allright, let's keep going.
When did you start your?
(37:39):
I'm just wondering how longthese two aspects of your life
are running concurrently.
When did you start running andwhat was your first race?
How long was it?
Gabe Peterson (37:49):
Really, this all started when I was turning 40,
about 10 years ago.
I turned 50 this month.
Joe Miller (37:57):
But you've only been doing this for 10 years.
Gabe Peterson (37:59):
Yeah, I mean, I would say I was very active
after the Navy, always ran, butrecreationally.
I had done a couple ofmarathons, but not at all
competitively.
You know always just the goalI'm going to finish, you know,
and it'd be like a four and ahalf hour marathon which,
congratulate, everybody doesthat.
That's not a competitive me.
(38:19):
Sorry I've kept you going.
Yeah, I'd always been prettyactive, backpacked and things
like that.
I think it was kind of why Iwas turning 40.
I really had this epiphany likehey, I need to take my shot.
Joe Miller (38:30):
Oh, there's that phrase again, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (38:33):
Yeah and yeah, it's only going to get harder.
I'm 40.
It's only going to get harder,and it was kind of the series of
small goals.
When I turned 40, I said, hey,I'll do a half hour marathon.
For people don't know it's a1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride
and then a half marathon, whichto me at that time sounded just
(38:54):
insane.
I had run pretty steadily, butrecreationally, not, you know,
not particularly fast.
I thought I could swim becauseI was in the Navy, but it turns
out I could just not die in thewater for a very long time.
I could freestyle swim veryfast.
I basically had to be an adultonset swimmer and learn how to
(39:17):
actually properly freestyle swim.
I would say I'm still not greatthere.
And then I hadn't ridden a bikein 20 years, so I went to the
local bike shop, bought a bikeand started learning everything
that you need to do about knowabout cycling, and so so I did
it.
There's this race called SuperFrog, which actually here at San
(39:38):
Diego as I live in the Pasadenaarea at the time and I think I
liked it because it wasconnected to the Navy it was
actually a race that was startedby the Navy, seals Frogmen,
held on the BUDS course wherethey go through, based on the
SEAL boot camp, and they havepictures of fallen SEALs.
So it was very like all right,this connects to my past, but I
was my mental, I was like thisis one and done, I'll do this,
(40:01):
I'll hang the bike up on thegarage wall and I'll have
bragging rights for the rest ofmy life.
So I got to the finish line Iwas like, wow, that was, that
was really fun, I should do anIron man and, sure enough, next
year did Iron man Arizona.
It just kind of keptprogressing from there.
(40:22):
And then the Ultra started whenthe medical device company was
based in Salt Lake City, utah.
So around 2014, moved up toUtah Again.
I had no connection to Utah, nofamily no religious connection.
I'd been there a few times and Ithought, you know, as I
discovered, jen, it was beforesocial media.
Now, now people know Utah isamazing.
We got in before, beforeeveryone do that.
(40:44):
I remember posting pictures ofUtah and there, yeah, I'm up in
the mountains.
They're like where is that?
Are you in Colorado?
I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm inUtah.
And they're like, oh, utahdoesn't have mountains, it's
just a flat desert.
No, no, I had about the bathingof mountains in the world.
So that was when I got intoUltras, live right at the base
of a mountain, and I actuallyread Born to Run, which, yeah, I
(41:07):
love that book.
The whole thesis is this ishumans, this is our superpower.
We're literally born to run.
Humans can routinely outrunhorses and races, and so the
idea is that this is we're muchmore heat adapted than any other
species on the planet.
People always think of theMinolus shoe thing that came out
of Born to Run, which is alsoone of the teams that I don't
buy into that part.
Joe Miller (41:29):
Well, I mean, you can talk about feeling the next
goal, but I wonder if it's notthe next goal, but it's the fact
that you're pushing yourself.
You know that you're feelinglike I'm going to take the shot
or I'm going to go for it.
There's this disquieting youfor just sort of sitting and
(41:51):
being comfortable where you are.
Now I don't mean that anegative way, it's mostly
positive.
Gabe Peterson (41:56):
They're talking to you like why can't I be like
most people and just becomfortable?
Joe Miller (42:02):
Right, right.
So let's try to glean somelessons here.
Wow, I mean, there's so much.
What are some things that arepositive?
Lessons for growth and formoving forward in one's life
that you can glean from both ofthese.
Then use a few other optionssituations.
Gabe Peterson (42:20):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of overlap.
I'd say that when we talkedabout setting goals, because a
lot of these are long term goals.
When people come to me andthey're like, hey, I want to do
a 200 mile race, and okay, whereare you at?
Well, I ran a half marathon.
Okay, you're looking at like athree year goal, but I want to
do it, like in six months.
(42:40):
All right, you might be able todrag yourself through a 200
mile race in six months, butit's, it's not going to be fun.
Joe Miller (42:48):
You'll be in the hospital, yeah, afterwards.
Gabe Peterson (42:51):
Yeah, your chances of success are going to
be low.
Your chance of injury can behigh, like this is something you
need to build to over years.
So work is you know.
As the same way with yoursetting goals.
Some of them are very nebulous,like we want to go to this
mountain top and maybe it'sshrouded in clouds.
We can't even see it.
We know it's there, but wedon't know what it looks like.
Definitely I'd also say thatkind of agile mindset of doing
(43:16):
things in small bite size chunks, and one of the things I like
about agile is it's an empiricalcontrol framework or it's using
the science of approach.
I have an idea, I try it and Ifind out really fast whether it
succeeded or failed.
So a lot of times in training,Isn't it, by its very nature,
(43:39):
inboxed?
Yeah, so you're doing it in ashort span of time.
I'm an agile.
It's usually a one to four weekspreads, so it's kind of that
same idea with training.
Is you do this, what's calledperiod of that periodizer
training where it could be agoal in this block?
My goal is to get faster andI'll objectively be able to
measure whether I'm faster,because I'll go out and run like
(44:00):
a 5k time trial and I eitherran a faster 5k or I didn't,
whether that training approacheither worked or didn't.
And so I did a lot of selfexperimentation on what kind of
worked and a lot of what didn't.
Joe Miller (44:15):
So that framework then you apply when working with
your team.
I'm sure that there is maybefrom the business you get a sort
of, I'll say, somewhat nebulousgoal sometimes or what would
appear to be unrealistic attimes, but do you apply the same
sort of thinking and mentalmodel to mapping out the course
(44:39):
on your professional side?
Yeah, definitely.
Gabe Peterson (44:42):
There's a lot of parallels, I mean, some are.
I'd say that where it's reallydifferent a lot of times is
running is more individual.
Sure, you're part of acommunity, but it's really about
.
It's really about yeah, waityourself.
Joe Miller (44:53):
You have control of everything, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (44:56):
Which is sometimes the worst, because you
we're not honest with ourselvesa lot.
So the classic is you'll getsomeone who has this running
goal and you're like, okay, it'sreally easy to see if you're
gonna have a chance of I want todo, say, a sub three hour
marathon.
Okay, go run a half marathonand if you can do it in this
time you know like an hour and20 minutes or something like
(45:19):
that you can probably run a subthree and you go what's your
fastest half marathon?
Well, I've done a two hour halfmarathon, Okay it's a long way.
Yeah, you got work to do.
So sometimes it's harder to doit by yourself because and I
think this is why coaching is animportant in athletics is you
have someone who's giving youthat feedback, like, okay, I
hear your goal, you want to getto three hour marathon.
(45:41):
You're at more like a four hourmarathon.
Now here's what we have to doto get you there.
That's probably like a two orthree year goal of really
focusing on running a marathonthat fast Using the marathon
analogy, because you know peoplekind of understand marathons
like people run them or is thatteamwork?
Is it work is a team and it'smore?
I think they're a lot morevariables and it's a team that
(46:03):
you don't necessarily.
It's a hybrid team.
Some people report are part ofmy team.
They're my direct reports, so Ihave some ability to directly
influence what they do.
But most of the products weroll out are not for the
technology team.
They're for the business unitlike scientists doing research
in the lab.
So when they come to you withthose unrealistic goals, I want
(46:25):
to read a 200 mile race and butmy most recent thing is you know
I've read a half marathon andyou go okay.
Well, here's what you have, thework we have to put in.
Oh, I don't want to.
I'm too busy to put in thatkind of work, but I still want
that goal.
So I put in some early tests tosee are they really committed?
I want to do this project.
I'm like okay, here's what it'sgoing to take from your team.
We need a product donor,someone from your team who can
(46:47):
really drive the vision for thisproduct.
Oh, I don't have anyone thatcan do that, who is not busy.
Okay, that's fine.
I don't understand it, but wecan't do that product.
You're not committed to thisproject.
You won't give me a product.
Yeah, here's what I'll need.
I will need a product owner.
We'll need people to be a partof this team developing this
product, but they're too busy.
(47:09):
I totally understand it, but wewon't be successful.
And, yeah, I want to invest inprojects where we're going to be
successful for a company.
Joe Miller (47:18):
It seems so obvious, but I would say, based on my
experience, that's probably oneof the easiest places that
technology leaders can trip up,because they want to say yes to
something, they want to behelpful and in the end of the
day they're not going to behelpful because there are
realities to what it takes toget certain things accomplished,
(47:40):
and so that's really greatadvice.
The other thing I wanted topivot to unless you want to
spend a little more time on thatis just the importance of
mindset and how that it may be.
It's a little bit more of ageneral lessons learned and
advice for those who are on thejourney, but the importance of
(48:01):
mindset in both venues, bothareas.
Gabe Peterson (48:06):
Yeah, I think there's some overlap, definitely
.
Yeah, I think the ultra mindsetI was talking about knowing
when to focus on your big goallike hey, you're losing
motivation, why are you doingthis?
But if you're like I just needto get up the side of this
mountain or I need to learn thisnew programming language,
focusing on the why can beoverwhelming to focus on the
(48:29):
task.
So in ultra, there's a lot ofunderstand when to focus on the
why versus when to focus on thetask.
So it's 2am and you have itslept in three days.
That's a really bad time tofocus on the why You're going to
go to a dark place.
Just focus on the task.
My job is to get to the nextmountain pass and then from
(48:52):
there.
Joe Miller (48:52):
So maybe there's times to opine and then there's
times to grind, yeah there's alot of grinding.
Gabe Peterson (48:58):
That's in the video.
I've actually referred to thata bunch of times because that
was yes, I remember.
Ian up branded the John Muirtrail during COVID because all
the races were canceled, so it'sa 211 mile trail that's
Northern California right.
Yeah, in the Sierra Mountains.
So we did it northbound,starting from Mount Whitney,
(49:20):
tosimete Valley, and we ended upactually sitting in the fastest
known time on the route that wetook, although we didn't know
it at the time.
So I joked that I have thefastest known old dude time.
Here come his ultra runner,very kind of cocky, like, oh,
this will be easy.
It ended up being probably oneof the hardest things I've done,
maybe just a little below withtortoise jobs, but anyway, you
(49:43):
get in through hiking as atradition, you get a trail name.
You don't go by your regularname or civilian world, and so
my trail name was Grinderbecause my friend, he was really
fast.
He would shoot up to the passand then he'd take breaks,
whereas I would just keep going.
I'd get to the pass and Ididn't even break, I'd just keep
going, and so I'm going to justgrinding it out.
Joe Miller (50:05):
Or he's like well.
Gabe Peterson (50:06):
I can grab it sprinting to the next.
Joe Miller (50:08):
It feels like a time to talk about the tortoise and
the hare, maybe, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (50:14):
And then definitely there's a lot of just
grinding out, which I talkedabout a lot in that video, Like
it was just time to grind it out.
So I think the times in lifewhere you just have to do things
that are fun and they're goingto help you get to this goal and
I think but I think overallenjoying the adventure and
making sure it's fun in the workcontext I generally want my
(50:37):
teams to work should be fun.
Most days when we show up weshould be having fun.
I know there's some companiesthat take that as a really bad
sign that you're not serious andI don't want to work for those
companies anymore.
Joe Miller (50:49):
If you don't look like you've been going through
the torture chamber with miseryon your face, then you must not
be committed.
Is that the idea?
Gabe Peterson (50:56):
Yeah, I think I both have worked.
Both worked for that kind ofcompany.
Joe Miller (51:00):
Yeah.
Gabe Peterson (51:01):
Or where you run into someone and they tell you
like how busy they are and howhard everything is Me Okay,
that's just like the company'sculture is.
They're once telling each otherhow difficult things are,
versus more like a hey, we'rehere to discover new drugs.
That's a really cool thing thatwe get to do.
We get to discover newmedicines that help patients,
(51:21):
sometimes with untreateddiseases.
That's amazing.
So it's really cool to get tobe part of that in some small
way.
Joe Miller (51:32):
Well, that's part of mindset too, and is that is
understanding the overallcontext, and this gets back to
the vision part taking time toappreciate where you are and
that you are in a spot that youfeel good about.
The other thing I want to chatabout real briefly is to ask you
the question have you ever beenin a situation where you were
tasked to do something and justwasn't really your natural
(51:56):
strength to do?
Gabe Peterson (51:57):
Yeah, I think that's one of those, you know,
where I was asked to dosomething and I'm like okay,
I've never done anything likethat before.
When I was at the medicaldevice company, there were a lot
of folks who'd been there along time and so they're very
invested in the way things were.
I was new, so the CEO asked melike hey, we have this problem
shipping our products on time.
(52:18):
Can you look into it?
I'm like I don't know anythingabout me.
He's like it's okay, you seemto have a good like critical
thinking skill set.
Just go see what you identify.
I said, okay, I'll play Agile,we'll do a sprints, get a team
cross-factual team together,identify what the problems are
and then start attacking theproblems and then flash forward
(52:42):
a few months.
We've implemented a whole salesand operations planning process
, or SNOP.
It started off I couldn't evenspell SNOP, but just had to
learn along the way and reallytake advantage of that team that
collectively were much smarterthan any of us are individually.
Joe Miller (53:02):
Yeah, yeah, so that's great.
Are there any closing ideas youhave in terms of lessons
learned that would be helpfulfor folks tuning in.
This is the question I ask inall my podcasts is if you were
to turn the clock back and beable to speak to yourself when
you were 25 years old orwhatever, what advice, what sage
advice, would you give yourself?
Gabe Peterson (53:25):
Well, that's a tough question.
I'm very grateful for the lifeI've had growing up.
I wouldn't have thought I'd betalking about any of this stuff.
I think I enjoyed the journey.
I'm 25-year-olds.
A lot of them just aren'tappreciated.
I was in a unique experiencewhere I was at Berkeley and I
can appreciate how amazing thiswas.
(53:45):
I had so many peers who thiswas like a grind for them.
It was so horrible.
We're here at one of the bestuniversities in the world and
this is going to open up so manydoors for your future.
Just enjoy that journey.
Like I said, have fun.
And also one of the things I'velearned is hubris is rarely
rewarded in sports and also inlife, I think, wherever I've
(54:08):
ever had major setbacksdefinitely in sports, whereas
where I got cocky like, oh yeah,I've done this race, so I don't
really need to prepare for thisother race, I can just show up
and go beast mode the few DNFsI've had, that is almost always
how that story played out and itwas always like all right, I
(54:31):
need to stay humble, it doesn'tmatter, this race doesn't care
that I did these other races.
I need to respect that.
This is a really hard race.
So same thing in life, I thinktrying to stay humble and
keeping that learning mindset.
I mean, you know this, we bothhave the same career in
technology.
Most of our career is actuallynot about technology.
(54:53):
It's about getting people tochange.
And I think it's because at somepoint we lose that growth
mindset and we start sayingthings like this is the way
we've always done it.
That reason we should keepdoing it in the future.
Joe Miller (55:11):
Yeah, well, that's great advice when you danced
around.
A little model that we talkabout a lot in this field people
, process, technology and it'sinteresting Most of the time we
get recruited into jobs help anorganization based upon
technology, understanding andknowledge and experience, maybe
some process, but over timewe've both chatted about this
(55:33):
that kind of the one of thebiggest levers is how you
influence people.
That's leadership.
Gabe Peterson (55:39):
And how you get open this.
Joe Miller (55:41):
Examples of you bringing in Agile was just one
of several examples that cameout in this episode, but really
that is huge.
Yes, you have to have yourtechnology chops on.
You have to have understanding.
But understanding how to servethe organization, serve the
other leaders that you're peerswith or you report to, and how
(56:02):
to motivate and coach your teamis kind of what really makes or
breaks long-term success, Ithink.
So that's a great reminder.
But hey, it's been so much funtalking to you.
Any final closing thoughts.
Gabe Peterson (56:19):
No, I really enjoyed this conversation, joe.
It's interesting, I usuallytalk about one or the other, so
it's kind of a wall of blend ofprofessional and athletics.
Joe Miller (56:27):
Hopefully they'll come through okay with the
episode.
You're on LinkedIn.
People can find you there.
We'll put in the notes of thegame, once we're exposed, how
you can be reached, butdefinitely we will point to that
episode.
I don't know, it might be anhour or longer or something like
that.
Gabe Peterson (56:42):
About 15, 55 minutes.
Joe Miller (56:44):
It is really cool.
I mean, it's just amazing.
And again, it's an amazingaccomplishment.
So kudos to you for that.
But also just listening to yourinner dialogue, I think, is
really powerful, because there'sa lot there to unpack.
So anyway, thanks again, gabe,for being on Titans of
Transition.
Gabe Peterson (57:03):
Yeah, and a great discussing my adventures and
myth adventures.
Joe Miller (57:09):
Misadventures.
I love it All.
Right man, Take care.
Gabe Peterson (57:11):
All right, you too, bye.
Joe Miller (57:15):
Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of
Transition.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Please check the show notes foradditional information.
They did this really human superpower that
we're born to run.
I say this a lot and people arevery skeptical.
I wasn't a collegiate runner.
I ran recreationally, mostly tostay kind of fit, and I don't
think I'm a particularlytalented runner.
Just lots of hard work andsetting small goals.
So he starts off doing this 50Kcalled Anilope Island.
(00:26):
50k which is Anilope Island isan island in the middle of Salt
Lake.
It's pretty amazing.
It has bison, it looks likethis prehistoric pile.
It's like a 50K lap.
And again I finished I thoughtthat'll be it.
I'll never need to do an ultraagain.
I thought that was fun.
Maybe I could do a 50-miler.
So the next year do a 50-milerand then 100-miles sounded
(00:47):
pretty insane to me.
But eventually you're like well, I'll do it once.
Tell you what.
It's kind of a drill, I'll justdo it once.
So I ended up doing this race inUtah called the Bear 100, which
goes through kind of theWasatch Mount.
It's just amazing, beautifulrace, although it's one that
most people consider one of thehardest hundreds in the world.
(01:07):
This is my first 100.
Usually people start off with avery easy 100.
I didn't know that, so I juststarted with one of the hardest
hundreds out there Next.
That was fun, so I'll do theWasatch 100 the next year.
And I heard of these 200-mileraces, which is how fast forward
2019 and me starting doingthese runs for the Juvenile
(01:30):
Diabetes Research Foundation.
I was like all right, moab, Ilove Moab.
I lived in Utah.
That was my favorite place.
Joe Miller (01:37):
And.
Gabe Peterson (01:37):
I said this will be like running through paradise
, but I'm only going to do itonce, and this week.
Along the way, I read aboutthis race Badwater, which is 135
miles.
That starts at Badwater Basinin Death Valley in July, so the
hottest place on the earth atthe hottest time of the year,
and you finish at Whitney Portal.
(01:58):
I remember reading about that,people like Scott Jerk doing it
and I thought no way, those guysare super, super human.
And then, next thing, you knowI did that.
Yeah, you're in Italy runningthrough the Alps.
It was progression over many,many years.
I would always have a smallergoal and a lot of times I
thought that was the goal andthen I realized maybe it's like
(02:18):
the idea of using that mount topanalogy A lot of times, the
mountains frustrating it's ballsummits.
You're like I'm at the summit.
I'm like, oh no, this isn't thesummit, it's actually over
there.
And then you get there and oh,this is another fall summit.
So it looks like those smallergoals were ball summits and I
don't know, Baby tortoise wasthe actual summit.
It's hard to imagine doinganything more challenging than
(02:40):
that.
Joe Miller (02:47):
Dave Peterson, welcome to Titans of Transition.
Gabe Peterson (02:50):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe.
This is going to be a good move.
Joe Miller (02:54):
Yeah, this is one of the things I do on this side.
You and I are in the same CIOChief Information Officers
network.
I do recall recently youmentioning on this side that you
had done some extreme sportevents and we'll get to that.
But I just want to ask you alittle bit about your background
(03:21):
.
So you were in the Navy, isn'tthat right?
Gabe Peterson (03:25):
Yeah, so straight out of high school I enlisted
in the US Navy.
So I grew up in a small town inNorthern California and it was
very intriguing by the NavyRecreation Post and joined the
Navy to see the world.
So I thought it was a good wayfor me to get some good life
experience.
Also came from a pretty modestbackground, so my parents were
(03:45):
like if you want to go tocollege, good luck.
Joe Miller (03:48):
Yeah, I do.
Gabe Peterson (03:50):
So the GI Bill was also really compelling.
So they lived up to theRecreation Post or by the time
I'd been in the Navy a year, Ihad circumnavigated the globe.
Wow, I was in the tail end ofthe Persian Gulf War.
It was actually kind of funny.
When I came back I was in E2,which is like the second lowest
ranked in the military, but Ihad like three rows of ribbons,
(04:14):
and at the time people who hadbeen in the Navy 20 years didn't
have three rows of ribbons.
So, he's like old crusty chiefwho'd been in it 20 years, and
he's like sailor.
How did you get three rows ofribbons?
Joe Miller (04:26):
They sent me the bread and dough, and you had
such a safe job too.
Right, tell us about what youwere doing on that.
Gabe Peterson (04:34):
Yeah, I was in the F-18 Hornet Squadron F-18's,
the jet the Blue Angels fly.
So I worked on the flight deckit was what's called a crew
chief or plane captain when Ibasically had one plane that I
was responsible for themaintenance on, and so I
actually had my name on the sideof the airplane.
It was much lower than where thepilots was.
(04:54):
I was following it.
The nose gear is on the doorthat opened up.
It said you know AirmanPeterson from Ferndale,
california, there you go.
Very cool.
Not many places you know an18-year-old can be responsible
for a $25 million jet, makinglife and death decisions.
Joe Miller (05:12):
Oh man, so I had to bring back so many memories of
visions of Top God Tom Cruisemovie yeah, that was it.
Did you oversee the group ofguys that went out there did the
little dancing action on theflight deck?
Gabe Peterson (05:27):
I don't remember A lot of dancing, but definitely
like the hand signals.
It's so loud you can'tcommunicate verbally, you can't
hear it all, so you communicatewith hand signals.
And when I was in Top Band itactually come out and there
weren't a lot of movies on theboat.
But you know there's a 5,000person ship the boat so they go
(05:50):
to the cruise for six months andthey bring like 20 movies so
they play the same movies overand over.
You get through where you canmemorize the movies and Top Gun
was one of them.
But we know it lacked becausethe hand signals are totally out
of context and wrong in themovie.
Oh are they?
They're correct signaled butthey're given the wrong time.
Joe Miller (06:09):
Well, some producer probably thought they looked
cool it looked cool.
Gabe Peterson (06:12):
It's a great shot we're going.
You never do with that.
Joe Miller (06:17):
Well, we'll swing back to that probably a little
bit later, but I want to jumpright in and kind of in the back
of everyone's minds as you'relistening.
I know there's question howdoes a guy that rose to being in
the C-suite of VP ofInformation Technology have that
(06:37):
as part of their life?
It's kind of you envision that,a sort of buttoned up,
professional, corporate guy.
And then, like I said, we werehaving this meeting, actually
over Zoom.
We were having this meeting andI mentioned that this book I
was reading by Dave Goggins andyou went, oh yeah, I've raised
with him and which is this crazyexceal out of control, extreme
(07:04):
accomplishments, physically typeguys.
And yeah, I raised with him.
Gabe Peterson (07:08):
I actually finished a race that he did not
finish.
Joe Miller (07:12):
Oh, was it one of the ones where he was like
running on broken legs and stuff.
Gabe Peterson (07:16):
I don't think I broke in legs, he just kind of
had other issues.
Joe Miller (07:22):
Altitude issues, I think what he said Gotcha, so I
went to the same altitude Didn'thave those issues.
Yeah, so let's talk about yourlast one, which is like it's
like the mother of all events.
It's Tour de Ligeants, Is thathow you say?
Gabe Peterson (07:35):
it Tour de Jants.
Joe Miller (07:36):
Tour de Jants.
Gabe Peterson (07:38):
Italian for the Tour of Giants.
So it's a approximately 220mile loop through the Italian
Alps.
It starts in Cormeier, which isjust if you've been to Mont
Blanc.
There's the Mont Blanc Tunnelas soon as you pop out of the
Mont Blanc Tunnel.
On the Italian side, that'sCormeier.
(07:59):
It's just a very scenic Lookslike, yeah, you're in a postcard
.
When you get there it almostdoesn't seem real, right in the
middle of the Alps.
A lot of people consider it thetoughest mountain race in the
world because it has about86,000 feet of vertical gain and
loss, or about three Everests.
If you went up Everest from sealevel, it came down three times
(08:22):
.
Joe Miller (08:23):
And how many miles long or kilometers long is it?
Gabe Peterson (08:26):
It's.
They built us 330 kilometers,but I actually got 227 miles, so
it's a little longer thanadvertised, wow.
Joe Miller (08:36):
And five days, is that what it took you?
Gabe Peterson (08:39):
to complete.
It took you five days.
So the race started on Sundayand I finished Friday night.
So it was 135 hours and inthose 135 hours I slept about a
total of seven hours.
Joe Miller (08:53):
I watched that blog video that you put on your
channel.
I got to know you a little bit.
I mean, I know youprofessionally, but I got to
know you a little bit morebecause of your self-talk
through the whole process.
I'm just curious when youwatched it back, did you notice
anything in what you said as younarrated that that surprised
(09:15):
you, or was it pretty much theway you remember?
Or yeah, just kind of curious,because sometimes when you're in
the middle of going throughsomething you have one thought
in mind, but then when you lookback at it you go, oh, I guess I
was.
I'm just going to say I was inbetter shape than I thought I
was, or I was struggling morethan I thought I was.
Gabe Peterson (09:32):
It was probably the opposite.
I probably generally thought Iwas in better shape than I was.
Like, did you see on the video?
You know, I think at one pointhe would talk about it feeling
strong, but I looked like.
I just like, like I justcrawled out of a grave and I'm
like I feel really good.
Well, I don't look good forthat video.
Joe Miller (09:53):
Well, what I noticed was you were like coaching
yourself because you would sayall right, wow, okay, well, that
was interesting, okay, so nowthe next one.
Yeah, we can do this.
I mean, you were kind ofkeeping yourself encouraged and
I'm just that's just sort of I'mgoing to park that.
Thought we can swing back tothat, but that might be the mode
(10:15):
you operate in in a lot ofdifferent spheres of your life.
Gabe Peterson (10:19):
Yeah, then there's definitely a lot of
transferable lessons to life,the work world, I think.
And in the movie I tried to,you know a lot of people film
like the Epic Mountains, whichis there, you see it, I tried to
kind of narrate my internalmonologue, so you're hearing
generally what I'm thinking.
(10:40):
You know the more like PG-13,what I'm thinking.
Joe Miller (10:45):
Did you cut some things out in post, did you?
Gabe Peterson (10:49):
There were things that were like oh, that's yeah,
that's no.
I could put that in there,which is great.
That's the real few months ofthe 18 year old sailor.
Joe Miller (11:01):
So this was pretty much the most extreme thing
you've done at this to thispoint.
Gabe Peterson (11:05):
Yeah, I would definitely say this was the most
extreme thing I've done.
And I would say you know that'ssaying a lot, because I've done
some pretty extreme things.
Yeah, a lot of times I lookback and I'm surprised Like, oh,
I did that, because if wentback 10 plus years I would have
(11:25):
a hard time believing me.
From 10 years ago that's doing,has done this stuff.
What started that?
Because it wasn't somethingthat started very early in life.
Joe Miller (11:34):
I do want to point out pretty early on that, in
addition to just doing thispassion of yours, you also have
a personal mission involved inthis too.
You're raising funds for acharity, and why don't you tell
us about that?
Gabe Peterson (11:47):
Yeah, I have to tell.
So.
2019, my oldest daughter, sky,was diagnosed with type one
diabetes, which you know she'svery young and it's just nothing
a kid should have to go through, because usually the way
they're diagnosed is she endedup in the pediatric ICU and it's
a medical mystery.
(12:07):
You know why?
She's basically passed out andthrowing up.
It did take the doctor's log todiagnose that she had type one
diabetes.
The upside is, as you get intoit, the technology has really
improved the quality of life.
But when you're in the hospital, they want you to know all the
low tech stuff, because what ifthe technology doesn't work?
So they're giving you like thevial and a syringe this is going
(12:29):
to be the rest of our life likemeasuring doses, and then as we
leave the hospital they go oh,there's a pen where you just
dial the dose and give it to her, and then at six months, once
you guys are approved, you'reconfident that you can get an
insulin pump where you wouldpunch in the numbers and it'll
automatically do the dosage.
But I read the first few weekswere tough, where before every
(12:51):
meal she'd have to get a shot,and so it's very complex.
We have to calculate, like, thenumber of carbs which actually
turned out the endurance sportsthing.
You know, I knew how to likecount carbs because that's
really important you have tofuel.
So I guess one of mysuperpowers I can look at a
plate of food and go that'sabout 40 carbs and I'll usually
be within like 10% accurate.
(13:11):
Wow, my wife was like Google itand how much is this?
And I'm like, oh, that's about40 carbs.
And she's like wow, it was 43.
You're really close.
The first few months they comeup and show me a plate of food
like how many carbs is this?
Yeah, and then you have to dothe injection, which my daughter
really, you know, is usually alot of crying.
So her strategy was she wouldjust not eat.
Joe Miller (13:36):
And she didn't do the injection.
Good idea.
Gabe Peterson (13:38):
Yeah, and then she goes forward.
Now it's she's got an insulinpod.
It uses technology where it'staking her, basically blood
sugar reading and adapting.
I mean, technology is amazing.
That's why you know part of whyI'm in this career.
But at the same time, in 2019,I was doing the Moab 240.
(14:00):
This is a race where I beatGoggins.
Yes, as you would think I tookhis soul.
Joe Miller (14:05):
Let's see if we can hook him into this video to
comment against this Go viral.
I know you got into it with DanCrenshaw there for a while too,
so that was kind of interesting.
Gabe Peterson (14:15):
Yeah, I was definitely.
I'd read his book and I wasaware.
When he was showed up at theregistration I was like that's
Goggins, that's cool.
I was in the Navy.
People in the Navy are calledsquids.
I was catching up to him and somy plan was, when I caught up
to him, I was going to say hey,it's two squids, let's have a
push-up contest, see who wins.
Joe Miller (14:33):
I didn't expect that to win, but I thought that'd be
funny.
Gabe Peterson (14:36):
But he ended up dropping out due to some medical
issues.
But anyway, I thought maybepeople would donate to a
fundraiser, I don't know.
So I set a pretty modest goal.
I think it's 240 miles.
So I said, yeah, $2,400.
If I can hit that, that'd bereally amazing.
And again, the power oftechnology.
(14:58):
I just put this out on socialmedia.
Hey, I'm going to go do thisrun for my daughter.
It'd be great if you donated.
And I think in a day we blewthrough $2,400.
I can't remember how much weended up raising for Moab, but
it was like $4,000 or $5,000.
Since then, every year I pickone race that I dedicate as a
(15:18):
fundraiser for the JuvenileDiabetes Research Foundation.
So their mission is a worldwithout type 1 diabetes, with me
doing this crazy, stupid epicstuff, and help in some way.
I'm happy to do that and Ifound that the more insane the
event, the more people arewilling to contribute.
(15:41):
And it helped me out therebecause I know I can't quit.
All those people contributed.
I can't quit for them, I can'tquit for my daughter.
So those are usually raceswhere I really need that extra
boost of mental resolve that I'mnot going to quit, because a
lot of these races are 40% or50% of the people don't finish.
Like Tour de Chauds, about 50%of the people who started did
(16:05):
not finish, and these are thebest ultra runners from the
entire world.
No one shows up lightly to doTour de Chauds.
Everyone there, like when Italked to them, they had a very,
very serious resume.
So just failure is a very realpossibility, which makes things
(16:26):
exciting.
Joe Miller (16:28):
You see, in a lot of these events you know it's
going to thin out, but it wasreally interesting watching your
video because in the verybeginning there was so crowded
going through those narrowstreets that you really couldn't
run or just maybe walk yousometimes had to stop.
And then, probably about halfwayin, you noticed that reading
(16:49):
less than that you wereseparating on the skinny trails
and then, I think probably twothirds in or three quarters in,
it was like, hey, I actuallycould find a place to sleep
tonight.
I didn't have to sleep on thefloor or the ground.
Gabe Peterson (17:04):
It was really unusual to say.
Ultra running is a sport thathas a lot of popularity in
Europe and you see in the movielike people were lined in the
streets, ringing bells, yeah,shouting the others, which one
of the things at times it showsis die, which means go, which
like on day three or four wheresomeone's shouting, hey, you got
(17:27):
to go, wait a minute.
And then something realizedlike oh, he's an American that
debate and they would know itwould be like don't say that to
him.
Joe Miller (17:34):
Oh gosh, that's hilarious Wow.
Gabe Peterson (17:37):
But yeah, so you don't have ultras like that.
Where it starts with you knowthat was there was two waves in
each wave was about 500 runnerslike the biggest ultras in the
US are 500 runners and that's acap of tortoise nods and you
don't get that kind of crowdmojo at an ultra.
It's more like if you're doingBoston marathon or something
(17:58):
like that.
Yeah, yeah, so that was reallycool.
Joe Miller (18:02):
So one of the things that I want to bring out is
this incremental improvementconcept.
But before we tie that intothis extreme events that you've
been doing, let's pivot back.
You were talking about thetechnical aspects of helping
your daughter manage yourdiabetes and doing the manual
injections, and I make insulinpump and the feedback with the
(18:25):
monitoring.
You have a scientificbackground, which I found out
also.
I come, I have a degree inchemistry and a minor in physics
.
You do as well.
So let's pivot to your initialcareer.
This is supposed to be abouttransitions this podcast and
talk a little bit about yourtransitions and how they came up
.
You graduated from Berkeleywith that degree, is that right?
Gabe Peterson (18:47):
Yeah, no, that's right.
So got out of the Navy, whichis in some ways a hard decision.
So I actually enjoyed the Navyin a lot of ways as an adventure
and I could have seen myselfbeing a career Navy guy.
Sometimes I wonder what wouldhave happened, but life's turned
out pretty good for me.
So I used the GI Bill.
I started up in a small collegein Northern California where I
(19:09):
grew up and then I transferredinto Berkeley and so a couple of
transitions there just go fromthe military back to school and
I had this very exciting,dangerous job and then all of a
sudden life's kind of boringagain.
You're studying.
I was responsible.
I ended up responsible for ateam on the flight deck and as
(19:29):
responsible for myself, it'skind of like for me it was
almost for a while better word,relaxing and enjoyable, like
going to college.
I'm just responsible for myself.
Everyone else there is superstressed, especially when I got
to Berkeley.
It's a very competitiveenvironment.
You know you do the orientationand they're like how many of
(19:50):
you are the slewditorian orvaledictorian in your high
school and like half the peopleraise their hands and like why
isn't high school?
I didn't even know I was gonnago college.
Wow, if you talk to a lot of thestudents there and they're like
they'd been groomed from thetime they were 12, that they
were gonna go to Berkeley.
And I'm like huh, I decided Iwas gonna go to college on my
21st birthday when we justpulled out of Hong Kong and I
(20:11):
said, you know, if I don't takemy shot now, that might not come
again.
So I'm gonna get out of theNavy and use the GI Bill.
It's a just GI Bill and a lotof hustle.
I was able to put myselfthrough Berkeley.
Joe Miller (20:25):
So just real quick interrupting you.
I'm sorry, but when you saidsomething there, how did you
come to the point where you feltlike you had to make that
decision?
At that point in time, you weregetting close to the end of
your initial commitment.
Is that what it was?
Gabe Peterson (20:38):
Yeah, it was kind of either reenlist for another
four years and I had orders.
I wanted to be an air trafficcontroller, which can be a
lucrative civilian career too.
It's hard to get into thatschool and I had orders to go to
air traffic controller school.
So on the one hand I had a verysure thing like this sets me up
for a nice life.
(20:59):
But for me I felt like I coulddo more.
I could take my shot because Iworked with the pilots and I
knew them pretty well.
You see, I'm off the boat, havea beer and thought what's the
difference between me turningthe wrench on the airplane?
(21:19):
It's hard to imagine now, but Iused to have mechanics hands.
You know we have the grease andthe crevices of your hands.
What's the difference betweenme with the greasy hands and
this pilot?
And it's like, well, that guygot a philosophy degree from
Ohio State, so he gets to fallinto the airplane and I try to
get that.
I go.
I'm at least as smart as theseguys.
(21:40):
I need to take my shot.
So I figured, worst case, Icould always reenlist back in
the Navy.
But I would kick myself if Ididn't take my shot.
So it was kind of a big leap tojust like I'm gonna give up
this sure thing.
That would give me a prettygood life.
Then go back to college and whoknows what happens there.
Joe Miller (21:58):
Okay, so your life changed.
You're on the Berkeley campus,which is kind of an elite.
I'll just say I don't know ifit was the same timeframe, but I
did have a CIO IT leadershippost in Berkeley, so I visited
that campus a number of timesfor meetings and my nephew went
there as well, so I'm prettyfamiliar with it and that's a
(22:19):
big shift, you know, culturally.
Gabe Peterson (22:22):
Yeah, from the Navy to Berkeley.
Joe Miller (22:24):
Yes, yes.
So I imagine you just put yourhead down and just focused and
grounded out for the remainingtwo years or whatever.
Gabe Peterson (22:34):
however many years, yeah for the junior and
senior year.
Yeah, I mean, I always try tomake time also to enjoy the
experience as an older student.
By the time I was there, I wasin my mid-20s and, like I said,
I had an appreciation for itthat, hey, life's not really
like this where you're justresponsible for yourself, where
your job is to enrich yourselfand take tests.
(22:56):
A lot of the students were verystressed about it.
I'm like no one's gonna die.
Joe Miller (23:02):
I had a job where I could actually die if I made the
wrong decision.
Gabe Peterson (23:07):
So yeah, I definitely worked hard.
The usual pattern was all theproblem sets for physics and
chemistry were due on Fridays,so I would stay up all night
Thursday get those done and handthem in, like let's do it in
noon, so like 11.58, I'm there.
But then I was like, oh well,you know the weekend I have some
time to go enjoy.
The Bay Area.
(23:27):
So I wanna go, I wanna go.
Just huge value in Berkeley isall the people you meet there.
I consider myself kind of anextrovert, so I just meeting
people, learning their storiesand having a really unusual
background there.
They grew up kind of poor inthe small town in Northern
California that I've been in theNavy.
That was the usual story.
Joe Miller (23:47):
Unique, definitely unique.
Gabe Peterson (23:49):
They were not many older students.
It was usually like the age ofthe grad students.
Usually people thought I was agrad student.
Joe Miller (23:58):
Ah, so the next transition came when you had to
get a real job right.
Gabe Peterson (24:03):
Yeah, when I graduated I did some research.
I did an internship at theStanford Lateral Accelerator,
which again was another kind ofpinch yourself moment, when I
had my old 1960 Volkswagen bugthat I bought saving up from a
cruise in the Navy and I driveonto the Stanford campus and it
was like something I'd neverimagined for myself.
(24:25):
It was just like going on theBerkeley campus Like I can't
believe this is my life.
But the thing I realized wasresearch was not my passion.
I enjoyed I definitely enjoyedscience, but the actual research
turns out all the interestingchemistry seems to happen at
like three in the morning insome sort of concrete bunker by
(24:46):
yourself, and I like working.
Joe Miller (24:47):
By yourself, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (24:49):
I didn't get energized by doing it and it was
kind of the tail end of the dotcom era, you know late 90s.
So I thought I could maybe moveinto technology.
But I still want to stayinvolved in science because,
yeah, it's important for me.
So I did a plight of job at asoftware company, make
scientific software for thepharmaceutical industry, which
can put me on this whole path oflife sciences, informatics and
(25:13):
IT.
Joe Miller (25:15):
Were you a developer .
Gabe Peterson (25:16):
Kind of worked in professional services.
I guess the way I got the jobwas.
They were trying to make achemistry based product and
found they couldn't teach theprogrammers chemistry, and so
they wanted to see if they couldteach, you know, chemists
programming and sure not anysuper useful programming
languages like Fortran, but theyhad treatment transmission
though, as I basically walked inand they're like hey, our
(25:37):
product uses Oracle database.
And I'm like what's an Oracledatabase?
I've never heard of it.
It's fine.
Here's the book.
Read the book and then startprogramming next week.
Ok, so a great experience forlearning.
Yeah, they're like OK, we havean engagement where this
(25:58):
customer wants a chemistry datawarehouse and you're flying out
there on Monday OK, I guess I'dbetter read that book.
So you have the playbook andthen you have to present
yourself as the expert andyou're in a lurch and you're
making a lot of mistakes.
So that's one lesson I'vepicked up for my life is being
(26:18):
willing to fail.
Like I mentioned, a lot ofthese races is a very high
probability of actually failing,but I think that makes it more
exciting.
Joe Miller (26:27):
Not everyone is like that.
There's a lot of people in thisworld who have fabulous
contributions to whateverendeavor they're in, but I
wouldn't call them risk takers.
I would say that certainly theycan move into other areas I'll
say, grow into other areas butjumping into something that they
don't have structure and theydon't have a base competency in
(26:51):
it is something they aren'twilling to do.
And I think, thematically, hereI'm starting to see a thread
that this is one attribute youhave in your wiring and your
natural or gifting or wiringthat has played out in multiple
different areas of your careerand your life.
Is that, like you said earlieron, when you're making the
(27:14):
decision to go to Berkeley, itwas like, well, I figured I
would take my shot at it.
Or, as we'll probably learnlater on, how you got into your
endurance sports is you justwent for it.
And so the length of thatstretch for that kind of a
transition, people havedifferent tolerance levels for
(27:35):
that.
Gabe Peterson (27:36):
Yeah, I don't know if that's intrinsic or
that's maybe something thathaving that early experience in
the Navy where you learn how totake risks and maybe even learn
how to even enjoy taking risksyou used to take your risks, or
maybe you're born with it, I'mnot sure, but it's definitely
there and I think for the mostpart, it's led to a lot of
(27:58):
interesting what I callmisadventures, you know my.
Youtube channel called Gabe'sMisadventures.
Joe Miller (28:03):
Misadventures yeah.
Gabe Peterson (28:05):
They're not always adventure and sometimes
they're misadventures.
So often they're misadventures,but just be willing to accept.
This isn't going to go the way.
The movie's playing out on myhead.
Joe Miller (28:15):
Right.
So then you were at thatcompany and then you went
forward.
The next transition came.
When, or how?
How did you actually get intoIT management?
Gabe Peterson (28:26):
It was kind of a long and indirect road, Like
I've said, my life's kind ofseries of happy accidents.
So I was more on the softwaredevelopment, informatics side.
I worked in early discovery,pharmaceutical discovery at
Pfizer the one now would becalled data science and kind of
progress, so that I worked.
(28:47):
I ended up working in everyphase of pharmaceutical R&D over
a series of years.
It sounds really short, I needto say it Worked in discovery at
Pfizer, preclinical at Amgen,and then started the clinical
informatics team at City of Pope, which is one of the top cancer
research hospitals in the world, and so each of those is a big
(29:08):
transition.
People generally wouldspecialize in one of those areas
and make that their wholecareer.
For me it was kind of likewhat's the new challenge After
that?
I was kind of like well, I'veworked in every phase of R&D,
what's next?
And so I like to joke that Iwent to the dark side of IT.
I figured, yeah, I'd learn alot and everyone was kind of
(29:29):
jobless, you could do itanywhere, whereas our industry
is largely based in a handful oflocations.
You're committed to living inone of those.
Luckily for me.
Now one of those locations isSan Diego, which is San Diego,
does not suck.
Is that a T-shirt?
Sure, yeah, I'd make that themarketing slogan.
Oh you've probably heard that alot on the on my movie.
(29:50):
Some of my friends joke that itshould be a drinking game.
Every time I say something likethis view does not suck and you
have to drink.
So I ended up heading upinformation systems at a medical
device company that wasactually based in Utah and it
was a spin off from a muchlarger company.
So it was kind of a new areadoing something that most
(30:15):
companies would take 18 monthsto do a spin off like that and I
think we had about half thattime so had to build up the
entire IS team, implement allthe systems.
The new company would needeverything from an ERP with SAP
to HR system, workday customerrelationship management, sales
(30:36):
horse.
These are things I'd never donebefore.
I do kind of what they did, butit was kind of like.
Joe Miller (30:41):
I'm sure there's not a theme here.
I'm still seeing there beingsort of a theme.
Gabe Peterson (30:44):
Yeah.
Okay, it's something I haven'tdone.
I made a lot of mistakes alongthe way, but I'm generally
trying to learn.
I'm trying to learn from themand not repeat them.
So that was a good learningexperience, just working a lot
of different areas of thebusiness.
The company was heavily basedin GMP or good manufacturing
practices and I'd never donethat.
So I learned all about theplant and just doing things like
(31:07):
Gembo walks and was able tobreak kind of the flavor that I
learned of Agile by the capitalA yeah.
Introduce Agile to theorganization, and so, by the
time I left, a lot of themanufacturing teams were having
daily standups when they had ascrum board.
Joe Miller (31:21):
People are not in the industry.
That's a big shift, becausetypically in these highly
regulated fields, things moveslowly when it comes to
development.
You're in what they call theold waterfall method.
Gabe Peterson (31:37):
I was kind of early adopter way back in the
early 2000s as a softwaredeveloper and there were some of
the early flavors of Agile likeextreme programming that
eventually scrum kind of tookover and for me that's something
I brought to every company.
So I said, well, this works inthe software world.
We're making hardware, medicaldevice products.
(31:58):
There's no reason it shouldn'twork.
You've got a lot of resistancethat well.
I understand why they work foryou software guys, but that's
not going to work for hardware.
But it's all about people.
It's not really about what theproduct you're delivering.
It's about how humans worktogether in teams to be highly
productive.
And so I said, okay, well,let's try the experiment.
(32:18):
You have a product developmentteam, I have a scrum master.
He'll take you through onesprint, one two week sprint, and
we'll see what happens.
And I got one of the VP's ofR&D to agree to that.
I think probably expected it tofail.
And two weeks later he saidthat team got more done in two
weeks than they would usuallyget done in two months and they
(32:41):
were sold.
Joe Miller (32:41):
That's why I sell people.
Gabe Peterson (32:45):
It's how I ended up doing a lot more beyond the
classic IT role, whereas reallyhelping a lot with the business
transformation, and end upleading business projects that
really had almost nothing to dowith technology, because I was
thinking you guys want a toolproblem or a tool solution, but
(33:05):
you have a process problem.
Let's fix that and then we'llgive you the technology you need
.
There's a lot of just usingAgilent and digging into it.
What's the problem?
How do we solve it?
In bite-sized chunks.
So one of the analogies I usebetween mountain running and the
work world is we're going tothe mountaintop, so the classic
(33:28):
waterfall approach would be Ican tell you we will be at the
mountaintop at 842 AM on thisdate and it will look exactly
like the.
Joe Miller (33:40):
It never happens?
Gabe Peterson (33:41):
It never happens.
I have a Gantt chart that showsyou on this exact moment, we
will land on the mountaintop.
Joe Miller (33:47):
And it doesn't matter how many tiny tick marks
you have on your Gantt chart, itdoesn't make it any more
accurate.
Gabe Peterson (33:54):
None of the Gantt charts are ever reality.
So it's like, hey, we knowwe're going to get to the
mountaintop, but the first stepis we got to get to the base of
the mountain and then we findthe trail.
And then we know there's atrail there.
We don't know much about thetrail, but then the next
milestone is we're going to getto the stream that's up the
mountain and while we learn,this trail is really different
than we expected.
It's a lot steeper, so we needto adapt our approach.
(34:16):
That same approach, I think, isreally what kind of the agile
philosophy of small, bite-sizedchunks, big goals.
But if I focused on the finishof Tour de Gence, I don't think
I would make it.
So I'd just be mentallyoverwhelming to know I've got
five more days of being outthere in the mountains running.
It was always like what's thenext thing?
Joe Miller (34:38):
When I coach leaders , I often pick up on a problem.
When people get stuck justbecause of that one comment you
made, it becomes overwhelmingbecause they're so focused on
the long range of the outcomethat they want.
It's good to have a vision,it's good to have a directional,
a vector I'm talking physicsnow towards where you want to go
(35:01):
.
But the problem is your visionis just not that great.
When you start things out andif you overanalyze and think
about the destination, itbecomes extremely discouraging
along the way and you find outthat the journey, the way you
plotted it out, is not at alllike the journey that you have
(35:21):
to take and it's a lot likeclimbing a mountain or going up
a mountain where, if you're wayback on the valley floor, you
can see the ultimate destinationthat's your long range outcome
planned the peak.
But when you get up close, yougo up to base camp and you go up
to the first shoulder, youcan't even see the peak.
There's like three or fourother lower peaks in the way,
(35:44):
other shoulders that you have togo across, and your vantage
point from the floor of thevalley doesn't appreciate the
journey along the way.
It's a mindset thing that Ithink is illustrated in your
journey, both on the corporateside and also in the athletic
achievements you've made.
This comes up a lot and it'svery helpful for people to
(36:07):
reframe things, to say, yeah, Istill have that long range goal
for today.
And this came out of your videobecause you kept saying, today,
this is my goal.
Or even like if I could justmake it down this hill in the
dark without falling off thecliff and dropping my poles,
then I'll be good.
And we'll go and then we'll see.
Gabe Peterson (36:29):
Yeah, focus on the next milestone.
That ultra mindset is verytransferable because in the
ultra there's definitely timeswhere you want to focus on what
is that goal?
Like your motivation is low,right, like, why am I doing this
?
I think about, like, mydaughter, the mola, like why am
I doing this to myself?
And I ask myself that a lot intortoise odds, I think why am I
(36:50):
doing this to myself?
And then you focus on the why,the big picture, but mostly it
was like I just need to focus onI'm getting to the next town
where there is an age stationand I'll get to have a bowl of
pasta or something.
I'm not thinking any fartherthan that because if I think
like, oh God, 200 more miles togo, that is just overwhelming.
(37:12):
I would just you can't eat thatelephant all one bite.
Joe Miller (37:16):
Right, and I think of people when they think about
their careers.
Sometimes they can be the sameway.
They're like oh, I have thislong, I have this goal that I
want to get to a certain level,but for the past six months I
haven't moved an inch.
Well, that's six months, allright, let's keep going.
When did you start your?
(37:39):
I'm just wondering how longthese two aspects of your life
are running concurrently.
When did you start running andwhat was your first race?
How long was it?
Gabe Peterson (37:49):
Really, this all started when I was turning 40,
about 10 years ago.
I turned 50 this month.
Joe Miller (37:57):
But you've only been doing this for 10 years.
Gabe Peterson (37:59):
Yeah, I mean, I would say I was very active
after the Navy, always ran, butrecreationally.
I had done a couple ofmarathons, but not at all
competitively.
You know always just the goalI'm going to finish, you know,
and it'd be like a four and ahalf hour marathon which,
congratulate, everybody doesthat.
That's not a competitive me.
(38:19):
Sorry I've kept you going.
Yeah, I'd always been prettyactive, backpacked and things
like that.
I think it was kind of why Iwas turning 40.
I really had this epiphany likehey, I need to take my shot.
Joe Miller (38:30):
Oh, there's that phrase again, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (38:33):
Yeah and yeah, it's only going to get harder.
I'm 40.
It's only going to get harder,and it was kind of the series of
small goals.
When I turned 40, I said, hey,I'll do a half hour marathon.
For people don't know it's a1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride
and then a half marathon, whichto me at that time sounded just
(38:54):
insane.
I had run pretty steadily, butrecreationally, not, you know,
not particularly fast.
I thought I could swim becauseI was in the Navy, but it turns
out I could just not die in thewater for a very long time.
I could freestyle swim veryfast.
I basically had to be an adultonset swimmer and learn how to
(39:17):
actually properly freestyle swim.
I would say I'm still not greatthere.
And then I hadn't ridden a bikein 20 years, so I went to the
local bike shop, bought a bikeand started learning everything
that you need to do about knowabout cycling, and so so I did
it.
There's this race called SuperFrog, which actually here at San
(39:38):
Diego as I live in the Pasadenaarea at the time and I think I
liked it because it wasconnected to the Navy it was
actually a race that was startedby the Navy, seals Frogmen,
held on the BUDS course wherethey go through, based on the
SEAL boot camp, and they havepictures of fallen SEALs.
So it was very like all right,this connects to my past, but I
was my mental, I was like thisis one and done, I'll do this,
(40:01):
I'll hang the bike up on thegarage wall and I'll have
bragging rights for the rest ofmy life.
So I got to the finish line Iwas like, wow, that was, that
was really fun, I should do anIron man and, sure enough, next
year did Iron man Arizona.
It just kind of keptprogressing from there.
(40:22):
And then the Ultra started whenthe medical device company was
based in Salt Lake City, utah.
So around 2014, moved up toUtah Again.
I had no connection to Utah, nofamily no religious connection.
I'd been there a few times and Ithought, you know, as I
discovered, jen, it was beforesocial media.
Now, now people know Utah isamazing.
We got in before, beforeeveryone do that.
(40:44):
I remember posting pictures ofUtah and there, yeah, I'm up in
the mountains.
They're like where is that?
Are you in Colorado?
I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm inUtah.
And they're like, oh, utahdoesn't have mountains, it's
just a flat desert.
No, no, I had about the bathingof mountains in the world.
So that was when I got intoUltras, live right at the base
of a mountain, and I actuallyread Born to Run, which, yeah, I
(41:07):
love that book.
The whole thesis is this ishumans, this is our superpower.
We're literally born to run.
Humans can routinely outrunhorses and races, and so the
idea is that this is we're muchmore heat adapted than any other
species on the planet.
People always think of theMinolus shoe thing that came out
of Born to Run, which is alsoone of the teams that I don't
buy into that part.
Joe Miller (41:29):
Well, I mean, you can talk about feeling the next
goal, but I wonder if it's notthe next goal, but it's the fact
that you're pushing yourself.
You know that you're feelinglike I'm going to take the shot
or I'm going to go for it.
There's this disquieting youfor just sort of sitting and
(41:51):
being comfortable where you are.
Now I don't mean that anegative way, it's mostly
positive.
Gabe Peterson (41:56):
They're talking to you like why can't I be like
most people and just becomfortable?
Joe Miller (42:02):
Right, right.
So let's try to glean somelessons here.
Wow, I mean, there's so much.
What are some things that arepositive?
Lessons for growth and formoving forward in one's life
that you can glean from both ofthese.
Then use a few other optionssituations.
Gabe Peterson (42:20):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of overlap.
I'd say that when we talkedabout setting goals, because a
lot of these are long term goals.
When people come to me andthey're like, hey, I want to do
a 200 mile race, and okay, whereare you at?
Well, I ran a half marathon.
Okay, you're looking at like athree year goal, but I want to
do it, like in six months.
(42:40):
All right, you might be able todrag yourself through a 200
mile race in six months, butit's, it's not going to be fun.
Joe Miller (42:48):
You'll be in the hospital, yeah, afterwards.
Gabe Peterson (42:51):
Yeah, your chances of success are going to
be low.
Your chance of injury can behigh, like this is something you
need to build to over years.
So work is you know.
As the same way with yoursetting goals.
Some of them are very nebulous,like we want to go to this
mountain top and maybe it'sshrouded in clouds.
We can't even see it.
We know it's there, but wedon't know what it looks like.
Definitely I'd also say thatkind of agile mindset of doing
(43:16):
things in small bite size chunks, and one of the things I like
about agile is it's an empiricalcontrol framework or it's using
the science of approach.
I have an idea, I try it and Ifind out really fast whether it
succeeded or failed.
So a lot of times in training,Isn't it, by its very nature,
(43:39):
inboxed?
Yeah, so you're doing it in ashort span of time.
I'm an agile.
It's usually a one to four weekspreads, so it's kind of that
same idea with training.
Is you do this, what's calledperiod of that periodizer
training where it could be agoal in this block?
My goal is to get faster andI'll objectively be able to
measure whether I'm faster,because I'll go out and run like
(44:00):
a 5k time trial and I eitherran a faster 5k or I didn't,
whether that training approacheither worked or didn't.
And so I did a lot of selfexperimentation on what kind of
worked and a lot of what didn't.
Joe Miller (44:15):
So that framework then you apply when working with
your team.
I'm sure that there is maybefrom the business you get a sort
of, I'll say, somewhat nebulousgoal sometimes or what would
appear to be unrealistic attimes, but do you apply the same
sort of thinking and mentalmodel to mapping out the course
(44:39):
on your professional side?
Yeah, definitely.
Gabe Peterson (44:42):
There's a lot of parallels, I mean, some are.
I'd say that where it's reallydifferent a lot of times is
running is more individual.
Sure, you're part of acommunity, but it's really about
.
It's really about yeah, waityourself.
Joe Miller (44:53):
You have control of everything, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (44:56):
Which is sometimes the worst, because you
we're not honest with ourselvesa lot.
So the classic is you'll getsomeone who has this running
goal and you're like, okay, it'sreally easy to see if you're
gonna have a chance of I want todo, say, a sub three hour
marathon.
Okay, go run a half marathonand if you can do it in this
time you know like an hour and20 minutes or something like
(45:19):
that you can probably run a subthree and you go what's your
fastest half marathon?
Well, I've done a two hour halfmarathon, Okay it's a long way.
Yeah, you got work to do.
So sometimes it's harder to doit by yourself because and I
think this is why coaching is animportant in athletics is you
have someone who's giving youthat feedback, like, okay, I
hear your goal, you want to getto three hour marathon.
(45:41):
You're at more like a four hourmarathon.
Now here's what we have to doto get you there.
That's probably like a two orthree year goal of really
focusing on running a marathonthat fast Using the marathon
analogy, because you know peoplekind of understand marathons
like people run them or is thatteamwork?
Is it work is a team and it'smore?
I think they're a lot morevariables and it's a team that
(46:03):
you don't necessarily.
It's a hybrid team.
Some people report are part ofmy team.
They're my direct reports, so Ihave some ability to directly
influence what they do.
But most of the products weroll out are not for the
technology team.
They're for the business unitlike scientists doing research
in the lab.
So when they come to you withthose unrealistic goals, I want
(46:25):
to read a 200 mile race and butmy most recent thing is you know
I've read a half marathon andyou go okay.
Well, here's what you have, thework we have to put in.
Oh, I don't want to.
I'm too busy to put in thatkind of work, but I still want
that goal.
So I put in some early tests tosee are they really committed?
I want to do this project.
I'm like okay, here's what it'sgoing to take from your team.
We need a product donor,someone from your team who can
(46:47):
really drive the vision for thisproduct.
Oh, I don't have anyone thatcan do that, who is not busy.
Okay, that's fine.
I don't understand it, but wecan't do that product.
You're not committed to thisproject.
You won't give me a product.
Yeah, here's what I'll need.
I will need a product owner.
We'll need people to be a partof this team developing this
product, but they're too busy.
(47:09):
I totally understand it, but wewon't be successful.
And, yeah, I want to invest inprojects where we're going to be
successful for a company.
Joe Miller (47:18):
It seems so obvious, but I would say, based on my
experience, that's probably oneof the easiest places that
technology leaders can trip up,because they want to say yes to
something, they want to behelpful and in the end of the
day they're not going to behelpful because there are
realities to what it takes toget certain things accomplished,
(47:40):
and so that's really greatadvice.
The other thing I wanted topivot to unless you want to
spend a little more time on thatis just the importance of
mindset and how that it may be.
It's a little bit more of ageneral lessons learned and
advice for those who are on thejourney, but the importance of
(48:01):
mindset in both venues, bothareas.
Gabe Peterson (48:06):
Yeah, I think there's some overlap, definitely
.
Yeah, I think the ultra mindsetI was talking about knowing
when to focus on your big goallike hey, you're losing
motivation, why are you doingthis?
But if you're like I just needto get up the side of this
mountain or I need to learn thisnew programming language,
focusing on the why can beoverwhelming to focus on the
(48:29):
task.
So in ultra, there's a lot ofunderstand when to focus on the
why versus when to focus on thetask.
So it's 2am and you have itslept in three days.
That's a really bad time tofocus on the why You're going to
go to a dark place.
Just focus on the task.
My job is to get to the nextmountain pass and then from
(48:52):
there.
Joe Miller (48:52):
So maybe there's times to opine and then there's
times to grind, yeah there's alot of grinding.
Gabe Peterson (48:58):
That's in the video.
I've actually referred to thata bunch of times because that
was yes, I remember.
Ian up branded the John Muirtrail during COVID because all
the races were canceled, so it'sa 211 mile trail that's
Northern California right.
Yeah, in the Sierra Mountains.
So we did it northbound,starting from Mount Whitney,
(49:20):
tosimete Valley, and we ended upactually sitting in the fastest
known time on the route that wetook, although we didn't know
it at the time.
So I joked that I have thefastest known old dude time.
Here come his ultra runner,very kind of cocky, like, oh,
this will be easy.
It ended up being probably oneof the hardest things I've done,
maybe just a little below withtortoise jobs, but anyway, you
(49:43):
get in through hiking as atradition, you get a trail name.
You don't go by your regularname or civilian world, and so
my trail name was Grinderbecause my friend, he was really
fast.
He would shoot up to the passand then he'd take breaks,
whereas I would just keep going.
I'd get to the pass and Ididn't even break, I'd just keep
going, and so I'm going to justgrinding it out.
Joe Miller (50:05):
Or he's like well.
Gabe Peterson (50:06):
I can grab it sprinting to the next.
Joe Miller (50:08):
It feels like a time to talk about the tortoise and
the hare, maybe, yeah.
Gabe Peterson (50:14):
And then definitely there's a lot of just
grinding out, which I talkedabout a lot in that video, Like
it was just time to grind it out.
So I think the times in lifewhere you just have to do things
that are fun and they're goingto help you get to this goal and
I think but I think overallenjoying the adventure and
making sure it's fun in the workcontext I generally want my
(50:37):
teams to work should be fun.
Most days when we show up weshould be having fun.
I know there's some companiesthat take that as a really bad
sign that you're not serious andI don't want to work for those
companies anymore.
Joe Miller (50:49):
If you don't look like you've been going through
the torture chamber with miseryon your face, then you must not
be committed.
Is that the idea?
Gabe Peterson (50:56):
Yeah, I think I both have worked.
Both worked for that kind ofcompany.
Joe Miller (51:00):
Yeah.
Gabe Peterson (51:01):
Or where you run into someone and they tell you
like how busy they are and howhard everything is Me Okay,
that's just like the company'sculture is.
They're once telling each otherhow difficult things are,
versus more like a hey, we'rehere to discover new drugs.
That's a really cool thing thatwe get to do.
We get to discover newmedicines that help patients,
(51:21):
sometimes with untreateddiseases.
That's amazing.
So it's really cool to get tobe part of that in some small
way.
Joe Miller (51:32):
Well, that's part of mindset too, and is that is
understanding the overallcontext, and this gets back to
the vision part taking time toappreciate where you are and
that you are in a spot that youfeel good about.
The other thing I want to chatabout real briefly is to ask you
the question have you ever beenin a situation where you were
tasked to do something and justwasn't really your natural
(51:56):
strength to do?
Gabe Peterson (51:57):
Yeah, I think that's one of those, you know,
where I was asked to dosomething and I'm like okay,
I've never done anything likethat before.
When I was at the medicaldevice company, there were a lot
of folks who'd been there along time and so they're very
invested in the way things were.
I was new, so the CEO asked melike hey, we have this problem
shipping our products on time.
(52:18):
Can you look into it?
I'm like I don't know anythingabout me.
He's like it's okay, you seemto have a good like critical
thinking skill set.
Just go see what you identify.
I said, okay, I'll play Agile,we'll do a sprints, get a team
cross-factual team together,identify what the problems are
and then start attacking theproblems and then flash forward
(52:42):
a few months.
We've implemented a whole salesand operations planning process
, or SNOP.
It started off I couldn't evenspell SNOP, but just had to
learn along the way and reallytake advantage of that team that
collectively were much smarterthan any of us are individually.
Joe Miller (53:02):
Yeah, yeah, so that's great.
Are there any closing ideas youhave in terms of lessons
learned that would be helpfulfor folks tuning in.
This is the question I ask inall my podcasts is if you were
to turn the clock back and beable to speak to yourself when
you were 25 years old orwhatever, what advice, what sage
advice, would you give yourself?
Gabe Peterson (53:25):
Well, that's a tough question.
I'm very grateful for the lifeI've had growing up.
I wouldn't have thought I'd betalking about any of this stuff.
I think I enjoyed the journey.
I'm 25-year-olds.
A lot of them just aren'tappreciated.
I was in a unique experiencewhere I was at Berkeley and I
can appreciate how amazing thiswas.
(53:45):
I had so many peers who thiswas like a grind for them.
It was so horrible.
We're here at one of the bestuniversities in the world and
this is going to open up so manydoors for your future.
Just enjoy that journey.
Like I said, have fun.
And also one of the things I'velearned is hubris is rarely
rewarded in sports and also inlife, I think, wherever I've
(54:08):
ever had major setbacksdefinitely in sports, whereas
where I got cocky like, oh yeah,I've done this race, so I don't
really need to prepare for thisother race, I can just show up
and go beast mode the few DNFsI've had, that is almost always
how that story played out and itwas always like all right, I
(54:31):
need to stay humble, it doesn'tmatter, this race doesn't care
that I did these other races.
I need to respect that.
This is a really hard race.
So same thing in life, I thinktrying to stay humble and
keeping that learning mindset.
I mean, you know this, we bothhave the same career in
technology.
Most of our career is actuallynot about technology.
(54:53):
It's about getting people tochange.
And I think it's because at somepoint we lose that growth
mindset and we start sayingthings like this is the way
we've always done it.
That reason we should keepdoing it in the future.
Joe Miller (55:11):
Yeah, well, that's great advice when you danced
around.
A little model that we talkabout a lot in this field people
, process, technology and it'sinteresting Most of the time we
get recruited into jobs help anorganization based upon
technology, understanding andknowledge and experience, maybe
some process, but over timewe've both chatted about this
(55:33):
that kind of the one of thebiggest levers is how you
influence people.
That's leadership.
Gabe Peterson (55:39):
And how you get open this.
Joe Miller (55:41):
Examples of you bringing in Agile was just one
of several examples that cameout in this episode, but really
that is huge.
Yes, you have to have yourtechnology chops on.
You have to have understanding.
But understanding how to servethe organization, serve the
other leaders that you're peerswith or you report to, and how
(56:02):
to motivate and coach your teamis kind of what really makes or
breaks long-term success, Ithink.
So that's a great reminder.
But hey, it's been so much funtalking to you.
Any final closing thoughts.
Gabe Peterson (56:19):
No, I really enjoyed this conversation, joe.
It's interesting, I usuallytalk about one or the other, so
it's kind of a wall of blend ofprofessional and athletics.
Joe Miller (56:27):
Hopefully they'll come through okay with the
episode.
You're on LinkedIn.
People can find you there.
We'll put in the notes of thegame, once we're exposed, how
you can be reached, butdefinitely we will point to that
episode.
I don't know, it might be anhour or longer or something like
that.
Gabe Peterson (56:42):
About 15, 55 minutes.
Joe Miller (56:44):
It is really cool.
I mean, it's just amazing.
And again, it's an amazingaccomplishment.
So kudos to you for that.
But also just listening to yourinner dialogue, I think, is
really powerful, because there'sa lot there to unpack.
So anyway, thanks again, gabe,for being on Titans of
Transition.
Gabe Peterson (57:03):
Yeah, and a great discussing my adventures and
myth adventures.
Joe Miller (57:09):
Misadventures.
I love it All.
Right man, Take care.
Gabe Peterson (57:11):
All right, you too, bye.
Joe Miller (57:15):
Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of
Transition.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Please check the show notes foradditional information.
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