EP 148: Joe Hudson - The Leadership Coach Sam Altman and Top AI Teams Trust

Speaker A: Every single business problem you have is a self awareness problem. The whole organization is a mirror. If the CEO is conflict avoidant, conflict avoidance is going to be in that organization.

Speaker B: Do you believe imposter syndrome is a real phenomenon?

Speaker A: You can't logic yourself out of it because it's real. Jeff Bezos is an imposter, you're an imposter, I'm an imposter, and we're all wrong on some level. Working with the reality on the ground is a far more effective way than trying to convince yourself that you're not an imposter, which is what most people try to do.

Speaker B: Joe, thanks for doing this.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: You have a rather unconditional background. I read that you spent seven years devoting 12 hours a day to self inquiry. Uh, actually I think literally sitting in a room asking yourself questions. Can you maybe give people a little bit of a background of your journey into coaching?

Speaker A: Yeah, might be a little bit of an exaggeration there, but generally, yes. Uh, I was for seven years. I spent most of my time sitting in a room meditating. There was one question that came up a tremendous amount, which is, what am I? Um, you know, I, I notice a lot of people contemplate the meaning of life, but I find that that's the, the less, um, useful question, the more useful question is, what am I? Or even specifically what am I? Essentially meaning what is the you that has always been there that hasn't changed? That's at any moment of your life you can say, oh, that, that's me. Right? So your body changes and your thoughts change. They come and go, emotions come and go. Your definition of yourself, dad, venture capitalist, come and go. But the question really is like, what is the essence of what you are that doesn't come and go. And that was that question I was obsessed with. So I asked that question, or it asked itself easily ten times a day. I was just absolutely focused on that question. And the whole thing came because I had, you know, I did this 10 day meditation retreat because my wife said to me, or uh, fiance at the time said to me, you know, if we want to get married, you need to go do a 10 day silent retreat. And during that retreat I had, I thought it was cool and a cool challenge. I thought being silent would be this amazing challenge. But what was really the challenge was sitting with yourself. And um, and during that experience I had this eight seconds of, you know, bliss. And that I dedicated my life to finding out what the hell that was and how to live in that.

Speaker B: How did that intense period of self reflection inform how you coach executives today? Or how you've built the program that, that you run?

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, wow. It's a great question. So, you know, before I was, before I did that, I did international stock lending. And after that intense period, I did venture. And so I would say both of those two things inform what I, um, how, how I, I coach and think about it. But I would say I'm not really teaching people about awakening in my coaching, um, which is what I was after at that time. Uh, but what it did do and inform me is that I don't believe any of their stories. So when I'm coaching somebody, I'm not talking to their stories. I'm talking to the thing that's beyond the stories. The thing that, the thing that it's not the thing that's strategizing to get somewhere. I'm talking to. And, and it doesn't mean that we don't all want to be affected. We all don't want to win. I think that's like a human condition. Um, but when I'm speaking to them, I'm speaking to the thing that knows already, not the, not the part of them that is in a story or in a question.

Speaker B: I want, I want to unpack uh, that a little bit more. But I guess at a general level, how do you define what a coach does and what role it plays for executives or people that you work with?

Speaker A: I would say a great coach meets m. Uh, the person where they're at and, and helps them with the thing that they're working on in that moment. So, you know, I'll have some executives I work with and we'll talk nothing but strategy for the first three, four months. And then we'll start talking about their parents or their upbringing or the emotions they're avoiding. And I have others that I immediately we just go right into the core issues that are running their life. And typically what I'll do is I'll open up in a. An opening conversation. I'll just ask them what's the biggest issues they're dealing with. Personal life and business, children. Like what and their internal relationship. What are the biggest issues in all these areas? And typically we'll find they're the same issue if you look at it from the right angle. And then you start there. There's a difference between, oh, I'm you, I'm a teacher for you, and I'm. I know this thing and I'm going to transfer that information to you and the thing that is more of you are on your path and there's a wisdom in you that knows your next step, your evolutionary path. And my job is to support you in that. And for me, coaching is very much the second. It's not the first.

Speaker B: I assume as you, as you speak to that the considerations or what you're coaching someone towards, uh, intersects and blends the lines of personal and professional in a meaningful way and kind of gets to the root of the essence of someone. Um, I guess I'm curious, do you view the responsibility to coach them towards professional, um, ends in some way, or does it just the lines end up blending in such a meaningful way that it's hard to disentangle what that is?

Speaker A: Um, if the person I'm working with really wants material success or success in their business, then, yeah, I feel I wouldn't use the word responsibility, but I would say that's what I'm hired to do and that's the job. And, um, and hopefully I do it in such a way that they have that and then also feel fulfilled, you know, because you and I both know if we've been around this block enough to see a whole bunch of people who got everything they wanted only to find out that it's not what they needed. And so, you know, you can, I mean, plenty of billionaires are very unhappy. So hopefully you can, you can, you can, you know, help them get all of their wants met and not think it, uh, binary in a binary way. It's amazing how somebody can literally think I can build a billion dollar company in seven years, but I can't do that and, like, have a happy marriage, you know, or I can't do that and raise healthy kids. Like, like the amazingness of the human brain to say, I can do this unachievable thing, but I can't do this thing that people have been doing for decades. I think that's our eons. I think that's just an amazing thing about us.

Speaker B: Many people talk about, uh, emotional intelligence, uh, but you emphasize emotional clarity, I guess. What are the differences between those two as you see it?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. The thing that I notice is that, um, most people are in emotional management, right? So where they're trying to manage their emotional states. And what, like, I don't want to feel this, I do want to feel this. I want to feel more of this and less of that. And if you right now in your body, if I say, hey, stop feeling all your emotions and maybe, uh, the audience does this with us for a second. If you have to stop feeling all your emotions, you have to start constricting muscles, you have to start, like, locking down. And that lockdown is stress. It's just another word for stress. So emotional intelligence seems to be like, how do I work with emotions? How do I manage my emotions? How do I, like, emotionally work with you? And emotional clarity for me is, uh, far more of how do I love and appreciate every emotional state that I'm in and not try to manage it, but see how to have a great relationship with it? And that's the difference. And. But the practical difference is you do things like make a lot of better decisions and you stop being passive aggressive and you stop procrastinating. There's a whole bunch of things because, for instance, in, uh, neurologically speaking, if I took the emotional center of your brain away, you would cease to make decisions. Your IQ would stay the same, but it would take you a half an hour to decide what color pen to use, maybe couple hours to, um, to decide where to have lunch. And there's a great book about this called Descartes Error. I think it was, like, last published in 2012 by a neuroscientist. And. And these people, their IQ stays the same, but their entire life falls apart when this part of their brain is damaged. And so we make emotional decisions and we think we can make logical ones, but we actually can't. It's not neurologically possible. What we're doing is using logic to figure out how to feel the way we want to feel. That's. That's actually what's happening. So if you think about how many decisions did I make to feel like a winner or to feel secure or to feel free or to not feel unloved or to not feel abandoned, you can pretty much look at your life and say, wow, that's most of. That's most of the decisions I've made. And so, so emotional clarity, con good decision making comes through emotional clarity because you, you. You've fallen in love with or you have invited or welcomed all the emotional experiences. And so you're not making a decision based on avoidance of an emotion or to get to an emotion. You're. You're making a decision based on something deeper.

Speaker B: So does that mean then, that being disassociative or, um, stoic in some way is kind of a contrived method, theology or system in that, like, we have to be emotional in our decisions to,

Speaker A: uh, function, and so we are emotional like that. It's not like we have to be one way or another. It's like there's never been a moment alive where you haven't had an emotional moment. Like so you, we always have emotions if you do. I think have I ever met someone who's deeply into Stoicism, who has joy in the modern interpretation of a Stoic Stoicism? Like if I take a look at, you know, Aelius and his, the way he talks about stoicism and how it's interpreted, I would say there's probably a difference there. But most modern stoicist people who are, I don't want to call it by stoicism, but people who are repressing their emotions, you, they're not joyful, there's no joy, there's no like exuberance and happiness there. And, and if they do it in a particular way, then they're, they're depressed. Right? Then you just look at depression and it's literally I don't want, I'm scared to feel this thing because I felt it once and I'm going to stop feeling it. And that just tightens down the system.

Speaker B: How do you help uh, executives, um, achieve greater emotional clarity in their day to day leadership?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. There's, there's like literally dozens of ways I, I do that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's sort of the, the crux of all of this I guess in some ways.

Speaker A: But there is, I mean I had so just to say I, I, I love the emotions but it's, there's also, there's an intellectual component to it that, and there's a nervous system component to it. I think of them as three different parts of the brain. Um, you know, there's the, what I would call the head, which is a prefrontal cortex, which is human. And that's the rational thought, problem solving, executive skills. And you've got the heart, what I call the heart, which is the mammalian, which is the emotional part of the brain. And then there's the nervous system, reptilian part of the brain. And if you don't work on all three of those, you don't get real transformation. So we've all, we've all known the person who knows they should work out, but they don't work out. So prefrontal cortex, they've got it, but emotionally and nervous system wise they don't have it. And so real transformation happens when all three of those things. It's just that our society, the emotion is the most ignored, that's all. And so therefore you usually get the best bang for Your buck there. But it's not that it's a more important part of it. You know, all three of those parts of our, our brain need to, need, uh, to be addressed if we're going to have consistent reoccurring, transformation, something you can depend on. Um, yeah, I, I got away from your question. Do you want me to go back to. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. The. How do I help them? One of the things that we like, a basic tool that we have is called emotional inquiry, which is basically taking childlike wonder and bringing it to the emotional experience you have. So typically, if I said something that triggered you or pissed you off or put you into shame or I'm a board member who did that to you, then you're gonna, the first, you're gonna feel that emotion for a split second and then you're gonna push it away. Either defensiveness or shut down armor, um, up, get angry, get scared, go into shame, beat yourself up. You're gonna do something to stop feeling that emotional state. And so what we do is we'll slow that down and get really curious. Where is that in your body? How do you hold that? How does it move? How does it move over time? What color is it? Where exactly is it in your body? How thick is it? What's the density? And so we'll. There's just, just a really easy thing that people can do. You can download it on our website, we give it away for free. And it's. We just call it emotional inquiry. And it's just allows people to investigate the emotion that they're so scared of. And typically what they find out is what, like, like what made me scared of that? Like, what makes us not want to feel shame? Like, you know, like it's actually just another set of sensations. And it turns out that it's an amazing signal. You know, if I feel shame, it means something very specific. It's like an incredible piece of intelligence. Oh, if I'm angry, if I'm anxious, if I'm sad, All of them are very particular pieces of intelligence that we can rely on more consistently sometimes than a thought. Like, oh, I'm angry, that means I probably have a boundary that's been crossed about something I care about because I don't get angry about things I don't care about. So what's the boundary that I need to draw here? That's an immediate signal, but not if you're like, I shouldn't be angry, then it's just shame, then it's just you've done something wrong. And if you can't figure out how that affects a boardroom or, uh, like any meeting that you've ever been in, it's like that's, like, that's half of what's happening in the meetings.

Speaker B: You know the name of your platform is Art of Accomplishment.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Curious. How do you explain what that means and what makes accomplishment, uh, in art, in your view?

Speaker A: I find that the mind likes to create false paradoxes. And, uh, often. And you and I think have been around long enough to know that, remember in the 1980s, it was, you could either be a businessman or you could be, uh, uh, an environmentalist, but you couldn't be both. And then somewhere in the 90s, you could be both. And so oftentimes what humans like to do is they like to say, oh, I have to accomplish something. It's just business. I'm going to compartmentalize. I'm going to push this thing aside so that I can get it done. I'm going to push the rest of my life aside so that I can get this thing that I want to accomplish done. But we can make a billion dollars by cutting down trees, and we can make a billion dollars by planting them. We can, like the. The ultimate expression of, like, m. Uh, I would say one of the ultimate art forms is business. So, right. If I'm going to paint, I need to use pigment. If I'm going to play music, I need to use sound. If I'm going to make a business, I'm gonna. I need to have revenue. Some. Some way or another. I need to have in incoming cash. But that's the only. Really, that's the only real requirement. And it's this crazy piece of art because it exists without you. It's like, uh, that's a. That's a rare form of art that, like, uh, you're like giving life to something that exists without you. You can pass. And Edison's gone. GE still stands, and it's constantly moving and evolving, and you get to do whatever you want with it. And. And if all you're thinking about is how do I create this business? Then you're less likely to be successful than if you're thinking about the goal behind that goal. And that's what I've noticed with all forms of accomplishment. My girlfriend in college used to play tennis, and she had a tennis coach, and he put out a basket and said, serve and hit it. And she hit it like two out of five times. She was really good. And then he put a quarter in the middle of where that Basket was and said servant hit the quarter. And she didn't hit the quarter once, but she would have hit the basket five out of five times because she was focused on the thing beyond it. And what I noticed is that every successful entrepreneur that I ever have met, making money, building the business wasn't their primary objective. It was to win, or it was to change the world, or it was to put a dent into society or whatever universe or whatever. They all have their own ways for it, but they always had a mission beyond making money, prove themselves to their father. I don't really care what it is, but they have something there. And so similarly, I think if you're thinking about your business only as being successful in your business, you don't do as well than as if you actually say like what is this thing that I want to create in the world? Like what's. And people respond to that. You know, employees, they'll come for a paycheck, but they work differently when they feel a sense of purpose.

Speaker B: Is there a time horizon that you encourage people to think about as they work and try to make improvements? Uh, I think about that example you just gave of the quarter within the basket.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And to some extent having a focus beyond the actual uh, objective in some ways or a very specific means that you're aiming and on the path to doing something, you accomplish other things as the example of trying to hit a quarter and landing in the basket may imply. And so does that lead to a focus of more incremental things, uh, on a day to day basis that leads to compounding over the long term? Or is it better to think about some time horizon five years in the future, uh, and if you swim or skate to where that puck is going, um, you're keeping the right distance and mindset towards accomplishing meaningful things.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think different things have different time horizons. That's a great question, by the way. I, um, um, so transformation, the time horizon that's most useful is usually right now that you can find the pattern that's occurring in your business. You can find it happening in the moment and to address it in the moment is usually the most useful place to address it as far as like working with teams and building goals. Different businesses are slightly different because some are more predictable and some are less predictable. But usually you want pretty short. I'd like, uh, quarterly is evenly probably too long for most businesses unless they're really established and, or dying. Um, so typically you want like team alignment needs very short, much shorter than a quarter. Well, not much Shorter but maybe like monthly or something depending on the business. So if you're trying to achieve that way, that's a different time horizon. If you're thinking about how you um, want your life to be, there needs to be probably 20 or 30% of your time thinking about your deathbed or just short, short of it. And then the rest of your time thinking about the tactical right now moments or this month moments. So it just really depends on what you're working on.

Speaker B: We touched on the, the emotional side of how that tends to be where the most focus, uh, and opportunity for improvement or opportunity to calibrate in some ways.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Are there, are there things that serve as commonalities, um, that are low hanging fruit across almost every client. When you drop in for the first time you're working with someone and it's just almost universally true if you're competitive and ambitious, that XYZ thing needs to be recalibrated or thought through in some way. And I assume emotions are some element of that. But like at a specific level that tends to be very true for these types of people.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's a couple things typical. Typically self reliance is one of the big ones that can be seen through pretty quickly. Um, and if they do they can really unlock a team. Um, so most people who are super high achievers somewhere learned that they had to do it themselves if they're going to be successful. And the lucky ones got mentorship and like learned that they had some authority, fam of authority in their life that was kind and therefore they look for mentor relationships but they'll still in most of their world feel like they have to get it done and they feel alone in solving the problem and they, that's a really common situation and it's weird. So you can look at a person who's running, let's just say like a uh, 3,000 person company and it's like everybody in that company shows up and nobody says you know what, I want the CEO uh to be really unhappy with me today. Nobody does that. And yet they feel alone in problem solving. Like how, how the is that possible? But yet that is a really common world belief um, in that place also another really common one is shame. A lot of times that folks, and this is uh, across the board, this isn't just highly ambitious folks but this the lever of undoing shame for highly ambitious folks is an amazing lever. And so typically unless you have like the you know, personality disorders that you get occasionally in Silicon Valley, but I don't, I work with those Folks, um, that you, that there is some sort of like, I have to prove myself shame. And the, the feeling that they have is if I stop riding myself, beating myself up, pushing myself, then I'm just going to sit on a couch and drink beer and, and not do anything. And usually what they find is that, you know, it's like a simple experiment I'll do with people. I'll be like, okay, well then let's just be quiet and you just tell me what that critical voice in your head is saying every time it says something. And then uh, you know, and the critical voice in the head talks really often as it turns out. And it's like a repeating voice. It's like, you're not doing this well enough. You're not doing this. Why aren't you doing this? You got to get this done. And oh, uh, you screwed up there, you know, just kind of repeats. And according I think to the Mayo Clinic is it's like 60,000 thoughts a day. And most of them are these repeating negative thoughts. And so I'm like, great, okay now imagine you're doing your work and your boss is sitting next to you and they're talking to you like that. How productive are you going to be? And they start to understand in that moment like, oh yeah, this is not an effective way of managing. If I manage somebody else like that, they'd be ineffective. And yet I think. And so what they realize is, you know, 30, 40, 50% of their energy is going towards this negative self talk and self management. So that's another one where if you can really undo that, you really unleash a tremendous amount of energy for somebody. And then the last one that's pretty common is the emotional. What's the emotions that you're trying to avoid and how is that limiting your capacity to do business? I was just working with somebody and um, running um, one um of the big parts of uh, a AI uh company. And uh, we were noticing, I was like okay, so here is everything you're good at and yet somehow you can't problem solve this one area. You can problem solve better than all these other people in these 25 areas that we just saw. But you can't do this one area. What's the emotion you're avoiding? As soon as they saw it, as soon as they felt that emotion, boom, the problem just appeared. And that's the thing that I think people don't get when we can't solve a problem. Typically it's just an avoided emotion.

Speaker B: The self reliance point is a Particularly interesting one, um, Keith Raboy, uh, who we've uh, had, we've had on the podcast before came up. He's done a talk called Barrels and Ammunition which I think is a, ah, really interesting and profound one. My, my ripoff of it is to some extent um, football players and basketball players. And the thought is that at least my spin on it is organizationally human nature is to be football players which is you get told what your job is to do and you do it as well as you can. And if all 11 people execute their job then a play works out and if anyone fails then the play could fall apart. And a lot of people are very comfortable in owning um, discrete elements of uh, functions that lead to some higher purpose and that helps companies operate. The flip side of the basketball players are um, you give general primitives uh, and then people go out and execute. And I find that far more people are comfortable being football players and that they get told their job and it uh, leads to this greater um output in some way. And I guess my question is there's an element of um in self reliance. If you're a leader of an organization, oftentimes either rightly or wrongly, um, you might feel in ownership and accountability for the totality of considerations that are driving the organization forward. And any individual might not have the full picture uh, of considerations that go into it. So I guess as you think about delegating more or having less of that self reliance, you think it's about bringing more people from one side to the other and having them take more ownership and feel more of what you're feeling as a leader or is it more clearly uh, delegating and communicating the jobs to be done within the football player analogy and drawing up more of the plays that you see commonplace for leaders.

Speaker A: That's great. It's a little bit of both actually. Um, and it also is business dependent. But I'll give you some examples of what happens. Typically so oftentimes when a leader becomes self less self reliant. One of the things they notice is that people can project a lot on a person and they'll project a lot less on a team. So if you're my boss, I might project dad onto you or a bad teacher or whatever, I might rebel against you. But it's harder to do that with a team. And so as uh, the self reliance goes away in meetings, you'll notice that they start maybe handing the running of their staff meeting to different people in the organization. And then it's like oh no, I'm Going to hold everybody accountable the first Tuesday of the, you know, our first meeting of the year. But you're going to hold everybody accountable the next, you're going to hold everybody accountable the next. And then all of a sudden these folks learn how to run meetings from each other. They're not just running having one person run the meeting. And then the meeting culture uh, improves because they're all learning from one another and they're all holding each other accountable instead of one person holding everybody accountable. And then all of a sudden I can't really rebel against dad anymore or have a power authority issue with the CEO or the, you know, or I can't like project my mom issues on you. And so, and now I, I, I feel like I'm letting down the whole team if I fail not I'm letting down one person. And that's a very different feeling. And it's harder for a human to do that would be an example of it. But generally the biggest thing is that where it comes more like basketball players is what a, uh, uh, as the self reliance dies, they start going to the team for problem solving. They try to hand as many problems. You know, one of, One of the CEOs I worked with, his mantra for a while was never solve a problem that somebody in your organization can solve for you because that's what empowers people. People want to solve problems. People want to feel like they've been valuable and that they've, they've put some sort of something important in front of you. And so you're constantly putting the problems in front of them. Even if you know the answers, often you're letting other people solve the problems. When you do that, then they all think like owners. So oftentimes you'll hear a um, uh, CEO of a company feel all alone in it. At the same time they're trying to solve all the problems for these people instead of having them solve the problems for the CEO. And so it's, yeah, that's just, so that's, those are the things that kind of get undone as you start seeing the self reliance and, and, and seen through it.

Speaker B: You have worked with a lot of different folks in the AI world. Um, you've coached broad teams within OpenAI. You've worked with Sam Altman among other people going through your program. I'm um, curious what is unique about coaching people uh, in that world as it stands today that might be distinct from other businesses uh, that aren't in that orbit?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say the things that are distinct about their environment compared to other. It's growing faster than anything has ever grown ever, period. So in business. So it's just the hyper growth is crazy because of hybrid growth inside of a culture. What's happening is things have to change really rapidly and humans don't do well with change at a slow pace. You know, like HP was, you know, I think, uh, had this whole change management thing way back then. And it's like HP is like snails pace growth compared to what's happening here. So if you're inside of an organization, it's particularly a research organization in any of these companies, things are happening quickly, which means reorgans are happening quickly or pivots are happening quickly. It has to um, like you have to. And humans feel really insecure when that happens. So that's one of the things that's happening. The second thing that's happening in the outside world is that it's affecting the environment, is the entire world is projecting on these people. We're basically giving birth to some form of life. You know, maybe it's not life life, maybe it's life life, who knows? But like some version of this intelligent thing, we're giving birth to it right now as a society. You can't not give birth to it. By the way, we're ninth semester or trimester, we're third trimester, we're ninth night month. It's like this thing's happening and if it doesn't happen here, it's going to happen in China. It's like it's going to happen. And we have a whole bunch of people in the hospital, you know, yelling at the mom who's giving birth, like,

Speaker B: what are you doing?

Speaker A: Like all the projections and just like a birth, you know, there's some people who are like, this is going to be the best thing ever. This is. I'm just going to change my life. And other people who are like, this is going to be the worst thing ever. This is going to take all my time away from me and I'm not going to be relevant anymore. Like all that is going. So if you're working in AI right now, you've got like the entire world projecting onto you. It's like you're the President of the United States in some way with all that weird projection happening. And I don't think any. But most of these people weren't signing up for that. You know, maybe some of the top leaders understood what they were getting into, but most of the people, they, they weren't Particularly signing up for that. Um, there are also hyper, hyper intelligent people and many of them are super sensitive. Ah, maybe don't even know it, but they're, you know, they're super sensitive folks and they're, they're, I haven't met one yet. And I've worked and worked with people from all of the companies at uh, high levels and I haven't met one that's not a sweetheart. I haven't met one that's not, that doesn't care. And you've got a whole bunch of people yelling, be careful. You got to be careful. What are you doing with this person who's like, you know, three stories up on a tree, who's pretty damn aware of that they're three stories up on a tree. And uh, so I, I mean if I could change anything about the, the way the world, which I can't obviously, but the uh, what, what I'd love to change is like if we could be treating the people who are creating AI the way we treated the people who are in World War II. You know, like these people are doing a lot to, to try to create a better future. They may not succeed. Um, but they could really use a ton of support and love. And, and I, that's, that's the thing. But that tangential, but those are the things I think generally that, that I see that they would, that they are, that they have in common. Hyper intelligent, very sensitive people, really, really smart and getting a whole bunch of things projected onto them and this hyper growth with a, like massive change. No, nobody. I haven't met anybody who can even keep up with how much is changing, how quickly. If you spent all your time trying to keep up with the changes of AI you would not succeed.

Speaker B: I guess a question as it relates to the World War II analogy. Um, I, I agree with a lot of what you said about the consequence of what we're doing. We're giving more birth to some form of life. And if it's life life or you know, not life life, we'll, we'll figure out in the fullness of time. Um, I think in The World War II scenario, um, inevitably or there was a consequence of elected officials that, you know, determined there was an evil out there that I think has stood the fullness of time. M, maybe less people agree than, uh, five years ago, but I still, uh, think, uh, it's pretty universally held that that was a axis, uh, of evil, if you will.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and I, I, I wish that was still, uh, as consensus as it felt five Years ago, um, I'm curious. I mean there was a galvanizing force and there was an evil that was out there. And so there was ine support and the patriotism and all of that stuff that exists there. Yeah, I guess this is a little different than that. And I'm curious, yeah, uh, the people that are skeptical or would say hey, these are unelected, uh, people who are, have, have uh, have worked to create some new life and push society forward. And maybe they're a little cynical of the sentiments uh, of the people or the altruism of the people within the organization. I mean obviously you've experienced it firsthand, but yeah, anything that um, you would share to assuage those concerns or any, um. Yeah, I guess at a practical level to make people feel that at a, you know, more viscerally than they do today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I could go deep here. So let me geek out for a second. There's um, you know, there's a nature to think that we as Americans, we like to think that we can choose every single aspect of something. And in Eastern philosophy there's this kind of a thought process of there's a river that's going to go to the lowest ground. And your job isn't to try to control the river. Your job is to like predict where it's going to be and be able to take advantage of it. And I think both of those two points of view are really important. I say that because artificial intelligence was an inevitable consequence A so B a government, uh, our current government was never capable of creating it. So an elected fictional or not. And even if it was elected official, there would still be an equal amount of people who were opposed currently as there would be. So you know, that that's another thing. And the third thing is that like the, that at this point it is in a, um, it is the choices are who's going to get it first? Is it an autocracy or is it not an autocracy? Is it somebody who, you know is an empire that has been one of the more generous empires ever on earth or is it a one that's clearly not a very generous empire? These are the questions that you know, you have to ask yourself. And so that's one thing. The other thing I would say to those people, I wouldn't really try to assuage their guilt. I would say, um, notice the pattern that you're in. So I guarantee if you're like, oh my God, let me put it to you this way. Before I go into the pattern, I'LL say, I have noticed that the people who think that doom and gloom are on the horizon, who try to predict the future for doom and gloom on the horizon, like there's some business people are trying to predict the future for profit. They're a little bit more rational. But throughout all of history, since the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Dead Sea Scrolls were a collection, uh, of people who thought that doom was right on the horizon, anybody who looks to predict the future always predicts doom. And we've been doing it forever. And the reason that that is the case is because you're concerned about the future if you're in fear. So the people who are trying to predict the future are naturally doing it from a place of fear. Unless you're one of those businessmen who are, like, looking for the opportunity or business women who are looking for the opportunity. So part of our perspective on the world is based far more on our history than it is on any kind of reality. And so the people who are dooming and glooming or saying you have to be careful, it's like, well, okay, so let me talk to you about the authority figure in your life that took advantage of their power and didn't treat you well, because I guarantee it's in there. I guarantee that perspective comes in part because you've learned authority shouldn't be trusted. Just like me. I, I, I mean, I remember those moments in my life where, like, every single spiritual teacher I would not go to, I would, I would read and then I would try to pick apart because they all shouldn't be trusted. And by the way, that was an incredibly huge service for me to be able to do that. I remember, like, one of the most potent teachers of mine was a guy named Adi Ashante. And I first looked at his book and there was a picture on the back of his book. And I was like, that guy needs too much attention. He can't be trusted. Like, that was like, the immediate thought process. I was just like, I was ready to dismantle any authority at any time as not trustworthy because I had an alcoholic father who wasn't fucking trustworthy. It's like, it's as simple as that. And so, so I would say the, my more important thing would say, if you don't trust AI in general or anybody in authority in general, like, first of all, great. I have no problem. I don't want you to change that. And how can you grow and learn from that experience? What, what makes it, how is that controlling your life? If you are doing what an authority says or rebelling against an Authority, either one of those things, you're still being controlled. You're still the puppet of the authority. So let's learn there, let's work about that. I don't really care what you think about AI. I, I care far more about your personal freedom than I do about A.I. uh, because your personal freedom is the thing that's going to make a bigger difference on society than your view on AI.

Speaker B: There's an element of just change in general that we've touched on, of how the speed of which AI is moving. Uh, yeah, and I'm curious, I want to analyze that from a, I don't know, a business standpoint that I guess at a personal level, this, um, this fear that you're talking about, we do exist in this hedonic treadmill of resetting expectations. Uh, and what, what was great quote.

Speaker A: The hedonic treadmill of resetting expectations. That's amazing.

Speaker B: There's a, there's a thing I probably referenced in the past but like a Louis CK stand up thing about like how amazing WI fi on airplanes are and like how quick we were to get pissed off that when it doesn't work and it's like you're in the sky and you have access to the, all the information the world's ever created and you're upset that it's like disconnecting every, uh, on, uh, every now and then. And I agree with that. Like, nothing is more frustrating than trying to connect Internet WI fi when it's not working. Right. I literally think that's the, that's a peak frustration I've had in my life.

Speaker A: And you're right. And, and that. That's your peak frustration in your life is like. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: You said something right. Like, literally. Uh, but nothing gets my blood boiling more than it like. And to some extent it's like you get a taste of it and then it gets pulled away from you. And, and that is almost more painful than to not have ever seen it. It's sort of like, um, I imagine, uh, you know, the, the people that, that get addicted to heroin, it's like they, they try this drug and forever their world's altered because they've experienced this. This thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah.

Speaker B: And it's almost better to have never known what that is. Right. Than have tasted it once and tried to walk away from it. I guess I'm curious, like, as it relates to an individual level, is there anything you would say to embrace this mindset of change and to know like, your priors of of, um, how you've, you've known the world to be, uh, are gonna evolve and to not accept suddenly that you have something that's as powerful as a, you know, maybe 90% of the doctors in the world today, you have something that maybe is as powerful as 90% of those doctors at your fingertips, no matter where you are, so long as you're connected to the Internet and appreciate that while there's going to be disruption that inevitably comes with it and such that we don't lose sight of the gains.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And just focus on the losses.

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker B: It's kind of a question of like, how do we stay appreciative in some ways, like the world that's changing.

Speaker A: Yeah. I, so I would, I love gratitude. I think it's an incredibly useful thing. Or appreciation. I think it's an incredibly useful thing. But I, I think it's more useful to work with the thing that's actually there in front of you. And so, so what I would say is that the most powerful transformations that human experiences, whether good or bad, happen in moments of transformation. So people become much better or much worse through a divorce. People become much better or much worse having kids. Every job is this opportunity. You have a new job, you have that moment of tension. It's usually three to five months of tension of this new job. And then you can uplevel or you can, or you can decay in those moments. There's slow decay and slow up leveling at other moments. But those moments of transition, they are an opportunity. Quit drinking. That's a massive opportunity to, to, to transform your life. We are in a massive opportunity to transform. So to me that's far more, um, that's far more done by paying attention to what's happening in the moment. Not trying to adjust it, but learning from the thing and, and, and using it as a mirror instead of uh, being with what's actually here in this moment. And so if you're annoyed by what's happening in the plane, then let's start there. Like, like, great. I'm annoyed that I, I don't have this thing, but there's five people on the plane that are trying to use the Internet that aren't annoyed by it. Like what's happening? Like what makes me the one that's annoyed by what makes that they have that freedom and I don't have that freedom. Like what's going on there. And so to me, uh, the trans. If you're going to take advantage of the transformation that's available in times of massive change and transition, the way to do it is to look at what's actually happening in the moment and investigate it with a lot of wonder. Not with like, I have to be different. I. Great. I'm annoyed. I don't have. I don't need to change that. I can be annoyed if I want to be annoyed. But what's happening, what's going on there, and to me, that's a far better approach to that. The opportunity that's in front of us. With that said, appreciation and gratitude is really, really good for transformation as well. If you can have a practice of gratitude, it's amazing to have that ground in your life. And there's always something to be grateful for. As it turns out, at a business

Speaker B: level, um, the AI Labs model companies are forced to operate at a speed both, um, given the momentum and the opportunity cost. That's unnatural. But it's the game on the field that they have to play. And so you don't get to take a few months to regroup, uh, and recalibrate how you're thinking about things. You need to push forward and change the tires while the car is in motion or whatever the right analogy is. Um, I think all businesses right now would benefit from internalizing elements of that, um, pace. Yeah. Ah. Even if not to the extent that, uh, you need to. If you're working at an AI, uh, model lab company. Um, I'm curious either.

Speaker A: I, I think a lot of companies are going to have to move at that pace.

Speaker B: I, I agree, I agree with that. And so I'm curious, uh, as you've worked with people like Sam, as you've coached people like, you know, uh, the, the different leadership departments within OpenAI or whatever, whatever AI lab business, um, are there any things that you would say to make these companies more of a perpetual motion machine if you're out of the eye, um, of the storm that is AI like, how do you inject elements of this into your business if you're not a, uh, you know, if you're not forced to do it?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. Or before you're forced to do it.

Speaker B: Before you're forced.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: If we think everyone's going to be forced to do it, how do you do it before you're forced to.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so I'm gonna, I'll get really tactical and then I will get m. More perspective from a more strategic perspective, really practical. Is a, uh, lot of businesses I'm working in right now, we are doing this thing where iteration is required and so, uh, and we do this in our company, too. Your job is to run an experiment every whatever month. And the experiment needs to be, how do you do your job differently and more effectively? And it's just like it's, we have a sheet, it's a job you like, you have to do it. And I'm working in orgs that are 2,3000 people big, where it's just literally one of their biggest objectives is how many experiments you've run. So what typically we've been told in our lifetime is that, uh, to do a good job, you need to learn how to do it, execute the play, be the football player. And, and so you learn that you do it over and over again. You figure it out, and now you're doing it and everybody's happy with you. And now the new job is how do you iterate quickly for everybody? So software engineers get it because they've been doing this for a while. Um, some product people get it because they've been doing it for a while. But ops people, it's a little harder for them. Or finance people, it's a little harder for them. It's literally, hey, okay, this month I want you to use one AI tool to help you do your job better next month. Okay, what's your next experiment? Okay, what's your next experiment? So you're constantly looking at how do you take very simple, lightweight experiments to learn quickly. And it's something that the MIT Media Lab taught, which I really appreciated. And it was, if you're doing something new for the first time, say building a car as an example, you're going to know how to build a lot of that car, but there's going to be a part of the car you don't know how to build. Let's call it the catalytic converter. So what's the first thing most people do? They build the car and then they do the catalytic converter, because that's comfortable, emotionally comfortable to do what you know. So instead, okay, I'm actually going to embrace the uncomfortable emotion and I'm going to do the thing that I don't know the first. And the reason you do that is because if you build the car and then the catalytic converter, I, uh, guarantee the car will have to be rebuilt to make room for the catalytic converter, because you didn't know what the catalytic converter was going to look like. So then the question becomes, what's the simplest experiment you can do to learn the most about the thing you know the least about? And that's the job. And, and so now that's everybody's job because there is no part of anybody's business that isn't going to be affected by AI. And so instead of saying you've done a good job because you performed, it's, you've done a good job because you're constantly experimenting and iterating. And that's the, that's, that's the tactical approach. And they need to be lightweight, easy. You don't need to spend like decades to figure out the measurement systems. It has to be just very whack, whack, whack. What's an easy one? You can do that. You're going to learn this, this month, this week, and just create a culture of experimentation and innovation. That's a tactical approach to it. Intellectually, the approach is, um, you can no longer find safety and predictability. You need to find your safety somewhere else. If you rely on the feeling of safety coming from predictability, you are, so where are you going to get that safety from? And typically the best place for that safety to be found is in the moment. Is what is it like right now? That's the problem. And what is it that makes me think that I can't handle what's coming next? What, what makes me not be able to rest in that? What are those thoughts? What are those emotions? How do I address those? That's how you find the safety that's beyond predictability. But grand majority of humans, client safety and predictability.

Speaker B: I'm sure there's been situations where you've worked with a, um, a leader who's maybe skeptical about, um,

Speaker A: daily,

Speaker B: uh, is there a particular tactic, uh, or argument or, I don't know, way of communicating with, with skeptics that get them to come around more often than not, or tactics that you employ to get people to start working on making progress in some direction.

Speaker A: So there's yes and no. So if somebody doesn't have a question, I don't have an answer. So if there's no question, I'm, um, there's nothing I'm going to do that's going to be useful. There's a great phrase that somebody taught me, which is if you help somebody who hasn't, who hasn't asked for help, it's like taking on their credit card debt without relieving it for them. You just double the debt. And that's my experience totally so. However, there are a group of people who are skeptical that change is possible, but they want it. And those folks, it's just usually like there's one of three tactics. One is you listen and then predict their life for them. So you listen to everything that they have to say and then you say, oh. So from what you've told me, I'm guessing that your childhood was something like this, your marriage is something like this, your kids think of you something like this, and you just call. I call it reading their beads. It's a parlor trick. People are really impressed with it, but it allows people to feel safe. Oh, if you can figure that out, there's something, you know, that I don't know because, uh, unlike computer science or unlike research, it's really easy to know in research or physics who knows more than who does. But when it comes to like understanding how to be a human, everybody thinks they've got it pretty down pat. So there has. You have to actually show some sort of evidence. So that's one way to do it. The another way to do it is to show them Girdle's theory of mathematical incompleteness in their own thoughts. So you just basically show how their logical structures are incomplete and, and that there's something beyond logic that's at work. You know, that we as humans get 11 bits of information per seconds by our, to buy our brain, but like 10,000 or something like that from our body. And so it's pretty easy to show that there's something, there's a, uh, an intelligence that they can access that's more than their thought process because the skepticism is often in the thought process. And then the other one is you speak a whole bunch of neuroscience and somehow people just feel like, oh, that's true. Uh, which is ridiculous to me because neuroscience is moving. You know, the neuroscience of 2000 is different than the neuroscience of today and it'll be very different in, in 30 years or 10 years. So I mean, but somehow or another, if you put the word science behind it, people calm down.

Speaker B: One of the things I, um, found is that the most effective leaders or founders that I've been fortunate enough um,

Speaker A: to work with

Speaker B: have a level of, um, uncommon self awareness. I would say that, uh, I think comes um, naturally to, to them. I'm curious, can, can you improve your self awareness or is that, how do you go about doing that?

Speaker A: Uh, the same way you solve any problem, you put your attention on it. It's just most people don't put their attention on it. Every single business problem you have is a self awareness problem. So you have endless opportunities to look at your self awareness. You know, there is no, there is no CEO I've ever met who their. The, the, the consciousness of the creator is in the creation. The, the whole organization is a mirror. If the CEO is conflict avoidant conflict avoidance is going to be in that organization. So they have this massive mirror. It's like the coolest thing in the world as far as, like, business is such a cool way of having self realization to understand yourself because you have, you get it reflected and you don't get to like fool yourself. I could sit on a mat and meditate for seven years. I could fool myself to no end. I could not fool myself in business. People would be pissed at me. I would be upset. I wasn't getting results. All these things were just like, there, that, that. So it's this amazing thing. So. But you have to put your attention on it. You can't think to yourself, this problem is happening because of them. You have to think this. And you can't say it's, it's interesting. There can't be the shame. So some people go, uh, all the problems are mine and I'm the problem. And that's shame. And that really is a stagnating. Like if you're in shame, there's a lot of stagnation that happens because shame's whole job is to stop you. If you got shamed for crying in public, it's to stop you from crying in public. If you get shamed for farting on the couch, it's to stop you from farting on the couch. So shame just like stagnates. And so that doesn't work either. But it is a just a simple thing of, oh, I am, I am creating this thing. What is it about? And the first creation is my thought. So how does it work? How does my thought create the, the world in which I've, I'm, um, existing in?

Speaker B: Do you believe, um, imposter syndrome is a real phenomenon or is it just a symptom of, of something deeper and different?

Speaker A: I think it's a recognition of reality. We are all imposters. You know, someday, one day I was hanging out and there was some guy who was like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You've made this all up. And my response was, yeah, yeah, Jeff Bezos made up Amazon. I'm making this up. And I guarantee I will change my opinion on some of this stuff next year. The question is, what's useful to you right now is what I said to him. And it's, and it's what I said, yeah, we're all imposters. So I think there's a recognition of reality. And so you can't. If you're working with imposter syndrome, uh, it's not particularly helpful, but you can't logic yourself out of it because it's real. And, you know, Jeff Bezos is an imposter. You're an imposter, I'm an imposter. And we're all wrong on some level. Like, we do not understand. Just the fact that we don't have eyes that see, you know, six colors, like mantis M. Shrimp means that we are limited in our perspective and we are wrong about something. And so, um, so you can't find it that way. The question is, what's the problem with it? Yeah, so we're an imposter, at least. And. And what's the issue with that? And so if you're working on imposter syndrome, working with the reality on the ground is a far more effective way than trying to convince yourself that you're not an imposter, which is what most people try to do, I guess.

Speaker B: Um, one practical thing that I would love to leave people with is if you're. If you've made it this far. Ah. And are, uh, curious, like, want to take the first steps, um, to doing some of this inner work, um, and maybe working with a coach or at least starting to be a little bit more reflective and try to be. Bring in elements of being, you know, descriptive about or prescriptive about where you're going. Um, I'm curious, are there, um, is there a first step you'd encourage people to take? Um, uh, anything from just an exercise to a book or a resource or anything that you'd recommend.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Um, I'm gonna, I wanna answer that question in two ways. The, the first way is kind of more tactical, practical, which is find somebody who you think, who you have seen change dramatically, that you can recognize their change, and then say to them, what did you do? And then do it. That has been extremely effective in my life. I've just, like, looked for people who have transformed and said, what is. What did you do? And then do it. Um, so that's an effective. That's like a very effective approach. Another very effective approach for most humans is work on the emotional stuff, because that's the stuff that's limited. The brain is usually doing just fine. Um, as far as a particular resource, uh, obviously our podcast is amazing and has like a hundred and something thing. Our newsletter on leadership is really good. Um, and then I would think that as far as for entrepreneurs who are really uh, yeah, the first thing I would do is I would the if and if you're an entrepreneur, find a mentor, whether it is a coach or whether it's a, a business person who you admire and get a regular conversation going with them. You need to set up time to reflect. If you set up time as an entrepreneur, if you say I am dedicating this like working out to do self reflection on myself in the business, then it kind of happens in the background on a regular basis. But if you don't set aside that like very particular time, whether it's with a coach or with a mentor or even with your team, let's self reflect for a minute and we'll teach our, our uh, CEOs to have like the deep self reflection time with their team. And that by the way is really hot. If it's one thing, if a CEO is self reflective, it is something else. If a team is self reflective together that is like super power for organization.

Speaker B: And I guess as you think about the uh, the shift potentially we've talked a lot about like at an individual level, how people go through this process or things to think through. I guess at more of an organization level.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Are there practices that you would um, recommend or things to make companies run better together that might be a first step for people that not only want to reflect on them as an individual, but also how to make improvements in how their company actually works together?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a hard one to do generally. Um, you know again our leadership newsletter just puts these practices out on a regular basis because there's just so many of them that people aren't doing. But the, if I was thinking just generally if, if a first step of this for an organization. Yeah, the, the first step I would do is I would ask my um, management team. If I was a CEO, I would ask my management team or whatever team three questions and have a meeting just around these three questions. One is what is the thing that you can, that we can do that would 2x our results in the next year? What's the thing that would 2 extra enjoyment in the company in the next year and what needs to change about the way you're viewing things for that to happen? So you're, you're creating a problem, uh, a uh, problem statement that may, that requires people to be creative in their thought process and requires self reflection. And so I would just take a, you know, hour and a half meeting and I would start there. And if you do not get a whole bunch of really good ideas and self reflection, then change your management team quickly or change the way that you run them quickly. Because if you, if you, if your team can't do that level of thinking, they're probably not going to drive success and, or they're too scared of you to show you their thinking.

Speaker B: That's great. Well, Joe, thanks for doing this.

Speaker A: Yeah, man, what a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be with you.