Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Building World-Changing Products, Vision and Success | Inventor of the iPod, Tony Fadell

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Tony Fadell, an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and investor with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing some of the most influential products of the 20th century. Over his remarkable career, Tony has become best known as the inventor of the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat (which eventually sold to Google for $3.2B). Tony has authored more than 300 patents and was named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World". In 2016, Time also named the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Learning Thermostat as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time".Tony also recently published his first book, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, which quickly topped charts as a bestseller. Tony is a legend, and it was a joy to learn from him in this conversation. I think everyone will find significant value from the insights Tony shares as he outlines his journey from devastating failure to unbelievable success, and some of the lessons he learned along the way._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, a trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And today I'm excited to sit with Tony Fadell. Tony is an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and investor with 30-year history of founding companies and designing some of the most influential products of the 20th century. And that is not an easy feat. We're going to understand how that happens, who he is, the principles that live just underneath the surface of how he's made choices in his life. And Tony, I've been following you in your work from a distance. I've been consuming just about all of the products I think that you've made. And I'm really excited to sit with you. Michael, it's great to be here.

Thanks for having me on. I'm excited for this conversation and hopefully your audience gets something out of it. I'm really, really, really anxious to be on. I think that that is, what you just said, I hope somebody gets something out of it. I feel like that is right at the heartbeat of your purpose right now,

is passing a baton, is a phrase that I read in your book that's meaningful to you. And so you have been wildly successful in your career, but it's clear that it didn't happen overnight in your words. And you've held significant leadership positions across at least seven different companies that I'm aware of. And then you sold one of them, a small little project called Nest to Google for multiple billions. I mean, my hope for this conversation is really to better understand how you organize your inner life, how you develop vision. Yeah. How you develop a vision. So maybe, maybe we can start with this idea of failures and successes.

How do you define success? Big question, I understand. But I'm equally interested in how you operationalize and define failure. So let's start with those two big, heavy topics. Okay, big, big, big, heavy. So how do we define success? Well, I think success is, first, it starts with a mission. So, you know, you have to have a mission focus to be able to then drive yourself and drive others to get behind something

that's big and bold and meaningful. So I don't think of success as just making money. You know, people can define it by numbers. I define it on a mission that's going to change the world in some constructive, positive way. That's the way I think of success. And if you get there, the money follows and the money follows 10x or 100x more than you could ever expect. So instead of chasing money, chase a mission that's worth chasing and then people will join you along the way. So for me, it's reaching that that the conclusion of the mission. I don't think the mission, if it's a really well defined one, ever ends. But, you know, for me, it usually takes about 10 years to realize the mission that I'm on to, to, to truly bring impact. And then we create a culture or

whatever, and that, that can follow on even if I'm not involved in it anymore. So, so for me, success is really, you know, getting to that mission and that mission objective, even if it slightly changes over time. But that's what I, what I like to see. Now, when it comes to failure, failure is the only way we really learn. OK, so if we understand how we are educated and how we grow up, for the most part, when we grow up, we go to school. We're told, here's the things you need to learn. Read these things, take these tests and you either pass or fail. It is a very, very much prescriptive process driven thing. And that is how your brain is trained in your most formative years, which is unfortunate because in fact, you learned to walk and talk

before you learned to go to school and follow that process. And how did you learn to walk and talk? By failing thousands of times. When you wanted to walk, you failed a thousand times before walking. And you know what? You had an environment around you saying, I encourage you.

Yes, go for it. You just stood up for one second. Yeah, you fell down. Oh, keep trying, keep trying. And you have an environment who supports failure and understands that the way you're going to learn is by doing and failing and keep trying till you have success. Same thing with language. So now all of a sudden we put kids in schools and they're told this is the way you do it. And if you pass, you pass. And if you fail, you fail. And there's no other way around that. I think that's utterly wrong

because as soon as you get out in the real world, you're back to do, fail, learn. Do, fail, learn. And you only truly fail in life is if you don't take the next step to learn through the failure and continue to keep going. So failure is only when you stop pursuing whatever you're curious on because for whatever reason, you can pivot.

You can obviously pivot when you learn and change your direction, but you keep going, right? It's when you stop and you just say, ah, I've given up. I failed too many times. I'm not going to get there. You can always modulate and figure out a new way. And that doesn't mean you're going to do the same thing, but it means you're going to pick yourself up and find the next big mission to go on, even if the last one failed. So to me, we have to understand failure is the best way to learn. And it's the only way to learn in life. Because if you're doing anything innovative, there are no experts. There are people with experience that you can bring on your team, but there are no experts for innovating to change our planet, our societies, our health in the world, because you're by definition doing something the world's never seen before.

There's so much embedded in what you just talked about from a psychological lens. There's obviously resilience and perseverance and vision and purpose and, and, and. So one of the things maybe I would love to unpack just a little bit is on, if I understand it correctly, you're saying success is made by making or being on a mission. You don't necessarily have to make the mission. You could be on a mission. And so is that fair to say? Because you have created your missions and you're very clear about it for you. But that would mean that if you're employing, let's say 500 people, that the other 500s, if they're in service in some way of your mission, that that wouldn't be success. I know that I'm

being pedantic, but that's not. Yeah. So let's get into it. Look, every time you add another person to the team, they can further that mission. They are part of it. They need to own the mission just as much as the leader might. In fact, you as a leader, a great leader gives the mission over to everyone to make it better. So as a leader, you need to have more details and more details. And these are the people that you bring on because they are in service of this, what starts to be a very vague mission at the beginning. And then it becomes better and better defined at how you implement the strategies and tactics behind that mission. And maybe the mission grows and becomes even bolder over time. So the people that you bring on to help you with the mission need to have agency and ownership of

that mission. It can't just be, I have this idea. This is what we're going to do. Now you follow my lead. Sure, there is some of that, but you have to let each of those people own it in their very core and bring the best of themselves because what they want to do is they also want to learn. They're curious. They want to do what we're wanting to do, but we don't have all the details understood. And that's the reason why you build teams and you go and root out all of this uncertainty to be able to make a stronger mission and a stronger culture behind that mission.

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slash finding mastery. Let's pull apart agency and ownership for just a minute because let's call it, let's look at it that in two different lenses. One lens, which is a shoestring budget, kind of early startup, right? And then another one is like ledger money where you're well-funded and you've got rich resources. Okay. So on agency, it's such a great word and it means that somebody feels powerful in themselves, right? They feel like they can get something done.

The tension with ownership. So people want agency. And actually, I should say it better. Like we all have agency at our core. And the old way of doing business, tell me if you think I'm off on this, was I'm going to give you, I'm going to empower you to have agency, which makes me nauseous. What do you mean you're going to empower me? You know, and I don't say that, I guess it sounded arrogantly, but it's, it's meant to almost be like, have a rough edge. Like I already, I have a sense of power. I want to express it. I want to, I want to share my,

my gifts and talents and skills with this mission with you. So I don't need you to empower me. What I need you to do is help me create a runway so I can do my thing. Okay. So hold on. I'm getting, I'm getting lost in my narrative here is that the old way is that I'm going to empower you so that you can do your best work. And what you said is like, you said, no, no, no people. I want them to work from agency and ownership, But agency is like, I feel powerful. And ownership is like, I own something. Correct. So sometimes the two of those are, I own the mission. I own this part of the mission.

Sometimes those two things struggle together because of accountability. So the account, I would love for you to talk about agency and accountability. Because if you're the founder, you're on the hook. You have full account. You probably leveraged your home and your children's mortgage or your children's education, fill in the blanks for all the dramatic things that we could say, but you're on the hook. You've got the loan in your name. So how do you help build that accountability? Well, first, people normally, this is what I've seen, is they sign up for that accountability because they care about the mission so deeply that they want to see it succeed. So they're accountable to something higher than just me.

They're accountable to something that they want to see exist and the people around them want to see exist. So they're also accountable to their peers. So they watch each other and they pull each other up and they help each other. So through this kind of peer network and leadership network, everybody is rising themselves up to the best standards they can because they don't want to let the other person down, whether that's the leader or the other or the other people aside of them, as well as the mission. So it's this kind of very tight bundling. Right. And you've probably seen it in many of the things that you've seen in

the past when you build a small team. We're all in this together. OK. And sure, there's someone who has the checkbook or is paying. But remember, as a leader, I could also worry about them and their families. Oh, yeah. Right. And so I always have to go back. We're on this mission. But I also know that you're on this mission to for yourself. But you also have to take care of your family. And the more I recognize that and more I say that we need to do the right thing by not just you, but by your family. That shows that we're all in this together and acknowledging the spouse when you're away from the family because you're working so hard or the kids or whatever, and making sure that the spouse and the family feels a part of it as well. So that they, it becomes this movement, not just a job. Okay. So that's what I mean by that. Now, the other thing is we have to also understand that when you have agency and ownership, we have to understand what decisions you can actually make as an individual because of your purview, but also what you have to understand that

you're going to give opinions to and data to, to someone who's making opinion-based decisions. Because when you're doing something new, usually a lot of those decisions are opinion-based. And you can't all of a sudden bring together all these people with all these opinions and try to blend them all. Because then what you get is blah. Because it's always compromise.

And everyone's compromising and getting around and it's political and everyone's like, I want to be heard and I want to be heard. You still have to understand that even if you have a mission and you're giving people agency, that those people understand when you're making opinion-based decisions, it sometimes needs to come from one person or a small team of people who hold that vision and can help keep the opinion-based decisions congruent with all the other ones so that it comes out in service of the mission for the customer at hand that you're trying to meet. So the team understands that we're working on this together, but certain decisions, even though they own certain pieces, they're not going to own necessarily the end decision because it's an opinion-based decision that needs to be made by a small group of people saying, which way are we going? And they can explain why we're going that way and explain the logic behind the way they made that opinion-based decision.

So I hear you repeat the idea of an opinion-based decision. Is that your engineer mind? Or is that you speaking to engineers saying, listen, I don't have the data to support what I'm doing. This is my opinion based on gut. It's like another way of you saying, listen, I recognize that data is important, but right now this is a general opinion that I'm trying to narrow down for direction. Exactly. That is exactly what it is. And I want each person to give their opinion and also the data that might refute that opinion, their opinion or my opinion. But at the end of the day,

we can't have a group of people all agree on one opinion because everyone's going to come from different things. All you can do is make that decision and then explain it to people. And if people don't agree with it, they can leave the team. But most people get behind it if you can do a good job explaining why this matters for the mission and for the customer. Because if you're doing anything innovative, you're not going to be able to get data until

after you've given it to the customer who's paid for it, who's shown that there's an exchange of value when they can give real feelings about what it is you're making. Did you have this clarity before you built, you and your team built the iPod and before you built the iPhone and before you built Nest, or has this come on reflection post? So if we go all the way back to General Magic, this was the 1990s. There's a movie all about it. It was a huge failure. It was the biggest failure. We were trying to create the iPhone 15 years too early. There were lots of opinions and we were doing things, but they were not grounded in enough reality for us to be able to have the right way to think about what we were building. Okay. We were just building for building

sake. We weren't thinking about the customer. We weren't, we didn't have this. We had a grand arching vision of pleasing ourselves, but we didn't know who was going to buy it because we just said, Oh, we like it. Everyone's going to buy. So through that failure, that incredible failure. And I encourage everybody to watch General Magic, the movie. It's a, it's, it's really a lesson in failure and redemption. That's where it Magic the movie it's it's it's really a lesson in failure and redemption um that's where it started for me and that's where I get sensitized to really understanding opinion-based decisions and the why behind products and then I at Philips I did it again and then you know and and got better and better at audience and understanding messaging

than at Apple I really saw the mastery of Steve Jobs and the storytelling, the non-fictional storytelling and the delivery of a customer experience. And then we put it into full, on full display at Nest. And we were very, very clear about the opinion-based decisions, the customer journey, the storytelling, all of those things, and the bonding of marketing to the product design at the very earliest days so that we would not make the mistakes I saw over the early years of my career. Okay. Did you learn mission there?

Is that, or did you learn the mistakes of not having clarity of mission there? At General Magic, I learned mission. What I didn't, what I learned through the, I learned mission, but we were focused on the what at General Magic, not the why and the who. So what was just making more technology for technology's sake and impressing the geek next to us, impressing ourselves and the geek next to us. We had all kinds of crazy ideas because we were literally making the iPhone 15 years too soon, but there was no internet yet. There was no even mobile communication. There was no mobile phones for them for the most part. There was no, you know, there was almost not even laptops. So, or mobile entertainment or down, you know, downloadable games or emojis, or most people didn't even have email. So we were making things because the geeks in us knew what the future would be.

But we didn't, we didn't know why we were making it or who we were making it for and why would they want to buy it? Yeah, yeah. Okay, what a magical time. Like that must have been awesome. It's a little bit like, you know, I imagine what it would be like in Mission Control

putting the first person on the moon. And I was fortunate to be in Mission Control supporting Felix Baumgartner, which is now the 10-year anniversary of Felix jumping from outer space. Wow, it's amazing. 10 years already. That's crazy.

10 years. So that type of electric, you know, bright minds coming together with a very clear mission where somebody's life was on the line. And you guys were just like, in your words, a bunch of geeks and nerds

like trying to build something to impress each other and like and it was must have been just awesome you know who we had on we had on megan smith oh yeah megan's awesome yeah she would she she was there six months before i got there and so we were like in general magic the movie she's there in it like it's amazing oh she's yeah she's like yeah she's dynamite is a great word for megan she's so electric and i mean look what she ended up doing with the rest of her career look at what most of you did look okay so i gotta get i gotta understand what was in the water at at that time was it accidental that you guys got together or were the was there somebody that had a mission to put the brightest nerds, the hardest working nerds, whatever it might be,

nerds is not the word you use, you use geeks. Like what was that mission about? So what we were about was, this was the Macintosh team. So literally the original Macintosh team, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Joanna Hoffman, Susan Kerr, and a whole cast of characters said, what is beyond the Mac? Mark Peratt was there and he came from Apple. And so it was all of these incredibly brilliant minds who created the Macintosh, minus Steve, and said, we're going to go build the next platform, the next thing that's going to change the world. It was going to be something handheld. It was furthering the Dynabook concept from Alan Kay in the 80s, which was like the early tablets. He had this idea of education on a tablet. And so they wanted to build this thing. And so they attracted all the smartest minds around

Silicon Valley that they knew. And they you know, and they had an underground network because remember there was no internet, there was no LinkedIn, there was none of this stuff. So they all like got together. And I, through reading the rumor pages of Mac week and Mac world magazine heard about this team forming. And I went and had to go knock on the door, send letters, do everything I possibly could for six months, nine months to get into that company. Oh, so you weren't in. So you were the young kid.

I was the youngest. I was the youngest for a while there. Okay. Did you always, did you always have this fire that you have in this call? Is this, this is you, this is you, you know, rule breaker. I was the kid who's getting thrown out all the time. I wouldn't just take no for an answer. I would always push, push, push. 15 schools in 17 years. Is that right? 12 schools in 15 years. Jesus. So you know about people. You know about figuring out how to make a new relationship. Did you reinvent your time?

You know how to be a chameleon. That's right. You know how to fit in. Yeah. I know that I moved a bunch too. And so like middle, my parents would move me in the middle of school years. Like you too. You too. Okay. So rule breaker, physical rule, physical risk taker, like, Or is it more social? Or is it more emotional? I wouldn't say risk taker in terms of real physical, like mountain climbing or free climbing. I'll do stuff like I'll go on intense bike rides, long, long road bikes and mountain bikes and all that other stuff. But I wouldn't say overly intense. Like you're, you know, extreme. That's not right. Okay, got it. But for me, really, what it was about was,

after you saw enough clicks in schools, you probably remember this, you saw enough clicks, you're like, and you moved around enough, you're like, screw that I'm just going to be me. And I was also a geek. So I was also your revenge of the nerds right in the 80s. They weren't celebrated like they are today. So I was always the outcast, the weird kid, the new kid. And so you really steeled yourself around watching each of these, these cultures, these subcultures inside of a school, whether that was in Texas or New York or wherever it was, Michigan. And you just said, okay, at some point you're like, I'm going to be me. And if you don't like me, screw you. I still got beat up. I still was this, but I just hunkered down and was the kid who just did what he wanted to do. And people were jealous that I might be smart some days, or I, or I said shit that shouldn't be said because I didn't care about being part of the group. I didn't care about running with the gang.

So you sound like you were bullied. Oh, yeah. From time to time, for sure. Okay. How did that shape you? I mean, that's awful. You didn't go about building strong connections, right? Because you knew you were going to move on

and you knew that typically those people wanted you to conform with whatever way they were living, right? You're going to tuck in, there's the gang member, the gang leader, and then you were going to, whether that, it wasn't a real gang, you know, I was never in that kind of situation, but you know, those little cliques, the clique leader and that. And I just wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't follow those rules

because I could never stay long enough to earn anybody's trust, right? Because if you're there a year, you have to be there a couple of years, especially as the kids got older, because they're like, oh, should we let them in or not? Right? Or they wanted you to test you out or play with you. So literally, it was those groups always coming after the new kid or the geeky kid or the smart kid. And so at some point you just give up and say, screw it, I'm just going to be me. And then I would rebel, you know, to my teachers. I would be the kid who would always ask too many questions and everybody hated, right?

Like, oh, he's asking another question. So I just didn't care at some point about my relationships with people I didn't care about. I did care about certain relationships with certain people. Like I hung out with a lot more girls than I did with guys. Because I had I was much more in touch with certain sides of myself that were much more about like, oh, why don't we just have a discussion? Why do we always have to have a discussion? Why do we always have to have a competition? And so naturally I had all of these girl as friends, not girlfriends, but girls as friends who I could resonate more with than typically the guys. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance,

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I have to be a blend of both. So you have that anima, anima side, the male, masculine, feminine energy about you. Like you can access your head and your heart. Yeah. I think guys don't have anywhere near enough feminine energy about you like you can access your head and your heart yeah i think guys don't have anywhere near enough feminine energy and they should tap into it right and i think with and i and i love women who have more masculine energy because then that empowers them and they don't get suppressed right by the male domination so i like people who are much more balanced whereas guy guys that's not me. Guy guys, I can't go and sit there and drink beer and watch sports 24-7 and that is just not me.

That is so funny. Okay, so and it is because it feels too surface or because there's not enough emotional stimulation? There's not enough emotion stimulation. There's not enough learning. It's the same thing over and over. I'm like, what am I learning here? I'm just watching more people compete. I don't care about somebody's sports career, especially inside of a team and then their egos and everything else. I care about what are you doing for the world? What can I learn?

What can I? So I like individual sports to a certain to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent. But I'd much rather prefer non-fictional stories, non-fictional books, learning, learning, learning, curiosity and tapping in things that can make me be better by learning through people, not watching just just outright entertainment for entertainment's sake. To me, that's diversionary and it doesn't build me up. It actually makes me up. It actually makes me weaker. You know, this is going to sound surprising maybe to you. I really relate with that. I don't watch sport on the weekend. I love watching people that I, because this is the, this is the industry that I'm in. So I love love i love what sport provides for people to for it to be a working laboratory so do the arts so does business there's many working laboratories of how of how do

people together become their very best and what are the methodologies and the principles and the practices for that so sport is like this very mechanical working laboratory. And so I don't watch sport. I watch my friends that I've been able to, you know, get to know along the way. And I watch, you know, the athletes that I've been fortunate enough to work with. But and I love that. That feels when you watch somebody. Sure, that's friends and you're cheering them on and you're doing all that. But the business of sport, all that other stuff, I think I'd much rather see.

I like it when the kids are like kids are doing sport and you're like helping them and mentoring them and they see all the human factors and dynamics and overcoming their own issues. I love it when people are growing themselves inside of something as opposed to something that's business driven and those kinds of things. So I do like sport, but in a different context. I would not have imagined that you would be more people-focused than idea-focused. Because, I mean, think about what you've done. Well, I don't need to say that. I'm thinking about what you've done.

iPhone, iPod, Nest. Those are massively disruptive, meaningful products. And I would have thought you're an idea person to engineer, to execution. And I would have thought you're an idea person to engineer, to execution. And I hear you saying, no, it's really about relationships and people, which is refreshing and surprising to me. If you don't make products in service of people and killing pain that the people have, it's not doing any good.

So you have to understand people, their problems, their hopes, their dreams, and everything to take the technology, the ideas you have, and make sure they'll meet the needs, meet the people where they're at, the customers where they're at, to solve those pains and hopefully give them superpowers. So you need to have deep understanding of the technology. And you have to have deep understanding of people and how to make the two connect. Too many times, geeks, like we were doing at Gemini, we were making it for other geeks. And then when we try to connect it to the real world, it fell flat. People were like, oh, that's neat, but I don't think I need it. I don't know what it does for me because they

didn't have the pain. Fast forward 15 years later, when iPhone came out, they had the pain. At least a certain set of people in the world had that pain. And we solved for that pain and gave them a superpower. And they're like, oh my God, you got to try this. So if you don't have both halves of that equation, people and technology and ideas to make them, forget it. It's going to fall flat. This is why I'm using, you use technology, I'm using psychology. You use people where they work or, or maybe not because I think your later products were people for people outside of the business world, like Nest, you know, et cetera. But so I use, you use technology, I'm using psychology and you're using where people work and I'm using sport. And so meet people where they sweat or meet people where they have a pain or where they need. It feels really organic. It's refreshing to hear you say that. I did not know that part about you for sure. It didn't jump out. And that was developed over time because of failure, because every single time,

why did the product land flat? It wasn't because we didn't have good technology or, you know, you know, general magic, we didn't, but because it was too big a vision, but at Billups, we did the right thing, but we didn't have the right messaging and marketing and sales, but we delivered a good product. It's just about, you know, you, it was just this process of unfolding and understanding that, look, you can work as hard as you want, but if you really don't connect with the person on the other side, the early adopters, for sure, maybe not the late adopters, but the early adopters and hit them where they are and really speak to them, you're going to waste four or five, 10 years of your life in something. So I wanted to make sure we were connecting and doing something that was successful

because we were on a mission to help, not just a mission to impress ourselves with cool technology like we were at General Magic. And so that mission continued on for 15 years. And then it ultimately came out as the iPhone, right? I cared. I was, I am, but was a DJ back in the 90s. And I really cared about music. And you, if you know about being a DJ, if you've ever been a DJ, you have to be, to have the dance floor going, you really need to have the vibe of that audience. And you need to know what the next thing is on. You can't just put you on on. You got to have just enough to stretch them from where they are musically, not just always give them the hits because you're going to wear them out because they're like,

yeah, I heard that again. Michael Jackson yet again? No, you got to stretch them just enough so that they get out of comfort zone to something they can go with and something they can still dance to and have that emotion. Right. So a DJ, if you haven't done it, it's so incredibly stressful. You can't just put on a playlist and go because that's not the vibe of the room. You have to read the vibe. And so when it came to the iPod, you know, a thousand songs in your pocket, 10,000 songs in your pocket, it was about taking that love of music and putting it in a factor that people could be their own DJs because they had all their music with them at any one time and then they could figure it out and making sure you connected that way.

So you always have to have these blends between the things because at the end of the day, your audience is your audience. And how are you performing for them? Whether it's just putting on a track or is creating a product, it's all a product or a service in service of an audience that you're trying to bring forward, trying to grow, whether that's their musical knowledge or the superpowers in their hands. Those are the things that are so fundamental in our relationships in this world of delivering products or services. Okay. So you've used two words, mission and vision. And I think this might be one of your

superpowers is that you know how to build them you know how to clarify and communicate them and then you said that the vision was too big at one point so i that that's a little perplexing to me okay that vision is too big but but i don't want to get lost on that i do want to know as i'm listening and learning it it's like, Oh God, like, you know how to build missions. So how do you, how do you build a mission? What? Come on. So vision, when you're making something really big, you're going to have a vision. Your vision can be a 10 or 20 year vision. Okay. What's the laugh? But if you tell people your 20 year vision, you'll scare most people out of their wits and they go, this person is crazy. Oh, okay. Is that the, wait, wait, is that the laugh you just had? Like you're the, I love the laugh, but you're like, Oh God, here we go. What is the laugh? Is it because it's,

this is so, so clear for you or is it like. I've had so many times where you see people and I get this all the time from entrepreneurs they won't tell me their vision because they're worried that they're going to scare the person on the other side i scared people too because you have such a big mission you're like i'm going to do this and this and this and then investors go you're going to need billions of dollars for that it's going to take years i'm not investing in this crazy person i want to make sure i see the next step. So you have to put it in chunks that most people will be,

how can I say, enthusiastic about and engaged in, but not so far that you're crazy. They think you're crazy. And they're like, I can't follow this guy. I'm going to go follow him into running into a brick wall. Like he's psychotic in a way, but you need to have that big vision, but you need to parcel it out over time. And you do that with missions in between. So the vision's

there and then there's phases. And each phase is a different mission along the route. There you go. Okay. So when you think about vision, do you literally, when I think about it, it's like another word for when I use my imagination and think about the future state that I want to create, that that's how I think about vision. And it's not about what's probable. It's more about what's possible. And so it's a through line to this other world that I'm imagining could be. It's your North Star. It's your North star. And you're

going to have waypoints along the way. Right. But you want to make sure you're not focused right here. You want to make sure you're focused up here and that you're building along that route. Now it's obviously going to diverge. It's not a straight line. It's going to, you're going to go and change and you're going to adapt. And maybe you're going to change your vision a little bit when you get more data, when you ship something and you see it and you're, Oh, we're going to change this a little bit. Or maybe the landscape has changed slightly and you've got to change your vision a little bit when you get more data, when you ship something and you see it and you're, oh, we're going to change this a little bit, or maybe the landscape has changed slightly and you've got to change it. Right. But you want a much bolder vision so you can, it drives you, but you want missions along the route that's going to help you to get there.

Perfect. Okay. Now on the mission, now let's talk about the mission specific. Yes. How do you figure the mission you want to be? All right. To me, it all starts with where's the pain? What is painful? If you start with pain and there are new technologies, like there's pain that's always been there. If there are new technologies to address that pain, then you might have a new novel thing that you can create because the technology affords you new, new advantages, new ways of looking at the problem to solve the problem, to solve that pain in a new way so that you can remove that. So there's a lot of times we have lots of pain. Let's say,

let's say you're creating a, you created a product 15, 20 years ago. And you're like, Oh, it was all this great, but there was a couple of things not right yet with the technology, but it was good enough. And those users tried it. And they're like, oh, it was all this great, but there was a couple of things not right yet with the technology, but it was good enough. And those users tried it and they're like, yeah, the first three weeks were horrible, but I got through it, but it gave me some, it solved a problem for me. But I still have to deal with those few problems each day, but I've habituated them away saying, oh, this is what I have to do to get this. Okay. Think of the transition from text-based computing to the Macintosh, graphical computing. People are like, oh, this is what I got to do. And then graphical

came away because there was enough processing and graphics and all that. And they're like, oh my God, it's so much better. So what happens is when the Mac came, it was, look, yes, you want to do all this computing, but you want to make it easier. You want to be able to train people faster on it. You want to see things. You don't want to just have to imagine it because you're texting, you know, you're text creating it. So boom, that happened. So that was a major advantage. But people, when they were just, before they saw the Mac, they were like, this is how we do spreadsheets. And this is how we do, you know, data processing and stuff. Really textual, very hard to learn and not for everybody. Then when the Mac comes, it goes,

remember all those command lines? Remember all that stuff? Look at this new world. And people go, yes, that's what I want. They might be doing similar things, but they're doing it differently and it gives them a new superpower. And you've reminded them,

like the drudgery of the computing-based, you know, command line things. You see what I mean? So it's that kind of mental shift you have and you remind people of the problems they have and you create a new world for them to say those problems will go away. And now you have a new way of interacting with the world. So you've been in the world for just over five decades. What do you think the pain that most people feel is? How are you thinking through that? Well, you know, there's all kinds of pains. You know, we have climate crisis now

where most people are finally waking up to it. So we have to deal with that. We can't just ignore it and shove it under the rug. We have pains in healthcare. Cancer is a huge one. We have pains in our society, which means like, you know, big companies have all the technology in the small and medium businesses, family businesses suffer because they don't have the capital or access to the technology that the big guys do. And so they're always under the thumb of big agriculture or big energy or what have you. How can we now use technology, because it's now being democratized, to rise up these small and medium businesses, family businesses, and they can work in maybe even

better ways than the big incumbents that are already there and we can unseat them. So I'm always looking for the pain where there's an underserved category of people who want to do something and be empowered, but couldn't for the longest time. But now because the technology is available on their smartphone, there's mobile data networks everywhere. There's new forms of financing and ways of getting it paid for that they can now adopt this technology and compete with or compete better than the big guys that are too dumb and slow and fat and happy to, you know, to actually address the change that they need to make to make their the planet better. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

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Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So tell me if we just try this out for just a minute, how do you help people clarify what's possible in their life? I think your book is where you're trying, is your best attempt at doing that right now. Well, the first one is be the change you wish to see. So I don't drink. I haven't drank for 15 years. I'm a vegetarian. I, you know, I try to do the right things by the climate, all this other stuff. I try not to over consume, even though I could, because it's easy

when you have the resources. So I try to stay within bounds, right. And, and try to be that change. And I see people around me, my friends and everything that thought it was crazy. Now, all of a sudden they're like, I'll give it a try. And they're like, oh, I like this. And like, oh, you know, I always was the odd guy out. But, you know, if you live to what you think. So one is to here talking to you today is because I had mentors who helped me get here. It wasn't because I just was the smartest guy. It was because people called bullshit on me, people I trusted called bullshit on me and helped me get there. And so I wrote the book to honor those mentors, to say, since most of them had died, I was like, wait a second. Oh, the baton, as you said, has been passed to me. Now I have to give back because that is the cycle of life. And so through the book, it's that. But I also look at, you know, there's other things

that we have to fight for people who are self-actualized, which is the overconsumption of marketing, the over brainwashing through highly targeted social media and the like media in general, clickbait, we need to fight against that stuff. And there's some of us who live outside the system who can do that. And I try to do that. I try to be very vocal about that stuff. Like I don't believe in the metaverse. I don't believe I think it's horrible for humans. We haven't seen any disintermediation between human connection that has actually turned out to be anything, anything positive. It's all been more or less toxic. Look at comments and chats in chat rooms. If you're anonymous, what happens when you can lose the connection, when I can see your eyes and I can make that

connection, I'm not going to say the same things I would say to you if there's just, you're a graphical character or you're just text or whatever. You're not going to say those things. Toxicity grows when there's a lack of human connection, but you can still have communication. Okay. So I think it's incumbent upon the people who are outside of the system or who run the systems to stand up for this human connection and these things. So when you talk about depression, you talk about these kinds of things. Why did they start? It's because people are getting these bad things in their brain from somewhere. Obviously it could be family. It could be their environments, but also their digital environments can be feeding them. I've seen digital addiction firsthand. I see

what it does to people. I've seen people go through digital detox programs. And when I saw what the iPhone and it was like and how kids were getting in trouble because we didn't have the tools to really monitor and control our digital consumption like we do for our physical consumption, like a scale, you know, nutritional facts, all of these things. We need the same thing for our digital life. So I went out and spoke up and spoke up hard. People at Apple didn't like me for it. They were like, why are you doing this? I'm like, because you're not doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing for our societies. You need to have healthy customers to have a

healthy business. And if you're treating the customers wrong and they're being unhealthy, you're not going to be around for as long as you should be. So I think that, you know, things like you were talking about, which is, you know, trying to make these things available, these tools available. I think there is a new generation of things available, these tools available. I think there is a new generation of people who want these tools. They want digital control over their digital life. They don't want to be surveilled all the time

and their data taken. And they want the tools to help deprogram them and the brainwashing from a lot of the stuff they might've grew up with. And so I think that the tools like what we're doing now, we're creating this content, getting it out to people at scale needs to happen. I would love to see the digital device purveyors out there

make sure that digital health comes part of the set of applications that are default apps that you come when you get your iPhone. It's right there. You don't have to download. It's right there and says, here, let me tell you the best ways to, you know, for to avoid digital addiction and the rules of that.

Why do we have to go search it? Just like you have warning signs that freaking smoking and cigarettes. Why do we have warning signs on this stuff? Right. Not that it has to be so, you know, like like we see with smoking, but at least give people the tools and making them so easy and tell them about the dangers so they can make better choices. How do you how do you build practices for your family and yourself working with the digital world and some of the products that you're responsible for their birth of? Yeah. I'm very clear about no devices at the tables. Have human connection. Don't even put the device on the table. Put it in, not even in your pocket. I don't want to see it buzzing. Don't

turn off all notifications. Much to the chagrin of my wife and kids because I don't get their messages immediately and I don't respond immediately. You know, I grew up in a world where we didn't respond immediately. Right. We didn't know where everybody was at every single time. Every now we worry about, oh, my God, where's the next step the kids take? We were out on the streets doing whatever it was. Right. And now all of a sudden we're hyper like lead digital leashes for everyone. We need to start understanding that we can live that way. We've gotten so sensitized that we need these things to actually like feel good, but it actually creates more nervousness as opposed to more

confidence in our environments around us, that they're not toxic and kids aren't going to be, you know, swept up off the street and these kinds of things. So I think we need to find a new way. The pendulum swung to, you got to need to know where everybody is at all the time and message everyone and get notifications and respond right away. We need to find a nice balance here. And so by turning off notifications, by putting away the devices, by making sure they're not next to your bedside every night, like a bottle of alcohol, would you leave a bottle of alcohol next to your kid's bed and say, oh, I trust that they're not going to drink it. Would you leave a bottle of alcohol next to your bed? No. So why do you have that, a digital version of it next to

your bed? Yeah. Okay. And then clear. And then do you have, those are great practices. Do you do anything to counter rotate the digital world? So those are like practical practices. And I'm wondering if you do any sort of, let's call it exercise or meditation or being outside. I'm CrossFit. I'm on my bike. I'm running. I'm doing yoga. I'm hiking, right?

I'm doing all these different outsides, outdoor sports, but I will only take a digital device with me for security, but I will not use it in any way. I will not have music. I will not have a podcast on. I won't do anything. I want that stuff away because this is my moving meditation time.

So no music when you're running? No, absolutely not. Because one, it's dangerous. Because you don't have your pick. But I'm also not getting the nature signals into my brain to help me to navigate my surroundings and understand fight or flight. Right. Like it's something coming up behind me. I also find that the best time when I come up with my ideas, when I'm really working with hard problems,

is when I'm on a four-hour bike ride. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden, I don't, I'm not thinking about it, but all of a sudden the answers start dropping in and I'm like, oh my God, where are these things coming from? I don't know if it's just me, but I always find when you get rid of the distractions, the attention distractions and get clarity,

not just when you're sleeping, but clarity of mind when you're doing something, get, the attention distractions and get clarity, not just when you're sleeping, but clarity of mind when you're doing something, get in the flow of doing something. All of a sudden it relieves the stress on the brain of ruminating on something. And it naturally pops in at least to my brain. And the amount of ideas or resolutions to problems that I find when I'm not being bombarded,

my attention being bombarded is amazing. So I learned this long time ago, people like you don't, you don't run with an iPad. I'm like, no, but you can run 30% better with music. I'm like, yes, but that's not the point. The point is to get moving meditation, not to be the fastest marathoner. I mean, it's not lost on me that the father of the iPod does not use or listen to music while he's working out. There's no loss of irony there. Yeah, it's true. You got to have your own time away from all this stuff.

Okay. At least me. Yeah, no, no. So at least me. Yeah, no, no. I mean, okay. And then what you're talking about,

we've talked about this so much in our, this community about signal to noise ratio is making sure that you're working to get to the signal. Right. And it's the only chance you have to work with all of the noise of the world. The internal noise, the external noise for sure is to be connected to the signal.

And if you don't have a practice to get to the signal, I think you're, you're not even in the fucking game. You want to hear my, you want to hear, you want to hear my way to find signal? Yeah. Is by listening to a lot of noise. What? So I look at between 800 to a thousand headlines a day. I look at 800 and maybe out of those, I see 20 to 30 that are interesting.

Okay. And each day I look at a lot of noise. And then when I see enough of the same things popping up in my stream from all kinds of different things, it becomes a signal. Oh my God. How do you do that? Why? What?

I have an RSS reader. I have an RSS reader that comes up with all the things that I go, click, click, save this. Nope. And I just read the headline and maybe the first two sentences of the text. And from that, I can already know what I'm tuning into because I care about climate health and societal changes. I care about certain things that are my hobbies. And through that, I'm like, yes, yes, yes. And maybe I'll get 20 articles out of those thousand each day that I'll actually read. But I also got the noise of all those articles. And it's there. It's just simmering below the surface. And then the next day, I see a couple

more articles that have similar words. And then the next day and the next week I'm like, oh, maybe I better pay attention to this. Oh, interesting. Yeah. It feels like, it's like, so I think of you as a visionary technologist, you know, like, like deep innovator, deep tech type of stuff. And obviously you're mentoring so many people and companies, you know, from your fund. But then that seems so, that seems like somebody's picking up 15 newspapers, you know, 20 years ago and saying, I'm just reading all the headlines. Yeah. Like if there's something.

But how do you get to the edge? So I'm reading research papers. I'm reading the headlines from research papers. There's summaries of research papers. I'm reading about fashion. I'm reading the headlines from research papers. There's summaries of research papers. I'm reading about fashion. I'm reading about news in Southeast Asia. I'm reading about politics in, you know, out of the FT or, and so I get enough of these things because you need to find where the problem space are and where new technologies and kind of movements are happening. So just kind of like what I was doing, like when I was a kid in school, watching. That's the thing. I'm just watching. And then sooner or later, I'm like, like when I was a kid in school, watching. That's the thing. I'm just watching. And then sooner or later, I'm like, things start dropping. Finding Mastery is brought

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quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. What do you say to yourself that like is really harsh? Like the things you wish your kids would never say to themselves about themselves. What do I say to myself? That's harsh. Yeah. Like what is the, I want to know what that inner, cause you've got an inner critic too. I haven't heard it yet. Yeah. So how do you, what is that inner critic? And then how do you work with it? Well, first, my inner critic is when something didn't go to what I, you know, my opinion or my gut, and then you tear it apart and you try to analyze and learn from it because that's a failure, right? So you need to learn from it and then pick it up. Like, like to me, remember 80 to 85% of all of my investments fail. So I'm, so 50 out of 100% of investments, 15, maybe 20% are good investments.

The other 80% fail. So I'm failing all the time. And so when I fail in a space, I'm like, why did that fail? Oh, it failed for these reasons. Okay. Now let's invest in the space again in a new way. But so that's not an inner critic. That is like being critical. That's doing critical thinking. Sure. I'm wondering if you like say things to yourself because I'm not getting a sense of it,

which means that it might not be prevalent for you. It might not be an issue. Do you say things to yourself like- Imposter syndrome. Okay. How do you say that to yourself? Like how did you just go? How the hell did I get here? Why am I here? Why is it me? Like, why should I be doing these things? Why do people care about what I say? Like in the book and all that stuff, I was really worried about writing that book. And actually in April, I was scared shitless because I, I pulled back the veneer. I was totally raw and vulnerable. And I, you know, when you read the book, I think he comes across, like I was saying stuff that I wouldn't even tell most people, but I was telling

it on a scale that was much larger because I said, this needs to be told and I need to resolve it for myself because it was catharsis for me. So I needed, how do you work on the, how do you work from the inside? Like, is it, is it writing meditation? Is it therapy? Is it a wisdom council that you have? Is it your, so, so, so one is having mentors around me or having other people who, who are, were kind of peers who can really call me on my shit. Okay. I have my kids. Truth tellers. Yeah.

Just like, oh, oh, really got me, man. I, for, for build, I had a co-writer,

Dina Levinsky. And, you know, she, she, she, it was, she was with me since the early nest days.

She'd call me on my shit. I called her on her shit. So we were always battling it out throughout the book because she saw a lot of this stuff. You know, I also get very quiet sometimes when I know I'm not doing the right thing. And I then talk to some friends about it and just go, hey, well, here's what I'm thinking. And this is what I'm feeling. Because to me, when I know a conversation goes awry, I feel it so viscerally that it doesn't leave me for days. And so through that, I have to then, I feel guilt, some weird guilt. Maybe it's because I was Catholic. I feel this guilt. And I'm like, if I don't resolve this, this is going to hang with me for a long time. And because I ruminate, like I shouldn't have said that. And I'm like, OK, how's the best way to come back and apologize or look, reframe it?

Or what was I really trying to say here? You know, like in the book, the assholes chapter was rewritten eight times because there was so much emotion to finally tear down to get to what the points were or fuck massages, that chapter. How do we get to the real core of what I'm trying to say and strip away the emotion and get to that? Because I have so much emotion, you know, and so many gut instincts that sometimes it doesn't come out clearly, you know, because I know what I, I know what I want to say, but it comes out emotionally instead of rationally and distilled down. So I have this kind of inner sense in me that I think I did wrong.

I check it outside and then I go, okay, what can I learn from that? So it retrains my brain so I don't do it again. And also try to do the healing if there was any trauma that I created in others. Yeah, I imagine like, you know, you've broken some glass. You've got an energy about you that is compelling, exciting. There's a lot of intensity. It's a double-edged sword, man. That's, yeah.

Have you done well in your life with relationships? Look, I'm working with people that I worked with 30 years ago. We work every day together. So without a doubt, because of relationships are not transactions, right? And you go through the ebb and flow, the ups and the downs, and you help people a lot. I try to help people. And I've always learned that if I help people,

I don't look for a quid pro quo, usually comes back to me 10X bigger than I ever thought, right? So the more I pay it forward, if that's the right term for it, I've always seen it come back to me in some ways. And that's either whether it's advice, good advice that I give or connections or linking people up or whether it's I give the hard advice, the truth. And people hate you for it and they might hate you for five or 10 years, but then they come back.

And I've had so many emails from people going, I hated working for you. You pushed me. You were just a complete, for me, mission-driven asshole. But you know what? You pushed me beyond my limits. You saw something in me I didn't see. And you made me make myself become a better person because you wouldn't let me just skirt by. That's when I know that I'm

doing the right thing and I'm doing it for the right reasons, even though it could be, I have to soften it. But when you say those truths, hopefully in a nice way that can be, it resonates with the person. Even though it's hard to hear, it comes back tenfold later, because who knows what it is, because that's when you show you care. That's caring, is giving people time and your advice and trying to help, right? Even if it hurts at certain times. So on this blend between people and purpose or people and mission and vision, I wonder if you could pull me into the first 100 days at Nest.

And my working thesis is that in those first 100 days, you can't win, but you can definitely lose. You can lose your people. You can lose your money. You can lose the vision. You can lose your way. And so can you pull me in to help me understand from those first hundred days, what are some of the most important lessons that you could share

with other folks that are starting anything new, whether it be a new company or a new family, or they're now a mom or dad or a parent for the first time, the first hundred days at nest as a framework. So the first hundred days, so before we, I think, you know, there's the kind of the official date of when it started versus the build up to it. So let's talk about the hundred days around, not just after the sake, we're going to do it, but up to it. So it was me discovering the pains out in the world. I had already been feeling the pains for about five, six years. And then I was like, okay, now it's time. I'm going to take up this pain and I'm going to see if I can make a painkiller.

So I started looking at the business, reading online, all this other stuff. Then I pulled in a person, Larry Gussin. Larry, I'd known since college. He'd always called me on my shit. He was a researcher. He would like be all over the place. And Larry, I'm like, Larry, I've known since college. He'd always call me on my shit. He was a researcher. He would like be all over the place. And Larry, I'm like, Larry, can you help me with some research on this thing? Because he was always just very clear cut. He's like, sure, I'll help you. And then he's like, oh, I have this other woman. She just graduated. We could bring her on, too. And she didn't know anything about the space. So I'm like, sure, bring her on. If you think she's great, okay. So, and then I brought on,

then I talked to Matt, Matt Rogers, and I gave him the idea. And I started pitching him the idea. It's like, oh my God, that's great. I need to do this. And then he started going every day, like we got to do this thing together. Then I started telling other smart people around me

of the idea. And they were like, yes, that was good. And this was people who I knew for 15 or 20 years at General Magic and said, yes, I want to join this. And there was other people said, are you crazy? Are you nuts? This is the stupidest idea ever. The iPod guy shouldn't be doing this. Right. But I started building this team around this mission of, you know, the, you know, saving energy. It was really about saving energy and being more comfortable and saving money and doing it in a way to help the planet overall. And so that was the mission. And people were joining the mission and it got stronger and stronger. We changed things and we

kept changing things. And this little team just kept building and building, you know, the ideas and throwing things overboard and adding new things and trying and changing, then I would go out to, again, more friends as it got better and said secretly, hey, this is what I'm thinking about doing. And one person said, hey, I'll write you a check right away. I'd love to invest in this. Right. And then when I asked another person, because at this point, now this is, Nest is different because it wasn't the early part of my career. I didn't have all the success in my, this is a later part of my career. I didn't have all the success in my career. This is a later part of my career. So everyone's like, anything that Tony's doing, I want to be involved with.

It's usually how it goes now. And so it's kind of difficult sometimes to always get true feelings about what I'm trying to do. But I surround myself with people who will call me on my craft. So more and more people were joining this thing and it was becoming this movement. And at some point, I was just like, I got to do this. Who is going to do this? Like nothing out there even addresses half the things we're trying to do, solves the problems we're doing. And who else is going to be crazy enough to invest in a small team building a thermostat?

Right. Internet connected. So it's like and this is going to really help the planet and change the way people think about things and help. I'm like, shit, I got to do this now. The money's coming. The people are showing up. The mission's coming together. It's like, OK. And I just had to throw myself into it.

And that's how it really started. And then after that, the snowball just kept rolling downhill and growing bigger and bigger and bigger. So, but I don't, I think that anybody who has a really good mission and enough smart people around them can do the same thing. Maybe it'll be a little bit more difficult. Remember, this was 2010, just after 2008 financial crisis, right? And so it wasn't like it was the best of times.

It was not necessarily good, especially for anybody doing climate technology, but we found the right people and the people who really want to support the mission. And they, they got behind us. So the first hundred days was just forming that team, getting the people around you whittling away and strengthening your stories and saying, we don't know everybody, everything, but would you help? Right? Too many people when they're on a mission or on a building

something, they think they have to know everything. They don't ask for enough help. So it was asking for help, getting people involved. What do you see? And again, owning that idea, giving that idea up to people, saying, what do you see? What do you see? What can we do? How can we make it tested, make it better? So it was all of those things. It's that kind of petri dish of different ideas, all fighting it out and coming together to form a bigger organization, organism. Very cool. Thank you. I mean, feel the pain, clarify a solution, clarify a mission. Understand the why. Understand the why that resonates with other people and be able to communicate the why to and then that's where you start to at you're asking for help which is really the people part there's the vulnerability that you share in that which is remarkable

and so and noted and the why thing that came from steve is, if I understand. The storytelling of why I saw on display at Steve, with Steve, he was a master at it. And then we took it to a whole nother level at Nest and codified it and made sure we understood it from every single aspect of customer touch points of the customer journey and broadened it further than Steve had. Yeah, I'm sure it was in his brain, but we actually made it like almost a Bible for how we went off and thought about problems and how to solve them and make sure we were resonating at every, we engineered marketing. If that makes any sense, we literally had an engineering process for how to do messaging and marketing so that we made sure that we were not losing the plot

at every single touchpoint along that customer journey. And that's all in the book. When did you sell, Ness? What year? End of 2014. So I worked with your senior leadership team. And I think- What year? What after you sold? was i was in my head i can go look but i think it was like i thought it was 2015 16 okay yeah like they were switched on

i remember we did some stuff to help them get out of their comfort zone they swallowed it like they went for it it was a lot of fun and so i but i think it was after i'm sure It was a lot of fun. And so, but I think it was after, I'm sure there was a lot of changes after you left, but I don't know how involved you are in like 2015, 2016. 2015, I was there. 2016, I was wrapping up. So, but, you know, when you have a team that wants to learn and to do better, that's amazing. And we wanted to make sure that we were growing the team as we grew so that we were growing from the inside and growing the individuals, because the more that those individuals believe the mission and they believe that you're supporting them and you're trying to grow them. Not everyone grows with the team, but enough people are growing with it. You create this culture that's like, I wouldn't go anywhere else. And this is something I want to do. And, and that's when they see, when they see something better, they don't get defensive. They devour and say, what else can we do? Because they're so, they want to, they want to raise the bar for themselves and the whole team. And that's the

most rewarding thing. You can build products, but building cultures and teams that last, and this is like general magic. We are still together. Most of us are still together as best friends. 30 years later, the nest team, the same thing. And they go off to do their own startups. Now there's a bunch of nest ex nesters who created startups out and they're recreating those teams and those cultures and taking and making even what we built in the process is even better. And that's what's beautiful. So you don't just build a product or you don't just build a service, but you build a mentality, a mindset, a way of working and a network of people like that. So you can continue generation after generation to do that. To me, that's your soul. I don't believe in the ethereal soul. I believe your soul is what you

plant in each person on this planet. And they remember you even when you're gone and they live and take those things that you imparted to them and build on top of it and, and, and instill it into the next generations and the next generations and the next generations. That is a person's soul. That's what people remember. So the next big mission, speaking about like making a difference in people and illuminating something special is about environment and climate change. Yes. And what,

not only are you just donating the proceeds from the book that you wrote, build, but you're going to five X, whatever the book makes. If it makes a million, you're going to donate 5 million to what fund are you supporting? So it's the Build Climate Fund. And that's going to be run by my team and I going out. And because that's what we do every day is find these businesses and back them. And then as they grow and we help them, we mentor them. And if there's any profits and proceeds from that, we put it back into the build fund to go back out again. So it's an evergreen fund that keeps rolling the money through. And then ultimately any profits that we see are going to go to climate focused philanthropic funds. So there's no money that's going to come back to the team or I in terms of like big windfalls. What this is supposed to be is an

evergreen fund to continue this culture, this creation of generational companies that can help our planet and sustain it. Because even if we get to 2015, we're going to need more things after that because we're going to continue to grow and build on this planet. So that's my hope with the outcome of this book is that a lot of great entrepreneurs doing really hard things or people inside of big companies doing really hard things get inspired by the book, learn some things to use those tools so that we can then make the money, 5X match the money, and then continue to create more and more and more so that it becomes a real movement, not just of one team, but a whole set of teams and a whole set of people who can then go off and change the world en masse everywhere on the planet. So you buy the book, build, and not only do you get 30 years of insights and best practices in digestible, snackable bits of powerful information, but you also are putting 5x that back into the climate. That's a win. Absolutely. Win, win, win. I like win, win, wins. When that happens, you know, magic can happen. It's awesome. Tony, thank you. I feel like I could spend so much time

with you, but I bet a lot of people feel that way about you. Thank you for making a difference in the planet. Thank you for making a difference in our community. And I their mastery, finding like some way, something that moves them. Because it takes all of us working together to help, you know, make movements. So you do what you do at your level. I do what I do at my level. And it takes all of us and all the teamwork, wherever you are, to be able to change this planet for the better.

So thank you for doing what you do. And thank you for having me on the show. And I hope the listeners had learned something from this and can take this on and build great things and change the world for the better. It's awesome knowing you're on the planet doing what you're doing. And so again, I feel everything you just said, gratefully appreciating it. And again, Tony, thank you. I hope our paths cross in person soon. Absolutely. And they did at Nest. I. I hope our paths cross in person soon. Absolutely. And they did at Nest. I'm sure there's more things we can do together. So I'm looking forward to seeing what we can manifest together.

Come on, Tony. Let's go. All right. Peace, man. Okay. You too. Bye now. All right. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe

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