Off-Nominal - 200 - On the Interstages of Giants (with Matt Gjertsen)

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Matt Gjertsen, founder of Better Every Day Studios, to talk about leadership and management development in the space industry (and elsewhere!).TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 200 - On the Interstages of Giants (with Matt Gjertsen) - YouTubeBetter Every Day StudiosFollow MattEasily listen to Leadership Launchpad – Team Development, & Performance Improvement for Aerospace & Technology Managers in your podcast app of choiceEasily listen to A VC, a Headhunter, and a Trainer Walk into a Bar in your podcast app of choiceFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Happy 200th episode, everybody. 200 today. Whoa. A meaningless divisor based on how often we do the show, which has drifted over the course of those 200 shows. Yes. It's not like a clean four-year mark.

It doesn't matter how you got there. It's still 200. We got 200 of these in the, well, we have an hour to go, but then we'll have 200 of these in the pocket. But I realized that we probably didn't count happy hour, though, did we? Just happy hour? No, no, no. That's what I mean. All right. Happy 200 and or that show that we did in the Mexican restaurant by Cape that we got all sorts of bad feedback on. And somebody said, never do this again. And we said, never do this again. Now we're probably going to do another one.

You'll never get between me and some guacamole. So we have, let's see if I say this right, Matt. We have Matt Gertzen. That, so we say it a much, more unsophisticated way here in the States where we just say Jertsen. We just do silence. So like George. So we lose that European flair. Jake's practicing for his upcoming trip to Scandinavia. So yeah.

And it's very hard because those jays, they should be H's to me. That's what I'm used to. And then, yeah, that's one of those letters where. Yeah, now they're like ours. We have a different take on this. That's like come on you guys. All right. Matt Jersen.

So yeah, we're excited to have you. You were one of the people who answered the call. We put out a call and said, we need people to come on and fill some slots. Well, we get our shit together candidly and you answer the call. So thanks for coming. Yeah, no, I'm really excited. I've been listening to you all for a long time. I'm always looking to talk about it.

It's funny because even though I've been kind of working in the aerospace industry for my entire life, I spend most of my time talking about learning and development, talent development, kind of more the core thing that I do. And so any chance I get to combine those in any way, I'm loving it. Well, maybe I assume we will get to the crux of this entire thing by the end of the episode where we find out that the hardest problems in going to space is not rocket problems as people problems, right? That's what we're going to get to.

Yeah, that's it right there. That's the whole point. Got it. Awesome. You got a fun drink with us today, Matt? Yeah. So I just got a house IPA from, I'm up in Northern California, and this is from a brewery called Beriasa Gap in winters.

So that's what I brought. How north are we talking? We are direct, it's a town called Vacaville, so it's directly in between San Francisco and Sacramento. So, yeah, honestly not, California is such a big state. It's honestly not that far north. Yeah, it's mostly north, but not all the way. There's a lot more.

California has the, it has the same sort of effect. I'm from Alberta and Canada, and that province has the same sort of situation where, like, you say southern Alberta, you're talking about Calgary and you say northern Alberta, and you're talking about Edmonton, but Emmington's like right in the middle. Like everyone is in the bottom half.

And so it's kind of funny, there's this whole other, like enormous part of the province where nobody lives, and that's actual northern Alberta. But yeah. Yeah, that's exactly California right there. Waited for the people. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'll be out in and around your way, Matt, in a couple of weeks. Oh, fantastic. We've got some itinerary changes that we're making to a trip in July. So I'm going to look at the map and I'll tell you how close I am approaching at this point because I don't know exactly what towns were ending up in. Excellent.

We're right over the hills from like Napa Valley and everything like that. So, yeah. It's good stuff. Sounds like a nice place. Let me know. Big trees. In the news lately, California. Big California news lately.

Yeah, probably better reasons to be in the news, but we're in the news. Big time for California. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Leadership problems. On that note. Yeah, on the note of leadership problems, that is, yeah.

Jake probably made a crazy drink and I cut him off. He wants to show us. I'm drinking another beer from a local brewery. I don't even remember which one I grabbed, but I put it in a cup and I forget which one I poured in here. Excellent. that cup of beer matches your current house situation. It's like, it's just there. It's just 69 cent cup.

There's nothing, there's nothing more to say about it at this point. It's a beer. Just take your wins, right? It's the one cold thing in this office. So it's great. I do have something really weird today and I bought it with zero knowledge on what I'm supposed to do with it. So I found this. And, well, liquor, uh, 440.

3 is like a it's like a cream liqueur I think I've never really had it but I've seen before and then it's got like some sort of like Mexican coffee mixed in it coffees oh with coffee okay I can see this a little bit better now 100% yeah so and it's like 10% so like I think you can just drink that straight like doesn't I don't see a reason why you couldn't drink that straight it says to shake it so I'll do that and then it just says have it cold I don't know what this is so I just I got like a 85% sure you're supposed to water that down in a cold brew concentrate-like way, and this is about to be horrible. We'll find out.

I'm looking forward to this first sip and the facial reaction of the first step. I'll do a little bit. I'll do a one shot. It looks pretty like. It's like cough medicine. Oh, I don't know. It looks kind of like a glue or something. I don't know.

Oh, it's definitely coffee. It had 40, it was 43 things with coffee in it. Oh, that's great. All right. Great review. Yeah. If you know, if you know what clue is,

you know what this is. But okay. A little more. Cool for it. Now he's like, I'll fill it all. I'll fill it all the way up. All right.

Yeah. I'll go all the way with that one. Cheers, Matt. Also, Miko executive producer. Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

For like a long time. Look at this. Yeah. It's portrayed in the show, Jake. Bought his way on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. A to play over here. You have a really, interesting backstory and many interesting locations at which you operated and probably gave you great perspective for opining on leadership in space. So we probably should start with some origin story and hear about this path for the industry. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's been an interesting ride for sure. I think it actually started when I was about 13 years old. I grew up near a little a local airport up in Washington State.

And me and my friends would ride up there and we'd be riding our bikes around the airport and checking out planes and everything. And they would all be like, hey, well, they would all say, hey, we're going to fly. We're going to be pilots when we grow up. And I just had to one up them and said, well, I'm going to fly the space shuttle when I grow up. And so I was always really into space. And so that's what led me to the Air Force. I went to the Air Force Academy.

I spent about a decade flying in the Air Force. went off the path of, you know, there's obviously a very clear path to becoming an astronaut that way, but it's a very, very narrow path. And so when I left active duty, I wanted to still get closer into the space world. And so I kind of networked my way into SpaceX, where I didn't have any connections, didn't know how I was going to get there, but I managed to connect with somebody who was the head of the launch site who said, hey we need help with with training can have you ever done that and I was like well sure I've been an instructor pilot so I can I can train folks why not and so then started to say training like

generally like you had any idea going in of we were going to train or for what nope no just stuff at the launch site and that that that's the weird thing so when you come from out for most people like you don't even necessarily know that learning and development is a thing I didn't until I started doing it. But really in a lot of organizations, it's bringing kind of the science behind what is good learning to everything, right? And so we're commonly put in the situation where we're working with subject matter experts. We're sitting down with a technician who's been working on the rocket for 10 years and figuring out, okay, let's take your knowledge and distill it down and put it into a format that is then easy for other people to digest.

And so leading the training development team, we were doing that for technical training. We were doing that for leadership development, for onboarding and all that jazz. And then I left SpaceX after four and a half years for another startup in the LA area. And then about three and a half years ago, started Better Everyday Studios,

where now we do leadership development for all kinds of organizations. You know, we've worked with VAST, with Virgin Orbit, to help really help create those like frontline managers. You know, the tagline I always use is we turn great engineers into great managers. So it's as you're making that first transition. That's what we focus on. Is it easier to make an engineer into a manager or a manager into an engineer?

I'm going to ask you the Armageddon question. Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that, I mean, that's the hard thing with a lot of stuff is you have to have that technical expertise. Like people spend years, obviously getting, getting their education in order to become managers and there's no replacing, or in order to become engineers. And there's no replacing that. But then it's when you make that transition, it's being deliberate about realizing this is a new role that has new skills that you need to take the time to learn. Yeah, yeah. I come from the corporate world. So the learning development is like, this is all, this is all code speak to me. I'm just like,

I'm flipping over to an old mode in my brain right now. I'm back. I'm back. Let's throw that at the wall and see what sticks. You know? Yeah. Old firmware is in there somewhere. Yeah,

it's in there somewhere. We always had that problem, though. Like I worked for Best Buy and we had big problems with people that were great salespeople in the floor and then you promote them to managers and then they would just just fail. Like just, that's just a disaster. And it's like, yeah, it's, so it's an interesting challenge. I imagine the engineering is the exact same thing. You find these great engineers who can fix any problem on a rocket.

You're like, can you manage people? And it's just like an entirely different animal. Yeah. And actually, I've been spending a lot of time recently asking a lot of friends of mine why it's so difficult, people that I worked with at SpaceX. And I think the number one thing that I keep coming back to is that, you know, when engineer, the whole job of becoming an engineer is learning how to, solve problems. That's why you become an engineer. Everything is about how you bring these different

tools to solve problems. And at least for surface level problems, like when you become a people manager, it's all about not solving problems or helping others solve those problems. And the way one person put it is the transition is like you've spent your whole life or your whole career trying to be the one up at the chalkboard, showing people how all the stuff works together. And now you're supposed to be the person in the back of the room asking questions. And that's a hard transition to make. But I think it's just, it's a really important transition because in my opinion, kind of as you said at the beginning of the show, you know, when we, and we even talked about

this a little bit over email, you know, we talk a lot about the technology. We talk a lot about the financing. But it really, most companies fail because of leadership. They're making either they're making the wrong decisions. They can't hold on to key talent. I was working at a company once where they had an, they had 8% attrition per month. So they were replacing the entire company every year.

You can't have a successful company if that is your situation. And most of that comes down to leaders and frontline leaders, especially. Yeah. I'm playing in my head a fun game of guest the company. So it was not SpaceX. Okay. No, no. That was 80% every month.

But there's that saying, though, that people don't quit their job, right? They quit their boss. And so that's a, that's part of that, right? But yeah, that's well, I know. I'm really excited to. I know. Totally back. They're all coming back. And it's just like, oh, yeah, it's a, it's a change management problem. So, yeah, I'm excited to talk about that because it's, you're right. Like, you know, we're in the business, you know, Anthony and I have talking to people about which, which company is going to do great. things in which company's not and why is this is this strategy sound or is it not sound or is this rocket good or is it not good we're like just constantly adjudicating the technology and then sort of like how you apply that technology i guess would be the next derivative down from that but man that people behind that is i feel like that's a big part of it but we don't get to talk about it a lot because it's it's a personal thing for a lot of people and you don't necessarily want that to come out right it's also yeah no there's no insight whatsoever and even if you do get direct insights. You talk to one person, you're like, hey, is this a good place to work? And they'll go,

oh, it's fantastic. Or like, oh, no, my manager was a douchebag. And it's like, well, you're just literally one data point. And I don't know if that's a you problem or them problem. And so, like, you can't even derive that. Like, you can't, you can't even go on, you know, the blue word on subreddit and go, oh, there's five people complaining about the culture there. And you're like, well, it's five out of like six thousand people. So like, this isn't actually meaningful data. And I don't know what's true. Right. So it's like, you can never actually get anywhere trying to figure that out. So I'm excited to kind of, I know you're not going to, like, we're not going to stack rank the companies by leadership quality. I'm excited to just,

I'm excited to hear sort of like your insights on that. Yeah. Well, and, and I think you're 100% right is it is, you can't make blanket decisions or blanket statements about companies because there's all these different subcultures and different leaders. I mean, uh, the last company that I worked for, I, I think I learned pretty quickly that my way of working, was very opposed to the way the company worked. Like we were just, we had different vibes. They were very much like a show up late, but then stay later kind of culture where I got a young family.

And so I'm like, I want to show up early and they get home in time for dinner. But I stayed there for two and a half years because I had an amazing manager. Like, like she was just like, she allowed me to work in a way that I don't think would have worked in the rest of the company. And so was it, was the company the right fit for me? Probably not. But was the job a good fit for me? it was and it was because of the manager. And so, yeah, I think you're right, different.

It is tough to paint with a broad brush of which companies are doing it well and which companies aren't. But I honestly think a part of that is because the norm is not devoted enough attention, especially to leadership at the lower levels. And so there isn't necessarily a company, you know, a right way to do things that's even defined in a lot of organizations. I think the combo of people makes a big difference, right? Because if you have like, you know, you could even have the same manager and the same group

and then one new entrant comes in and changes the dynamic and it doesn't work anymore, right? And the manager is not to deal with it. And then it's all falling apart. You could have like pocket departments that are good or bad, you know, like, you know, this department's dragging the company down or this one's a bright star and the whole thing. Or you can have higher level stuff, you know, up at a director or VP level that's going to be doing weird stuff and affecting a whole. whole branches of the company.

Like there's so many combos. You can even have a whole company that's working really well together under a certain style. And if you like switched half the people with another company, everything would fall apart, right? Just because like that worked for that company in this combination of people. You have you have bad employees that move companies and become good employees. You know, like it's like so hard to figure out what the issues with that. And that's, yeah, it's challenging to try and figure out what's going on in space.

In the chat that will help also is, and I don't know why it went over there, is in your current capacity, are you working, like interfacing with the companies and trying to help them or individuals or both? Is it, what's the deal? Yeah, right now we focus on the companies. So we're going into organizations and helping build those programs to, to train everybody in their organization. So whether that's their very first leadership development program, if they're a startup, or it's making adjustments to their to their programs. So that's where that's where we work right now. We have thoughts to change that in the future, but that's where we are right now. it's just i mean but it's also the fact that you've been in in companies and organizations at kind of both angles right where certain roles you had you were probably looking at it from the more company derived directive or direction and other times you were you know one of the cogs in the wheel and so you have that insight on on like does that i guess it probably helps you address like jake was illuminating all the different variations that you have in this of like which one

of these things is true is it like this squeaky wheel is squeaky because they're not fit for the system or the system is stifling it out of this person. And, you know, that feels like probably the biggest part. Because there's also the case where somebody might want to institute a certain system at a company-wide level, but then there's little fiefdoms in there that are like, no, no, but we're going to be a little bit more creatively chaotic and flexible with the personalities that we have. So it's mushy stuff, but that seems really hard to diagnose.

Is it like a grand scheme thing that you're trying to go after? Yeah, and I think it's the thing that I often say about, this is true about a lot of things, like anything can work and nothing can work. Like you just have to be deliberate about it. And I think that's the most important challenge. I often say that companies that most disdain red tape are the ones most likely to be consumed by it because they think red tape, you know, they think bureaucracy is a waste of time, so they just ignore it. But red tape and bureaucracy is almost like, a law of nature and that it just starts to occur and grow inside organizations. And so really the only way to make sure it stays under control is to treat it that way. Treat it like a lot,

like give it the resources, give the resources that it's due so that you can plan for that kind of stuff and make sure the red tape or the bureaucracy that is created is created in as minimal fashion as possible. And I think the same thing is true with leadership is it's less about saying, do we allow fiefdoms or don't we? Or do we allow chaos or don't we? It's about making a choice and being deliberate about what do we stand for? What does leadership mean for us as an organization? How much variance are we going to allow?

And then putting processes in place that allow that to happen. I'm a friend of mine, a former SpaceX, actually, he's starting a company. I was talking to him about it yesterday. And he's saying they're trying. to create a company that bucks against the trend. We're right from the beginning. They're going to deliberately say,

we don't want people working 100 hours a week. We only want people working a certain way, but we still want to move really quickly. And so they're spending all of their time right now trying to figure out, okay, if that's true, what are the processes that we have to have in place so that everybody knows what's going on,

so that everybody can make decisions quickly, so that everybody has the information that they need. and it's and it's and it's and it's just it's not a right or wrong it's just a choice that they're making to structure their company that way and lead their company that way and then they'll see if it works yeah that's sort of like that yeah yeah that's sort of like the one the one leadership topic that seems to be very prevalent in the community right is as you have kind of these two ends of the spectrum you know I don't know how true this is like as a broad statement but what is often talked about is that you know you go to SpaceX if you want to work 80 hours a week and just bust your ass and it's like that's your life.

And then when you're tired of that, you retire to Blue Origin where you can have a life and a family. And then that's that's the, that's the meme, right? I don't know how true it is, but that's the meme. Yeah. But it's funny to think about that because like, you know, when I think about the idea of working 80 hours a week, like, I would never ever do it. I just like, no thank you. That would not work for me. But there are some people that thrive in that.

They just, they love that. Right. And so it's like, that's like a perfect example of, of a leadership style, a leadership decision that isn't, isn't inherently right or wrong. It's just that's a choice. And then you find the people that work with it and see if you can make it go, right? It's tricky. It's a hard problem, man. Yeah.

And then there's the aspect of like the people that in that in your friend's company that with that message that you're going to hire, right? Are you getting the people that formerly were 80 hour a week people that now want to tone it back because they had kids? But you're still going after the talent that. knows how to work that other way and like has that mentality or is it no whatever like if they used to be at some desk job that was fairly boring for 40 hours a week but they just want to work in space now like you know there's there's still subsets of that still yeah yeah and then and what if somebody comes in that just was like well I got down a rabbit hole and I worked an extra five hours because I got really hooked on something is that admonished within the company culture like is

that if that's their guiding light they have to right you have to like you have to like rule that way. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where the challenge is going to be. I'm really interested in keeping up with him to see how it goes because I don't think it's possible to like find somebody who's worked at SpaceX. They wouldn't agree with the statement is that there that there is a lot of,

for lack of a better term, wasted work like because you're just moving so quickly. You're doing so many things. It's just natural. I mean, I mean, just look at pad one and pad two in South Texas. Like clearly there's just a whole new thing going on. But the question is, is it truly, is it possible to move that fast or get that much done and get and have that innovation without that much waste? I don't know.

Nobody knows. That's the thing. Yeah. And so that's where I think it's really exciting that we're starting to get these second layers of layers of companies of kind of like post-Space companies. that was there was having kids now and they've reassessed their balance of life yeah yeah yeah i get it too i'm also there right like i've got a almost five-year-old and almost one-year-old like totally understand what have been five shift that happens yeah we've all just grown up together and now everyone has kids

and they're like oh yeah i just literally can't work that much like there's it is physically impossible to sustain human life and also work that many hours so we need to figure out yeah but okay so here's my biggest question especially with regards to the the SpaceX of it all right we see everywhere else in the industry, the shit that Jake and I analyze, everybody's doing their best SpaceX cosplay to try to instigate themselves as like a new, you know, competitor that grinds as hard as SpaceX and can perform. And that's from the marketing perspective or from the methodology they use to test and fly and everywhere that is visible. Is this the case where like culturally people are trying to mimic SpaceX in that way too? Is SpaceX even a cultural

outlier internally? Is that what makes them the outlier in the industry? how does that work internally? Definitely companies are there are plenty of companies that are trying to emulate that that are saying like, yeah, you know, they're choosing to answer this question

of the reason they're successful is because they're working so hard and so we're going to work just as hard or just as long. There are definitely companies that are trying to do that. But there are also companies that are trying to do it differently.

I mean, this is honestly why I've never worked with them at all, so I have no inside knowledge, but why I'm so interested in Stoke space, because they feel like, to me, they're kind of like the first post-reuse company, right, in the sense that they started after, like, okay, like we know reuse is a thing. And so they have a lot of insights with that, whereas almost every other company is having to kind of like, re-steer their ship over the last couple years, if they had a particular direction. And so maybe the reason why the rocket labs of the world aren't able to,

haven't moved as quickly as because they're having to kind of change their strategic direction, whereas Stoke's base is like, here we go. And they're just, they're moving so quickly with such a small team. I'm really, I personally really want to know what's going on in there and like how, how they're doing that because I think they're the ones that I'm watching it. seem because I don't also I also don't hear I at least haven't heard that they're famously working 100 hours a week or you know they're famously not they're famously not exactly doing that right I've had the founder on the show and we've talked about that specifically because it's it's like

the third leg of Jake's joke of work really hard at SpaceX retired of blue origin and then it's like but when you're going to want to get a little bit more done than that go to stoke space like you have your family now and you still want to work a family schedule but you want to get a little bit more done, head over to Stoke is how it feels like they would like that rejoinder to be. Which, I don't know, I mean, they are, I kind of am buying your theory that because they are, are, have come about in the, in the post reuse era, they are going at it with even more of a clean sheet than the prior generation. And so they can cut out a lot of things that they might have thought they needed to do in

the first place. And they can start with their upper stage. rather than the first stage, you know, like that's a thing that they started with and it made a lot of sense. Yeah. And also, you know, from the interstages of giants. From, you know, from like a leadership perspective, like it was clearly a decision where they've devoted so much effort to their, you know, manufacturing software for the software that they use to control everything and to tell them what they're going to do, that they now sell that software. And so that was a decision that like, oh, in order for us to. move at the pace that we need to move, without working so hard, we need a tool that is really

going to clearly make all the information available to everyone and keep us all very alive. And so they devoted enough resources to that to make a custom tool for them. And so again, you know, because- Terrifies me as an idea. Like, you know what is stopping the space companies from being efficient software? What should we build first software? Like, oh, that's- all right. SpaceX did it too, right?

SpaceX with Warp Drive, like they have a terrifying prospect though, of like, this won't distract us at all? No, yeah, exactly. This is a one-end-done job. It's software. How are it going to be? But if you step back, so when I think about what it means to be a manager or a leader,

I think there are three things that you are responsible to do. You have to get people to work together. You have to get them working on the right things, and you have to improve their work over time. and that get them working on the right things is really, really hard when you're moving fast, right? Because there's so, you know, things are all constantly changing.

These are really complex machines. And so I can understand why somebody arrives at the conclusion that software is the problem that's limiting that function of a leader because we're not, you know, getting information out there cleanly enough. That just hit me hard because I'm in the middle of a project, which is a brand new app. and we're on that phase of like, well, the thing that everyone assesses is the next thing to be done is not the same across the entire team. Because whatever your exposure to it is, it's like, well, no, but that part's clearly unfinished.

I should go work on that. It's like, I thought that was something that should be in 1.1 or two. Like, that is not the thing that we're worried about right now. Yeah. So that's all that. But what I did first was that I built this piece of hardware that would actually organize all of our work on the software. And that way we just look at it and they say, okay, that's what we should do. you. Yeah, it's good, but I'm working on like the, it's like one of those flap displays and the

flaps aren't working well. So I got to fix that before we can build the rest of the software. What did you use to design that? Made a new CAD app. It's AI driven. And here we are. So I invented CAD and then, yeah, yeah, we've yack shaved our way through this entire company. Yikes, yikes. Yeah, but I don't know. I also like totally sympathize with the idea of like trying to get stuff done and just none of your software works. Like I've been in that situation too. Like corporate software. is an absolute nightmare. Like if you go into any like large company as a software developer and look around,

you're like, this is what you work with. Like you have 147 systems that barely talk to each other. Like what are we getting through the day with this? You know, it's brutal. Yeah. I can see that. As software people, I've always wondered, I've always assumed, especially with AI coming out, I think that's going to be more than norm in the future because especially enterprise

SaaS, like the whole name of the game is that they try, they just become like software factories because they're trying to be everything for everyone. And that's what then creates those complexities. Whereas if we eventually live in a world where a good software engineer can just like do a lot more and create and create more systems, I think more and more people will choose to just, more companies will choose to just make their own custom thing,

so that they can get rid of the 80% of features that they don't even use. Yeah. Yeah, the more the older I get, the more I think about like that, I think is it AWS that has like every product in AWS is like siphoned off in its own little app and you can only communicate via APIs. Like there's no, they don't build any giant like infrastructure around it. It's all these little pieces that just talk to each other. And if you want to, yeah, I start to think more and more that's the right way to do it. I don't know. You're going into microservices. He did turn 40. This is our theme. Yeah. We can do the video with the whiteboard. Bingo only knows their name. Jake turned 40 harder than anyone ever. Just unbelievable. How's your Corvette? That's funny.

Is it good? It's a good Corvette color red? This little coffee drink I'm making right here, you know. He's both 65 and 40 harder than anyone you know. Yeah, I already retired to Mexico. Yeah. You're half one's there already. It's just like, yeah.

just looking to make it efficient. I'm looking on the other angle. I'm like 34 harder than anyone you know and trying to be 25 harder than anyone you know. That's my ideal. You're like, I'll make apps, man. I make apps. I ride a bike, you know?

I don't even ever get a good. No, no. I just make apps, not applications. Apps. Apps. Apps. Yeah. That's fantastic.

I haven't considered the word apps in a while. Yeah. It is pretty funny. Matt, can you give us like, what is something that the space industry is doing really well in terms of leadership? Like, just like it's a broad generalization. Like what would other industries look to space to go, man, they got this thing figured out for leadership? I mean, I think the biggest thing that I'm hearing more and more of, I mean, I heard it on your podcast when you had the CEO of, I think it was the CEO of Astroforge was on, talking about how, I think the specific thing you said is as CEO, the number one thing. his number at one job is reminding people of the mission,

is reminding people of what they're there to do. I think generally, so I'll say two things. The companies that are succeeding, I think are the companies that are best at that, of really staying laser-focused on what they're trying to achieve versus, you know, there's famously a few years ago when there were like 150 rocket companies and they were all raising a bunch of money.

And it was like, the priority was raising money or making PR and the priority wasn't the hardware. And so the companies that are doing well, often it is that piece of being really clear about what the most important thing is. As a whole industry, inspiring people is the thing that the whole industry is doing. I mean, it's attracting so much talent right now.

Honestly, I think anybody that looks at a company, you know, at a company like SpaceX or some of the, you know, companies like Uber and some of these really successful tech companies, often people from more of an HR background or a leadership background, we kind of scratch our heads and we look at these companies and they're like, everything that we think about when we think about leadership says these companies shouldn't be working. Why are they working? Why does anybody stay there? Why is this being successful? And the number one answer that I've come back to is that at the highest level,

their leaders are able to create such a clear and compelling vision for a better future and what they're going to do. Like I think that that's what draws the talent. That's what keeps people there. That's what allows people to overlook any of the other like growing pains of a startup is is having that clear and compelling vision. I think that's one thing that the space industry does really really well, at least for people like me who are space nerds.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. Space is kind of blessed with the built-in cool factor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't know it, though, because every company thinks they need to market that as the cool part. I still, this is my, you know, this is my bugaboo Jake, right? Everybody's website is like the first thing to try to do is convince you that space is cool.

And it's like, no, bro, we're already there. Like, this is nobody's like, what? Space is a cool thing. No one in the world feels like that. And they're not shocked to learn that. Yeah. So you don't have to convince them of that part. Just get to the thing.

Why are you unique? One aspect, too, that I've found interesting of, you know, you're talking about coming out of the era of 100 billion launch companies and all these different space companies. There's something, like, location-based that I'm curious about, where Firefly is attracting people that want to live in Austin. And there are people that have joined there that I know moved there because they wanted to live in Austin, but also work on a space company. And, you know, there's a. shrinking population of like long beach companies but there's a couple out there's a couple in seattle there's like these nexus areas that um the the the more the competition whittles down in certain markets if you want to work in space you kind of get to select a couple of cities that you

might want to live in yeah and there's competition from that regard that can outweigh you know to put a fine point on it i've heard like internal firefly dysfunction a lot and yet people like to move to Austin, so that counterbalances what they might hear internally from people that have left. And I find that balance interesting, too, because it's not just everyone's starting up in the same four office parks like it was in, you know, back in the day. So do you ever, and then also, though, there's the other aspect of those, like, there's people that don't want to move to Texas right now for many different reasons. And that's going to negatively impact their ability to go work at Axiom or Firefly or anyone that's in that area. So I'm curious about,

that too. Do you ever talk with companies about their strategy of where they land facilities and look at what competitors are in the area that they might be able to, you know, head hunt from or they might be a draw because they would be unique in this different area? Does that ever come up? It's not our area focus, so it doesn't come up a lot. I think, you know, there's certainly a level of every company wants to believe that they can attract talent from anywhere, you know, that just like whatever their thing is that they're going to be able to bring it in. But again, I would go back to the one thing I would say in terms of the strategy is that's where to the point that was said earlier, you know, people don't leave companies, they leave managers. And so it's all the more reason why

the management is so important. You, because everything else is a crutch that could go away. You know, maybe Austin becomes a not as cool city or there's some other thing that happens where people really don't want to live in Texas or the same thing could happen with California. And so the more you can think about what can we do as a company that doesn't rely on, a particular location or a particular industry trend is really important. And when it comes to attracting talent, the kind of culture you have, the kind of leadership that you have is going to be really essential to that. It's one of the really important parts for attracting talent for sure.

It's something I think about a lot because I think I'm a victim of like growing up in New Jersey in the 90s where it was the 90s, so space was boring and it was New Jersey. So there was no space anywhere close to me. And like I probably would have got sucked into whatever, space company was local if that was the thing at the time that had any cool stuff going on, you know, and so it's both like time but also location that for me as a kid, I'm like, I don't want to live all the way out in L.A. Like I don't really want to move all the way out West Coast.

I don't fit there. And now they're like, it wasn't launcher. They were like up in Long Island for a bit, right? And that was weird. That was like, they were like Brooklyn-y Long Island, something. It didn't last. They ended up advanced. But, you know, there's like,

A different face to the space industry as it gets away from like needing enough space to build an entire rocket and it gets more into manufacturing payloads or doing a constellation. Software. Yeah, software. Yeah, build your version control software. There are other ways to get involved with space that expands the net to areas, people that are in areas that otherwise were had to think of something else to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the big reasons why I, because I'm working on a book right now that's really focused on helping engineers transition and to be managers because I do think clearly with the industry and that with more of like global

technology trends, we're entering a world where, yeah, I think there's going to be a proliferation of the ability to proliferate a lot of smaller and smaller companies that are supporting space. And so we could see a lot more of them. But in order for that to happen, we need these technically minded more of these technically minded people who feel like they are capable of leading organizations so that they can lead that broad expansion of the space industry. That's an interesting thing too, right? You've talked about the challenges of engineers that don't go on to be managers

and aren't good at the people's side or don't want to do that. But, you know, is there a kind of like minimum technicality level you need for a manager to come into the space industry and be effective? Like, you can't really just come out of any other industry, out of the software industry, maybe software is a little bit more applicable, but like out of finance, right? And then be plopped in as a manager. or above a technical team, you still do need some of that insight. So is it more about going into the teams and finding the person who has a good ability to communicate and write and share

thoughts and like managed things and then extracting them and guiding them? Or do you find that there's other places you can go find effective managers that can be plopped into the space industry? I think the easier route is the first one you said. I think it's about finding those people who are already close to the technology and then giving them those additional skills. because you're 100%, I mean, there's innumerable examples of whether it's a technical founder or a technical leader being replaced by more of the business person. The funny thing is is that, yeah, it's like the common trope of we need to bring the adults into the room.

And very often that's when things start to not go as well. Yeah, yeah. And especially in space with the margins being as small on everything that they are, if one of the key principles or responsibilities of a leader is to figure out what things to work on, Well, then you need to be able to make that decision. And the only way you can make that decision is if you understand the technology that's underlined at all. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's the reason.

If you've ever said the phrase, it's only a kilogram. You're not fit to be a manager in a space company. Like, you're out. You have one strike. Get out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You should come up with a list of phrases, if ever said, you are immediately disqualified for this physician. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really interesting question. question that I have not. It's like the next thing on my list to really dive into, you know, the first area of research that I'm asking everybody about right now is, you know, what makes that transition hard. But the second question on my list that I want to get to is exactly that question of like, how technical do you need to be? Because especially when you do make, when you become a

leader, by almost by definition, you're going to become less technical, right? Like you have this new set of responsibilities, this new set of skills that you need to get good at. And so there's almost no way that you can stay as good as you were. Yeah, you'll lose your right. You just, you have to act. But there's like, isn't it that there's an instinctual side of it where like, you're, the part of your brain that that says that ain't right or that is right doesn't go away, even if you don't know how to use the latest software that was developed by the company, you still have that instinctual level that lets you, that gets you to the right decision, quicker than you would if you had to consult with like five people within the company.

Yeah. And so then the question is what's like the minimum level of involvement that you need to keep as you progress in your manager career to maintain that instinct, right, over time? I think that that's the key question of how much of that, because every company, you're still going to have some individual contributor work that you have to do. But how do you make, what's the balance between doing that work so that you can stay technically engaged and not becoming a micromanager and just making every decision you're. yourself because that's not going to work either. Yeah.

And there's like, you know, there's technological paradigm shifts that will wreck some of those instincts, right? Like you can, you can have a good instinct that even if you're not on top of the details like lasts you for, you know, 10 years and then some fundamental thing just turns on its head. And now,

now your instincts are backwards and you got to relearn that. Even if you don't, you know, go back to the, the practice of crafting individual things anymore, like you got to, you got to keep on top of those. And so there's almost like, I don't know, there must,

There must be a continuous learning thing for managers who are managing technical teams where you got to devote some time at least to go back and be like, now you've got to learn how this works. And just so you can be smart. I mean, obviously this is at the highest level. But like Jensen Wong or Elon as well, like the famous thing that they do is like whenever there's going to be a problem, it's like they do take a moment to zero in and really dive and to understand every detail of this new technology.

I just finished a book, the Navidia way that was really clear about that, about the reason why they're able to stay ahead and make the best decisions is because he at the top takes these times to really understand the technical details of problem and kind of, you know, refresh his ground level knowledge of whatever is happening with the technology. So if it's important at the top, it's definitely going to be important every layer in between. Yeah. What's the thing that you go into a company and see most often as like the number one,

oh, you go into Carmen Aerospace. I don't know. I'm trying to make up a thing that probably exists. Does that company exist? Maybe. You go in there and then what are you expecting, you open the door. What is it, what are you that you're expecting to be like, all right, this is the first obvious thing that we're going to fix?

I think the first thing is just defining what it means to be a leader. I think of defining what good looks like. because that's the thing that we always run into in training generally is that people want they say we need training and I say okay how do you want people to be trained or how do you do this thing like oh we need you to figure that out like they haven't defined what good is yet and you have to define that before you can make the training and so if you want to create well you got to train yeah in this case you got to figure out what a manager is like what are what are their responsibilities what do you how do you want them to be involved with with their people. Do you want one-on-ones or not? You know, all these things. That's, I think, generally the first thing that you have to define. Because when I'm working on building programs for companies, it's all about what's the behavior that you're trying to change.

And so you have to define what good looks like. I think that's the most common thing. Is that the answer? Like, if I asked you the opposite question of my first one, it's like, what is something the space industry is doing very poorly? Like, is that what it is? Or is there something below that still? I don't,

that's not unique to the space industry. I think that's, you know, a lot of companies in general and especially a lot of technical company. You know, the more technically minded a company is often, not always,

but often like the more they kind of, you know, step back from that or just focus on, on the technical stuff. And so I think more broadly out, if it's not just the general, not defining what good looks like, I think probably the next thing

that I would say that's common across most technical companies is really having a deep belief and understanding of the people side of things and how important the people side of things are. You know, kind of, again, this is going back to a comment very early on, but I remember when I was working at SpaceX, and it was right after we had landed the first Falcon 9 on the barge, and I was having a meeting with my boss, and I said, okay, so how long as SpaceX existed? You know, it had been like 15 years at that point. And how much money have we spent solving this problem, you know, maybe a billion dollars? How much time has been spent solving this problem? So we've taken 14 years, countless man hours, a billion dollars to solve the problem of how do you land a building on a

football field in the ocean. So it was a big problem that was really hard to solve. Great. Step back. How long have people been spending trying to solve the problem of getting, large groups of people to work together effectively. That's like the defining problem of humanity. And so to me, we still don't have it right. And so to me, by 3,000 BC based on what I'm looking at. So.

Yeah. Yeah. And so to me, like the, like the, that challenge, which is the challenge of every manager is the hardest challenge in any company. And it's, and it's just making sure we kind of have that realization, I think, because I think the tendency, especially in very tech driven companies, is to discount that stuff as less important. And my whole thing is that it's actually the most important thing. Well, I was going to say that that's like almost a, like a cultural thing nowadays, you hear so much. It's like, yeah, like you said, cut out the bureaucracy, which sometimes they mean the managers.

And they, and they say, I'll just, I'll fire all the middle of management and hire a bunch of 10x engineers and we'll just brute force our way through this problem. And it's like, ah, okay, yeah. That sounds like a fun thing to try for you. First thing they do, build more software. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because years ago, I don't know, have you ever heard of Project Oxygen? Google's Project Oxygen? I have.

I don't remember what it is, though. Yeah, it was like, it was around 2010 timeframe. They probably ran it for a little bit. It was in beta once. Yeah, exactly. And then, yeah. Yeah. It was this massive research program that they did.

internally because they wanted to get rid of all their managers. And so they did this big program to determine do managers matter? And they determined yes, like managers are incredibly important. I know it. I canceled it. And then yeah, exactly. They're like, oh, okay, we got the answer. And then we move on from there. That's our project on this podcast is do administrators matter? We keep doing it every couple years and then canceling that project and going, yeah, they probably do. And then we ask it again and then we say, yeah, they probably do. Well, we never got to that. But we've had this whole conversation on private companies,

but we never ever got to the idea of NASA leadership. We may have to have a round two on this one. We'll see. That's going further back in your history, Matt. That's like more to the government side. Exactly. Exactly. It's actually really funny because I remember when I first moved from the Air Force,

because I was in the flying world of the Air Force. Which ones were flying behind you, by the way? What were you flying? So the KC10, which is, I don't know if it's on the screen, there's a model of it right over here that's a little bit off of, of, there you go. Yeah, it's right. Right there is the KC10. And so, where was it going on this? Oh, yeah.

So I'm sitting over in the Air Force and I'm hearing about all these horror stories of how SpaceX and the Air Force are at odds with one another. And they don't work well together. And, you know, SpaceX is suing the Air Force. And so I come from the flying world into SpaceX. And I don't get why there's any contention. Because to me, the SpaceX culture was exactly like the Air Force culture that I was used to, where we're flying missions, we're getting things done. We have a crew chief, a piece of the plane breaks. Can we wave it?

Can we fly anyway? We just, you know, like we're just leaning forward trying to get the mission done. And it wasn't until I left. And so then after I left active duty, I switched into the reserve. and I more recently started serving in Space Systems Command. So like in the part of the Air Force that the that SpaceX was interfacing with. And that's when I was like, oh, this is why there's a problem because, or this is why there's friction. Because the culture in that part of the Air Force was nothing like the culture of the flying world.

And you can immediately see why. This is tough. Yeah. Tracks. That's hard to fly. Yeah. That's why Elon bought an administration. He wanted to fix that, right?

Top down, baby. Let's do it. Well, okay, let's run that one by you. Now there's a space guy in charge of the Air Force. I always talk about this. There was plane people running it for a while. Now there's a space guy. Does this matter as much as I've been told it matters from the outside?

I 100% think it does. It matters a lot. It goes back to what you said earlier of like, what are the initial conclusions that you draw instinctively? It really makes a big difference. There was, I mean, going back, I think it was around 2008, 2009, I forget exactly, there was a whole big mix up, or a big mix up in the Air Force where I think the chief of staff of the Air Force ended up getting fired.

And a lot of it came down to the fact that the leadership forever had been fighter pilots. And they were all about people in the cockpit, people doing things. We need pilots out there on the front line. And what that caused is as Iraq was picking up, there wasn't a lot of very. resources devoted to the drone warfare that was happening. They just weren't resourcing it that much. And so finally, you know, kind of at the secretary of defense level, they're just like, look, all these people, you know, the army guys are dying here. We need more support. And ultimately, it led to a head where they had to change leadership because the assumptions and the conclusions

that one style of leadership was drawing was to not support this stuff that needed to be supported. So I think it can make a huge difference if you have that mentality. the top level. Checks out. Yeah. Yeah. Drone warfare in 08. If only,

if only we put more thought into that, we wouldn't have had the fucking New Jersey craze that happened a year ago. Yeah. Yeah, that's getting. Drono for today is a whole new animal.

That's, I mean, oh, man. Well, no one of you were so easily like, oh, you software guys. How's the AI going? It's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Like, yeah. Yeah. The robots came for your job pretty early.

The drone people don't always look at today's drones and be like, no, that's not what we were talking about. Yeah. Like that's basically nanobots. That's on too far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We hardwired this joystick to the direction we wanted this thing to fly.

Yeah. We'll just run a wire behind it. Yeah. Fly by many wires. Yeah. Fly by many, many wires. All right. Gunny.

You got any Casey 10 follow-on hot takes for us in the ongoing saga of what is the next tanker? Oh, my goodness. I've followed this story in a while. Has there's still drama in that world? There's a deep cut. Oh, there's still tons of drama. Listen, I'm going to talk to the guy that flew Casey 10 on this show, Jake. Come on.

We've got to take our chances when we can. Yeah. There's so much drama in there. The funny thing is, so I flew the KC10. The KC10, most of many of the KC10s that I flew were older. than me because they started coming online in 79. There were only 59 of them in the inventory because they were supposed to be a stopgap. They were they were supposed to be just this classic period where we figured out the replacement to the KC 135 ends up. We replaced the KC10.

The KC-135s are still flying everywhere. And yeah, there's there's a ton of challenges with the KC 46. It's the interim garage of the air force of the Air Force. Yeah, exactly. The Evolves expendable launch vehicle program that is half reusable launch vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The number is crazy on KCs, by the way. KC10, 135, and 46. Put those in order, Jake. I will not. No. No, no. Yep. Exactly right. I will not.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. All right. And again, it all comes back to leadership decisions. Yeah. Jeez. Leadership decisions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Cool. So, Matt, how do, if someone not listening is ahead of a space company and wants to hire you to teach their people, where are they going? Where are we find you on the internet? So I'm super active on LinkedIn. There's a couple people that are running space companies that listen. I know at least.

We know some names specifically that are listening. So this is relevant. Yeah. Excellent. And I also work with, like there's sometimes individual teams, you know, where a director says, hey, we need some help and we can work with an individual team to kind of push them forward. But yeah, I'm really active on LinkedIn. Better Everyday Studios.com is our website. And then I also have a podcast called the Leadership Launchpad, which talks, yeah, there we go, all about leadership development. We bring on a lot of leaders at, you know, at space companies to talk with them about how things are going, going to be. with them. And then another podcast that I'll bring up to check out is a relatively new one that I started up with the folks from Ad Astra Talent Advisors and Space Capital. Yeah, we've got the VHTB podcast where we kind of, just like we were talking about here, we talk about the space industry through the non-technology lens. So it's all the other stuff. It's all the financing side,

the people side, the culture side, that kind of stuff. It's a great title, by the way. So good. And these are people that you've worked with in other areas, or what? How did you all get together in this group? So we all got together in this crew. So Brian, he used to work at SpaceX. And so Brian and SACA, they started their own company supporting space and clean tech and defense companies. And then I can't remember how I met justice from Space Capital.

But yeah, we started talking the beginning of the year. And just kind of like, hey, we think this could be a cool thing. And so we just started doing it. They're just 20-minute conversations where we get together and kind of every one of us brings a question. And then we all talk about it for 15 or 20 minutes. I love it. Love it. We've got links in the show notes.

And in the chat, if you're a YouTubeman, they're there. If you're a YouTubeman. A YouTubeman. One of the U.S. Jake, we're losing you for several weeks, huh? Yeah, yeah. taking my summer vacations. So I don't know.

I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to try and see a little bit of a sabbatical. Yeah. It's not as long. Like last year I think it was like five or six weeks or something. So this year it's not that long, actually. We're going to see if we can pull off a pre-recorded show before you leave. Spoiler alert.

Jerry B, if you're listening, respond to my email because we need to talk about high stakes. And that'll either happen with or without Jake. So it just depends on if we can land that before you leave. beyond that, who the hell knows? I hope I have air conditioning in this studio before mid-June. It's already mid-June, mid-July, because then otherwise I'm going to die in here. I got a rack-mount. I built a rack-mount.

If you want to follow along with Anthony builds the studio, the Discord pre-shows, I am, I guess, showing you around my office that's mostly cardboard and watching me build this thing. So off nom.com slash discord. It was a particularly enticing pre-show. today. I'm sure. Yeah. There's lots of lights and microphone issues.

It was fun. Very little of it works so far. Matt, thanks for hanging out with us. I feel like we did not even get close to exhausting our list of topics. So you're going to be back soon. We'll tackle that does the administrator matter question. That'll be done.

Definitely. That'll be the next thing. Another couple weeks to see what happens. I think so. Yeah. Yeah, let's see what happens next. Let's get an administrator first. Yeah, if there's one in this administration.

Honestly, probably get calcium odds on that, Jake. No NASA administrator gets appointed. I would take that. I mean, that would be a true, true to brand on the executive power vibe, right? Yeah. What happens first? Budget or administrator? You don't have to firm the acting one, right?

I mean, the goal from the on a conservative side is to kind of prove that things can keep going without government intervention, right? So wouldn't that be a good test to run? It's just, like, not have a leader and see if it still works. Janet won't like to hear that, Matt. Janet's going to get up in your comments and your mentions about that. Not saying I'm for it. Not saying I'm for it.

You just got yourself a position as the head of NASA. All right, y'all. We'll see you next week. Bye. Thanks, everybody.