TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #784: The Billionaire Playbook with Chase Koch

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Chase Koch joins Marty Bent to break down principle-based management, the operating system behind Koch Industries' 86 years and 9,000x growth. Chase explains why he stepped down as president of the fe...rtilizer business after nine months, how comparative advantage and creative destruction shape decisions across 140,000 employees, and why sizing your bets to your knowledge beats chasing quarterly numbers. The conversation covers bottom-up AI adoption, Austrian economics, Federal Reserve overreach, motivation beyond money, and the education entrepreneurs building 5,000 new schools outside a broken K-12 system. Principle Driven Leader Book: https://www.principledrivenleader.com/ Stand Together: https://standtogether.org/ Find the Home Mining Playbook here: https://www.tftc.io/home-mining-energy-playbook STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Block: Cash App: For a limited time, new customers can get $21 added to their balance. Just use code TFTC10 when you sign up, and send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Square: Visit http://square.com/go/tftc for up to $200 off eligible Square hardware. Bitkey: Use code TFTC10 for 10% off the new Bitkey. Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/ Disclosure: Bitcoin services are provided by Block, Inc. Bitcoin services are not licensable activity in all U.S. states and territories, and not all services are available in all states. Bitkey is not available in New York. Block, Inc. operates in New York as Block of Delaware and is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Bitcoin is a non-deposit, non-bank product that is not FDIC insured and involves risk, including monetary loss. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures: https://help.cash.app/btcdisclosures Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/tftc! #squarepartner. Offer expires December 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST. Offer for $40 off the cost of one Square Stand, $75 off the cost of one Square Terminal, $100 off the cost of one Square Handheld, or $200 off the cost of one Square Register, excluding applicable taxes. Limited to one discount per product type per seller account. Each code is limited to one redemption per account holder. Valid for new Square customers located in the US only. Offer not valid with guest checkout. Square reserves the right to modify, revoke or cancel the offer at any time. Offer cannot be combined with any other coupon. Void where prohibited, not redeemable for cash, and non-transferable. #squarepartner #blockpartner

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:06 You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Case Coke, welcome to the show.
Starting point is 00:00:38 Marty. Appreciate you having me on. I am honored to have you on as we've been discussing over a couple of conversations over the last few months. We've implemented Coke Industries principle-based management system here at TFTC, and it's been wonderful. Is it working? It is. I think it is working. That's good, man. What have you found is like the most helpful, like right out of the gates to you guys? I think for us, we did a, we probably spent three months doing PBM implementation with a consultant. And through that process, we realized that we had a bunch of knowledge gaps in the company. And we have a relatively small team. And I think that was the most surprising thing is since we're so small, it should be relatively easy to get information and data to every member of the team.
Starting point is 00:01:37 But through the process, we noticed that there are some knowledge gaps. And mainly because I've been running the company, I ran the company as a solo founder for like six or seven years. And we've grown the team over the last two. And there was a lot of embedded knowledge that I built up in my own head over the course of the first seven years that I just took for granted and needed to open up to the rest of the company. Well, good. Well, I appreciate you experimenting with it, you know, and the principles, like what you're talking about on the, knowledge side. Also, there's the framing of having, trying to have a Republic of Science. So, well, you know, Polani's idea of a Republic of Science, whether it's a very small team or like
Starting point is 00:02:19 Coke, we have 140,000 employees and growing to try to get knowledge on a specific problem, to try to get the best knowledge we can from the talent that we have around the world. And then make the best decisions at scale with the knowledge. We have. It's always been one of our biggest challenges, right? But it starts with a mindset of having a republic of science and not thinking about an organization in silos, which I think is a trap that, you know, many companies have is that if you have four or five different companies or even capabilities, right? Sales versus marketing versus operations, you know, whatever the, however your company is set up, how you can work as a team and design knowledge. systems to make knowledge move as quickly as possible to where it's needed most. And we are actually talking about this yesterday because all of the innovation in AI that we're trying to, we're trying to experiment with. And it's been amazing over the last year just to see the company from the bottom up experiment with some of these models.
Starting point is 00:03:37 and not do that from the top down. Sure, we have a vision of leveraging technology and driving transformation with it. But where you get the magic, at least in our experience and learning, is when you can create a bottom-up culture where, you know, it's spontaneous order, where someone has an idea, let's say two businesses in our fertilizer business, and then we have Georgia Pacific, where someone says, you know what, I think some of these folks over in Georgia Pacific and operations can also benefit from this knowledge. And it automatically, that knowledge automatically transfers to those people.
Starting point is 00:04:13 And no one's telling them to do it. No one's from the top down, like waving some magic one is like, oh, you need to tell this person that this, there's no way you can do that in a really large company. So back to what I was saying, like yesterday we're in a meeting and we're thinking, like, how do you create a faster Republic of Science with technology? And so there's so many new models that are being spun up, like with Anthropic, for example, or even a Microsoft co-pilot. We use all these different technologies. And there's amazing models that are being built, but back to the how do you make it so it's not stuck in silos and groups. And the CFO group are just, you know, applying it in their group.
Starting point is 00:04:59 And like, how do you get that over to Georgia Pacific or nor a fertilizer or energy business or whatever? So that not all these groups are making the same model, right? Over and over and over because that drives your cost up and there's also waste and inefficiency in that. So we're just talking about how do you how do you build like a it's almost like an app store, a Coke app store where people can see these are the, you can see the trends within the company of these are the ones that are being used the most and are adding the most value. And hey, why don't you try it on your business instead of starting from scratch. this one's probably 80% all the way there. Right.
Starting point is 00:05:37 So back to your point on knowledge, this is one of our key principles, knowledge and transformation and then also like creative destruction, having every employee have the mindset of one, how do I transfer knowledge across the organization, but how am I like innovating with these models and how fast they're moving and staying ahead to create a competitive advantage for the company? So what you're working on within your shop, we're working on in spades as well. So I think what's cool about principles and knowledge as an example of creative destruction, it can work for one person.
Starting point is 00:06:17 It can work for a 10 person shop or a 140,000 person company. That's where we see we're so excited about what these principles can do. and that's going to be, you know, kind of make or break Coke in the future. Are we still, are we going to keep applying these principles and innovating or not, right? And that to me, to us, that's like, that depends on the results in the future of Coke and where we go as a company. Well, that's what really drew me to principles-based management when it was originally pitched is that it's really seeped in. Hayakian, Mises, Austrian principles of grassroots. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:00 I mean, on the macro scale grassroots development of an economy, but you can apply that to the micro too. And I think information and being the source of the inputs that go into the decision making, whether it's a bleak, grown economy or a business is something that I've believed very deeply in on the macro side for years. And so it was very intuitive once I found principal-based management. So just like apply this to your business. And to your point about AI, I think it was very serendipitous that we started our PBM journey when we did, which was November of last year, when Opus 4.6 was coming out. And then in January, we were still going through the process. And open claw was becoming popular. And we hopped on that right away and actually help us solve this knowledge gap.
Starting point is 00:07:54 And I think it was a combination of PBM, the agent, And then the paper that Jack Dorsey and Rolloff from Sequoia put out about businesses becoming this intelligence layer and sort of flattening the hierarchy that those businesses follow with a managerial executive class, managerial class, and then underlings between them and these silos. and identifying that we had this knowledge gap and then having the tool of these models and then the harnesses that make them very powerful has enabled us to solve those knowledge problems that we had pretty quickly because now we've built up this agentic system internally with a company brain. And instead of people having to communicate even with each other, they can just ping the company brain, the intelligence layer to figure out, okay, who do we have coming on the podcast of the next week? what a, is there a headshot that we need to get? Is there an ad need to insert? It's interacting with the agent. I mean, obviously, we're still interacting with each other,
Starting point is 00:08:59 but you can sort of solve that knowledge problem with the agent as well. Well, I mean, it's so exciting to hear that you're practicing these principles and experimenting with them. Like, for us, you know, the reason of my father and I just wrote this book, it's called Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader. It's the first book I've ever been a part of. It's my dad's fifth. But not just to like get this, get these ideas out to Coke employees, you know,
Starting point is 00:09:29 which we like we feel like we have so much opportunity just to empower people of these principles to continue to transform the company. But we want to get it out to society too, right? Because we feel like we will all be much better off if we can, we can, we can solve problems in a principled way and not only get better business results, but interact in a way in society that takes us out of this divisiveness. And I mean, look, we're, we are all living in unprecedented uncertainty, right? Whether it's economic uncertainty or the stuff we're just talking about with AI, you know, we'll have to place jobs.
Starting point is 00:10:16 all of those things or just divisiveness in general. So the whole reason why we think a principled approach wins is that you have to have something to navigate all of this uncertainty. If you don't have like a principled approach and a framework to kind of work with, I think too many people unfortunately like blow with the wind. Right. And whatever is the trending or whatever is the most popular, then you can apply that to business.
Starting point is 00:10:46 and just, you know, chasing the trends, or you can apply that to, like, what you believe, you know, at your core based on what you read in social media, right? So, well, our hope is that this principle-based framework and the way we're kind of organizing this and then communicating it to the world gives people a navigation tool to that unprecedented uncertainty. So big picture, I know we started, like, right in the business, but this is, for us, It's much more of a societal thing. I know you studied all this stuff.
Starting point is 00:11:19 And I did as a kid, too, a Hayek von Mises, Milton Friedman, all of the core philosophers that really my father learned these principles from. But it's more than just transforming a business. It's like transforming your life, right? And transforming society at large. So anyway, just as for your audience, just more of like a broader picture of what, you know, why we're so excited to get these ideas out into the world. That's the reason why. To your point, I think they're very important to get out there because I think the principles that you've laid out in becoming a principal-driven leader and the book that I read when I first
Starting point is 00:12:01 started getting into PBM was a good profit, which Father Charles wrote. And it really helped orient myself as we're beginning to go through this process. And I think to take that step back, Coke's been around since 1940, 86 years. And I believe our conversation in May or June that we had our first call, one of the ideas that's been stuck in my mind since I've read Good Profit is, it seems very clear to me that Coke Industries has paired patient patients, just in general, patient capital, risk taking and creative destruction in a way that the very few companies have done over the last century.
Starting point is 00:12:47 And I think that particularly that idea of patient capital, taking long-term bets, staying private so you can take those long-term bets is something that is underappreciated these days, particularly in a world where we like to say in this show that we live in a world of a high-velocity trash economy where everything is driven by quarterly financials and really just thinking day-to-day, not taking a step back and thinking long-term. And I think Coke, having been around for 86 years is a testament to the other way of doing things, which is long-term principles, steeped in principles, immorals, and taking the time to actually do things in a calculated way. Well, Marty, to your point, I appreciate what you're saying about the company.
Starting point is 00:13:34 And you're right. I mean, it's up to, you know, the last almost 90 years, it's really been, it's been an endurance. business to your point because of this principle-based approach. That is the differentiator and like where it started. But I will tell a lot of people think that the Coke story is like this, like up and to the right. And if you've read the book, you've seen the story, you've heard, you know, you read the story that it has been a rocky road, rocky road. I mean, there was almost like two bankruptcies in there in the story that, but the way we framed the, the storytelling of the book that we hope is most helpful to the world is through the lens of
Starting point is 00:14:20 failure. And I think that's one of the biggest differentiators on how we tell the story is that we learn a hell of a lot more from our failures than we do our successes. And back to this principle-based approach, all of those failures, the consistency comes to ignoring one or more of the principles, where we just ignored it and we just plowed ahead and we didn't challenge ourselves with that. And all of our successes or where we've transformed and dug ourselves out of the ditch is because we really focused on the principles to dig ourselves out. So, you know, rocky road, lots of failures, but it's how you learn from those failures and then
Starting point is 00:15:03 internalize the principles at a deeper level and then share those stories with others so they can learn from your mistakes and keep growing, you know, from that standpoint. So, but yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a crazy story. It's, you know, like I said, it's a rocky road, but it's been a 9,000 X growth since, you know, the early 60s, something that my father never, was never in his goals, you know, to build a company that, but he just kept learning from failure, but also studying the principles of human progress and what worked in society, what made countries successful, what made countries fail, and then kept adding these principles, and then just like empowering great talent with those principles and getting out of the way. And I think, like, just, I don't know, I like celebrating
Starting point is 00:15:58 my father, not only because he's my best friend and mentor, but he leads by example, right? I mean, that's the only way this works and you have the story that you do. is that he looked at his own gifts and where his own weaknesses were. And instead of like kind of thinking about himself as a typical CEO that top down, you know, making a lot of the strategic decisions, he thought about himself more as a chief philosophy officer. Because his core gift was these abstract principles. He learned them, he understood them.
Starting point is 00:16:34 And then how do you communicate that into a. large organization where if people can understand the principle, they can go empower it in their own way, not in a rules or formulaic basis. Like a lot of companies are run that way, very process driven. And we've always done it this way. We're going to do it that way. He wants it to change daily, right, in terms of what are the new systems and processes? How do we leverage AI in a new way?
Starting point is 00:17:01 I used to do it this way. How can we blow that up and start over, right? And that's you and I talked about this before. but one of the key principles that is like core in our vision statement is creative destruction. And that's, you know, as you know, Joseph Schumpeter's principle that he coined in 1942, that if you're not disrupting yourself from within, the market will disrupt you and turn you into a dinosaur. Right. And we're seeing that, you know, his whole idea of the ground is always crumbling beneath your feet.
Starting point is 00:17:33 my father always says, well, now it's earthquakes. It's not crumbling. Like, we're all dealing with earthquakes all the time. And so that's why creative destruction is in every meeting and every conversation of what we're doing to transform ourselves and disrupt what we've done in the past. And there's no, like, there's no sacred cows that Coke, you know? Like, even though my grandfather started the company in pipelines, you know, crude oil pipelines and energy and refining, none of that's sacred. Like, we're investing in all sorts of alternative energies, right? Because we believe that the energy stack of the future is we need all of it to power the world.
Starting point is 00:18:26 right we need we need fossil fuels um natural gas and crude oil we need solar we need nuclear um and so a lot of people i think have a misperception that well coax just focus on fossil fuels because that's where they started that's like four percent of the capital that we have in the business goes towards that and why because we believe in creative destruction and constantly investing in the next technology and make experiments, make investments that we know have low probability of success. But if we're not in the game, testing and learning and driving that principle of experimental discovery, we'll eventually become a dinosaur. And so a combination of creative destruction and experimental discovery, you've kind of live
Starting point is 00:19:18 and breathe that every day, right? And not just the top, right? We need the whole organization to be thinking that way. invading in their day-to-day roles, their jobs, all their their tactics. And yeah, it's just it's core to what got us here. And it will be core to see if we can keep keep this going for multiple generations. Yeah. I think another list of values or principles that that you've talked about in the book and just
Starting point is 00:19:49 having observed from going to the process that we have here at TFTC, is there a level of humility that's necessary for the individual within cocaine? industries, even at the top, and meritocracy that exists based off of that humility. Humility. Notice what you're good at and focus on that, what you're passionate about, because at the end of the day, that will benefit the company overall. And you went through this personally. Yes, I did.
Starting point is 00:20:14 Time and time again. Many, many times. And how did you recognize that you need to step back? I believe you were the head of the fertilizer? division. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe just to give your audience just kind of a high level framing on the company, we have nine, we touched the majority of the economy. You know, I mentioned we have 140,000 employees, one of the largest private, privately owned businesses in the U.S. And, you know, it's in one of those businesses, one of those nine operating businesses in fertilizing.
Starting point is 00:20:56 So we're wood products with Georgia Pacific. We're in technology with Molex connectors, global business, enforce, very large ERP software company. We're in glass manufacturing. So anyway, a lot of different things that we're very broad. And we own and operate those platforms that I spent about a decade in the fertilizer business. And this goes back to one of the principles that you're talking about, whether it's humility, you can say intellectual honesty about who you really are, but also the principle of comparative advantage.
Starting point is 00:21:36 You know, what have you demonstrated your gift is relative to what everyone else can do on the team, right? And that's a very important point. And what you can do relative to others, what you're good at, but relative to what you're good at, but relative to what the what others are good at on the team. I think a lot of people mistaken comparative advantage for absolute advantage. It's like, what am I best at in a vacuum? And if you're not looking at tradeoffs of what you could be doing,
Starting point is 00:22:06 relative to your alternatives and relative to what others can be doing, you're missing out on a huge, a huge opportunity. So that just as kind of a pre, just to tee up my, like my story and looking at my father and how he recognized his comparative advantage was abstract concepts and really organized his role and his job around being more of a chief philosophy officer and really challenging with principles and empowering people with principles. I realized in the fertilizer business that I was a much better builder than I was operator. And, you know, I had a great opportunity to be president of the business.
Starting point is 00:22:47 it was third largest profit driver of Coke, huge business operating in 30 countries and 3,000 or 4,000 employees. But I realized that it was not my comparative advantage after about nine months. And frankly, I was miserable on the role. Most people think that, oh, you got the big job. You're running the whole thing now.
Starting point is 00:23:12 Why would you ever step away from that? And it's because, one, my father taught me humility and intellectual honesty to really look in the mirror and understand who you are. But the second thing is I really understood comparative advantage. And I looked at the guy, Scott, that could have been running. He was a great operator. And I knew he was going to be a great president as well. And he was operating in a smaller part of the business. So his opportunity cost of not running the whole thing.
Starting point is 00:23:43 but then my opportunity costs back to the tradeoffs and what I was given up as a team member was focusing on building and looking at innovation and what we can do to drive creative destruction is that if I was I was honest with myself even though it was cool to have the CEO title and like what everyone thinks you should want I wasn't happy and I wasn't doing a good job relative to the alternatives we had in the business and someone like Scott running it And we are missing out on this big opportunity to go invest in in new technologies. And so once I met with leadership and we talked about all the different tradeoffs, I've, you know, I've called it like firing myself before.
Starting point is 00:24:31 That's really, it doesn't really articulate the principle itself. Because if you look at it objectively, it's just about wrong person, wrong role. and too many trade-offs for all the people involved, right? So think about everyone's comparative advantage, just like a sports team, get everyone in the right positions, quarterback, wide receiver, alignment, tied in, or that relative to what they could be doing, other roles on the football team,
Starting point is 00:24:59 and go get the best results overall and go win the championship. Right? And so that's what we did, and we started getting better, the business performed better, And then I got to ultimately start Coke disruptive technologies. That was a whole new arm for Coke. And then everyone, if they're in their comparatively advantaged role and they can look in the mirror and say, this is my sweet spot. You start to see the results follow that. And so to me, like, you know, we talk about 41 principles in the book.
Starting point is 00:25:30 Comparative advantage is one of the most powerful. And I think it's one of the most misapplied principles. And I think the reason why for that is too often we worry about what everyone else thinks about our job, our own ego or how many people report to me. And that's some kind of measure of success. When the measure of success is, are you maximizing how much value you can create as an individual towards the overall vision of the business, right? And I just think so much is missed in that across so many businesses that, I mean, what is what a societal transformation we could make if we just all apply.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Think about what the world would look like. If you just, we all applied comparative advantage and people would be self-actualizing because it's like, I'm killing it every day. And I'm not in the wrong role, you know. It's a, it's a really big one. I know I probably over explained that one, Marty. sorry but i'm very very passionate about that one because i've seen it misapplied so much and you know i'm i'm kind of uh example number one on that so freaks this rip was brought to you by our good friends the bitcoin team at block bitcoin at block bitcoin was originally introduced as a peer to
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Starting point is 00:29:47 the state and our senior we had very good coaches and that was the one thing that they beat our yeah know your role you don't need to be the star if you just do your your role perfectly For some reason, it's easier to apply in sports. It's more obvious. But then when you apply that in business, for whatever reason, it's just more gray, I think, in terms of who does what. So we have a lot of people working on the wrong things. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:08 Well, I mean, it seems clear that you're enamored by creative destruction. And I think that can lead into a couple of other principles from the book too, because with creative destruction, you're venturing into the unknown in a way to figure. out what what's new and how you can apply it to your business that comes with a lot of experimenting and a lot of failure as well which could both be expected and that's another thing in the book that I really appreciated is the normalization of a failure and rapid experimentation which is necessary for actually going to be able to successfully creatively destruct your your incumbent business yeah well you know
Starting point is 00:30:51 I mean just to kind of to jump on that one whether it's creative destruction or experiment with discovery. I mentioned that before, but those are two of the 41 principles as well. And I go through this one because it's also an illustration of if someone's like reading the book or trying to get their head around the principles, it can be daunting to say, oh, my God, there's 41. Why does there have to be so many? But the reality is like these are, and why 41?
Starting point is 00:31:24 These are just the ones that we had the stories that we thought were most powerful that could help the most people. And but you really only need like one or two to get started. And if you take the story, the comparative advantage story that I, you know, applied to my own role and my, like, it was one of the most important decisions in my life. Because it set my whole, my life on a completely new trajectory. And I also enjoyed my life a lot more. I was having more fun.
Starting point is 00:31:52 I was adding more value. I even had a better relationship with my kids because work was going better. It all like ties together, right? But then when you take experimental discovery and creative destruction, the next role of starting something like Coke disruptive technologies, which is our, basically our venture capital to growth equity platform, we had a gap within Coke. if we're going to drive creative destruction to your point, we have to be able to see what technologies are coming at us.
Starting point is 00:32:26 Otherwise, we're going to wake up one day and wonder what happened. So we have to be able to see around corners. And as you know now, with all your work in AI, that's more important than ever. But then how do you apply experimental discovery to areas that we don't understand and but we need to be in the game? And so this goes, and this is a learning, and I think I talk a little bit about this in the book of the early days of KDT, we were, because of me, we were violating experimental discovery in some cases, meaning we were making, like in health care, right? That's an area we didn't have a lot of expertise in, but we saw it as, you know, 20% of our economy. We need to really start to like set some experiments in there. Well, we were writing $100, $200 million checks into these companies without a lot of knowledge around that specific company.
Starting point is 00:33:26 And so when you think about, okay, what have we learned from that? It's like to apply experimental discovery, even in venture, and you can apply this to any element of your business, right? It's like, bet your knowledge size. The size of your bet should be, you know, equivalent to the size of your knowledge on that. make some bets and you're going to lose, right? But a great experiment we define as the value of the learning exceeds the value, the cost of the loss. So if you can approach anything like that, whether it's a venture capital bet or trying out a new vendor for AI as an example, right, that you know it might fail, but you need to put enough experiments out there on the board to
Starting point is 00:34:12 say, all right, we got to try new things. We got to figure out who our preferred partner is. we want to work with. And so I share that just so your audience understands, you mentioned experimental discovery. I had to fail a number of times of experimental discovery to understand what good looks like and applying it. And so that's, I'd just encourage your audience that think about like, okay, where am I stagnant and where have I not made any changes? And how do I put some responsible experiments in place that where I can bet basically make small bets that are relative to the size of my knowledge and to figure out how I can learn from them, knowing that a couple of those will be failures.
Starting point is 00:34:57 Yeah. And I think one of the examples in the book is not necessarily for creative destruction, but after the acquisition of Molex, I think from I recall, the pure KPI was revenue growth, but that wasn't really leading to increase profit margin. So you had to do a deep dive on the different products that Mullix was spinning out. And you found some interesting things that came in with some assumptions. And they proved to be wrong, particularly about which products were, were the most successful and where you should focus on new initiatives.
Starting point is 00:35:31 And I think a lot of what I recall reading the book, one of the problems was you just had this, or the managers of Molex had this assumption that we've been running this for a while and it's popular product. But after going in and dissecting exactly what was going on, it became obvious. Like, oh, this actually isn't the right way to do things. No, I think that's right. And Molex has always been a fantastic company. But I would say that, like, that's a great example of the challenge of M&A and doing an acquisition and bringing a new very large company. I think when we bought it to 50,000 employees. So you can imagine that took Coke from 80 or 90,000 to, you know, 130, 140,000 employees over and that is a, that is a large gulp to integrate and to take on.
Starting point is 00:36:26 And to your point, you're right on the story is that, you know, Molex had been public for decades. And to this, where you started the conversation back on one of the key principles of our principle-based culture is long-term thinking versus short-term. But if you're thinking top line and a lot of public companies have this problem, right? You're thinking quarter to quarter and making sure that you hit your numbers for the analysts. It's very, very difficult to make the capability investments you need for the long term. Right. And so that was one thing that culturally we had to overcome.
Starting point is 00:37:06 But I'd say it was top line thinking versus bottom line to your point. And that took many years to start to turn the corner there. But it was also some top down thinking versus bottom up empowerment. And so I think that's been one of the biggest transformations in Molex is empowering people. Let me back up a little bit. And, you know, I think you benefit from having experimented with PBM in your own organization. For your audience, though, if you take a principal-based management culture and what we've tried and developed within Coke over many, many decades, if you boil what that is into
Starting point is 00:37:51 basically down to a nutshell, I always tell people, what if you had a business where people knew what to do without being told. And that is the simplest way I can describe all of these principles, all of our frameworks of like what you're, you're never going to get there perfectly, right? But that's what you aspire to be and that's your vision. Then you can start designing and running your business with that operating system with a bottom up empowerment mindset. It's just like what I talked about with my dad.
Starting point is 00:38:26 he tries to empower people with principles and let him run. It is not him at the top saying, well, you guys need to go do this and you need to do this with this strategy. He challenges all the time, right? But it's more of, you know best, you're closest to the opportunity, you're closest to the problem. How can I help you? How can I remove barriers?
Starting point is 00:38:49 And just on your point on Molex, the last quarterly business review or last board meeting we had. I remember, you know, they're, they're really performing well right now across all their businesses, automotive, health care, their data center business, their consumer business. All of them are growing. Much, you know, more things need to be connected, right? In this IoT world that we live in, and especially with AI, you know, driving transformative demand. But our data center business in particular is just we can't keep up with demand. We make the connectors that connect all the data centers and the cables and products like that.
Starting point is 00:39:35 But I remember in the quarterly business review, instead of going through a 40-page PowerPoint on just a page turn and what are the results and asking a bunch of detailed questions, his approach and most of our senior leaders are just what are the top problems? how can we help you remove constraints? And let's talk about what principles are, you know, are either we're not applying or that we should be. Changes the whole dynamic of the, you know, of the culture, but also how businesses are run, right?
Starting point is 00:40:09 So I think it's like that kind of mindset, culture, and leadership that enables you to go from a top down kind of control and dependency of leadership to bottom-up empowerment. And when you have leaders doing that, what that does is it gives everyone else permission downstream to say, oh, well, I need to do that too, right? I see how that's empowering me. How am I empowering my people instead of operating as a supervisor or a leader
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Starting point is 00:43:13 Like other principles you talk about in the book are incentives are much more than money. It really comes down to motivation and how you create an incentive structure internally that motivates people to do better. Yeah. Boy, I mean, that is a big one. And I would say, you know, we, one of our, one of our frameworks at Coke is around motivation. We call it five dimensions. It's like a problem solving tool, problem solving framework. And motivation, it used to be called incentives.
Starting point is 00:43:47 We now call it motivation. Because it's much more, people think incentives, they think money. But to your point, it's much broader than that. And motivation is about motivating long-term value creation. Right. So, and you may be motivated by different things that I'm motivated by, right? You may be motivated by what teams you get to work on, who you get to work with, which exciting projects do you get to be a part of.
Starting point is 00:44:15 It's not just about, okay, what's my total compensation at the end of the year? There's all these different things, right? So to break it down, like, for your audience and, like, how we think about motivation, there's kind of four key areas that we want to motivate every employee to unlock their potential on. And it's not, you know, the first thing you'd say was, like, how much money are you making right now? That's not the first thing that we look at, right? It's more about cultural alignment to these principles that we're talking about. is are you as an individual, like if Marty works at Coke, are you advancing the culture or are you
Starting point is 00:44:53 taking away from it, right? And we have a 360 process where we'd ask the people that you work with, your supervisor, even your customers, your vendors, your coworkers, hey, how's Marty doing on that? And you get very specific examples of what's going well and what's not. And so then it's like, okay, let's see what Marty's doing on culture. But then the other thing is on capability building, right? And thinking about what's Marty doing to innovate and building for the future, for his role and for his business. That's highly subjective.
Starting point is 00:45:31 There's no like you made X dollars, so therefore you get Y. Right. But then we think about long-term value creation. Like, you know, what are you doing to advance the long-term, value of Coke or whatever business that you're in. And then leadership is one too. And it doesn't mean that you have to have people reporting to you to be a leader. Right.
Starting point is 00:45:56 It's like, are you helping others around you succeed? And it's like, how's Marty doing on that? And then, of course, there's the more objective thing is like, well, how's Marty's like P&L and how's his results? But that's a very, again, a very different approach than most companies that if you're a salesperson, well, I brought in $10 million of business this year. And so I made X, therefore, I get Y. You got to put all these subjective factors. Otherwise, you're not motivating people on a principle-based culture. So you have to have all those factors in it. It's harder to do.
Starting point is 00:46:32 It takes more time. And we put a lot of, we put all that leadership back on supervisors of their people to really make recommendations on bonuses and base salaries based on those factors. And so I think that's, I think that's one of the key elements of our secret sauce to build the culture that we have. You have to hire based on that culture. You have to fire based on that culture. You have to motivate day to day based on that as well. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:04 And it's just like having read the book, Coke has like the internal process. What I like about your principles and your view on the world and how a company should operate in that is that it's a mutual benefit too, which I think can tie into this. You create this cultural, this culture internally, but then you're making sure that you have partners and that you're actually doing good to your,
Starting point is 00:47:34 counterparts as you're doing business throughout the world. I think really in today's day and age, I mean, AI is the big topic right now. But if you're if you're looking at the AI race right now, many of the leaders in that space, view it as a zero-sum game. And I think one of the core principles of Co because that's not a zero-sum game. There's mutual benefit to be had. Yeah. And you want to, I think you hit on what we don't want in society is a constrained pie thinking.
Starting point is 00:48:03 Like, we want to grow the pie together. And if you pick the right partners to do that and everyone, you have, like, let me hit two principles in here because I think they're very important. One is preferred partnerships. This is one that I've learned because the nature of my role is I'm, you know, I'm pounding the pavement a lot. I'm trying to find the next disruptive technology, the next, you know, family-owned business that we can help with a capital solution.
Starting point is 00:48:30 That's, I'm in that like flow every day. And this, I think this is one that is very important. And one of the principles that I think is a big differentiator for Coke as well on how we select and how we choose what we're going to work on and who we're going to partner with and who we won't. Creative destruction is one of those principles that we learned from Joseph Shumpeter back in the 40s on. But preferred partners, we learned from failure internally. And we created our own principle around that. So this one's a good example, but a preferred partnership requires three things. One, an aligned vision, two, aligned values, and three complementary capabilities.
Starting point is 00:49:14 And when you have all three of those in place, you have the best, the highest probability of creating the most long-term value and having a long-term growing partnership with someone. And again, that applies to business and a customer, a supplier. It applies to an M&A deal. It applies in your personal life, your girlfriend or your wife. I mean, it is a principle that applies to everything that we found. And anytime when you pull one of those out, you don't have an aligned vision, right? Because one partner's thinking long term, the other one's thinking short term.
Starting point is 00:49:56 That's just vision misalignment, right? You see that at board level. all the time. Someone wants to sell, the other one wants to hold on and keep growing. That's just a misalignment that's going to break the company. Or align values, right? Do you operate with integrity? Do you, you know, how you treat your customers? Are you compliant? Or do you cut corners with rules and regulations and that sort of thing? And then the third one around complementary capabilities, if you and I are partnering, do you bring something to the table that I don't have? then do I bring something to the table that you don't have?
Starting point is 00:50:33 And then because if we both bring something to the table, then there's synergy. And then that goes back to this. We grow the pie together. And you're right. I mean, the alternative to that is zero-sum game. So do you want to have a zero-sum game thinking of which there's a story, I won't belabor it here, but there's a story where I learned mutual benefit through failure because I was running the trading group in Coke Fertilizer,
Starting point is 00:51:01 and I basically took one of my trading partners to the mat where he didn't make any money on the trade, and I did really, really well, and we're all high-fiving on the trading floor, only to find that three months later he competed with me and set up a whole business that destroyed everyone's business, and then there was nothing for anyone. Because I thought, because I applied,
Starting point is 00:51:24 short-term zero-sum game thinking to one trade, like what could have been this amazing long-term partnership where everyone won, I got left that on the table and I'll never forget that, right? And so thinking about how you help the other person win, if you have a preferred partnership and you have the aligned vision values, complementary capabilities, and you have the mutually beneficial mindset where I'm going, how am I helping my partner win all the time and they do the same for you?
Starting point is 00:51:55 That is a beautiful long-term relationship where you're going to grow the pie and everyone's going to win and everyone's going to get results. So so many examples where we've screwed that up as a company and we paid for it. But those failures in the early days are almost blessings because you learn from them. And it's like, boy, mutual benefit is so core to everything that we do. Yeah, it goes back to the patience, right, the low time preference that's necessary. That's right. That's right.
Starting point is 00:52:26 Exactly. Tradeoffs conceding some upside at certain parts of the relationship to make sure that the ultimate upside is there in the long term. And again, I can't stop thinking about the high velocity trash economy. And I'm very happy that you and your father decided to write this book and you're putting a concerted effort to spread these principles outside of Cook Industries because I do. look out at a lot of the modern economy and the giants and exist today. And again, bringing back to the AI sector, there's too many people that view the world as zero sum. And it's very cannibalistic in the long term and not good for the health of the individual companies and the economy broadly. And so like on that note, what would you say are the biggest mistakes that company is that that, um, that exists today?
Starting point is 00:53:19 they make and or what changes could they make coalescing around principle based management to get everybody rowing in the same direction? Well, I mean, you we've hit on a bunch of them, right? I think if you just took a step back and said, what if we have a culture of mutual benefit? And we just think about that one principle. You think about every interaction, whether it's a customer, a vendor, a supplier, every decision and we have that in our DNA, every employee. And you think about, think about how the results that you could get. And also just like how the world would work. I think that's a big one.
Starting point is 00:54:04 I think the comparative advantage one where I told my story about being in the wrong role, what if everyone just put, really thought about their own role and their own comparative advantage and we had the right people on the right roles in society, right? I mean, more, but not just in your business, but across other businesses and other nonprofit organizations, right? Sports teams, you can apply it to anything. I think those are, those are two that are just really, really significant. And then to your point on time preference, thinking, long-term versus short-term. So much of our decision-making is as a society is short-term versus what's best for everyone long-term. But I think the overarching principle for all,
Starting point is 00:55:02 that's almost like I think about like this umbrella principle for then take this to society and how we think about the institutions across our economy, whether that's our education system, our government systems, like how business works, bottom up versus top down, bottom up empowerment. And if we actually believe in people and we empower them with principles and we believe that people that are closest to the problem are the ones that should be solving those problems, as opposed to the alternative and where so much of our society works today and we're trending in the wrong direction, top down control and dependency to where the government keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, more regulations, more telling people how to live their lives. And more, sadly, more people, especially the next generation that believes, when we've done the research on this, that that that is.
Starting point is 00:56:10 the answer. We can't solve our own problems anymore. We need someone else to come in and solve them for us. That's a very scary place to be in. It's a very scary trend. That's why I say, bottom-up empowerment and just that one mindset alone and that one principle, what that could do for us to start to strip back more of the layers of bureaucracy, red tape barriers that we're putting on ourselves as a country and believing in people to go, like, help people improve their lives, apply mutual benefit, help their neighbor, make a contribution, not just in business, but in your community as well. We need to get back.
Starting point is 00:56:54 We need to get to that. And that's where the country started, right? I mean, the Declaration of Independence and it's all about, like, grit and entrepreneurship and making a contribution to your community. that's where we got to turn the tide on that. I completely agree. And I'm happy you brought this up because that's where I wanted to go. If you think of the federal government, how big it's gotten, the federal reserve, how important it's become.
Starting point is 00:57:21 It's a complete, or derelict of the knowledge process and the principle that you talk about. Because from an information theory perspective, there's no way that people congregating in Washington, in D.C. and in the Eklis building and in New York City can can get all the local information necessary to make decisions for small towns across the country and cities across the country. It literally does that. You're right. But what we've done a bad job on the people that believe in bottom-up empowerment and like where like what made the country such a like a beacon of entrepreneurship and hope and everyone wanted to come here was because there was.
Starting point is 00:58:06 the fewest barriers in their way to go, you go chase the American dream. And so what we try to keep putting more barriers, so it's less attractive. And fewer and fewer people, it's like the system is rigged against them so they can't. Right. So what we've done a bad job of is get the stories out there so people can connect to the principle of bottom up empowerment as opposed to top down control to fix problems. I'll just say it like two quick examples if I could, Marty. Like I talked about education as one of the key institutions of our society. I mean, so much is so much, so many of our problems are downstream of our broken education system. Okay.
Starting point is 00:58:51 Okay. Okay. example. And, but what we're seeing in terms of the transformation of the opportunities of where that trend is going is very exciting. So I don't want to be someone that comes on doom and gloom and say, everything's so screwed up or whatever. What are we going to do about it, right? How are you going to drive change? And this is one of the things we have an organization called Stand Together. We've talked a lot about business. We apply all those same principles into our nonprofit organization called Stand Together.
Starting point is 00:59:25 And I'd encourage any of your audience to dig in and check us out. But I'll give you two examples of just some things, some problems that we're working on where we're seeing some very exciting results. Education, back to that. Bottom up empowerment, vision for education is one where you basically have individualized education and understand that every kid is different. Every kid is a different gift. Every kid learns differently. So why do we have this broken system that's one size fits all? You know, I mean, we're treating our kids like an assembly line with this teach to test model where everyone's on the
Starting point is 01:00:10 same. They have to, and then they don't understand, you know, basic math, but then they go on to the next grade without having that fundamental understanding, right? So we have to look at every kid as an individual in our education system and figure out how we help support them at and move at their speed. And now we have the tools to do that. You know, I mean, you look at Sal Khan with Khan Academy, what he's done with technology, with his mastery system. Look at Joe Leymont with his Alpha School concept in leveraging AI.
Starting point is 01:00:45 He's taking failing students out of the. broken system and by thinking about new ways to motivate them and meeting where they are and helping them with AI to A students in three to six months. So like this is the exciting stuff to me. And one of the things that stand together has has really invested and we work with the Walton family on this. We have a VALA fund. And so basically think about venture capital for education. right so writing very small checks to what we call education entrepreneurs that have are sick of the existing system it could be a pissed off parent a teacher that says this system is failing my kids I got to get out and I have a better way and then so we fund those people to go build like micro schools
Starting point is 01:01:37 and new concepts or new software right like like a salcon and so over the last since COVID, we've built, I think now we're at like 5,000 new schools across the country. That's awesome. And we thought it'd be like venture capital where 70% of them would just fail and it wouldn't work, but those 30% would be really like awesome new models. What we're finding is more than 80% are succeeding. This is a crazy result, right? 80% of those are succeeding and don't need more capital because they're sustainable.
Starting point is 01:02:12 and like the market wants it and the market's willing to pay for it. And it's priced in a way where even the least advantage are benefiting from these new, these new microschool concepts. So education transformation is underway. But one of the things that enabled that was really changing the whole regulatory framework for education. And now I think there's 30 plus states that have gone through education reform. A lot of those are school choice reforms in these states. And so when I talk about barriers that are stacked against kids in our society,
Starting point is 01:02:51 those are the barriers we need to remove. So they have options and then we can have a new system where they can learn and self-actualize, understand their gift, get the right job, and then go start the right business or whatever, right? I mean, it's that one thing alone, I think is one of the most exciting things. So it's happening from a society standpoint. I'll leave you with this.
Starting point is 01:03:15 We did all the research pre-COVID in terms of families that were open to new models for their kids. And it was like 20% or something, like very, very low. And then post-COVID because families saw how wrecked the system was and seeing some of these models emerge. Now more than 80% are open to their kid going to a new innovative kind of school model. So to me, it starts there. It starts with completely transforming the education system, and we're making progress. I completely agree. Sal Khan helped me dearly in college.
Starting point is 01:03:53 And I mean, as you did it, is Khan Academy, I leaned on heavily in college. And then Alpha School, we've actually had an Alpha School student on the podcast. That's one thing I love. Oh, how'd that go? How'd that same? Well, great. I got to check that out. and one of the they gave her a hard problem.
Starting point is 01:04:11 She made her like semester project. She had to go out and find a way to get on a podcast and talk about it. And she did. That's amazing. We talked about Alpha school, what the process is like. And it's incredible. Then on top of that, like shout out to Corey DeAngelis, who's really been on the tip of the spear of school choice, which I think is a no-brainer option, give parents the ability to
Starting point is 01:04:35 take their tax dollars and spend it how they want on their share. children's education. So, you know, hopefully you get more like what you're doing. You put one of the kids on your podcast. People see the results. They see it's a show versus tell. I think we've got to do that across all these. And bad regulations that are holding people back.
Starting point is 01:04:55 We have to get the stories out that show people there is a better way and empowering people and like removing barriers is what is going to transform all of our lives and make society better off. So anyway, but I'm glad you're doing what you're doing by getting these ideas out there. It's great. We need more of that. Well, the feeling is mutual. I'm glad that you're doing what you're doing. And for taking the time, I know you're an extremely busy person, but principle-based management has been great for us at TFTC, becoming a principal-driven leader. is a book I highly recommend if you're looking to reorient your philosophy of business and how to apply free market grassroots principles to what you're doing to get the best
Starting point is 01:05:46 results. And I'm very happy that you're out there beating the drum, getting this message of PBM out there because I think the world would be a better place of more companies adopted this. And hopefully it would prove to the government that we don't need we don't need them as much and we can we can have a flourishing economy that the founders envisioned when when they started this country well and marty like uh this is a great opportunity for me to to be on your your podcast so i appreciate you thinking of me that i wanted to to leave your audience with a real practical way that they can like leverage the principles so i don't want to miss this opportunity and so to and something that you're working on um and very
Starting point is 01:06:32 focused on is AI. The combination of principles with AI to me is one of the biggest opportunities that we have. And so our first experiment was with this book where we created an app that was basically powered with these principles to solve very specific problems. So we have an app. It's called principal companion. And you can get it on, you know, all in any of the the app stores, Apple store, Google Play, all the platforms are having, and it's free. So if you download it, you can put any problem you're having, not only in business, whether you run any type of organization, a sports team, you're having problems with your kids.
Starting point is 01:07:17 It's just like a chat, GPT field, type your problem in, and it coaches you to think through that problem with two or three of these principles. So instead of the alternative is saying, well, I got to go learn all these 41 principles, and you feel like you've got to eat the elephant all at once, start with a problem that you have right now today, take five minutes and engage with it. And to me, then it's like you start to see and connect.
Starting point is 01:07:42 It's like, oh, wow, I can think about that problem differently. This is very effective in helping me get to an answer through a principled approach. And then what happens is you get momentum, right? It's like, oh, I learn about mutual benefit there. I'm going to put in another problem.
Starting point is 01:07:57 Oh, it's telling me I need to really think about creative destruction. or maybe my own role was comparative advantage. And so we are, we've started there and like we've had some really good success internally and externally of people solving problems. Like that's one of the most rewarding thing for me is me getting the emails and texts like, oh, dude, I tried this and like it actually transformed the way I'm looking at my team or I tried this with my wife or my kids or whatever. And so like those are so rewarding because it's actually you see. people transforming and like getting real results with it. But the next step of what we're doing, and I love your ideas or anyone in your audience that has ideas of how to
Starting point is 01:08:40 combine principles with AI, we're taking that same brain that we have, that we've been building that feeds the principal companion. And we want to apply that to more surface areas. So for example, then one of the next steps within the company is, you know, we use Microsoft co-pilot, you know, and almost more than 100,000 employees are using this. So to get these principles and problem-solving tools into the flow of their existing work and meeting them where they are, much different than having them go download an app, right?
Starting point is 01:09:15 So how can we open-source these principles in a way that it really helps people solve problems in a principle-driven way? So any ideas that you have, that we want to experiment? with in your shop or anyone that listens to this, we are wide open on this. And I'm thinking about this much more than just what helps cope transform. I'm thinking about this at the societal level. And we're just so excited. We're just like scratching the service and what's possible because of AI and the power of this technology. So principal companion one, you know, go go try it. That's out there now, but bigger ideas on this that you or anyone on your team or your audience has, like,
Starting point is 01:10:02 uh, you know, please ping me, reach out to me. Um, um, would love it. Put it in the chat. And we, we can, we can discuss, you know, big opportunities because this is going to change the game. Yeah, I'll leave you with one. Um, that's been very helpful for us. We have the principal base management. We have a bunch of skills, but the most helpful one has been a, the after action review. So we'll do a launch or, um, a webinar or something like that. And then immediately after we have a PBM skill. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 01:10:31 How to go. Where'd you mess up? What do you want to do better? Oh, that's beautiful. We need to take notes from you. I don't apply this within Coke. I love that, though. I mean, the more any organization is applying this.
Starting point is 01:10:43 And then back to that Republic of Science, you share knowledge, what's working. That's how we're going to keep transforming. So very exciting. And thanks for your interest in the principles. Well, thank you. chase and thank your father for me for co-writing the book with you uh it's been like a great pleasure hopefully we can do this again at some point yeah thanks marty appreciate you man thanks a lot peace and love freaks okay thank you for listening to this episode of tfTC if you've made it this far
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Starting point is 01:11:55 Thank you for your time. And until next time, okay.

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