The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – CES Show 2025, Gary Shapiro, CEO of CTA and His New Book: Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

CES Show 2025, Gary Shapiro, CEO of CTA and His New Book: Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes CES.tech Amazon.com From Gary Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author and head of CES and the Consumer Technology Association, a manifesto for today’s top executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders: pivot or die. As CEO of the Consumer Technology Association ®, owner and producer of CES ®, Gary Shapiro has had a front row seat to the launch of nearly every recent major technology. He's seen tech companies rise and fall, and bankrupt entrepreneurs become billionaires. After more than four decades in the industry, he knows that leaders who make it in the tech world have one thing in common: they know how to pivot. Drawing upon detailed case studies, economic theory, and personal experience,Pivot or Die offers a behind-the-scenes look at the development of innovative technology and business strategies. Along the way, Shapiro offers a "pivot" framework for leaders in technology and beyond to stay flexible and agile: The startup pivot: how startups can shake up industries and maximize the advantage of new ideas The forced pivot: adapting to the unforeseeable (or simply unforeseen) and meeting shifting consumer demands The failure pivot: why failure can deliver better lessons than success and how to take those lessons forward The success pivot: Beating the market by seizing opportunity and out-pivoting your competitors In laying out each of these pivots, Shapiro shares unique lessons on how leaders can change minds and mindsets and steer their organizations to success in an increasingly competitive environment. About the author Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies and which owns and produces CES® – The Global Stage for Innovation. Shapiro directs a staff of about 200 employees and thousands of industry volunteers, leading his organization’s promotion of innovation as a national policy to spur the economy, create jobs and cut the deficit. CTA advocates for a lower deficit, skilled immigration, free trade and policies that support innovative new business models. CTA does not seek government funding for industry. Shapiro authored CTA’s New York Times best-sellers, “Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses” (HarperCollins, 2013) and “The Comeback: How Innovation will Restore the American Dream” (Beaufort, 2011). His upcoming book, "Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation" (HarperCollins, 2018), will be released December 31 and is available now for pre-order. Through these books and television appearances, and as a columnist whose more than 1,000 opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Shapiro has helped direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy. He is considered an “influencer” on LinkedIn and has more than 280,000 followers.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm host, Chris Voss, here from the chrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes official. Welcome to the big show.

For 16 years and 2200 episodes, we've been the Chris Voss Show. The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the smartest, brilliant minds on the planet. And of course, I'm just the idiot with the mic. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Chris Voss won on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet today we're going to be turning to a good friend of mine loved him for years he's a wonderful gentleman and a scholar and a debonair person i don't know i tried to make it sound really classy gary and that's the best i can do i flunked second grade gary love you chris love you you've been

great gary shapiro joins us on the show. He is the president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, CTA. He is the U.S. Trade Association that represents more than 2,200 consumer technology companies and owns and produces CES for the global stage in innovation. There's probably more consumer technology companies now. I don't know how old this Amazon thing is. But he directs a staff of over 200 employees, thousands of industry volunteers, leading his organization's promotion of innovation as a national policy to spur economy, create jobs, and cut the deficit. This is his sixth appearance on The Chris Voss Show. Six years.

And like we like to say, it can't be CES without having Gary on the Chris Voss Show. He's the author of the latest book to come out October 8th, 2024 called Pivot or Die, How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show, Gary. How are you? I am great, honored, and thrilled to be on your show, Chris. It's always great to talk to you because it's not an interview, it's a conversation. I love it, man. It's good to have you as well. Give us.coms,.techs, wherever we want people to find out more about you guys on the interwebs. CES.tech, C-E-S.T-E-C-H, or CTA.tech, T-E-C-H, CTA. CTA is the Consumer Technology Association. It's a big nonprofit trade association of over a thousand companies. And CES is what we own and. It's a big nonprofit trade association of over 1,000 companies,

and CES is what we own and produce, but we also do a lot of things. We're involved in Washington and state legislatures. We do technical standards. We do market research, and we produce events. We have one goal, and that's to make the world better through innovation. So for people that don't know, because every now and then I meet somebody who doesn't know what the CES show is, what is the CES show?

How long has it been going on? How big is this thing? The CES is the coolest, funnest event of any type in the world. It's not a sporting event, but it's a business event. And it's definitely one of the largest or the largest, depending on what definition you use. Its footprint is absolutely huge it's 2.6 million net square feet of exhibit space is over 4,000 exhibitors it's been around since

1967 started in New York moved to Chicago Chicago in January's a little cold moved to Las Vegas first big business event to move to Las Vegas way back in 76. That's 1976, before my time. And moving to Las Vegas, we just grew, prospered, did great. Caught this thing called innovation and consumer technology. And although that's the consumer, it's out there. It's become pretty heavily business to business. But basically, we get more people in Las Vegas from outside the United States in any event in the country, including sporting and business, any business event.

We'll get over 50,000 people from outside the United States in addition to 110,000 or so or 100,000 from inside the United States. So that's about 140,000, 150,000 people will be getting. Every day, did you say? No. The way we count, which is not how everyone counts, is our numbers are actually honest. You can only be counted as a person one time for an event, no matter how many times you go, no matter how many buildings you go through, no matter how many days, you're only one person. Sorry. That's not true with some others, and we also independently audit. It sounds like it's going to be a huge show. I mean, we've been through some turbulent times.

We'll talk about that in your book, A Pivot or Die. Over the last few years, COVID really hit a lot of events and stuff. How are you guys faring on coming back full force and in size and scope? You know, I'm thrilled with how we're doing because not only was it covid but you know there's the economy there's uncertainty there's global issues involving relationships with certain you know there's a few wars going on yeah so there's definitely been an impact from all those things i just read las vegas's head person steve hill said it shows about% coming back in terms of the attendance, and I think we're close to that at this point.

Awesome sauce. It is my favorite show to ever go to. It's like a huge toy store. It's like an adult. I don't want to say that. It's a huge toy store where there's technology and all this stuff. What are you most looking forward to? What are you seeing is kind of really sticking out there as the leading edge of technology of the show this year?

What I love about this show is it inspires people and it gives people a hand to cutting relationships with other people. As much as I'm the paid cheerleader for the tech world in the United States, I love face-to-face. I love the serendipity of discovery. I love the fact we get over 1,000 companies in Eureka Park for startups, and they meet potential customers, investors, big company partners. Big companies love to go to Eureka Park. And you have everyone from Shark Tank and Mark Cuban walking around, you know, trying to see who should be on the show, to, you know, the top people, the top retailers from around the world are walking around. Because they want to see the next big thing. They want to be inspired. They want to help others. show to the top people, the top retailers from around the world are walking around because they want to see the next big thing. They want to be inspired. They want to help others. And the big companies are always looking to cut deals because that's how they grow. And that's really important.

So what am I looking forward to? Just the excitement and optimism and the fact that there's a better world out there with innovation that solves big problems like clean air and clean water and healthcare and hunger and food. And there's so much of that out there. And, of course, it's all overlaid with generative AI, which is huge throughout the show. All these creative ways of solving problems. You know, I've been joking with my staff lately because for at least a year or two, I've been talking about generative AI will teach us how to communicate with our pets and understand their languages and other animals now there's in the last week there's been all sorts of articles written yeah it's true it's gonna happen wow yeah i mean i have husky so i'm

used to just being yelled at all day long so i'm pretty sure i know what they're yelling at me they're just like give us more treats that's funny let me out give me food i get it that's pretty much it it's just i'm never i'm never fully approved of what I'm doing. I need to do more of whatever they want. But yeah, AI is really huge. We've had a lot of AI interviews on the show this year. We're doing a lot over at CES. AI just seems to be the hottest thing coming.

And one of the things I've had trouble with is I normally can get on to new technologies and I can kind of onboard with them but this AI is just it's like bitches moving hyper fast you're just like what's going on now this week what's crazy how are you doing it at keep well on the new AI stuff the way we as humans deal with everything is we try to relate that to something in our past and for me I think about it like the internet itself you know when it came on you know there wasn't that commercialization of it yet which i was lucky enough to get involved in that very deeply and help make that happen around the world but it was it was something we knew was big we just didn't know how big and it was more like pets.com

and stuff like that that people went crazy in the late 1990s and the market exploded, then it imploded. That's not the generative AI, I think, is like that. It's growing quickly because it's been made easily accessible to everyone. People see the value of it, and businesses are seeing the value for productivity. So there's so many different use cases for it. And the thing that's happened is the problem with the dot-com explosion in the 1990s was that every business plan assumed there was broadband we have broadband now ironically what we don't have is enough electricity and that's one of the

focuses of the ces is for the first time we're talking about something we've always assumed existed which was enough electricity to not only run our products but the electric vehicles and then there's something also big coming down the pike, and we'll be talking about in the show in the next few years, is quantum computing. So all computers will work on zeros and ones. Quantum adds a third dimension, which allows a logarithmic increase in speed and solving, you know, obscure medical problems of obscure diseases and comes up with not only the

solutions with generative AI could come up with, but testing the solutions. So I think we're in just an extremely exciting place where all of us today are lucky to be alive in this era because the change is so phenomenal. Yeah. I mean, I've been seeing the advancements of chat GPT

and somebody said to me the other day, they're like, you know, that's only been like a year, year and a half or something. I'm like, what? And it's crazy and the creativity it brings like it's really opened up my ability to create and i'm no artist like i don't have artistic abilities i'm really logical and reasonable but being able to go on to some of these ai programs and have them draw stuff for you if i want a logo or if i want to talk about something and make something for a post and it's so great you can just be like hey make me a picture of a guy in a business suit doing whatever and boom there it is

three seconds and it looks like professional artwork and so it's just crazy and then of course we've had people on the show we had one guy who wrote a book who aligned AI with the Origin of Species book, and he believes that AI will be its own species, technically. How's that for crazy? That boggles my mind, and that's the kind of thing AI will do to us. It'll continue to surprise us with what it can do, and that's great. Of course, AI's been around for a while. I mean, if you've flown an airplane, a commercial plane, it's been using AI for 95% of the trip to get you going.

That's what automatic pilot is. But generative AI allows you to take it a step further and actually create and learn and move it. It frustrates me. My navigational system in my car hasn't figured out the way I like to go, all the shortcuts, all the things are wrong, and it just doesn't learn. Wow. The learning aspect to me is really cool. And the electricity electricity thing you mentioned i mean they're having to fire up they're talking about firing up old nuclear plants three mile and stuff it's just it's just crazy so they can power ai it makes sense you know i did an embark on an aircraft carrier a few years ago and

those those huge vessels owned by our government is they get 5,000 people on there. And those 5,000 people live around a nuclear, they're all nuclear powered. In fact, that's something that, you know, since this time, Jimmy Carter just passed away. That was his thing. He got our Navy nuclearized. He was a nuclear engineer before he was president. I mean, nuclear to me is a huge part of the answer. Of course, there's great things like renewables, but they are such a tiny percentage. And even with those, no one talks about it, but the huge expense of even getting renewable energy is not only the construction of the windmills or the solar or whatever you're talking about. It's getting the electricity from one place to another costs literally billions of dollars in transmission lines, and those aren't built.

Yeah. So lots of infrastructure that has to happen. Absolutely. With CTA, you guys do a lot of advocating, speaking in front of Congress and lobbying them to make sure that they're up on technology, make sure they're business friendly and all that sort of good stuff. Are you seeing that they're going to keep up with this AI stuff? I mean, they were kind of struggling to interview some of the Google and Facebook executives the other day about how email works. I think actually it's a different generation of politicians that are in there. I think they know their stuff. I was part of the Senate where the

senators just sat and listened to a whole bunch of people from every different interest in generative AI. And it was amazing because I've never seen it happen before where senators were actually walking, even if they're not in the relevant committee, and they'd sit there and listen for an hour or two. And I am pretty optimistic about our government in terms of what they do with AI. And there were some really dumb things coming from business and others that meant good. Actually, Elon Musk was one of them. And what they did was they wanted to have a six month moratorium on generative AI. And we opposed that immediately. That just was not a good idea.

So the good guys will listen to the moratorium and the bad guys will go ahead. Because part of generative AI is stopping bad guys from doing things. We need generative AI to do that. Yeah. Because they're already using AI now to do bad things. Oh, absolutely. And you can see it in your inbox. Yeah.

Crazy what's going on. Anything more we want to plug at what's going on at CES you want to talk about before we get to your book? Sure. I mean, CES, it's only open to people with a connection

with innovation and technology. But that's, it could be a media investor, employee of a company, obviously. We get, what we're having is we're having some incredible speakers,

including, you know, the hottest CEOo in america jensen who heads up in a nvidia we have ed bastion of delta first trade show keynoter ever to use sphere in las vegas oh yeah it's really cool. That thing is crazy, that sphere, huh? Yeah. We're not allowed to call it the sphere. It's sphere. It's sphere. I want to be good with our partner there. And then we have a whole bunch. We have 1,100 speakers. A lot of these, if you go to our website, you'll see they'll be streamed keynotes.

People can watch it on their own. You don't have to be a member of the industry to do that. And a lot of these will be recorded for posterity. So these are big. But we get everyone from the CEO of Twitter, or X as it's now called, Linda Iaccarino, to so many others that are being there. Panasonic and Delta are both celebrating their 100th anniversary by keynoting CES. And we just have some sessions on the big issues, sessions on big policies. We have people from all over the world speaking, giving their views. And it's really a festival as much as it is a trade show business event

because people are celebrating and sharing information and innovation. So there's a lot there. It is, CES is also one of the world's largest auto shows, mobility event. We have not only cars, but electric vehicles and scooters and flying machines, as well as electric boats and all sorts of different devices that get people around, which is cool. It's also one of the biggest health technology shows, if not the biggest in the world in terms of showing everything from COVID on. There's been so much in that area. And of course, we don't talk about it a a lot and it was the biggest surprise to me the last

show last year was the accessibility for people with disabilities it's huge a lot of the leaders of that community come they have incredible interactions with companies they're actually trying to sell those but even perhaps more so with companies that are not and they don't realize what they're sitting on and they get educated on that which is cool and of course overlying that whole theme of sustainability. There's a lot of companies very focused on the environment. They talk about it. They're green.

A trade show is green. The average person who comes has about 29 meetings. It would take several months traveling around the world to have those meetings. So it's efficient. And of course, there's no better place in the world than Las Vegas to have a trade show. You know, the one thing they talked about with the AI origin of species becoming its own species is one of the challenges of being human is we're kind of in a box of where we focus on propagation of the species.

Every, you know, every biological species operates on propagation of species. And we spend a lot of time, you know, worried about mating and raising children and making sure that there's, you know, the survival of the human race. And the one thing the gentleman talked about was AI isn't going to be concerned about that because it's not, it doesn't have to worry about, you know, buying a hot car, you know, he can find a gal. It's going to think about things that, you know, we don't, we don't, you know, we don't think about it. It's limitless, you know, it doesn't sleep, you know, like I got to get some sleep every now and then. It's just limitless. It doesn't sleep. I got to get some sleep every now and then. It's just limitless.

And so it's going to be thinking about solving cancer and disease, hopefully, and all sorts of different things. At least we hope it will. It might just be like, these humans are annoying. It's a great point. I mean, certainly humans are creative, but they're not very efficient. And often we tell them we do stupid things. You know, we have wars and we, you're right, we do crazy things. But if it wasn't for that drive, you know, where would we be?

We wouldn't have future generations. We wouldn't have jewelry stores. You know, we wouldn't be spending a lot of money we shouldn't be spending. So anyway, the point of it is, is it AI? You're right. We'll solve big problems. I mean, the question is, what will the role be for the AI robots and others versus the roles of humans? And there's a lot of different schools of thought.

There's a lot of science fiction books that were written years before anyone even used the phrase generative AI about, you know, future. You know, what it looked like, that balance between man and machine. And, you know, right now we have machines like cars, and they're killing 40,000 of us a year and putting about almost a million people in the hospital. And that's something which, now that we have generative AI, self-driving vehicles are a reality. What's getting in the way of that? We have people like humans in various occupations.

Take trial lawyers trial lawyers are fighting like hell to block and they've stopped they've literally stopped congress from acting on self-driving vehicles and saving lives there's a whole carnage industry that depends on all the money oh the oh they make well the number one lawsuit filed in the country is for vehicle accidents and we can avoid those the technology is there even at this point of generative AI. Not everyone, because it's never going to be perfect. But most of them, those people who died could live. And all the clogging our hospitals with all these things and these head wounds and all that, it's just, it's so unnecessary. And that's, you know, you want to talk about what we do in Washington, what I'm frustrated about. That is the biggest

deal. Now, out of fairness, Trump did everything he could as did Obama. Biden and his team or whoever's running the presidency, they just stopped everything on self-driving. They gave trial lawyers. And now I expect with Trump, especially his new designee as secretary of transportation, who talks about the fact that he has lots of kids and they distract him when he's driving he said it's that that's going to end you know he doesn't want to have those accidents when they're fighting in the back and spilling coffee and food that's what adoption is for the thing that it will do to our economy i mean you'll have i'm talking to you from detroit and there there's car companies

what can they do wow they could produce vehicles that are rolling home entertainment units or home office units or sleep units. There's no shortage of what you could do with a vehicle once you get self-driving. And you could take some of the cost out of it. Because if you don't need that driver column and the steering wheel and all the information for the driver, it removes a lot of the weight. It removes a lot of the cost. And we could change it.

And you want to talk about the disabled community. It just empowers them totally. I personally am passionate about, you know, this is the kind of thing where technology, AI, all combines together in a way which solves a really big problem. We've all had friends that have died or been seriously injured in car accidents. And to think that this is unnecessary going forward it's just it's exciting yeah it's going to be an interesting world so let me ask you this before we get to your book too i've always i've always wondered about this because i'm interviewing a lot of ceos for my new book and i one of these days i gotta sit down with you maybe follow you

around cs one of these times and how do you do it what coffee you drinking how do you how do you stay energized through these these events and you know i mean it's a pumped up event you're almost maybe 24 7 on and during cs how do you do it what are you drinking for coffee first of all the plan was in december from thanksgiving on i i try to you know have a clean life like actually since thanksgiving i don't think I've, New Year's Eve I took a sip of alcohol, but I haven't had any alcohol. And I've tried to, you know, exercise almost every day, try to do things to prepare.

I should be doing voice exercises. I didn't do that this year, but I usually do that. You know, just good, clean living. And the other thing is, is that it's just so energizing. I joke that the official drug of the CTA staff at CES is Ambien at night because my brain can't process everything. It's like the one time I take Ambien a few nights in a row at a controlled dosage and make sure that I so I could, you know, get to sleep because I can't exist. But I am getting older. And although you announced me as a CEO and president, the truth is I will share.

It's not breaking news, but I'll share that I am no longer the president. I'm just the CEO. And as of yesterday, the vice chairman of the board, we have a president, Kinsey Fabrizio, has worked with us for getting close to 20 years and has been groomed and handles and is doing, in many ways, she's like a thousand times better than me. So I think between the two of us, we're doing okay. And we have a tremendous team, frankly. I mean, we got people that are, we get the best of the best and we get them because we're

considered one of the best places to work. We've gotten a zillion awards and look, what we're working on is pretty exciting. You know, it's, it's, this is the future. So we have great people working with us. I mean, the machinery and the moving parts for the size of this event. I mean, I go to every year and I promise myself, I'm like, I'm going to hit every booth. I'm going to sit every day. You can't do that, Chris.

Chris, I don't know. You can do the math, but let's say that I think there's 4,300 booths or exist stands, as they say in Europe. 4,300 times on multiple. You'd have to spend two seconds in each booth or something crazy like that. Plus you put in 60 or 70 miles of walking. So you gotta, you know, we have a great app.

We urge people to download it and you can plan out your visits, wear comfortable shoes. And we have all sorts of recommendations for people plan it out. And you can do some things afterwards. You can watch some of those keynotes after the show. You don't, you know, we know that it's going to be pretty full for the keynotes.

You can see them elsewhere or you can do other things. But you have to plan it out and you have to leave yourself time. And that's your point is a good one. You can't just plan out all your time. You got to be able to. If you can't walk around Eureka Park and some of the bigger areas of the show, the mobility or health area. I mean, and we have a whole area of Innovations Award winners,

which we had a record number of entries this year for that contest. Who's the most innovative products? It's just astounding. I mean, it is overwhelming, frankly. It's overwhelming to me. And my dirty little secret is that I don't get to see much of the show because I'm greeting, you know, foreign dignitaries and introducing keynoters and having meetings. Everyone wants a meeting. Like they have to go back and say they met with the leadership.

So that's why having, you know, people with different titles is very handy right now. And we have just a first-class team, which is thrilling. And you guys pull it off. Like, I just look at all the moving parts, the stages. I mean, it's just crazy how much goes into it. I'll give you my view of life because I know your audience is so important in terms of what they bring. I tell our team that, look, people will want to make a business decision based on what they personally want to do and then justify it. Some people will never go to Las Vegas.

I get that. We're not going to get those people. But if we can help make it a great experience for anyone there, what does that mean? That means like spending a lot of money and investing in thicker carpet or directional sign or an app or buses to get people around quickly, making everything as easy as possible for someone who comes, then we're likely to succeed. And that philosophy of helping out the customers who come, all of them, not just the people who pay us money, the exhibitors, but everyone who's there and empowering our staff to help out in situations and frankly, be nice. It's important. We live and die by our surveys after the show. We survey the media, we survey

the exhibitors, we survey the people who are just coming from abroad. We survey even people who decided not to come after registering just to find out why they don't come. And we take this very seriously and act on the results of those surveys. That brings the quality to the show. So your newest book that just came out October 8th, 2024, Pivot or Die, How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes. You and I have certainly been through that over the last six years. We've talked about it through COVID. And, you know, at one point, the show was virtual, I think 2021. Give us a 30,000 overview, your new book, please. Certainly COVID inspired the book. But now the sudden switch of politics in Washington, which a lot of people didn't expect a complete takeover

by the Trump's party is there's a pivot for you. So it's timely in terms of what it says. And basically, you talked about Darwin before with your prior guest and the new Darwinism is generative AI. And perhaps it is. But Darwin was reported to have said, although he never actually said it, he implied it, that it's not the strongest that survives. It's not the fastest that survive. It's those who can adapt to change the quickest. And one thing that RR shares, we all share, is we are living in an era of rapid change, and you have to adapt. And the book starts with COVID and my personal journey in CES and how we adapted way quicker than anyone else through a series of very good coincidences. And frankly, my wife, who called it from like early January of 2020 and

said, this is going to do all these things. And I talk about it and how we made decisions about the CES and how companies pivoted because it was a forced pivot by everyone with a business. And it produced some great things. It's producing them still today in healthcare and technology and transportation. And what I noticed in our industry until COVID, there was a lot of me too-ism. Like every company would look at the market and say, take a photo of it and say, I could do this if I could grow in this area. So were their competitors. COVID changed that. They all went in different directions. Now they're doing different things. A company like Panasonic, which was a consumer company, is now most of their business is business to business. And they're still using CES to get to that business. But you look at other companies and there's so many stories there, whether it's the ring, which started at CES and how they pivoted

a lot of the most successful companies in the world. Their story is a pivot from founders that tried things and didn't work. Even I read your book, Chris, I loved it. I thought it was one of the best business books I've read. And you talk about all the pivots in your life and you made them and that pivoting takes courage man and it's going into the vast unknown you know it's like the star trek where people have never been before and that's what you're doing with our lives but but as a person that's getting to the age where i'm giving people advice a lot of younger people are very anxious about these decisions in life and my response to them is don't sweat it out you You know, what you do after high school, what college you go to, if you go to college, it's not that important.

What's important is you learn about yourself because some of the things are random. You know, yeah, you may meet a spouse or a loved one there. But even your first job, it'll teach you about yourself and you'll get valuable experience and self-knowledge. The only really big decisions in life are like four. One is, are you going to commit a major crime? Two, are you going to do something unsafe? Three, are you going to marry somebody? Because that's expensive to get out of. And number four, are you going to have kids? Those are four big, big, big decisions. The rest of them,

you know, be willing to experiment and pivot, especially when you have the glory of youth. But a lot of people actually, they pivot when they're older. You know, be willing to experiment and pivot, especially when you have the glory of youth. But a lot of people actually they pivot when they're older. You know, life life changes for all of us as much as we want to keep it the same. And and so whether, you know, a loved one passes away or things don't go as you thought, you can't keep the status quo. But as humans, we're programmed to keep the status quo and want the status quo. And that's not real life. And that's why Darwin is one of my heroes, is he recognized that. And it's a good thing to always remember, we'll never be able to preserve what we have, but we have to adapt to changing circumstances. And the quicker you adapt,

the better. And that's what CES does. It gets people together. They see the future right before them. They meet people and they can change their business models. The startup pivot you talk about, the force pivot, the failure pivot, the success pivot, remote working was something that also got thrown into the mix of COVID. Do you have any thoughts on what you see the future of that becoming? I've been hearing that remote working has been going away. Maybe there's only 10% of new jobs on the market for remote. Maybe that's finally ending. I know from a CEO perspective, it's very frustrating not to have that face-to-face contact.

If there's one people interested in getting back to business meetings and travel and trade show and senior customers, it's CEOs. And their natural inclination is to want to have everyone in a room and talk to them and get the body language and get the relationships and the trust flowing. And I get that. On the other hand, the reality is things have changed. People want different things and some jobs can be done remotely. And I think every company is trying to figure out what they're doing. I mean, we have issues. For example, we allow some people remote, but we don't allow them to be remote in California or New York or New Jersey because they have some crazy laws that we don't want to follow. And it's what kind of state it is. It's the

reason they're doing it. We found that maybe it's because of what we do, that a lot of our former employees are consultants to us, because they know who we are, we don't have to train them, we trust them. And they have lifestyle changes they want. And the nature of CES especially is a lot of intense work for six months. And then like from the end of January through the summer again, it's a little more relaxed. And so we have a whole bunch of CES full-time staff, but we have a lot of consultants, huge numbers actually. So we're flexible.

I think every employer has to look at their own situation and look at their jobs and determine it. But it's, you know, it's like Milton Friedman of the Chicago school said, if you discriminate against people, then you're cutting down your worker, potential worker pool and the number of great workers you'll attract. I'm a little more flexible in my approach.

I've been remote commuting for 20 years. My wife is based in Detroit. I'm based in Washington. So I've done both ways. We have kids. It's not perfect. Trust me. I mean, it's difficult. It's difficult for families. It families difficult when you want to go to the kids games and things like that

and you feel guilty about work you feel guilty about home but that's the nature of being a parent and those things will just have to work through but it's still evolving I think a lot of companies go to two or three days a week and some companies it's full-time but that's what you know it depends if you're making stuff you can't work remotely yeah but if you're more it's called white collar or new collar you know you're you're you're able to do a lot more of it i like the thinking time i like the flying time even even though sometimes it really is bad i could think because thinking is really important for me that's one of the things we should get into one of these days with an interview with you off the CS thing But you know how you how you how you deal with the time for yourself to think through things made me any meditation or self

Self awareness self-help, you know time out for where you can operate in your space and focus on what you would need to do As a CEO stuff like that I'd love to kiss, you know, I'm happy to talk to you you're you're an interesting guy i read what you write you're a great writer you're great you have a radio voice i wish i had i have radio face is what they call it i have that too i also you know i and i respect the pivots you've made and your successes and you don't let the grass grow under your feet no yeah it's like you say you got to keep pivoting. You got to keep, you know, being an entrepreneur

really is just a problem solver, constantly problem solving. And I remember seeing this, there's a guy on TikTok who sells private jets and he's 60, 65. He's been doing all of his life since he was young. And I was watching a day, how he goes through his day. He did a, here's how I, you know, go through my day. And like midday, he goes to the gym. He did a, here's how I go through my day.

And like midday, he goes to the gym. And he was like, you know what's funny is I've been in business for however many years, five decades. And he says, every day, there's new problems to solve with new technology, with new AI, with all these things. And that's what you guys are doing at CES. You're helping people find new resources to be more efficient, to get stuff done. He goes, but it's funny that I'm this old and it never ends that there's new problems we have to continually solve every day.

And I'm like, yeah, that's, come to think of it, that's what being an entrepreneur is about. And, you know, some people love that and that's what turns them on. And some people want a job where they could just turn it off, you know, after the eight hours and move on. It's know yourself when you choose what you're doing. And the fact that people are listening to you, that means they're curious and they want to explore, which is great. So Pivot and Die, what do you hope people come away with?

We may have covered a little bit of that, but final thoughts on that as we go on. This is my fourth book, and I am gratified that I could share, you know, my experiences, what I've learned. And when people come up and I love doing book signings because people tell them how, how their prior, my prior books have changed their lives or their kids' lives, or they got them to do something different or they started a business. And that just, that's the biggest turnaround there is. I mean, you know, the fact that you've affected someone's life in a positive way. It's tough to do, you know, one-on-one, which is I try and maybe sometimes I'm effective and sometimes it's not. I mentor people.

I work with people. But to actually change people through a book is to me exciting. And, you know, it's not a matter of money. It's a matter of helping people. Like I wish I had read my books when I was younger. I wouldn't have made all the mistakes I made. You should have wrote them sooner. Yeah, well, I talk

to a lot of executives when they sell their companies and I try to give them a caution that someone's buying your company because they think they can make more money than you're making right now and that means they're going to change things. And 99% of the time after the honeymoon the person's gone within three years no matter what they say yeah and i and i say what

could i have said to you differently and one of them said you couldn't you couldn't have convinced me that this would have happened i just had to learn it and live it and that's what life is like you got to experience things yourself that's true and the great thing is about books is we share the stories we share cathartic journeys and we learn each other. You find people that have blueprints. I remember writing my book and I was at the point where I was like, I was writing, you know, I felt like I was writing all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy from, you know, I thought about that moment. So the shining, the shining. Yeah. And, and I, I complained to one of the authors that came on the show and she goes chris there's somebody who needs to hear you and your book you don't know who that person

is you may never meet them but they need to hear you and your story and they're going through some sort of thing that only you can save them from and so it's great that's why we have so many wonderful officers authors like yourself on the show and everything else. I'm excited. CES 2025. I'm so glad we're like five years away from COVID and all that crap. Jeez, what a nightmare. Backwood. I never take it for granted until the show's over. Oh yeah. Now you love the show. You're like, this show is awesome now. Just losing it for a year was bad. But final thoughts as we go out, Gary, on the show and everything else. Final thought is life is an adventure. Technology can make it better. Innovation's important. And I don't want to screw it up in my job and not allow people to innovate or not do

something right. Or if I don't do my job right, people won't get together or government will screw it up. Throwing some shade at the government there. Yeah. But it's good that you're there to advocate and lobby and advocate for business. Business is such an important thing to this world. So Gary, thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. And then I think we got the.tech or the.com for CES, right? Both of them. CES.tech and CTA.tech. So much exciting, folks. Go see it.

It's the greatest toy showroom in the world. I love seeing all the newfangled things and all the cool stuff. And it's just so exciting. It's a thrilling thing. Thank you, Gary, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. And thanks to Gary for coming to the show.

Thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Order of the book, wherever fine books are sold. Pivot or die, how leaders thrive when everything changes. Thanks to Ronis for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Fuss, linkedin.com, Fortress, Chris Fuss, Chris Fuss, one of the, whatever it is, and all that good stuff. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sound.