The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Blockchain Syndicate: A Contemporary Thriller by Robbie Bach

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

The Blockchain Syndicate: A Contemporary Thriller by Robbie Bach https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Syndicate-Contemporary-Thriller/dp/B0F9GYKTL9 https://theblockchainsyndicate.com/ A dead man blackmails a United States senator. A Russian assassin leaves a trail of bodies. A cryptic criminal syndicate unleashes financial chaos. A courageous war hero races to save her family—and her country. Set amid the turbulence of today’s headlines, this gripping techno thriller—the second in Bach’s series to feature Tamika Smith—pulses with high-stakes intrigue and razor-edged political drama. Senator Tamika Smith’s new year begins in shambles. First she receives an email threatening to expose her past—a threat from someone she knows is dead. Then her boyfriend, Johnny Humboldt, is kidnapped in broad daylight after his daughter is wounded in a California school shooting. Someone is desperate to take Tamika down and damage the country she loves. The attacks are professional, the delivery is flawless, and the message unmistakable: America is broken, and someone is determined to fix it their way. Standing in the eye of the storm, Tamika must navigate a political landscape riddled with betrayal, misinformation, and moral decay to rescue Johnny and uncover the group behind the web of conspiracy. As the country spirals toward financial Armageddon and democracy itself begins to unravel, Tamika must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to save her family and pull the nation back from the brink. With its sharp blend of shadowy villains and morally torn heroes, The Blockchain Syndicate dares you to question everything—right up to the final, breathless moment. About the author Robbie Bach is best known for founding and leading the team that created the Xbox. Today he is an entertaining storyteller and catalyzing voice who writes books and speaks to audiences on leadership, creativity, strategy, and civic issues. Robbie joined Microsoft in 1988. Over the next twenty-two years, he worked in various marketing and business management roles—including supporting the successful launch and expansion of Microsoft Office. As Chief Xbox Officer, he led the creation and development of the Xbox business, including the launch of the Xbox, and its highly popular successor, Xbox 360, as well as the Xbox Live gaming platform. Then as Microsoft’s President of the Entertainment and Devices Division, he was responsible for the company’s worldwide gaming, music, video, phone, and retail sales businesses until he retired in 2010. In his current role as a civic engineer, Robbie works with corporate, philanthropic, and civic organizations to help drive positive change in our communities. He guest-lectures extensively at a variety of colleges and universities and speaks to corporate, civic, nonprofit, and trade association audiences across the country. In 2015, he published his first book, “Xbox Revisited: A Game Plan for Corporate and Civic Renewal.” His first thriller novel, “The Wilkes Insurrection,” was published in 2021. The sequel thriller, “The Blockchain Syndicate” featuring Senator Tamika Smith, was published in 2025.

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 moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, this Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Well, ladies, gentlemen, the Ireland sings that means we're turning into an AI mode and probably have robots to me and my job next week. That way I can sit home and just eat ketos in my beanbag naked all day playing video games. Speaking of video games, we've got a gentleman we're going to be talking about some of his

pass in video games. and design and how he's used that to thread into being a serial nonfiction book author. So we'll get into some of that. But in the meantime, we must endure you with as much guilt, shame, and whatever we can get to get you to refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, Forteousness, Christfoss, Facebook.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Fortisess, Chris Foss, and YouTube.com, forward slash, Chris Foss. I don't know why I did that, but I did it. So there it is. You'll just have to deal with it, people. because it's my show. Anyway, guys, we had an amazing young man on this show.

We're talking about his most interesting book that is hitting the bookshelves and tearing up the charts of top booksells, and as soon as I can find which tab is the thing is blocking, I will tell you what it is. But I just wanted to build up some suspense there. It is entitled, The Blockchained Syndicate, a contemporary thriller out October 21st, 2025. Robbie Bach joins us on the show with us today. We're going to talk about his insightful book that's part of a series, and you're going to be entertained or else.

I don't know what that means. I don't know. Why are you threatening your audience, Chris? I don't know. It seems fun. Robbie is best known for founding and leading the team that created the Xbox. You may have heard of it from a small company in Microsoft. Today he is an entertaining storyteller and catalyzing voice.

He writes books and speaks to audiences on leadership, strategy, creativity, and civic issues. The Robbie joined Microsoft in 1988. That's weird because he looks like he's about 30 years old. Anyway, over the next 22 years, he worked in various marketing and business management roles, including supporting the successful launch and expansion of Microsoft Office. He was the chief Xbox officer. He led the creation development of the Xbox business,

including the launch of the Xbox and highly popular successor, Xbox 360, as well as the Xbox Live Gaming Platform. Then as Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, he was responsible for the company's worldwide gaming, music, video, phone, and retail sales business until he retired in 2010. Welcome to the show, Robbie. How are you? Really good, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Good to hear that introduction. That was quite a production. I love it. 1988. Were there even computers back then? No. Barely. I was running on DOS. Nobody on your show will even know what DOS. was. So I'll tell you how long ago it was. Yeah. I'm old with you, man. I know what Doss is. I remember

that. I remember when Windows came out. Like, it was really freaking cool, man. I think it was Windows 2.0 where it was officially Windows. That's right. It started with Windows 2.0. And then the real big release was Windows 3. Oh, yeah. That was a huge deal. Yeah. Still better than Vista. No, I'm kidding. I'm doing jokes. Or was it Windows 7? Seven was better than Vista. That's the That's the thing you wanted to know. It was the one that came after Vista that was just as equally as bad. I'm not, I'm throwing you under the bus for saying. Oh, after Vista was seven, and then there was Windows 8, which people weren't fans of.

And then Windows 10 was a pretty good product. Yeah. It's a journey. Give us any dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. They can find me at Robbiebock.com. You can also find information on the books at blockchain syndicate.com and Wilkesinsurrection.com.

All that stuff is all linked together. And follow me on LinkedIn. That's where I do my. writing so you'll see i probably post something up there meaningful once a couple every couple weeks and so you've written the thriller here it leads off with it doesn't lead off but the billing does on the description a dead man blackmail's u.s. center a russian assassin leaves a trail of bodies wasn't me folks a cryptic criminal syndicate unleashes financial chaos a courageous war hero saves her family and her country well that sounds like a lot packed into a book there it's it is a lot packed into a

but that's sort of the you know that's what makes thrillers thrillers you got to be able to constantly be turning the page baby that's the that's the secret to the genre turn in them pages that's what i'm going to name my next book turn them pages or i don't know what the hell i'm going on about so give us a now this is a part in a series this is the second part of the series do i understand yeah the first book was the first book was the wilkes insurrections the same main character a woman named tamika smith she starts in the first book as a major in the air Force Reserve. And in our second book here, the blockchain syndicate, she's a U.S. Senator. So she has a lot of responsibility and a lot of interesting things to come across her plate, so

speak. I've done the Russian assassin thing. I love to trail behind me, not bodies, but mostly tacos. Tell me more about this, Tamika. Who is she and kind of what she is up to there in your trailer? So she starts, Tamika starts as a Air Force Reservist. In the first book, there's a plane crash at her Air Force base. She rescues somebody from on the plane crash. And as the plot unrolls, there's a domestic terrorist, let's say, who's trying to disrupt the country. And he does five or six attacks in the U.S. And those end up revolving around Tamika and her life and her family. And she has to dig in and try to help the FBI figure out who committed the crimes. And so that's her, that's the whole, that's the plot of the first story. It's a domestic

anarchist who's attacking the country. In the second book, the blockchain syndicate, think of it like a mafia boss, creating his mafia family, attacking the U.S. government, except the one important thing is because the mafia boss is hiding behind blockchain, it's impossible to know who he or she is. And by the way, he doesn't know who the rest of the people

and his mafia family are, and they don't know who he is. Oh, really? So it's an anonymous crime syndicate. Think of it that way. Not on his crime. Isn't that a little hard to lead if you don't know who the boss is? He knows who the boss is. Oh, okay.

So he's the one in charge of the, of the, of the syndicate. And so he's directing people. And, you know, as the plot on roles, you know, our good guys are trying to figure out who is this guy, where is he from? And why can we not figure out who he is? And technology plays a huge role in the story. Yeah. And as we learned from, you know, mobsters that, you know, used to try and stay anonymous and undercover, you know, certainly not John Gotti. You know,

they, they tried to do that so they can keep anonymity. You know, it's, it's hard to figure out who to take out or who to prosecute if you don't know who the boss is. But I suppose the guy pulling the strings, the puppet master, he knows, and that's all that matters. Yeah, that's right. And he turns out to be a really smart guy. He's a venture capitalist, has a lot of money. So he has plenty of money at his disposal to attack what's going out of the country. Wow. That's pretty wild. Now this is kind of a journey.

You spent a lot of years of Microsoft and technology with, you know, being nerdy with the pen things. I forget what they're called. The things that go in your pocket. Yeah. Pocket protectors. Yeah, the pocket protectors. I think that's standard procedure wearables for

Donald, or for Bill Gates. Yeah, for sure. I almost said guy, the Apple guy. Steve Jobs, yeah. Yeah, and somehow I fell into the other one. But I'll just, you know, I'll make it through the show somehow and having a seizure, clearly. So what got you into this?

How did you, you know, you wrote a first book on just Xbox and the business sort of aspect of working there and stuff? What made you jump into this series and find a love for writing, I guess, novels? When I, when I left Microsoft, I started doing some writing and I wrote this book called Xbox Revisited, which is a, a. strategy book. It's a nonfiction business book, very typical ex-CEO executive talking about the things that we did to build and create and fix the Xbox business. Love that book. I use it today for a lot of my consulting and guest lecturing that I do. I finished it. I discovered two things. One, I really

like to write. That was fun. And two, nonfiction is really not very exciting. And so I decided to challenge myself and and started to write i wrote literally 100 pages of character sketches of these five main characters and a day in their life and then how those characters interacted with each other and that was the beginnings i didn't even know i was writing a thriller at that point i just thought i was writing fiction and that was the beginnings of what became the wilkes insurrection wow now why did you name it the wilks insurrection can you tell us that i don't want to give away anything that's in the bad guy's name is ford wilkes there is a theme in the book around lincoln so you can imagine ford wilkes john wilkes booth you can see some of the you can see some of the connections

there so there's a both of these books because they're contemporary and you know tamika's becomes a u.s. senator and all those kinds of things there's a lot of government democracy what contemporary things that are going on in the U.S. that is in both of these books. Lincoln Coalition and Lincoln references seem very fitting, and they do fit in the plot and what's going on. You know, these novels are very popular in suspense and a little bit of military and political intrigue, you know, makes for a great sort of spyish sort of novels. Would this classify as a spyish, though?

I may have thrown under the bus when I said that. No, the first one is a little less of a spy novel. second one is definitely a spinajable. The second one is kind of this mix of what I'll call old school espionage, Russians against Americans, and new age cyber crime, as I discussed earlier on the mafia connection. So it's, it's a blend of those two things, which I think is really kind of cool. How is this working out for you so far? Obviously, the first one was successful they did you do a second book because if your first book bombs, they usually don't ask you do a second one. What's your vision for this series and other work that you?

you might want to do. Some authors have multiple series and multiple characters. Yeah, I will, writing is one of three things I do. I spend a lot of time in the nonprofit space. I'm very involved in Boys and Girls Clubs, Habitat for Humanity, an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center. So that's one part of what I do. I do a bunch of public speaking, and then I do my writing. So for me, having one series is just enough. I can't, I couldn't possibly write more than one book at a time. The reason I write, you know, sort of two ways. One, I just love this year entertainment of writing something that people enjoy. So if you get to the end of the Wilkes insurrection or the blockchain syndicate, I want you to say, wow, that was really fun,

interesting. I couldn't put it down. And then the second reason I write, and this is why I write contemporary fiction, is I want people to pause and think, oh, that actually made me think about what's going on in the world around this. So there is some, these novels aren't just sort of the classic sit-on-the-beach, semi-repetitive, trashy thriller novels. There's some thought in the themes that flow through it and what happens to my characters. Ah, that works pretty well, then. So do you, are you going to focus then on just building this out, keep building out? The next phase will be, this isn't giving anything away, but the last line in the blockchain syndicate says,

things would probably get worse before they get better. So my next, that's a lead-in to the next novel. And so I'm plotting now to have things get even worse and then presumably hopefully help them get a little bit better. Who hurt you, man? You're just making things worse. your poor character is really i went through all this crap in this book and now i got to do another yeah it's you know it's a little bit the nature of the genre and it's also a little bit of the

challenges of all the crazy stuff going on in the country right and the what in the world around us is a crazy stuff going on i don't know maybe maybe maybe yeah so it's to me that's the that's what's fun is mixing what's actually going on with fiction and with fictional characters and kind of blending those two things. That's super exciting for me. It's been kind of so weird lately with some of the things that are going on in the world. Of course, AI is bringing a lot of that into our world and disruption and yada. And it never seems, it seems to be that I'm just going to get the tattoo of the Chinese curse. I mean, you live in interesting times.

And then I can just, any time I complain, I can look at it and just be like, hey, you do live in interesting times. Got that going for you. If you're a fiction writer, it's actually a problem because, you know, one of the things you do as a fiction writer is you try to write things that are just barely believable, but far enough out and a little bit crazy that it sort of entices people. And the problem is things are so crazy right now. It's hard to figure out what's crazy. What's crazy? You're like, I don't know, I just read the news.

I don't know how I can build on that. like yeah exactly i don't know people are eating tree bark now or something you know i don't know but yeah does where do you get the wherewithal for understanding maybe research or something understanding you know maybe some of the guns and aspects of you know these sort of novels maybe the the gun play the you know some of the different you know a lot of the guys that we have come on the show that do novels like this they were in the military sure and so where did you kind of dig up or research maybe that you did that helped you kind of figure out how to flesh out the characters and some of the scenarios they get into. There's parts of this that are sort of

native to me. So in my case, I'm not in the military, but I was worked for a technology company. You didn't work for Microsoft. There's probably a lot of gunplay in that. No gunplay, but a lot of tech. And technology plays a role in in all of these books. So the tech part of it is sort of my background. I also spent a lot of time in the civics and policy space, so I have some of that in my background. And then for other things, I do a lot of research. I interview a bunch of people. You know, there's a scene in the book that involves an airplane and how do you track an airplane and how can an airplane hide itself and all those kinds of things? It turns out one of my friends from Microsoft flew F-4s in the Israeli Air Force. And another one of my daughter's friends

is a commercial pilot for Delta Airlines. So I talked to that. and they sort of gave me the ins and outs on how tracking works and how those things work. Tamika Smith in the Air Force, two of my fellow board members on a couple of boards I'm on, our Air Force generals. I spent some time talking with them. They've connected me with other Air Force people. You know, you go and do the research. For the blockchain syndicate, through my connections at the bipartisan policy center, I got a tour of the U.S. Senate because a couple of the scenes take place on the Senate floor, and I needed to be able to see that to sort of describe it. You know, it's a combination of my background, the work I do, and the people I meet.

And sometimes you have to go to extreme measures. Once I had to take an Amtrak train to see what the inside of an Amtrak train looked like, and so I can describe it. You know, you do things to get as real as you possibly can't. Yeah. We have a lot of novels that come on the show, and they'll tell me, yeah, I set the novel in Paris so that I could have an excuse to go there and do research. I'm like, that's pretty smart.

They're like, yeah, last time I went to Venezuela or, you know, Archdea, whatever, pick your country. And you're like, yeah, just every time I write a book, I go someplace I haven't gone to that I want a vacation. I was, you'll laugh. I was talking to a fellow author, and he said, tomorrow I'm going to Finland, to do research for my book. I was like, okay, dude, you don't really understand how this is supposed to work.

Finland is not the place you go to do research on the book. I mean, do you really want to go to Finland in December? That doesn't seem like a good strategy. They have a good Red Valley District. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, who knows in Finland?

It is cold there, though. Yeah, it's cold and dark in December. It's really dark. Yeah, if you like skiing, that might be the place to go. Yeah, maybe. Better just looking at Russians through the scope. Yeah, there's not too. There's better places to go skiing.

Anyway, I do think, like the blockchain, Synecate. I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands. My wife is Dutch, so a meaningful books from the book takes place in the Netherlands. Oh, so my red lister, my red light district was a good reference. I was just, I was just one country off. Yeah, exactly. Good reference. Yeah, we, we pull a good one every now then. Every now that we get a joke right on the show. So, people are going to read this books, and, you know, we've had the Tom Clancy folks on the show, everybody but Tom Clancy himself, and lots of the novels that write these series of books and people love them man they eat them up they get they fall in love of the characters

pretty soon they start telling you what your characters are up to and you're like what i wrote the book how do what we have one of our authors we have on regular she's a wonderful lady and i think she's almost 90 and she's written 60 or 70 books with multiple threads and trees if you will and yeah people have come up to me and told me about my characters one time it came up and said do you understand that that character you've written like 15 books on is a serious alcohol And she was like, oh, wow. No, I didn't realize that. But her previous husband, her last husband, was an alcoholic.

And so she was writing, you write what you know? It is true that people always ask me, which one of the characters in your book is you. Ah. I get asked that question a lot. And the answer is in my case, at least, none of these characters are me. But of course, the people I interact with myself, business, folks I meet in the business community, folks I meet in the nonprofit space, you get influenced by the things you know. And sometimes consciously you build that in, like in this case, you know, I know a lot. I know some venture capitalists, most of whom are good people, a couple of whom I don't think are great people.

And I picked my venture capitalists in this story is not a great person. So, but there are, it also happens subconsciously. where you're not really even thinking about it and suddenly you get to the end and you read the character that said, oh, that's a little like name a friend, name a person you know. Yeah. That happens.

Yeah. Sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's not. You write what you know. That's really important, folks. Do you find it's, how do your characters come to you? Because we have a lot of people on the show, the characters, like literally talk to them

and annoy them into writing the book. And I don't know if that's, I mean, for me, anytime people talk to me, It's one of my 12 personalities and the judge says I can't talk to the one that says kill, kill, kill all the time anymore. Ankle bracelets come off next week. But yeah, but how many times can you do that callback joke on the show, Chris? I don't know.

There's 2,500 shows or 2,600 shows. How do you, how do your characters work with you? Do they stalk you or are you able to kind of contain them? It's a little bit of both. I mean, there's some characters who are with me. And it's not really that they stalked me, but I know them so well. Tamika Smith, as an example, even though she's a mixed-race woman in the military and now a senator, I know her very well. I feel like when I'm writing her, it's super easy.

It comes off the page, and I can be authentically her. There are other characters who have to work a little bit more challenging for me, and I have to work harder at them. Does any of them stalk me? That's an interesting question. I have one character who has to talk to himself. He's a technology nerd who lives in a basement and is a super technical whiz. But, you know, he never really meet anybody by design in the story. And so I can't have him in his own head the whole time.

So he talks to himself. And that's how I get dialogue in the chapters on him. And so I suppose he sort of stalks me a little bit in that way. But, you know, to me because, Tamika's with me all the time. I take the dog for a walk. I'm trying to solve a book problem. And, you know, sometimes that's how it works out. You know, it helps if you dress up like your character.

So maybe you know, I'm not going there. I'm not going there. They don't say that, folks. I just made that up for funny. Right now, somebody's going, we should write that down. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting to me what authors tell me about their relationships with the characters. And I'm jealous because I, I'm stuck in writing business books.

And I wish I could have that imagination or maybe, other voices in my head other than the kill kill kill one that it would it would you know it would make it easier to write because i i just got nothing all i got's business stories and a collection of that crazy stupid stuff i did all my life and that's it's all i got so i'm jealous you guys have that for me for me it's it's one of those it's sound this is going to sound really silly but after i finished the first book the wilkes insurrection people said are you going to write a second one and i said to them yeah tamika's story's not that I feel like I have an obligation to tell her story.

And, you know, so you do, you do make connections and have an affiliation and have a relationship with the characters in your stories. That happens. Now, then there's the bad guys. And, you know, I don't know if I, I don't think I actually have a relationship with any of the bad guys. Although in the blockchain syndicate, there's a, there's a Russian named Nostean drop off, who I really, She's a bad person, but I really like her as a character.

So you can work both ways. Nostio. Wasn't she with Bullwinkle and that one guy? No, that was, let's see. Who is that? No, that was, that's her name. Her name was like Nostner. It was Boris and.

Natalia. Natalia, yeah. That's where that reference popped into my head from. I was like, hey, man. I think I know this one. Yeah, that was, yeah, that was Boris and Natalia. Boris and Natalia I can't even quote for that

That's a bullwinkle show When we're kids Love that show When should people expect the next book from you That's a good question Going right into the spot I'll certainly not in 2026 Because I haven't started

But maybe 2027 We'll see I you know I now have In a strange way With the second book I didn't feel any urgency The first book was

Did really well I was very happy with it But I didn't feel any urgency. Now I feel like the story has enough momentum that I feel like I have some urgency. So hopefully to be 2027. You know what you do? You get one of those contracts where they have a gun at your head. Yeah.

That fixes that. Yeah, that's hard for me because this is, you know, writing for me 30% of my time. And, you know, when I get a chance to do it, I got to be super efficient. And thankfully, I enjoy doing it. Do you try and write an hour a day at least? Some people, some people, they follow a thing. They're like, you've got to write often and stay on top of it. I find that I do better when I don't write often.

I know that sounds a little strange. I find that, you know, I'll write in Chuck. So I'll have a week where I'll spend, I'll have three or four days, I'll clear my schedule, and I'll write three hours a day. And I'll get a ton of work done. Then I'll have to travel and do a board meeting or do something else. And two or three weeks later, I'll come back. And the good news is, you know,

The bad news is I have to reread and do some editing on it while I've written. But the good news is I come out of it fresh. I've been gone a little bit. And so I don't, in the three books I've written, the nonfiction book and the two fiction books, I've never had the look at a page and stare at it and not be able to write. That has not happened to me. And I think partly that's because I step away from it. I have author friends who say I write 1,500 words a day no matter what happens.

Yeah. I do that. I do have my relationships. I'm like, I think I can be better in this relationship. I leave for a while and then come back. That's a different problem, a different tactic. Ah, now you know why you've been married for 44 years, was it? And I...

40 years, yeah. Yeah, I can't make it past 45 minutes on a date. Yeah, you have something I don't. So as we go out, tell people a final pitch out on the book on where to pick it up. Dot coms, where they can find you all that good stuff. And you're going on Xbox. You can buy the book anywhere. books are anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local independent bookstore. I love to

support independent books. So find a local independent store and head there. You can find me at Robbiebock.com, just like it sounds. You can find, if you type in the Wilkes Insurrection or blockchain syndicate, you'll get to dot-com site for both of those. There's video trailers there, character descriptions, scene descriptions, lots of background on the books, and I hope everybody enjoys it. They certainly are. You got a second book and a third one on the way, so people will definitely want to check it out thank you very much for coming the show robbie we we certainly appreciate it we didn't get your what what game console do you run on now or do you want to tell us i don't want to okay so this is this is the best this is the best part of the story so i i ran the xbox business for 10

years i love the business i love the products i love the creativity i don't play video games what i know that's crazy my if you go if you go on xbox live there's a gamer tag called Xbox X-B-A-C-H-S. Oh, really? And that is my original gamer tag, but it is now my son. He's actually good. He's actually good. So if you want to play against my son, you can find Xbox online and give it a shot.

He's going to have everyone contacting him or people are going to contact you on your website and be like, hey, that red lights on. What do I do now? Yeah, exactly. He's going to tell me, Dad, don't put my gamer tag on. the line that's not good the red light of death i think i don't uh yep that was on my watch the red rings of death was on my watch i could i could talk we could have a whole other show on that we'll have another show on that you're welcome to come back anytime i'd love to get to i'd love to get

what's it like personally working with bill gates i think you'd work with them right i did i worked pretty closely with him particularly on xbox and you know as a person people won't think this he has a great sense of humor. He's actually quite funny. He has a sort of a dry, dry sense of humor, quite funny. Obviously, super smart. Maybe the most competitive person I know. Really? But I, God, I learned so much from him and from Steve Ballmer. I worked for, directly for Steve for seven years. I learned so much from both of them. And they both are really competitive. They're demanding. Not every meeting was easy. But it was never personal. It was always about the business. And I learned a ton from them.

Does he read, just he always portrays himself to be reading? Like, I'll see him on like sailboats and he's got a book and he's reading and I'm like, Oh, Bill, Bill reads, Bill reads nonstop. Wow. He reads nonstop. And he reads a wide range of stuff he reads is pretty wide. This is not a, not a narrow field. He reads a lot of different stuff.

And that's, you know, I could bring guys on my team who were deeply technical in an area where you might think Bill didn't know anything. I bring him to a meeting. They would start a conversation, and it was clear that Bill had read up and knew which questions to ask and could figure out he had a good BS meter with the guys who didn't know what they were talking about. He's a unique individual. And look, he and his ex-wife will do more for the world in what they do in the nonprofit space and the money they give away than they ever did in the tech space.

I think the way that space is really good. It's too bad USAID got shut down. I think he was talking about that recently. It's super sad. You know, unfortunately, you know, people are dying as a result. And he's pretty up front, Frank, about that. That's sad. I always remind myself, I need to be more like him and read more books.

I try and audiobook consume as much as I can. But, you know, reading, you not only learn to be better as a writer, but it really activates the brain. It keeps the brain sharp. and having a good imagination and understanding things. Yeah, I've had those CEOs where you can be working on a project for two months and you're a wall and you're stuck and he comes in

to help and within five seconds he knows the answer and he's no, you just do that with this and how are you guys been working on this? We've been, we've been our heads against the wall for two months and you just walked in here and told us the answer. Here's the hard part. Here's the hard part I will tell you.

That experience I've had with Bill and Steve, no question. But I've also had the experience where they thought they knew the answer, and then you've got to tell them you think they're wrong. That is always, that is always a fun experience. And the good news in both of their cases, if you had facts to back it up, they would listen and change their mind. But it was always interesting. I would just always hold up that video of Balmer making fun of the iPhone and how it was never going to work. Steve, unfortunately, there's a lot of videos that Steve would be.

prefer word out there. But, you know, he's a super energetic guy and, you know, crazy smart. As long as you have more home runs than you hit foul balls, you win a game. Yeah, and he's had, they both have had their share of home runs. That's for sure. Thank you very much, Robbie, for coming to this show. We certainly appreciate. Please come back for the next book when it comes out. I'll be happy to do it. Thanks for having me on and all the best in the holiday season. Thank you, you too. The holiday season. People are watching 10 years from now in May are going, what? That's why I always date things on the show, because, like, They're literally people that will write me and be like, hey, you review of the Xbox 360.

I actually have a big review of the Xbox 60. It's got like 360. It's got a trillion views on there or something. And people write me and be like, hey, you know, you know the price in that isn't the same anymore. I'm like, dude, look at the date on the video. And they're like, why are you reviewing the Xbox 360? It's 2025. You're like, dude, the video's 15 years old.

This is great. Folks, pick it up where we're fine. Books are sold. stay away those alibi bookstores you might get mugged or i don't know you might meet the russian assassin in the book the blockchain syndicate a contemporary thriller out october 21st 2025 by robbie bach thanks for tuning in for the show to your family friends and relatives or i'll haunt you at night and make noises under your bed so you think there's a monster under there might be the monster in the bed you never know that's why you should always for the show go to goodrease

dot com for this christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas youtube.com for just christmas on those crazy places in it be good at each other stay safe we'll see you next time you've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life warning consuming too much of the chris wash show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter younger and irresistible sexy consume in regularly moderated amounts consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed That has this out.