The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Two But Rule: Turn Negative Thinking Into Positive Solutions by John Wolpert

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

The Two But Rule: Turn Negative Thinking Into Positive Solutions by John Wolpert https://amzn.to/47Ys1xR Jwolpert.com An inspiring and exciting guide to building unstoppable momentum for your transformative ideas In The Two But Rule: Turn Negative Thinking Into Positive Solutions veteran tech innovator John Wolpert delivers an exciting, hands-on guide to using the principles of Momentum Thinking to get you―and your organization―unstuck. You’ll learn how to build unstoppable velocity for your big idea, product, or strategy as you blast through the endless objections and counterarguments that bedevil every innovator and changemaker. You’ll discover how to address common “but” complaints, like “But that’s too expensive,” or “But that won’t work,” at the same time as you refine your idea and polish it into a gem worthy of attention and implementation. In the book, you’ll also find: Explanations for why a “but” statement should always be followed by another “but” statement Discussions of why “toxic positivity” and blind optimism can be just as harmful as constant naysaying Step-by-step strategies for transforming momentum-killing objections into momentum-boosting innovation rocket fuel A can’t-miss resource for managers, executives, directors, and business leaders everywhere, The Two But Rule is also perfect for product managers, professionals in any field, government and academic leaders, and anyone else ready to successfully tackle their most stubborn and intractable problems. About John Wolpert John Wolpert is an esteemed speaker, writer and thinker in technology and business innovation. As a CEO, product executive, and advisor, he’s been at the vanguard of technological breakthroughs from the early days of the Web to the rise of artificial intelligence. John is known for founding Flywheel, a pioneer in the ride-hailing industry. His work at IBM made him a key figure in the evolution of open source software, blockchain, and AI. He’s co-founded global R&D consortia and industry standards bodies, and his thought leadership on Open Innovation has been showcased in the Harvard Business Review. John has led countless new venture workshops and spoken before the European Union and the Australian Parliament in his mission to help organizations work together to solve hard problems.

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 roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. There you go. Welcome to the show, folks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for being here.

As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you but doesn't judge you. To all our new listeners, we've been having this New Year's Eve resolution, New Year's resolution crowd come into the show. And after 15 years and millions of downloads, we're getting a 330 330 increase in volume this month of january so if you're new to the show we certainly appreciate you guys having here please stay don't be like the gym crowd who just goes to the gym for the first two months and then quits we will improve your life guaranteed if you listen but you have to listen that's the deal go to goodreads.com for chest chris fossrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1 on the TikTok, and chrisfossfacebook.com as well. We always have the most brilliant minds on here, the CEOs, the billionaires,

the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, people that bring their stories, their learnings, their educating that they've done to the show, and they depart. They impart their knowledge upon you and will change your life if you don't have epiphanies or learn some new paradigms of the show you better check your eardrums because they're full of wax we have an amazing gentleman on the show he's a multi-book author his newest book is called the two but. Turn negative thinking into positive solutions, which is always important to take and do. And it's currently in stock wherever fine books are sold.

John Wolpert joins us on the show today. We'll be talking to him about his amazing book. He is an esteemed speaker, writer, and thinker in technology and business innovation. As a CEO, product executive, and advisor, he's been at the vanguard of technological breakthroughs from the early days of the web to the rise of artificial intelligence john is known for founding flywheel a pioneer in the ride hailing industry his work at ibm made him a key figure in the evolution of open source software blockchain and ai he's co-founded global r&d consortium and industry standard bodies and his thought

leadership on open innovation has been showcased in the Harvard Business Review. He's led countless new venture workshops spoken before the European Union and the Australian Parliament today in his mission to help organizations work together to solve hard problems. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? It's good to see you, Chris. I sound pretty good, especially with that sultry voice of yours. You know, it's the 10 packs of cigarettes every day. I got to do that. That's what I've got to do.

Yeah, you got to do the Kent thing with the no filters or menthol. That's it, right? Yeah. There you go. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll die of cancer next year, but this sounds great. So, John, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

The two-butt rule, all one thing. The two-butt rule. 1T, very important, dot com. We'll get you to the book page or just jwolpert.com. 1T also. Also, you can go to my sub stack at twobutts.com. That's the number two, B- S.com where all the butt heads hang out and support each other.

There you go. And make sure you use just one T in the button. One T please. One T in the butt or else you'll end up on my only fans. So John, give us a 30,000 overview of your book. Yeah. So I was approached by Wiley a year and a half ago, and they wanted me to write the Blockchain is Dead book

because I weirdly got into that space for a long time and then decided it was a really terrible idea. And I said, no, that's too much negativity. And they said, we've got another book, and I pitched the Two-Butt Rule. I think the original title I pitched was Embracing Your Butt and they liked it. And yeah, it is a book full of adolescent butt jokes, but it's also kind of serious in that we have gotten to this point in society where we have this toxic positivity, where we have lost touch with our butts. We are afraid of our butts. We're running from our butts, which is hard to do.

It takes commitment to run from your own butt. Plus, it's always behind you, chasing you, so it's in your shadow. I mean, the idea is that you really, success depends a lot on how much momentum you can muster, turning bad ideas into good ones, right? The mythology is that there's some innovator innovator with a great idea spanks you know you hear about spanks and how she had this great idea ignored all the negative thinking and made it happen finally somebody believed in her no it's usually a terrible idea and you evolve it you turn it you say but that won't work but it would have but that also won't work but it would would have. But that also won't work. But it would have.

You keep doing that. In fact, you think back to Apollo 13. Imagine when the oxygen tank blows up and they've got to scramble to save the lives of the crew. And the first idea was, okay, let's light up the main engine, turn the ship around, burn back to Earth. The engineer said, but that's not a good idea, turn the ship around, burn back to Earth. The engineers said, that's not a good idea because it could blow up and it might be damaged. Imagine if when they said that

the answer had been, don't be so negative. That's all you do. Two-butt rule must be kind of like, yes and. I'm like, no, no. If Dr. Evil is suggesting to you to take over the world, you don't say yes and. You say, but that's a terrible idea because you want your mommy to love you,

and this will just make a lot of mommies hate you, but we could do this other thing instead. Oh, so, wow, I should change course then. We had Fred Hayes on the show, too, a couple years ago. The steel, the nerves of steel those guys have that are astronauts for the Apollo 13 mission. These guys really know how to hang on to their butts. He didn't, you know, unlike

the Tom Hanks movie, he was complimentary to it, but he goes, we didn't break a sweat until we were coming in or we were coming in from orbit or we were coming in the atmosphere and I think there was something that happened that made it a little weird and he said that's the only time he broke a sweat but part of it is because they're so they're trying to see cool they're trained through thousands of failures

they're trained for every if and or but if you will and uh yeah his his cavalier to the whole thing was just like we're're going to be fine. People ask me why two butts, and I'm like, because failure is only an option when you stop on an odd-numbered butt. And that really is the key. Something like dating. But that didn't work. End. Done.

I'm fresh out of butts. But if you can muster another one, but it would work in there in my experience in research and you know engineering and you know doing stuff for ibm and research consortia if you come up with if you can do five rounds of the two-butt rule you'll you'll have a pretty good invention more more on more times than you think there you go yeah so what is the two-butt rule let's just lay a foundation on that yeah the boring term is momentum thinking right so you want to maintain momentum

in fact you don't have to come up there's lots of different kinds of butts right but i don't like that but i would if but you're a big dumb poopy head but you wouldn't be if and it's usually separated with the word because right but you're a big dumb poopy head because, which really helps. It's not a trite thing. Really, the deeper part of the two-butt rule, and I called it the two-butt rule in that momentum thinking because it's frankly just more fun to say. And we're trying to get this serious idea into society, right?

We have generated a no-butts-allowed culture where terrible gig economy startups bulldoze whole service sectors. And it solved very few problems. Pile a dozen more on top. Social networks promise, you know, what? Community and deliver blows to social norms. And politics, don't get me started, right? We're just chasing each other's butts around.

But I don't like that. A lot of asses in politics, yeah. Yeah. So these are the products of a no-butts-allowed culture. Right? But if you can say, if you can, and the important thing, and this really, I think, the reason, one of my favorite quotes on the back of the book is from Jack Spear from NPR.

And he says, you know, I've read the book, and he did. He said, this needs to be read by both journalists and people in government to raise the level of discourse. Because the deep part of the book is about paying attention to the needs behind your intentions, right? So if you say, I want to do this. And if I think enough about why you want to do it, what you want to do is never as interesting or as important as why you want to do it, right?

That's something I learned as a product person. You know, if somebody says, I want a faster horse, you really want to listen to the word faster and why they want to go faster. You can get to either a racing car or a Model T, depending on how you interpret what their real needs are. You want to honor those needs and then honor the objections you have to those needs. What motivates you to object to them?

And then find a way to square those in a way that doesn't, it's not just about compromise in fact compromise is a poor substitute to innovation right compromise is like you know here's a teeter totter a seesaw you're only up when your friend's down or you're both compromised in the middle and you're going nowhere or you turn it into an airplane wing and you go up together right so the two butt rule is a way to get into that and to salvage a whole lot of very smart people who are getting written off thrown out the door or just generally ignored their pariahs the butt heads right the people that say but that won't work because nobody likes one butt guy right nobody wants that you know and they'll be kept

around the boss will keep them around until they overstep. But I kind of think that the halls of mental health are filled with one-butt guys. We need to turn them into two-butt guys. Right? We don't want to silence them. They have good things to say. They're just giving you

one butt. They need two. And ideally, in fact, this is the best advice i can give is if you are one butter and you're you know about to get fired don't articulate your first but until you have formulated your second and i don't know if you're about you but when i'm cutting in too quickly on a conversation or interrupting someone or coming you know throwing my butt out there exposing my butt i'm usually doing it because i'm afraid i'm going to forget what i wanted to say it's very hard to forget what you want to say

when you're formulating the second butt and that gives you time it slows you down and allows you to inject that that insight at the right moment you go from pariah to hero so so is the intent of the two-butt rule to flip negative thinking into positive solutions should should i approach something you know there's a lot of negative nancies in the world you know you you cite some things in in in your book but doing whatever that business thing might be is too expensive or but that won't work you know as an entrepreneur you hear that a lot that's not going to work um is is just asking two butts in a row going to fix the problem or do you have to focus on the second butt being a positive step and and then comparing the two it was a very good question first of all i find that a chain of life is a chain of butts right and you rarely just a single chain you You've got to, you know, you've really got to, usually it's, but that won't work. Well, we could try this, but that also won't work. We could try this. And sometimes you can't come up with a good second butt. And this is, there's a chapter in the book called Elon Musk's fuzzy butt, which is one of my one of my favorites. My favorite chapter is playing with your butt.

It's just hilarious. As long as it's pictures of Elon, that's fine. Elon's butt. No. But in seriousness, Elon and people like him really know how to tackle a problem. They don't just gnaw on it like a dog with a bone. They also know how to maintain momentum.

They're always bringing that second butt, no matter how crazy or silly it is. And a silly butt will get you out of the... A second butt doesn't have to be a particularly good butt. I was running an innovation incubator once, one of the biggest ones in history for IBM. And we were given this really gnarly problem to solve. And this new hire steps right up and says, what if we, and an engineer on the team didn't waste any time.

He's like, but that won't work. Boom. Wow. And I had just come off of this. I had just come off of a tour with an innovation consulting firm, fancy one in San Francisco. And there was somebody there that was always saying, but the but, always bring two buts. Changed my life.

So I said to this guy, I'm like, but it would work if? And he rolls his eyes at me. He goes, it would work if gravity was different. And sure enough, a second later, another engineer went, wait a minute, wait a minute. And that led to a project, generated a couple patents, and got the attention of the top brass of the company. Wow.

Yeah, it was a good result. They maintained momentum. You don't have to come up with a particularly good second butt. Sometimes a stupid, silly, crazy, fuzzy butt will get you to a place that you weren't expecting. This is why, as a man, I have a very fuzzy butt. Yes. Fuzzy everywhere, actually.

But you wouldn't if you shaved. I i mean i'm not that kind of guy the i don't know what that means you can just roll with that joke folks so just discuss why toxic positivity and blind optimism can be just as harmful as constant naysaying i think it's a it's toxic positivity is a pretty charged and overloaded term these days so i'll dodge that and call it culture of avoidance right we're we're really running away from even inside our own minds right we it's very hard not to when you have a negative thought we're taught to run away from it. You know, I don't want to be negative. What we need to do is embrace that. We got to look at it and go, Hey buddy.

Hey buddy. Hey, negative thought. I'm your buddy. I'm here for you. And, and that allows you the mental stamina to unpack that and say, okay, what's going on with you? Let's see what we can do about that. Right?

So toxic positivity is just a team version of that. I think. There you go. It's a voice. You know, I, this, this kind of reminds me,

you know, sometimes the, the negative, but, or as you put it, or the negative notion, the negative comment is almost necessary sometimes to keep a grounding or to give that paradox.

Maybe what's there's probably another one I'm looking for, but to give a, or to give that paradox maybe what's there's probably another word i'm looking for but to give a an altruism maybe to good ideas too as well so sometimes it's good to know like basically what we used to we used to call it looking the dragon in the mouth i think there's some other variations of that but that's what i we called it and one of the things we do is we sit down with whatever ideas we're working on and we try and flush out all the negative aspects of it and decide whether we could live with the downside of the risks that we were taking. And if we could mitigate those risks by analyzing them or understanding what the downside was,

if we failed, it would propel us much better partially because we looked the dragon in the mouth and said we really don't want to get eaten or burned today yeah that really focuses the mind right it really does right yeah there's a great story about lewis and clark in the book about how they came to this fork in the road that they weren't prepared for they hadn't been advised that this fork in the river in missouri was there, and they didn't know what to do. They both looked like they could have been the route they needed to take, and most of their crew didn't disagree with the two captains, Lewis and Clark.

They wanted to go one way. Most of the crew, including the expert at this, said go the other way. And so they didn't just pull rank or what have you or go with that with the other guys they they said okay but we can we can we can we can burn a half day let's go send two expeditions out and they did came back didn't have anything conclusive did it one more time found on that expedition several species unknown to science before then. So the unexpected result of embracing your butt. And then at the end, they actually went with Lewis and Clark's decision.

But even then, most of the crew didn't want to go that way. But because they had honored the perspective of the crew and took the time, the crew did not resist. They had a party the night that they set out and they went happily. So they, and even then they were like, but we can also send a, a scouting party overland to shorten the,

the, the, the track back if we have to, if we're wrong. So you see that that's, it's not, if somebody wants to go left and you want to go right, you know, you could say, but I don't want to go left, but we could go right. And that's

really not a good example of the two-butt rule, but you could say, but if you apply a silly, but you say, but if we grew giant legs and went left and right together, at least you're signaling that you're going to do it together and that might take you somewhere. There you go. So what are some step-by-step strategies for transforming momentum killing objections into innovation rocket fuel? I think the first thing that there's several, I could unpack that in several ways. There's a really good passage in the book about for product people and entrepreneurs about using the two-butt rule to avoid confirmation bias in lean startup, right? So if you're going to go out and you're going to start a company and you're like, okay, we're going to run an

experiment. This happened. So I was the CEO of Flywheel, which was the first ride hailing app and got clobbered by Uber. That was a fun story. I'll tell you all about it if you want. And there was a taxi driver coder I hired. If you're going to write a taxi app, hire a coder who's a taxi driver. That's a good idea. And he was a great guy, Kieran Farr. In fact, he runs his own stuff now. And Kieran said, hey, we should go.

This was early in 2009. And it was not certain that every taxi driver had an iPhone or a smartphone at all. And we wanted to load the software on their iPhones because we'd only raised like about a million bucks. So we needed to test that. So we told them all to go, we got on the dispatchers for all these taxi companies. We said, go to Bob's Donuts on Polk Street in San Francisco. Famous, you know, hole in the wall donut shop. We'll give you a donut and cup of coffee if you show us what phone you've got. And sure enough, they came in and there was like 28% had iPhones. Even then, we were like,

great, we're onto something moving forward. Side note. I also met my future wife there. Wow. There you go. Yeah. So I got something. Yeah. Yeah. You did.

Let me ask you this. I was actually in a lift over the weekend, a cars in the shop. And so I, I took a lift and the guy, I don't know why, because I was telling him how many silicon valley friends i have and that my friend robert scoble was at uh he's cool i've used it yeah he was at loic's

event that loic used to put on in france or europe i forget his last name but so he used to put on this event and is it who was it uh who's the guy travis what's his face from yeah and his his little crew there they were there to pitch uber and they were they were still just pitching this idea on robert's lap is marissa meyer who of google fame who eventually went on to waste a bunch of money at yahoo hey i think if they had done what they did for for steve jobs and lou gersner and given her chairmanship and ceoship and able to fire the board she'd have had a better chance they didn't give her that that meant you cannot turn a company like that around without that kind of power so i don't think she had a fair shake. We'll differ on that one.

Mr. Meyer was sitting on his lap. And I don't think she was CEO quality, honestly, in my book. But so Mr. Meyer is sitting on his lap. And Travis and the other guys are telling him about this fantastic idea of Uber. And so I told that to the driver. And somehow he decides to give me a whole historical lesson of the evolution of Uber. And I just shut up and i'm just like i'm not even going to try and cut him off um and he mentioned that there was an app that uber had stole not really stole or hijacked or taken over he's like somebody had the uber idea first with the app and then Uber took it. Yeah, we did. Is that you?

We had cars on a map. In fact, it's a great story. I was running an incubator for Best Buy for Brad Anderson and a guy named Rick Rommel and a guy named Cal Patel. And the idea was Brad Anderson wanted every budding entrepreneur to start their career at a Best Buy, learning customer centricity and stuff. So we would give them 50 grand and a team of three or four, put them in LA for nine weeks, and they could prove out their idea. So Daniel, he was a Geek Squad agent. He comes up with the first Cars in a Map app. True story.

His idea was to do it for Geek Squad cars, so you could see them coming to deliver your TV or something. And they quickly discovered that was a bad idea in 2008. So they pivoted. So they go out to a party one night, and it's in LA, and they all come back complaining about how they could never find a cab in LA. They're like, they're everywhere, but you can never spot one because they're out of sight and out of mind.

And somebody went, wait a minute, minute and said wouldn't it be cabulous if we did that for cabs and that resulted in the first cabs on a map app there was a there's a taxi booking app called taxi magic i know i know the ceo from that those days and and our difference was and it was not an obvious thing like did like, did it matter that you could see the cars on the map? So, again, we went out and did Lean Startup and walked up to people with a completely fake app that we wrote in two days and showed them cars driving around the map. You know, like we'd walk into the Transamerica building and go, hey, you need a ride home? Check this out. And if they tried to get their smartphone out of their pocket and download the app, then we would mark that. Then we'd tell them it was fake and give them a coupon to get a hot dog or something.

And say, hey, it's fake, but thank you. And that gave us great data. In both of those tests that I just i just told you about we validated the idea but we were not we didn't have we didn't we weren't leaning into our butts right so lean startup was fine but we didn't lean into our butts what we should have been doing is joyously going and looking for all of the other reasons it was not going to work and one big one that we missed was that while taxi drivers had smartphones enough to make a difference and for us to get started, they had jailbroken them back in the days when it was like the iPhone,

what two or three, whatever it was, three G two G three G it couldn't handle data and voice at the same time. So they, these drivers would get on the, on the, on this chat line all day long with people that spoke their language mainly like there was the air trains chat line and

and they're like complaining that they're not getting any hails because they can't get the data and that was a very expensive mistake and it was because we we were so happy that we saw that they had the smartphones that we didn't get interested in what other butts were out there. So you asked about the just kind of coming around to pay off the promise. That's one that's, you know, there's procedure to that. I mean, you know, it's not just, hey, but it would work if, but it wouldn't if. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if it was you guys because he said it was the company that developed the gps of it and into the app and so they could they could see the thing he he said he'd been a driver since 2005 so i think he did taxis before he was doing lyft but it was it was kind of interesting conversation at least the that part of it was the rest of it he literally told me how uber conquered the market. I'm just like, seriously, dude,

then I tell you, I have friends in Silicon Valley. Do you, do you not think that I know the story like the back of my hand? I watched the whole thing go down. Yeah. Uber, you know, we,

we thought, I remember Bill Gurley who funded Uber called me. I remember I was raising, you know, we were finishing the raise and we were the first thing funded is I'm told we were the first thing funded in Silicon Valley after the financial crash. It was mid 2009 and we only had like maybe 300,000 left in the round. Bill called me. I'll never forget it.

I was sitting and I was standing in Pivotal Labs and he said, so how much is left in the round? And I'm sweating because I'd never met. I'd never talked to Bill Gurley, and I knew he was. And I said, 300, and he said, no, that's not enough. And then we had this very nice conversation. I was stupid enough to not read the writing and say, okay, I'll just throw that term sheet out. I was still a Boy Scout. I was like, you know, ethics. I still am kind of at this time but yeah he he gave me really good advice he's like focus i'm like yeah we're focused

you know san francisco it's like no south beach focus on just being the only the perfect thing for south beach that was really interesting what i mean u did, they really knew how to pick their butt. They had picked a different user entirely. My read of it, and I was pretty up close and personal with this, so I think this is true. And what I've heard from others is, consciously or unconsciously, they were serving, I'll call it, douchebag in the Castro trying to pick up a date with an iPhone and a limo in 2009, right? So you say, hey, look, my place are yours. And you pull out your iPhone

and you say, look at this. And if you get a Crown Victoria taxi coming late, that's not going to get you what you want. But that guy is also patient zero prime. He's going to tell everybody about his cool new toy. And it's going to excite everyone else because in those days it was get a taxi or get a limo for slightly more than a taxi. It wasn't like get a Prius for sometimes less than a taxi as it is now. And yeah, that guy was perfect because you didn't have to change the product at all to serve everybody else they were patient zero brilliant i learned i learned more from getting my butt kicked by uber than anything i can remember there you go now you can be positive with your butts because you're getting your butt kicked so there you go what haven't we touched on that's inside the book

that we can educate people on and and help tease them out to pick up the book well they're telling a ton of really good stories there's a great story about calendly and if you haven't heard the topia i went on a story it's great please i love calendly i love it yeah yeah it's in the book and it's it's a brilliant story about this guy had was faced had to face all the butts. I mean, everything. He had no money. He was from nowhere.

He was just like software sales guy, enterprise sales guy from Atlanta. Wasn't hanging out, doing parties with VCs or incubators in the valley. I mean, he didn't have any advantages. And he was picking this horribly hard problem that we had been trying to tackle since literally the 80s. So it wasn't like this brand new insight, right? It was like the calendar ping pong problem has been around forever, and everybody's tried to solve it.

Microsoft tried it. Lotus tried to solve it. I mean, everybody. Dozens and dozens of companies that are dead now that tried to solve it. He's got no money burns a 401k to fund it doesn't have a cto or a technical team hires a ukrainian technical team which is usually not the right answer but he gets a good one depends on where they're in suddenly huh no these guys were good depends which way they're, we do do Korean jokes on the show from time to time, and Russian ones too.

Yeah, it's good to be equal opportunity. And they, yeah, and then, and then, they run out of money, he runs out of money, just as they're finishing the product, everything is done except the payment system. But we don't have any way to get paid. So he can release the product, but he can't get paid. But he released it as a free product. And that's probably why we know them today. Because everybody went crazy about it at that point. Yeah. Well, it's so wonderful

and easy to use. You mentioned the ping pong effect. I think you're referring to where you go, hey, should we meet? And you're like, yeah, let's do it. And think you're referring to where you go hey should we meet and you're like yeah let's do it and you're like hey what about tomorrow at 10 you're like i can't do that tomorrow tuesday at eight you're like no i can't do that is that what you're referring to what a ping pong yeah exactly like when are you available on tuesday maybe what time and you're just back and forth that's just a huge pain in the butt and and this calendly really solved that but there's there's reason why that, why did that one hit? It's fascinating. And so it's a really interesting story and there's a lot more to it.

Then there's a story about, the long one at the very end of the book is, you know, I took a real hard swing at applying the two-butt rule to ocean plastic. And that one was daunting. That took a lot of time and research and talking to a whole lot of people in that problem space. Really? And saying, okay, but this won't work, but this won't work. I'm like, if we can apply this and get anywhere on ocean plastic in that chapter, that was my sweating moment

because I was like, if I can't apply it to this, then I don't have a book. Yeah, it's good. And I'd already sold the book. Yeah, so you had to make up something. No, I'm just kidding. No, it was good. Yeah, no, I made it all up. You know, throughout my business career, I started my first company when I was 18.

There have been so many moments where I had ideas and either a partner would be like, yeah, I don't think company when I was 18. There have been so many moments where I had ideas and either a partner would be like, yeah, I don't think that's going to work. Or I was like, God, I had this great idea. And if somehow we could innovate this, whether it's a business model inside of our business, a process model where you're like, if we can fix this one department and if things could flow better through it without so many hiccups and and barriers this could really be more profitable or profitable and and so being able to have that but and you're like what if we do this what if we do that that experimentation model and that's really what made me successful was one of my last ceos i worked for he taught me to run just experiments to try

stuff and sometimes he knew stuff was going to fail but he would try to see if i could do it oh i call that the old but right but it didn't work for us in the 90s but here's what went wrong so when you try it again you'll see it coming yeah so i told it was a real important lesson i learned in and it's in my book be Beacon's Leadership. And what it was is one day he comes to me, and I was like his experiment boy. Experiment boy, that sounds weird. That sounds really weird, actually, now that I think about it. I was his experiment guy, his innovator. They used to call me that I was the entrepreneur of the company.

And so I could be his, kind of like his junior, because he was busy running things. But he was really good at just seeing outside the box. Like you could, you could work on a plan for whatever he wanted to innovate and you could sit and we could be like two months into it, beating our heads up against the wall. He'd walk in and be like, so what do you get?

Where are you at with it? We're like right here. This is what it is. And he goes, but we can't get this to work. And he goes, do that, do that,

do that. And then he'd leave and everything at work. And you just hate the hell out of him, but he was a great man. And I'm like, I want to be like that as a CEO someday, be able to see outside the box. And one day, part of what he sold was he sold edited and censored movies, much to Hollywood chagrin up here in Utah. the movies much like Columbia house out to on a monthly, you know, rental thing out to the VCR movies out to Christian communities throughout the South and, you know, wherever, wherever there's just people in the, like swearing nudity and violence in their movies. And so he, you know,

we had hundreds of telemarketers, I don't know, 800,000 telemarketers, these giant buildings. And one day he says to me he goes hey chris i want you to try something for me and i go okay and he goes i want you to go door to door and see if you can sell these movies and i'm like are you fucking kidding me i get paid way too much to go door to door he goes no we got to see if this will work i need you to run this experiment and i'm like okay I get paid pretty well, so I'm going to go wear a pair of shoes and a suit in the middle of summer. So I did that for two days.

I literally went door to door, and I was dressed up pretty nice, and no one answered the door or come to the door. And this is the 90s, so there are people still at home. But almost no one would open the door and talk to me. I don't know. Maybe I just, I don't know if I overdressed because they have more missionaries that run around here. Maybe someone just thought I was more of a missionary. But I pretty much wore a hole in some really expensive dress shoes and walked all over this neighborhood, killed myself for this experiment.

I remember coming back to the office and I said he goes how'd it go i go dude i might have like three doors open for me i can't sell anything because i can't get the doors open and i knocked i here i showed him the neighborhoods that i worked and we diversified it and i'm like i dude this this doesn't work and as i'm i'm as i turn to walk out, he makes the comment, I guess it still doesn't work. And I stopped and I went, spun around and went, what did you say? And he goes, yeah, it still doesn't work. We tried it a few years ago, but I want to see if you can make it work. Nice.

And so I started getting a little hot under the collar. I'm like, what the fuck did, why the fuck would you send me out to do something that you knew wouldn't work? And he goes, Chris, it's about running experiments and testing things. He goes, a few years ago, we tested it. And he goes, I know if anybody could have made that work

or figured out how to square that thing, it would have been you. And so basically what we learned is it still doesn't work. So sometimes market conditions change. Sometimes things change in the environment or buyers things. And so we need to test it. And I know with my confidence in you that if it would have worked, you would have figured out a way.

So it doesn't work and there you go. Maybe we'll test it in a few more years. And it really hit me like a ton of bricks mainly because i burned a hole very expensive i was i was waiting for you to say that you know he said he he said it didn't work or yeah it still doesn't work and you went wait a minute and then you know got mad and made it work somehow that would have been a good story too that would have been maybe a good story but i don't think there was a way but i i was in the mood to take off his head

because two door two days of banging on doors when you're supposed to be an executive of a company it's a it's a little bit you know that's the real deal man i mean i i was in taxis not to go back to the uber store the the flywheel story but i i one of the most real experiences of my life and one of the most proud things I've ever done was be up at night in the middle of the night at in taxi dispatch in the city part of San Francisco or riding shotgun. I mean, every taxi driver in San Francisco used to know me and where I lived because they'd come and try to get their units fixed from my house um it was i learned more about real stuff than i ever did doing middleware or object-oriented programming stuff at ibm or anywhere else that was a real experience so i mean yeah getting um you know burning through your your shoes is is honorable work yeah but you know the the idea of the relationship thing that you mentioned struck me. I think more than any reason why I spent a year writing about butts was I think we need to foster this culture of two buttism because if you're going to say, but that doesn't work, your team, you need a team that knows

that you're going to come up with the second, but shortly so that they let you get your first one out. Otherwise their resistance is going to come. If somebody's got an idea and you say, but it won't work or, but I don't like that resistance. Right. But if we all know, right. If we, if this can get into the zeitgeist, if it can get into the air, oh, yeah, what's your second butt, man? Then it's fine, right? Then we've defused that problem, and we don't have to have the positivity police running around going,

no killer phrases, you know, whenever you're brainstorming. So that's, I think, a big reason i wrote the book the i should say before we we wrap that in cases when you can't expose your butt to other people on your team this is i think and we're checking but i think this is true i'll make the claim that the two butt rule is the first you know big idea book that launched from a major publisher, hit Barnes & Noble on the same day that the GPT on OpenAI launched as a companion. So you can go to jwolpert.com slash 2BGPT, number two GPT, number two BGPT. And you'll find the 2ButRule GPT.

And you can say, this is my intention. This is what I want to do. And it'll start going two, but rule GPT. And you can say, this is my intention. This is what I want to do. And it'll start going, but that won't work, but it would, if, and you can elaborate from there.

People are going bananas over this thing. It's coming up with some pretty crazy stuff. So I definitely go try it. If you want to say, I intend to, you know, take over the world, but it's really interesting. Yeah. It's, it's say i intend to you know take over the world but it's really interesting

yeah it's it's i think you know so many entrepreneurs you know they get shut down no that'll never work no don't waste your time being an entrepreneur no don't develop that product it's you but you'll just fail but you'll lose a lot of money but you'll you know 97.9 percent of businesses fail blah blah blah you know and and the great thing about entrepreneurs is they go to that second butt they go but what if you know what if you know you can make this work what if you can you can change the world what if you can move mountains what if you can put a dent in the universe and i think you need a butt that never runs out of gas exactly and some money and some luck.

There you go. Speaking of which, money, luck, and I guess if people can afford the gas to get to Columbia, South Carolina next week on the 7th, 5 p.m. at the Boyd Innovation Center, the McNair Institute and Moore School and the Boyd Innovation Center are putting on a night of the two-butt rule in Innovators Evening. You can find it on my website, and I would love to have you there. There you go. Anybody in the Southeast that wants to hang out with a bunch of innovators. There you go.

So it's been wonderful to have you on, and it's like, well, give us your final pitch on the show for people to order the book and.com where people can get it. If you've got a team that is wallowing in negativity and can't get out of their own way, having circular arguments, and you need to achieve momentum and you don't want to fire everybody that's seemingly negative, you might need some help. Get the book or go to jwolpert.com and engage me either with Team Rot team rotary which is a really wonderful platform that bob sutton and and others at stanford and harvard have put up it's kind of like a master live master class so you can you can you can engage me that way or or you can engage me to

speak or or come and help you out there you go thanks john for coming the show we really appreciate it yeah you too chris thanks a lot there you go thanks for for coming the show we really appreciate it yeah you too chris thanks a lot there you go thanks for tuning in everyone ordered the book where refined books are sold the two-butt rule turn negative thinking into positive solutions make sure you use a one t on the butt part of that otherwise you end up on my only fans you don't want to see that because that's just wrong anyway guys thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortune chris voss linkedin.com fortune has chris of Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortunes of Christmas, Christmas, one on the TikTok, any of those crazy places we're at.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.