The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 216: Jim Collins - How To Go From Good To Great

Episode Date: July 30, 2017

Episode 216: Jim Collins – How To Go From Good To Great Show Notes: Sustained Excellence: Never go to a meeting without writing down 5 questions prior to the meeting Always follow up the meeting with at least a page of notes -- Share those with your mentor What made you say yes to The Learning Leader Show after 2 1/2 years? It requires intense focus to prepare This is a teaching moment Only say yes if it's going to be impactful. The team determined this show was the right place to do that Always ask yourself -- "How can I make myself useful to the world?" This was advice originally given to him by Peter Drucker A great teacher can change your life in 30 seconds -- Peter Drucker did that for Jim "I am constitutionally unemployable" -- Why Jim feels this about himself His curiosity has led to the success and most importantly... Great questions like: How to turn something into an enduring great company? How someone or a company can go from Good To Great? Jim most admired Peter Drucker when he was 35 years old... The story of their first meeting and how Peter was the curious one... Kept peppering Jim with questions to start the conversation (much like Jim did to me to start this conversation) "The ultimate zen master with bamboo stick" Drucker - "It seems to me that you spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive. You probably will survive. You seem to focus a lot on the question, "how to be successful?" That is the wrong question. The right question is "How to be useful?" What would it have cost Jim to not publish Good To Great after he finished the manuscript? -- More than $100m.  He had to get it out in the world.  He felt it was his responsibility to do so... Another great mentor said to Jim... "When seeking an entrepreneurial path... Cut off all other options and GO." "Everything is driven by by questions" Can a good company become a great company? How? Level 5 Leader Starts with confronting the brutal facts Personal humility and professional will Not what, but who -- Get the right people on the bus Does not happen in one fell swoop or a leap. It happens over time. Flywheel -- Create momentum Understand the hedgehog concept -- An expert in one thing... Knows it very well 3 Parts of the Hedgehog concept Deeply passionate about it Encoded for it... You're really good at it. An expert Economically, you can make money from it Level 5 Leaders: What cause do I serve? Humility to serve... It's not about them Willful -- Able to make difficult decisions For the best Level 5 Leaders... How do they sustain it? It's easier for them because they understand their personal hedgehog -- It helps them remain renewed after many years "Measured Risk" vs. "Burn The Boats" Fire Bullets... Then Cannon Balls For Jim, this was his first two books + his time as a professor at Stanford before he decided to leave to start his own company You must navigate your path.  It doesn't mean you take unfounded risk... Fire bullets first, then cannonballs "If you never fire a cannonball, you'll never make it. "BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) How to write a good one? Take calibrated, calculated risk -- Have things to keep you alive even if everything goes wrong Productive Paranoia Validation - What are points of success you can look to? Jim's wife Joann committing to winning an Ironman race... She was a consultant at the time.  She was also a runner. She tried biking and was very good at it.  Eventually she practiced, took measured risks, and won the Ironman race "If you were a trial attorney and had to win the case, what evidence would you use?" The Flywheel principle and putting it to use for Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team -- How could they build momentum? After Jim met with Jeff Bezos and his leadership team in 2001, Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business.Most important for young leaders -- Jim's advice "FIRST WHO, THEN WHAT?" Who do you want to mentor you? Who do you want to mentor? Who do you want to be your friends? Who do you want to work with? Who do you want to spend time with? The most important question is WHO You don't need to answer WHAT until you answer WHO "The most important question is WHO. First WHO, then WHAT. Who will be your mentor? Who will be your friends? Who will you help? Who will you spend time with? You don't need to answer what until well after you've answered WHO." Social Media: Read: Good To Great Read: Great By Choice Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community More Learning: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: NateBoyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Callaway Golf. We have partnered to give away The #1 selling Driver in 2017.  The Callaway GBB Epic Driver.  This club is valued at $499 and we are giving one away to a loyal listener of the show.  To enter the drawing: Tweet (or post on Instagram) a favorite leadership quote from an episode of The Learning Leader Show and tag/@ me on Twitter or Instagram. To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12       Jim Collins is a student and teacher of leadership and what makes great companies tick. Having invested a quarter century of research into the topic, he has authored or co-authored six books that have sold in total more than ten million copies worldwide. They include: GOOD TO GREAT, the #1 bestseller, which examines why some companies and leaders make the leap to superior results, along with its companion work GOOD TO GREAT AND THE SOCIAL SECTORS; the enduring classic BUILT TO LAST, which explores how some leaders build companies that remain visionary for generations; HOW THE MIGHTY FALL, which delves into how once-great companies can self-destruct; and most recently, GREAT BY CHOICE, which is about thriving in chaos – why some do, and others don't – and the leadership behaviors needed in a world beset by turbulence, disruption, uncertainty, and dramatic change.    

The most important question is who? Who are you going to allow to mentor you? Who are you going to work with? Who are you going to spend your life with? Who are going to be your friends? Who will you let shape you? And if you could just early, and who are you going to take care of? And who are, what are you going to do?

Not what is your next career step, but who are the people in your unit that you are going to take care of as a leader? take care of your people, not your career. And that shift from what to who, the sooner you can do that in life, that's how my life changed. I had great mentors. But I also understood that I didn't have to have the answers to the whats if I really paid attention to finding great who's. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Callaway Golf. Calloway's business and marketing approach has turned heads over the last several years, helping the company make a dramatic turnaround from losing millions of dollars per year

to being a leader in the industry. Products like the GB Epic Driver, Steelhead XR irons, and Calloway's Chrome Soft golf ball are aimed at avid golfers looking for premium performance. And the coolest part about this partnership is we're doing a giveaway. Yes, we're giving away the number one selling driver of 2017, the GB epic driver. All you have to do is put your favorite leadership quote pulled from an episode of The Learning Leader show on Twitter or Instagram.

So pull your favorite leadership quote that any of the greatest leadership minds over the last three years from the Learning Leader show has said, quote them on Twitter or Instagram and tag my name at Ryan Hawk 12 at Ryan Hawk 1-2 on Twitter or Instagram. My team will gather all of the quotes, and you can enter as many times you like. The more times that you enter, the better chance you have of winning. And over the course of a few months, we will gather them all, and then we will draw a random winner, and my friends at Callaway will send you the GB epic driver.

Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing all of your great responses on Twitter and Instagram at Ryanhawk, 12. And thank you to my friends at Callaway Golf. Hey everyone. Thank you so much for being here. It's Ryan Hawke with The Learning Leader Show. Think back to a few years ago. Episode number 23, I had my younger brother, AJ on, and he was asking me questions towards the end of it. And one of his questions was, who are a few of your dream guests, the people who you would love to have on more than anybody else? And I named two people at that time. I named Elon Musk. And the second person I named is my featured leader tonight, Jim. Collins. It's kind of surreal at times when you're able to speak with your leadership heroes. Jim, for those you who don't know him, is perhaps one of the greatest leadership management thinkers slash writers ever, authored good to great, great by choice, and built to last. And I had incredibly high expectations for this conversation. I mean, it's been

three years in the making. Good to Great is really the foundation in which my leadership journey was built upon over 15 years ago. And so it was quite a moment to have this one-on-one conversation with Jim. We scheduled about 30 minutes and you'll see we went over an hour. And he'd even asked to speak more, which also if you study Jim, you'll notice that he never does podcast. He carefully selects the specific moments when he shares his message. He looks for teaching moments. And he chose the Learning Leader Show to do that over just about any other place. And so I'm deeply honored by that.

And I loved this talk. It was incredible. You can even tell by the different tone of this intro. It just means so much to me that we were able to do it. A few of the topics that we discussed on this wide-ranging conversation. It's the moment or the story when he met his leadership hero, Peter Drucker. And I just, I found the story to be incredible. I think you'll love it. Jim can retell it so well. And it was a pure joy for me to hear it.

And he even started our conversation similar to how Peter Drucker started the conversation with him. And then how each of us can find our personal hedgehog what that means and how we can do it. And then he closed the conversation by discussing the most important question to ask yourself and how doing it will change your life. Ladies and gentlemen, could not be more excited. Jim Collins. I'd be curious to ask just a few questions as we get rolling to kind of get myself sort of oriented. And I'm curious, can you just tell me the story of how you decided to start doing this? Oh, of course. So about three years ago, I was, just have kind of an inquisitive nature. And I've had some interesting conversations with great mentors in my life.

In addition to that, I'm a big fan of the medium of podcast. I listen to a lot of them. I'm always searching, seeking out knowledge, wisdom from others who have come before me to learn from them so I could implement into my life. And so I also in my profession of growing up in the profession of selling, going from individual contributor to manager and leading others, I've done quite a probably thousands of interviews. I've helped others. I've hired for my own teams. And so I decided to marry all of those things together, which is interviewing, learning, approaching things with a curious mindset, and having these conversations with some incredible leaders.

And then what better way to do it than to share them with other people? And hopefully it could help positively impact others. So that's how my podcast, The Learning Leader Show, was really created. I wasn't certain if it would catch on or if people would like it. And obviously, I've really put a lot of work into preparing for each and every conversation and with hopes that it could create great dialogue and great messages for people to learn from. And the show has grown every day from day one over two and a half going on three years now, 210, 15 plus episodes. So it's a lot of fun. It's my favorite thing to do in the world, Jim.

I love it. And I appreciate you asking. And I'm curious, how do you prepare? What's your kind of what's your daily and weekly regimen? What's your recipe for how you prepare? I imagine you have kind of a systematic process and somewhat of a ritual for how you do it. And I'm curious over 200 and some how that's evolved. So first it starts with the fact that I choose all of my guests carefully.

So I only pick people that I'm interested to learn more about. And I feel like they have a good message to share with my audience, people who understand how to tell their story and their share their information. And then I dive deep. I watch every speech, read their books, watch TED talks, read articles written about them, read articles written by them, see conversations maybe they've had with other people, try to learn as much about the people I'm speaking with their message. I always come into the talks with, like for you, especially, obviously I have, I probably have enough material for us to speak for about 20 hours. And I know we'll have to figure out how to distill that down to much shorter than that. But I think that's, for me, I'm not.

typically have more information than needed. And it's like, what's the best way to be a great listener to ask good follow-up questions and not just go down a list? Like for my process for you, obviously, I sent over some things prior to us talking. But basically, I take detailed notes. And then good episodes and good conversations are based upon, I think, being a good listener and asking good follow-up questions. So I try to ask good follow-up questions based on the responses.

that I get. It doesn't work 100% of the time, like most things. It's not always perfect, but I do my best to make the time investment from my guest worth it. And also the time investment from my listeners worth it. I don't want to release an episode if I don't think it's good enough. And so that happens sometimes too. But it's like I said, it's a lot of fun.

The preparation is where I relearn a lot of things. I mean, I read Good to Great. It's one of the first foundational leadership books I've ever read. And so getting to reread that multiple times through the years, I think the first time, you probably don't even know this, the first time I reached out to you and your team was right when I launched. So it was two and a half years ago. And so it's been a lot of fun to go back and forth with your team. And even your team has changed a little bit.

And so I'm excited and happy that we're getting to do this. Yeah. And just a couple other questions. I'm very curious about what you've learned through this process. If you were to sort of, you know, think about, well, I guess let me, you know, I assume one that you've got. over the 200 plus, that's a lot of empirical experience, and you have continually evolved the essence of the recipe of what works. And if you think about, you know, like any great outputs going to have, you think about,

like say Saturday Night Live, right? There's a basic recipe that they've used for many years that they found that works. But then within that, they have a lot, you know, variation in a lot of things. and a lot of creative content. And once they stumbled upon it, they really built upon it with tweaks. And I'm curious what you've stumbled upon really you've discovered is the recipe for you that makes your very, very best podcasts. I mentioned it briefly before.

So there are a lot of podcasts. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of people who quite frankly. This, by the way, why I do almost none. Right. I mean, I just because it's noisy. and you have only limited amount of time that you can really prepare for a teaching moment. I mean, you probably spend more time preparing for this than I did,

but, you know, I certainly spent quite a bit of time preparing as I do for any conversation. It's like I always tell my young people, you know, never go to a meeting with a mentor without writing down five questions before you go and never come back from a meeting with a mentor without writing at least an hour of notes. you know, I mean, otherwise you're not making use of the time. And I think you kind of need to come at every conversation that way. So you have to be very choosy, which is why I'm just, you know, if you're going to commit, you commit.

So part of it's the prep. But I'm curious, like, you know, you kind of learned as you've evolved how you structure one, how you put it together. So you think about, you know, live from New York and Saturday night, then they have the cold open. And then, right, there's certain things they've found works really well. And I'm just curious what you found works really well. So one, I think being prepared to take the conversation in any potential direction, being prepared to use specific examples and stories, people, as you know, people love stories. And then I'm a guest now frequently on podcasts. When people ask me, I'll say yes, because I understand how hard it is.

And so I feel for them. So I'm probably a guest at least once or twice a week on others' podcasts to share what I've learned. And I've noticed, unfortunately, that, the majority of them are quite bad. And that is because they list out questions and they don't listen to what I say. They just, they just mow through their list. And I had a great trial attorney on, uh, named Lynn Wood who told me you have to approach each conversation with a curious mind.

And so he says you have to truly, truly listen to what the person is saying and then ask a question, a follow up based on that. So I have to really have. have, I think, the good to great, great by choice, Jim Collins stuff down cold. I can't be just staring at questions. I have to have it down cold so that when you say something, I'm listening and then I believe I can ask an educated, specific follow-up question that hopefully advances the message even more and makes it more impactful for both me, because I'm trying to learn here, as well as the people listening all over the world. And so, which actually,

brings me to a question, you don't ever really do this. And I've been at it now, you know, trying to get you to come on for years. What made you eventually say yes? Well, so there's, you know, I have, I have key members of my team who I, you know, listen to very carefully. And Amy, who is a, the key person that you were working with, she helps me think through the limited number of, kind of teaching spots, if you will, that I agree to. And I think of each teaching spots. I think of them as teaching moments that, you know, they require a certain kind of, you know, intensity and focus and being very present and preparation for them so that you should only say yes, if something is going to be a great teaching moment. And essentially what Amy did was to, you know, look back at the

correspondence that we've had over the years to check out your, your podcasts, to look at, you know, the cumulative momentum that you have been building and basically then does an analysis of the entire thing to basically assess its quality, its impact. And also in particular, would it be something where I could make a distinctive contribution that is really relevant to the people who benefit from that particular podcast? And so there's a lot of hurdles. They kind of think of it as, you know, you have to sort of clear each of the gates and then eventually, eventually come through. In your case, a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's now been a lot of a cumulative experience that you have had that demonstrates that you're very capable at what

you're doing and that the folks who benefit from what you create might be the type of people who could benefit from a teaching moment between the two of us. And I think that's the essence of it. I mean, in the end, I go back to a very simple thing in my own life, which is how to really make myself the most useful to the world with the limited time that I have. Over, say, the next 30 years, I'm only 60. I figure I got 30 more years to go if I'm lucky, but I've got to make every one of those years potentially useful. And so Amy made a very good case that this would be a very useful thing to put the time in. And again, the time means not just the time of the actual conversation, but the time of deliberation and then the time of preparation

and then the time of the actual session itself. That's probably the most thoughtful response I've ever received, Jim, in regards to why somebody did my show. I really appreciate it. I mean, by the way, the recording starts when we connect, and so I can edit any part, but I can't help but ask a question based on what you just said, because I was reading through when you first met with Peter Drucker. And you were asking for his advice.

And he said, it seems to me that you spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive. This is when you were thinking about leaving Stanford and starting your own thing. And he said, you seem to focus a lot on the question, how to be successful. But that is actually the wrong question. The right question is how to be useful. And that's what you just said to me, which is interesting that you've taken that message from him. And you've explained that a great teacher. can change your life in 30 seconds.

And so the impact that that Peter Drucker's had on you and that bit of advice to when you had to make the choice to leave from a great profession, a great job of teaching at one of the most notable institutions in the world to then going out on your own to what you're doing now. How did that moment shape you and your life and change your life particularly? Well, I'm really fortunate in that I have been tremendously impacted by fabulous mentors. And Peter Drucker is right in a very small group that's at the very top of that list. He's probably both mentor and role model for me. And what really really maybe just back up and tell the story a little bit of how that conversation came about.

I had been teaching and teaching happily at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I had a course on entrepreneurship and small business that then led to the question of, well, how would you turn an entrepreneurial venture or small business into an enduring great company, which is the question that for some reason captured my attention when I was quite young. And then that led to writing a couple of books beyond entrepreneurship, the first one, and then with another mentor, Bill Azir. And then with teaming up with a great research mentor, Jerry Porras, we produced Bill to Last, which was ultimately an entrepreneur's book, really.

How do you, the question is, if you want to figure out what makes an enduring great company, you go back and you look at what, and how did an entrepreneur did it? You go back and you look at Sam Walton when he had a single dime store, and how did that become Walmart? Walt Disney Wayne had a single film, and how did that become a great company? And you basically figure out what allowed them to build those sorts of companies. Now, as Bill to last was coming out and I was thinking about leaving Stanford, you know, part of it is that I am one of those people that's probably constitutionally unemployable. And I realized that relatively young. And I really felt that I wanted to carve my own intellectual path. And I wanted to pursue questions and projects that would take, they'd be really big bets. And that would allow me to go maybe five, seven years without publishing anything, which,

it doesn't necessarily fit with the mode of doing a series of small articles. I wanted to do, you know, focus on books. And so that would be more of an entrepreneurial path where I would take all my resources and bet on really big projects. And I was right on the cusp of doing that. I think of it as, you know, I was going to essentially want to remain a professor in the world. I just wanted to be able to do it on my own. And so with this somewhat unusual approach, a friend of mine, Tom Brown, who was an editor at that time for Industry Week magazine, asked me who I most admired. And I said, Peter Drucker. And he said, well, if I could get Peter to spend some time with you, keep in mind, I'm only 35 or 36 at the time. Would you be up for that?

And of course, the chance at that pivotal moment in my life, I would rearrange anything in my life to have a chance to learn from Peter. So one day I get this phone call out of the blue from Peter. And I remember his very resonant Austrian accent coming through the phone, Mr. Collins, this is Peter Drucker. I would be so pleased to spend some time with you. Would you come down and visit me in Claremont? And I flew down to Claremont, California, and went to his very modest house and spent the day with him.

And in that day, which was just a marvelous experience, I mean, I'll never forget the moment when the, when his door opened. And there, Peter, he's 86 at the time and is the most significant management thinker probably of all time. And he grabs my hand in two of his. And just, Mr. Collins, I'm so very pleased to meet you. Please come inside. I mean, just this incredible sense of warmth. And through that time, he started off by asking me, questions. Like I kept wanting to ask Peter Drucker questions, but he kept asking me questions, and

eventually I got around to asking him some questions and the day unfolded. At the end of that day, we're sitting in a little Renekar outside Peter's house, and he'd listened very intently to the challenges that I faced, whether I should take this really audacious path, and that's when he issued that challenge. And I feel like it was like the ultimate Zen master with a bamboo stick, because he really did, you know, sit there and say, you seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive and you will probably survive. He very kindly told me and you worry about if you'll be successful, but then kind of this thwack moment. It's the wrong question. The question is how to be useful.

And that to this day is one of those moments that has guided what I do. more I go along, that was now 20 some years ago, it was 19, it was December 10 of 1994. So almost a quarter of a century ago, and as I head into my 60s, that is the dominant question I think about. I think constantly about the question of, you know, how to make myself a best use subject to wanting to also follow the idea of simplicity with whatever number of decades that I have left. I'm very inspired by Peter because he wrote two-thirds of his life's work after the age of 65. Wow. I love this story.

And so as we continue down the path, you're writing good to great. It takes an immense amount of time. Obviously, there's millions and millions of people have read this book. It's, you know, people, I feel like every day somebody tells me, you know, good is the enemy of great. It's just commonplace and it all reverts back to you. So anyway, you go for a run after you finish the manuscript of the book and you asked yourself a question, you know, how much would someone have to pay me to not publish good to great? And I believe you said you crossed the $100 million threshold because you're a teacher at heart. That's what that's what you are.

And you spent over five years researching for this book. And I think it's important for people to think about this moment because this is before good to great comes out. Now, looking back, you're like, well, it's good to great. Of course, it's the, I mean, it's, I don't like necessarily say the Bible, but it's, it's comparative. I mean, it really is to people who are in leadership management. They want to, they want to be a part of a good company. They want to be one of the reasons that a company becomes great. And so good to grade is synonymous with all of that.

And you're saying to yourself, I put in this amount of time, but if someone gave me a check for $100 million, I wouldn't take it. I'd rather publish this work. That's incredible to me when I read that about this work. What was going through your mind as you're on that run? You finish the manuscript and you're ready for this book to be published and why it meant so much to you to get it out into the world. Yeah. Well, so first, kind of maybe just back up briefly how we even got to that point. So after that meeting with Peter Drucker, I did fully commit to the path of carving my own path.

And there was another marvelous mentor moment that I had that led to that moment, led to that next stage in the path. Another mentor of my name, Erd Grosbeck, who was on faculty with me at Stanford. I asked him, I said, should I try to leave an option open to return to Stanford? And he gave me this marvelous piece of advice, which was, you know, when you're really taking an entrepreneurial path, sometimes options have negative value. You should not seek an option to be able to return. You should cut off the option because it will change your behavior. And so that was another, you know, critical moment, critical mentor moment. And what happened at that point was I made sure that I had no option to return.

and Joanne and I describe it as our Thelma and Louise moment, right? We were watching off across the chasm, except we wanted to get to the other side. And so once we made that commitment where there is no turning back, I mean, you're leaving the edge of the chasm and you have to get to the other side. And this image I have in my head is that we're sure we were going to make it. But once we hit the other side, we hit at least with two wheels and then kind of bounced up and kept on going. and so built to last ended up becoming read by a lot of CEOs and that provided some some foundation. Then I said to Joanne, I said, well, we need to keep creating. And so we took all the resources and the good fortune that came from built to last and turned around.

And I plowed it all right back into what became good to great. And that again, really big. and what spent five years self-funded research had fabulous members of my research team that I got from the university and had stumbled upon a fantastic question. See, everything's driven by questions. And that question was, you know, really came out of Built to Las. Built to Las looks at these enduring great companies. But they were kind of great from the ground up, right?

And Sam Walton got it right early, and Walt Disney got it right early, and David Packard got it right early. And so then their companies, they were just well-parented from the ground up. And the question, which Bill Meyan put to me, was, well, what if you've never been great? What if you're just mediocre? And can you actually turn an established company into a great one? And if you can't, then Bill's last is interesting, but it's useless. And it was one of those marvelous questions. And I remember coming back on the airplane from that meeting with Bill Meann, where he gave me the gift of that challenging question.

and I drew a curve on a sheet of paper. And the curve, imagine two curves going sideways across the page, one on top of another, just two lines. And then all of a sudden, one of them starts to rise at a 45-degree angle. Well, the other one keeps going sideways. And then I wrote a little above that, can a good company become a great company, and if so, how, essentially. And so what the whole idea was there was this beautiful question and this beautiful study. Can a mediocre average good company make a breakthrough to become a great company or at least have a great run for, say, 15 years or more? And also ran sports team into a dynasty for 15 years or more.

And then the lower line was the comparison. And while another company that's in the same situation doesn't, because all of our research has this comparative method and of contrast to be able to say what was different. And it was one of those things where, my goodness, I can't believe this question with this methodology has. never been answered. And you get every once in a while a gift in life. It was a gift from Bill Meen and then it was the question, but then the good fortune, incredible, good luck, the question had never been addressed in a rigorous way by anyone. And so it was just sitting there to be addressed. So I said, I'm throwing the next phase of my life into this. So went five years of research and we were able to come up with a fabulous framework.

research base that get good concepts that are highly correlated with why some are able to take something from good to great and others are not. And so after doing all of that research and seeing powerful concepts like the level five leader or that it's first get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to drive and then the discipline to confront brutal facts and it doesn't start with vision. It starts with confronting the brutal facts and getting the hedgehog concept, which we write about in good to grade and getting the fly away. will turning and really seeing this framework beginning to unfold. And it was like it was just all of a sudden I could see with clarity how it actually happens and the concepts that go with it. By the time we put it all together and after five years of work, I'm just sitting up there. I remember it was a snowy day.

I think it was like March sometime or something like that. And I'm sitting at this place where I used to love the citizen, El Dorado Canyon. And I would run up this trail called the Rincon Trail. And I would sit there. And I remember looking out on the high country because it had all. all the late winter snow, blanketing all the mountains, and it's kind of a cool,

coolish day. And I have this place where after running hard uphill, I'd like to stop and just look out over the mountains. And I think of the mountains as this giant cathedral. And I'm sitting there in the giant cathedral

of the mountains, and I'm looking out. And that question just popped into my head. I have no idea why that question popped into my head. It was just this thought experiment. It was like, huh, how much would somebody have to pay?

me to not publish this. And I thought, million dollars, and keep in mind, we didn't, we just spent all of our money investing in this, right? So, so it's not like all of a sudden good to great had changed my life financially at that point. It still hadn't been published yet, right? So I'm sitting there and I'm, well, a million dollars wouldn't do it, 10 million dollars wouldn't do it, 50 million dollars wouldn't do it, probably even 100 million dollars wouldn't do it. And then I was getting cold and I went down the hill. And that was the end of the the end of the mental conversation in my head. And what was really going on is I knew that we had something very special.

And sometimes with a piece of work, and this will sound odd, but sometimes a piece of work, in a sense, you carry a burden of responsibility to bring it into the world. And it becomes something where, in fact, I remember at that time I made decisions for while I was finishing the book to about the risk level and the rock climbs that I would do or the certain kinds of ways I spent my time because I'm thinking to myself, you know, I have to get to the end of this. I have to get this out. And it was very much, this must get out there.

And I carry the responsibility on my back to make it happen. Wow. Did it have initial, like immediate success? Was good to great? like was it one of those ones that just launched and it just took off and it basically has never slowed down or how was it received immediately upon, I believe you did it in July of 2000 or was it 2001? When did it come out exactly?

Yeah. So let's just, I would like you to just now think through the timing. Yeah. The timing of publication is, I think it's either late September or the first week of October of 2001. Okay. Okay. I thought that, I mean, if you think about what happened to our country in September of 2001, all of a sudden, you know, my book didn't seem very important at that moment.

It just sort of seemed like everything was bigger. I mean, in my own mind, too. I mean, it was a time where all of a sudden everything seemed to change. And I did not know if good to great would simply disappear into the much bigger issues that we all faced at that time. And so I think I got my first copy like the second or third week of September and was really excited to see it but didn't know what would happen. And oddly, it started to get traction from fairly early on. And I'm not sure why it did. It just, it did at that time.

There were really important things going on in the world. And yet for people who were leading, it somehow grabbed and started to build momentum. And I think that part of it is that good to great is not really a business book. In fact, none of our work is ultimately about business to me. A business is the data set that allowed us to have a very rigorous approach to answering ultimately very human questions. I mean, the question of good is the enemy of great and how you take something good and make it great. That's not a business question and why something becomes great and something else doesn't and why something lasts, how you can build an institution that can endure versus not.

These are not business questions. And it's just that business provides a lot of data and rigor to be able to assess. those sorts of questions. And I think when people hit something like the level five leader, where you have what we found in the research are these leaders who ultimately ask a deep question, which is what cause do I serve, right? That's the real question that they come at the world with. And that they have the humility to put themselves in service to something that is bigger than themselves, whether it be the purpose of their company, whether it be the culture they're building, whether it be their people, but it's not about them.

And yet they're also incredibly willful to want to be able to make whatever difficult decisions and to endure whatever challenges and sacrifices are required to make good on that ambition for that thing that is bigger than them. I think that there was something that just really resonated with people about a level five ethos in the world. And so maybe that's where it really started. I think that the level five idea, that's not a business idea. It's a deeply human idea.

And I think that's true for most of the key concepts. So I think maybe we just hit something that is deeply human in people. And then it started to gain traction from there. The other is I think people saw the beauty of the question. I mean, it's a beautiful question. Can good become great? and if so how is a great question yes it definitely is and you've talked about level five leader a few times now and one of the the the questions that i the few questions that i seem to ask most people i speak

with jim whether it's recording or not is what are the common themes or characteristics slash virtues of people or leaders that sustain excellence not not not just hit it for a little bit, but they sustain excellence over an extended period of time. That's a big deal. Those words are used specifically for a reason. And I would be remiss if I didn't ask you that direct question. I imagine you're going to share some Level 5 leadership characteristics, which you've already talked about a little bit. But I'd love for you to dive deeper when you think about the study of sustained excellence amongst leaders.

You mean about them as as leaders or, or, uh, or more about their organizations. Because how I answer the question would depend on the frame. The people, them as leaders, the people themselves. Well, so it's very interesting question. Let me just kind of share a little bit of something that's going to be coming in the next year or so as soon as I get it all finished. Because it sheds a little bit of light on this question. I am in the process of finishing up a three-year, probably by the time it's done, maybe close to a four-year project when it gets out in the world, which really looks with the question of producing great K-12 education in our most difficult settings and environments.

And so I've been looking at leaders who took schools in our most difficult settings, whether it be the Bronx or the Mississippi Delta or Central Valley, California, South Central L.A., places where there's significant gang activity, really, really difficult adverse environments in our country, in our society. And looking at the question of how they as unit leaders, whether they be the principal, the headmaster, or sometimes the superintendent, because many of them ended up in that role later, ended up being able to take whatever circumstances they were handed and to produce great results for the kids, or at least take their schools, you know, through a positive. inflection. And the premise of that work is that the unit leader is really the key person. You get a level five principal and you get, you're building great results in education is about great teachers well-led, right? And so well-led by level fives. And so we looked at this. And one of the things that I was thinking about, because I've got these, all these schools that

in, I know, and I'm talking the really, really tough environments, these are our level five unit leaders deployed on the front lines of the, for helping these kids get a start in life. And I went into the study thinking, one of the big questions is going to be how you deal with burnout, right? Here you are in these really tough settings and these leaders are doing heroic work to make sure these kids get a shot to get started in life. So I got these great level five leaders, but I wondered, how long are they going to be

able to sustain it? How are they going to keep themselves in the game long enough? And my worry was that they get about seven years in. And just when they're starting to be really good at leading a school, they're just going to blow up because they're just burned out. And so I went into the conversations with them with one of my key questions being, how do they keep themselves renewed, how do they keep themselves sustained in the game? And to my surprise, this just isn't a problem for them.

And I'll come to why, because I think it provides a business. big part of the answer to your question. But I'll never forget a couple of them saying things like, you know, I've been doing this for 32 years and I'm still on fire. I mean, and you have them, I mean, they are just like year after year after year in there leading at a really high level. And so you stand back in your ask yourself, okay, level five leaders in difficult settings, producing great results, like what allows them to keep going, to keep sustaining themselves? Well, I think there's two things that jump out. The first is, And this, boy, I tell you, if you have young people who listen to your, to your podcast, make sure they get this lesson.

Somewhere along the way, you have to find your personal hedgehog. Now, the hedgehog concept is something we wrote about in good to great, about companies, right? The idea that you focus the energy of the company on, on the intersection of three circles, what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine. very powerful idea for companies. But when you stand back and you look at individuals and then you can go to the question of what's your hedgehog, right? Your personal hedgehog. And that is an analog to those three circles.

The first being, what are you passionate about and love to do such that when you do it, you just, you think, boy, I sure hope I get a long life because I really am passionate and love doing this. The second is you're encoded for it. And to some extent that when you're doing it, you sort of feel, I was constructed to do this. I didn't just pound myself to be good at it. I became good at it because I'm wired for this. I'm encoded for this. And then I worked really hard to master it. But it started with an encoding, right? And it started with something where I have some sort of a

natural orientation or gift for this. And then the third is you can make a living at it, right? You can, you can have a resource engine at it. You can fund what is, you're trying to accomplish one way or another, whether it be with salary or nonprofit funding or, you know, the profits in the business, you've got an economic engine that can make their work. Now, if you have all three of those, you're passionate about it and love to do, Circle one. You're encoded for it, Circle two, and you can make a living and fund your aspirations, circle three. Now you have your hedgehog. And what all of these great Level 5 leaders had in our, in our schools and same in our companies and so forth is they somehow relatively early in their life,

although some found it later, but most found it relatively early. They got inside those three circles. And so they never sort of viewed it as, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do this kind of success thing over here. And then when I'm done with that, I'll really kind of find my hedgehog, right? That's not what they did. They found their hedgehog. And then once they're in it, they just don't leave it or they don't want to leave.

They renew within it. They grow within it. They evolve within it. But because they are there, they're just acting and leading out of that hedgehog. And there's no real reason. And it doesn't mean you only have one hedgehog. You could have multiple ones to discover in life. But so long as you find one, then you can really stay in it and build with it over a long period of time.

And it becomes a positive reinforcement loop in your own life. The other is that you remain renewed as you go along. And this, each person has a different approach to renewal. Some people meditate. Some people run. Some people work nine months really hard and take three months off. I mean, there's a lot of different ways. But you have to care for yourself the same way you take your car in to get an oil change

and the same way that you, you know, you keep your, you know, you reboot your software in once in a while. You need to do that too, right? That's a care and feeding of yourself so that you just don't. physically and mentally grind to a halt. But so long as you're doing that, if you're your hedgehog, you can basically go forever. When you were leaving Stanford to do this on your own, this entrepreneurial journey, is that what you were on the path to? Did you know that at the time?

Were you thinking about that? Like, am I finding my personal hedgehog like something I love to do? And other people tell me I'm pretty good at it. And I could find a way to make money and build the last is going to help fund this. Is that what you were personally doing? I mean, the reason I bring this part up, Jim, and I wanted to go back briefly, is because I've had Adam Grant on. He wrote Give and Take and Originals.

And what he talks about in Originals is the fact that some of the greatest leaders, entrepreneurs in the world, whether it's Steve Wozniak or the Warby Parker guys who created a billion-dollar company that they were actually in his class at Wharton, he said they take measured risk that while some entrepreneurs burn the boat, and feel like they need to leave themselves with no other option, which is the advice that you got and what you did and ultimately it worked. There are a host of people who got backup jobs, who had a side hustle until it became fully sustainable, who spent years toiling away at whatever it was that they felt maybe was their hedgehog and then eventually did it, like a was with Apple and where he worked at HP for a couple of years before he left full blown. to go with Steve Jobs. What do you think about that dynamic and the fact that there is one path, the path that you

took, that a lot of people have taken where they've essentially burned the boats, leave themselves no option. First, the more measured risk approach. Well, I would reframe the question because I think that I can go to one of the concepts that's ingrate by choice because it actually sheds light on this. I don't think that what I did was an entirely. blind risk. Here's the issue. First thing you got to understand is that is that if you're going to take, if you're going to pursue a low odds game, the reality is at some point if you don't

go, if you don't commit fully, the odds are zero. Great point. That's just the way, that's, I mean, the odds will go to zero. If at some point you don't commit fully, you're never going to get across the chasm in that Thelma-Louise moment if you're, if you're basically just going to keep yourself tethered to one side. That's true. But then this is key. So this is very, very important if you include this in the podcast, because that doesn't mean you're taking an unfounded leap into the wild beyond. Let's go to Great by Choice. There's a key concept in there, an absolutely crucial concept that Morton Hansen and I stumbled upon, which is the fire bullets, then fire cannibals. And this is the, you know,

answer to your question, deeply empirical finding. What you find is that when you're going to try to do, when you're going to sort of navigate to find a path, how do you get there, right? This notion of imagine you have a certain amount of gunpowder, and there's a ship bearing down on you. And one approach you'd be to take all that gunpowder and put it in a big cannibal and fire that ship and just hope it hits. And but it misses and then you turn, you're out of gunpowder, and here comes the ship and you're in trouble. That's, by the way, not what I did, and that's not what most of the people that we studied did.

Another approach is to say, I'm going to fire some bullets, right? And I'm going to fire some shots out there, and the first one might miss, and the second one might miss, but it's getting closer, and I'm learning from each one of them, and then boom, ping, I fire a bullet, and I actually hear that I've hit the side of the ship. And now that I have an empirically founded, an empirically validated line of sight, now I'm going to fire the cannonball.

Now, if I had simply woke up at age 29 and launched out with no bullets fired, that would have been an uncalibrated cannonball. That's not what I did. Prior to this, keep in mind, prior to betting on this future, I had fired a lot of bullets. First, I'd taught at Stanford, and I fired bullets on testing and can I teach? Am I able to make concepts make sense? Can I distill quickly a very messy world into what's the essence of this case? Bullet, bullet, bullet. Okay, I'm figuring out how to do this. First book that I wrote was with a co-author of my name Bill Izir. Dear, dear mentor of mine, closest thing I ever had to a father. But as wonderful as that book is, and in certain areas, it actually didn't become a big successful cannonball. And there were things that we

just in terms of our, you know, we didn't necessarily do the publishing arrangement right. I didn't know how to launch a book. There are some things that, uh, that I wish I could have done differently. And there are some wonderful things in that book. Read Hastings, you know, still says everybody should read the first 86 pages of that book if they're going to launch a company. But it only found a small following, right? So it was a bullet. It wasn't, it didn't, it didn't actually hit the ship, it sort of glazed off the side, but learned from it. Recalibrated, built last, only became built to last because of beyond entrepreneurship, right? All the learnings from that went into, I got to, you know,

there are a whole bunch of things about my publisher relationship, and I sure wish I would have had an agent. Learned from that going to have a wonderful agent. To this day, I have the same agent with Peter Ginsburg, who's been with me all the way along, right? Those, that recalibration so that then when he fired the next one on built to last, That had been had bullets before that. So the gun is getting more calibrated.

That one actually hits the ship, if you will. It wasn't clear, but it looked like the cannonball was going in the right direction. So by the time I'm leaving Stanford and launching out there, a lot of bullets have been fired, a lot of classes have been taught, a lot of research had been done. And there were two books, right? So it's not a blind leap. There is actually empirical validation. then the really big cannonball was good to great, right? But notice there's tons to that point where everything then went back into that.

But that cannonball hit the ship because by then the amount of empirical validation was very, very high. So was it risky? Was it not risky? Well, at some point, here's the key. This is the critical thing. You don't look at it and say, oh, I'm only going to fire bullets because I never want to take a risk. Well, if you don't fire the cannonball, at some point, you never get the low odds big result.

You've got to fire a cannibal at some point if you're going to take, and every one of our entrepreneurs that we studied in grade by choice, they made big bet commitments. That's why they were 10x better results than others. But they were risk averse. Why were they able to do that? Because they fired the bullets to get calibration and then fired the cannibal. Here's what the three mistakes are.

you can make. One, not firing enough bullets to figure out what will actually work and to hedge against uncertain events. Two, to fire big uncalibrated cannibals or three, and this would have been the mistake that I could have easily made. When you do have validation,

you blink and you don't fire the cannibal, right? And I would have stayed at Stanford. And I would have kept the option open. I had to fire the cannibal. So that's the key. So the answer is fire bullets, then fire cannibals. You bound your risk by getting empirical validation, but it's at some point, once you

have empirical validation, you've got to place the big bet and go big. That's the key. Empirical validation to some might be hard to define for you, was it built to last? Or just the sequence of those books for you. I'm trying to relate this to others who are not Jim Collins, who are listening to say, what's some of their evidence that may be out there that they're missing, they're not seeing, or they could at least seek to set a goal to say, okay, this is, this is what's telling me that I fired some, I fired some bullets. Is it time to, to really go forth with the cannonballs or not? Because it's a really delicate, potentially dangerous move.

And I think most of the people, as you mentioned, are risk averse, but they're smart about it. So what's the, what are some signs or ways, I guess the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, What I would ask this is how could people implement this into their daily life who haven't written, you know, good to grade or built the last things like that at this moment? So let's talk a little bit about how you set a really good B-Hag, which we write about and built to last the big heriadesious goals, which would be kind of committing to a really big cannibal path versus having a bad one. That's just crazy and can hurt you. And I am fundamentally a person who I think you have to take very, very calibrated and validated risks. So I am, so there's two sides to this. The first is that you have things in place that will keep you alive if everything does go bad.

Right. So, you know, what's your, what's your fallback position? And this is the notion of the productive paranoia where you ask yourself the question, if everything goes wrong, you know, are we still alive to be able to come back and have another day? And you have things in place, whether that be your education, whether that be some financial resources that you might have built up, which we didn't have at that time. But we had the education. You know, what's your fallback position that would make it such that, you know, the game won't come to an end. You're not going to hit the death line. And so that even if it goes badly, you're still in the game of one way or another.

You have a fallback. And that's a really important thing to have because that by being, I've always been financially very conservative so that I can take life risks, right? I wouldn't double down on financial risk later, like really risky investments, for example. I maintain a very, very conservative investment portfolio so that I can make really big life bets, right? Productive paranoia on one side, enabling an entrepreneurial risk on the other side. And so you have to ask yourself, what are my buffers, my contingencies, my fallback, what keeps me alive and in the game? That's good, prudent.

That's just like saying, what are my repel lines on a cliff? You know, if the storm comes in, can I repel off at some point? And that doesn't mean retreating to Stanford. What it means is I can stay alive, right? I can always come back to try to not do another client. Then you go to the validation. You know, this is just looking at. at, you know, what are the points of success that you can look to and say, that worked and that worked and that worked and I can explain why?

In good to great, we write this story in there about my wife, Joanne, committing to go to try to win the Ironman, which she did eventually end up winning the Ironman, became world champion. She was working at a consulting firm. She had had admissions in her pocket to the top business schools in the country. but she had run cross-country and track in college. So she knew she could run. She knew she had athletic talent. So boom, there's some empirical validation. Then she started doing some triathlons, and she discovered by empirical experience,

wow, I am strong on the bike. Like I pass people uphill, right? There's empirical. You can see it. You're passing good riders when you're on uphill. By the way, your bike weights more than theirs does. Okay, now I've got another piece of empirical validation. Third, I'm not as good at the swim segment, but they're a good master's programs and I'm noticing my times are starting to come down.

So you think of it is there's this building body of evidence that it is not crazy to say, I could probably win some triathlons and then one day to say, I think I'm going to go off and try to win the Iron Man, right? That was the commitment to the cannonball. But it wasn't out of the blue. You're looking for tangible pieces of evidence. Maybe it's feedback you get from the mentor. Maybe it's some specific things that you've done where you say, wow, that worked better than I thought it would. Or you get positive feedback on something.

You tried something and it worked. Or you can actually see some numerical foundations for it. It doesn't matter what arena you're in. You can basically point to if you were a trial attorney and had to win your case, what evidence would you point to that my case is I should. should commit. Here's the evidence. Here's the tangible, practical, empirical evidence from experience that would say this is not crazy. Love it. Jim, do you have time for one more? There's one more topic I wanted to get to.

So there's hundreds. I'd love to at some point. I'd love to do this again. But specifically in 2001. We should do it when we talk about the, when the, when the, when the K-12 stuff is coming up because it's, and actually, can I, can I back up to, there's actually, well, there's two, two things that I might want to get to as well, but go ahead. Yeah, so maybe this will be one of them. So thinking about the flywheel, and I know you have a tool for this, but to where this got started, and especially with what's going on in the news right now about Amazon, I mean, Amazon's essentially taking over the world.

They just bought Whole Foods. I mean, everything about it. We all basically live on Amazon, Amazon Prime. It's the best. I buy on it constantly. But in 2001, long before Amazon was Amazon, they had an off-site meeting, and they decided, Jeff Bezos, Bezos,

how you pronounce his last name, they decided that they wanted you to come in and help them. And I'd love for you to share this story in regards to the fly week. feel free to expand and take as much time as you need. But I'm curious about, one, them bringing you in and how, I mean, there's quotes from people in that meeting that said it basically changed the course of their company based on what you shared with them during that off-site meeting.

So it's really incredible to especially see them now about 16 years later, but love to learn more about that story and specifically more about the flywheel. It's interesting when I think back to that. So one of the marvelous things about having great students is they make you look like a good teacher. And so, I mean, it's, you know, if you are fortunate enough to have the chance to share your ideas and good to grade had just come out and I went up to Amazon and shared the ideas. But if you're fortunate enough to be able to bring a powerful set of ideas like that, but to the right. students. I mean, to people like Bezos and his team, they're going to make those ideas and what you taught them look really good because they're fantastic at what they do and be able to

take it. So great students make people look like very good teachers, and that's part of what happened there. I think that, so I went up to Amazon. It was in the wake of the dot-com crash, and there were people wondering what would happen with Amazon. on next and so forth. And I basically taught the good to great framework and challenged in particular with this idea of the flywheel. And the flywheel came out of good to great was the idea

that, hey, you never build a great company as a single event. And a lot of what had happened in the dot-com world was this idea, we're going to have this kind of single event, and we're going to have this big cash out moment. And it's the antithesis of the flywheel.

And I went and I said, if you really want to build a great company, you have to basically figure out how to build cumulative compounding momentum over time, like turning a giant heavy flywheel. You get one turn and two and four and 16 and 32 and 64 and the flywheel begins to build momentum. And you really need to think about what's the flywheel, not what's the event. And so they, to their great credit, went and sat down and said, let's take that idea and really diagram out our flywheel. Let's ask ourselves the question, what's the compounding machine, of Amazon. So then years later, I'm reading this book called The Everything Store, and I come across

my name, and I'm wondering, why am I in this? And they write in there about that moment there where they went and did this, and it became part of the underlying architecture of Amazon. And so they had done this thing where they talked about, you know, you have lower prices on more offerings, and that allows you to bring more people to the site, which brings more third-party visitor. which then allows you to actually extend the store and extend distribution, which then allows you to get more people and to be able to have greater volume per fixed cost, which then allows you to lower prices and more offerings and boom, the flywheel would just start to build momentum if you just stayed on that.

And you think recently about some of the moves they've made, and you think expand the store, extend distribution check, right? It's all part of the flywheel. And so I thought about that a lot and was realized, you know, that's something I've been doing for years with companies, but I never really sat down to actually articulate it. Vanguard had come to my lab in Boulder and articulated their flywheel. Other companies had come and articulated their flywheel when they got their specific virtuous flywheel turning. This is how our flywheel turns.

This leads to this, leads to this, leads to this, leads us back to the top of the loop. And then it just creates this sense of like snap, snap, snap, momentum. the flywheel goes around and then boom it goes around again and then it goes around again and just keep turning and building the momentum and you can just feel the acceleration and when you have that you don't have to motivate people you don't have to have vision statements you don't have to be kind of trying to get people alive people get swept up into the momentum of the flywheel because they can see this is how it turns and if we do this and this where they compound upon each other then the flywheel will continue to build momentum so recently from that observation decided that I need to put down in a tool for people to be able to do this. Because I've been just doing it in my lab in Boulder with companies for a long time. I thought, I need to make this available to the world. So sat down and created a flywheel tool to actually help people. We've made it available to everyone in the world.

It's just there for people at the site, which is Jim Collins.com. You can just go there, go to the tool section, whoever you want, are in the world, you can access it and use it. It's just there for free availability. And in that, sort of describe exactly how you begin to pin down how your flywheel turns. How do you do for yourself what the Amazon team, what the Vanguard team, what these teams did for themselves to be able to build their momentum machine? So it's kind of exciting. One of the neat things about the research is that you see an insight, like say the flyer. That's a true concept that came out of good to great.

But only years later, sometimes do I even more deeply understand how the concept best works. So it's sort of like the addition to the chapter from good to great that I wish I would have been able to write 16 years ago. But I wasn't. So it's available now. It's really good. I was reviewing it preparing for our time. It's just seeing the Amazon flywheel, the Vanguard flywheel and go on and on. and the detail in between, I would encourage people to go read it.

Jim, this is, I know we went over a little bit, but I really appreciate your time. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover that I may have missed? Well, as you say, there's just so much to, that we could hit. But I would just like to circle back to one thing. It's been through our conversation today all the way along. And I know that you have a lot of young, leaders who enjoy your podcast. And the future for me is in the young leaders who are going to build great things from here.

And we've talked a lot about mentor moments. And I just want to pass along one overall frame that I would, if I just had three minutes with young people in the world, what would I tell them? And there's a key concept in good to grade about first who, then what? It's the idea that we live in a world that's full of what's, right? You know, what's your vision, what's your strategy, what's your direction, what's your plan, what's your career, what are you going to do to solve this problem? It's all about a bunch of what's. But I think the thing I've come away with from all of our work is the most important reframing is to shift as many what's to whose.

And the question is not what career you're going to have or what path you're going to take or what company you're going to work for. or what company you're going to start or what idea you're going to have or any of those. Those are important questions, but they come second. The most important question is who? Who are you going to allow to mentor you? Who are you going to work with? Who are you going to spend your life with?

Who are going to be your friends? Who will you let shape you? And if you could just early, and who are you going to take care of? And what are you going to do? Not what is your next career step, but who are the people in your unit that you are going to take care of as a leader? Take care of your people, not your career. And that shift from what to who, the sooner you can do that in life, that's how my life changed.

I had great mentors. But I also understood that I didn't have to have the answers to the what's. if I really paid attention to finding great who's that would help guide me. And so I would offer that to your young folks. If they were to take a big piece of just life advice, what comes second? It's always who first. Wow, what a way to close, Jim. I really appreciate it.

And again, what an interesting start to this conversation too, much like your meeting with Peter Drucker. he started the conversation by peppering you with questions immediately. And for a guy like you, who I'm not sure what I expected, but I was very excited. And to immediately have you take a genuine interest in me and my show and ask real questions that you cared about the answers and you did your pre-work to get ready for this and you don't really ever do podcast, it means more to me than you know. So I have to acknowledge that. I really appreciate it. And I would, you know, you've been a mentor of mine for many years without even realizing it. And I want to thank you for the work you've put out.

And I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both progress because I'm excited to see what you do next. I'll be gobbling it up. You can guarantee it. And I'm pumped that we had this talk. And I can't wait for the next one, man. Well, I appreciate that very much. And I really have enjoyed the conversation and your genuine approach to the conversation. and when we get to the education stuff,

I hope we'd get a chance to talk about that because we have got to make sure that all of our kids get to the starting line of life at age 18 and we've got a long way to go. Well, I would love to. And as a person of a dad of five daughters, ages 10 to 2, it means a lot to me too. I have a personal, I care more about them than anything in the world.

And so I think about their education on a regular basis through all the parent-teacher conferences and my interactions with their schools, it's very important to me as well. So I would love to have that conversation with you, as well as really any time. You feel like expanding and talking more about leadership, as I said, I have pages and pages of notes.

We got to some of them, but there's so much more. But thanks again, Jim. I really appreciate it, man. Very good. You take care, Ryan. All right. Thanks, Jim. Bye-bye.

Bye. in until next time. Head over to learning leader show.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Callaway Golf. Calloway's business and marketing approach has turned heads over the last several years, helping the company make a dramatic turnaround from losing millions of dollars per year to being a leader in the industry. Products like the GB Epic Driver, Steelhead XR irons, and Calloway's Chrome Soft Golf Ball are aimed at avid golfers looking for premium performance.

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