The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The State of the Global Automobile Market – with Jim Rowan, CEO of Volvo

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo, joins Scott to discuss the state of play in the global automobile market including the rise of electric vehicles, disruptions to the traditional automakers, and the winners and losers in the space.  Scott opens with his thoughts on Facebook threatening to remove news from its US platform as well as a poor branding decision by Warner Bros Discovery.  Algebra of Happiness: reach out to someone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 220. 220 is the area code of southeastern ohio in 2020 a fly landed on mike pettis's head during the vice presidential debate and kamala harris became the first female vice president i like to think that they might get married someday and that would be the couple that brightens up a room by leaving it jesus christ. Snoozefest. Boring and more boring. Oh, God. Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. Go, go, go!

Welcome to the 220th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo. I remember growing up with Volvos. My friends, my close friend Adam's mother had a Volvo, and I just remember the silver Volvo. It's kind of a, takes me back to a kinder, gentler time. Anyways, we discussed with Jim the state of play in the global automobile market, including the rise of EVs, disruptions to the traditional automakers, and the winners and losers in the space. Very thoughtful guy, very strategic, and a Scotsman, a fellow, literally, arguably the second most successful Scottish person ever. I can't think of who's number one, but there's got to be Adam Smith, maybe, maybe Ewan McGregor, Sean Connery. Other oatmeal savages, you'll win, I'll give you a thick

ear. Anyways, that's my father. He used to threaten to give me a thick ear. I didn't even know what it meant. I just knew I was scared. And then I learned when I was older, his dad used to hit him so hard his ear would swell. And he said, give you a thick ear. Probably to remove news from its platform in the U.S. if Congress passes the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would allow that news organizations are going out of business while these big tech companies garner billions of dollars in digital ad revenue. In a September press release, Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote the following, open quote, to preserve strong independent journalism, we have to make sure news organizations are able to negotiate on a level playing field with the online platforms that have come to dominate news distribution and digital advertising. Close quote. Senator Kay, Meta certainly does not like this bill.

And Andy Stone, a MetaComms person, tweeted recently, open quote, if Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions. Well, smell you, Facebook. That's right. I'm taking my news ball, and I'm going home. Yeah, I doubt that would happen. This is a tough one because I like the idea of news outlets being able to bind together

sort of collectively bargain. If you look at the music industry, the reason they have are growing again is they were essentially able to bind together and say, all right, anyone uses our music, we as a group are going to have this thin layer or this thick layer above us representing us to go to bat for our rights, our compensation with the streamers, et cetera. And I think it's been quite effective. I remember being on the board of the New York Times and saying, we should turn off Google. Why on earth are we letting Google come in and give us a nickel while they take dollars? They literally just drove up to our vault with a tractor trailer and pulled cash out of it for 10 years. But we were so fascinated with those cool digital people, as we are fascinated with guys

who don't shower and have floppy hair, see above FTX, we fell under the same idolatry of innovators. And I remember Arthur Sulzberger just couldn't wait. And we'd talk about his drinks with Steve Jobs. And we continued to have them molest our data and give us pennies on the dollars. Anyways, I suggested, no joke, that we turn off Google. I said this in my first board meeting. I'm like, why are we letting them come in here and commoditize and homogenize our content, putting it next to USA Today and Joey Bag of Donuts newspaper and the Chattanooga whatever independent?

We should turn off Google. And then we should bind together with News Corp. And I suggest we get together with the Newhouse family, the folks who own Pearson, and basically all bound together and then license it all to the highest bidder. And it was back when Bing was a tangible threat or sort of in the fight against Google. I think they had 12 or 15% market share. And I said, let's say to each of the major search engines, i.e. two of them, whoever pays the most for this license gets access to our incredible content, whether it's Vogue or the FT or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, and the rest is just going to be a sewer of shitty content. And I thought we would raise billions of dollars. And of course, the in-house counsel said we can't do that because it violates antitrust. I'm like, antitrust? Antitrust? Jesus Christ, this is worse than a

date, a double date with Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. What do I mean by that? What do I mean by that? Supposedly, the newspapers weren't allowed to bind together to negotiate against advertisers or distribution or carriers. Meanwhile, Google had, at that time, 83% or 85% share and was on its way to 93%, which it is today. So that made absolutely no sense to me. So I like the idea of newspapers being able to bind together. At the same time, this kind of reeks of the legislation in Australia, which was essentially Rupert Murdoch, who's the most powerful man in Australia, strong-arming the government into basically taxing the innovators and paying the old economy companies. So this kind of feels punitive, like, oh, you're smarter than us. We're jealous. We're more likable. We're newspapers.

Let's tax you and give us that money. I kind of don't get it. I think we should enforce antitrust. I think the big tech should pay their taxes and not be able to license their IP offshore, not be able to weaponize elections. You've heard my rap. But this idea of selectively, if you will, punishing innovators such that you can prop up firms that just are no longer relevant, I don't know. That smacks of socialism or engineering from the government. So I'm torn. I'm torn.

As much as I love Senator Klobuchar, I think this is probably ill-considered legislation. All right, moving on. Moving on. Let's wrap with a little lesson on brand strategy. HBO is part of Time Warner, which is now under the same roof as Discovery. According to CNBC, once HBO and Discovery Plus merge under the same app,

the combined Warner Brothers Discovery is expected to name the service Max. So HBO is going away. It's not going to be HBO Max, HBO Plus, HBO Now, HBO Joey Bag of Donuts. It's going to be Max. So just as Time Warner has been a part of, I think, two or three of the five worst acquisitions in history. One, they fooled AT&T by selling it for too much.

They were fooled by AOL and sold for way too little to AOL. Anyway, they now can boast that they have made two of the worst decisions in the history of brand strategy. The first awful decision when John Stanky showed up at a team meeting and said to the good folks at HBO, we need to scale this, referencing Netflix. Oh, my gosh, John. By the way, I know John Stanky. I think he's a pretty thoughtful guy and think he did the right thing shedding Time Warner. A step back from the wrong direction is a step in the right direction. So you gotta give him credit for that.

But we need to scale this. Here's the thing. Here's the beauty of HBO. First and foremost, HBO has created a culture which is unrivaled. And people will write about this. One of my mentors, and I would call him a friend, Jeff Bukas, who I think is the brightest business mind

in the history of media, was all about, okay, it's not about what's on HBO, it's about what's not on it. And if you think about HBO, if anyone is talking about a show around the water cooler, if there's a show that's really part of the zeitgeist, there's a really good chance it's from HBO. I don't care if it's Succession or Girls or Game of Thrones or Sex and the City, I'm dating myself. But if a show really commands the conversation across the globe in popular culture, it's almost always got three things in common. The first is H, the second is B, and the third is O.

What is this brand? It's an artisanal brand. It's a Vuitton. It's a Ramoah, right? It's a Chanel. It's an Hermes. And what does that mean? What does that mean? It's not those beautiful stitched, right? It's a Chanel. It's an Hermes. And what does that mean? What does that mean?

It's not those beautiful stitched, hand-stitched backs, right? It's not that cool steel. By the way, best piece of luggage I've ever had was Ramoha. It's my favorite thing in the world. One of my favorite physical item in the world. Although there's probably some people in my life I'd give up before I give up my Ramoha. But anyway, another talk show.

Merchandising isn't about what you have. It's not about selection. Endless selection as a retail strategy means you better be number one because it's a business about scale and lowest cost, which is a shitty business unless you're Dell or Walmart or Costco and you can have that kind of scale. Everything else is about creating voice through merchandising. And HBO is the only streaming media platform that has figured out a way to create voice through merchandising, see above.

It's not about what's on HBO. It's about what's not on it. And to come in and decide to scale it was just meant he didn't get it. And what do you know? A bunch of Texas Republican phone guys didn't hit it off with a bunch of New York and LA progressive media guys.

And it was kind of the cultural, like worst marriage ever. See above Vice Presidents Harris and Pence. Anyways, they are now contemplating the second worst brand move in the history of media. They're going to get rid of HBO and call it Max? Unless it's a strip club or unless it's a erectile dysfunction drug, I'm just not interested in anything called Max, right? Actually, I know a nice guy named Max. And my friends, what was it called? Mastiff was named Max.

And also Max is a really popular kids' boy's kids' name now. But distinct to that, it is a terrible corporate name, Max. I mean, I just didn't, maybe it's a suffix, right? Maybe Uber Max or something like that. But they're going to get rid of what is arguably one of the best brands in the history of media, HBO. What the fuck are they thinking? I'll tell you what, they're not thinking. This Trump stanky going, I know, let's try and turn Louis Vuitton into Walmart, right?

That was dumb. This is crazy to give up HBO. You are literally throwing billions of dollars at the wall. Case in point, what does it cost Amazon to get an Emmy? About $180 or $200 million. What does it cost HBO? $50 million. See above one of the most productive cultures in history.

And that culture is all bubbled up to a brand that means whatever they produce, whatever they produce, you're willing to give it a trial. Any show comes out on HBO, I'm willing to give it a shot. If it gets any traction, I'll tune in. Why? Because it's HBO. See above manicured, see above edited, see above artisanal, see above curated. And they're going to do away with that amazing brand so they can have shark week over and over. I don't know what the hell else they're putting on. Has anyone seen Discovery Week? I have several hundred subscribers at Time Warner to my newsletter. I say that because I'm desperate for your affirmation and at HBO. Listen to me now. Open Revolt. Do not give up HBO. One of the best media brands of this and the last century. What the fuck, Zaslav?

What are you thinking? Park the Porsche. Great, you're in Jack Warner's office. Great, you're probably pretending to be some Hollywood mogul, but you also have your head up your ass. HBO, that's the asset. That was a rant. We'll be right back for our conversation with Jim Rowan. you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories,

and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it.

So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo. Jim, where does this podcast find you? It finds me at my desk. Actually, I'm in Asia this week. So I'd love to get your sense of the state of play in the automobile market.

It's an enormous market, but what is your sense, if someone were to say, all right, give me the cliff notes on what's happening globally in the automotive market. What are the biggest trends? Who are the biggest winners, losers, et cetera? Yeah, it's a great question because everyone tends to talk about this move towards electrification. And of course, that's true in itself. But electrification is really the tip of the iceberg. Just changing an internal combustion engine for an electrical propulsion system is really the easy part. The bigger and much, much more profound change

is the move to core compute technology, next generation silicon, connectivity, cloud, and of course, software, which can be updated over the air. And that's really the big, big change. And I guess if I put that into two words, the automotive industry has never really focused on software and silicon. And that really is the big change that's going on in the industry. Yeah, that feels right. My sense is that this used to be a low margin manufacturing based industry, and it's become a higher margin software based industry. So assuming that's the case, are you going to see a lot of new entrants, specifically Apple, into this business? Who does that trend benefit and hurt most?

Well, I think it hurts everyone who doesn't figure out that the whole industry is going to change from selling hardware to someone, you know, once every five, six, seven, eight years. And so you're moving really from hardware to hardware and software and really to hardware, software, and services. That's really the direction of travel. And the companies that don't figure out how to sell directly and then service that customer base meaningfully through software upgrades,

but also through other services that have never really been offered by the OEMs directly. And that direct customer engagement, if you will, is the part that's really going to change significantly as well. So you really get two transformations going on at the same time. One is the technical transformation, let's call that, from petrol to electric. And then the other transformation is around the direct customer engagement.

And it seems really crazy for me, because I don't come from the auto industry to think that you sell a product, which is a $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 product to a customer and you never speak to that customer either before or after the sale. Everything was done through a dealership network and that's going to be a significant change

in the industry. So that brings into play, back to your question, other companies who are really good at software and direct customer engagement. So that's a, I want to press pause there because I've always thought that the issue around the automotive industry was its distribution strategy. And that is through a business construct or business model

that was very profitable where they outsourced the capital requirements to build the distribution, specifically the dealership. They had a local capital source that ran kind of a local region around distribution. But as a result, it wasn't always the best thing for the brand and they couldn't control the relationship. And there's even laws, I think, in the U.S. prohibiting manufacturers' brands from distributing directly. Do we need car dealerships moving forward? I guess is how I would cap the question. Yeah, I think you need, I think you do. And I think that's one of the good things

about Volvo is that it has a pretty reasonable size dealership network that's been trained over years and actually that's quite trusted by the customer base. So the dealership itself is not necessarily the profound change. The change is one direct customer engagement by Volvo so that there's a, you know,

we're a brand that's really built on safety and people don't want to just feel safe when they drive the Volvo. They want to feel safe at every touch point with the customer.

A buyer hypothesis in so much as how it operates right now is you've got this distributed inventory across, you know, let's say, 500 dealerships. Every one of them holds a little deposit of inventory. Maybe it's not exactly the car that the customer comes in to buy. So that then encourages discounting. And obviously, then that affects the brand. Also, you have very different pricing. What are the customers looking for?

Customers are looking for price transparency. And if you look, if you take Apple as an example, you basically pay the same price wherever you purchase that product. And I think that same change is needed and is wanted within the car industry. People don't want to haggle over price. They want to know exactly what they're getting for the money that they're spending. And so moving to

a more centralized inventory or, you know, let's say smaller deposits of inventory rather than completely distributed is going to really help, I think, in that scenario. So yes, I buy the hypothesis. So, and this is post-marketing, but ever since buying an SUV eight years ago, I'm sort of hooked on it. I like the feel. I like the feeling of safety. I like riding up high.

And I thought, okay, I want to be, I'm trying to be more conscious of my carbon footprint. I want to get an electric SUV. I was shocked how few options there are. Why do you think, I mean, my sense is the SUV market has been the gift that keeps on giving for the automobile market. And yet it feels like it's been slow around electric.

Talk about your efforts there. And why is it that I can find a bunch of sedans that are electric or compact cars, but I can't find that many SUVs that are electric? Well, I think what people were trying to do is they were trying to build an electric car out of what was once an ICE design, an internal combustion design. And it's very difficult, I think, to do that properly. So if you really want a good SUV that's purpose-built for electric, you need to build it from the ground up.

And that means you need to take out the tunnel, put in a flat skateboard design that allows for maximum battery storage, but it also allows for maximum ride stability on that platform. And I think the people who are then willing to invest in that say, okay, I'm going to go all in on electric

and I'm going to make this new platform fully electric without being able to do both electric and i'm going to make this new platform fully electric without being able to do both electric and internal combustion so you could maximize the benefit because as soon as you do that you compromise the design and and i think that was really the uh the the holding up point people were trying to do both and we know because when we did our first electric car, it was built originally on a hybrid design. The latest designs that we have are fully electric from the ground up, what we call born electric. And those born electric designs are just so much more powerful

in terms of the design choices that you get and the ride stability and even cost because it's purpose-built. So auto sales are in some ways the tip of the spear. Whenever you hear an economist, they talk about housing starts, they talk about credit card expenditure, and then they talk about auto sales. Try and be an amateur economist here.

And based on where Volvo's sales are going up and going down, what does it say about our economy? Where's Volvo really killing it? Where is it struggling? And what does it say about the different regions economically? Yeah, so we are strong. And that's really quite surprising because when you look at rising inflation costs, you look at rising energy costs,

you look at some of the turbulence that's in the market in various forms, you would expect consumer sentiment to dip in certain some of the turbulence that's in the market in various forms, you would expect consumer sentiment to dip in certain parts of the world, especially on a big purchase like a vehicle. We actually, we're not seeing that at all. We're strong in every single region, pretty much

in every country. We're backlogged in terms of orders more than we've ever been, especially on electrification. Now that may be because there's been a lack of because of the semiconductor issues and so on there's been a lack of vehicles coming into the market so that backlog may be as a result of that but at this particular point in time we don't see any dampening of demand let's say and you're right it's it's a surprising if not welcome um set of events but that's kind of what you're right, it's a surprising, if not welcome, set of events.

But that's kind of what we're enjoying at this particular point in time. And we're, you know, our biggest market is Europe, but right behind that is the USA and China and even, you know, large parts of Southeast Asia. So it's pretty global, to be honest. And your background, you have such an interesting background.

You were the CEO of Dyson. And so when I think of Dyson, I think of design. I think of a company that is just consistently winning design awards and took these fairly pedestrian products and said, there's no reason these products can't inspire people through just sheer, elegant, interesting design. I mean, even like the hand dryers in the bathroom, I thought, okay, here's literally the most mundane product in the world. And they figured out design attributes to make it interesting. How do you bring that? And I assume you're trying to bring that to Volvo, but what does that mean in terms of a cultural shift? Do you bring in new people? Do you spend more money on design? Do you get involved in different ad channels? How do you bring some of that design sizzle to a company? I think of Volvo, quite frankly, not known as being really cutting edge design. I almost feel like it was a little bit boring in a good way. But that's not Dyson.

What is your plan for Volvo in terms of that design sensibility? Actually, it kind of goes back a little bit. So I worked for a large number of years for Flextronics. You know them as a contract manufacturer, I'm sure. And the interesting piece about that part of my career was I got to see 40, 50 different companies because we were contract manufacturers to some of the biggest companies in the world. Some of those companies were in exactly the same marketplace.

And we could see firsthand who was going to win in those markets by the way they designed their supply chain, by the way they designed their products, how easy it was to manufacture, etc. And that was really something which was a huge learning piece for me. And then even getting into, from there, then I went into BlackBerry. And BlackBerry was running the show at one point,

if you will, in the smartphone industry. And then again, you see this massive transformation come into an industry where it was going from feature phones or early smartphone adopters to then when Apple and Google and Android and stuff come in. And it made such a difference. Yeah, it's striking.

I mean, I can't think of an industry that has changed more. And I feel like it's this meteor hit the industry with Tesla that had sort of infinitely cheap capital. And then I'm curious, Apple question mark, do you think Apple's coming into the industry and do you think they'll be successful? And what do you think it'll do to the traditional automakers? You know, that's a great question. I have no idea. I hear the rumors the same as you. And for me, because that's a really interesting question around, for me, what do we build versus what do we buy?

And at Volvo, we really focused on building the technology and writing the software that's really differentiating for us as a company and for our customers. But then we partner up with the likes of Apple or Google, because there's 7 billion people on the planet got either an iPhone or an Android machine. And therefore, they like that. They obviously like that connection. So for them to go into their car and boom, they've either got their Android system up and running or their Apple system. And it doesn't bother me that they say, hey, Google, or say, hey, Siri.

That's fine. And so right now, I think that's where they're really adding value to the auto industry is basically being a bridge between the smartphone adoption that we've seen over the last 15 years or so and bringing that straight into the business of, let me just throw out there, why wouldn't a company like Volvo buy Lyft and get into ride hailing? It feels like autonomous driving, and I'm going to make a lot of assumptions here and push back where I have it wrong. It feels like autonomous driving is going to happen just not as soon as we had thought or as some people had claimed. But at the same time, the relationship between transportation and especially younger people is just shifting. Have you any thoughts about getting into, one, going vertical with ride hailing, two, getting into some sort of subscription service?

I think you dabbled in that, where I might get a car just delivered to me, switch it up every year. Or what are your thoughts on autonomous? Yeah, so I think you're right. Autonomous is going to take a bit longer. It'll be governed more by regulation than it will be by technology, in my opinion. The technology will exist

and then you'll need to make sure that it's safe. And in certain parts of the world, there'll be different legislation and rules that you'll need to adapt to. So AD will come, but it will come, I think, later than maybe it was first thought

you know five or six years ago in terms of so we do offer subscription and that's one of the things which I think is really interesting right now

so we offer what we call Care by Volvo and that's a full subscription based model and the minimum you need to sign up for that is three months

so that's a pretty small commitment and then we actually offer what we call Volvo On Demand and that means you need to sign up for that is three months. So that's a pretty small commitment. And then we actually offer what we call Volvo On Demand. And that means you can hire the car for, I think it's a minimum of one hour. And we see a lot of younger people who just want a car periodically. They just maybe want it for a weekend

or even for a half a day. Then they use our Volvo On Demand process. The subscription model, they they use their Volvo on-demand process. The subscription model, they tend to take for longer, minimum three months. Most of them stay for much longer than that. But here is where it becomes really interesting. Next year, we've already signaled that we'll bring out a smaller SUV,

and that will be much more competitively priced. We'll offer that in subscription-based ownership. So you're signing up to basically three months. At that point in time, young people, Gen Z is 19, 20, they're coming into the car buying market. That's a demographic that at Volvo we've never really spoken to before.

It's always been a kind of older demographic. So that young demographic will come on, they'll go online and they'll say, hey, here's a Volvo, nice safe car, good design and uh i'm going to sign up for three months they won't go anywhere near a dealership at that point they'll buy online and they'll ask to get the car delivered to their home or the place of work or whatever and that's going to be a massively profound change not just for us in volvo but that's going to be a big change for the industry when you get gen z who are used to buying online,

they get their information from different places. As you know, Scott, they ping their own network. That's how they validate whether they're making the right purchase. And then they'll hit the buy button. And hopefully it'll bring us into a brand new demographic that we've never really spoken to before. We'll be right back.

Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge,

to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Think about those businesses that grew their sales beyond their forecasts. Companies like Momofuku or Feastables by Mr. Beast or even a legacy business like Mattel. When you think about them, sure, you think about a product with demand, a focused brand and influence-driven marketing,

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash voxbusiness, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash voxbusiness to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash voxbusiness. I want to talk a little bit about your background and then I'll let you go here. I would imagine you're the only Scott that's running a global automobile manufacturer. Can you talk to what were the biggest influences on your life growing up? Yeah. So I think, for sure, my father was a mechanic, and he had just a tremendous—

I mean, the whole Scottish background and psyche, I guess, he just had a tremendous work ethic. I mean, that was pretty much it. And his whole thing was, listen, there's no substitute for hard work. You can be smart. You can be really smart. But if you're lazy and you don't put it in, you don't put in a shift, it probably won't amount to much.

Whereas you don't need to be that smart or you don't need to be super smart you just need to be smart enough but you've got a great work ethic and and you've got great attitude towards getting stuff done then um then that was that and his big thing was education right so he's like you know we're good and of course in the uk you're privileged to to have that education for free pretty much all the way through university certainly still in scotland Scotland, that's the way. But even if you're paying for university in the UK, it's still pretty cheap by comparison to a lot of countries for the quality of education that you can get. So I think the three things were work ethic,

the focus on education and continued learning, and then just treat people as you'd like to be treated and that kind of golden rule. That was pretty much the big influence of his teaching, if you will, to me as a young boy and as a young man. And I think the really cool thing is because my dad was a mechanic,

he wasn't a motor mechanic, he was a mechanic who worked in the factory. But because he was pretty good with his hands in that sense, then we used to go together and fix the car because he would always he was always buying cars that needed some work done and then we would go together and of course that would be his unwilling apprentice but here was the thing here's the thing which was really interesting through the course of being that unwilling apprentice we were fixing the car

it wasn't really the conversations around you, fixing the plugs and the points or the, or the, or the brake discs or any of that stuff. It was the other conversations around, I guess around life, right? Which was like, Hey,

how are you getting on at school? And you know, how is this going? And, you know, and, and it was just a way in which you, in a quite relaxed way could really get into some pretty,

you know, meaningful conversations with your, with your dad. And, and of course at the time you don't realize how profound that's going to be later in life. But I think that's where a lot of the learning came. Yeah, I've always, my one piece of advice I have to other dads is whenever your kids need to go somewhere, offer to drive. Because I find that being in the car with them,

when they're not looking at you and not forced to have a conversation, you just never know what's going to come out of their mouth. Sort of that informal extended period, whether it's 10 minutes, 30 minutes, two hours, where at some point someone says something and it's just a relaxed environment, that's where you sort of get stuff, if you will. You get stuff from your kids. You know, you hear them talk about what's going on at school and they don't, you're not looking at them and asking them questions where their kind of screens go up. All right. So quick, quick lightning round, Jim, last piece of media that really inspired you or that you binged on. Last piece of media. That's a tough one.

Books, streaming, music, albums, something you just devoured recently. You know, so when I get on planes, I've now got to the point where I just download everything on my iPad so that I can binge watch it. And the last, the thing I just watched recently, which I thought was tremendously well put together

in production was the Ozark. What company would you want to run if you weren't running Volvo? If I wasn't running Volvo, you know, I'd love to have a 4A challenge. And because I think it's meaningful and it's needed, I would love to run the NHS in the UK. I think it needs to be modernized and it needs to be streamlined and it needs to be run the way a business should be run. Have you ever thought of returning to the UK and running for office? No, I don't think that's going to be my gig. Best advice you've ever received? Things are never as bad as they seem and things are never as good as they seem. That is absolutely the best piece of advice

I have ever received. Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. It gives you a level of stability. The other thing is, and I got this when I was in Flextronics, you know, is that if you're going to be a senior person in business, you need to be able to take bad news well. And if you're not

able to take bad news well and you shoot the messenger, you run out of messenger really, really quickly. Advice on how to be a better husband or father? Paul, just listen. Don't try and solve all the problems. I mean, I think, I don't know, maybe it's sexism, I don't know, but men or certainly me, I used to be, I went on a listening course. It was called active listening. And I got to tell you, it was one of the toughest courses I ever went on because they really made you, you know, listen. And they says, what did you hear? And you tell them, they're like, nope, that's not what they said. So I think, yeah, listen without trying to give massive advice. We suspend the time-space continuum

and you get 30 seconds with your 25-year-old self. What would you say to your 25-year-old self? Make sure you spend the limited time that you have on this planet with the people that you want to be with doing the things you want to do. Jim Rowan is the CEO and president of Volvo Cars. Previously, he was the CEO of Dyson, where he was also a board member from 2012 to 2020. And before joining Dyson, Jim served as the COO for BlackBerry for several years. He joins us from, where in Asia are you?

I'm in Singapore right now. He's in Singapore and he's the proud product of Glasgow, Scotland. Jim, I really enjoyed this conversation. Best of luck to you. Likewise. Take care. Have a great day. Algebra of happiness. I wrote a post on friends and how important the notion of friendship is. And I think we can all agree that friends play a huge role in our life. But something strange happened to me. I was going through my best friends in high school, your formative years. I think as a parent, most of it is not up to you. Your kids as Michelle Obama, they just come to you. You can manicure a little bit, try and give them some values, but the most important environmental factor is their peer group. And I got very lucky.

My friend Adam Markman was both cool and kind, and I was so impressed with him. I think I modeled some of his kindness. I had another friend named Ronnie Drake, who was a black kid who wasn't going to college unless he got a football scholarship. And I think that gave me some empathy. I had another good friend, Brett Jarvis, who was a Mormon. I love Mormons. I think people make a cartoon of Latter-day Saints. It was just a great experience for me. I played on the church, softball, and basketball teams, and Brett was very ambitious. He wanted to go to Stanford. He was a great athlete, really good student, and he was more disciplined and a better athlete than me, but not much better, so I thought maybe I could go to a good school. And I think that gave me aspiration. I had another good friend,

a guy named Scott. And I won't use his last name because I'm worried that his mom might still be alive and I don't want to upset her. Anyways, very quiet kid, very handsome. I remember when we'd walk across the campus, girls would like whisper to each other when they'd see Scott, but he was very uncomfortable in his own skin and painfully shy. And one day he just kind of nodded at me as I was going upstairs and he was going down and he stopped and I stopped and he said, do you want to play tennis sometime? And I said, sure. And twice a week through our senior year in high school, we used to go to Westwood Public Park, and we'd flip a coin to see who would pay the quarter for the lights, and we'd play tennis. And he was very quiet.

And I remember thinking he was the first person I ever spent time with that we were comfortable being quiet around each other. And I think that's a skill to be comfortable in silence around other people. Anyway, Scott went off to a school in Oregon. I went off to UCLA and we lost touch. And I found out two years later that Scott had gotten his heart broken his first year. And this story does not end well. And took a shotgun and ventured to a very public place

on campus in the middle of the night and put the shotgun in his mouth and killed himself. And the thing that really struck me was when I'd heard about it back then, you know, so wrapped up in my own shit, so selfish, so void of any real, I don't know, vacuous in terms of any emotion, just thinking about it again, just kind of overwhelmed my emotions. Like, how did that happen? Like what, it's like this horror movie, imagining like this guy who had, he was a good athlete, nice kid, super handsome, whole life ahead of him. And you think about what series of decisions led him to think this is the right decision. And it's just kind of unthinkable. And it's the first time people talk about when

they're triggered and they have a, I don't know what it's called, a relapse, and they go back to an old memory and it like, I don't know what's a release, I don't know what the term is. And it was kind of the first time I thought, wow, I'm having that. I had never really processed it. And, you know, there's no real lesson here other than to say, I'm involved in a group called the Jet Organization that does a great job focusing on teen depression and prevention of teen suicide. And if you're down, if you're really in the position where you're thinking about a series of decisions that might lead to self-harm, the one thing, and I'm not a trained psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, but what I can tell you as someone who has struggled with mental illness, and I want to be clear, my mental illness is kind of a garden variety, like Easter parade compared, you don't have the knowledge of knowing, as black as it may seem, this will pass. And this isn't that the world is so awful. This isn't that you are so, that you lack so much value. It's not that at all. It's that something is going on in your life that has triggered likely a chemical reaction, and you are in a very bad place. And the thing you have to

tell yourself is, one, you need to reach out to other people immediately and tell them how you're feeling. And two, I promise you, I promise you, this will pass. It may feel like it will never get better. It will. It will. I wish you look back and when you hear about young people who decide to self-harm, you worry that they don't have the life experience to know that almost everything awful that happens in your life, even if you lose people, I'm not saying you get over it, but I'm saying it gets better. It gets better. Thank you. digital disruption report, you can learn the best path to turning that disruption into growth for your business. With a focus on clarity, direction, and effective implementation, Alex Partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com slash vox. That's www.alexpartners.com slash v-o-x. In the face of

disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM.